In the opening moments of Vladimir, Netflix’s new erotic drama series, the protagonist M (Rachel Weisz) is sprawled on a couch in her negligee, writing in her notepad. She leans towards the camera, then stares into the lens to address you, the viewer, on your couch.
In film and television, this is called “breaking the fourth wall”. It is a ploy of metafiction: a kind of self-aware mode of storytelling.
The fourth wall is the invisible plane through which the camera observes the action. To break the fourth wall is to play with – or sever – audiences’ suspension of disbelief, and abandon the norms of screen narration.
The history of breaking the fourth wall is almost as long as the history of cinema itself. Edwin S. Porter’s film The Great Train Robbery ends with an outlaw firing his gun directly towards the camera. Back in 1903, audiences ducked for cover.
Nearly a century later, director Martin Scorsese paid homage to Porter in Goodfellas (1990) in a scene where Mobster Tommy DeVito (Jo Pesci) fires his gun directly at the screen. Here, the fourth wall break is used in an existential moment for Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) – rather than for pure shock.
In fact, the shock value of the technique has depleted over time, as audiences have become more media literate.
Making the invisible visible
The fourth wall breaks from early cinema fast disappeared with the industrialisation of the medium. The rise of the American studio system privileged some film techniques over others.
The “Classical Hollywood” style – think Casablanca (1942) – was built on a premise of invisibility, from the carefully directed eye-lines of actors, to “continuity” editing that stitched together different camera angles.
In Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1959) Jean-Luc Godard opted for jump-cuts and “direct address”. This is when a character speaks to, or looks directly at, the viewer.
Today, direct address is used widely across genres, from Barbie (2023), to Marvel’s Deadpool films (2016, 2018, 2024), and Jane Austen adaptations such as Persuasion (2022).
On television, we’ve seen women creators and characters explore the power of direct address in a re-calibration of the “male gaze”.
One example is Phoebe Waller-Bridges’ confessions to the camera in Fleabag (2016–19). Cinematographer Tony Miller notes how creative camera choices work in conjunction with direct address to make viewers “complicit in her [character’s] journey”.
The direct gaze
A fourth wall break is not always dialogue-driven. In Persona (1966) film auteur Ingmar Bergman directed his actors to stare deep into the abyss of the camera lens, delivering existential malaise.
This direct gaze has been remediated for streaming programs, including in the
intense close-up shots of Carmy (Jeremy Allen-White) in the final season of The Bear (2025), and knowing glances from the troubled Rue (Zendaya) in Euphoria (2019–26).
Fourth wall breaks can also be graphic. In Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) traces a square of light on the screen with her finger instead of calling Vincent Vega (John Travolta) a “square”.
And in Michael Haneke’s films Funny Games (1997, 2007) a home invader literally “rewinds” the story when a victim kills his accomplice. These kind of wall breaks call attention to the invisible membrane of the screen.
As filmmaker Mark Cousins attests in The Story of Film: An Odyssey, the medium has advanced over time through innovation and the recycling of techniques such as fourth wall breaks.
Is breaking the fourth wall back in vogue?
With the dominance of literary adaptations for the screen (and IP-driven screen stories in general) we’re likely to see more cases of direct address, as screenwriters seek to creatively refashion texts for the screen. Vladimir, for instance, is an adaptation of Julia May Jonas’ 2022 novel of the same name.
While breaking the fourth wall may have lost its shock value, it remains a bold storytelling device which, if done well, can set apart one screen production from another.
Actor Matt Damon recently pointed out how streamers such as Netflix are discussing the potential to reiterate “the plot three or four times in the dialogue” of a film, to account for people who scroll on their phone while listening to “background TV”.
Having a character speak directly to a distracted audience may be one way to return their gaze to the bigger screen.
Hyper-reality in unscripted TV
Breaking the fourth wall sits within a wider envelope of “metafictional” storytelling.
As screen culture becomes increasingly aware of its own machinery, unscripted genres such as reality TV are not merely breaking the fourth wall, but abandoning the conceit of separation entirely. The boundaries between cast, camera, story producers and audience have become increasingly porous.
Alex Baskin, executive producer of the long-running series Vanderpump Rules (2013–25), describes this as “hyperreality”. In the wake of Scandoval, the cheating scandal of Tom Sandoval, the reality TV cast started to intervene in the producers’ narrative arcs by speaking on camera about audience feedback, and providing meta commentary on their own “edits”.
When Ariana Madix (Sandoval’s ex) refused to film with him, it disrupted plans for a neat season finale based on his apology. Madix left the set, effectively ending the entire show. Fellow cast member Tom Schwartz called it a “plot twist”. Unsurprisingly, Scorsese is a fan of the show.
Meta and hyperreal storytelling will continue to be on the rise as screen creators seek to imbue a point-of-difference in a congested market – serving an ever-distracted audience.
Alex Munt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With a shaky ceasefire in place between the US, Israel and Iran – and little progress on talks to resolve the complex issues at the heart of the war – where is this conflict going?
The most likely scenario is a frozen conflict.
A frozen conflict is not static, but is an unresolved war that continues at a low-level below the threshold of full-scale combat.
Even if negotiations resume this week in Pakistan and an eventual agreement is reached, there are still three reasons we believe this is headed towards a frozen conflict, not a comprehensive peace agreement.
1) Trump equates ceasefires with an end to war
US President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy has shown he does not treat ceasefires as pauses for negotiations to agree on substantive political issues. Rather, he declares a ceasefire as a US success, then moves on to the next global issue.
Trump claims to have ended ten wars, including the current conflict with Iran and Israel’s war in Lebanon. A closer look reveals that in most of these conflicts, a shaky ceasefire has held while substantive issues remain unresolved.
This has left frozen conflicts in place with ongoing tensions. In India and Pakistan, which engaged in a brief armed conflict last year, for example, there is a continued risk of renewed hostilities. And a lasting peace between Thailand and Cambodia after last year’s border spats remains elusive.
Yet, Trump has walked away from these conflicts and claimed an end to war as soon as a cessation of major hostilities was in place.
2) Asymmetric wars are difficult to resolve
The current war is asymmetric because of the huge difference in military strength between the US and Israel on one side, and Iran on the other.
Iran has intentionally used asymmetric tactics to counter the US’ overwhelming military power, including targeting infrastructure in Persian Gulf countries not involved in the war and closing the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping traffic to disrupt the global economy.
Research shows asymmetric wars are inherently protracted and often open-ended. As a result, they are more likely to end in a frozen conflict than an enduring political settlement.
The reason for this is simple. The weaker actor cannot win a conventional military battle against the stronger actor. So, it tries to exhaust the more powerful nation with political, economic and psychological pressure, forcing a withdrawal and cessation of hostilities.
This is what we are seeing now between the US and Iran. Trump is feeling these rising pressures and is pursuing a ceasefire, while trying to claim a US victory.
Iran, meanwhile, has agreed to a ceasefire in a bid for survival as the weaker actor, rather than a commitment to an enduring end to the conflict.
This is reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who survived 20 years in a frozen conflict with the US before taking back control of the country when the US withdrew.
3) There’s been no focus on the more complex issues
Neither the US nor Iran appears committed to any long-term resolution of the underlying tensions at the root of the conflict. Key among these is the question of Iran’s nuclear program.
For Washington, the first round of peace talks in Pakistan on April 11–12 were aborted because Iran refused to compromise on its nuclear program. And Iran has long argued it has an inalienable right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
The negotiations that led to the multilateral 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear program – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – took 20 months to conclude. Trump withdrew from the agreement three years later, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal”.
Given this history, a quick and clear resolution to this complex dispute is unlikely.
Some analysts believe the US and Iran could announce a partial agreement that would leave many of the technical aspects to be ironed out later.
But Trump is now facing an opponent that is unlikely to become more accommodating with respect to its long-term “nuclear rights”. In fact, Iran has already shown its resolve by asserting a new geostrategic normal, closing the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting the global economy.
What a frozen conflict means for the region
The Iran-US war may conclude with a series of ceasefires, but will likely remain a frozen conflict due to these underlying tensions. This means more threats from both sides over Iran’s nuclear program and periodic flare-ups of violence between Israel and Iran, the US and Iran, or both.
This is much like the frozen situation in Gaza. Last October, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire under Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The first phase of the plan was then largely implemented, leading to a hostage-prisoner exchange, a decrease in Israel’s heavy bombardments of Gaza and a resumption of aid into the strip.
However, there has since been no progress on the more complex questions of the post-war governance of Gaza, redevelopment of the strip and – crucially – the disarmament of Hamas fighters. As a result, Israel has refused to completely withdraw its troops and violence has continued.
From a historical perspective, the frozen conflict in the Koreas is also instructive. The war ended with an armistice in 1953 and no peace treaty, effectively leaving North and South Korea at war to this day. This led to the North developing an underground nuclear weapons program that continues to pose a threat to the world.
Similarly, the decades-long frozen India-Pakistan conflict has led to an arms race (including the development of nuclear weapons on both sides), instability in South Asia and periodic flare-ups of violence.
A frozen conflict between the US, Israel and Iran will no doubt create similar long-term instability in the Middle East, including a possible arms race in the Middle East and more flare-ups of violence, particularly around control of the Strait of Hormuz.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Over the past several days, there have been conflicting reports about the Strait of Hormuz. It’s difficult to know what’s happening from one moment to the next.
Iran said the waterway was open to commercial shipping again, then turned around and said it was closed.
Iran then fired at two Indian-flagged ships going through the strait, forcing them to turn around.
The next day, the US fired on an Iranian cargo vessel, which Tehran called a violation of the two countries’ temporary ceasefire and threatened retaliation.
What’s actually happening in the strait? Are both sides acting lawfully? We asked naval expert Jennifer Parker to explain.
What happened over the weekend?
There have been several key developments over the last 48 hours.
The first was the statement from US President Donald Trump and the Iranian foreign minister on social media that the Strait of Hormuz remained open. It was an interesting announcement because it was consistent with what the foreign minister had said at the beginning of the ceasefire a week and a half ago.
On Saturday, we saw a large number of tankers and cargo vessels move towards the top of the strait to follow what Iran has designated as a new passageway. Some ships that are clearly desperate to get out of the strait were obviously more confident they were safe to transit through at that point.
The Joint Maritime Information Centre in Bahrain said 18 ships were able to transit through, at least ten through the new Iranian-designated transit route, which is north of the normal transit route.
However, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy then reportedly attacked a number of
civilian merchant vessels. One was an Indian tanker that was on an approved list with the IRGC to travel through the strait.
This suggests the Iranian military may have been disagreeing with the statement of the Iranian foreign minister, saying the strait remains closed.
Is the US blockade legal?
Then, on Sunday, the US fired on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Arabian Sea.
The US is blockading Iranian ports through what’s called a distant blockade. This means US Navy ships are not sitting right off Iran’s ports to stop vessels. Rather, they are positioned further back in the Gulf of Oman and the northern Arabian Sea, with a blockade line effectively drawn between the Iranian-Pakistan border to around the Omani-UAE border.
The US Central Command has reported turning away a number of ships – at least 23 as of April 18.
When a ship approaches the blockade line en route to or from an Iranian port, the US Navy will radio the vessel and say it is not free to go through. Most ships will then turn around.
This is allowed in a lawful blockade under the law of naval warfare. Once a conflict has started, a blockade is a lawful if it complies with certain provisions:
the blockade must be declared
it must be impartial, meaning it needs to apply to all ships
humanitarian goods must be permitted to go through
it must be effective, meaning you can’t declare a blockade, start doing it, and then not actually enforce it
it can’t close off neutral ports.
Many news reports have said the US is blockading the Strait of Hormuz. But it is actually blockading Iranian ports, not the strait. A blockade of the strait would be illegal because this would affect neutral ports in the Persian Gulf. Ships in an international strait enjoy unimpeded transit passage, which cannot be hampered or suspended by the coastal state.
Is the US permitted to fire on a cargo vessel?
The US says it warned the Touska, the Iranian-flagged vessel, to stop over a six-hour period.
If a vessel doesn’t comply with warnings like this, warning shots can then be fired, depending on your country’s rules of engagement. The country maintaining the blockade may also use “disabling fire” against the ship.
This is what the US claims happened – the US Navy destroyer fired on the Touska’s engine room to make it stop. My assessment is this is consistent with the law of naval warfare because the US Navy is enforcing an effective blockade. It also appears to have adhered to the principles of proportionality and necessity under international law.
The US also seized the ship, which is consistent with the law. In terms of the crew, the US has not announced what it intends to do with them. If the crew is non-Iranian, they would likely be released and repatriated. If the crew is Iranian, or if some of the crew are linked to the IRGC, they could be detained.
By contrast, based on current reporting, the ships fired on by Iran appear to have been neutral merchant vessels transiting an international strait. On the information publicly available, there is no indication they had become lawful military objectives.
This is not a lawful use of force because these vessels are not a lawful military objective.
Neutral merchant vessels are generally considered civilian objects under the law unless, by their nature, location, purpose or use, they make an effective contribution to military action. Therefore, it’s not lawful to attack them.
There are some exceptions to that, including a merchant vessel seeking to breach a lawful blockade.
Where do things go from here?
The US is not saying it’s in control of the strait, it’s saying it’s in control of the vessels going in and out of Iran, which is different.
Iran has claimed it’s in control of the strait since the war began. It has been attacking and threatening civilian, predominantly neutral vessels since then.
What I think we are seeing is a tussle for leverage to supercharge the negotiations between the US and Iran, should they continue this week in Pakistan.
Ten years earlier, Kim Gordon’s career began during New York’s post-punk era. Her book, Girl In A Band (2015), recently re-released as a tenth anniversary edition, chronicles her time with Sonic Youth, and charts her role within an alternative scene that shaped and influenced independent music culture across the United States.
By the early 1990s, she was something of a godmother figure for Auf der Maur’s generation of women.
Review: Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir – Melissa Auf Der Maur (Atlantic); Girl in a Band – Kim Gordon (Faber)
Introverted individuals with distinct perspectives on the peculiar challenges of the rock industry, Gordon and Auf der Maur appear to have benefited from a stability missing in many of their peers.
As bass players, they avoided the spotlight until embarking on their solo projects. And with backgrounds in the visual arts, they each had access to independent creative identities away from the stage, which no doubt minimised the pitfalls of rock stardom.
As a music journalist throughout the 1990s, I interviewed many of the people in their stories, including Courtney Love, Billy Corgan, Dave Grohl, Thurston Moore and Kurt Cobain. I witnessed their complex politics and fierce power plays, some still ongoing.
For example, a very high profile singer tried to persuade other women not to speak to me for my first book because my magazine profile of her was badly altered by a male editor. Another musician blamed me for publishing personal details in an interview after I’d given her full copy approval.
It was, as Auf der Maur says, a time of “messy humanity”, low-level trust, and delicate egos.
It was also, as she points out, the last analogue decade: a time before the music scene was transformed by the internet, when rock culture appeared to be finally embracing powerful women and female agency. But in my experience, and as each of these books reveals, it was never that straightforward.
Musical callings and romantic dreams
An artistic free spirit raised in Montreal by unorthodox, creative parents, Melissa Auf der Maur first saw Hole and Smashing Pumpkins within a fortnight of each other in July 1991. Both bands played at the legendary punk club, Les Foufounes Électriques, where she worked part-time while studying photography.
More impressed by Hole’s calm, centred bassist, Jill Emery, than the band’s infamous, volatile frontwoman, Auf der Maur was truly starstruck by Corgan. She introduced herself to him after he was bottled on stage by her roommate. Watching him play, she experienced a “new musical calling”. Four months later, she travelled to a Pumpkins show in Vermont and spent the night “soul fucking” him in his motel room.
“I am you and you are me,” she remembers Corgan saying to her, in what sounds like a rock-starry show of narcissism towards an impressionable fan. But for Auf der Maur, who occasionally veers into grandiose claims, the encounter was a “romantic dream come true” and “a turning point […] musically, personally and cosmically”.
More tellingly perhaps, though she describes Corgan as eventually exerting “more influence on my life than anyone other than my parents”, Auf der Maur didn’t question his patriarchal power dynamic for many years – despite being in one of rock’s most notorious female-fronted bands.
But Corgan’s hold extended to his former girlfriend, Courtney Love, long after she left him for Kurt Cobain. When Hole’s second bassist, Kristen Pfaff, died from an overdose, it was Corgan who decided Auf der Maur should be the replacement.
The Hole drama
Life in Hole was nothing if not dramatic – and Auf der Maur’s account harbours no illusions about the difficulty of working with a grieving, traumatised widow.
But her empathy and compassion keep her story from collapsing into the critical terrain so often provoked by the outspoken, uncontained Love who attracted considerable vitriol, particularly after becoming involved with Kurt Cobain.
Auf der Maur is also more forgiving than drummer Patty Schemel, who paints a harsher picture of the ambitious, tempestuous singer in her brilliant memoir, Hit So Hard. But she was very aware of her marginalised position as Love’s “good girl” in the autocratic Hole. She had no artistic freedom in the band and eventually grew frustrated with her unfulfilling situation.
After five years in Love’s orbit, Auf der Maur wanted out. By 1998, the singer’s Hollywood film career had catapulted her into a different stratosphere of celebrity culture, further widening the existing chasm between her and her band members.
And the glamour and excitement of big festival billings and hit records were not enough to prevent the bass player from feeling ultimately “disillusioned and disconnected”.
Her decision to quit was compounded when she fell in love with ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, now with the Foo Fighters. His long-running rift with Love had previously made him “off-limits”.
But before she was released from her restrictive contract with Hole, Corgan was back in touch, asking her to replace D’arcy Wretzky in Smashing Pumpkins for a year of intensive touring. Wretzky’s sudden departure is glossed over in the book as a “touchy subject”, though she played with the Pumpkins for 11 years, and was reputedly a friend of Auf der Maur.
I remember Wretzky as a quietly intelligent individual with a striking stage presence, but Corgan’s domineering personality and punishing work ethic apparently proved too much for her.
And Auf der Maur makes no secret of Corgan’s ruthlessness. At her first rehearsal, he issued her with three rules: “One, you can’t make a mistake. Two, you can’t get sick. And three, there are no days off.”
Away from Grohl, who was also on the road with his band, she was bound to a gruelling schedule at the hands of a man she now saw as a moody overachiever. In response, she began to change her perspective.
Corgan’s partner at the time was the gifted photographer Yelena Yemchuk, who, Auf der Maur notes, had become “a bit of a kept woman”. Knowing Grohl wanted marriage and children, she witnessed Yemchuk with “her beautiful talent trapped in the bell jar of Billy’s world” with growing alarm.
As the two women became close, together they realised they needed to “step out of the shadows of these bigger, more successful men” and forge their own paths.
With the culmination of the Pumpkins world tour in 2001, Auf der Maur was 29 and finally ready for a new direction. She left her relationship with Grohl and turned down Corgan’s invitation to collaborate on a new project. She finishes her book with a glimpse into her next chapter: motherhood, and a grounded life of artistic ventures in upstate New York.
It’s more of a beginning than an end.
Feminism and challenges with men
The first time I interviewed Kim Gordon was over the phone in 1990. At the time, she was the bass player with Sonic Youth, the seminal no wave band she co-founded with her husband, singer/guitarist Thurston Moore, in 1981. Hinting at what I suspected was sometimes a lonely situation, she told me that while the band’s relationship was essentially a beautiful one, her male colleagues could be “so non-communicative”.
Three years later, I had a second, longer conversation with Gordon in her New York apartment for my aforementioned book, during which she elaborated on her original theme. Being in a band with men could be challenging, she said, because “there are some really boring aspects to it” and “no matter how much of a new man someone thinks they are, they’re just not!”
Gordon’s experience is summed up by both the content and title of her acclaimed memoir. With a new foreword by her friend, celebrated American writer, Rachel Kushner, and an additional closing chapter where Gordon reflects on the intervening decade, the latest version of the book is testament to its ongoing relevance for feminism, popular culture and music history.
Infused with the visceral, embodied sensuality of her artistic perspective, Gordon’s memoir details her upbringing in Los Angeles with her schizophrenic brother, Keller, whose moods clouded her early life, and whose death in 2023, aged 74, she recounts in the new edition.
It charts her pivotal move to New York as a 27-year-old in 1980, her involvement with the city’s post punk arts and music scene, her relationship with Moore and their resulting career with Sonic Youth.
Crucially, it details her influence in the Riot Grrrl movement, and her side projects, Free Kitten, with best friend Julie Cafritz, and fashion label, X-Girl, with Daisy von Furth, all of which afforded her the female companionship she lacked in Sonic Youth.
‘Painfully protracted’ marriage breakdown
It also tells the more universal story of a painfully protracted marriage breakdown and a couple’s failed attempts to save their relationship, following Gordon’s discovery of Moore’s affair. The book refrains from specifying dates, but by the time she found out through texts and emails, her husband had been unfaithful for several years.
The woman in question, who is not named in the book, was Eva Prinz, who became Moore’s second wife in 2020. At the time of the affair, Prinz was married to her second husband. She had previously been involved with one of Sonic Youth’s collaborators.
An editor for an independent publisher, she had initially approached Gordon about a potential book project in the early 2000s, but Gordon had passed it onto Moore, with fateful consequences.
Sickened by Moore’s long-concealed infidelity with someone well known to their inner circle, Gordon was left to navigate the devastating impact on her family, her career and her sense of self. Given the pivotal nature of this episode, it seems fitting that she starts her story here, at the end of a significant personal and professional era, with Sonic Youth’s final performance in 2011.
According to Gordon, this last appearance in Sao Paulo, Brazil “was all about the boys”. Struggling to hide her misery, anxiety and anger on stage, while her ex regressed into an adolescent display of “rock star showboating”, she was tempted to verbalise her fury on stage. But she didn’t want to follow the unboundaried example of Courtney Love, who was then ranting and raving her way around South America on tour with Hole.
“I would never want to be seen as the car crash she is,” writes Gordon. “I didn’t want our last concert to be distasteful when Sonic Youth meant so much to so many people; I didn’t want to use the stage for any kind of personal statement, and what good would it have done anyway?”
Distance as power
Gordon is highly adept at balancing between strong emotion and careful restraint. Throughout her book, she considers herself honestly, but thoughtfully. She conveys a quiet self-possession and enigmatic presence, writing as she speaks: with intelligence and a guarded openness. It’s how I remember her: warm enough to gift me a pair of John Fluevog sandals straight from her own closet, yet somehow always slightly removed. As Kushner says in her introduction to the memoir, “distance is the power of her performance”.
Now 72, Kim Gordon has been a touring musician for almost 40 years. Having made multiple forays into the worlds of fashion, art and film, since Sonic Youth she has launched two experimental bands with male collaborators, Body/Head and Glitterbust, been nominated for two Grammy awards, and released three highly acclaimed solo albums as a formidable frontwoman with an all-girl band.
These days, Gordon performs as if her life depends on it. With her second chapter well underway, she’s on fire – and cooler than ever. Let’s hope a second memoir is in the works.
Liz Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Transparent acrylic samples coated in the new material.RMIT
Think of how many surfaces you touch every day, from your kitchen bench to the hand rail on the bus or train, your work desk and your phone screen.
A range of nasty viruses and other germs can easily spread via these surfaces. The typical route of infection involves touching a contaminated surface – and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth.
Of course, it’s possible to clean surfaces with chemical products. But these can wear off, harm the environment or contribute to antimicrobial resistance, where germs no longer respond to medicines because of repeated exposure.
In our new study, published in Advanced Science, colleagues and I created a thin plastic surface with tiny nanoscale features, billionths of a metre in size, that mimic the nanotextured surface of insect wings and can physically rupture viruses – specifically human parainfluenza virus type 3 (hPIV-3).
This new material offers a cheap, scalable way to make surfaces such as phones and hospital equipment far less likely to spread disease.
The downsides of disinfectants
Current methods for combating the spread of viruses via surfaces usually involves cleaning to remove dirt and disinfection to remove hidden contaminants.
Disinfectant must remain wet for some time to kill germs. This can be challenging in some real-world settings.
Surfaces can also be recontaminated quickly when other people touch them. And disinfection often involves the use of harsh chemicals which can damage equipment and the environment.
Scientists have previously developed antiviral surface modifications. These strategies often involve incorporating materials such as graphene or tannic acid and other natural agents into personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves, goggles, hard hats, and respirators.
These coatings are efficient. But they can pose a risk to human health. They can also be environmental hazards due to chemical leaching and have declining effectiveness over time as the potency of the active ingredients weakens.
A decade-long journey
Our journey toward a virus-bursting surface started more than a decade ago.
We initially aimed to engineer a surface so smooth that germs would simply slide off. Surprisingly, we discovered the opposite. Bacteria adhere quite readily to nanoscopically smooth surfaces.
Nature offers examples of bacteria-free surfaces. Take the water-repelling wings of cicadas and dragonflies. While these wings are self-cleaning, they act less by repelling bacteria and more as natural bactericides. That is, they kill bacteria. Natural bactericides are nature-derived “agents” that can kill germs, rather than inhibit their growth.
Experiments my colleagues and I did with gold-coated wings confirmed this bacteria-killing effect is not driven by surface chemistry, but rather by topography.
The physical nanostructures on the surface essentially force bacterial cell membranes to stretch and rupture.
Our earlier work showed that nanospike-covered silicon effectively destroys viruses on contact. But its rigid nature restricts its use on complex objects.
Microscope image of a virus cell being ruptured by the nanotextured surface. RMIT
A lightweight, flexible and virus-bursting material
In this new study, we addressed this problem by creating a virus-bursting material that was lightweight, cost-effective and flexible.
This material is a thin acrylic film covered in thousands and thousands of ultra fine pillars. The nanotextured materials are smooth to touch. However, these nanopillars grab and stretch a virus’s outer shell until it ruptures. This kills viruses through mechanical force.
Lab tests with hPIV 3, which causes bronchiolitis and pneumonia, found up to 94% of virus particles were ripped apart or fatally damaged within an hour of contact with this material.
We discovered the distance between nanopillars matters far more than their height, with tightly packed pillars about 60 nanometres apart working best.
The mould we used to create this material can be easily scaled to provide wide-ranging industrial opportunities, from food packaging to public transport systems to hospital equipment and office desks.
Nanostructured surfaces are built for durability. But they are susceptible to the same physical, chemical, and environmental stressors as any other material, and will degrade over time.
Much remains to be discovered in the search for germ-free surfaces. But these nanotextured surfaces have enormous potential in the fight against viruses and provide an alternative to traditional, chemical-based methods.
Elena Ivanova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joshua Gonzales, PhD, Management, Lang School of Business and Economics, University of Guelph
If you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn, you’ll have certainly come across this type of phrasing: “This isn’t a job, it’s a calling” or “This isn’t marketing, it’s a movement” or “This isn’t a tool, it’s a paradigm shift.”
If you’re like me, you find it annoying and scroll past as soon as you read it. Your exasperation is warranted. Negation can be a powerful literary device when used thoughtfully, but when unearned, it feels hollow.
For most AI tropes currently in circulation, it’s enough to just ignore them. The negation form of AI slop, however, isn’t just annoying, it distorts how people process and remember information. Before you get the chance to absorb something meaningful, your attention is already anchored to what is not.
Learning a language is hard, but even native speakers get confused by pronunciation, connotations, definitions and etymology. The lexicon is constantly evolving, especially in the social media era, where new memes, catchphrases, slang, jargon and idioms are introduced at a rapid clip.
The Conversation Canada’s series Slanguage dives into how language shapes the way we see the world and what it reveals about culture, power and belonging. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of linguistics.
How the brain processes negation
There’s a reason this structure feels off. Cognitive psychologists have known for decades that negation doesn’t work the way speakers intend it to. When someone tells you what something isn’t, your brain doesn’t skip to the alternative. It processes the negated concept first.
This was demonstrated in a 2003 study. After reading negated information, readers’ mental models still retained the negated concept at short processing intervals. Negation didn’t function as an eraser. The concept entered the reader’s mind, and only with additional processing time and contextual support could the reader move past it.
Every time you read “This isn’t marketing,” for example, you process marketing before you can get to whatever the writer claims it actually is.
That would be manageable if it happened once, but that cognitive load compounds with repetition.
‘Don’t think about the white bear’
In a classic 1987 experiment, psychologist Daniel Wegner asked participants not to think about a white bear. They couldn’t.
Those told to suppress the idea mentioned it more than once per minute. Worse, participants who had first tried to suppress the thought later showed a rebound effect, thinking about white bears significantly more than participants who had been free to think about them from the start.
The effort of pushing a concept away made it stick even harder.
When your LinkedIn feed delivers dozens of posts built on the same negation-reframe structure, each one is a new instruction not to think about the thing the writer wanted you to forget.
The consequences go beyond annoyance. In a 2004 social psychology study examining how people encode negated information, researchers explained why some negations fail more than others.
When a negated phrase has an obvious, commonly inferred alternative, readers mentally replace it. For example, they can substitute “not guilty” for “innocent” or “not cold” for “warm.” Without the alternative, the original concept remains active with a negation tag attached, like a mental sticky note reading “not this.”
That sticky note can fall off quite easily. In the study, participants lost it more than a third of the time for concepts without clear alternatives, remembering the affirmed version instead.
Consider what that means for “This isn’t marketing, it’s a movement.” Marketing has no ready-made substitute for our mind to consider. What readers store is “marketing” with a tag that may or may not survive their scroll to the next post.
Scaling a cognitive problem
The problem is scale. A 2024 study on generative AI by economics and strategy researchers found that when people write with AI assistance, their outputs converge. Individual pieces may be more polished, but the collective pool of writing becomes more similar. AI-assisted texts were found to be roughly 10 per cent more alike than those written by humans alone.
Their study examined creative fiction, but the results have obvious implications for other forms of writing. When a rhetorical formula saturates an entire platform, it stops being one person’s stylistic habit and becomes a default frame through which ideas enter public conversation.
Right now, that frame often starts from a deficit. It emphasizes what something fails to be rather than what it offers.
The alternative is straightforward. Say what it is. Say what you built, what you believe, what you offer. It’s a better cognitive strategy.
Readers who encounter “I am a movement builder” store “movement builder.” Readers who encounter “This isn’t marketing” store “marketing” with a sticky note that’s already peeling off.
One formulation gives people something to remember. The other gives them something to forget, and psychology suggests it won’t work.
Joshua Gonzales does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A long-running experiment is testing tree mixes to develop the healthiest forests.Mickey Pullen/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Around the world, people plan to plant more than 1 trillion trees this decade in an ambitious effort to slow climate change and reduce biodiversity loss. But if the past is prologue, many of those planted trees won’t survive. And if they do, they could end up as biological deserts that lack the richness and resilience of healthy forests.
However, many tree-planting commitments have a critical flaw: They rely too heavily on monoculture plantations – vast areas planted with just a single tree species.
A grove of commercially grown poplar trees, planted in lines with not much active beneath them. Mint Images via Getty Images
Rather than gambling on a single species and hoping for the best, science now points to a smarter path that captures both ecological and economic benefits while minimizing risk: mixed-species plantings that mirror the biodiversity of a natural forest, ultimately creating forests that grow faster and are more resilient in the face of constant threats.
The long-running BiodiversiTREE study compares forest plots containing several tree species with single-species monocultures. The results, illustrated here, show that mixed-species plots (right) produce 80% larger trees compared with monocultures (left), resulting in denser canopy growth that creates cooler understory microclimates, leading to more abundant and species-rich communities of insects, spiders and birds. Sergio Ibarra/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
We are community and landscape ecologists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Since 2013, we and our colleagues have been rigorously testing this idea in a large, ecosystem-scale experiment called BiodiversiTREE. The verdict is striking: Trees in mixed forests don’t just survive – they outgrow their monoculture counterparts and support dramatically more biodiversity.
Trees with diverse neighbors grow larger
Thirteen years ago, we teamed up with volunteers to plant nearly 18,000 tree seedlings on 60 acres of fallow fields on the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center campus near the Chesapeake Bay.
We didn’t plant just a single species. We planted 16 different native species from all walks of tree-life. Some species were fast-growing timber species, some were mid-story species, and some were slow-growing species that might not reach full size for a century or more.
Some plots we planted with just a single species – homogenous rows of the same species over and over again. But others were planted with random allotments of four and 12 species, reflecting the middle and upper ends of tree diversity in similar-sized areas of our local forests.
We asked a simple question: What would happen if we tried to mirror nature and plant a mixture of species instead of a monoculture?
A drone image shows some of the BiodiversiTREE plots, including monocultures, outlined in white, and mixture plantings, outlined in green. Mickey Pullen/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
The monoculture plots – those that survived – resemble traditional plantation forestry that historically has dominated rural lands in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest in the U.S. They contain rows of tall, narrow trees with sparse canopies and little life below.
The mixed-species plots, by contrast, are layered, complex and dynamic, with foliage filling the canopy and a diversity of plants and animals thriving underneath.
These visual contrasts reflect real ecological gains. Trees grown in mixtures, including important timber species like poplar and red oak, are up to 80% larger than the same species when grown alone. Mixed plots supported fewer leaf pathogens, more abundant caterpillar communities that provide food for birds, and increased phytochemical diversity in their leaves. We hypothesize that these leaf chemicals, some of which deter animals from eating them, reduced browsing damage from hungry deer, ultimately leading to higher tree growth in the mixed plots.
Plots with several tree species also had much fuller, denser leaf canopies, leading to cooler, shadier conditions that help understory plants flourish and support up to 50% more insects, spiders and birds.
The fuller canopy of 12-species forest plots like the one above supports more insects and birds than the monoculture plots. John Parker/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center A sycamore monoculture plot at the BiodiversiTREE project provides little canopy cover. John Parker/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
This pattern isn’t unique to our site. The BiodiversiTREE project is part of TreeDivNet, a global network of large-scale experiments spanning more than 1.2 million trees and hundreds of species. Across continents and climates, the results are consistent: Forests with a mix of species tend to grow larger, store more carbon and better withstand stress from drought, pests and disease.
So why are monocultures still common?
Despite decades of evidence, mixed-species plantings remain relatively rare in practice. Most commercial forestry operations still rely on monocultures, and these plantations are counted toward international planting campaigns aimed at slowing climate change and reversing biodiversity loss.
Technician Shelley Bennett uses high-resolution GPS to lay out plots for an experiment at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland. Regan Todd/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
A new experiment at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center called “Functional Forests” aims to bridge some of the gaps between science and practice. We’re developing intentionally designed combinations of trees to test whether specific mixtures of species can contribute ecological benefits while also providing timber and other services that humans need to support a thriving, sustainable economy.
Each of the 20 tree species in the Functional Forests project was chosen to provide one or more benefits, including timber, wildlife habitat, food for people, resistance to deer and climate resilience. But no single species provides all of these benefits.
Some of the nearly 200 plots will contain a single species, while others include carefully selected combinations of five species assembled based on the functions they provide. Some plots are protected from deer browsing, while others are left exposed.
The Functional Forests project includes trees with edible fruits like the pawpaw (Asimina triloba), one of 20 different tree species being planted there. Jamie Pullen/Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
By comparing these approaches, we can test how different planting strategies perform across a range of goals, from timber production to food production and from biodiversity to climate resilience.
Landowners and communities have different priorities, whether that’s producing wood, supporting wildlife or creating forests that can withstand a changing climate. The idea behind Functional Forests is to design plantings that can deliver these multiple benefits all at once, rather than optimizing for just one, essentially leveraging the positive effects of biodiversity to achieve real-world goals.
Planting 1 trillion trees wisely
The stakes are high. Restoration has become a major global investment, with hundreds of billions of dollars already being spent annually. Getting it wrong means wasted resources and missed opportunities to address some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time.
If the world is going to plant a trillion trees, we believe it needs to do more than just put seedlings in the ground. It needs to rethink what a forest should be.
The goal isn’t just to grow trees. It’s to grow forests that last.
John Parker receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture. He is affiliated with TreeDivNet, a global network of tree diversity experiments.
Justin Nowakowski receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Defense, and through Maryland Environmental Service.
Does Canada need public grocery stores? The debate has moved into the mainstream since Avi Lewis became the new leader of the NDP after campaigning on a plan for government-run grocery stores.
The premise is relatively straightforward: governments would build and run grocery stores that offer pricing at levels well below those of traditional stores.
The real question is whether public grocery stores are feasible and, if so, whether they’re the most effective way to deliver relief to consumers. The evidence suggests otherwise.
Scale is everything in grocery retail
Successful food retailing requires significant distribution infrastructure to efficiently bring products to the retail location. Loblaws, Canada’s largest food retailer, has more than 2,400 stores. Empire Group, which includes brands such as Sobeys, has more than 1,600 stores. This scale allows them to achieve significant purchase volumes while lowering distribution costs.
Even with those advantages, large retailers achieve relatively low margins. Operating income (revenue minus direct costs and excluding things like taxes and depreciation) generally represents between four and six per cent of total revenue.
A new government-run chain operating without that infrastructure would be starting from behind, and would require substantial subsidies to achieve the promised price reductions.
Some proposals suggest public stores could only carry staples, which would reduce the cost of inventory. While that’s true, this overlooks how grocers cover overhead: by the size of the “basket” of each customer. Basket size is the total value of everything each customer buys.
Basket size is a key metric for grocers, who often price select staples below cost to draw customers into the store. Margins on those staples are already thin, meaning government stores would require greater subsidies to achieve discounts without the benefit of higher-margin secondary products.
Examples come with trade-offs
Supporters of public grocery stores point to examples in Mexico, the United States and Canadian provinces. Upon closer examination, however, these examples highlight the challenges and costs that suggest that this path is not feasible.
Mexico has operated government-run grocery stores for years. The number of stores has declined significantly in the past decade, with only approximately 50 remaining, located predominantly in the Mexico City area.
Price tracking by Profeco, the country’s federal consumer protection office, shows these stores are less than two per cent cheaper than Walmart (the dominant Mexican food retailer) and some private grocers are cheaper still. A significant informal food sector of market stalls offers additional competition. This is nowhere near the 35 to 40 per cent savings being promised in Canada.
The U.S. military commissaries offer groceries that are almost 25 per cent cheaper on average for active service members and veterans. But federal appropriations pay for labour, rent/real estate, distribution costs and other overheads.
There is some suggestion that the commissaries should be privatized to achieve the efficiencies of larger chains while still providing cheaper options for soldiers’ families and veterans living close to the bases.
Provincial control of alcohol and cannabis retail in Canada is sometimes raised as a parallel. However, these models are not designed to lower prices. Instead, they are designed to collect taxes and control prices. The policy direction runs opposite to what public grocery advocates are proposing, so this comparison is invalid.
What governments are already doing
Food prices are rising for reasons largely out of the control of Canadian governments, including geopolitical events (such as the wars in Ukraine and Iran) and the climate crisis. What governments can do is cushion the impact for those hit hardest.
Canada’s GST/HST rebate program already does some of this, offsetting taxes paid on goods and services to eligible households. Beginning in July, the new Groceries and Essentials Benefit will replace the GST/HST credit. The structure and eligibility rules will remain the same, but payments will increase by 25 per cent for five years.
The program is not in the range of 35 to 40 per cent, but it’s intended to offset much of the increases Canadians have experienced over the past few years. This program provides direct and targeted benefits for those feeling the most pressure from rising food prices.
Unlike a tax rebate, the program cannot target specific consumers, but it can target certain categories of food. Milk and bread are cheaper for shoppers, for example, but frozen pizzas are not.
The most effective path forward
Building a national chain of public grocery stores would immediately raise a question of equity: how would governments decide which communities get a store and which don’t?
The cost of building thousands of stores would be prohibitive; a few dozen would leave most Canadians without access while costing governments more per transaction that consumers would save. And, because anyone could shop there, it would dilute the benefit for those who need it most.
The money would be much better spent directly supporting the Canadians who need it most. Direct payments remain the most efficient use of taxpayer money. They can be targeted to low-income households and deployed quickly.
Nutrition North-style subsidies work well in specific areas but can’t target individual households. A card or voucher system could combine both approaches by targeting and selecting eligible food products, though the administrative costs would either dilute the benefit to recipients or raise the overall price of the program.
Even so, a well-designed voucher program would almost certainly deliver more value per dollar spent than building and operating retail infrastructure from scratch.
There are ways to make food more affordable for Canadians. Government grocery stores just aren’t one of them.
Michael von Massow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
To date, inclusion of Black history has been based on the voluntary efforts of individual educators or some school board equity initiatives.
As highlighted in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Dreams Delayed report, the Black community has long criticized the over-emphasis on Black American history and the exclusion of the rich and diverse histories and contributions of Black Canadians.
I have been waiting with bated breath.
I am a historian of Black Canada, an assistant professor and a curriculum consultant specializing in Black Canadian history. I have taught Black Canadian history at the elementary and secondary levels and facilitated professional development for educators on the same subject for more than 20 years.
I’ve also studied the Ontario curriculum pertaining to Black Canadian history since 1999. During the early stages of the development of the new expectations, I was invited to review only initial drafts.
Questions have been raised about this because of the final output. I’ve examined the released revised history curriculum and present here an assessment.
New expectations
The new mandated expectations pertaining to Black Canadian history were included in a revision of the Grades 7, 8 and 10 history curriculum. These are the grades where students learn Canadian history. The number of expectations regarding Black history is reasonable because there is a lot to cover in the history curriculum overall.
Chart created by author Natasha Henry-Dixon showing new mandated Grades 7, 8 and 10 curriculum expectations on Black Canadian history. (Natasha Henry-Dixon)
However, unlike all of the other specific expectations in the history curriculum, the “Black-specific expectations” are the only ones that don’t have any supporting topic suggestions or optional topics.
While specific curriculum expectations for Grades 7 and 8 don’t have any framing questions like other ones do, the Grade 10 expectations have two framing questions: “In what ways did the actions of various Black individuals, communities and organizations during this period help shape strategies and initiatives combating anti-Black racism today?” and “How did Black communities contribute to Canada’s identity and heritage during this period?”
The ministry could argue that such open expectations give teachers room to teach what they’d like. But teachers should receive as much informed guidance as possible, particularly because most have not taught any Black history content before.
Black Canadian history topic suggestions
There are Black Canadian historical subjects included as topic suggestions in other specific expectations throughout the history curriculum.
The ministry has maintained all of the topic suggestions from the current (soon-to-be-retired) version. I compared these using my 2016 master’s study, Lend Me Your Ear, where I evaluated the 2013 social studies, history and geography curriculum.
There are also very broad topics in the history curriculum — such as immigration and analyzing the social and political values and significant aspects of life for some different groups and communities. Black Canadian experiences could be included, if a teacher chooses to do so.
Members of the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Essex County, Ont., in 1918. (F 2076 Alvin D. McCurdy fonds/Archives of Ontario/Wikimedia)
These soldiers and their descendants received an apology from the federal government in 2022 for the appalling mistreatment they endured in their service to Canada.
Black History Month was suggested as a Canadian commemoration in the soon-to-be former version, but was the second topic cut from the new version.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary, educator, publisher, lawyer and abolitionist is a topic, but her last name ‘Cary’ isn’t used in Grade 8 expectations. (National Archives of Canada/C-029977/Wikimedia)
For some of the topics, their inclusion left out some information. In Grade 7, Black Loyalists in Ontario were not recognized. Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s last name “Cary” was not used in Grade 8. She married Thomas Cary in 1856 and used that last name throughout her life.
The ministry missed the opportunity to include a range of new topics to demonstrate more meaningful integration of Black Canadian history.
New topics would provide more explicit examples of the contributions of diverse Black individuals to Canada’s foundation, the obstacles they faced in the pursuit of full citizenship and equality and the many ways they resisted that helped build a more inclusive and prosperous country.
The occasion has been marked for 192 years and was recognized federally in 2021. This treatment maintains the relegation of Black Canadian history to the periphery.
My grade
I give the new expectations a “D,” a marginal pass, only because they were actually implemented.
The revisions instituted two expectations per grade on Black Canadian history that is now part of the official curriculum policy. In this respect, the changes advance the cause long lobbied for by the Black community.
However, the new expectations miss the mark.
They lack substance and leave gaps that can further perpetuate the nonexistent and inconsistent teaching of Black Canadian history.
Given the nature of the content, and because this is the ministry’s first foray into mandating Black history in Canada, the regularly opaque revision process should have been more transparent. One wonders if issues and questions raised could have been avoided if the process was more collaborative. Questions include:
• Was feedback gathered from collaborators really considered or was checking the box that they met with them the total sum of the “collaboration?”
• Who was involved internally and externally? What are their expertise and credentials? Were they involved from beginning to end?
• What feedback was provided and implemented or not? Why?
• What kind of professional development will be provided? Who will deliver it?
• What instructional resources will be provided and who will develop them?
The new expectations establish a standard that needs to be greatly improved upon in the next cycle of revisions. Hopefully this happens in my lifetime and more valuable time isn’t lost. I’ll continue to hold my breath until then.
Natasha Henry-Dixon reviewed early drafts of the curriculum revision.
The sounds of cars, airplanes, boats and industrial activities in urban areas produce a steady roar that impacts birds, such as this great tit. (Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA
When Rachel Carson wrote the environmental classic Silent Spring in 1962, she warned that unchecked human impacts might create a silent future.
Forty years later, biologists uncovered a striking effect of noise pollution on songbirds. They found that low-pitched traffic noise in European cities forced birds to sing at higher pitches. Songbirds in a noisy park beneath the Eiffel Tower sang at a pitch of 400 Hz higher than those in quiet forests outside Paris.
Yet even as Paris has grown quieter, birds have not returned to their natural song frequencies. Our research shows that great tits in Paris continue to sing at higher pitches than birds in wilderness areas outside the city.
Further noise-reduction efforts are vital, in urban areas throughout the world, to allow wild birds to communicate at their natural sound frequencies.
The devastating impact of noise
Human activity fills the world with noise. The sounds of cars, airplanes, boats and industrial activities produce a steady roar that impacts wild animals, birds and insects. We often overlook noise pollution as a conservation problem, yet it may have devastating effects on wildlife during an era of increasing urbanization.
Since the discovery that low-pitched traffic noise in European cities forced birds to sing at higher pitches, this pattern has been demonstrated in diverse bird populations around the world.
An automated digital recorder in the city of Paris. (Dan Mennill)
Automated noise cameras issue fines to excessively loud vehicles. A regional observatory called Bruitparif now monitors noise throughout the city and oversees noise-reduction efforts.
These noise-reduction efforts in Paris stand to make the city quieter for both people and wildlife. The city’s campaign in the war against noise prompts the question: can we turn down the volume on noise pollution to minimize its impact on birdsong?
Turning down the racket
In 2023, I travelled to Paris to record the songs of the great tit, a familiar European backyard bird closely related to the chickadee.
I used microphones and digital recorders to record birds in the streets, squares and parks throughout the city. I retraced the footsteps of my collaborator, Hans Slabbekoorn, the original biologist who recorded great tits in Paris in 2003.
Dan Mennill uses a microphone to capture birdsong close to the Eiffel Tower. (Dan Mennill)
When we compared background noise with bird songs, we found that great tits sing higher-pitched songs in noisier environments. By singing at a higher pitch, great tits avoid having their songs masked by the low-frequency noise of traffic sounds.
We also analyzed noise data collected across Paris by Bruitparif. We found that Paris is winning the war on noise pollution and the city has grown quieter in recent years. In fact, Paris today is approximately three decibels quieter than it was 10 years ago. Because the decibel scale is logarithmic, a three-decibel drop represents a major reduction in sound intensity.
Despite this progress, great tits in Paris continue to sing at higher pitches than birds in wilderness areas outside the city.
Birds can revert their tune
However, there is reason for optimism. Research has shown that when cities become quieter, birds in other locations have returned to their natural pitch.
These findings reveal that noise pollution affects diverse birds, even those whose songs seem well-suited to noisy environments.
Listening to the future
Our studies in Paris show that a three-decibel reduction is not sufficient to allow birds to return to their natural song frequencies. Further noise-reduction efforts will be required for us to adequately share the airwaves with our feathered friends.
Paris also provides a hopeful lesson about battling noise pollution. Cities can reduce noise by encouraging cycling and quieter transportation. Public policy also plays an important role, exemplified by Paris’s Bruitparif agency.
If we measure noise pollution, we can strive to reduce it, improve our own well-being and create the space for wild birds to communicate at their natural sound frequencies.
