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Collectively, we have chosen to explore an Australian First Nations-first approach to understanding the chemical elements. We believe that engagement with cultural heritage, ongoing cultures, and the knowledges of this place—the lands on which we work, live, and study—will lead to new ways of understanding the elements and change the way we practice chemistry. The “First Nations first” phrase and approach comes from understanding the unique place that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have in the Australian context. In this paper we explore how a First Nations-first approach could take place in Sydney on Aboriginal lands. This approach is led by Aboriginal people, engages with culture, and is produced with local knowledge holders. So far, the work has entailed two years of meeting, conversing, and sharing space to determine appropriate ways of working together, interrogating the complexities of the ideas, and to refining our approach to the work. To appreciate the significant shift that a First Nations-first approach represents for chemistry, we consider the legacy of the Periodic Table. We share some reflections on how Indigenous knowledges can contribute to an expanded chemistry curriculum through the recognition of productive cultural tension.

Here we explore ways in which the Indigenous Torwali community of Swat, north Pakistan, is working to renew and preserve its musical and dance traditions, and how Torwalis are using social media and online archives to share and popularise their performances, worldwide. Social activism is a motivator, but people also relish the fun created through instant online engagement. The methodology for the paper is to weave a narrative, using Indigenous storytelling by both Indigenous authors, one Torwali and one Ngarigu, Australian Indigenous, about their experiences with and knowledge of performance in the community.

What, if any, similarities and differences between music and speech are consistent across cultures? Both music and language are found in all known human societies and are argued to share evolutionary roots and cognitive resources, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music across languages on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyze a novel dataset of 300 high-quality annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of singing, recitation, conversational speech, and instrumental music from our 75 coauthors whose 55 1st/heritage languages span 21 language families to find strong evidence for cross-culturally consistent differences and similarities between music and language. Of our six pre-registered predictions, five were strongly supported: relative to speech, songs consistently use 1) higher pitch, 2) slower temporal rate, and 3) more stable pitches, while both songs and speech consistently used similar 4) pitch interval size, and 5) timbral brightness. Our 6th prediction that song and speech would show similar pitch declination was inconclusive, with exploratory analysis suggesting that songs tend to follow an arched contour while speech contours tend to decline overall but end with a slight rise. Because our non-representative language sample and unusual design involving coauthors as participants could affect our results, we also performed robustness analyses - including a parallel reanalysis of a previously published dataset of 418 song/speech recordings from 209 individuals whose 16 languages span 11 language families (Hilton & Moser et al., 2022, Nature Human Behaviour) - which confirmed that our conclusions are robust to these potential biases. Exploratory analyses identified additional features such as phrase length, loudness, and rhythmic/melodic regularity that also consistently distinguish song from speech, and suggest that such features also vary along a “musi-linguistic” continuum in a cross-culturally consistent manner when including instrumental melodies and recited lyrics. Further exploratory analysis suggests that pitch height is the only consistently sexually dimorphic feature (female singing/speaking is almost one octave higher than male on average), and that other factors such as musical training and recording context may also interact to influence the magnitude of song-speech differences. Our study provides strong empirical evidence for the existence of cross-cultural regularities in music and speech.

The social and emotional wellbeing of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be supported through an Indigenous-led and community empowering approach. Applying systems thinking via participatory approaches is aligned with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research paradigms and can be an effective method to deliver a decision support tool for mental health systems planning for Indigenous communities. Evaluations are necessary to understand the effectiveness and value of such methods, uncover protective and healing factors of social and emotional wellbeing, as well as to promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination over allocation of funding and resources. This paper presents modifications to a published evaluation protocol for participatory systems modelling to align with critical Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander guidelines and recommendations to support the social and emotional wellbeing of young people. This paper also presents a culturally relevant participatory systems modelling evaluation framework. Recognizing the reciprocity, strengths, and expertise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander methodologies can offer to broader research and evaluation practices, the amended framework presented in this paper facilitates empowering evaluation practices that should be adopted when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as well as when working with other diverse, non-Indigenous communities.

ObjectiveMany children in low-income and middle-income countries are disadvantaged in achieving early developmental potential in childhood as they lack the necessary support from their surroundings, including from parents and caregivers. Digital technologies, such as smartphone apps, coupled with iterative codesign to engage end-users in the technology-delivered content development stages, can help overcome gaps in early child development (ECD). We describe the iterative codesign and quality improvement process that informs the development of content for theThrive by Five International Program, localised for nine countries in Asia and Africa.DesignBetween 2021 and 2022, an average of six codesign workshops in each country were conducted in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya and Namibia.ParticipantsA total of 174 parents and caregivers and 58 in-country subject matter experts participated and provided feedback to refine and inform the cultural appropriateness of theThrive by Fiveapp and its content. Detailed notes from the workshops and written feedback were coded and analysed using established thematic techniques.ResultsFour themes emerged from the codesign workshops: local realities, barriers to positive parenting, child development and lessons learnt about the cultural context. These themes, as well as various subthemes, informed content development and refinement. For example, childrearing activities were requested and developed to promote inclusion of families from diverse backgrounds, encourage best parenting practices, increase engagement of fathers in ECD, address parents’ mental well-being, educate children about cultural values and help bereaved children with grief and loss. Also, content that did not align with the laws or culture of any country were removed.ConclusionsThe iterative codesign process informed the development of a culturally relevant app for parents and caregivers of children in the early years. Further evaluation is required to assess user experience and impact in real world settings.

The year 2020 will always be remembered for COVID-19. The global pandemic has brought massive disruption to our everyday lives on many fronts—lockdowns, economic disaster, border closures, and an unprecedented uptake of online human engagement. Workplaces rose to the challenges of adapting to fully online environments. For some, this has been a smooth transition, but for others this change of work mode has brought high levels of stress, disconnectedness, dissatisfaction, and exacerbated isolation. Arguably, for those more vulnerable and marginalized peoples, there is a greater risk of negative outcomes than for those who are affiliated with the dominant society. In this article we share stories gathered from members of the Sydney Indigenous Research Hub of The University of Sydney. By applying the qualitative methodology of narrative enquiry to our shared stories, we will show how we have used online platforms to support and care for one another's individual and collective social and emotional well-being according to Indigenous ways of understanding.

UNSTRUCTURED Recent years have seen remarkable progress in our scientific understanding of early childhood social, emotional, and cognitive development, as well as our capacity to widely disseminate health information using digital technologies. Together, these scientific and technological advances offer exciting opportunities to deliver high-quality information about early childhood development (ECD) to parents and families globally, which may ultimately lead to greater knowledge and confidence among parents and better outcomes among children (particularly in lower-and-middle income countries). With these potential benefits in mind, we set out to design, develop, implement, and evaluate a new parenting app – “Thrive by Five” – that will be available in 30 countries, providing caregivers and families with evidence-based and culturally appropriate information about ECD, accompanied by sets of “collective actions” that go beyond mere “tips” for parenting practices. Here, we describe this ongoing global project and discuss the components of our scientific framework for developing and prototyping the app’s content. Specifically, we describe: (1) five domains used to organise the content and goals of the app’s information and associated practices; (2) five neurobiological systems that are relevant to ECD and can be “targeted” behaviourally to potentially influence social, emotional, and cognitive development; (3) our anthropological and cultural framework to learn about local contexts and appreciate decolonisation perspectives; and (4) our approach to tailor the app’s content to local contexts, involving collaboration with in-country partner organisations and local and international subject-matter experts in ECD, education, medicine, psychology, and anthropology, among others. Finally, we provide examples of content that has been incorporated in Thrive by Five’s global launch in Indonesia.

This article aims to re-evaluate Johann Lhotsky’s published sheet music ‘A Song of the Women of the Menero Tribe near the Australian Alps’ to claim it as a distinctively Ngarigu document that speak...

Australia, as far as Aboriginal languages are concerned, is not yet engaged in systematic language planning exercises. This is in contrast to other parts of the world where language planning is institutionalised and enforced. In this paper we chronicle some of the language planning exercises we have observed, been involved in, or have studied of from the historical record. Terminology planning will obviously vary according to the language situation under consideration and we claim here that much of the terminology planning in Aboriginal Australia has been highly localised, ad hoc and much less institutionalised than elsewhere. With 250Aboriginal languages existing at first significant European contact, it is not so surprising that efforts should be localised. The better documented cases of terminology planning are mostly to be found in northern Australia where the effects of outside contact have been more recent, so that some languages are still being spoken by children. In recent years, some of the more ...