I Felt It Was Worthwhile To Give The New Pope One Cautious Welcome Blog!

This appeared a few days ago:

• The Wall Street Journal

How an American cardinal beat the odds to become Pope

Stacy Meichtry, Margherita Stancati, Ian Lovett and Marcus Walker

10 May, 2025

Cardinal Robert Prevost, seated beneath Michelangelo’s monumental fresco of the Last Judgement, buried his head in his hands as the sound of his name echoed off the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

It was Thursday morning, and the prelates running the conclave were reading out the ballots. The papal election was shifting the way of the Chicago-born cardinal. His tally was rising with each round of voting, while support for the early frontrunner — Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin — was stagnating.

A realisation weighed visibly on Prevost, said three cardinals who watched his reaction: He was on track to become the 267th pope of the global Catholic Church, with its 1.4 billion faithful.

By late afternoon it was all over. Votes for Prevost reached the winning threshold of 89, or two-thirds of the 133 voting cardinals present in the chapel. Applause rang out from banks of red-clad cardinals. Prevost, sitting with his eyes closed, stood up and mustered a smile as the historic moment sank in.

“I couldn’t imagine what happens with a human being when you’re facing something like that,” said Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, archbishop of Newark.

The election of the first-ever American pope stunned the crowds gathered in St Peter’s Square, defied betting markets and shattered an assumption that the church would never hand its highest office to a citizen of the world’s leading superpower.

But by Thursday, the 69-year-old Prevost had become the natural choice for the cardinals secluded in the Sistine Chapel. For weeks, they had searched for a successor who offered continuity with the late Pope Francis’ dream of an inclusive and humble church — but who showed more deference for Catholic tradition and stronger managerial skills to run a financially strained city-state of global reach.

Even before the conclave began on Wednesday, a geographically and ideologically diverse bloc had come to understand that they had among them an all-rounder who checked those boxes.

The longtime bishop of Chiclayo in Peru was from the US, but of the global south. Many of his supporters described the polyglot prelate with the same four words: “citizen of the world.” Years of missionary experience had lent him a reputation as an advocate of the poor and marginalised. He had served in the heart of the Vatican, but not long enough for its frequent scandals to taint him.

Cardinal Parolin, in contrast, had spent his career in the Vatican’s diplomatic service before rising to serve nearly 12 years as secretary of state, effectively Pope Francis’ No. 2.

Parolin was the favourite to succeed his former boss and satisfy Italian yearnings to recover an office the peninsula held for most of the church’s 2000-year history. But as an Italian saying goes, “He who enters the conclave as a pope leaves as a cardinal.”

Francis was hospitalised with a complex lung infection, eventually dying from his ailments on Easter Monday. As cardinals converged on Rome from around the world for his funeral and pre-conclave deliberations, Parolin still held a strong advantage.

“He was the best-known among us,” said Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero of Spain. “But that is not enough.”

The empty throne

The cardinals filtering into Rome in the days after Francis’ death represented the late pope’s legacy: the most geographically diverse conclave in church history. They came from 70 countries and territories, ranged in age from 40-something to 90-something and spoke a Babel of languages. Many of them barely knew each other.

Several had little in common with the Italian-dominated Roman Curia, the Vatican administration. English was the lingua franca for a new crop of cardinals. European prelates spoke about the dangers of artificial intelligence with African cardinals, who replied with laments that their continent’s natural resources were being plundered to produce tech gadgetry. Latin American cardinals discussed the migration of their compatriots to the US A cardinal flying in from Mongolia wowed his colleagues with stories of offering Mass to nomads in tents.

But Italy still boasted more cardinals than any other single country, and after three successive foreign popes — a Pole, a German and an Argentine — many felt the time had come to make the pope Italian again. Before St. John Paul II, who was elected in 1978, Italian popes had reigned continuously for 455 years.

Parolin, born near Venice, was their country’s hope. The veteran diplomat was best known in recent years for negotiating a controversial agreement between the Vatican and China that gave Beijing a say in choosing bishops within the Asian country. Despite his pedigree as a statesman, he lacked the pastoral experience of on-the-ground ministry that many cardinals were looking for.

A Latin American bloc of cardinals already viewed Prevost as their region’s best shot at retaining the papacy. Many other cardinals wanted, above all, to maintain Francis’ emphasis on “synodality,” or gatherings of bishops and laypeople to discuss the church’s challenges.

The day after Francis’ funeral, Parolin presided over a Mass, but his remarks — an opportunity to shape the agenda for the conclave — bypassed synodality.

“His not mentioning it was striking,” said Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Vatican official who was sitting in the pews.

Prevost’s name began to circulate, at dinners and in the secret pre-conclave deliberations. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, recalled how Italian cardinals were pressing him for information on his American colleague.

“Do you know this ‘Roberto?’” Dolan recalled one of them asking.

Day after day, cardinals sat through speeches on issues facing the church, from sex abuse to the increasingly dire state of the Vatican’s finances. During coffee breaks, cardinals concurred that they needed to elevate a proven manager.

With the conclave approaching, Tobin saw Prevost. “Bob, this could be proposed to you,” he said. “I hope you will think about it.”

Cardinals converge

On the last day before the conclave, Prevost delivered a speech to his fellow cardinals, and hit the note Francis’ supporters wanted to hear: He praised synodality.

“Synodality is working together,” Prevost said, according to Cardinal Luis Cabrera Herrera from Ecuador.

On Wednesday afternoon, the cardinal-electors filed into the Sistine Chapel and took an oath of secrecy in Latin. All electronic devices were banned. The Renaissance-era chapel had been swept for bugs. Its heavy wooden doors swung shut, cutting the cardinals off from the outside world.

Inside, Parolin’s opponents already had a strategy. In the first round of voting, they dispersed their votes across several candidates, to gauge their appeal.

The first ballot began hours late, partly because the 90-year-old preacher whose speech opened the conclave went on for over an hour.

When the papers were finally tallied, Parolin was in first place with more than 40 votes. The field behind him was fragmented.

As voting continued on Thursday morning, Parolin was still in the lead, but his tally was stuck in the high 40s. Prevost, by contrast, was closing the gap as the cardinals broke for lunch.

Over pasta, steak and tactical debates in a plethora of languages, Prevost emerged as the new favourite.

A frustrated caucus of Italian cardinals sat mostly among themselves, speaking in their own language. Nearby, cardinals from Asia, the Americas and Europe mingled and chatted in English, or used each other to translate.

“At lunch, things were getting clarified,” said US Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Only one more round of voting was needed.

By an auspicious coincidence, Prevost was seated in the same spot in the Sistine Chapel where Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had sat at the 2013 conclave that elected him as Pope Francis, noted US Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who attended both conclaves.

Prevost’s final score in the afternoon vote surged to over 100 votes.

The next step fell to Parolin, as the highest-ranking cardinal in the room. Turning to the victor, he asked in Latin: “Do you accept your canonical election as the supreme pontiff?”

“I accept,” said Prevost.

“By which name will you be known?”

“Leo,” came the reply.

Cardinal Parolin was the first to kiss the ring, said Cardinal William Goh of Singapore. “Parolin is a gentleman,” he said.

Leo stepped into the Room of Tears, where new popes change into the white papal cassock for the first time. Nearby, ballots were being burned. White smoke soon billowed from the slender smokestack over the Sistine Chapel. The cheering crowd waved flags from all over the world as the name of the new pope was announced.

Two elderly Italian women near the back of St. Peter’s Square scanned their phones. One looked and said to the other: “Americano …” Her friend shot back a perplexed look: “Americano?”

Wall Street Journal

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/how-an-american-cardinal-beat-the-odds-to-become-pope/news-story/f8f7de883690d6d88cffbf696d2f6e16

As a Protestant / Agnostic / Atheist I welcome the new Pope only conditionally but I am hoping his missions in South America may have led him to more humanitarian views on such issues as contraception, abortion, euthanasia, assisted dying and so on. To remain rigid and utterly conservative on such matters will benefit few and cause unnecessary suffering for many IMVHO. It would be a true wonder to see some Christian caring injected by the church into these issues. I believe there is a better and more humane way to approach these issues than the usual Roman Catholic inflexibility!

Time will tell I guess.

David.

It Is Very Hard To Be Sure What Is Going On Here, But I Suspect It Is Not Good For Academic Progress And Freedom!

This appeared a few days ago:

Trump v Harvard: Clash of the titans

Cameron Stewart

12:00AM May 10, 2025

On a warm northern spring day this week, dozens of students relax between classes on the grassy lawns of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the peaceful scene belies the turmoil that has engulfed America’s oldest and most famous university.

Inside his rarefied office on campus, Ryan Enos is fuming about Donald Trump’s growing war with the Ivy League institution. Enos, an associate professor of government, concedes the university should try to be more ideologically diverse but he says the US President has gone too far in his unprecedented demand to try to reform its liberal progressiveness, which includes cutting off its federal funding.

At Harvard, America’s richest and most prestigious university, the stakes of this latest intervention by Trump into the civic life of the nation could not be higher.

“The university certainly has flaws, and I think that one of its flaws is that it is largely ideologically homogenous,” he tells Inquirer during an interview in his Harvard office.

“There’s a dominant culture of liberalism here that doesn’t reflect the median voter in the United States. And you know, we should be aware of that, and we should think about whether that serves our mission of education or research. Harvard should be more ideologically balanced, but it’s allowed to not be ideologically balanced. That’s part of living in a free country.

“Just like the National Rifle Association can be ideologically imbalanced, just like Quakers can be ideologically imbalanced, just like any other private institution can be ideologically imbalanced. That’s what freedom means.”

Enos says none of Harvard’s failings justifies the sort of government interference Trump is proposing. “I don’t think that should ever be thought of as an excuse to attack an institution,” he says. “Trump operates very clearly as somebody who is an aspiring authoritarian. And so he was going to attack higher education.

“There was no doubt about this. And what he found were convenient pretexts.”

Harvard v Trump has become the heavyweight fight in a broader campaign by American conservatives to tackle what they see as rampant left-wing bias in US higher education institutions.

This has been a long-term cause for Republicans, but Trump has turbocharged it by issuing a range of unprecedented demands the Harvard administration and study body say crosses the line and jeopardises academic freedom.

Harvard, alone among more than 60 American universities targeted by the President, has drawn a line in the sand at Trump’s attempts to mount an ideological war against it. The Trump administration seeks to punish Harvard for its failure to protect Jewish students during campus encampments in 2024 and also is trying to impose government oversight to ensure greater “viewpoint diversity” among staff and students.

Harvard’s defiance of his demands has infuriated Trump, who has frozen $US2.2bn ($3.4bn) in federal funding to the university and claims he will revoke the university’s tax-exempt status unless it bows to his wishes.

Harvard president Alan Garber has warned that Trump’s actions pose an “existential threat”, not only to Harvard but also to all American universities.

Harvard is suing the Trump administration, arguing that it has violated the first amendment to the US constitution and exceeded the law in its behaviour. The success or otherwise of Harvard’s legal action will determine whether Trump succeeds in his quest to “reclaim” America’s elite universities.

“Everyone knows that Harvard has ‘lost its way’,” Trump says. “Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders’,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

Elite universities are a priority target for Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has accused Harvard of having an “anti-America, pro-Hamas ideology”; in a 2021 speech JD Vance, now the US Vice-President, argued “the universities are the enemy”.

Influential conservative political activist and Trump supporter Charlie Kirk says: “At a lot of these schools they’re not pursuing what is good, true and beautiful. It has become the oppression Olympics and a weaponised complaint seminar of people sitting in a circle and finding out who’s been offended the most that day.”

The irony in this fight is that Harvard admits it has a campus culture problem that needs fixing.

“We acknowledge that we have unfinished business,” Garber wrote in a letter after the univer­sity filed its lawsuit against the Trump administration in the US District Court in Boston. “We need to ensure that the university lives up to its steps to reaffirm a culture of free inquiry, viewpoint diversity and academic exploration.”

The ugly scenes of anti-Semitism across many US university campuses, but especially at Ivy League schools such as Harvard, in 2024 underlined how an intolerant form of left-wing ideology had taken root across many campuses.

In the immediate wake of the Hamas massacre of 1200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, Harvard student groups released a statement holding Israel responsible. Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, later caused a furore at congressional hearings in December 2023 when in reply to a question from representative Elise Stefanik asking if “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate Harvard’s rules, Gay replied that it would depend on their “context”. Gay resigned within the month.

Last week, a Harvard taskforce released a blistering report that detailed how anti-Semitism had infiltrated everything from university coursework and social life to the hiring of faculty members and the world view of many departments.

It gave numerous examples of how Jewish students lived in fear on campus and of how the university failed in its duty to provide protection for Jewish students and to shut down the racist behaviour of many of the anti-Israeli protesters.

“The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful,” Garber wrote in response to the report, commissioned by Harvard. “I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. Harvard cannot – and will not – abide bigotry.”

Before its showdown with Trump, Harvard had been moving in recent months to ensure the disgraceful scenes of the 2024 encampment were not repeated. It took steps to improve campus safety, removed two anti-Israel leaders from its Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, banned any form of encampments or obstructive protests on campus and abolished several courses that promoted a hostile view of Israel and Jews. The day after Trump’s inauguration in January, the university adopted a more stringent interpretation of anti-Semitism based on that used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This defines certain criticisms of Israel, such as calling its existence racist, as anti-Semitism.

The reforms have been welcomed by many of Harvard’s Jewish students, including a group called Students Against Anti-Semitism that earlier had launched legal action against the university. The group describes Harvard’s reforms as “demonstrating leadership in the fight against anti-Semitism and in upholding the rights of Jewish students”.

But on April 11 the Trump administration ordered Harvard to initiate a far wider series of reforms beyond dealing with anti-Semitism to continue to receive federal funding.

It says government funding “only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigour, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture”. These include hiring and admissions based entirely on merit, ending all preferences based on race, colour, religion or sex.

The administration has demanded a full government-monitored audit of the student body, faculty, staff and leadership for “viewpoint diversity” and says each department and teaching unit also needs to be “viewpoint diverse”. It warns if these audits show Harvard is failing to implement sufficient “viewpoint diversity” it will lead to corrective measures, including the deliberate recruiting of “a critical mass” of new faculty and students to correct the imbalance.

The administration’s letter to Harvard – which goes further than Trump’s demands at other universities such as Columbia and Princeton – was a step too far for the institution.

Harvard accuses Trump of overreach by demanding something that not only is impossible to deliver in practice but also injects the heavy hand of government into controlling academic thought and research.

On the anti-Semitism front, it believes it has already implemented the necessary reforms and that Trump is using anti-Semitism as a cudgel to implement wider and unrelated ideological reforms across the university. “The government has cited the university’s response to anti-Semitism as a justification for its unlawful action,” Garber wrote. “As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising anti-Semitism.”

But he says “the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach”.

Harvard University said it will not comply with demands issued by the Trump administration aimed at curtailing antisemitism on campus, resulting in the White House freezing billions in feder…

Garber points out that the freeze of $US2.2bn in federal funds will end a wide range of critical medical and scientific research that Harvard conducts on everything from cancer research to infectious diseases outbreaks.

“As opportunities to reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are on the horizon, the government is slamming on the brakes,” Garber says. “The victims will be future patients and their loved ones.”

Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration states: “The government has not – and cannot – identify any rational connection between anti-Semitism concerns and the medical scientific, technological and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation.”

But the critics of Trump’s actions say the cost is far greater than the loss of this medical and scientific research.

They fear that if it is successful, it will set a precedent of direct government interference in higher education across the country.

Even The Wall Street Journal – which is no fan of Harvard’s leftist campus culture – believes Trump has overreached in his demands.

“Few Americans will shed tears for the Cambridge (Harvard) crowd, but there are good reasons to oppose this unprecedented attempt by the government to micromanage a private university,” it editorialised on April 15.

“These reforms may be worth pursuing, but the government has no business requiring them. Its biggest overreach is requiring ‘viewpoint diversity’, which it doesn’t define … An external monitor will decide such questions … Must Harvard ask applicants if they support Mr Trump and impose ideological quotas in hiring and admissions?

“President Trump has enough balls in the air without also trying to run Harvard.”

A central problem with Trump’s demands on Harvard is that the concept of “viewpoint diversity” is not explained and is left wide open to interpretation.

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who previously has accused the far left of creating an atmos­phere of intellectual intolerance on US college campuses, said this week that viewpoint diversity was “crucial” in “intellectual discourse”. But he said having the government impose it could lead to outcomes that are Orwellian.

“There’s nothing to prevent the party in power from enforcing the teaching of ideas that are both flaky and congenial to the administration: vaccine denial in medicine, 2020 election conspiracies in history, creationism in biology, quack nutritional theories in public health, the benefit of tariffs in economics, and so on,” he said.

James Prashant Fonseka, a student at Harvard Divinity School, which was the scene of some of the most virulent anti-Semitism in 2024, says it was valid to criticise the university for some of the more “extreme progressive views” on campus.

But he says when Harvard knew Trump would be serving a second term, it moved fast to curb some of the excesses on campus as well as cracking down on anti-Semitism.

“I think they saw the firestorm that was coming and they made certain moves to try to inoculate themselves from it,” he tells Inquirer in the divinity school library. He says the Trump administration is determined to punish the university regardless of what reforms it puts in place.

“Now it just feels like revenge,” he says. “It’s like they’ve gone beyond the original concept and they’re just trying to change the way the whole university thinks. It’s like they really want to win.

“But democracy cannot function if we do not have independent institutions.”

His friend and fellow divinity school student Jarrett Hill says: “I don’t believe that there is anything material Harvard could do that would satisfy them. I believe that those in the administration who are going after Harvard are absolutely convinced that they have a righteous cause, and that Harvard, as an institution, represents something that is bad and dark and bad for society, that they need to be targeted and punished for that.”

Perhaps the most telling sign that Trump has overreached in his battle with Harvard is that many of its Jewish students have said they are opposed to his attack on the university.

More than 100 Jewish students at Harvard have signed a letter decrying Trump’s “exploitation” of anti-Semitism to threaten the university’s funding.

“We are compelled to speak out because these actions are being taken in the name of protecting us – Harvard Jewish students – from anti-Semitism,” the students wrote.

Ophir Cohen-Simayof, president of the Jewish Student Association at the Harvard Divinity School, tells Inquirer she is worried Jewish students will become the scapegoat for any backlash against Trump’s actions because they are being carried out ostensibly in the cause of combating anti-Semitism.

“I do think it’s too heavy-handed, what they’ve done,” she tells Inquirer. “I don’t think it’s about anti-Semitism. I think most of it is unrelated. And I do fear that Jews are going to be targeted once again. My fear is that students are going to get angry at their Jewish colleagues, even though their Jewish colleagues have nothing to do with (Trump’s actions).”

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, the Jewish community centre at Harvard, tells Inquirer that Trump’s attack on the university might have been less heavy-handed if the university had acted more quickly in 2024 in tackling anti-Semitism on campus.

But he says Harvard is right to oppose the Trump orders. “Trump’s edict had a level of invasiveness that would functionally end the independence of Harvard as an organisation. Harvard could not and should not have acceded to that,” Rubenstein says.

Legal experts believe Harvard stands a good chance of winning its legal case against Trump because they say the President’s orders appear to be a clear breach of the free speech provisions of the first amendment.

The case will be keenly watched by the roughly 60 higher education institutions that have also had their funding reviewed or threatened by the Trump administration. The irony is that Trump’s election win, coupled with the obvious failures of universities in 2024 on anti-Semitism, has already had the effect of forcing many American universities to do more to protect Jewish students and distance themselves more from diversity, equity and inclusion mandates and other progressive causes. So the “Trump effect” was already affecting the university sector.

But by attacking Harvard and the notion of academic freedom with such extreme demands, Trump risks blowing up his own campaign to reform American universities before it begins.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/trump-v-harvard-clash-of-the-titans/news-story/7047fe20e8a71be689444e4a2e2cd142

One has to be grateful not to be at any of the major US universities right now! Time to let things settle and wait for the next US President to be elected. Trump is not a president I would even start to try and calm down / appease in this area!

David.

This Has To Be The Most Stupid Sort Of Press Release.

With the re-election of the Government we have had a blizzard of nonsense press releases.

Here is an example:

Guild congratulates Minister Butler

12 May 2025

Media Release

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has welcomed the opportunity to continue working closely with Minister Butler in his re-appointment as Minister for Health and Aged Care.

“Minister Butler has worked hard to put patients at the heart of his work. Most recently we’ve seen the announcement that medicine will soon be more affordable” National President Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Professor Trent Twomey said.

“Continuity will ensure the necessary reforms to healthcare, including expanding the range of services offered in pharmacy, can be taken forward at pace. There were a lot of reviews and recommendations in the first term – now is the time to put these into practice in partnership with industry, healthcare professionals and experts. Now is the time to act.

Minister Butler is joined in the Department for Health, Aged Care and NDIS by Minister Sam Rae and Minister Jenny McAllister.

“The Guild and community pharmacy looks forward to working with Minister Butler and his team to continue delivering for all Australian patients.

“I am also looking forward to continuing to work closely with fellow pharmacist Emma McBride to deliver regional and rural healthcare – and with Dan Rapacholi as Special Envoy for Men’s Health.”

Community pharmacy is Australia’s most accessible frontline healthcare destination and plays a vital role in treating and supporting patients across Australia. On average people visit community pharmacy every three weeks, providing a unique opportunity for proactive health advice and intervention.

There are more than 6,000 community pharmacies, often with extended opening times through the week and weekend. This makes it easier for patients to get the help they need. By thinking pharmacy first patients can access high quality advice, triage and treatment.

----- End Release:

Here is the link:

https://www.guild.org.au/news-events/news/2025/guild-congratulates-minister-butler

While I am sure the Minister is thrilled, this release really has to be total rubbish that makes no difference to anything!

Its just total nonsense IMVHO and a waste of paper and ink!

Why do they bother do you think?

David.

I Don’t Understand This Stuff But If Others Throw Billions Of Dollars At It. It Must Be Important!

This appeared last week:

PsiQuantum’s $1bn quantum computer project cracks ‘major milestone’

Jared Lynch

9:00PM May 08, 2025

The American company tasked with building Australia’s first quantum computer is steaming ahead with plans to deliver the machine, as the Queensland government reconsiders its co-investment in the $1bn project with Anthony Albanese.

PsiQuantum – a US company founded by Australians – has unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest cryogenic plants to house the computer in Brisbane.

It has signed a deal with Linde Engineering, based in Germany, to build the cooling plant, which is expected to take several years to complete. It has said previously that it expects to have the computer operational by the end of 2027.

The federal and Queensland governments have invested $1bn to build Australia’s first practical quantum computer. But Queensland’s new LNP government is reconsidering the investment.

“The (Queensland) government is reviewing the deal between the previous Labor government and PsiQuantum,” Treasurer David Janetzki told The Australian on Thursday.

PsiQuantum co-founder and chief executive Jeremy O’Brien remained upbeat, saying the deal with Linde was a “major milestone” in delivering the computer.

“This cryoplant is a critical component of the first utility-scale quantum system. It is a key step on the company’s road map to systems with millions of physical qubits, and the realisation of quantum computing’s potential,” he said.

“Linde Engineering is one of very few companies worldwide with the required expertise – having installed more than 500 cryogenic plants in total. These are serving hi-tech industries such as semiconductors and magnetic resonance imagining and supporting scientific applications like particle accelerators and fusion research.”

A cryogenic facility is needed because quantum computers must operate at extremely low temperatures – colder than deep space – to maintain the delicate state of qubits, which are needed to process quantum information. For example, Microsoft’s quantum computer operates at less than 100 millikelvin or -273C – around absolute zero.

The difference between quantum and classical computing is quantum uses qubits rather than bits. Bits can either be 1 or 0 to process information, while quantum could be both at the same time — like a coin being both heads and tails spinning in the air before it lands — a process known as superposition, and is incredibly powerful.

This means quantum computers can process information in a fraction of the time of classical computing, in some cases saving thousands, maybe millions of years – performing tasks such as rapidly accelerating drug development and personalised medicine; more accurate climate modelling; creating new materials at an atomic level; and more.

The Tech Council has said Australia cannot afford to be “left behind” in the quantum computing race, which it said had the potential to create a multibillion-dollar local industry by the end of the decade.

But qubits are, as Microsoft’s vice-president of advanced quantum development Krysta Svore said, “noisy”. She said they are like 1000 spinning tops, and the task is to keep them spinning for a month, while the room moves around a bit.

“It’s a hard task”.

Microsoft has invested more than $US1bn in quantum and has created a new chip that leverages a new state of matter and that could underpin quantum computers. But Professor O’Brien said PsiQuantum had taken a different approach.

Its technology uses photons, or light, rather than matter-based qubits. Therefore it can operate in a warmer but still chilly environment (4 kelvin or -269C), allowing it to use existing cryogenic systems.

“Photons don’t feel heat the way matter-based qubits do. Our systems can run 100 times warmer – and we appreciate collaborating with a world-class firm like Linde Engineering to deliver industrial-scale systems with proven technology,” Professor O’Brien said.

“This is a fundamental scaling advantage and a key reason we are able to move rapidly toward utility-scale quantum computing.”

Australian venture capital Playground Global founder Peter Barrett is a majority investor in PsiQuantum.

Blackbird Ventures- which has an investment portfolio of more than $7bn – has also backed PsiQuantum. Blackbird general partner Michael Tolo said PsiQuantum was “Australian by heart and spirit as much as origin”.

PsiQuantum has also partnered with Australian start-up Iceberg Quantum – founded by University of Sydney mates Felix Thomsen, Larry Cohen and Sam Smith – to design fault tolerant quantum computers.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/psiquantums-1bn-quantum-computer-project-cracks-major-milestone/news-story/c76c4ef595e9b8d16e59f2e035cb467d

There is a prize for a less than 200 word explanation as to what quantum computing will / can do for us!

You can read the relevant Wikipedia article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

Given Australia seems to have some expertise in the pretty arcane area I felt it was important to mention the article.

I look forward to your explanations!

David.

This Is A Really Distressing Disorder We Have Yet To Come To Grips With!

This appeared last week:

Ben spent thousands trying to fix ringing in his ears. Now he’s at peace with the noise

Many young Australians are “suffering in silence” with tinnitus – a phantom ringing or buzzing in the ears that has no cure.

By Hannah Kennelly

May 3, 2025

On an unseasonably warm afternoon in August 2022, Ben Niznik sat inside his car and quietly cried to his mum on the phone.

The 35-year-old coal miner and photographer, who lives in Maitland, NSW, had just been to see an ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT) for help with the debilitating and ongoing ringing in his ears – a noise he described as a symphony of high-pitched cicada chirps mixed with screeching train brakes.

Niznik developed the ringing when he was 19 years old, after spending much of his adolescence listening to “blaring music” on his phone and cheap earphones. However, the noise had recently worsened after a COVID-19 infection.

The specialist checked his ears, pressing the cool tip of an otoscope inside his eardrum and peering inside, before delivering his diagnosis in a matter-of-fact tone.

“The ENT told me I’d just have to learn to live with it,” Niznik said. “He compared it to quicksand – the more you resist it, the worse it gets.”

The 10-minute appointment finished, and $250 later, Niznik left feeling defeated.

“Mum rang and asked me how the appointment went, and I just started crying,” he said. “I was a 35-year-old man, I’m hard-working, and I wasn’t emotional like that. But it was just so overwhelming and the helplessness and that loss of hope was really crushing at the time.”

Niznik said he spent the next 18 months barely working and forked out nearly $10,000 on medical appointments and treatments to try to alleviate his symptoms.

He is one of thousands of Australians living with tinnitus – characterised by phantom ringing or buzzing in the ears. Tinnitus and hearing loss conditions are stereotypically associated with old age, but studies have shown an increased prevalence among young people.

In its 2020 Making a noise about hearing report, Hearing Australia’s research division, the National Acoustic Laboratories, said 60 per cent of young Australians experienced ringing in the ears at least sometimes.

Additional research indicates 14.1 per cent of teenagers and young adults may be at risk from leisure noise exposure, with the main sources of hearing risk coming from personal listening devices. With no cure and minimal awareness about the condition, tinnitus is leaving young Australians, in some ways, suffering in silence.

What is tinnitus, and why is it affecting young people?

Melbourne audiologist Dr Ben Altidis said there were about 10,000 reasons someone could have tinnitus, but it was important to describe it as a symptom not a disease or syndrome.

“The majority of us have primary tinnitus,” he said. “We all have these tiny hair cells and we start to lose them from the day we are born, so usually by the age of 60, we’ve lost around 30 per cent, which is when we see recordable hearing loss due to natural deterioration of our hearing.

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“These little hair cells stop unwanted sounds reaching the brain, so when we lose them, you start to get ringing, buzzing and hissing noises.”

The founder of Acute Hearing Clinics has spent more than 35 years in the industry and has seen a gradual increase in the number of young adults with tinnitus and hearing loss. He attributed the rise to noise exposure and a lack of education on hearing protection.

“We see a lot of young adults in our clinics who haven’t really protected their hearing … the messages around hearing protection don’t seem to be getting through to them any more, which is pretty sad.”

A 2017 study found 63 per cent of Australians aged 11 to 35 experienced tinnitus in some form, while people with higher levels of accumulated noise exposure were more likely to experience tinnitus more often.

In our increasingly noisy society, headphones and earphones have become an omnipresent accessory. We wear them at the gym, on the commute to work and at the office, and some even use them to fall asleep.

Dr Caitlin Bar is chief executive of Soundfair, a not-for-profit Australian organisation that focuses on hearing health and equality. Barr noted headphones themselves were not problematic, but rather it was the “overall volume and duration people listened to”.

“As a society, our average daily exposure to noise across all of our lives is higher,” she said. “We are pretty much constantly surrounded by sound … therefore opportunities for our ears to rest are less. There are studies where they’ve measured people’s lifetime exposure to noise, and for too many, by age 30, it’s above what it should be for their lifetime.

“It’s unsurprising that we would then be noticing an increase in tinnitus because it’s the earliest sign of hearing damage.”

Barr would like to see more awareness of hearing protection for young people and also more research into tinnitus.

“It [tinnitus] is invisible and not taken seriously,” she said. “For that reason, it’s been dismissed by various healthcare professionals and there is still so much we don’t know about it.”

Silence, cicadas and tuning out the noise

Lily Tomasic can barely remember what silence sounds like.

The 24-year-old Sydney building design co-ordinator has had tinnitus since she was a teenager, but the ringing became significantly louder when she turned 18.

“I don’t really think I can say what silence is,” she said. “I’ll be on holidays and my partner will comment on how everything is so peaceful and relaxing, but I’m not really enjoying it because it’s not peaceful in my head.”

Tomasic is not sure what caused her tinnitus, but says noise exposure and stress were probable factors.

“I used to play a lot of loud music in my ears, but a lot of people were doing that back then in my age group,” she said. “I think it could be a combination of factors. When I was 16, I used to listen to music with a loud volume, which was probably pretty stupid.”

A specialist diagnosed Tomasic with hearing loss when she was 19, and she has worn hearing aids ever since, which help make the high-pitched ringing noises less noticeable.

She feels more at ease with her tinnitus now, and will always wear earplugs to concerts and festivals. But she says the ringing can sometimes flare up with stress.

“It [the ringing] comes on a lot when it’s very quiet and when I start feeling stressed, and then it just gets louder and louder,” she said.

While there is no cure for tinnitus, many specialists encourage patients to engage in psychological therapy to help them get used to and accept the ringing in their ears.

Myriam Westcott, director of DWM Audiology, uses tinnitus retraining therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and other mindfulness strategies to help her patients manage their tinnitus.

An audiologist with more than 40 years’ experience, Westcott said stress could often aggravate a patient’s experience of tinnitus.

“We’ve always considered tinnitus to be the consequence of a change of hearing, but we now have a much greater recognition that tinnitus can also be caused or aggravated as a result of muscular stress and tension held in the head, neck and jaw,” she said.

“The stress of tinnitus can be very intense because it’s tapping into a survival mechanism that’s almost bewildering and frightening to people. So my role as a therapist is to explore those pathways in my patients and explain it back to them, to actually deconstruct why they’re so distressed.”

Westcott works with her patients to help “tune out” their tinnitus and teach the brain to recognise the ringing as non-threatening. She cites the example of people who live on noisy streets or near an airport or railway line.

“It’s not that those people don’t hear the sound that would annoy almost everyone else, it’s that they hear those sounds so often,” she said. “Their brain just gets bored with the sounds. They lose their importance. Tinnitus retraining therapy is about helping the brain feel safer.”

Westcott wanted young people to be aware of hearing protection but did not want to provoke unnecessary fear and anxiety about noise.

“Yes, we’ve got to be careful of loud noises,” she said. “But we do live in a world that has noise, and the ear was designed to hear it and the brain designed to receive. It’s important to find that middle ground.”

Making peace with tinnitus

Eighteen months after his ENT appointment, Ben Niznik now considers himself fully recovered from tinnitus. The ringing is still there, it’s still constant, but he’s at peace with the noise.

He has a tinnitus counsellor and audiologist he sees regularly and also follows three tinnitus YouTube channels that focus on positivity and resilience.

When asked if he mourned the loss of silence, he paused.

“No, I think that’s a big way to stay stuck in tinnitus … because we never really hear silence, do we – there’s always a train or car or cicada in the background.”

“You basically have to make peace with tinnitus to get peace. And that can take a long time. I think a lot of people experience regret, they think, ‘I shouldn’t have done this when I was younger’ or ‘it’s all my fault’, but then you’ll stay stuck.

“You can’t be angry at yourself for living … but you can take precautions and measures to look after yourself moving forward.”

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/ben-spent-thousands-trying-to-fix-ringing-in-his-ears-now-he-s-at-peace-with-the-noise-20250324-p5lly5.html

This is a really frustrating problem for which there is precious little that can be done for sufferers other that helping them adapt to the issue and avoid damaging high levels of sound, which can make it worse.

This really is a problem, once treatable issues have been addressed, that “one has to learn to live with”! Has anyone seen any cute technical gizmos help?

Really annoying, but sadly the truth – reported by one who has adapted to it for over 40 or so years! These days I have to check if it is still there, I have got so good at ignoring it! Gentle classical music helps me ignore it and brings great pleasure to boot!

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 793 – Results – 11 May 2025.

 Here are the results of the recent poll.

Will The Continuation Of Labor Government Be Good For The National Health System Overall?

Yes                                                                 16 (50%)

No                                                                  10 (31%)

I Have No Idea                                               6 (19%)

Total No. Of Votes: 32

It seems clear that a fair few think Labor will be OK for the Health System for the next 3 years

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Medium voter turnout. 

6 of 32 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

In The Un-vaccinated This Spreads Like Wildfire – As It Is In Texas At Present.

This appeared last week:

‘A catastrophe of a disease’: Doctors sound alarm on spread of measles

By Henrietta Cook

April 27, 2025 — 1.30pm

Victoria is in the grip of its worst measles outbreak in a decade, as health experts brace for a rise in local transmission after the school holidays.

The state has recorded 22 measles cases over the past four months, more than the entire number of cases detected last year.

Unlike previous outbreaks, which have mainly involved returned travellers, the majority of recent cases have been acquired locally in greater Melbourne and Gippsland.

Chief Health Officer Dr Tarun Weeramanthri said while a genetic analysis of Victoria’s 11 locally acquired cases showed they originated from returned travellers, authorities were unable to determine how they came into contact with one another.

“This means there’s transmission going on in the community,” Weeramanthri said.

There are 15 active exposure sites including supermarkets, cafes, shopping centres, libraries and hospitals in Collingwood, Fitzroy, Kilmore and Cockatoo.

Property developer Tim Gurner’s luxury spa, Saint Haven in Collingwood, also appeared on this list, with members urged to monitor for symptoms until April 26.

Measles is an extremely contagious virus that spreads through direct contact or by inhaling air contaminated by an infected person.

Symptoms may include coughing, fever, red or sore eyes, a runny nose and a red rash that typically begins on the face and spreads downward and across the body.

The disease can cause pneumonia, ear infections and diarrhoea, and about one in every 1000 cases causes swelling and inflammation of the brain, which can result in permanent brain damage or even death.

Eight Victorians have been hospitalised with measles this year, and most people struck down by the virus have been aged between 25 and 30.

Weeramanthri said he was cautiously waiting to see if cases would rise after the school holidays.

“The incubation period can be up to 18 days,” he said. “We’re not out of the woods for another week or so.”

The latest outbreak coincides with a decline in the proportion of Australians vaccinated against measles.

About 93 per cent of Victorian two-year-olds are vaccinated against measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), which is below the national target of 95 per cent.

The most recent measles cases involved individuals who had not received two recorded doses of the MMR vaccine.

Weeramanthri said people had a much higher risk of contracting measles, and becoming sicker, if they were unvaccinated. He said some vaccinated Victorians had also become sick but had experienced a milder illness.

Measles is a disease that Dr Anita Munoz, Victorian chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, never expected to worry about during her career.

“I was told as a medical student that this was an infectious disease of the past,” she said.

But like many doctors in Melbourne, Munoz is now on high alert for the disease’s tell-tale symptoms.

“It is a catastrophe of a disease,” she said. “It is one of the reasons why entire populations in South America were wiped out during colonisation.”

Munoz said vaccine hesitancy following the pandemic, as well as dangerous messaging from public figures such as anti-vaccine US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, was fuelling a decline in vaccination coverage.

Measles cases are on the rise around the world. The disease recently killed two unvaccinated children in the US and made at least 800 people unwell. The World Health Organisation estimates that 107,500 people died from measles in 2023 – mostly unvaccinated children under the age of five.

Professor Benjamin Cowie, an infectious diseases physician who works at the Doherty Institute and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, said measles was a notoriously infectious disease, with one case able to generate 13 other infections within a susceptible population.

He is concerned cases will rise after the school holidays as Victorians return home from countries with current outbreaks, including Vietnam and Thailand.

“Many Australians visit these countries,” he said. “They might be completely unaware that they are susceptible.”

Cowie said he was on high alert for the disease and exercising a high level of caution with patients.

“If someone comes in with a sore throat, fever and rash, I think could it be measles and then put a mask on them and isolate them.”

Murdoch Children’s Research Institute professor Margie Danchin said babies too young to be vaccinated were at heightened risk. Australians born between 1966 and 1994 are also at greater risk of measles as they may not have had two doses of the measles vaccine, which is currently provided to Australian infants at 12 and 18 months.

While Danchin said there was a perception that most unvaccinated children had anti-vaxxer parents, one of the biggest barriers to vaccination was access and cost.

Her research found that 20 per cent of parents with partially vaccinated children were unable to afford costs associated with vaccinating their child, such as gap payments for a GP appointment or time off work.

She said some families were unable to attend council-run vaccination sessions, if available, because they worked during the week.

About a decade ago, Danchin treated a child with measles who wound up in hospital with pneumonia, a complication that arises in one in 20 measles cases.

“It is the most infectious disease we know,” she said. “It is a heat-seeking missile that will find people who are unvaccinated and spread.”

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/a-catastrophe-of-a-disease-doctors-sound-alarm-on-spread-of-measles-20250424-p5lu2m.html

The problem with vaccine preventable diseases arises when you have not had the vaccine – which sadly is becoming more common:

Need to keep an eye on this over the next month or two, Not good if is gets going!

David.

Dr Mackay Is Making Pretty Good Sense Here I Believe

This appeared last week:

Australia must seize its medical research sovereignty – before it’s too late

It should be easier to commercialise Australian medical research, a key industry figure says.

Fabienne Mackay

5:00 AM May 01, 2025.

As a federal election approaches on May 3, Australians are being asked to decide what kind of future they want. For us, the answer is clear: a sovereign, secure and self-determined Australia must place medical research at the heart of its national ambition, not as a cost but as a catalyst.

Medical research is about national capability. It’s about improving population health, growing new industries, creating high-skilled jobs and building a knowledge economy that will outlast any single election cycle. It’s a matter of sovereignty, of Australia owning its future rather than outsourcing it.

QIMR Berghofer is a Brisbane-based medical research institute established in 1945. Today it is one of Australia’s largest and most prestigious independent institutes, employing more than 1000 staff across 67 laboratories. Our researchers lead internationally recognised work in cancer, infectious diseases, mental health and chronic disorders. QIMR Berghofer is ranked second in Australia and among the top 100 globally for biomedical research, according to the Nature Index – a reflection of our scientific impact and global competitiveness.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Australian researchers made vital contributions, from vaccine development and antiviral research to public health modelling and genomic surveillance. However, unlike countries such as Britain, Australia lacked the domestic manufacturing capacity, streamlined clinical trial networks and investment readiness to bring a vaccine to market. At QIMR Berghofer, we supported national efforts by testing therapies, conducting genomic sequencing and modelling virus transmission. But without national co-ordination and investment, much of this work couldn’t progress further.

We demonstrated that, when empowered, Australian research delivers global impact. But now, with public investment plateauing and international funding becoming more politicised, the question is not whether we can lead again – it’s whether we’ll retain the ability to.

This is not a plea for handouts, it is a call to ambition. Countries that invest in medical research not only are improving health outcomes, they also are building entire industries – biotech, immunotherapy, precision medicine, mRNA technologies, cellular therapies. These are not abstract ideas. They are multibillion-dollar sectors that are transforming global economies.

The recent decision by the US to reduce funding to overseas research institutions – despite contributing $386m to Australian-based research in 2024 – is a wake-up call. That figure represents about 42 per cent of the annual budget of the Medical Research Endowment Account, Australia’s primary federal research fund within its main health research body, the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Such reliance on foreign support is unsustainable. Sooner or later it will come with strings attached – or disappear altogether. No sovereign nation should build its research future on decisions made offshore.

QIMR Berghofer has not been directly affected by US cuts but the environment is changing. Since January 2025, the new US administration has introduced policies deprioritising foreign funding and diversity initiatives, resulting in temporary freezes, delayed communications and lower cost recovery rates for international institutions.

A new US budget may bring clarity but uncertainty remains. We cannot ignore the risk.

Australia’s economy is among the least diversified in the OECD. We talk often about future industries – but here is one already delivering, already competitive and poised for growth. With the right platform, Australia could develop a globally competitive biomedical industry. We have the talent, infrastructure and breakthroughs. What is needed is national focus and long-term vision.

At QIMR Berghofer, we are developing advanced cellular therapies already being used under the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Special Access Scheme – a regulatory pathway that allows clinicians to provide unapproved but promising treatments to individual patients when no other options exist. Demand is rising. We are ready to scale. But manufacturing each new therapy still requires individual TGA approval, a slow process that limits the pace at which we can meet demand.

This is not just a clinical challenge, it’s a national opportunity.

Medical research is not a lifeline, it’s an investment with expected returns. It drives technologies, companies, jobs and export markets. It strengthens our health system and boosts productivity. In a country where chronic disease causes nearly 90 per cent of all deaths, this is not just good policy – it’s smart economics.

What’s needed now is a bipartisan commitment to research sovereignty: the ability to set our own priorities, grow our capabilities and build economic strength from our scientific success.

This election is a chance to think bigger, to move beyond the rhetoric of scarcity and commit to ambition. Medical research doesn’t need saving – it can help save us.

Fabienne Mackay is director and chief executive of QIMR Berghofer.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/medical/australia-must-seize-its-medical-research-sovereignty-before-its-too-late/news-story/31e5f9c5f922d16b3aed4afca49849de

I have to say I find this article pretty compelling!

David.