 The highest IVF success rates are reported in women under 30 who have an around a 26% chance of having a baby. Philippe Put/Flickr, CC BY Thanks to IVF and donor conception, infertile couples, single women and lesbian couples now have a better chance of starting families. But while you might know someone who has gone through the process, it’s rarely openly discussed. Last month, you submitted your questions about donor conception and IVF and we put them – and some of our own – to The Conversation’s experts in law, embryology, sociology, psychology and donor conception. Here are your questions answered (scroll down ): 1. How much are men compensated for donating sperm and women for donating eggs? 2. Where do donors come from? 3. What sort of identifying information is filed about open donors on the information register? 4. When and how should you tell children they’re donor-conceived? 5. What kind of contact can donors expect when their offspring are adults? 6. What are the options for gay men to start a family? 7. What logistical barriers do lesbian couples face when starting a family? 8. Who goes on the birth certificate when using a sperm or egg donor? And what about if the couple is same-sex? 9. How much does IVF cost? 10. What are the success rates for IVF? 11. Is sex selection legal in Australia? Should it be? 12. How long can donor eggs and sperm stay in the freezer? 13. How difficult is it to obtain information about overseas donors/surrogates? 14. How are donor eggs and sperm transported interstate and overseas? 15. What barriers do donor-conceived people face in obtaining information about their biological mother or father? 16. Can donor-conceived people access information about their donor if they were conceived before anonymity was abolished? 17. Will using donor eggs from a younger woman increase my chances? 18. What motivates men to donate sperm, and women to donate eggs? 19. Why do I need ICSI (sperm injections) if I use donor sperm? Q1. How much are men compensated for donating sperm and women for donating eggs?A. Deborah Dempsey, sociologist: In Australia, human eggs and sperm cannot be treated as goods that are bought or sold. It’s permissible to pay egg and sperm donors “reasonable expenses” (such as travel and parking) and medical costs incurred in the process of making their donation. Although the actual sum paid varies, for sperm donors it is generally around A$250 per donation. For egg donors, it is substantially more as it’s a much more invasive medical procedure. Women are required to self-inject drugs for several days to hyper-stimulate their ovaries and need to be monitored to ensure there are no serious side effects. Eggs must be extracted by a medical practitioner, and this usually requires an anaesthetic and a half-day stay in hospital. If there is too great a financial gain attached to providing eggs and sperm, one concern is that people will be motivated by money rather than a desire to help infertile men or women, and this could cause harm. Potential donors, for instance, may be more likely to conceal a health condition that could be passed on to intended parents or children because they wanted to receive the fee. The issue of compensation is currently a hot topic due to a national shortage of both egg and sperm donors in Australia. In April, one group of fertility clinics made headlines for offering A$5,000 payments to cover egg donors’ expenses. Debate centred around whether this flat fee could be considered an “inducement” to participate, just as it did several years ago when a different clinic offered A$7,000 to Canadian students willing to come to Australia for a working holiday and to donate sperm. I agree with a number of other scholars who argue it’s time we looked seriously at whether the principle of “reasonable expenses” is useful in taking into account the actual risks, costs and inconveniences incurred by egg and sperm donors, and the interests of children born from such donation. Q2. Where do donors come from?A. Loretta Houlahan, embryology lecturer: Clinic-recruited donation is probably the most well-known method of donation. Because of the critical shortage of donor eggs and sperm in Australia, some clinics are now recruiting from overseas. This is generally permitted if it complies with local laws. Patients can also ask someone they know to donate to them. This is commonly a friend or family member, however, some people may find their donor through online forums as well. Advertising online is subject to many legal restrictions, so be careful if you go down this route. Sperm donation can also occur outside the clinic environment. Private insemination with donor sperm is not necessarily illegal, but potential medical and legal issues can arise from these arrangements. Unlike clinic-recruited donors, private donors are not screened for infectious diseases and donors often advertise online without their true identities being confirmed. There are pros and cons to both clinic and private donation, however, patients should seek medical and legal advice if they choose the latter. Q3. What sort of identifying information is filed about open donors on the information register?A. Fiona Kelly, legal scholar: Under Australian guidelines, all donors in Australia are required to be “open donors”. Anonymous donors ceased to be available across the country in 2005, though some states abolished anonymity earlier. The guidelines require fertility clinics in Australia to collect the following information from sperm and egg donors:
Clinics are also obliged to tell egg and sperm donors that it is their ethical responsibility to keep the clinic informed about any changes to their health that may be relevant to the persons born or the recipients of their donation, and about changes to their contact details. Clinics are not required to proactively gather additional health information or change of address details. So it’s possible that the information a donor-conceived person receives when they turn 18 is not up to date. In some states and territories, such as Victoria and New South Wales, donor information is held in a central register, while other states and territories require the clinics to maintain the data. Q4. When and how should you tell children they’re donor-conceived?A. Damian Adams, donor conception researcher: Discovering you’re donor-conceived later in life can potentially lead to confusion, anger and distrust of the family members who kept the secret from you. Some researchers argue that telling children earlier in life causes less harm. Associate Professor Ken Daniels, a sociological researcher into donor conception, writes that “a child should never be able to remember a time when he/she did not know”. Others suggest it should at least occur before the identity construct window of adolescence occurs. As there is currently no evidence that more problems arise by telling early, doing so while young has the least potential to create problems. There are numerous books on the market that can assist parents in how to tell, as well as numerous online resources. One of the better ones is run by the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA) which has been running very successful “Time to Tell” campaigns for many years and has numerous informative pages on their website dealing with this. Q5. What kind of contact can donors expect when their offspring are adults?A. Roger Cook, psychology scholar: When offspring reach adulthood it’s possible for them to initiate contact with their donor, the outcome of which is varied. Some offspring reach strong relationships with their donor parent and some do not. There are, of course, some offspring who do not want to make contact. Typically, however, if both the donor and the offspring are enthusiastic and prepared for contact, an on-going relationship can emerge but it’s not usually a parenting relationship. Often, the young adult can develop and maintain positive relationships with his or her biological father or mother but retain affection for the parents who raised them. Q6. What are the options for gay men to start a family?A. Deborah Dempsey, sociologist: Australian gay men’s pathways to creating families with children are diverse, although relatively limited compared to men in the United States. Australian gay men’s history of involvement in known sperm donation for lesbian and single heterosexual friends and acquaintances dates from at least the 1980s. Some men are able to negotiate “donor dad” or parental relationships with children conceived in this way. For gay men who are US residents, adoption is a well-documented path to parenthood. Though laws in some Australian states do not permit gay men or lesbians to adopt. And relatively few children are available for adoption in Australia. La Trobe University researcher Jennifer Power and her colleagues investigated family make up in the 2012 Work, Love and Play study. Of the 88 gay and bisexual men who described themselves as “actively involved” in parenting a child:
Q7. What logistical barriers do lesbian couples face when starting a family?A. Deborah Dempsey, sociologist: Lesbian couples using clinical donor insemination, known donor insemination or IVF to form families with children must navigate a complex range of logistical, social and emotional issues. Finding a suitable known donor can be difficult because of the need for compatible expectations about parenthood. Men may want more or less involvement than the lesbian parents feel comfortable with; they may feel awkward or uncertain about the responsibilities attached to giving sperm; or their partners may not approve of the idea. For some lesbian couples, deciding who will become pregnant and whose eggs will be used will be straightforward and for others, it will be emotionally difficult. It really depends on how the women view the issue of being genetically related to the child, and their feelings about how important it is to become pregnant and give birth.  Reciprocal IVF is not available in Australia unless the couple has fertility problems. Danny Hammontree/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
In some US states, a procedure called “reciprocal IVF” is offered so both women can have a biological relationship to the child. One woman provides the egg, while the other becomes pregnant and gives birth. However this procedure is currently only possible in Australia if the couple has fertility problems. Q8. Who goes on the birth certificate when using a sperm or egg donor? And what about if the couple is same-sex?A. Fiona Kelly, legal scholar: Where a couple or single woman has used assisted reproduction (ART) to conceive, the donor is not named on the birth certificate. Rather, the recipient parent(s), who are the legal parents of the child, are named, provided they were married or in a de facto relationship at the time of conception. In all states and territories, the woman who gives birth to a child born as a result of ART is the “mother” of that child. When a married woman or a woman in a de facto relationship with a man becomes pregnant as a result of assisted reproduction her partner is presumed to be the father, provided he consented to the procedure. All Australian jurisdictions also presume the same-sex partner of a birth mother who has used ART to conceive is a legal parent of a child born. In other words, same sex couples and opposite sex couples are treated identically. The language that is used on birth certificates may vary. For example, in Western Australia, the partners may register as “mother” and “parent”; “mother” and “mother”; or “parent” and “parent”. In the ACT, a person may be registered as “mother”, “father” or “parent”. Several states make a notation on the child’s birth certificate, indicating that further information is available about the child’s birth. The notation ensures the child can determine that he or she is donor conceived, particularly in the event of the child not having been informed by their parents of the nature of their conception. Q9. How much does IVF cost?A. Loretta Houlahan, embryology lecturer: Back in 1987, the cost of IVF treatment was about A$3,500 to A$4,500 and the pregnancy rate was around 40-50% after three attempts. At the time, Professor Carl Wood, one of the pioneers of Australian fertility treatment, said:
Arguably, the reverse has occurred with live birth rates reported to be as low as 4% at one IVF clinic. Further, despite a large proportion of IVF now being subsided by Medicare, the going rate for a fresh IVF cycle is around A$10,000, with out-of-pocket expenses commonly over A$4,000 before private health insurance rebates. Using donor sperm or eggs costs more again, with clinic-recruited donor sperm usually costing around A$1,000 per treatment. Although, actually paying a donor for their eggs or sperm remains illegal. Q10. What are the success rates for IVF?A. Loretta Houlahan, embryology lecturer: Fitness guru Michelle Bridges recently caused a stir when she suggested her ability to conceive naturally at 44 was because of her and her partner’s healthy lifestyle. While lifestyle factors such a smoking and weight will play a role, the biggest contributing factor to infertility is the woman’s age. So while Michelle Bridges’ 12-week body challenge may reduce your body mass index, drinking protein shakes and running on the treadmill cannot turn back the clock. The highest success rates are reported in women under 30 who have around a 26% chance of having a baby with IVF. Women over 40 have around a 6% chance, and as for women 44 or older such as Michelle, the chance of going home with a baby is less than 1%. Michelle was lucky. Most women her age would need donor eggs. There is also a wide discrepancy between the success rates of IVF providers. The last report showed overall results ranged from 4% at one clinic to 30.9% at another. There is also evidence to suggest having a younger male partner may improve IVF outcomes in women. This doesn’t necessarily mean women should go out looking for a young male sperm donor, it just shows there are many factors at play, many of which are out of patients’ control. Q11. Is sex selection legal in Australia? Should it be?A. Deborah Dempsey, sociologist: Sex selection using assisted reproductive technology is only legal in Australia to reduce the risk of transmission of a serious genetic conditions, such as duchenne muscular dystrophy. Sex selection of embryos created through IVF is done using a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This technique enables the removal of one or more cells from an embryo so it can be tested for genetic abnormalities prior to implantation. Clinics providing PGD must be accredited by the Fertility Society of Australia, which requires them to comply with National Health and Medical Research Council ethical guidelines. Some Australians would like to use PGD for “family balancing” reasons. Australians often consider it ideal to have at least “one of each” in their family, although in many parts of the world there is a cultural preference for sons. Australians are known to travel overseas to obtain sex selection services in countries where clinicians will perform PGD for non-medical reasons. While I understand that some parents have a very strong desire to have children of both sexes, my personal view is the practice is undesirable and discriminatory. If we take the “family balancing” idea seriously enough to legally facilitate it, we are perpetuating the view that boys and girls are so different from each other that families with children of one sex are “unbalanced” and somehow deficient. There would also be no impediment to using the procedure to support more extreme forms of gender discrimination, for example, in cases where families favour having sons. Q12. How long can donor eggs and sperm stay in the freezer?A. Loretta Houlahan, embryology lecturer: Donor eggs and sperm are often frozen before they’re given to recipients. This allows donors to be tested for infectious diseases and genetic abnormalities, transported interstate or overseas, if needed, and to be readily available for patients who need them. Some people express concerns about the survival rates of donor eggs or sperm that were frozen many years ago. But as long as they’re stored correctly, there is no biological limit on the amount of time eggs or sperm can remain in frozen. Just like Elsa in the movie Frozen, the cold never bothered them anyway, and staying frozen doesn’t reduce their thaw survival rates. There is also limited information about the success of egg freezing in general. So while we know eggs can survive the thaw process, we don’t know the how many babies are being born from this process. Sperm isn’t usually vitrified like eggs are, but advances in sperm freezing technology have also improved success rates over time. So, to sum it up, donor eggs and sperm can theoretically remain frozen indefinitely – although there are legal restrictions on this. Q13. How difficult is it to obtain information about overseas donors/surrogates?A. Damian Adams, donor conception researcher: Australian clinics are mandated to follow National Health and Medical Research Council’s guidelines which stipulate that all donor-conceived people (since the guidelines came into effect in 2005) are entitled to know identifying information on the donor once they reach 18 years of age. Subsequently, if clinics are sourcing eggs or sperm from overseas, the information available must meet our guidelines. We are yet to see whether any donor-conceived people have trouble accessing this information as those conceived under these guidelines as they’re yet to turn 18. Those conceived prior to this will be at the mercy of whatever agreement the Australian clinic and the overseas clinic had in the supply of those gametes and associated information. The donor-conceived are then also reliant on a foreign business maintaining and looking after those records. Anecdotal evidence from older donor-conceived people overseas does not paint a rosy picture of possible outcomes from seeking information, although it is hoped that their practices have also changed for the better as has been the case in Australia. Q14. How are donor eggs and sperm transported interstate and overseas?A. Loretta Houlahan, embryology lecturer: After eggs and sperm are frozen, they need to be kept in liquid nitrogen, which is about minus 196 degrees Celsius. This can make transportation tricky, as liquid nitrogen is really dangerous, and if it was to leak it could easily kill the courier or the any one else around at the time. Luckily, scientists have come up with a special device called a “dry shipper” which allows frozen embryos, eggs and sperm to be transported safely while keeping everyone safe. Dry shippers absorb the liquid nitrogen in the walls so it doesn’t leak, but it still keeps everything cold. Very occasionally, this process can fail, but most transportation occurs successfully without any damage to patient material. Q15. What barriers do donor-conceived people face in obtaining information about their biological mother or father?A. Damian Adams, donor conception researcher: This is highly dependent on when the person was born and which state they were born in. Those conceived from 2005 onwards around Australia, and 1998 onwards in Victoria, are entitled to access identifying information. Prior to those dates, donations were primarily anonymous. Research my colleagues and I published in 2012 on accessing information in Australia showed some people found dealing with the clinics quite difficult (others have found them helpful), and if information was available that there was no national consistency on what information was recorded. In some instances, records had been destroyed or redacted. We have also seen instances of registers failing to match people who were later matched through DNA testing. So, some younger offspring may find it easy, while older offspring may find it difficult or even impossible. Q16. Can donor-conceived people access information about their donor if they were conceived before anonymity was abolished?A. Fiona Kelly, legal scholar: The only state in which donor records have been opened retrospectively is Victoria. As of June 2015, all donor-conceived people who were conceived in Victoria may apply for access to their donor’s identifying information, with the donor’s consent. In other states, there is no right of retrospective access. However, in a number of states, such as NSW and WA, donor-conceived people may place their names on a voluntary registry. If both the donor-conceived person and the donor register, access is permitted by mutual consent. Q17. Will using donor eggs from a younger woman increase my chances?A. Loretta Houlahan, embryology lecturer: Women over 40 are the main recipients of donor eggs. Using donor eggs from a younger woman significantly increases the chances of success. However, using donor eggs doesn’t eliminate all complications. Women who use donated eggs have a higher risk of developing serious complications, specifically high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia. Although it was thought these dangers may have been linked to the age of the birth mother and not the egg donor, the real reason remains unknown. There is also a difference between fresh and frozen eggs to consider. Fresh is best because the success rate with thawed eggs remains unclear. However, this option is not always available where donor eggs are involved. Until only recently, egg freezing was considered experimental so we are still learning a lot about this process. Q18. What motivates men to donate sperm, and women to donate eggs?A. Roger Cook, psychology scholar: Both sexes are motivated, at least in part, by a sense of altruism. In the past, some men were enticed to donate by payments, albeit very low amounts. This became less common through the 1980s and now some clinics provide some reimbursement but no inducement payments. The Human Tissue Act of 1982 prohibits commercial profiting from semen donation. Financial reward is not a current motivation.  Some donors are unlikely to have children of their own and want to be fathers. Dave Lawler/Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDThe motivation for men to donate sperm changed somewhat after laws were introduced prohibiting anonymous donation. Donors must now be prepared to be identified and allow contact with their donor children. This has reduced the number of men donating, as the necessity of identification is incompatible with their sense of privacy. Another motivation for some men is a desire to be biological fathers, particularly when they’re unlikely to form a parenting relationship with a woman. Women are usually more reluctant than men to give away their DNA, except when they have had their own experience of IVF. This is likely related to the significance of pregnancy and child birth experience, which men experience in a different way. Women who donate their eggs are have been through infertility treatments such as IVF, and therefore have some understanding of the distress that follows such circumstances. Their motivation is to help other women who are not able to produce their own viable eggs. Q19. Why do I need ICSI (sperm injections) if I use donor sperm?A. Loretta Houlahan, embryology lecturer: A common source of confusion for patients is why they need to use intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) when using donor sperm. ICSI is usually preserved for treatment where the male partner has a low sperm count and costs a lot more than a standard IVF treatment. The main reason ICSI is used is because of the critical shortage of donor sperm. To enable supply to meet demand, the donor sperm sample may be diluted. This way it can be used in more patient treatments. The downside to this is that because diluted samples contain such a low volume of sperm, ICSI is required for the insemination procedure. ICSI is also required to inseminate frozen-thawed eggs. In order to freeze eggs, the “cumulus cells” that surround them need to be removed. In natural conception, as well as standard IVF, the cumulus cells act like a maze and the sperm are required find their way through these cells to get to the egg. It also acts like a barrier to limit the number of sperm that reach the end point. Without the cumulus cells in-tact, the risk of more than one sperm fertilising the egg is too high, so ICSI is used to avoid an abnormal fertilisation. With ICSI, the embryologist can ensure only one sperm enters the egg. Damian Adams, PhD candidate, Flinders University; Deborah Dempsey, Senior Lecturer - Sociology, Swinburne University of Technology; Fiona Kelly, Senior Lecturer in Law, La Trobe University; Loretta Houlahan, Casual Lecturer, Master of Clinical Embryology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Monash University, and Roger Cook, Associate Professor; Director, Psychology Clinic, Swinburne University of Technology This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. |
Telling children early seems to work best. 
NTT preparing $500m fund to boost IOWN AI initiative (2026-06-11T11:37:00+05:30)
 Posted by Harry Baldock : The vehicle will target startups across North America, Asia, and Europe to accelerate the commercial ecosystem for all-photonics networks Japan’s largest telco, NTT, is preparing to create an investment fund worth roughly $500 million to support the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) initiative and related AI development, according to reports from Yomiuri Shimbun. South Korea’s SK Group, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom, and the Development Bank of Japan are reportedly partners in the ‘IOWN AI Fund’. More than 10 additional Japanese corporations – spanning tech giants like Toshiba, Sony, and Fujitsu, alongside major financial institutions including MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho – have also expressed intent to participate. The ‘IOWN AI Fund’, which will be set up by the end of the month, aims to expand IOWN’s growing ecosystem and the AI infrastructure supporting it. This will be achieved by targeting tech startups across North America, Asia, and Europe, focusing on photoelectric fusion, AI semiconductors, and the development of next-generation, IOWN-native AI models. The concept of IOWN was introduced by NTT in 2019, with the central premise of shifting telco network topology from electronics to photonics (i.e., data transmission via light rather than electricity). Currently, typical backbone networks carry optical signals over fibre but are forced to convert these photonic signals into electrical signals for processing. IOWN envisions an end-to-end optical network that would remove this translational bottleneck, delivering major benefits like lower power consumption, higher speeds, and larger capacity. As generative AI data centres place unprecedented strain on global energy grids, it should be no surprise that the IOWN initiative is gaining momentum. Indeed, IOWN is already beginning to show signs of moving from technical R&D to commercial scaling. In 2024 deployment by NTT and Chunghwa Telecom successfully activated a 3,000km subsea IOWN link between Japan and Taiwan, achieving a one-way latency of just 17 milliseconds.By leveraging a formidable cross-border alliance of East Asian telecom, semiconductor, and financial giants, the IOWN AI fund is betting all-photonic network architecture will be a major alternative to traditional network strategy in the not-so-distant future. NTT preparing $500m fund to boost IOWN AI initiative - Total Telecom |
Almost 20% of Australian students don’t finish school – these 3 things can help them stay (2026-06-10T13:10:00+05:30)
Rebecca J. Collie, Monash University and Andrew J. Martin, UNSW SydneyThe latest data on Australian schooling shows about 81.5% of Year 10 students go on to Year 12. This is a modest rise of 1.6 percentage points on the previous year, but figures have been largely stable since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. There has been decades of research on how to help students finish school. Each student is of course different and will have different needs. But there are many things schools can do from Year 7 to support students to stay until Year 12. Here are three of the most important ones. Why it’s important to finish schoolCompleting Year 12 is associated with a range of positive longer-term outcomes. These include better employment prospects, higher lifetime earnings, and stronger health and wellbeing. It also keeps the widest range of post-school options open, from vocational training and apprenticeships to further study and direct entry into work. Why do students leave?The reasons students leave before Year 12 are varied and often complex. For example, some students might be managing health challenges, navigating difficult life circumstances, or pursuing opportunities like an apprenticeship that fit their goals well. For others, however, leaving early is shaped by experiences at school itself. Somewhere along the way, they became disengaged, fell behind, or lost their connection to school. These are the experiences schools are best placed to influence. Research shows there are three key areas schools can better develop now to help increase the retention numbers in the years ahead. 1. How teachers teachIt may sound obvious but one main way schools can keep students is through teaching approaches that help students learn effectively. This is because students need to feel they can succeed at school — and see themselves making progress — in order to stay engaged and connected to it. When learning is consistently out of reach, students disengage. In contrast, when they can see themselves getting better at things, school feels worth their effort. Our research shows effective teaching in Year 7 is connected all the way through to whether a student completes school six years later. This type of teaching is also linked with students putting in greater effort at school and higher achievement. What kind of teaching practices are we talking about? One well-evidenced approach is explicit instruction where teachers clearly model new concepts and skills, guide students through examples, and gradually shift responsibility to students as they gain mastery. As part of this, two strategies stand out. First, reducing difficulty during initial learning. When a concept is new, break it into manageable steps and match the challenge to what students already know. Second, give students well-organised opportunities to practise, paired with specific guidance on how to improve. 2. How the classroom worksOrderly, predictable and positive classrooms free up students to focus on learning rather than navigating disruption. This is why classroom management is important. This is how teachers structure the classroom environment and the interactions within it so learning can happen. In a recent study, we found students whose teachers provided strong classroom management were up to six times more likely to have high motivation, engagement, and resilience at school than students whose teachers did not. Two strategies are particularly effective for classroom management. First, establishing and consistently maintaining clear rules and routines is important, so students know what to expect. Second, recognising and building on what students do well rather than only focusing on what goes wrong. 3. Student-teacher relationshipsResearch also tells us it’s important for teachers to build warm, respectful relationships with students. It is not only important for retention in its own right — it also underpins the other two areas above. Strong teaching and good classroom management both depend on positive teacher-student relationships. When students feel known and supported by their teachers, they are more willing to engage and stay connected to school. Our research shows each relationship a student has with a teacher matters. The more positive relationships students have with their teachers — relative to negative ones — the greater their academic engagement. Academic engagement in turn, is a key driver of school retention. Research tells us every teacher can make a difference, and the relationships teachers build with their students could be what helps that student stay on and complete school. This is because the relationships add up — and for some students, the bond they build with one teacher in particular can be what tips the balance toward staying engaged with school. So it is important to create conditions where every student has the chance to build genuine, positive connections with teachers. This means teachers getting to know students as individuals, showing interest in their lives beyond the classroom, and teaching in ways that feel personal and engaging. Rebecca J. Collie, Professor of Learning Sciences, Monash University and Andrew J. Martin, Scientia Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology, UNSW Sydney This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. |
An AI solution to an 80‑year‑old problem has shocked mathematicians (2026-06-03T14:01:00+05:30)
 A representation of one version of the new best arrangement of points on a plane with pairs separated by a unit distance. Álvaro Lozano-Robledo
Melissa Lee, Monash UniversityLast week, OpenAI shocked the mathematical community by revealing that one of its internal artificial intelligence (AI) models had found a counterexample to a famous conjecture made by legendary Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946. The planar unit distance problem, or Erdős problem 90, has intrigued mathematicians for decades. The new result is no mere curiosity. Canadian mathematician Daniel Litt described it as “the first result produced autonomously by an AI that I find interesting in itself”. The breakthrough, produced with a general-purpose AI model rather than one specialised for mathematics, also highlights how AI is changing mathematical research itself. Days after OpenAI’s paper, US mathematician Will Sawin followed the same line of reasoning to an improved result. Also last week, a team from Google DeepMind used one of their own models to resolve nine lesser open problems left by Erdős. At the same time, results like this show us what kind of mathematics current AI models are good at – and where their capabilities are still uncertain. Dots and linesPaul Erdős was one of the most prolific mathematicians of the twentieth century. He was famous for asking deceptively simple questions whose solutions often resisted decades of effort. At first glance, the underlying problem seems relatively straightforward. Suppose you have some number of points – call the number n – drawn on an infinitely large piece of paper. Given you can arrange the points any way you like, how many pairs of points can be positioned exactly one unit of distance away from each other? If you try this problem yourself (on a presumably finite piece of paper), you may quickly gravitate towards a square grid as a promising candidate for the best arrangement. The spacing of the grid naturally creates many pairs at a regular distance apart.  A square grid intuitively looks like a good solution to the planar unit distance problem. OpenAIThis intuition influenced much of the early thinking about the problem. As the number of points grows, grid-like arrangements continue to appear to be remarkably effective. For decades it was widely believed these highly regular structures were about as good as it gets. Erdős himself conjectured that no construction could improve substantially on these intuitive arrangements, even for an extremely large number of points. (The new best result, by Sawin, reportedly only starts to yield improvements for around 102000000 points – that’s a one followed by two million zeroes.) Over the past 80 years, mathematicians have tried to prove Erdős either right or wrong. Their efforts have linked the problem to other areas of mathematics called incidence geometry, graph theory and extremal combinatorics. While a full proof remained elusive, there was a general feeling that Erdős’ conjecture was probably true. However, OpenAI’s recent breakthrough proved Erdős’ intuition wrong. The new result uses tools from an area of mathematics called algebraic number theory to show there are patterns of dots that involve many more unit-distance pairs than the square grid, for infinitely many values of n. No hesitationIn an article OpenAI published alongside the new paper, several leading mathematicians remarked on the result. Fields Medallist Timothy Gowers wrote that if a human researcher had submitted the paper with this result to the prestigious journal Annals of Mathematics, he would have recommended publication “without any hesitation”. He also added that no previous AI-generated proof had come close to this level of sophistication. This breakthrough also represents the first major mathematical open problem solved with AI with minimal human intervention beyond the initial prompt. The accompanying paper shows the prompt given to the model, as well as a recount of the “chain of thought” conducted by the model. This has renewed broader questions about the capabilities of AI to aid in, and perform, mathematical research. Three keys to mathematical researchResearch mathematicians have been using computers for a long time, but their work is rarely driven by computation alone. Most major breakthroughs emerge from a delicate combination of three things: expertise developed over years, sustained effort to apply that expertise creatively to explore ideas (many of which turn out to be dead ends), and occasional conceptual leaps that suddenly reorganise how a problem is understood. The first two are domains where AI models excel: as noted by Gowers, large language models such as ChatGPT have an “encyclopaedic knowledge of mathematics”. Moreover, they can follow huge numbers of speculative lines of enquiry, even those unlikely to lead anywhere, without human time constraints. The latter seems to be what provided the key to success here. In hindsight, it seems an expert given a small number of hints would be likely to be able to reach the same proof. As Gowers notes:
Lightbulb momentsThe harder question is how much AI can contribute to genuine conceptual leaps. These acute moments of insight, where a lightbulb moment reframes a problem in an entirely new way, are often seen as the most human part of mathematics. These leaps are hard to formalise and even harder to predict. It remains unclear whether AI models can replicate them, even with recent advances. What is clear is that AI models are causing a seismic shift in the way mathematics is discovered. For centuries, progress in mathematics depended almost entirely on human creativity and persistence. Now, for the first time, researchers are working alongside systems capable of autonomously exploring enormous spaces of ideas and contributing to problems once thought accessible only to human insight. Melissa Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematics, Monash University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. |
Counting on Fingers Really Helps Kids Improve Their Math Skills–By 40% New Study Shows (2026-06-02T15:03:00+05:30)
 By Yan Krukau via Public Domain on Pexels22-08-2025, Some teachers consider finger counting a signal that youngsters are struggling with math, while others associate its use as advanced numerical knowledge. Now, new research is the first to show that children’s performance in arithmetic can show a “huge” improvement through the teaching of a finger-counting method. Swiss and French teams explored whether finger counting can help primary-school-aged children to solve math problems. They said adults rarely use their fingers to calculate a small sum, because such behavior could be attributed to cognitive impairments or “pathological difficulties” in math. But young children under age 8 who use their fingers to solve such problems may be seen as intelligent, probably because they have already reached a level that allows them to understand that a quantity can be represented by different means. The research aimed to determine whether children who don’t count on their fingers can be trained to do so, and whether such training would result in enhanced arithmetic performance. The study, published in the journal Child Development, focused on 328 five- and six-year-old children at kindergarten, mainly living in France, and tested their abilities to solve simple addition problems. The kindergarteners were recruited through their teachers, who voluntarily took part in the experiment, which included a pre-test, training held over two weeks, a post-test closely after the training’s end, and a delayed post-test. The results showed an “important increase” in performance between pre- and post-test for the trained children who did not count on their fingers originally—from 37% to 77% of correct responses—compared to non-finger users in the control group. Whether children who use finger counting are using it as an arithmetic procedure or understand something deeper about numbers will still need to be determined with future research. “Our findings are highly valuable because, for the first time, we provide a concrete answer to the long-standing question of whether teachers should explicitly teach children to use their fingers for solving addition problems,” said study leader Dr. Catherine Thevenot. “Finger calculation training is effective for over 75% of kindergartners,” she added. “The next step is to explore how we can support the remaining 25% of children who didn’t respond as well to the intervention.” Dr. Thevenot, of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, says the study came about as a result of conversations with primary school teachers. “They often asked me whether they should encourage or discourage children from using their fingers to solve calculations. “Surprisingly, the existing research didn’t offer a clear answer, which left teachers understandably frustrated with my frequent response of ‘I don’t know.’ “This recurring question, coupled with the lack of concrete evidence, inspired me to investigate the issue myself. “When I first saw the results, I was amazed by the huge improvement in performance among children who didn’t initially use their fingers to solve the problems. “Before our intervention, these children were only able to solve about one-third of the addition problems during a pre-test. After training, however, they were solving over three-quarters of them. “This improvement truly exceeded my expectations,” said Dr. Thevenot. “The difference was striking, especially compared to the control groups, where gains were insignificant. “An important question now is to determine whether what we taught to children goes beyond a mere procedure to solve the problems. “In other words, we want to know whether our intervention led to a deeper conceptual understanding of numbers, specifically whether children better grasp how to manipulate the quantities represented by their fingers. “In fact, we have already started addressing this question and the initial results are very promising. However, we still need to carry out additional experiments to confirm that these improvements are indeed a direct result of our training program.” Counting on Fingers Really Helps Kids Improve Their Math Skills–By 40% New Study Shows |
What is ‘Net Zero’, anyway? A short history of a monumental concept (2026-05-28T13:18:00+05:30)
Ruth Morgan, Australian National UniversityLast month, the leaders of the G7 declared their commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. Closer to home, the Albanese government recently introduced legislation to establish a Net Zero Economy Authority, promising it will catalyse investment in clean energy technologies in the push to reach net zero. Pledges to achieve net zero emissions over the coming decades have proliferated since the United Nation’s 2021 Glasgow climate summit, as governments declare their commitments to meeting the Paris Agreement goal of holding global warming under 1.5°C. But what exactly is “net zero”, and where did this concept come from? Stabilising greenhouse gasesIn the early 1990s, scientists and governments were negotiating the key article of the UN’s 1992 climate change framework: “the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [human-caused] interference with the climate system”. How to achieve that stabilisation – let alone define “dangerous” climate change – has occupied climate scientists and negotiators ever since. From the outset, scientists and governments recognised reducing greenhouse gas emissions was only one side of the equation. Finding ways to compensate or offset emissions would also be necessary. The subsequent negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol backed the role of forests in the global carbon cycle as carbon sinks. It also provided the means for well-forested developing countries to participate in the emerging carbon offset market, and to play their part in reaching the carbon accounting goal of “carbon neutrality”. Under those terms, the industrialised countries subject to the Kyoto Protocol could pay developing countries to offset their own emissions as a form of low-cost mitigation. The Kyoto Protocol was unable to curtail soaring global greenhouse gas emissions, and a successor agreement appeared uncertain. As a result, interest turned in the late 2000s to the possibility of using highly controversial geoengineering techniques to remove greenhouse gas emissions. These proposals included sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky so the atmosphere would trap less heat, or reflecting sunlight away from the planet to reduce heat absorption. The focus on carbon sinks, whether through forests or direct air capture, would appear again in the idea of net zero. Temperature targetsBy this point, policymakers and advocates were shifting away from emissions reductions goals (such as Australia’s unusual first Kyoto target to limit emissions to 108% of 1990 emissions by 2012). Instead, temperature targets became more popular, such as limiting warming to no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels. The European Union had already adopted the 2°C threshold in 1996 and argued successfully for its relevance as a long-term objective for climate action. What changed was scientists now had better ways of tracking how long carbon dioxide emissions would stay in the atmosphere, allowing better projections of our carbon budget. These findings allowed the IPCC’s 2014 report to clearly state limiting warming to below 2°C would require “near zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases by the end of the century”. By this time, London-based environmental lawyer and climate negotiator Farhana Yamin had also set her sights on net zero by 2050. For Yamin, translating the 1.5°C ambition into climate negotiations meant focusing on net zero: “In your lifetime, emissions have to go to zero. That’s a message people understand.” The concept of net zero offered a simple metric to assess mitigation efforts and hold parties legally accountable – an instrument she and colleagues proposed for the negotiation of a new legally binding agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. By late 2014, net zero had gained traction, appearing for the first time at a UN climate conference, the UN’s Emissions Gap Report, and in a speech by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim that stressed “we must achieve zero net emissions of greenhouse gases before 2100”. Zero in ParisThese efforts culminated in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which in addition to its well-known temperature targets of 1.5°C and 2°C, also added a complementary goal:
This is what “net zero” means – a “balance” between carbon emissions and carbon sinks. It was subsequently enshrined in the IPCC’s Special Report on the importance of keeping warming under 1.5°C, in which 195 member states agreed to get to net zero emissions by 2050. Slogan for greenwashing?So, what’s next for net zero? Countries such as India have questioned what it means for fairness and equity between developing and developed nations, Instead, they favour the well-established approach of “common but differentiated responsibility” to mitigation. This justifies India’s aim to reach net zero emissions by 2070, as developed nations should lead the way and provide developing countries with funds and technologies necessary to support their mitigation ambitions. The UN, by contrast, has warned the flexibility of net zero as a concept could make it a mere slogan for greenwashing by corporations and other non-state entities rather than a concrete objective. As the chair of the UN’s High Level Experts group put it:
Given the chasm between pledges and practice documented in the 2023 UN Emissions Gap Report, there is a very real likelihood we will shoot past the temperature limits of the Paris Agreement. Fossil fuel treatyNet zero isn’t the only approach to tackle climate change. Other concepts are growing in popularity. For instance, optimists say the temperature “overshoot” we’re on track for could be tackled with a “drawdown” of carbon emissions if we use “carbon dioxide removal” or “negative emissions technologies” such as carbon capture and storage, soil carbon sequestration, and mass tree planting and reforestation. But beware: the IPCC’s Special Report cautioned that while some of these options might be technologically possible, they have not been tested on a large scale. Can these untested technologies be relied on to halt and reverse the chaos likely to be unleashed by dangerous levels of global heating? What does overshoot mean for the low-lying island nations who rallied around “1.5°C to stay alive”? Momentum has been building for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty since 2022, when Vanuatu called on the UN General Assembly to phase out the use of fossil fuels. Such a treaty, Vanuatu President Nikenike Vurobaravu said, would “enable a global just transition for every worker, community and nation with fossil fuel dependence”. At the Dubai climate conference late last year, held in the wake of the International Energy Agency’s revised Net Zero Roadmap, the negotiations culminated in a first for the UNFCCC – an explicit statement endorsing:
Will net zero become more than hot air? That remains to be seen. While the science behind the concept is broadly sound, the politics of achieving net zero are a work in progress. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the point where they are zeroed out by carbon sinks by 2050 requires just and credible planning. We must prioritise the phase-out of fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Ruth Morgan, Associate Professor of History, Australian National University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. |
It’s tempting to offload your thinking to AI. Cognitive science shows why that’s a bad idea (2026-04-01T11:58:00+05:30)
|
Misia Temler, University of Sydney: With so many artificial intelligence (AI) products on offer now, it’s increasingly tempting to offload difficult thinking tasks to chatbots, agents and other tools. As we chart this new technological terrain, more and more we’re exposed to vast amounts of information and highly sophisticated software that offers to do the thinking for us. In just a few seconds, tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini can draft your emails, generate a caring birthday message for a friend, or even summarise the plot of that novel you haven’t gotten around to reading. Such increased offloading has raised the fear that people will become overly reliant on AI. This could have unintended consequences, such as eroding our critical thinking skills and declining our overall cognitive ability. This fear is not unfounded. Research from our lab suggests the online environment exploits our cognitive tendencies – individual differences in how we think, perceive, pay attention and remember. In turn, some people end up taking more mental shortcuts and only engaging with information superficially. Other studies have linked high AI use to increased laziness, anxiety, lower critical engagement and feelings of dependence. Yet it may be how we use AI that’s the problem, rather than the fact we do it at all. Generally, relying on external sources is fine – we do this constantly. But it’s important to remain in control of what we choose to offload, and why. How do we even know things?We all constantly rely on each other’s knowledge to function as a society. Doctors provide medical information, engineers are in charge of construction, financial advisers give investment tips, and so on. All this spread of expertise provides each of us with more knowledge than we can individually hold. In other words, we constantly balance offloading (letting someone else do the thinking) with scaffolding (relying on external knowledge sources to enrich our own thinking). Scaffolding often happens when we learn. For example, a teacher doesn’t write an essay for their student – instead, they provide feedback so the student can connect, integrate, and grow their knowledge base. Crucially, we also don’t offload all thinking tasks to one specific person. Instead, we carefully consider the person’s trust and expertise before accepting their advice, tools or support. We also check how the new information fits in with what we already know. As our knowledge grows in a certain area, we rely less on outside support, just as a student relies on a teacher until they learn enough to stand on their own. It’s not just our brains doing the workCognition (our thinking skills) is the central concept in all of this. Our minds engage in three fundamental tasks:
Cognition relies on how well these three mental tasks work together. When we’re overwhelmed with information, distributing tasks to outside sources lessens that mental effort. Research shows when our attention is strained, our minds focus more on encoding information while sacrificing storage and retrieval, which are more taxing. Intuitively, it’s easy to assume all our cognition just happens in the brain. But our cognitive processes are sometimes extended to things in the environment. These external sources can be people, physical objects and digital tools. A diary is an extension of your mind if you use it to retrieve memories you’ve written down. However, flippantly offloading your knowledge acquisition and storage to external sources – such as asking ChatGPT any question that pops in your mind – can have an impact on your critical thinking skills. This is because acquired knowledge actively interacts with newly encoded information in our minds: we convert information we come across in a way that makes sense to us. And the more knowledge we hold, the greater our capacity to encode and critically interpret new information. For example, knowledge of Hitler and Mussolini in the context of the second world war helps us to better understand the modern dangers of dictatorship. Hard work can be rewardingTo restore balance, we need to perform the more difficult cognitive tasks ourselves, not just offload them whenever it’s convenient. The faster and easier option isn’t always the best – just like choosing to walk to your friend’s place provides better exercise for your body and mind than driving there does. Sometimes hard work can be rewarding. When faced with using AI tools, you can either choose to control them, or let them control you. One way to balance your relationship with AI tools is to use reflective practices. Ask yourself: how do you feel after using AI? Do you feel proud and satisfied, or do you feel more anxious and more overwhelmed? Have you replaced or scaffolded your cognition today? What tasks can you do to expand your mental capabilities tomorrow? For a successful relationship with AI, we need to exercise all our mental skills – otherwise we really do risk losing them. This may not always be easy, but it remains in our control. Misia Temler, Research Affiliate, Psychology, University of Sydney This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. |
