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Your weekly dose of evidence
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Students around the country are finishing up their NAPLAN exams, and there have been reports of breakdowns due to glitches in the online system. Other news reports tell of some Australian students foregoing Year 12 exams and choosing less stressful pathways to finishing school.
Psychologist Mandie Shean asks if perhaps the way we’re talking about exams is making them a bigger threat in students’ minds than they ought to be. Exams are stressful and nobody likes stress. But she says it’s how we see stress that determines our levels of anxiety around it. And if we avoid it, we may learn to see it as a threat to our well-being and miss out on learning how to handle challenging situations.
Anxiety and depression are serious and young people experiencing these illnesses should have professional support. But we need to get the balance right. Support is important, but being overly protective can have the exact outcome we’re trying to protect our children from. This is explored in another article on over-protective parents. Parenting expert Marilyn Campbell runs through the research on the outcomes of university-aged children whose
parents help them too much, and says these students suffer from more anxiety and depression than their peers.
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Sasha Petrova
Section Editor: Education
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Reports suggests many Australian children are forgoing Year 12 exams because they are too stressful.
from shutterstock.com
Mandie Shean, Edith Cowan University
In our efforts to support young people, we might be teaching them to be afraid rather than encouraging them to see exams as a positive challenge.
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From the archives: rising anxieties
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Children are living at home for longer, so parents have more time to be overly protective of them.
from shutterstock.com
Marilyn Campbell, Queensland University of Technology
Children who grow up with loving and attentive parents grow up more resilient. But at what point does love and attention go too far?
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The inability to handle uncertainty is associated with a range of mental health disorders.
James Sutton/Unsplash
Danielle Einstein, Macquarie University
Reaching out for reassurance every time you have a doubt, or problem, might seem helpful in the short term. But learning to face uncertainty is essential to managing our mental health.
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Expert answers to serious, weird and wacky questions
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Philip Oldfield, UNSW
It would be difficult, but we could probably build a tower over 2,000 metres tall, which would be like ten normal skyscrapers on top of each other! This is probably not a very good idea though.
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Bill Bateman, Curtin University
One thing I can tell you is that a snail's bottom is right over its head.
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David Bowman, University of Tasmania
Bushfires require three key ingredients to ignite: heat, fuel and oxygen.
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Imogen Whittam, University of the Western Cape
The diameter of the Milky Way is a billion billion kilometres.
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Top picks from the week
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Blueberries contain anthocyanins, which might reduce your risk of heart disease. If you eat 150-300 in a day, that is.
Andrew Welch/Unsplash
Emma Beckett, University of Newcastle; Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz
We often hear eating specific foods can help prevent disease. But these claims are best taken with a grain of salt (or tumeric). The benefits are likely only if we eat them in really huge quantities.
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There’s no need to be put off using sunscreen.
From shutterstock.com
Ian Musgrave, University of Adelaide
A study that found chemicals from sunscreen in people's blood has made headlines. But the participants were applying huge amounts, and the measurements were far lower than would be cause for concern.
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It’s a 50km long patch in the middle of Queensland that’s causing a lot of trouble, but many people couldn’t even point it out on a map.
Queensland Government - Coordinated Projects Map
Michael Hopkin, The Conversation; Madeleine De Gabriele, The Conversation; Wes Mountain, The Conversation
Everything you need to know – where it is, the environmental impact, Indigenous land rights issues and actual profitability – of the Adani Carmichael coal mine in one simple interactive.
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Featured jobs
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La Trobe University — Bendigo, Victoria
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Curtin University — Perth, Western Australia
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University of Western Australia — Perth, Western Australia
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University of Melbourne — Parkville, Victoria
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Featured events
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Learning and Teaching building, 19 Ancora Imparo Way, Clayton campus, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia — Monash University
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900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, Victoria, 3145, Australia — Monash University
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Crowne Plaza Canberra, 1 Binara Street, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2601, Australia — Australia New Zealand School of Government
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Treasury Theatrette, 1 Macarthur Street, East Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3002, Australia — Australia New Zealand School of Government
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