Study finds food security resources for refugees resettling in Australia are accurate but too difficult to read

A recent study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior finds that most informational materials meant to assist refugees are written above the recommended reading level

Elsevier

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New research discussed by lead author Julie M. Wood, MHumNut, Graduate Researcher, Deakin University’s Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (Australia), found that refugees resettling in Australia face high rates of food insecurity, but most informational materials designed to support them are written at reading levels far too advanced for effective use to address their needs and many fail to consider cultural and linguistic diversity.

 

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Credit: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

November 5, 2025 – A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (JNEB), published by Elsevier, found that refugees resettling in Australia face high rates of food insecurity, but this new research reveals that most informational materials designed to support them are written at reading levels far too advanced for effective use to address their needs.

The study assessed 184 government and community-developed materials meant to help refugees navigate food access and nutrition in their new environment. Researchers found that while nearly all resources were accurate, suitable, and current, 96% were written above the recommended readability level for refugee audiences.

Nearly 70% of the materials were created by Australian government agencies, but topic coverage was narrow, and many failed to consider cultural and linguistic diversity. The research team used established evaluation tools—the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM), the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) test, and the American Library Association’s currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose (CRAAP) framework—to assess readability, relevance, and authority.

“Access to clear, understandable information about how to find and prepare food in the Australian food environment, including finding cultural foods, is vital during resettlement. People living as refugees bring many food skills and strengths with them, but the new food environment may be very different from their original food environment,” said lead author Julie M. Wood, MHumNut, Graduate Researcher, Deakin University’s Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition. “Our findings show that even when resources exist, they may not be accessible to the very people they’re designed to support.”

The authors emphasize the importance of using plain language and cultural tailoring when developing future resources. The study underscores the need for collaboration between government agencies, settlement service providers, and refugee communities to ensure materials are linguistically and culturally appropriate, visually engaging, and relevant to refugees’ lived experiences.

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Journal

Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

DOI

10.1016/j.jneb.2025.06.005 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The Suitability, Readability, and Accuracy of Food Security Resources for Refugees Resettling in Australia

 

SPRTA: a smarter way to measure evolution uncertainty

A new method from EMBL-EBI and collaborators offers fast, easy-to-interpret confidence scores for phylogenetic trees for pandemic preparedness

European Molecular Biology Laboratory

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SPRTA: a smarter way to measure evolution uncertainty. Image credit: Karen Arnott/EMBL-EBI

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Credit: Karen Arnott/EMBL-EBI

When COVID-19 arrived, researchers tried to build evolutionary family trees – known as phylogenetic trees – of the virus. These help scientists understand when new virus strains appear and how they are linked to each other. But with millions of genomes to analyse, checking how reliable those trees were proved impossible. 

To address this gap, researchers at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and colleagues at the Australian National University have developed SPRTA (SPR-based Tree Assessment), an interpretable and efficient way to score the reliability of each branch in a phylogenetic tree. SPRTA is the first such tool that is scalable to pandemic-sized datasets.

Re-inventing phylogenetic assessment

Since 1985, scientists have relied on a method called Felsenstein’s bootstrap to measure confidence in phylogenetic trees. But because this method works by repeating the same analysis hundreds or even thousands of times, it becomes too slow to handle the millions of viral genomes sequenced during a pandemic. 

A recent paper, published in the journal Nature, introduces SPRTA, a modern, scalable alternative capable of handling the huge datasets generated during large disease outbreaks. SPRTA enables researchers to track how pathogens spread and evolve reliably and rapidly, informing better decisions during outbreaks and supporting pandemic preparedness.

“For nearly 40 years, scientists have relied on the same method to measure confidence in evolutionary trees, but when faced with the scale of data we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, the old method simply couldn’t cope,” said Nick Goldman, Group Leader at EMBL-EBI. “SPRTA gives us a fast, reliable way to understand which parts of these massive trees we can trust and to find the most plausible alternatives in regions of low confidence. This is exactly the kind of tool we’ll need to respond faster and smarter in the next pandemic.”

A smarter way to measure confidence

Traditional methods, such as Felsenstein’s bootstrap, focus on whether groups of samples, known as clades, are strongly supported by the data collected. But for outbreak analysis, that’s not always enough. SPRTA takes a different approach. It analyses how likely it is that a virus strain descends from a particular ancestor, and which alternative evolutionary paths are possible.

To do this, SPRTA tests many possible scenarios by virtually rearranging branches of the phylogenetic tree and comparing how well each one fits the data. It then assigns a simple probability score showing how confident researchers can be in each connection.

“With SPRTA, we’re not just making phylogenetic tree-building faster, we're making it smarter,” said Nicola De Maio, Senior Scientist at EMBL-EBI. “It helps researchers understand which relationships are solid and where they need to be cautious, even when working with millions of genomes.”

Designed for pandemic-scale data

Using more than two million SARS-CoV-2 genomes, the researchers demonstrated that SPRTA can:

• highlight which parts of a phylogenetic tree are highly reliable,

• flag uncertain sample placements, often due to incomplete or noisy data,

• reveal credible alternative origins for specific branches. 

SPRTA is built into MAPLE, a tool developed at EMBL-EBI for building massive phylogenetic trees efficiently. SPRTA is also available in IQ-TREE, one of the most widely used phylogenetic software packages.

Integrating SPRTA into these established tools makes the method open, accessible, and ready for researchers worldwide to apply in outbreak tracking, genomic surveillance, and evolutionary studies.

Funding

This work was supported by EMBL core funds and the Medical Research Council (MRC).  Australian collaborators received support from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative. 

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09567-x 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Article Title

Assessing phylogenetic confidence at pandemic scales

Article Publication Date

5-Nov-2025

'Jumping genes’ help scientists resolve tree of life

Termite study provides researchers with template to solve ancient evolutionary mysteries

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University

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Genomes are key to unlocking life’s evolutionary history. The presence and absence of certain genetic sequences and mutations can give us clues to the order in which species diverge. However, even state-of-the-art methods struggle to accurately map evolutionary events from hundreds of millions of years ago. Published in Current Biology, a new method from scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) harnesses ‘jumping genes’ to recreate the termite tree of life, showcasing a new way for researchers to solve ancient evolutionary mysteries.

“Phylogenetic trees, which map the relationships between different organisms, are pivotal to the field of evolutionary biology. They help us to understand the origins of modern biodiversity and inform conservation strategies”, says Professor Thomas Bourguignon, author on the study and head of the OIST Evolutionary Genomics Unit. “However, challenges arise when trying to predict evolution across deep history. Phylogenetic signals are often weak, and radiation events, where species rapidly diversify over a short period, add complexity, making it difficult to identify the order that individual species emerged. Our new method supports researchers to tackle these tricky scenarios”.

What makes a gene ‘jump’? Transposons explained

Certain DNA sequences, called ‘transposable elements’, or ‘transposons’, can move from one place to another, causing mutations and increasing genetic variability. Transposons are abundant in the genomes of eukaryotes—organisms having cells with nuclei encapsulating their genomes, including animals, plants and fungi. In fact, they form up to 50% of human genomes, and more in some other eukaryotes.

Despite their abundance, transposons have been somewhat overlooked in favor of other DNA marker sequences for tree of life construction. “Until recent advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics annotation tools, transposon characterization at genome level was difficult,” explains first author Cong Liu, PhD student at OIST. “Phylogenetics has tended to focus on conserved genes, such as those encoding proteins critical for life, which are common across different species. These usually only change slowly over time, so are good for examining changes over evolutionary timescales.”

This slow rate of change comes with a downside; it can become difficult to resolve rapid radiation events, as there may be very limited differences in these conserved genes between species. In such cases, transposons may provide helpful information on species divergence, given their active movement across the genome.

A new way to build phylogenetic trees

To prove the usefulness of transposons, the team first had to collect data, sequencing 45 termite and two cockroach genomes. They selected a diverse range of species to represent the different families and subfamilies of the insect lineage, studying each genome carefully to identify almost 38,000 transposon families across the different species.

By analyzing the presence and absence of transposons across the 47 species, the team built a tree of life, mapping when each species seemed to diverge from earlier ancestors. They then compared their tree to previously published termite trees of life. “We achieved similar accuracy to trees built from thousands of protein marker sequence alignments.” notes Prof. Bourguignon.

Overcoming DNA degradation challenges

Although this study used relatively rich genomic information, the methods may hold for more limited data, opening new possibilities for research based on older specimens such as historical museum collections.

“It’s often not possible to get ‘nice’ genomic data,” says Mr. Liu. “DNA degrades naturally over time, and faster in hotter and more humid climates, as many biodiversity hotspots tend to be. This can be a problem even in short timescales, just going from collecting a specimen to sequencing. But it’s particularly an issue when working with historical samples from old collections.”

Methods which work with more fragmented data are important in enabling researchers to extract useful information, supporting both evolutionary studies and biodiversity mapping efforts. Since transposons are very short sequences, they could even be retrieved from fragmented DNA samples.

Termites and beyond

The team isn’t done studying termites and is using their genomic data to bring about new insights into termite physiology, social structures and even dietary evolution. However, they hope this study will inspire researchers across wider fields to explore biodiversity and evolution throughout the animal kingdom.

“Our methods are complementary to existing phylogenetic techniques. We hope to inspire others to look towards transposons to unlock new evolutionary information and clarify longstanding mysteries within trees of life”, says Prof. Bourguignon.

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2025.10.019 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Article Title

Robust termite phylogenies built using transposable element composition and insertion events

Article Publication Date

5-Nov-2025

 

Tulane researchers uncover why breaking up is hard for some continents

Tulane University

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Lake Turkana, seen in the background in Kenya’s Rift Valley, sits within one of the most tectonically active regions on Earth. Tulane researchers studying the area discovered that parts of the crust here are stronger and more resistant to breaking apart than previously thought. (Photo by Cynthia Ebinger)

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Credit: Cynthia Ebinger/Tulane University

Tulane University researchers, collaborating with an international team of scientists, have discovered why some parts of the Earth’s crust remain strong while others give way, overturning long-held assumptions about how continents break apart.

Published in Nature, the study examines a section of the East African Rift, one of the few places on Earth where the process of continental breakup can still be observed today. Tulane researchers focused on the Turkana Depression between Kenya and Ethiopia to understand why certain regions resist deformation or breaking up.

Working with colleagues from the University of Montana, Imperial College London, Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and the University of Nairobi and Dedan Kimathi University in Kenya, the team found that an area of the African tectonic plate that had once been stretched and thinned was now resisting deformation — the opposite of what scientists expected.

The results show that a heating event 80 million years ago had dehydrated the plate, removing water and carbon dioxide from deep layers and leaving behind a stronger, more rigid plate.

"The team brought a wide range of skills and data sets to visualize the plate structure and its properties, and our modelling systematically eliminated the possible factors controlling where plate rifting initiates," said Cynthia Ebinger, a Tulane professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the School of Science and Engineering.

Tulane scientists led the earthquake and GPS monitoring that helped reveal these hidden processes. Using networks of instruments to measure both steady plate motion and rapid shifts from earthquakes, the team created three-dimensional maps showing how deformation and volcanism circumvents the previously thinned zones, leaving the thin zone barely deforming at all.

"Our collaborative research shows that volcanism and plate stretching that form deep basins avoids the thin and dry parts of the continental plates,” said Martin Musila, whose PhD research at Tulane explored the tectonic conundrum that was resolved in the paper. “In this area, water and CO2 in the deep layers of the plate were extracted by volcanism 80 million years ago, and dehydration makes the plate stronger and seismic velocities faster.”

The findings help explain how failed rifts — ancient attempts by continents to split — can actually make tectonic plates stronger and more resistant to future breakup. The research not only deepens understanding of earthquake and volcanic hazards but also informs models used to locate mineral and energy resources in ancient rift zones such as the Gulf Coast.

The project was jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council, with additional support from the U.K. Global Challenges Research Fund and the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation in Kenya.

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09668-7 

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The importance of past rifting in large igneous province development

Article Publication Date

5-Nov-2025