Schooling at Scale

Relatively simple visual and hydrodynamic signals are enough to make digital fish school in ways that resemble living ones. Here, researchers look at what happens when well-behaved schools of fish get too big. The researchers first demonstrate that their schools behave reasonably at one hundred members, either in a schooling configuration or a group milling around a central region.

At one thousand fish, the schools are still reasonably coherent and sensible. But at fifty thousand fish, the picture is drastically different. Neither schooling nor milling groups are able to remain together. They fracture and scatter into smaller groupings. (Video and image credit: H. Hang et al.)

The new uncomfortable normality
No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience (report): National security starts at the front door – not at the territorial borders.

"For most Australians, the 18-month research project revealed, national security starts at their front door – not at the territorial borders of the island continent. It showed they are worried the country is not prepared for the demands of a volatile 21st century in a polluted information ecosystem, where the rules-based international order is crumbling, economic precarity has become uncomfortably normal and trust is more fragile." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/29/surging-anxiety-australia-national-security-patriotism-ntwnfb

Report: No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience >>
https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience

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