Australia’s government trial has found age-assurance for its under-16 social media ban can be done effectively and protect privacy, but there is not a one-size-fits-all model.

The report, from an independent company and released in full, also warns continued vigilance is needed on privacy and other issues.

It found some providers, in the absence of guidance, were collecting too much data, over-anticipating what regulators would require.

The ban on under 16s having their own social media accounts has been passed by parliament and comes into effect in December. It covers a wide range of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube (which was recently added).

The measure is world-leading, and has been very controversial. One issue has been the degree of likely reliability of age verification.

The trial looked at various age assurance methods, including AI, facial analysis, parental consent and identity documents. The methods were judged on accuracy, usability and privacy grounds.

More than 60 technologies were examined from 48 age assurance vendors.

The report concluded age assurance systems “can be private, robust and effective.” Moreover there was “a plethora” of choices available for providers, and no substantial technological limitations.

“But we did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments.” Instead, there was “a rich and rapidly evolving range of services which can be tailored and effective depending on each specified context of use.”

The age assurance service sector was “vibrant, creative and innovative,” according to the report, with “a pipeline of new technologies.”

It had a robust understanding of the handling of personal information and a strong commitment to privacy.

But the trial found opportunities for technological improvements, including ease of use.

On parental control systems, the trial found these could be effective.

“But they serve different purposes. Parental control systems are pre-configured and ongoing but they may fail to adapt to the evolving capacities of children including potential risks to their digital privacy as they grow and mature, particularly through adolescence.

“Parental consent mechanisms prompt active engagement between children and their parents at key decision points, potentially supporting informed access.”

The trial found while the assurance systems were generally secure, the rapidly evolving threat environment meant they could not be considered infallible.

They needed continual monitoring, improvement and attention to compliance with privacy requirements.

Also, “We found some concerning evidence that in the absence of specific guidance, service providers were apparently over-anticipating the eventual needs of regulators about providing personal information for future investigations.

“Some providers were found to be building tools to enable regulators, law enforcement or coroners to retrace the actions taken by individuals to verify their age which could lead to increased risk of privacy breaches, due to unnecessary and disproportionate collection and retention of data.”

Communications Minister Anika Wells said, “While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to age assurance, this trial shows there are many effective options and importantly that user privacy can be safeguarded.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Suddenly, everyone is obsessed with magnesium supplements. It’s the key ingredient in #sleepygirlmocktails, powders stirred into tart cherry juice and prebiotic soda, a wellness cocktail for anxious millennials. Your coworkers are popping magnesium glycinate before bed instead of melatonin, because it allegedly cures insomnia, constipation, and existential dread. Folks seem especially concerned with optimizing their poop and pillow time. In the past year, Google searches for “which magnesium is best for sleep” and “which magnesium makes you poop” have more than doubled.

Magnesium is essential for maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system. It’s also one of the most abundant minerals in the human body, running more than 300 biochemical reactions, from protein synthesis to nerve function and blood sugar regulation. It supports bone structure and helps shuttle calcium and potassium across cell membranes, a process that allows for muscle contractions and normal heart rhythms.

You can get it from foods like legumes, leafy vegetables, and whole grains, or from fortified foods and dietary supplements. The question is: Do you need to supplement?

Symptoms of Magnesium Deficiency

While an essential mineral for overall health, many people don’t get enough magnesium. This is partly because magnesium is predominantly found in high-fiber foods, and a significant portion of Americans do not consume sufficient fiber, according to registered dietitian Sue-Ellen Anderson-Haynes. Research confirms this: More than 90 percent of women and 97 percent of men fail to meet the recommended daily intake for dietary fiber.

Older adults are particularly at risk, as the body’s ability to absorb magnesium decreases with age. Health conditions like Crohn’s disease or kidney disease, alcohol use disorder, and the use of diuretics can all lead to magnesium depletion.

Anderson-Haynes notes that a magnesium deficiency (also known as hypomagnesemia) can result in a range of symptoms, such as headaches, nausea, constipation, tremors, heart palpitations, and muscle soreness. Chronic magnesium deficiency can increase the risk of developing high blood pressure, osteoporosis, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes.

Benefits of Magnesium Supplements

There are several forms of magnesium supplements, including:

• Magnesium citrate: Often taken as a remedy for occasional constipation.
• Magnesium glycinate: Often taken for better sleep and reduced anxiety.
• Magnesium oxide: Often taken for constipation or indigestion.
• Magnesium l-threonate: Often taken for better sleep, cognitive function, and reduced stress.
• Magnesium chloride: Often taken as an electrolyte replenisher and for its laxative effect.

Supplements are most useful for people with a confirmed deficiency, but early research suggests possible benefits for specific conditions, including migraines, insomnia, and cardiovascular disease.

“It’s really overlooked that magnesium can help with menstrual cycle irregularity in terms of making sure that you’re not having severe cramping,” says Anderson-Haynes, who adds it may also benefit women in perimenopause and menopause. Clinically, it may be part of the treatment for pregnancy complications like preeclampsia and eclampsia.

Can You Take Too Much?

The recommended dietary allowance is 320 milligrams per day for women and 420 milligrams per day for men. These are amounts most people can reach with a balanced diet; healthy kidneys regulate magnesium levels, excreting excess when magnesium intake is high and conserving it when it’s low.

Daily supplements under 350 milligrams are generally considered safe for healthy adults. “If you take too much magnesium, you’ll probably get diarrhea, because it loosens the bowels,” Anderson-Haynes says. Other side effects include nausea, gastrointestinal discomfort, and, at very high levels of magnesium (usually from overusing laxatives or antacids), low blood pressure, muscle cramps, breathing problems, and, in rare cases, cardiac arrest. People with kidney disease are at the highest risk of toxicity.

Should You Supplement?

For most healthy adults, magnesium supplements aren’t essential. If you struggle with migraines, insomnia, or other conditions where research suggests health benefits, they may be worth trying—but first talk to a health care professional.

Otherwise, focus on magnesium-rich foods. These include but are not limited to: legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas), leafy greens (artichokes, kale, spinach), whole grains (oats, barley, quinoa), nuts (almonds, cashews, peanuts), fruit (bananas, avocado, dried apricots), and soy products (tofu, soy milk, edamame).

If you do decide to take any dietary supplements, “look for a seal or certification that says GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) or NSF,” says Anderson-Haynes, stressing the importance of third-party tests and verifications, considering the FDA doesn’t regulate dietary supplements in the US.

Meet the Experts

• Sue-Ellen Anderson-Haynes, MS, RDN, CDCES, is a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and founder of 360Girls&Women.

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Latam-GPT is new large language model being developed in and for Latin America. The project, led by the nonprofit Chilean National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA), aims to help the region achieve technological independence by developing an open source AI model trained on Latin American languages and contexts.

“This work cannot be undertaken by just one group or one country in Latin America: It is a challenge that requires everyone’s participation,” says Álvaro Soto, director of CENIA, in an interview with WIRED en Español. “Latam-GPT is a project that seeks to create an open, free, and, above all, collaborative AI model. We’ve been working for two years with a very bottom-up process, bringing together citizens from different countries who want to collaborate. Recently, it has also seen some more top-down initiatives, with governments taking an interest and beginning to participate in the project.”

The project stands out for its collaborative spirit. “We’re not looking to compete with OpenAI, DeepSeek, or Google. We want a model specific to Latin America and the Caribbean, aware of the cultural requirements and challenges that this entails, such as understanding different dialects, the region’s history, and unique cultural aspects,” explains Soto.

Thanks to 33 strategic partnerships with institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, the project has gathered a corpus of data exceeding eight terabytes of text, the equivalent of millions of books. This information base has enabled the development of a language model with 50 billion parameters, a scale that makes it comparable to GPT-3.5 and gives it a medium to high capacity to perform complex tasks such as reasoning, translation, and associations.

Latam-GPT is being trained on a regional database that compiles information from 20 Latin American countries and Spain, with an impressive total of 2,645,500 documents. The distribution of data shows a significant concentration in the largest countries in the region, with Brazil the leader with 685,000 documents, followed by Mexico with 385,000, Spain with 325,000, Colombia with 220,000, and Argentina with 210,000 documents. The numbers reflect the size of these markets, their digital development, and the availability of structured content.

“Initially, we’ll launch a language model. We expect its performance in general tasks to be close to that of large commercial models, but with superior performance in topics specific to Latin America. The idea is that, if we ask it about topics relevant to our region, its knowledge will be much deeper,” Soto explains.

The first model is the starting point for developing a family of more advanced technologies in the future, including ones with image and video, and for scaling up to larger models. “As this is an open project, we want other institutions to be able to use it. A group in Colombia could adapt it for the school education system or one in Brazil could adapt it for the health sector. The idea is to open the door for different organizations to generate specific models for particular areas like agriculture, culture, and others,” explains the CENIA director.