Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elizabeth Gregory, Lecturer in Education, University of Manchester

The government has announced that consultation will begin on a new vocational qualification for England: V-levels.

These are intended to replace a number of existing technical routes currently available to post-16 learners, and make it possible for students to combine academic and vocational courses. V-levels will, the government claims, streamline the options available to students and offer a clearer pathway to both higher education and the workplace.

Few would disagree that the vocational sector in England needs a shake-up. But is the new qualification really the solution the government promises?

V-levels are planned to begin in September 2027 as part of a gradual four-year rollout. Each V-level will equate to 360 guided learning hours, the same as one A-level. Possible subjects may include arts, craft and design, music and music performance, education and early years, legal services, and travel and tourism.

The equivalence with A-levels means that students should be able choose to take several V-levels in different subjects. They could even mix and match them with A-level subjects, rather than having to make a choice between an academic and a vocational route.

This contrasts with other vocational options available to young people after their GCSEs such as apprenticeships and T-levels, the latter of which are equivalent to three A-levels but focus on a single, specifically technical, subject.

In theory, students can currently mix A-levels with another type of work-related qualification, the BTEC, but in practice this option isn’t widely available. It is envisaged that the new V-levels will replace BTECs, which will be gradually de-funded.

The new qualifications are proposed as part of the government’s recent policy document on post-16 education and skills. They form part of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plans for two thirds of young people to either go to university or achieve a technical qualification by simplifying the “confusing” and “fragmented” landscape currently faced by 16-year-olds and their families.

If successful, the shift in focus away from Tony Blair’s aspirations for 50% of young people to go to university could be a significant step in promoting parity between academic and vocational pathways.

If students will indeed be able to mix A-levels and V-levels, the new initiative represents a significant step towards breaking down the perceived divide between academic and vocational qualifications. But this will only hold true if students are able and willing to combine them in the way the government suggests.

However, V-levels will involve more non-examination assessment than A-levels. This may mean that students continue to see A-levels as a more prestigious accreditation.

There is also the risk that some higher education institutions may not consider a V-level the same standard as an A-level when assessing entry requirements. Their smaller size may even mean that V-levels are seen as having less status than the BTECs they replace.

Many of the proposed V-level subjects are already available as a single-subject BTEC, but the new qualification will mean less commitment to choosing a specialist area at a young age.

In theory, young people might therefore be able to choose a V-level in, say, criminology alongside A-levels in subjects such as law and sociology. In practice, it remains to be seen how easy it will be for schools to offer such flexibility to their students.

Students wishing to specialise will be left with one option: a T-level in a single subject. The consultation papers state these have demonstrated a “strong performance” since their introduction in 2020, although this has been contested in some quarters.

While the de-funding of BTECs appears to reduce the options available, the government promises T-levels will “continue to grow”, with proposed new subjects including sports science, care services, music technology and performing arts. However, some of these will require the development of the appropriate occupational standards – a description of an occupation set by Skills England – first.

The proposals have been described as a “big step forward” in their ambition for “a more joined-up system” by the Association of Colleges. Others, including the Sixth Form Colleges Association, have sounded a note of caution over the “significant qualification gap that will open up when BTECs are scrapped”.

The intentions behind the new proposals seem positive. Previous vocational offerings after GCSEs have assumed students are ready to specialise at 16. The size of the qualifications available have made it difficult for students to combine academic and vocational qualifications in the way imagined here.

Elizabeth Gregory does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What are V-levels, England’s new post-16 qualification, and will they improve vocational education? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-v-levels-englands-new-post-16-qualification-and-will-they-improve-vocational-education-268118

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Philip Newall, Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol

Gambling advertising is everywhere. Even people who have never placed a bet are familiar with slogans like “Gamble responsibly,” “When the fun stops” and “Take time to think”.

But these industry-developed messages could soon change, with the government and the gambling regulator working to create independent warnings for gambling, much like those found on tobacco and alcohol packaging.

Our research has long argued that such changes are needed. Australia took this step in in 2023, imposing health warnings for gambling advertisements and websites.

By studying how gamblers perceive Australia’s messaging, we’ve identified which warnings are likely to be the most effective in deterring people from gambling. Australia’s warnings fall roughly into four categories: loss-based, positive emotional messages, counter-industry messages and self-appraisal.

Loss-based messages warn people about the likelihood of losing money from gambling. The Australian examples include: “Chances are you’re about to lose,” “You win some. You lose more” and “What are you prepared to lose today? Set a deposit limit.”

In a paper published earlier this year, we asked 4,000 gamblers to rate ten pre-existing and novel (created for the study) loss-based messages. We found that the best-ranked message was the novel “99% of gamblers lose in the long run.”

This message was based on a gambling company executive candidly telling a UK parliamentary committee: “99% of the customers who play on our sites will lose, so you’re probably losing more if you play more.” Our findings suggest that concrete information is received better than the vaguer Australian messages.

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Read more:
The ‘responsible gambling’ mantra does nothing to prevent harm. It probably makes things worse

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Positive emotional messages, like Australia’s “Imagine what you could be buying instead,” communicate the positives of not gambling.

Following a similar methodology to the previous study, we found that two novel positive messages scored highest: “Quitting gambling can help you with the relationships that matter the most to you” and “Don’t gamble on your happiness: do something else that will make you happy today.”

Such messages reflect how harms from gambling losses are not just financial, but also psychological, and health and relationship-related. The Australian warning scored joint third overall – good, but not the very best.

Loss-based messages appeared more effective for people experiencing low levels of gambling harm, while positive emotional messages resonated more strongly with those at high harm levels. This finding was based on participants’ responses to statements like “this message is relevant to me” and “this message makes me want to gamble less”.

Self-reflection

We also conducted a study on the third category of messages: counter-industry. These challenge industry narratives regarding gambling and personal responsibility.

Here, the three highest-rated messages came from existing sources, including, “The main purpose of gambling companies is to maximise profit, generated through customer losses” (from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority anti-gambling harms campaign), and the succinct “Gambling products are designed to be addictive” (from Gambling Understood).

Importantly, counter-industry messages began to appear relevant to participants at lower levels of gambling harm than the previous two categories.

The last category of messages is designed to help people to think about their own gambling differently and therefore change their behaviour. These are called self-appraisal messages: “Think. Is this a bet you really want to place?”, “What’s gambling really costing you?” and “What are you really gambling with?”

Self-appraisal messages have a long history in gambling research. These messages have been shown to reduce gambling when shown as pop-ups on slot machines. We are planning to test these in an upcoming study and compare the best performers to those in the other three categories.

Overall, we know that different warnings work better for different audiences. But even if there were truly one “best” gambling warning, policymakers should continue to create new messages.

Messages lose their effectiveness as they are repeated. Research shows that warnings about addictive and harmful products are particularly susceptible to these “wear-out” effects. Novel messages are therefore more memorable.

But given the life-shattering toll that gambling addiction can take, any changes to the industry-backed messages are welcome.

Philip Newall was a member of the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling from 2022 to 2025 – an advisory group of the Gambling Commission in Great Britain. In the last three years, Philip has contributed to research projects funded by the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling, Alberta Gambling Research Institute, BA/Leverhulme, Canadian Institute for Health Research, Clean Up Gambling, Gambling Research Australia, and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. Philip has received other funding from the Belgium Ministry of Justice, the Economic and Social Research Institute, the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling and Greo Evidence Insights.

Jamie Torrance has received funding from Gambling Research Exchange Ontario, the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling (AFSG), the International Centre for Responsible Gambling and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Leonardo Cohen received open-access funding from Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (GREO) and has received funding from British Academy/Leverhulme.

– ref. What messages are the most effective to deter gambling? – https://theconversation.com/what-messages-are-the-most-effective-to-deter-gambling-264224

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louis Bayman, Associate Professor in Department of Film Studies, University of Southampton

It was a classic year at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, which took place earlier this month. If there was any observable shift, it was the number of filmmakers who turned to smaller-scale dramas of human connection, with action, fantasy and, to some degree, politics less prominent than usual.

Even the big releases seemed to turn inwards. The opening night gala marked a break with precedent by not showcasing a major British release. Instead there was a screening of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third in the Benoit Blanc comedy detective series, hailed as a return to form after the rather grandiose Glass Onion.

The films that really excelled at this year’s festival succeeded in taking apparently small subjects and revealing the depths within. Blue Moon is set in the theatre bar on the opening night of Oklahoma!, the first collaboration between legendary partnership Rodgers and Hammerstein. Rodgers’ previous writing partner, Lorenz Hart, sits there drowning his sorrows, regaling fellow bar patrons with tales of showbiz glamour and trying to hold onto his fading hopes.

Directed by Richard Linklater, it’s a tour-de-force by Ethan Hawke as Hart, by turns amused, melancholy and sardonic in his take on the power of entertainment to brighten and conceal the disappointments of life.

Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet adapts Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the son who died prior to Shakespeare writing Hamlet. It is a two-hander between Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his wife Agnes as they become estranged by personal tragedy and Shakespeare’s pursuit of the London stage.

In an astonishing closing sequence, Agnes travels to London to see the play her husband abandoned her for, its poetic questioning of the meaning of a life lived under the shadow of grief transcending the division between author and stage, imitation and life.

Loss seemed to be the theme of the festival, and the power of art to provide not only an expression of loss but an imaginative trace of a past that cannot, however, be relived. Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound follows two musicologists (Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor) over one winter as they collect the folk music of rural America and develop a more intimate bond. Their eventual separation makes the film a document of the loss of both an older way of life and a brief moment of human connection.

Pablo Trapero’s & Sons features a famous but reclusive author who invites his two estranged sons to his mansion to ask them to look after their half-brother after he dies. But there’s a twist that makes the two brothers wonder if they have ended up in the plot of one of their father’s novels.

Even Paolo Sorrentino, a director prone to gaudy exuberance, turned to introspection with La Grazia. Toni Servillo plays a fictional Italian president reflecting on the decisions that await in his final months of service, while mourning the loss of his beloved wife and trying to maintain his connection with his daughter.

James Sweeney’s Twinless was the standout comedy of the festival, a laugh-out-loud film that could probably best be described as a buddy movie, about two men who meet in a support group for twins whose siblings have died.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You starts off as a fairly gentle account of the stresses of motherhood. But the escalating anxiety and absurdity end up making this a white-knuckle ride, centred on an Oscar-worthy performance from Rose Byrne. There’s also a nicely sardonic supporting role from Conan O’Brien as her exasperated therapist.

Still on the theme of children, Train Dreams features an impressive Joel Edgerton as a logger who spends his life waiting for the return of his lost wife and child, secluded from the passage of the decades amid the grandeur of the American pine forests.

Personal and political

Where films took a more overt political stance, they were again more likely to zero in on the intimate rather than the epic. The Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who has faced state repression for his social criticism, presented It Was Just an Accident. This stunning work follows a man who thinks he might have found the torturer who tormented him in prison. The film ultimately poses the question of how one can live not during, but after, atrocity.

Coming very much from the midst of atrocity, The Voice of Hind Rajab features the real audio recordings of a six-year-old girl who called the Red Crescent emergency line in Gaza. She is the only survivor in a car full of her dead relatives, and her rescue would only take eight minutes, but the route has to be agreed first with the Israeli Defence Forces. The hours of waiting that ensue become an utterly devastating account of the reality of occupation.

In another break with precedent, a documentary, Lucrecia Martel’s Landmarks, about the murdered indigenous activist Javier Chocobar, won the official festival competition. Combining documentary footage with Orwell’s writing, Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5 is a compelling documentary examination of propaganda and power.

A number of films missed the mark in my view. Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly has a great cast (George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup) but not much else to recommend it. Edward Berger’s follow up to Conclave, Ballad Of A Small Player, lacks the dramatic focus of his earlier film.

The biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Daniel Day-Lewis’s return to the cinema in his son Ronan Day-Lewis’s Anemone, and Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, Chronology of Water, all failed to live up to their promise.

Whether the turn towards more intimate dramas is a sign of a larger trend remains to be seen. But this year, the misses were greatly outnumbered by the hits, and there will be plenty of films to enjoy in the coming year.

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Louis Bayman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. London Film Festival: a hit year for human dramas – the films to look out for in 2026 – https://theconversation.com/london-film-festival-a-hit-year-for-human-dramas-the-films-to-look-out-for-in-2026-268054

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Stratton, Lecturer Biomedical Health Science, The Open University

When Russian president Vladimir Putin visited Beijing in September 2025, he told Chinese leader Xi Jinping that repeated organ transplants might make a person “get younger” and even live to 150. The remark was widely dismissed as science fiction.

Yet it coincided with genuine scientific progress. Just days earlier, researchers had identified a molecular “switch” that could reduce one of the most common complications in liver transplants, helping donated organs survive longer.

That breakthrough highlights both the promise and limits of transplant medicine. While science continues to improve the odds of saving lives by replacing failing organs, the idea of swapping body parts to slow ageing remains closer to gothic horror than medical reality.

The dream of replacing body parts to restore youth is not new. In the early 20th century, “monkey gland” transplants – grafts of monkey testicles – briefly became fashionable among wealthy men chasing renewed virility.

A century later, tech entrepreneur and self-described biohacker Bryan Johnson has revived that quest for eternal youth through blood-based treatments such as blood plasma transfusion. This involves injecting blood plasma concentrated with platelets to promote healing and regeneration, or transfusing “young blood” – plasma taken from healthy younger donors – into older recipients in the hope of slowing ageing.

The idea stems from parabiosis experiments in mice, where the circulatory systems of young and old animals were surgically joined. In these studies, older mice showed short-term improvements in muscle tone, tissue repair and cognitive function. But these effects have not translated to humans.

Clinical trials using plasma from young donors have produced no meaningful anti-ageing results, and the practice has drawn criticism for its ethical implications. In 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration warned against commercial “young blood” transfusions, calling them “unproven and potentially harmful”. Still, the fantasy persists: that youth might be extracted, bottled and sold to those rich enough to afford it.

Transplants save lives but they cannot reset them

Today, legitimate organ and tissue transplants are used to save lives when a vital organ fails completely. Donor organs are carefully matched to recipients based on tissue compatibility and screened for diseases, tumours and viruses to give the best chance of long-term survival. Yet this life-saving therapy still carries major risks.

As Katie Mitchell, the UK’s longest-living heart-and-lung transplant patient, has shown, success requires lifelong care and resilience. The body’s immune system naturally views a transplanted organ as a foreign invader. Without powerful immunosuppressant drugs, it will destroy the new organ within weeks.

Suppressing this immune response allows the host body to tolerate the transplant, but it also leaves the recipient more vulnerable to infections and some cancers. Over time, the immune system’s constant low-level attack on the transplanted tissue causes inflammation and scarring, eventually leading to chronic rejection. Even the most advanced drugs cannot always prevent this process, and lifelong treatment takes a heavy toll on the patient’s overall health.

These complications become more severe with age. Older patients have weaker immune systems, slower tissue repair and greater baseline inflammation, all of which make recovery from major surgery harder and rejection more likely. Studies show that survival rates after repeated or multi-organ transplants decline sharply in older adults, as ageing tissues struggle to heal and adapt.

One thing is clear. Transplants can extend life, but they cannot reset it. The biological cost of surgery and the strain of lifelong immunosuppression mean there is no simple upgrade for the human body.

Scarcity, ethics and the dark market for organs

Organs suitable for transplanting are scarce. The waiting list for donor organs is long in almost every country, with demand far exceeding supply. This imbalance fuels a dangerous black market, with a global trade in trafficked organs taken from vulnerable populations in poorer regions and sold illegally to wealthier buyers.

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Read more:
Prisoners donating organs to get time off raises thorny ethical questions

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The scarcity of donor organs does not just cost lives – it shapes the ethics of innovation itself. To overcome shortages, scientists have explored xenotransplantation, the transplantation of animal organs into humans – most often from pigs or baboons because of their anatomical similarities. While promising in theory, xenotransplants face severe immune rejection, with most organs failing within days or weeks.

Cloned or lab-grown organs offer another path forward. Researchers can now cultivate miniature organoids – simplified versions of human organs – but creating full-sized, fully functional, transplant-ready organs remains beyond current technology.

This scarcity raises difficult ethical questions. If a healthy, tissue-matched organ became available, who should receive it: a child or an elderly patient? Using a rare donor organ for someone whose existing organ still functions, albeit less efficiently, would be hard to justify.

These dilemmas matter because they strike at the heart of medical ethics. The guiding principle in transplant medicine is to allocate organs to the recipient who would gain the greatest benefit – the person most likely to live longest and with the best quality of life. Using scarce donor organs for elective “anti-ageing” surgery would not only violate this principle, but risk undermining public trust in the entire transplant system.

Finally, not all organs can be replaced. The brain, which defines consciousness and identity, remains uniquely fragile and irreplaceable. It is prone to age-related decline including memory loss, inflammation and degenerative diseases.

Unlike the heart or kidneys, brains cannot simply be swapped out or rejuvenated. Even if scientists one day learn to replace every other organ in the body, the brain’s complexity and its role in defining who we are ensure that true immortality will remain out of reach.

The dream of eternal youth through transplants is not medicine’s next frontier. It is a mirror reflecting our refusal to accept that ageing is not a mechanical fault to be fixed, but a vital part of what it means to be human.

Dan Stratton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. From monkey glands to ‘young blood’: the long, strange history of chasing immortality through transplants – https://theconversation.com/from-monkey-glands-to-young-blood-the-long-strange-history-of-chasing-immortality-through-transplants-266042

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alice Bradbury, Professor of Sociology of Education, UCL

The target for the proportion of children passing the phonics screening check – a test of how well children aged five and six in England can “decode” words – has been raised to 90%.

This increase, from 84%, comes as part of the government’s mission to “drive up standards”. It also marks a further commitment to the use of systematic synthetic phonics to teach children to read.

Systematic synthetic phonics has become dominant in education policy and in English primary schools, particularly in the last 15 years. Teachers are now well versed in teaching children how to decode words, which means that they say the right sounds – phonemes – in relation to the letters or groups of letters they see on the page.

Children who don’t pass, meaning they don’t sound out the required number of the 40 words in the test, have to take it again in year two. But results in the phonics screening check have plateaued for nearly a decade. This suggests that however hard schools try, and however good they become at preparing the children for the test, some children will still struggle to master phonic decoding.

It is a well established idea in assessment research that when a high-stakes test is introduced, the proportion of children reaching the benchmark increases initially, as teachers become familiar with how to prepare children for the test. However, there is then a ceiling figure which is reached within a few years.

In line with this, national figures for the phonics screening check show that the proportion of children passing initially increased. Pass rates rose from 58% in 2012 to 81% in 2016, as teachers began to prioritise systematic synthetic phonics teaching and learnt how to prepare children for the test.

But, since then, the pass rate has plateaued at about 80%. The only exception is a post-pandemic dip to 75% in 2022. This suggests that despite the dominance of systematic synthetic phonics as an approach, about 20% of children do not find this system works for them at this age.

Meanwhile, the cumulative figure for children who pass the test in either year one or year two stands at around 89%. This suggests that 10% of children simply need more time to pass the phonics screening check, or more input in order to master the skill of decoding. The remaining 10% who never pass may have additional learning needs – which have likely been identified long before the test – or will need to learn to read in a different way.

What this new target does is effectively require the system as a whole (for the target is a national one, not a school-level one) to ensure that those 10% of children who pass in year two, instead pass the first time around.

The importance of age

So, what can schools do to ensure that all children pass in year one? The figures show that boys are less likely to pass at this point – 76% compared to 84% of girls in 2025. Children born in the summer months are also less likely to pass, as they are younger when they take the test: 73% of August-born children pass, versus 84% of September-borns.

Department for Education data on phonics screening check pass rate by birth month:

The phonics screening check is so closely related to month of birth that it could be argued that it is a test of age rather than decoding. By the time the test is repeated in year two, the gap between August and September-borns has reduced to 7%, and 85% of August-born children pass by this stage.

The disadvantage gap

Moreover, the disadvantage gap – the difference in achievement between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more well-off peers – is significant. For the phonics screening check, it’s 17%, meaning that 67% of disadvantaged pupils pass compared to 84% of their peers. This would suggest that if the government wants more children to pass the test, finding ways to reduce the impact of disadvantage on children’s learning would be a highly effective way of improving the figures overall.

What remains, of course, is a deeper question of why the number who pass the phonics screening check should be such a key focus. Research has found no clear evidence that the phonics screening check improves how well children can read at primary school, or that it reduces the attainment gap.

It has also been critiqued as reducing children’s enjoyment of reading. The international comparison data shows a decline in children’s enjoyment of reading since the early 2000s. The proportion of children who really enjoy reading in England is far below the international average.

In the meantime, this is a target that is going to be very difficult to reach. It may result in an even more intense focus on phonics than we have seen thus far, at the expense of other aspects of learning to read.

Alice Bradbury receives funding from the Helen Hamlyn Trust which funds the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy at UCL. She is a member of the Labour Party and the Universities and College Union.

– ref. England’s new phonics target sets schools an almost impossible task – https://theconversation.com/englands-new-phonics-target-sets-schools-an-almost-impossible-task-267916

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Groeger, Professor of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University

The disruption of sleeping and waking patterns from the daylight saving clock change reveals a great deal about our everyday reliance on the interaction of sleep pressure and circadian clocks.

First, you need to understand the intricate changes happening in your body the night the clocks go back an hour. On Saturday evening, assuming we are not in bright light, our bodies will begin the daily chore of secreting melatonin, a key hormone for the timing of sleep. This will accumulate in the blood stream and a few hours later it will reach its peak concentration before declining steadily until morning.

Melatonin does not make most of us sleep, and certainly doesn’t keep up asleep. It is more like a reminder, signalling that sleep should not be far away. Even brief periods of normal electric light delay or even stop this sleep signal, depending on its brightness and wavelength or colour.

In the evening as melatonin rises, the heat generated by our internal organs increases to its highest level of the day, followed by a drop – which is another sleep signal. This is why having a hot bath before bedtime can help us to sleep.

The body’s core temperature continues to drop for the first couple of hours of sleep, which is mostly slow wave sleep. This is when more of the neurons in the brain are firing simultaneously, and when our heartrate slows. It becomes more regular as we have this first episode of deep sleep. Our coldest core body temperature more or less coincides with the highest level of melatonin, showing the synchrony of these two circadian timing signals.

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Sleep quality, circadian rhythm and metabolism differ in women and men – new review reveals this could affect disease risk

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A minute before 02:00 on Sunday 26 October our body’s timing systems and the
clocks will probably be aligned. Our internal core will be approaching its coldest temperature. As the body heats again, and the melatonin signal decreases, another circadian process begins – the slow sustained release of cortisol which will culminate on waking.

If melatonin is a sleep signal, then cortisol is a signal to wake. Unless we are very stressed during the daytime or drink a great deal of caffeine, it will be at its strongest at the time we typically wake. This is why waking up can sometimes seem both energising and stressful, and, why sleep is more difficult when we are stressed.

These three critical bodily timing systems, melatonin, core body temperature and cortisol, are synchronised by a central clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the brain, which co-ordinates the time of the clocks in each cell of the body. The pattern of each signal repeats about every 24 hours, but can be disrupted by different aspects of our environment such as light, vigorous exercise and stress.

These cycles are not fixed at exactly 24 hours. They can be a few minutes shorter or longer than 24 hours. This enables our sleep-wake regimen to gradually change with the seasons.

But the change is slow. Abrupt changes, flying east or west (which extends or shortens sunlight exposure, affecting melatonin), heat waves, cold snaps (raising or lowering core body temperature) or stress (which increases daytime cortisol) cause disruption in this regimen. We just haven’t evolved to cope with sudden changes.

It will take days for the biological and actual clock to realign. Just as flying from London to New York takes more adjustment time than New York to London, the springtime change often feels gentler, because it seems to be easier to move your clock forward than backwards.

We are likely to lose out on sleep in the morning, particularly REM sleep, which kicks in later and is involved in emotion regulation. Our biological clock will still begin the cortisol-induced daily waking process at the same time it did the day before. But you will be awake as it peaks, which may resulted in deflated mood.

This disruption is not the same for all of us. About one in a 100 of the general population have a genetic disorder called delayed phase sleep syndrome, which makes it impossible to sleep until the early hours of the morning. Their melatonin levels increase much later than in other people, which means they will probably benefit from the clocks going back, if only for a short while.

Similarly, about ten to 20 in 100 late-adolescent children – compared to adults – are biologically driven to initiate sleep later. And for them, temporarily, their sleep may align more closely with the rest of the household. But they too will be sleepier in the morning.

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Read more:
Can’t sleep? Your ability to adapt to shiftwork and the changing seasons may be determined by your genes

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Another group in the population, about 1% of those in middle age, feel they need to go to bed far earlier than most, usually in the early evening, and wake very early in the morning. It isn’t clear why advanced-phase sleep syndrome is more frequent in this age group, although the circadian system seems to weaken as we age. This group is more compromised by clocks being put back.

The autumn clock change is also often difficult for menopausal women who experience hot flushes – their body clock appears to be advanced and tend to need to sleep earlier. Clocks going backwards mean they will need to wait longer for sleep than they might wish and wake earlier.

The daylight saving disruption rarely lasts more than a week. But one is left asking why we put our bodily clocks under this abrupt strain. We challenge the synchrony of our bodily clocks, for the sake of fleeting moments of additional light.

John Groeger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why does putting back the clocks an hour disrupt us so much? – https://theconversation.com/why-does-putting-back-the-clocks-an-hour-disrupt-us-so-much-268016

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark McKinty, Early Career Researcher in Spanish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast

From New York City to Duke of York Island in Antarctica, the Dukedom of York has a wider cultural resonance than you might immediately realise.

The Duke of York military slow march can often be heard ringing out during the Changing the Guard in London and one of the city’s best-known theatres carries the name. The same is true for pubs in places like London and Belfast, and a second world war battleship and a passenger steamer share the same name too.

Equally, the holders of the title Duke of York have, for over six centuries, held a prominent position in British royalty and society. Customarily conferred on the second son of the reigning monarch, this dukedom has been closely associated with being the “spare to the heir” – the brother born to support the crown rather than inherit it.

Close to the sovereign but destined for a different journey, the story of the dukes of York is one of privilege and dutiful service, with a liberal peppering of scandal and twists of fate.

The current holder of the dukedom, Prince Andrew, has agreed to no longer use the titles and honours conferred upon him – the first time this has happened in the dukedom’s history.

This is a long history of men whose lives were shaped by their unique position within the monarchy. Proximity to power without possession may be the defining factor, but the dukes of York more often than not actively or accidentally flip that rule on its head – almost half of these “spares” found themselves becoming king, one way or another.

There have been 11 men officially styled Duke of York and three holders of the title Duke of York and Albany – a fusion of two titles, one from Scotland and one from England, devised as a demonstration of unity following the 1707 Act of Union.

Edmund of Langley was the first duke, after being granted the title by his father Edward III in 1385. He is the Duke of York who appears in Shakespeare’s Richard II, a play named after the duke’s nephew and son of Edward, the Black Prince.

Following the legal principle of male primogeniture, Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, inherited the title upon his father’s death in 1402. Edward was killed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and, without children, the title passed to his nephew Richard of York – 3rd Duke of York.

Richard’s death in battle in 1460, during the War of the Roses, then left the title to Edward Plantagenet. When Edward won the Battle of Towton in March 1461, subsequently becoming Edward IV, the Dukedom of York merged with the crown and became extinct, bringing a close to the 76-year existence of this first iteration of the title.

Incredibly, these are the only examples of the title being inherited. In over 560 years since, no Duke of York (or Duke of York and Albany) has ever directly passed the title to a legitimate heir. Of the subsequent ten men bearing either title, four died without heirs, five found themselves as heir to the throne following the death of their elder brother (or his abdication, as happened in 1936) and then king. And in Prince Andrew’s case, without a male heir – having had two daughters.

The duke who disappeared

Edward IV – himself a former Duke of York, recreated the dukedom for his second son, Richard of Shrewsbury, thus starting the long association of this title with the second-born son. Richard was married at the age of four and was one of the Princes in the Tower who disappeared and was presumed dead in 1483 aged 9.

The dukes who became kings

The title was revived in 1494 for Henry Tudor but again died out when Henry Tudor became King Henry VIII (1509). The same happened to Charles Stuart, who was given the dukedom in 1605 but also became king (Charles I, 1625).

James Stuart, second son of Charles I, was technically Duke of York from birth, but this was formalised in 1644. In 1660, James was granted the parallel Scottish title of Duke of Albany. New York state, its capital Albany, and New York City derive their names from this duke. James succeeded his childless brother Charles II and became James II of England and James VII of Scotland in 1685, when the title merged with the crown. James was later deposed in the 1688 revolution.

In 1892 Queen Victoria bestowed the title on her grandson, Prince George, the second son of the Prince of Wales and future Edward VII. However, this creation came following the death of George’s older brother. He became George V (1910) and the title merged with the crown.

George made his second son, Prince Albert, Duke of York in 1920. Initially more than comfortable being in the shadows of his elder brother Edward VIII, the abdication crisis of 1936 – the year of three kings – unexpectedly saw Albert become George VI. Because of this duke, the future Queen Elizabeth II was initially styled “Princess Elizabeth of York”.

Three double dukes

Although the dukedoms of York and Albany have been simultaneously held by the same person at times, three men have held the unified “double dukedom” as Duke of York and Albany in the 18th century, yet all died without heirs.

They were Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who served in the nine years’ war and the war of the Spanish succession, Prince Edward, who was briefly heir-presumptive, and Prince Frederick Augustus, second son of George III.

This Duke of York served a lengthy period as commander-in-chief of the British Army, including during the Napoleonic wars. He is perhaps the most likely inspiration for the “Grand Old Duke of York” rhyme. He is also memorialised on the Duke of York Column where Regent Street meets The Mall in London.

Queen Victoria again separated these titles, creating her fourth son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany in 1881, and her eldest grandson Duke of York in 1892.

Andrew became Duke of York in 1986 when he married Sarah Ferguson. While he has agreed to no longer be styled as such, he technically has not been stripped of the title. Nevertheless, with no male heir, the dukedom will become extinct upon his death, regardless.

Although it could be assumed that the title would have been recreated for Prince Harry as the second son of King Charles III, his self-imposed exile and ongoing controversies mean that the future of the Dukedom of York remains uncertain. Perhaps the next revival will take some consideration.

Mark McKinty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A history of the dukes of York – https://theconversation.com/a-history-of-the-dukes-of-york-268145

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Danny Marks, Assistant Professor in Environmental Policy and Politics, Dublin City University

The village of Khun Samut Chin, 50km southwest of Bangkok, Thailand, is a small, rustic fishing village similar to thousands scattered across Asia – except that it is slowly being swallowed by the sea.

Much of the country’s coastline faces severe erosion, with around 830km eroding each year at rates exceeding one metre. But in this village, the situation is far worse. Erosion occurs at three to five metres annually, the land subsides by one to two centimetres each year, and since the 1990s, around 4,000 rai (6.4km²) has already been lost to the sea.

All that remains of the original site is a Buddhist temple, now standing alone on a small patch of land that juts out into the sea so much so that locals call it “the floating temple”.

The severe erosion is partially due to climate change, but has been compounded by other human-driven factors. Upstream dams, built to provide flood control and irrigation to farmers, have reduced sediment flows in the Chao Phraya River delta, where the village is located.

Excessive groundwater extraction by nearby industries has increased land subsidence. Meanwhile, the construction of artificial ponds for commercially farming shrimp has led to widespread clearing of mangrove forests that once served as a buffer against erosion.

People move away

My new research has found that villagers have been forced to move away from the sea four times, losing both land and livelihoods in the process. The government has not provided compensation for damaged homes or financial assistance to help them relocate.

Many younger villagers, wearying of constant displacement and finding it increasingly difficult to find fish as sediment makes the sea shallower, have left for jobs in Bangkok on construction sites, in factories and other workplaces. Those who remain are mostly older villagers. Today, the local school has only four pupils, making it the smallest in Thailand.

Khun Samut Chin lies at the forefront of climate change. An estimated 410 million people, 59% in tropical Asia, could face inundation by sea level rise by 2100. Without concerted efforts to change our emission levels, many more coastal communities around the world will face similar struggles in the years to come.

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In theory, formal adaptation plans are government-led strategies designed to help communities cope with climate change. The theories assume that the state will decide when, where and how people should move, build protective structures like seawalls, and provide funding to affected communities.

In practice, however, as seen in Khun Samut Chin and many other places across Asia, low-income and relatively powerless coastal communities are often left to abandon their homes through forced displacement or try to stay put, with little or no government support, even when they ask for help.

Not giving up

Wisanu, the villager leader, says that Thai politicians have prioritised urban and industrial centres because they hold more voters and economic power. A government official told me that high land costs and limited budgets make relocation unfeasible. Instead, the state has erected bamboo walls as a temporary fix which have slowed down, but not stopped, the erosion.

Villagers are frustrated that the government has yet to implement any large-scale projects and that they are repeatedly asked to take part in consultations and surveys without any tangible results. Nor has the government provided much support to offset reduced incomes from fishing or improved transportation linkages, which remain sparse.

In response, the villagers have taken matters into their own hands. They have initiated a homestay programme. About 10 households, including the leader’s, host tourists who pay 600–700 Baht (£13-£16) per night, with 50 Baht going to a community fund for erosion mitigation efforts, such as purchasing or repairing bamboo dykes.

They market the programme through Facebook and other social media platforms as a place where visitors can experience life at the frontline of climate change, visit the temple, and help by replanting mangroves and buying food from the villagers. Wisanu, whose household manages five homestays, told me that the programme “enables us not to get rich but lets us walk”.

The villagers also believe that the programme helps raise awareness of their plight. They have also lobbied the local government to keep the school open and reconstruct a storm-damaged health centre.

This village offers a glimpse into what many others will likely face in the future. It shows that “managed retreat” is often not managed at all, or at least not by the state. Global frameworks like the Paris agreement and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports assume that governments have the capacity and political will to plan and fund coastal adaptation efforts.

Khun Samut Chin, however, shows how far reality can diverge from these assumptions: the sea encroaches, the state is absent, and villagers are left to mostly fend for themselves.

Yet they refuse to give up. They continue to stay, host tourists, replant mangroves, repair bamboo dykes and resist the demise of their village. They fight not only against erosion but also political neglect. If governments and global institutions fail to help them, this community will be washed away not by the water alone, but also by our inaction.

Danny Marks receives funding from by a seed grant from Utrecht University’s Water, Climate and Future Deltas Hub (entitled: “Human costs of shrinking deltas: Adaptation pathways of vulnerable groups to sea-level rise in three Asian deltas”).

– ref. Thai villagers have moved four times to escape rising sea levels – life on the climate-change frontline – https://theconversation.com/thai-villagers-have-moved-four-times-to-escape-rising-sea-levels-life-on-the-climate-change-frontline-267278

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Woods, Senior Lecturer in Physiology, University of Lincoln

Walk through any supermarket at this time of year and you’ll see shelves stacked with Halloween treats. Halloween and candy go hand in hand but what does all that sugar really mean for children?

The World Health Organization recommends that “free sugars” (sugar that is added to foods, plus sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices) make up less than 10% of total energy intake, and ideally under 5%. That’s roughly no more than 10g per day for ages 1–2, 14g for ages 2–3, 19g for ages 4–6, 24g for ages 7–10, and 30g for ages 11+.

To put that in perspective, a small biscuit contains around 4g of sugar, a treat-sized bag of sweets about 13g, and a single lollipop roughly 10g. A successful trick-or-treat haul can easily push a child past their recommended daily limit several times over.

Parents often hear well-meaning advice from friends and relatives about sugar highs, crashes and restless nights. But research shows that the bigger concern isn’t what happens after a one-off binge, it’s what happens when children regularly exceed those limits. So let’s unpack some common beliefs.

1. Sugar makes kids hyper

Despite its persistence, this myth doesn’t hold up scientifically. Research finds little connection between sugar intake and hyperactivity in children. The idea largely stems from expectation bias: when parents expect sugar to cause excitable behaviour, they’re more likely to perceive it.

Children are naturally energetic, and sugar is often consumed at parties, during trick-or-treating, or at other exciting events – so the myth reinforces itself.

For example, in one study, all children received a sugar-free drink, but half the parents were told it contained sugar. Those parents rated their children as significantly more hyperactive, even though no sugar had been consumed.

2. Sugar highs

The “sugar rush” is another myth. Sugar does provide quick energy, but the body tightly regulates blood glucose levels, so there isn’t a genuine “high”.

Studies show that carbohydrates, including sugar, are not associated with mood improvements after consumption.

3. Sugar crashes

This one has a little more truth to it. After eating sweets, blood sugar rises quickly, then falls back to normal – and sometimes slightly below normal.

These fluctuations are part of normal physiology and don’t consistently cause noticeable effects.

In adults, carbohydrate consumption has been linked to increased fatigue and decreased alertness within an hour after eating, but these effects vary widely and are typically mild.

4. They won’t sleep tonight

The evidence here is mixed. One small study found that 8–12-year-olds had more night wakings after a high-sugar drink before bed, while another in toddlers found no short-term effect. Overall, there’s no strong proof that a one-off sugar binge dramatically affects sleep.

Excitement, later bedtimes, and social stimulation around events like Halloween probably play a bigger role.

The long-term picture, however, is clearer. A meta-analysis found that high sugar intake in children is linked with shorter sleep duration. Another study of two-year-olds found that frequent consumption of soft drinks, snacks, and fast food (often high in sugar) was associated with more night wakings and poorer sleep, while children who ate more vegetables slept better. If only kids found carrots as tempting as candy.

It can also become a vicious cycle: poor sleep increases children’s craving for sugary foods, leading to higher sugar intake, which may further disrupt sleep. Over time, this loop can take a real toll.

5. If you restrict them, they’ll just want it more

There’s some evidence that completely banning sweets can make children desire them more – but that’s about total prohibition, not setting boundaries.

In fact, research shows that children whose parents set consistent limits on sugary foods don’t develop stronger sweet preferences, and actually consume less sugar overall than children with more permissive parents.

Parents have huge influence over eating habits by deciding what foods are available at home. Let’s be honest: kids aren’t thinking about metabolic health. They just know sweets taste good.

One night of Halloween indulgence won’t cause lasting harm. The real concern is habitual overconsumption.

Historical data from people exposed to sugar rationing during the second world war suggests that lower sugar intake in childhood (and even in utero) is linked to reduced risks of diabetes and hypertension later in life.

Modern studies agree: high intakes of added sugars in childhood are associated with increased obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and even cognitive and emotional issues such as anxiety and depression.

And, of course, frequent sugar consumption also damages teeth.

High-sugar diets tend to be low in nutrients too, especially worrying for younger children with smaller appetites. When sweets and other energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods replace vegetables, fruits, whole grains, or dairy, children miss out on essential nutrients like vitamins, fibre, and calcium.

This becomes less of an issue in adolescence, when growing appetites can accommodate occasional treats alongside a balanced diet.

Practical tips for parents and guardians

Before heading out to parties or trick-or-treating, serve a balanced meal so children aren’t starting the evening hungry: a full stomach makes it easier to resist overindulging later.

For younger children, it can help to set limits on how many treats they collect, while for older ones, rationing sweets over several days can keep sugar intake in check without making them feel deprived. Above all, remember that healthy eating habits are built gradually. It’s the everyday choices that matter most, not one night of excitement and sweets.

So yes – let them enjoy Halloween. The occasional sugar rush (real or imagined) isn’t the problem. It’s what happens every other day of the year that really counts.

Rachel Woods does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Five scary myths about sugar this Halloween – by a nutritionist – https://theconversation.com/five-scary-myths-about-sugar-this-halloween-by-a-nutritionist-266708