Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tarini Bhamburkar, Research Affiliate, University of Bristol

Much of England has been celebrating the Lionesses’ historic win at the Uefa European Women’s Championship – the first time a senior England football team has won a major championship abroad and retained a major trophy. However, not everyone was pleased.

Former footballer and manager Joey Barton took to X to express his underwhelm, writing: “Well done to the Lioness winning the Nonsense Pottery Trophy. Those penalties were borderline embarrassing again. Don’t ever ask for equal pay again. Youse are miles off it. 🐕💨”

Barton has faced a backlash for his outdated response to the historic win, with many pointing out that the Lionesses have won more cups for England than Barton – who has won zero with the senior team, having played only 17 minutes as a substitute for them.

Sadly, Barton is just one in a long line of men who have attacked sportswomen, while refusing to recognise that women have been excelling at sport for over a century. At the same time, there is a long line of women players and fans who have repeatedly called out such misogyny.

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I have spent the last year-and-a-half digging into newspaper archives where the stories of some of these women can be found. In their own words, these sportswomen and their fans detail their experiences as pioneers – and the attacks they faced along the way.

The earliest accounts of women engaging in sport in Britain show them playing tennis or croquet, or being adept at horse riding, in the 19th century. These were seen as permissible recreational activities for the “fairer sex”, but only if the practice of them remained noncompetitive.

But in the late Victorian age this changed, as women started playing many more sports – in some cases professionally. Women’s participation in athletics and competitive sports such as cricket was furiously debated – predominantly by men, who saw it as defying traditional gender roles. At the time, a woman wanting to be a professional sportswoman was widely seen as questionable and ungraceful.

There were, however, many female sports people and fans who were arguing against such ideas. I was particularly struck by one interview from 1890 with the remarkable Miss Daisy Stanley, captain of the Blue Eleven women’s cricket team.

The Original English Lady Cricketers are one of the earliest examples of paid, professional sportswomen who toured nationally between 1890 and 1892. They comprised 30 women divided into two teams: the Red XI and Blue XI.

Stanley’s interview was published on the front page of the weekly woman-edited newspaper, Women’s Penny Paper. As a progressive women’s newspaper, it was keen to profile a professional female player and inspire its women readers.

Throughout the interview, the unnamed lady journalist refers to her interviewee as “Captain Stanley” (rarely using any other term for her), asking significant questions about herself, her team and her ambitions. The article notes the enthusiasm for these women cricketers after their first public match in Liverpool against a local men’s side, where “visitors assembled in thousands”.

But the journalist laments the unserious treatment of the players at the hands of the “gentlemen” players, noting: “Whenever the game has been between ladies and gentlemen, the latter have … assumed broomsticks and treated their adversaries as weaker vessels.”

You can trace the thread from the attitudes to this pioneering cricket match in 1890 right up to Barton’s comments about the Lionesses in 2025.

Undaunted, the “tall and well-built” Captain Stanley, who looked “capable of much execution in the way of play”, rose through these afflictions. Before becoming a professional cricket player and playing regularly, she had considered the game impossible for girls to excel in – a view she reveals in the interview to have been “materially altered” by her experience of playing the game professionally.

Stanley is full of praise for ladies’ participation in sports, deeming that “there is not a more healthy … or beneficial game than cricket for our sex”.

In the wider society of the time, though, the possibilities – and benefits – of sports for women were being puzzled out socially and publicly through articles in periodicals. An article titled “Athletics for Ladies” in Cassell’s Family Magazine in 1896 lauded the benefits of women’s cautious “physical or muscular progress”, for example, but saw “football as a man’s game”.

The idea of women playing sports, let alone playing competitively, was both mocked and rebuked by swathes of the British media and public. But despite the ubiquitous pushback around them, women like Captain Stanley remained undeterred. In the interview in the Women’s Penny Paper, she mentions her thorough knowledge of the game, gives a shout-out to worthy team members and their skills, and celebrates her love of the sport.

Reflecting on having watched the paid professional Victorian women playing their cricket match so well, the impressed interviewer notes something that we would do well to remember today: “That here, as elsewhere, when women really take a thing in hand, they can and will carry it out thoroughly.”

The Lionesses have certainly done that, and we have the facts to back it up. After all, Chloe Kelly’s winning penalty kick on Sunday was reportedly faster than any shots on goal by the men this Premier League season. Try arguing with that.

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Tarini Bhamburkar has received funding from the Royal Historical Society.

– ref. The Victorian sportswomen who had to fight misogynistic abuse, just like the Lionesses – https://theconversation.com/the-victorian-sportswomen-who-had-to-fight-misogynistic-abuse-just-like-the-lionesses-261798

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Patrick David Sharrocks, PhD Candidate in Tsunami Geohazards, University of Leeds

On July 30, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded struck off the Kamchatka peninsula, in Russia’s far east. Within minutes, tsunami warnings were issued in Russia, much of Asia and across the Pacific in Hawaii, New Zealand and California.

But this wasn’t the first time a huge tsunami had hit Kamchatka. In 1952, an even more powerful earthquake hit the same fault line – but it was kept hidden from the world.

Kamchatka is no stranger to seismic activity, with a large earthquake occurring as recently as 2020 (the fourth most powerful anywhere in the world that year). However, only the biggest earthquakes can create large destructive tsunamis and cause Pacific-wide warnings like those experienced on Wednesday.

On a plate boundary, where two pieces of the Earth’s crust meet, such large earthquakes often occur on consistent timescales known as “seismic cycles”. In some areas, these cycles are long: on the Cascadia boundary off the Pacific coast of North America, for instance, the last major tsunami-generating earthquake was in 1700.

However, the plates move much faster near Kamchatka (around 8 centimetres a year) and the the cycle is much shorter. Large tsunamis were generated from earthquakes in 1737, 1841, 1952 – and now 2025 is a continuation of this cycle.

Just after midday on November 5 1952, tsunami waves up to 8 foot (2.4 metres) hit Hawaii. This was an early test for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which had recently been established on the islands in response to a 1946 tsunami following an earthquake in Alaska.

Earlier that day, seismologists across the world had detected signals from an earthquake pinpointed to the northwest Pacific around Kamchatka. When the wave hit Hawaii, scientists there quickly used the exact time of the wave and the known speed of tsunamis (in deep water, these are similar to a jet plane) to deduce it must have been created by that giant earthquake in the northwest Pacific. But from Kamchatka itself, there was silence.

There were no reports of an earthquake or tsunami in the Soviet press. Not a word was written in state newspaper Pravda, which instead focused on preparations for the Great October Revolution anniversary two days later.

Days and months passed without any recognition of the tsunami and earthquake. Even an interview with a Russian volcanologist, Alexander Evgenievich Svyatlovsky, was stored as a “state secret”, despite him merely explaining how the tsunami had originated.

Such secrecy was common at the height of the cold war, with Chernobyl and other disasters often being underreported by the Soviet authorities. It was only after the release of state archives in the early 2000s that the full picture could be told.

The devastation at Severo-Kurilsk

The isolated fishing town of Severo-Kurilsk lies on an island just south of the Kamchatka peninsula. According to state archives, 6,000 people lived there in 1952, spread thinly across the coastline.

On the morning of November 5, inhabitants were woken by a major earthquake, the strongest anyone there had ever felt. Around 45 minutes later a wave arrived, slowing and steepening as it reached the shore. Soldiers on lookout were able to warn people of the danger, and many fled to high ground.

But tsunamis are wave trains with a series of peaks and troughs. They act much like waves you’d experience on a beach – except that these waves stretch thousands of metres into the ocean, hitting the shore not every few seconds but with tens of minutes between each one.

Minutes after some residents had returned to their homes, a second, larger wave struck. It rose some 12 metres high – as tall as a three-storey building – and hit the town from behind. A third wave soon followed, washing away much of the town that remained.

In all, the tsunami caused 2,336 deaths out of a population of 6,000. The survivors never shared the details for fear of reprisals, and the story remained a state secret.

Today, Severo-Kurilsk sits 20 metres above sea level, rebuilt and fortified. Videos from the 2025 tsunami show flooding at the port, but there are no reported fatalities – testament to modern warning systems and urban planning.

One problem remains: the repositioning of the town has placed it in the path of deadly mudflows from the nearby volcano Ebeko (only 7km away). For Severo-Kurilsk, tsunamis represent only one of many threats in this corner of the Pacific.

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Patrick David Sharrocks receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, grant number NE/S007458/1.

– ref. The Soviet Union’s secret tsunami – https://theconversation.com/the-soviet-unions-secret-tsunami-262452

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Conor O’Kane, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Bournemouth University

The beginning of August marks the latest deadline for US president Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff policy. This era of chaos and uncertainty began on April 2 and the situation remaims fluid. With the deadline for partners to secure a deal with Washington now passed, it’s a good time to take a broader view and consider if Trump’s trade gamble is paying off.

The objectives of the tariff policy include raising tax revenues, delivering lower prices for American consumers, and boosting American industry while creating manufacturing jobs. The president has also vowed to get better trade deals for the US to reduce its trade deficit and to face down China’s growing influence on the world stage.

But recently the US Federal Reserve voted to keep interest rates unchanged at 4.25% to 4.5%, despite pressure from Trump to lower them. In his monthly press briefing, Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, said they were still in the early stages of understanding how the tariff policy would affect inflation, jobs and economic growth.

On tariffs, Powell did say that revenues had increased substantially to US$30 billion (£22.9 billion) a month. However, only a small portion of the tariffs are being absorbed by overseas exporters, with most of the cost being borne by US import companies. In comments that will concern the Trump administration, the Fed said the cost of the tariffs was beginning to show up in consumer prices.

The Fed expects inflation to increase to 3% by the end of the year, above its 2% target. US unemployment remains low, with Powell saying the economy is at or very close to full employment.

While Powell’s decision to hold interest rates probably irritated Trump, economic theory suggests that lowering them with the US economic cycle at full employment would be likely to increase inflation and the cost of living for US consumers. A survey by Bloomberg economists suggests that US GDP growth forecasts are lower since April 2025, specifically because of its tariff policy.

In terms of boosting US employment, the US administration can point to significant wins in the pharmaceutical sector. In July, British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZenica announced plans to spend US$50 billion expanding its US research and manufacturing facilities by 2030. The announcement follows a similar pledge from Swiss pharmaceuticals firm Roche in April to invest US$50 billion in the US over the next five years.

Tougher times for US manufacturing

The impact of tariffs on traditional US manufacturing industries is less positive. The Ford Motor Company has warned that its profits will see a sharp drop. This is largely down to a net tariff impact that the firm says will cost it US$2 billion this financial year. This is despite the company making nearly all of its vehicles in the US.

Firms such as Ford are seeing an increase in tariff-related costs for imports. This dents their profits as well as dividends to shareholders.

In recent months the US has announced major new trade agreements, including with the UK, Japan, South Korea and the EU. Talks on a trade deal with China continue. But rather than trade deals, these announcements should be thought of as frameworks for trade deals. No legally binding documents have been signed to date.

Read more:
European gloom over the Trump deal is misplaced. It’s probably the best the EU could have achieved

It will take many months before a clear picture emerges of how these bilateral deals will affect the US trade deficit overall. Meanwhile, in Washington, a federal appeals court will hear a case from two companies that are suing Trump over the use of his International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977.

VOS Selections Inc, a wine and spirits importer, and Plastic Services and Products, a pipe and fittings company, are arguing that the president has “no authority to issue across-the-board worldwide tariffs without congressional approval”.

With so much in play, it is difficult to judge whether Trump’s tariff policy can be viewed as a success. Higher tariff revenues from imports as well as significant investments from the pharmaceutical industry can be seen as clear wins.

But increasing consumer costs through rising inflation, as well as tariff costs hurting US manufacturers, are clear negatives. While several framework trade deals have been announced, the real devil will of course be in the detail.

Perhaps the greatest impact of the tariff policy has been the uncertainty of this new approach to trade and diplomacy. The Trump administration views trade as a zero-sum game. If one side is winning, the other side must be losing.

This view of international trade harks back to mercantilism, an economic system that predates capitalism. Adam Smith and David Riccardo, the founders of capitalist theory, advocated for free trade. They argued that if countries focused on what they were good at making, then both sides could benefit – a so called positive-sum game.

This approach has dominated global trade since the post-war period. Since then, the US has become the largest and wealthiest economy in the world. By creating and the institutions of global trade (the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization), the US has advanced its interests – and American-based multinationals dominate, especially in areas such as technology.

But China and others now threaten this US domination, and Trump is tearing up the economic rulebook. But economic theory clearly positions tariffs as the wrong policy path for the US to assert and further its economic interests in the medium to long term. That’s why Trump’s course of action remains such a gamble.

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Conor O’Kane 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. Trump’s new tariff regime has begun after months of chaos and uncertainty. But is his approach working? – https://theconversation.com/trumps-new-tariff-regime-has-begun-after-months-of-chaos-and-uncertainty-but-is-his-approach-working-262448

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

For a growing number of middle-aged men, ageing no longer means surrendering to sagging skin, sore joints or slowing metabolism. Instead, it’s becoming a science experiment. The new frontier? Injectable peptides – experimental compounds that promise rapid recovery, fat loss and muscle gains with the ease of a twice-daily to weekly jab.

Once confined to elite labs and obscure bodybuilding forums, these amino acid chains are now flooding wellness spaces, social media feeds and online marketplaces. Although they are marketed as “next-generation biohacks” and “research chemicals”, many peptides are not approved for human use and lack basic clinical testing.

Still, their popularity is growing – fuelled by testimonials, influencer hype and the seductive promise of turning back time.

But beneath the surface of glossy marketing and fitness fantasies lies a far more sobering truth: many of these substances operate in a medical grey zone, with unknown long-term risks, questionable manufacturing standards, and in some cases, life-threatening side-effects.

Peptides aren’t entirely new to medicine. The first peptide drug – insulin – was isolated in 1921 and became commercially available in 1923. Today over 100 peptide medications are approved, including semaglutide – better known as Ozempic and Wegovy.

But the compounds now circulating in fitness communities represent a very different category. They’re experimental substances that have shown promise in animal studies but have never undergone proper human trials.

The ‘Wolverine stack’

One such compound, first discovered in human gastric juice, that is attracting lots of attention is BPC-157. Early animal studies suggest it may help repair damaged tissue throughout the body.

Researchers tested it on mice, rats, rabbits and dogs without finding serious side-effects. The compound appears to support healing of the tendons, teeth and digestive organs, including the stomach, intestines, liver and pancreas.

Scientists don’t yet fully understand how BPC-157 works, but animal studies suggest it triggers several biological processes essential for healing. The compound appears to help cells move to damaged areas and encourages the growth of new blood vessels, bringing nutrients and oxygen to tissues in need of repair.

Another compound gaining attention is TB500. It is a synthetic version of thymosin beta-4, a naturally occurring protein fragment that plays an important role in repairing and regenerating damaged cells and tissues.

It also helps protect cells from further harm by reducing inflammation and defending against microbes. The combination of BPC-157 and TB500 has earned the nickname “the Wolverine stack”, named after the Marvel superhero famous for his rapid healing.

Then there’s IGF-1 LR3, a modified version of a natural protein (IGF-1) linked to muscle growth. This synthetic compound was shown to increase muscle mass by 2.5 times in animal studies, though it has never been studied in humans.

The limited human research that does exist for these compounds offers inconclusive results. For example, a study showed that over 90% of patients experienced reduced knee pain after BPC-157 injections. However, the study had no control group and several methodological issues, so the results should be viewed with caution.

Hidden dangers

Even though the early results seem exciting, these experimental compounds can be dangerous. Making them involves special chemicals called coupling agents, which can trigger serious allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis – a life-threatening condition.

The health consequences extend well beyond allergic reactions. Long-term injection of performance-enhancing substances can lead to heart failure that can occur rapidly with little warning, as documented in recent medical case studies of young bodybuilders.

Injection-related injuries pose another significant threat. “Compartment syndrome” can develop at injection sites in leg muscles, causing numbness, blood clots and muscle spasms that result in permanent loss of function.

In severe cases, skin and underlying tissue can suffer necrosis (tissue death), requiring antibiotics or surgery to treat. More alarming still are reports of users contracting HIV, hepatitis B and C, and serious eye infections from contaminated injections.

These compounds don’t just target muscles – they affect the entire body in ways scientists are only beginning to understand. Some interfere with natural insulin production, while others activate biological pathways that healthy cells use for growth and repair.

The concern is that these same pathways are exploited by cancer cells. The VEGF pathway, which promotes blood vessel growth, is active in about half of all human cancers, including melanoma and ovarian cancer. Laboratory studies suggest that thymosin beta-4 may play a role in helping colorectal and pancreatic cancers spread.

While there’s no direct evidence linking compounds like BPC-157 or TB500 to cancer, researchers emphasise that the long-term effects remain unknown because these substances have never undergone proper human trials. The World Anti-Doping Agency has banned these compounds, noting they lack approval from any health regulatory authority and are intended only as research tools.

A growing problem

Yet their use appears to be spreading rapidly. A 2014 study found that 8.2% of gym members used performance-enhancing drugs. By 2024, a comprehensive review suggested the figure could be as high as 29%. Perhaps most concerning: only 38% of users recognised the health risks involved.

These experimental compounds represent a dangerous gamble with long-term health. Unlike approved drugs, they haven’t undergone the rigorous testing required to understand their safety profile in humans. While they may promise enhanced performance and healing, they deliver it at a cost that users may not fully understand until it’s too late.

The appeal is understandable – who wouldn’t want faster healing and better muscle tone? But the reality is these substances remain experimental for good reason. Until proper human trials are conducted, users are essentially volunteering as test subjects in an uncontrolled experiment with their own bodies.

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Adam Taylor 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. Peptides: performance-boosting, anti-ageing drugs or dangerous snake oil? – https://theconversation.com/peptides-performance-boosting-anti-ageing-drugs-or-dangerous-snake-oil-259531

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Shashi Kant Yadav, Lecturer, Northumbria University, Newcastle

A small coastal community in Kivalina, Alaska sued several major oil and gas companies, including Exxon Mobil, in 2008. Local representatives argued that greenhouse gas emissions from these companies were contributing to the erosion of the coastline and causing irreversible damage to their village by heating the climate.

But the US Court of Appeals dismissed the claim, citing a lack of evidence linking the corporate emissions with coastal erosion.

In France, 2024, climate campaigners filed a criminal complaint against the major shareholders and the board of directors of TotalEnergies. They alleged that fossil fuels extracted by the company produced emissions that caused floods and storms that damaged property and irreversibly depleted biodiversity.

Despite acknowledging damage related to climate change generally, the Parisian criminal court also dismissed the case. Again, it said there was insufficient evidence to link the activities of TotalEnergies and damage from extreme weather.

Between 2008 and 2024, significant advances were made in climate science that enable us to understand how specific activities affect the climate, and contribute to wildfires, extreme heat and flash floods. The science linking these disasters to fossil fuel giants remains insufficient in the eyes of courts, however.

That’s because climate attribution science generally fails to meet the necessary standard of legal evidence to assign liability. For example, a recent advisory opinion published by the International Court of Justice acknowledged that states have a responsibility to address climate change, and that it is possible to establish a link between a state’s wrongful acts or omissions and the damage resulting from climate change. Despite this, claimants still sometimes fail to prove such a link in court.

However, a new study has demonstrated a computer model that can reduce scientific uncertainty around linking emissions from a particular source to outcomes related to climate change. This end-to-end attribution model, as it is called, could strengthen legal claims against entities damaging the climate.

Tracing emissions to damages

The end-to-end attribution model uses a three-step process to assign liability for climate damage.

First, using historical emissions data from online databases such as Carbon Major, the model simulates two scenarios: one with all historical emissions (the real world), and the other where the emissions from a particular company are excluded. The difference in emissions between these two scenarios is then paired with the concomitant increase in the global temperature, which shows how much warming can be directly attributed to that company.

Using statistical methods, the model can then connect the relevant global temperature increase to changes in the intensity of heatwaves in a particular region. It could, for instance, calculate how much hotter the five hottest days of the year have become in a given year because of the company’s emissions.

The model estimates the economic impact of these intensified heatwaves. It can do this using data on the consequences of reduced productivity and crop losses for growth, for example. It calculates how much money a region lost because of the heatwaves linked to the company’s emissions and gives a dollar value for the damages.

By combining these three steps, the model traces the path from a company’s emissions to specific economic losses, theoretically making it possible to hold emitters financially accountable for climate damages.

In doing so, the study estimated that emissions from Chevron alone caused between US$791 billion (£589 billion) and US$3.6 trillion (£2.7 trillion) in heat-related economic losses globally between 1991 and 2020, and that without emissions from 111 large oil, gas and coal producers (collectively referred to as “carbon majors”) such as ExxonMobil, BP, Saudi Aramco and Gazprom, the global economy would be US$28 trillion richer.

The advantages for claimants

Climate court cases in which claimants seek to assign liability to oil and gas companies are on the rise worldwide.

About 230 lawsuits have been filed against fossil fuel giants and trade associations since 2015. More than two-thirds of these were filed between 2020 and 2024, and many are awaiting a final decision. For such cases, end-to-end attribution could be helpful.

End-to-end attribution can assist claimants in meeting the commonly used “but for” test, by demonstrating that, but for a specific company’s emissions, certain climate-related damages would not have occurred. The method can also meet other liability tests. One is called proportional liability, and it attempts to quantify the extent to which a company’s emissions contributed to increased risk or the severity of damage. This flexibility strengthens the method’s applicability across different legal systems.

The end-to-end attribution method enables claimants to connect global warming to local disasters, such as the 2021 Pacific Northwest “heat dome”. This is crucial, as climate litigation focused on single, high-impact events is usually more successful.

It is well established that emissions from companies in the US and Europe have caused significant harm which is disproportionately suffered in the global south. End-to-end attribution strengthens the evidence base for such climate justice arguments in courtrooms.

There are no established standards for how courts worldwide evaluate scientific evidence. Consequently, while the end-to-end attribution method can link fossil fuel companies and climate-related legal injuries, the courts, depending on differences between jurisdictions and the context of each case, may require higher thresholds to trigger criminal or civil liability.

Additionally, fossil fuel companies often argue that any harm caused by their activities should be weighed against the benefits their products also provide. However, the benefits of fossil fuels should not exempt companies from climate-related liability, because climate change is an existential threat.

End-to-end attribution provides a vital scientific tool for making fossil fuel companies accountable, and could reshape climate litigation globally.

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Climate change: new method can more accurately attribute environmental harm to individual polluters – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-new-method-can-more-accurately-attribute-environmental-harm-to-individual-polluters-256002

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ioannis Costas Batlle, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Bath

School holidays are underway across the UK. But while young people might be getting a break from the classroom and having a chance to spend more time on their hobbies, they are still learning – whether they’re playing video games, painting toy soldiers or out on their bike.

Learning doesn’t just happen at school, college, or university. For Danish learning expert Knud Illeris, any process not caused by biological maturation (for instance, growing from a baby into a toddler) counts as learning. Learning is both inevitable and ubiquitous: it is part of being alive. We cannot “not learn”.

We can chunk the enormity of what learning is into smaller digestible portions. These three portions (called learning contexts) are formal learning, non-formal learning and informal learning. We can think of them as an iceberg, with some parts visible and others hidden below the water.

Different contexts

Formal learning is the very tip of the iceberg. This aims to intentionally teach someone something. It is provided by an education or training organisation that will give you a certificate or diploma to show what you have learned. Schools, colleges and universities are examples of formal learning contexts.

Non-formal learning extends beneath the iceberg’s tip but remains above the water level. Like formal learning, it is learning as the result of some kind of teaching. However, non-formal learning is not necessarily provided by an education organisation, nor is it necessarily recognised with a certificate or diploma. Music lessons, sports clubs, cooking classes, developing skills at work, or museum tours all count as non-formal learning.

Beneath non-formal learning, shrouded under the sea, is the gargantuan base of the iceberg: informal learning. Unlike formal and non-formal learning, informal learning is generally unintentional, unplanned and unconscious. This could be absorbing social norms, such as how to greet someone you don’t know, or unexpectedly learning new words by listening to podcasts.

It’s a widely accepted assumption among academics that most of the learning we do is informal. And it makes sense when you think about how much young people’s development is unconscious and unplanned. For example, while being taught formally in school classrooms, they simultaneously informally learn values such as what it means to be – and behave like – a “good student”.

The iceberg illustrates why we often think of learning in a narrow way. We overvalue what is easily recognisable, such as the schooling that leads to an exam result. And we undervalue the much larger, but comparatively less visible remainder of the iceberg: non-formal and informal learning, such as through hobbies.

Young people, in particular, may overvalue formal learning for two reasons. First, it is tangible. It features physical buildings – schools, colleges and universities – where young people go almost every day to learn. In turn, they aim to leave these buildings with qualifications that “prove” what they have learned.

Second, even though across our lifespans we spend a tiny fraction in formal learning contexts compared to non-formal and informal ones, that tiny amount is disproportionately weighted towards our youth. Children and teenagers spend a huge amount of time being formally educated.

Learning through hobbies

To encourage young people to flourish as learners, we need to help them value non-formal and informal learning contexts. Hobbies are great for this. Hobbies are serious leisure activities which young people find interesting and fulfilling. They are serious because hobbies require perseverance to gain experience, a skillset and a knowledge base.

Whenever someone intentionally teaches a young person something hobby-related, that counts as non-formal learning. For instance, a coach explaining how to bounce a basketball, a music teacher describing how to hold a drumstick, or a friend explaining the rules to a board game.

Hobbies are equally infused with informal, unplanned and often unconscious learning. Playing video games inadvertently develops eye-hand coordination and cognitive function (storing and processing information). Stamp collecting can foster attention to detail. Skateboarding can improve resilience in the face of failure.

Part of the reason young people’s non-formal and informal hobby-related learning above is so difficult to recognise is because it is rarely described as “learning”. Instead, they “play” music and videogames; they “do” skateboarding and drawing.

Though play is one of the best ways young people learn, both young people and the adults in their lives may undervalue its impact. While adults may assume there is no relationship between play and learning, teenagers may perceive play as childish.

Too many young people think they are “bad learners” because they struggle in formal learning. However, I bet they are extraordinary learners when it comes to their hobbies. We simply need to help them recognise the value of non-formal and informal learning.

Ioannis Costas Batlle 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. School’s out – but as young people paint, skateboard and play with their friends, they’re still learning – https://theconversation.com/schools-out-but-as-young-people-paint-skateboard-and-play-with-their-friends-theyre-still-learning-261125

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ming Gao, Research Fellow of East Asia Studies, Lund University

China’s central government introduced a childcare subsidy on July 28 that will provide families with 3,000 yuan (around £312) a year for each child under the age of three. The announcement came days after plans were unveiled to roll out free preschool education across the country.

These developments mark a shift from previous years, when the government largely left the issue of addressing China’s declining birth rate to local authorities. Many of those efforts, which range from cash incentives to housing subsidies, have made little difference. By stepping in directly, Beijing has signalled that it sees the situation as urgent.

Fewer Chinese women are choosing to have children, and more young people are delaying or opting out of marriage. This has contributed to a situation where China’s population shrank for a third consecutive year in 2024. An ageing population and shrinking workforce pose long-term challenges for China’s economic growth, as well as its healthcare and pension systems.

Before the central government’s recent roll-out, regions in China had already been experimenting with policies to increase birth rates. These include one-time payouts for second or third children, monthly allowances and housing and job training subsidies.

One of the most eye-catching local policies came from Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia province. In March 2025, the authorities there began offering families up to 100,000 yuan (£10,400) for having a second and third child, paid annually until the children turn ten.

The authorities in some other cities, including eastern China’s Hangzhou, have offered childcare vouchers or subsidies for daycare. Policies like these have seen the number of births increase slightly in a few regions. But uptake is generally low and none have managed to change the national picture.

There are several reasons why incentive-based policies have not moved the needle. First, the subsidies are generally small – often equivalent to just a few hundred US dollars. This barely makes a dent in the cost of raising a child in urban China.

China ranks among the most expensive countries in the world for child-rearing, surpassing the US and Japan. In fact, a 2024 report by the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute found that the average cost of raising a child in China until the age of 18 is 538,000 yuan (£59,275). This is more than 6.3 times as high as China’s GDP per capita.

The burden is so widely felt that people in China jokingly refer to children as tunjinshou, which translates to “gold-devouring beasts”.

Second, the incentives largely don’t address deeper issues. These include expensive housing, intense education pressures, childcare shortages and some workplaces that penalise women for taking time off. Many Chinese women fear being pushed out of their jobs simply for having kids.

Some local authorities have attempted to tackle the structural realities that make having and raising children in China difficult, and have enjoyed some success. In Tianmen, for example, parents of a third child can claim US$16,500 (£12,500) off a new home.

However, these policies are confined to specific districts and villages or are limited to select groups. Support remains fragmented and insufficient, while the prospects of scaling these piecemeal initiatives nationwide are slim.

Third, gender inequality in China is still deeply entrenched. Women carry most of the childcare and housework burden, with parental leave policies reflecting that imbalance. While mothers are allowed between 128 to 158 days of maternity leave, fathers receive only a handful – varying slightly by province. Despite public calls for equal parental leave, major legal changes seem far off.

These factors have together given rise to a situation where, as in east Asia more broadly, many young people in China simply are not interested in marrying or having children.

According to one online survey from 2022, around 90% of respondents in China said they wouldn’t consider having more children even if they were offered an annual subsidy of 12,000 yuan (£1,250) – far more than the recently announced 3,000 yuan subsidy.

Is Beijing too late?

The new measures show that Beijing is taking China’s declining birth rate seriously. But it might be too late. Fertility decline is hard to reverse, with research showing that social norms are difficult to snap back once they shift away from having children.

South Korea has spent decades offering its citizens generous subsidies, housing support and extended parental leave. Yet, despite a recent uptick, its birth rate has remained among the lowest in the world.

Projections by the UN paint a stark picture. China’s population is expected to drop by 204 million people between 2024 and 2054. It could lose 786 million people by the end of the century, returning its population to levels last seen in the 1950s.

Still, the recent announcements are significant. They are the first time the central government has directly used fiscal tools to encourage births, and reflect a consensus that lowering the cost of preschool education can help boost fertility. This sets a precedent and, if urgency keeps rising, the size and scope of support may increase as well.

However, if China hopes to turn things around, it will need more than cash. Parenting must be made truly viable and even desirable. Alongside financial aid and free preschool, families need time and labour support.

This also means confronting cultural expectations. Raising a child shouldn’t be seen as a woman’s job alone. A real cultural shift is needed – one that treats parenting as a shared responsibility.

My generation, which was born under the one-child policy, grew up in a time where siblings were heavily fined. I was one of them. But, just as fines didn’t stop all of those who wanted more children, cash rewards will not easily convince the many who don’t.

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Ming Gao receives funding from the Swedish Research Council. This research was produced with support from the Swedish Research Council grant “Moved Apart” (nr. 2022-01864). Ming Gao is a member of Lund University Profile Area: Human Rights.

– ref. What will it take for China to arrest its declining birth rate? – https://theconversation.com/what-will-it-take-for-china-to-arrest-its-declining-birth-rate-261717