Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Tobin, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Manchester

This year’s UN climate summit (Cop30) in Belém, Brazil, begins with a familiar dilemma: how can we tackle a highly political, long-term problem that involves every country of the world?

Governments, experts and activists have been trying to address climate change since the early 1990s, yet global greenhouse gas emissions remain at record levels.

Emissions growth may be slowing, but even pro-climate action strategies seem to be pulling in different – or even, antagonistic – directions. Our new book presents these antagonisms as a choice between “stability” and “politicisation” in climate governance.

According to those favouring stability, governments should lock in steady, long-term policies that place us on a predictable and gradual track to much lower emissions. Creating policies that commit us to a certain path should help businesses to invest in ways that meet this predictable trajectory.

However, if it is weakened and made inadequate by pro-fossil fuel lobbyists and governments, then the stable path can still meander into climate catastrophe. This is the course we are presently on.

On the other hand, for those pursuing the politicisation of climate action, it is better to encourage political conflict and protests that constantly create pressure for more significant and rapid policy change.

Such strategies can disrupt pro-fossil fuel lobbyists’ grip and expose strategies used by some political figures to dismantle the hard-fought climate goals already in place. But by encouraging increased politicisation of these issues, we may open the door to anti-net zero populists and others seeking to slow or stop climate policy action altogether.

Both schools of thought – stability or politicisation – have their supporters and detractors. Both have benefits and downsides. However, these have rarely been discussed in conversation with one another, until now.

At Cop30, these distinct strategies will be under the spotlight.

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The stability or politicisation dilemma helps to explain why building a strategy that works over years and decades creates difficult questions, not only about policy design but approaches for different organisations and states. These challenges change according to which level of government, which country, and which economic sector is in play.

For instance, it is easier to push for politicisation and conflict when you’re not a member of a marginalised or racialised community already facing myriad hurdles to political participation.

Conversely, it is hard to avoid having to engage in politicisation and conflict in areas where there are deep historical power structures that need to be challenged. For example, in the UK, land ownership concentration blocks peat restoration – both because landowners want to keep peat moors dry to maximise their grouse shooting revenue, and because the land concentration means they are very powerful within the British state.

Tension between timeframes

Our book traces these dynamics across a range of cases, from the fossil fuel industry in the US to strategies used by the insurance sector and central banks; from China’s industrial policy to environmental justice social movements in Germany; and from arguments about Norwegian oil extraction to Brazilian and South African renewable energy generation.

International relations expert Jennifer Allan explains that previous UN climate summits have been shaped by this clash in strategies, right back to the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 agreement that set emissions targets for economically developed countries.

Whereas the EU was previously the driving force behind depoliticisation of negotiations, more recently, countries such as India and China are also pursuing such strategies. As Allan warns, this may delay the implementation of climate policies as more states debate how best to progress.

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In Belém at Cop30, similar dynamics will be at play. Efforts are ongoing to implement the 2015 Paris climate agreement agenda and process. Core issues remain on how to ensure regular reporting of emissions, alongside questions around who pays for the consequences of climate change.

At the same time, there will be a continued politicising push by certain countries and social movements. States such as the US, Saudi Arabia and their allies will be trying to politicise the negotiations to stymy progress. Meanwhile, social movements will be protesting to keep the pressure on negotiators and promote climate justice for those who are hardest hit by climate change.

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Paul Tobin has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Matthew Paterson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). He is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Stacy D VanDeveer as received funding from Independent Research Fund Denmark, MISTRA (Sweden), Research Council of Norway, Uppsala University (Sweden), German Marshall Fund of the United States, US National Science Foundation

– ref. Why even pro-climate action organisations may pull in different directions – https://theconversation.com/why-even-pro-climate-action-organisations-may-pull-in-different-directions-261047

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Preeti Mahato, Lecturer in Global Health, Royal Holloway, University of London

You may have heard that vaping is the “safer” choice than smoking. But what if the very thing designed to protect your health also puts your heart at risk?

Vaping does not exist in isolation. It is part of a wider story about smoking, inequality and the growing burden of heart disease in the UK. Even after years of public health campaigns, smoking remains common in England’s most deprived areas.

The reasons are complex. People living with financial strain, insecure jobs and chronic stress are more likely to smoke. Targeted marketing and limited access to stop-smoking services make it even harder to quit. At the same time, one in two UK adults have high cholesterol, and many do not know it.

Reports show that people in the poorest communities have the highest rates of smoking and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including raised cholesterol.

As vaping becomes more common in these same communities, a new form of nicotine use could be replacing one heart risk with another. Many people now switch from cigarettes to vapes to reduce harm, but growing evidence suggests the benefits may not be as clear-cut as once thought.

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Research shows that vaping can help some people quit smoking more effectively than other methods, but newer findings challenge the belief that e-cigarettes are a harmless substitute.

Several studies have now linked vaping to arterial damage in both the brain and heart, even among people who have never smoked traditional cigarettes. The cells that line our blood vessels, known as the endothelium, keep arteries supple, regulate blood pressure and stop fatty deposits from sticking to the walls. When these cells are damaged, arteries lose elasticity and blood flow becomes less efficient, raising the risk of cardiovascular problems.

One study found that regular vapers had impaired blood vessel function. Their arteries could no longer expand and contract properly. Other research on humans and animals exposed to vapour showed less flexible arteries, higher blood pressure and damaged endothelium in both the brain and heart. This arterial stiffening increases the likelihood of heart attack, stroke and dementia.

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So what is behind this damage? When someone vapes, the vapour carries nicotine, chemicals and microscopic particles into the bloodstream. These trigger inflammation and oxidative stress, meaning the body’s defences go into overdrive and start attacking healthy tissue. Vaping also reduces nitric oxide, a molecule that helps vessels relax, while increasing harmful free radicals. Together, these effects make arteries less able to do their job and more prone to disease, increasing the risk of heart problems.

Vaping can also raise blood pressure and heart rate, even after a single session. Over time, this mix of irritation, inflammation and stress wears down the arteries, even in people who have never smoked before.

The UK’s NHS Health Check programme mainly screens people aged forty and over for heart-disease risks. Yet vaping is most common among people under 40, and routine screening is not designed to detect early vessel injury in this age group. Young vapers may therefore carry silent artery damage for years before any problem appears on standard tests. Evidence suggests that vaping can cause early artery changes similar to those caused by smoking, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) later in life.

That is why education and prevention are so important. Schools and public health campaigns play a vital role in showing young people that vaping carries long-term risks, including damage to the heart. Programmes that combine classroom learning with interactive activities have been shown to make a real difference. Initiatives such as Catch Your Breath and Essex’s Break the Vape aim to stop young people from vaping before they start, and to support those who want to quit, reducing their future risk of heart disease.

The wide differences in heart disease deaths across England show that prevention efforts are still not reaching everyone equally. A whole-system approach to CVD prevention is essential. Schools, councils, NHS services and local communities need to work together to tackle shared risk factors such as smoking and vaping.

Screening cannot yet detect early artery damage in younger adults, but education remains our best defence. Helping young people understand how vaping affects the heart can protect the next generation from the hidden dangers of nicotine addiction and cardiovascular harm.

Anusha Seneviratne previously received research funding from the British Heart Foundation.

Preeti Mahato 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. Vaping might seem safer than smoking but your heart could tell a different story – https://theconversation.com/vaping-might-seem-safer-than-smoking-but-your-heart-could-tell-a-different-story-268612

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Luis Angeles, Professor of Economics, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow

Tariffs on imports have been at the heart of Donald Trump’s economic policy since the start of his second term in the White House. And while the president believes that tariffs will be beneficial to the US economy, many eminent economists disagree. Here are three reasons why.

The first reason is that a US trade deficit should not necessarily be seen as a negative economic outcome. Trump certainly thinks it is. As he reportedly told Karin Keller-Sutter, president of Switzerland, earlier this year: “We have a US$41 billion deficit with you, madam….[and] we lose, because I view deficit as [a] loss.”

A trade deficit only means that one country buys more goods and services from another country than it sells to it. As a result, more money flows out of the country, to pay for the imports, than comes into the country, as a payment for exports.

Money flowing out of the country may sound bad, but for every dollar that the US spends abroad there is something else coming in: the goods and services it buys, which Americans get to consume. A “trade deficit” could very well be renamed a “surplus in goods and services consumed” – a positive outcome, reflecting the expressed preferences of the American public.

The second reason is that tariffs change what the economy produces – for the worse.

Tariffs are eventually passed on to consumers, making imported goods and services dearer. Trump’s hope is that making, say, Swiss watches more expensive will shift demand towards US-made watches, whose price remains the same. The US’s watchmaking industry would grow and employ more people, which sounds like a solid gain for the US economy.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. Foreign countries need to sell goods and services to the US in order to obtain the dollars that pay for American exports. If foreign countries sell less because of tariffs, they are also going to buy less American products.

This means that any expansion of the US watch industry would be matched by a contraction in other American industries, such as aircraft manufacturing or financial services, which the US successfully exports. Employment may increase in one sector, but it will decrease somewhere else.

And that’s not all. The reallocation of labour across industries is costly, as people lose industry-specific skills and need to be retrained. But more important, consider why the US was importing foreign watches in the first place. Clearly, because foreign manufacturers are better at watchmaking: they produce watches of any given quality for a lower price than America can.

The same is true for American export industries, which sell abroad because they are more productive than their foreign counterparts. The reallocation of labour away from American export industries, and towards other industries such as watchmaking, is a shift away from what Americans can do best. It renders the whole country less productive, making everyone poorer in the process.

Be grateful for the dollar

The third reason, finally, is that the US gets a very good deal when it comes to paying for its trade deficit.

When country A wants to buy goods and services from country B, a difficulty arises. Country A has its own currency to pay with, but this currency has no value in country B.

If trade is perfectly balanced between the two countries (they buy and sell the same amounts to each other), an easy solution is at hand. Country B will accept country A’s currency and immediately give it back, as payment for the goods and services it buys from country A, which are of the same value.

If there is a trade deficit, where country A imports more than it exports, country B will still accept country A’s currency if there is something else which can be bought with it. That “something else” is assets, which can be financial (stocks or bonds) or real (such as property). So a country with a trade deficit must sacrifice some of its assets to foreign ownership.

In the case of the US, however, there is one important difference. If a foreign country ends up with a positive balance of dollars because it sells more to the US than it buys, it may not use all these extra dollars to buy US assets.

Instead, it often wants to keep those dollars, in the form of banknotes, within the local economy. This happens because people around the world trust and value US dollars, often more than their own currency, and may prefer to use American notes for purposes such as savings and large transactions. A vast amount of dollar banknotes – currently worth over 1 trillion dollars – are in circulation outside the US economy.

This phenomenon translates into a great bonanza for the US. It has the unique privilege of being able to run a trade deficit with the rest of world, consuming more goods and services from other countries than it provides to them, and yet does not compensate those countries entirely with American assets.

Instead, it compensates them with pieces of paper it produces at essentially no cost. Foreigners are happy to hold these American pieces of paper because they have monetary status in their countries – something that would not be true for any other currency. Trying to shut down the US’s trade deficit also means trying to cut off this substantial source of wealth for the country.

Luis Angeles 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. Three reasons why so many economists disagree with Donald Trump’s tariffs – https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-so-many-economists-disagree-with-donald-trumps-tariffs-267046

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrea Scotti, Senior lecturer of Physical Chemistry, Lund University

Whether you prefer your spaghetti al dente or soothingly soft, it can be difficult to achieve perfection at home. Many of us will have experienced our pasta disintegrating into a beige mush – particularly for gluten-free alternatives.

So how much water and salt do you really need, and how long do you cook it for if you want optimal results? What’s more, how should you amend your cooking process when using gluten-free pasta? A recent study my colleagues and I conducted, published in Food Hydrocolloids, has provided answers by unveiling the physics behind the cooking process.

Turning to the Diamond light source, the UK’s national synchrotron (a circular particle accelerator) facility, we studied the scattering of X-rays off pasta (at low angles) to uncover its internal structure. Then we went to Isis and to the Institute Laue Langevin, which are neutron facilities in the UK and France, and used neutrons (which make up the atomic nucleus along with protons) to shed light on the microstructure of regular and gluten-free spaghetti under different cooking conditions.

The study shows how the hidden structure of pasta changes as it cooks, and why gluten-free versions behave so differently.

The setup enabled us to investigate the structure of starches and gluten within spaghetti on small scales that spanned from tens of times the radius of an atom to thousands of times. In this way, we could compare the transformation that happens in regular and gluten-free pasta while they are cooked in different conditions, such as being cooked for too long or cooked without salt.

Our experiments allowed us to “see” different components of the pasta separately. By mixing normal and “heavy water” (which contains an isotope called deuterium), we could make either the gluten or the starch invisible to the neutron beam. In this way, we could effectively isolate each structure in turn, and understand the effects of starches and gluten during cooking.

The power of gluten and salt

Our study reveals that, in regular pasta, the gluten acts as a strong scaffold that holds starch granules in place even during boiling, giving the pasta its firmness and slow digestion rate. In gluten-free pasta, the starch granules swell and collapse more easily – explaining the mushy texture and faster breakdown experienced when this kind of pasta is cooked in non-optimal conditions.

We also probed the effect of salt in the cooking water on the pasta structure. What we found is that salt doesn’t just make pasta taste better; it also strongly affects the microstructure of the spaghetti. When regular pasta is boiled in salted water, the gluten maintains its structure, and the starch granules are less deteriorated by the cooking process.

So how much salt should you add to preserve the pasta’s microscopic structure? Our study revealed that the optimal salt level is seven grams per litre of water, with more water required for larger amounts of pasta. The pasta should be cooked ten or 11 minutes in the case of regular and gluten-free altertnative, respectively. In contrast, when the salt concentration was doubled, the internal order broke down more rapidly and the structure within the starches granules was significantly altered by the cooking process.

In gluten-free pasta, the story was different again due to the lack of protection of gluten. Even small amounts of salt couldn’t compensate for the absence of gluten. Artificial compounds of processed starches, used by companies to substitute the gluten, degraded fast. The most extreme example of this degradation occurred when the gluten-free spaghetti was cooked too long, for instance, for 13 instead of 11 minutes, and in very salty water.

The main finding was therefore that gluten-free pasta is structurally more fragile and less tolerant of being cooked both for too long and with the wrong amount of salt.

Improving gluten-free alternatives

Understanding pasta’s structure on these very small scales, that are invisible even under a microscope, will help the design of better gluten-free foods. In particular, the hope is to obtain gluten-free alternative that are more resilient to bad cooking conditions and are more similar in texture to regular spaghetti.

Regular wheat pasta has a low glycaemic index because the gluten slows how starch granules are broken down during digestion. Gluten-free pasta, made from rice and corn flour, often lacks this structure, meaning sugars may be released faster. With neutron scattering, food scientists can now identify which ingredients and cooking conditions best recreate gluten’s structure.

This is also a story about how cutting-edge experimental tools, mainly used for fundamental research, are transforming food research. Neutron scattering played a fundamental role in advancing our understanding of magnetic materials, batteries, polymers and proteins. Now it is also helping us to explain how everyday foods behave at the microscopic level.

Andrea Scotti receives funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the Swedish Research Council.

– ref. How to cook the perfect pasta – we used particle accelerators and reactors to discover the key – https://theconversation.com/how-to-cook-the-perfect-pasta-we-used-particle-accelerators-and-reactors-to-discover-the-key-268416

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol

You may not give much thought to your armpits, apart from checking whether they need another swipe of deodorant. But this small, often overlooked patch of skin is one of the body’s busiest crossroads. Beneath those folds lies a complex network of glands, nerves and lymph nodes that keep you cool, fight infection and even influence how you smell to others.

The armpit’s design allows flexibility and free movement of the arm, while serving as a vital passageway for blood vessels and nerves that link the limb to the torso. It is also home to sweat glands that regulate temperature and release pheromones, and to clusters of lymph nodes that drain fluid and help defend the body against infection.

Yet for some people, this humble underarm becomes the site of something far more troublesome than a bit of body odour. A distressing, recurring condition called hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) can turn these hidden hollows and other areas where skin rubs together into a source of chronic pain, infection and scarring. Once thought to be rare, HS is increasingly recognised and diagnosed, though still widely misunderstood.

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Several conditions can develop within the tissues of the armpit (or axilla, as it is known anatomically). One of these is the rather bewilderingly named hidradenitis suppurativa.

The name translates to “inflammation of the sweat glands with pus,” and that is essentially what the condition involves. HS is a chronic condition that affects areas of the body rich in sweat glands and hair follicles, particularly where the skin folds and rubs together. This means it can appear not only in the armpits but also in the groin, around the breasts and buttocks, and in the perineal area. Friction in these regions may make the condition worse.

The inflammation appears to be driven by a process similar to autoimmunity, where the body mistakenly attacks its own tissues. It seems that blockage of the hair follicles occurs first, which then triggers involvement of the sweat glands. The condition is estimated to be nearly three times more common in women than in men and may also run in families. Other risk factors include increased levels of androgens, which are hormones such as testosterone that increase after puberty, as well as smoking and obesity.

Research also shows that people of colour are disproportionately affected. Both UK and US studies have found that HS is more common and often more severe among black and Hispanic patients. These groups are also more likely to experience delays in diagnosis or have their symptoms mistaken for other infections or boils. The reasons are complex and include differences in healthcare access, underrecognition of how HS presents on darker skin tones and broader structural inequities within medical systems. Early recognition and equitable care can help prevent advanced disease and reduce the burden of pain, scarring and stigma that HS can cause.

HS symptoms

Inflamed and blocked glands appear on the skin as hard nodules or swellings. Infection can turn these into abscesses that may grow to significant sizes. Prolonged inflammation and infection can lead to the formation of sinuses, which are tunnels beneath the skin that connect nodules, and to scarring. This can cause painful, oozing or foul-smelling skin, sometimes restricting upper limb movement if scar tissue forms.

These processes resemble those seen in acne vulgaris, which is the medical term for common acne. In fact, one of the alternative names for HS is acne inversa, referring to the inverted skin folds where it occurs. Like acne, it is not caused by poor hygiene and it is not contagious, despite common misconceptions.

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When it comes to managing HS, some treatments overlap with those used for acne. Antibiotics such as lymecycline, which have both antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, can help prevent flare-ups. Lifestyle changes are also recommended, such as wearing loose clothing and losing weight to reduce skin folds and friction.

In some cases, HS can cause large abscesses, sometimes five to ten centimetres across, which may require surgery to drain the pus or remove scar tissue. Because of the long-term nature and scarring associated with severe disease, new biological therapies such as adalimumab, which work by calming the immune system’s overreaction, are now being used to manage more advanced cases.

HS diagnoses are rising each year. This could reflect an actual increase in numbers or simply better recognition. It may seem surprising that such a condition could be so often missed or misdiagnosed, but it happens.

HS can mimic other skin conditions that affect the folds. It is common to experience irritation from sweating or shaving in the armpits or groin, leading to folliculitis, which is inflammation of the hair follicles. Because HS lesions tend to flare and then subside, sometimes improving with short-term antibiotics, they are often mistaken for other problems and treated incompletely, sometimes for years.

Historically, HS has been poorly recognised. Its variable symptoms and the embarrassment and stigma that often surrounds skin changes in intimate areas have contributed to delays in diagnosis. Early detection can prevent progression to severe disease, so any recurrent skin changes are worth discussing with a doctor.

The armpit may seem insignificant, but for those affected by hidradenitis suppurativa, it can shape daily life in painful and isolating ways. Too many people live with the condition for years before receiving a diagnosis or effective treatment. Recognising it as a medical condition rather than a hygiene problem is a crucial step in changing that.

Dan Baumgardt 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. Hidradenitis suppurativa: the painful skin condition that can hide in plain sight – https://theconversation.com/hidradenitis-suppurativa-the-painful-skin-condition-that-can-hide-in-plain-sight-266651

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Gentle, Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University

Animals in children’s stories are often depicted as living in neat mum, dad and children family units. Examples include Fantastic Mr Fox, 101 Dalmatians and, more recently, Peppa Pig and Bluey. But, this might leave people feeling like outsiders if they don’t come from a traditional nuclear family set-up.

In reality, there is a huge diversity in what family looks like within the animal kingdom.

In biparental care, a male and female animal raise their offspring together. This type of parental behaviour is predominantly seen in birds and is rare in invertebrates, fish and mammals.

Mute swans are a good example, where mum and dad can share the responsibilities of incubating eggs, feeding the cygnets and teaching them to be independent.

Single-parenting represents the most common form of family in the animal kingdom.
Usually, males compete for access to females. This is because the female invests more in reproduction than the male. For example, in a typical mammal, the female is pregnant, suckles the young and raises it.

In some cases, such as leopards, the female raises the offspring completely on her own. In fact, single mothers are found in around 90% of mammals.

Such single-parenting is seen in children’s books like The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. Although, there are few stories where the mother chooses to single-parent, unlike in the animal kingdom where females of some species benefit from raising offspring alone.

For example, animals who are left in a nest while their parent or parents look for food may be safer from predators if only one parent is leaving scent trails as they come and go.

Sometimes the male raises the young on his own. This is more frequent in fish and amphibians, where the offspring hatch from eggs. The male midwife toad wraps his fertilised eggs around his back legs and carries them with him until they are ready to hatch.

Darwin’s frog has an alternative parenting tactic where the male carries his tadpoles in his vocal sac for six to eight weeks, until they are developed enough to face the world.

These types of behaviour allow the females to focus on feeding, which means she can produce more eggs for the next batch of young. Male parenting is also much less common in children’s books, but a popular exception is The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson.

Homosexuality

Scientists have observed same sex couplings in over 500 species, including vultures, dolphins, giraffe, bonobos, geckos and dragonflies. Although life-long homosexuality in the wild is rare, in which animals forego heterosexual relationships, permanent male-male couplings have been seen in sheep.

Also, female albatrosses are known to sometimes reject males once their eggs have been fertilised, choosing to raise offspring in female-female relationships.

One of the most famous cases of homosexuality in captivity is that of Roy and Silo, a pair of chinstrap penguins from Central Park Zoo in New York, who formed such a strong bond in the early 2000s that the keeper gave them an egg to hatch and raise.

This story was turned into a popular children’s book And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson. Unfortunately, Silo’s head was turned by a female named Scrappy, ending his six-year relationship with Roy.

Same-sex parenting can be extended to species where large family units develop, such as elephants. Generally, elephant family units consist of several related females and their calves, led by an older matriarch. Sisters and grandmothers undertake allomothering, babysitting the youngsters, teaching them foraging, vigilance and defence, and sometimes even take on communal suckling of infants.

The story of one of the most famous communal parent species, the honey bee, has been turned into a novel for adults. The Bees by Laline Paull is the story of worker bee Flora 717, who helps feed her newborn sisters, and her life in the hive.

Communal parenting doesn’t have to be restricted to one sex, though. Many animals, including meerkats, are cooperative breeders. The young stay at home to help their parents to raise their baby siblings rather than go off and breed on their own. Most cooperative breeders are totipotent, which means they choose to help out temporarily. But some, such as naked mole rats are permanent helpers, foregoing their own reproduction.

Fostering and adoption

There are plenty of cases of animals being manipulated into raising the young of another. The most famous case is the common cuckoo where the female lays its egg in the nest of a different species, leaving the foster parent to raise the chick.

This deceptive brood-parasitism also happens within a species. For example, sometimes female starlings dump their eggs in the nests of other starlings.

Deliberate fostering and adopting is surprisingly common in the animal kingdom. Occasionally, adoption even happens between species. In 2004, a wild capuchin monkey was seen caring, for a common marmoset although it is not known how long this relationship lasted.

One of my favourite children’s storybooks is The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett, where a mallard adopts an egg that eventually hatches an alligator.

There are also many animals that hang out in friendship groups for a decent part of their adolescence. This is common among long-lived species, such as red deer, where bachelor herds often stay together until they reach sexual maturity.

Like humans who are orphaned early, estranged from their parents, or just leaving home, animals find family among their peers, learning from them, and creating strong bonds. Young, swifts form “screaming parties” for protection while looking for places to breed in future years.

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The final type of parenting seen in the animal kingdom is one that is, thankfully, rarely seen in humans – no parenting. The young of these animals are generally numerous, to ensure that some survive. They are also born to be independent of others.

This parenting style is typical of species such as fish and reptiles, and invertebrates including butterflies and spiders. Some types of solitary wasp trap paralysed grasshoppers in their nest, plug it shut and then abandon the nest.

This ensures a food supply for their young when they hatch. But, if their mother hasn’t provided enough food, larger wasp larvae will snack on their siblings instead. Three quarters of wasp larvae in nests end up as food for their siblings.

So, nuclear families are definitely not the norm when it comes to the animal kingdom. Species adopt a variety of parental care methods to ensure that their genes are passed on to the next generation.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Louise Gentle works for Nottingham Trent University.

– ref. Children’s books feature tidy nuclear families – but the animal kingdom tells a different story – https://theconversation.com/childrens-books-feature-tidy-nuclear-families-but-the-animal-kingdom-tells-a-different-story-265532

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sojin Lim, Reader in Asia Pacific Studies, Co-Director of the International Institute of Korean Studies, University of Lancashire

From 150 titles to a longlist of 13, six novels have been shortlisted for the 2025 Booker prize. Our academics review the finalists ahead of the announcement of the winner on November 10.

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

Middle-aged Tom waits 12 years to keep his promise to leave his unfaithful wife when their youngest child starts college, then embarks on a roadtrip across an American landscape both vivid and commonplace.

Tom recounts the journey and his memories, his voice fluctuating between disclosure and holding back. The reader is the silent party, compelled to reflect: do you resemble the wife craving emotional impact, the son constructing amicable distance, the daughter thrust into change, the ex-partner successful but unsatisfied, or Tom himself? There is nothing really extraordinary, and yet the story is captivating.

Despite one significant obstacle, Tom never expresses regret for risks not taken. He has unanticipated glimpses of alternative paths, and learns the joys of routine, a steady career and ordinary family life. A film adaptation is inevitable; its challenge will be to capture the gentle melancholic tension of this thoughtful novel.

Jenni Ramone is an associate professor of postcolonial and global literatures at Nottingham Trent University

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The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

An atmospheric domestic drama set during 1963’s “Big Freeze”, the novel follows the lives of two married couples – Eric and Irene, Bill and Rita – in the south-west of England over a few bitter winter months. Due to the intensity of events taking place over a short period of time with just a few characters, The Land in Winter feels claustrophobic, almost soap opera-like.

The wives are both pregnant and they bond, albeit tentatively, over impending motherhood. Despite being the novel’s protagonists, Rita and Irene feel like characters who have things done to them, rather than having their own agency.

Their pregnancies compound this, presented as inescapable obligations as opposed to happy, wanted circumstances. In a novel thick with metaphor and symbolism (the women’s friendship begins when Rita gifts Irene freshly laid eggs) it is perhaps unsurprising that a third pregnancy, that of a cow on Bill and Rita’s farm, foreshadows the trauma and tragedy experienced by the novel’s end.

Stevie Marsden is a lecturer in publishing studies at Edinburgh Napier University

Flashlight by Susan Choi

Susan Choi’s Flashlight opens with a disorienting event. Ten-year-old Louisa and her father Serk walk along a seaside breakwater at dusk, a flashlight in hand. By morning, Louisa is found barely alive. Serk is missing and presumed drowned. Instead of offering immediate answers, the novel follows three intertwined lives – Serk, Louisa, and Anne – across continents and decades.

What begins as a mystery expands into intimate family drama that takes in broader historical shifts, spanning across the Pacific and from the 1970s onwards. Serk, an ethnic Korean born in Japan, emigrates to the US and navigates a life shaped by statelessness and historical upheaval. Anne, Louisa’s American mother, embodies another thread of rupture and inheritance. Together, their stories form a constellation of absence and unresolved loss.

Choi illuminates the hidden currents of identity, migration and disappearance with remarkable skill. Flashlight is an ambitious, emotionally resonant work that rewards close reading.

Sojin Lim is a reader in Asia Pacific studies at University of Lancashire

Flesh by David Szalay

The titles of Szalay’s two Booker-nominated novels, this year’s Flesh and 2016’s All That Man Is, could be interchangeable. Both explore contemporary European masculinity, but where All That Man Is did this through nine short stories, Flesh is a novel about the eventful life of one Hungarian, István, from aged 15 to mid-life.

Here is sex, infidelity, murder, war. But the novel is spare rather than voluptuous, trimmed to the bone rather than fleshy. István’s thoughts and tragedies are often absent from the writing. We don’t hear about his time in a young offenders’ institution or anything at all about his father, for example. We learn that he is physically brave and attractive to women. “Flesh” then refers to the way he is seen, as only a body, a member of the new working classes whose lives are defined by precarity.

Kept outside, overhearing only his bare responses – “Okay” – readers become complicit in this failure to consider all that man is. And it is precisely this innovatively spare narration which makes the novel so deeply affecting.

Tory Young is an associate professor of literature at Anglia Ruskin University

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

At 35, Kiran Desai became the youngest female author to be awarded the Booker prize when her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, won in 2006. The follow up, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, has been twenty years in the making.

Set between the 1990s and early 2000s, Desai’s elaborately structured novel deftly traverses the US, India, Italy and Mexico as it spins the tale of two Indian-born migrants: aspiring novelist Sonia Shah studying in Vermont and struggling journalist Sunny Bhati in New York. Their thwarted romance is instigated by their respective meddling north Indian grandparents, who reside in mouldering mansions symbolic of their declining fortunes and a decaying colonialism, making this 667-page love story an epic, multi-generational family saga.

It dramatises how nation, class, gender, race and history shape its large cast of characters, each explored in detailed vignettes. Desai shows formidable insight as she ponders the cultural values of the US and India, the nature of loneliness, ruthless liberal individualism, postcolonial disintegration and violence, but also creativity.

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Read more:
Kiran Desai’s first novel in nearly 20 years is shortlisted for the Booker. Last time, she won it

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Ruvani Ranasinha is a professor of global literature at King’s College London

Audition by Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura’s Audition (2025) consists of two seemingly contradictory parts. In the first, a stage and screen actress in her late 40s meets a much younger man in a Manhattan restaurant. He has asked for the meeting because he suspects he may be her secret son, given up for adoption as a baby. She reveals that this cannot be: she had an abortion.

In the second part, the young man is the woman’s son, and has grown up with her and her husband, although he has, as an adult, argued with them and left home. Now he wants to return with his girlfriend.

These two seemingly contradictory scenarios are balanced, played against one another, and the tension between these “sliding doors” variant realities throws into relief the uncertainties, intermittencies and variabilities of existence. A pared-down novella, directly written and intriguingly characterised, this is a memorably ambiguous meditation on parenthood, performance, relationship and commitment.

Adam Roberts is professor of 19th-century literature at Royal Holloway

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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. Booker prize 2025: the six shortlisted books, reviewed by experts – https://theconversation.com/booker-prize-2025-the-six-shortlisted-books-reviewed-by-experts-267508