Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Catherine Manning, Associate Professor in Psychology, University of Birmingham

It is the time of year when decorations appear everywhere and everyone has a preferred style, from bright flashing lights to something more understated. Christmas decorations are meant to be cheerful, yet for some people, certain types of visual input can be surprisingly difficult to tolerate.

No one wants to dampen the festive mood, but it is worth knowing that decorations can cause discomfort in ways that are easy to overlook.

Flashing lights are a familiar Christmas choice, probably because they grab attention. We have known for a long time that flashing lights can trigger seizures in people with epilepsy because rapid flashes can synchronise activity in parts of the brain that are already more susceptible to overstimulation.

Autistic people can also be sensitive to flashing lights because many autistic people have heightened sensory responsiveness. People with migraines may be affected because bright, flickering contrast can stimulate the visual cortex and lead to headaches.

Even without these conditions, flashing lights can feel unpleasant. Faster flashes are usually worse. Anything above three flashes per second tends to more easily overload the visual cortex.

Since many modern lights have adjustable settings, slowing the flash rate or turning the flash off entirely can make the display more comfortable for people who are sensitive to this type of stimulation.

Invisible flicker

Lights can also be uncomfortable even when they appear steady. Some produce a rapid flicker that is too fast for you to see. A quick way to check is to record the lights on your phone using the video “slo mo” setting. Invisible flicker can affect reading ability,
cause headaches and increase visual fatigue.

People with sensory sensitivities, which can include heightened sensitivity to noise, touch, light, colour contrast or movement, are especially likely to be affected by flicker. Researchers are still exploring how flicker affects different groups, and the precise mechanism is not fully understood. But we know that certain lights bother some people far more than others.

Keep cool or stay warm?

When buying white Christmas lights, you will usually see two options. Cool white resembles bright daylight and warm white looks more like sunrise or sunset.

In general, cooler light can help with concentration because it mimics the colour temperature of daylight, which signals alertness to the brain. Warmer light tends to feel more relaxing as it resembles evening light when you are winding down. The choice depends on the atmosphere you want to create.

Warmer light can be particularly welcome when it is cold outside because it can make people feel physically warmer. People with sensory sensitivities, including many autistic people, may prefer warm white because cool white can feel harsher on the eyes, which makes it more uncomfortable to look at for long periods.

Festive colour schemes often rely on red and green. Red, however, is widely reported to be the most uncomfortable colour. One reason is because the photoreceptors responding to red light lead to more brain activity in the gamma range, which is a fast brain rhythm.

Discomfort is greater when red is a deep red or when it flickers. It can also feel more intrusive when displayed next to strong contrasting colours such as green or blue . Choosing reds and greens that are closer in tone to each other and avoiding alternating red and green lights can help reduce the strain.

Brightness also matters. Brighter lights are generally more uncomfortable for most people, and this is particularly true for people with sensory processing differences. Strong light feels more intense and can trigger quicker fatigue or discomfort.

For many people, visual discomfort caused by lights is mild and passes quickly. For others, it can lead to tiredness, nausea, headaches and feeling overwhelmed. People vary widely in how sensitive they are. Knowing that not everyone experiences decorations in the same way is a simple step to support friends and family. Something as small as changing a light setting or switching off certain decorations when someone visits can genuinely help.

Christmas decorations bring joy and brighten the darkest months of the year. With a little thought about how different lights and colours affect people, we can keep the festive sparkle while making the season more comfortable for everyone.

Catherine Manning currently receives funding from the Medical Research Council and The Leverhulme Trust, and has previously received funding from the Wellcome Trust.

Arnold J Wilkins has previously received funding from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.

– ref. Bright, flickering and flashing lights really can be bad for you – here’s how to have a visually comfortable Christmas – https://theconversation.com/bright-flickering-and-flashing-lights-really-can-be-bad-for-you-heres-how-to-have-a-visually-comfortable-christmas-271502

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yerzhan Tokbolat, Lecturer in Finance, Queen’s University Belfast

Russia’s wartime economy is getting weaker as the war in Ukraine approaches its fourth anniversary, according to a recent report by PeaceRep, a research group led by the University of Edinburgh. The report, Against the Clock? Why Russia’s War Economy is Running Out of Time, finds that Russia is being forced to spend aggressively on the war, while its earning abilities have dropped significantly.

The funding source used to finance much of this spending, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, also looks to be dwindling. According to the report, around 76% of the fund’s US$148 billion (£110 billion) pre-war liquid reserves was spent within the first three years of the war.

In an article in May, I argued that Russian leader Vladimir Putin could afford a drawn-out war because he had spent more than 20 years preparing for it. Under Putin’s leadership Russia has consistently posted budget surpluses, amassed foreign currency reserves and reduced its reliance on western debt.

The question now is how far can that preparation carry the Russian economy? For the moment, it appears Russia can still sustain the war. But it can do so only by drawing heavily on earlier buffers, such as foreign reserves and the sovereign wealth fund, while diverting an ever-growing share of national resources towards the military.

The strain on Russia’s economy is being compounded by mounting external pressures. The EU, which is currently the largest buyer of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) and pipeline gas, announced in early December that it would end its imports of Russian LNG in 2026. Imports of pipeline gas will end the following year.

But Russia’s revenue streams have remained relatively resilient throughout the war. Russia has diversified its exports of crude oil, with China now accounting for around 47%, India about 38% and Turkey roughly 6%. These revenue flows, together with earlier economic preparation, have helped sustain the three core areas that shape any wartime economy: industrial output, fiscal capacity and social resilience.

According to 2024 analysis by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, war-related output in Russia surged by about 60% in the early years of the conflict. That expansion still underpins Russia’s industrial base today. War-related industries have accounted for almost all of manufacturing growth since the invasion.

Energy revenues also continue to bolster the federal budget, though the government is relying increasingly on domestic borrowing and reserve drawdowns to fund deficits. And on the household side, higher wages in military-linked sectors and targeted government payments to the families of mobilised soldiers have helped soften the impact of inflation. Income from mobilisation has even lifted household savings, particularly in poorer regions of Russia.

Yet this appearance of stability reflects an economy being stretched rather than strengthened. Defence-related activity now dominates manufacturing, drawing labour and capital away from civilian sectors. Civilian industries are losing workers, machinery and investment, which is deepening structural stagnation and will make future economic recovery more difficult. What looks like resilience is, in practice, a system operating under growing strain.

Russia’s unsustainable economy

The central question now is how long can Russia’s remaining buffers support its militarised economy? Labour shortages have become structural rather than temporary, and inflationary pressures have persisted even amid weakening growth. Demographic pressures add to this squeeze, with mobilisation, emigration and long-term population decline shrinking the workforce available to both industry and the military.

Technological limits are tightening too. Export controls have cut Russia off from many advanced components, increasing reliance on parallel imports and domestic substitutes that are often more expensive or less reliable. This is slowing production and constraining the sophistication of new military systems.

A notable shift is also emerging in how the war is financed. With industry and labour close to capacity, and the EU phasing out Russian gas, the government can no longer rely on economic expansion or strong energy revenues to support the budget.

The new three-year budget, submitted to parliament in late September, raises VAT and expands the tax burden on small businesses. This will pass more of the cost of the war on to households and firms, a model that will only remain viable while the public tolerates higher taxes and gradually declining living standards. That makes its long-term sustainability uncertain.

How long Russia can continue fighting will also depend on forces beyond its borders. China and India are essential buyers of Russian oil, slowing the point at which fiscal pressures fully tighten. Meanwhile, tighter US and EU sanctions are constraining Russia’s access to advanced technology and complicating the logistics of foreign trade.

Geopolitics adds another layer of uncertainty. The latest US-drafted peace proposal for Ukraine echoes several longstanding Russian demands, while a major corruption scandal in Kyiv has weakened Ukraine’s political position at a sensitive moment.

These developments do not remove Russia’s economic vulnerabilities. But they do shape the environment in which Moscow navigates them, lowering the political cost of continuing the war even as economic pressures rise.

Russia’s war economy is not collapsing, but neither is it stable. It survives by pushing strain into the future – into labour markets, public finances and the everyday lives of Russian households.

The key question is how long the system can keep absorbing these pressures before they begin to reinforce one another. In that sense, Russia’s wartime economy still has time – but it is increasingly time borrowed from the future.

Yerzhan Tokbolat 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. Russia’s war economy is not collapsing, but neither is it stable – https://theconversation.com/russias-war-economy-is-not-collapsing-but-neither-is-it-stable-271700

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

The festive movie season is upon us, and one of my perennial favourites is Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I will die on this hill: it is better than the original. But rewatching it as an adult raises an awkward question. How on earth did the Wet Bandits survive the first film at all, let alone escape without lasting injuries?

Ten-year-old Kevin McCallister, the boy left home alone, sets up traps that are played for laughs, but many involve levels of force that would be catastrophic in real life. A 100lb (45kg) bag of cement to the head, bricks dropped from height, or heavy tools swung at the face are not things a human body can simply shrug off. High-impact trauma to the head and neck rarely ends well.

To understand why, it helps to know a little about skull anatomy. The skull has a protective “vault” that encases the brain, while the bones of the face contain hollow spaces called sinuses. These spaces reduce the weight of the skull but also act as a biological crumple zone, helping to absorb force and protect the brain during impacts. But that protection has limits.

A rough calculation of the forces involved when a 100lb bag of cement strikes the head suggests instant fatal injury. The neck simply cannot absorb that level of force. To put that in perspective, research shows that the cervical spine suffers severe damage above about 1,000 newtons of force. A 100lb (around 45kg) cement bag already exerts roughly 440 newtons under its own weight, and when falling, it decelerates over a very short distance on impact.

While the exact force depends on the height of the fall and how quickly the bag comes to a stop, even conservative assumptions place the impact well above 1,000 newtons, easily exceeding thresholds for catastrophic neck injury.

Beyond that, there is a high risk of brain herniation, where swollen brain tissue is forced into spaces it does not belong. This can compress areas that control breathing and movement, often leading to coma and death.

Head injuries are only part of the problem. Many of Kevin’s traps would also place enormous stress on the chest and major blood vessels. Falling forward from a height, being crushed by heavy objects, or being struck in the torso can cause severe internal injuries. These forces are commonly seen in high-speed, head-on car crashes. In extreme cases, the impact can rupture the aorta, the body’s main artery, which is almost always fatal.

Crush injuries elsewhere in the body can have serious and life-changing consequences. Even if they are not immediately deadly, they can cause internal bleeding that worsens over hours or days. Broken ribs, for example, can puncture the liver, kidneys or spleen, allowing blood to leak slowly into the abdomen. Damage to soft internal organs can also lead to infection, organ failure, or delayed death, depending on the severity.

Then there are the less obviously lethal moments. When Marv crashes into a shelf stacked with paint tins and the shelf falls on him, the impact alone could cause serious internal injury. And paint splashed into the eyes could cause chemical burns and blindness.

Simple slips and falls are not harmless either. The bones at the back of the skull are only about 6–7mm thick. A hard blow here can cause bleeding inside the skull. These brain bleeds do not always show symptoms immediately and may worsen over hours or days after what seemed like a minor bump.

Electricity is another recurring gag that would be anything but funny in reality. When Marv grabs the taps attached to an arc welder, he is exposed to electrical current that causes his muscles to contract uncontrollably. This is why people who touch live electrical sources often cannot let go. The current overrides the body’s normal nerve signals. Prolonged exposure increases the risk of disrupting the heart’s normal rhythm, potentially triggering cardiac arrest.

Despite what cartoons suggest, electricity does not make the skeleton visible – as we see happen to Marv. There is no X-ray radiation involved. To expose bone, you would need extremely high-voltage current, causing fourth-degree burns, which destroy skin, muscle and bone.

Piercing injuries also feature heavily. A nail through the foot is not just painful. It can damage nerves and soft tissues, fracture bones, and introduce bacteria deep into the wound. This raises the risk of serious infection, including tetanus.

Finally, there is Harry’s infamous blowtorch scene. Being set alight for 22 seconds is more than enough time to cause permanent nerve damage, potentially destroying pain sensation altogether. While scalp skin is among the thickest on the body, it has relatively little cushioning underneath. This makes the underlying tissue and bone more vulnerable to deep burns, reaching third or even fourth degree severity, which can be lethal.

Add combustible kerosene to the mix and the risks escalate further. Exposure is linked to kidney damage, heart problems, central nervous system depression and serious respiratory issues.

In short, Harry and Marv are walking medical impossibilities. Surviving a second round of Kevin McCallister’s festive booby traps would require extraordinary luck, immediate trauma care, and months of rehabilitation. Even if they appeared outwardly fine, the internal damage would probably be devastating. Perhaps those lingering injuries explain why the Wet Bandits never made it back for another sequel.

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. Home Alone’s ‘Wet Bandits’ are medical miracles – https://theconversation.com/home-alones-wet-bandits-are-medical-miracles-271538

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dylan Ryan, Lecturer in Mechanical & Energy Engineering, Edinburgh Napier University

The internet is awash with adverts for various portable heaters, with claims that they will heat your house for pennies. Some are marketed as the “Tesla of the heating industry” (despite being nothing to do with Elon Musk’s carmaker), while others claim they can “heat up a house in three minutes”.

It’s an appealing message, particularly during cold snaps when energy bills are high and many households are looking for quick fixes. But are any of these claims remotely true?

The short answer is no. And the reasons why are rooted in some very basic physics.

One key detail often missing from these adverts: almost all electric heaters are already close to 100% efficient. That doesn’t mean they are cheap to run – only that nearly all the electricity they use ends up as heat.

Electric heaters work by passing a current through a wire, which then heats up. That heat is then transferred to the room either by warming the air (distributed with a fan) or by radiating heat directly from a hot surface. Even things that sound like “losses”, such as friction in a fan motor, still end up as heat inside the room.

This means there is no clever design or secret component that can make one plug-in heater fundamentally more efficient than another. Electricity use is almost entirely converted into heat. So when a product claims to heat more while using less electricity, alarm bells should ring.

‘Heating a house in three minutes’ breaks the laws of physics

Some adverts go further, claiming a small portable device can heat an entire house in just a few minutes. This is where the numbers really matter.

Heating a typical home means warming hundreds of cubic metres of air, as well as countering heat losses to the outside. That takes lots of energy. To do it quickly would require tens of kilowatts of power – far more than can be drawn safely from a standard household plug socket.

In practice, most portable heaters are deliberately limited to around 2 kilowatts or less, to avoid overheating wiring and sockets. That’s enough to warm a small room, but nowhere near enough to rapidly heat a whole house. Claims otherwise simply don’t stack up.

What’s actually inside these devices?

Independent reviewers and engineers have tested many of these viral heaters, and are not impressed. In one teardown, electrical engineer and YouTuber Clive Mitchell found that a widely advertised “miracle” heater only produced just 500-800 watts of heat – less than half the output of a standard plug-in heater.

In another case, Mitchell looked at a device so badly built he described it as an “automatic house igniter” (though technically that really would heat up your home in three minutes…). He said it partly in jest, but it is a serious issue: badly made electrical products can pose genuine fire risks, particularly if left running unattended.

This is one reason why consumer groups consistently recommend buying heaters that meet established safety standards, rather than relying on anonymous online brands with big claims and little accountability.

Another internet trend involves using candles or tea lights to heat homes, often putting them inside various contraptions made from flower pots or tin cans. This is both dangerous and ineffective. Fire brigades have repeatedly warned against these setups, which pose obvious fire and carbon monoxide risks.

They are also expensive. A single tea light produces about 35 watts of heat. Even burning continuously, candles deliver heat at a far higher cost per kilowatt hour than electricity – and many times more than gas. Putting a tea light under a flower pot doesn’t change how much energy it releases.

What actually is the best way to heat your home?

Portable electric heaters do have a place. They are useful for short-term, localised heating, such as warming a home office or bedrooom for a few hours. Used carefully, they can be a practical supplement to central heating.

But they are not designed to heat entire homes continuously. Even if you rely on electricity for heating, wall mounted radiators are going to be much better for that. They are wired directly into the mains and can pull more power safely and reliably than you can get from a plugin device.

That said, even the best electric radiator is still expensive to run compared to a gas boiler. This brings us to a broader issue: households aren’t just missing a miracle heater. It’s that energy itself is too expensive.

Future solutions for home heating

Heat pumps are one electric technology that may genuinely change things. They work like a fridge in reverse, extracting heat from the outside air and pumping it into your home.

Because they move heat rather than generate it directly, a heat pump can move more heat than it takes electricity to operate. On average an air source heat pump will provide 2.7 kilowatts of heat for every kilowatt-hour of electricity expended. This works out to about a third of the carbon emissions of a gas boiler.

The downside is cost and complexity. Heat pumps are expensive to install and work best in homes that are already well-insulated. They’re not ideal for everyone, but they are one of the few technologies that genuinely offer long-term savings.

Wood burning stoves are another option, but there can be serious issues with air pollution. The price is highly variable and it is generally more expensive than regular heating.

Of course, the whole reason such adverts and social media trends pop up around now is because it’s cold and people are looking for solutions to heat their homes. But unfortunately, there aren’t any quick fixes.

The only real solutions are slower and unglamorous: better insulation, more efficient heating, and reforms to lower the cost of energy itself.

If a heater claims it can warm your whole home for pennies, it’s almost certainly too good to be true. Even the best heater cannot rewrite the rules of physics.

Dylan Ryan 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. Can ‘miracle’ heaters really warm your home for pennies? The physics says no – https://theconversation.com/can-miracle-heaters-really-warm-your-home-for-pennies-the-physics-says-no-271818

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julie Posetti, Director of the Information Integrity Initiative, a project of TheNerve/Professor of Journalism, Chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy, City St George’s, University of London

The era of AI-assisted online violence is no longer looming. It has arrived. And it is reshaping the threat landscape for women who work in the public sphere around the world.

Our newly published report commissioned by UN Women offers early, urgent evidence indicating that generative AI is already being used to silence and harass women whose voices are vital to the preservation of democracy.

This includes journalists exposing corruption, activists mobilising voters and the human rights defenders working on the frontline of efforts to stall democratic backsliding.

Based on a global survey of women human rights defenders, activists, journalists and other public communicators from 119 countries, our research shows the extent to which generative AI is being weaponised to produce abusive content – in a multitude of forms – at scale.

We surveyed 641 women in five languages (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish). The surveys were disseminated via the trusted networks of UN Women, Unesco, the International Center for Journalists and a panel of 22 expert advisers representing intergovernmental organisations, the legal fraternity, civil society organisations, industry and academia.

According to our analysis, nearly one in four (24%) of the 70% of respondents who reported experiencing online violence in the course of their work identified abuse that was generated or amplified by AI tools. In the report, we define online violence as any act involving digital tools which results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, psychological, social, political or economic harm, or other infringements of rights and freedoms.

But the incidence is not evenly distributed across professions. Women who identify as writers or other public communicators, such as social media influencers, reported the highest exposure to AI-assisted online violence at 30.3%. Women human rights defenders and activists followed closely at 28.2%. Women journalists and media workers reported a still alarming 19.4% exposure rate.

Since the public launch of free, widely accessible generative AI tools such as ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the barriers to entry and cost of producing sexually explicit deepfake videos, gendered disinformation, and other forms of gender-based online violence have been significantly reduced. Meanwhile, the speed of distribution has intensified.

The result is a digital landscape in which harmful, misogynistic content can be generated rapidly by anyone with a smart phone and access to a generative AI chatbot. Social media algorithms, meanwhile, are tuned to boost the reach of the hateful and abusive material, which then proliferates. And it can generate considerable personal, political and often financial gains for the perpetrators and facilitators, including technology companies.

Meanwhile, recent research highlights AI both as a driver of disinformation and as a potential solution, powering synthetic content detection systems and counter-measures. But there’s limited evidence of how effective these detection tools are.

Many jurisdictions also still lack clear legal frameworks that address deepfake abuse and other harms enabled by AI-generated media, such as financial scams and digital impersonation. This is especially the case when the attack is gendered, rather than purely political or financial. This is due to the inherently nuanced and often insidious nature of misogynistic hate speech, along with the evident indifference of lawmakers to women’s suffering.

Our findings underscore an urgent two-fold challenge. There’s a desperate need for stronger tools to identify, monitor, report and repel AI-assisted attacks. And legal and regulatory mechanisms must be established that require platforms and AI developers to prevent their technologies from being deployed to undermine women’s rights.

When online abuse leads to ‘real-world’ attacks

We can’t treat these AI-related findings as isolated statistics. They exist amid broadening online violence against women in public life. They are also situated within a wider and deeply unsettling pattern – the vanishing boundary between online violence and offline harm.

Four in ten (40.9%) women we surveyed reported experiencing offline attacks, abuse or harassment that they linked to online violence. This includes physical assault, stalking, swatting and verbal harassment. The data confirms what survivors have been telling us for years: digital violence is not “virtual” at all. In fact, it is often only the first act in a cycle of escalating harm.

For women journalists, the trend is especially stark. In a comparable 2020 survey, 20% of respondents reported experiencing offline attacks associated with online violence. But five years later, that figure has more than doubled to 42%. This dangerous trajectory should be a wake-up call for news organisations, governments and big tech companies alike.

When online violence becomes a pathway to physical intimidation, the chilling effect extends far beyond individual targets. It becomes a structural threat to freedom of expression and democracy.

In the context of rising authoritarianism, where online violence and networked misogyny are typical features of the playbook for rolling back democracy, the role of politicians in perpetrating online violence cannot be ignored. In the 2020 Unesco-published survey of women journalists, 37% of respondents identified politicians and public office holders as the most common offenders.

The situation has only deteriorated since 2020, with the evolution of a continuum of violence against women in the public sphere. Offline abuse, such as politicians and pubic office holders targeting female journalists during media conferences, can trigger an escalation of online violence that, in turn, can exacerbate offline harm.

This cycle has been documented all over the world, in the stories of notable women journalists like Maria Ressa in the Philippines, Rana Ayyub in India and the assassinated Maltese investigative jouralist Daphne Caruana Galizia. These women bravely spoke truth to power and were targeted by their respective governments – online and offline – as a result.

The evidence of abuse against women in public life we have uncovered during our research signals a need for more creative technological interventions employing the principles of “human rights by design”. These are safeguards recommended by a range of international organisations which build in protections for human rights at every stage of AI design. It also signals the need for stronger and more proactive legal and policy responses, greater platform accountability, political responsibility, and better safety and support systems for women in public life.

Julie Posetti is the Director of the Information Integrity Initiative, a project of TheNerve, the digital forensics lab run by the Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, which is a partner associated with the UN Women study.

This research was funded by the EU-UN Women ACT to End Violence against Women programme, and the report was co-authored by Dr. Pauline Renaud, Nermine Aboulez and Nabeelah Shabbir.

Kaylee Williams and Lea Hellmueller 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. AI tools are being used to subject women in public life to online violence – https://theconversation.com/ai-tools-are-being-used-to-subject-women-in-public-life-to-online-violence-271703