Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University

Jamaicans voted Andrew Holness, the leader of the centre-right Jamaica Labour party (JLP), into power for a third consecutive term on September 3. Holness beat Mark Golding of the People’s National party (PNP) in a tight election, with the JLP winning 34 seats and the PNP 29.

A head of state winning a third straight term is a rare feat in a participatory democracy. There are several factors that have contributed to Holness’s enduring appeal before the voters.

Jamaica’s economy has improved since Holness first took office in 2016. Public debt fell from more than 140% of GDP in 2013 to 73.4% by 2024, while the World Bank expects the economy to grow by 1.7% in 2025.

At the same time, Holness has sought to upgrade and improve public access to beaches across Jamaica. Most of the country’s beaches are gated and held in the hands of hoteliers, expats and private companies.

The Holness government introduced an initiative in 2024 to create new “beach parks” for ordinary Jamaicans. It also strenghtened regulations to prevent private developments from blocking public access to beaches.

But what is likely to have contributed most to Holness’s victory are his crime-busting policies. Jamaica has been reeling under gang violence for the past 25 years. As recently as 2023, Jamaica had the second-highest rate of homicide in the Caribbean region – behind only Haiti.

Holness has overseen a steady decline in the country’s murder rate since then. There was an 18.7% decline in homicides in Jamaica from 2023 to 2024, while the island registered an even greater drop of 43% between 2024 and 2025.

Like in nearby gang-infested Haiti, criminality and violence has long thrived in Jamaica owing to political patronage. Most homicides there are carried out by gangs known as “posses”. These groups have in the past been linked to major Jamaican political parties.

The JLP and PNP both fostered the development of posses in inner-cities and deprived areas by providing them with weapons and a free hand to run protection rackets in exchange for political support. Jamaican politicians have on occasion also allegedly paid gangsters to carry out crimes for political gain.

In the 2010s, an article in the Irish Independent accused Bruce Golding, the then-Jamaican JLP prime minister, of openly using the powerful “Shower Posse” gang to intimidate opposition voters in elections three years earlier. Shower Posse was led by Christopher “Dudus” Coke, a convicted drug kingpin who is now jailed in the US.

Golding “categorically denied” the claims at the time, and called them part of a conspiracy to undermine his government. However, regardless of the accuracy of these specific allegations, collusion between criminals and political elites turned Jamaica into a hotbed of criminality and spiralling violence.

Responsive governance

Holness’s success in fighting crime rests on three pillars: fighting urban poverty, clamping down on the drugs trade and putting tight restrictions on the importation of firearms.

One of his main focuses has been enhancing social programmes to reduce the allure of gang membership. His government has put in place a social pension, while also raising the minimum wage. These policies contributed to the national poverty rate falling to 8.2% in 2023 – its lowest level since measurements began in 1989.

Holness also amended Jamaica’s 2014 Gang Suppression Act in 2021, a year into his second term. This gave the police and military more power to combat criminality and was followed by the launch of an anti-gang task force in 2022. The task force oversaw direct combat with national and transnational gangs operating within Jamaica.

That same year, Holness launched his “Get Every Illegal Gun” campaign. This initiative was accompanied by severe penalties for those found in possession of illegal weapons. The countrywide illegal firearms crackdown is widely attributed as having brought down rates of violence across Jamaica.

However, while Holness’s zero tolerance stance towards criminality has successfully tackled crime rates, there are some concerns about his approach. His critics often cite human rights violations associated with the introduction of a state of emergency in parts of the capital Kingston and 14 other parishes in 2022. The measure enabled the authorities to arrest people and search buildings without a warrant.

Holness justified the move by saying gang violence had forced Jamaicans “to hide under their beds, hide their daughters, can’t go to church, and they see their sons and their boyfriends and husbands killed. That’s the reality”.

The election of Holness for a third time is by no means a guarantee that Jamaica will complete its transition from rampant violence to peace. His populist economic promises, such as lowering income tax rate from 25% to 15% earned him much-needed votes. But it is unlikely that such promises can be sustained in the long run.

Jamaican society has also not been completely freed from the ravages of its violent past. Parts of the country, such as Tivoli Gardens, Grants Pen and Trench Town in Kingston, Rose Heights, Flankers and Norwood in the city of Montego Bay, and the most of Spanish Town (colloquially known as the valley of death), still reel from vendetta violence.

It is these lingering fears that may have motivated a voter turnout of just 39.5% in the recent election – a turnout far lower than when Jamaicans last went to the polls in 2020. Holness’s vision of “a stronger, safer, more prosperous Jamaica” is still a long way from the finishing line.

Amalendu Misra is a past recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Fellowships.

– ref. Jamaican prime minister returns to power amid reduction in violent crime – https://theconversation.com/jamaican-prime-minister-returns-to-power-amid-reduction-in-violent-crime-264644

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Comerford, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science, University of Stirling

Back in the 2000s, the American pharmaceutical firm Wyeth was sued by thousands of women who had developed breast cancer after taking its hormone replacement drugs. Court filings revealed the role of “dozens of ghostwritten reviews and commentaries published in medical journals and supplements being used to promote unproven benefits and downplay harms” related to the drugs.

Wyeth, which was taken over by Pfizer in 2009, had paid a medical communications firm to produce these articles, which were published under the bylines of leading doctors in the field (with their consent). Any medical professionals reading these articles and relying on them for prescription advice would have had no idea that Wyeth was behind them.

The pharmaceutical company insisted that everything written was scientifically accurate and – shockingly – that paying ghostwriters for such services was common in the industry. Pfizer ended up paying out more than US$1 billion (£744 million) in damages over the harms from the drugs.

The articles in question are an excellent example of “resmearch” – bullshit science in the service of corporate interests. While the overwhelming majority of researchers are motivated to uncover the truth and check their findings robustly, resmearch is unconcerned with truth – it seeks only to persuade.

We’ve seen numerous other examples in recent years, such as soft drinks companies and meat producers funding studies that are less likely than independent research to show links between their products and health risks.

A major current worry is that AI tools reduce the costs of producing such evidence to virtually zero. Just a few years ago it took months to produce a single paper. Now a single individual using AI can produce multiple papers that appear valid in a matter of hours.

Already the public health literature is observing a slew of papers that draw on data optimised for use with an AI to report single-factor results. Single-factor results link a single factor to some health outcome, such as finding a link between eating eggs and developing dementia.

These studies lend themselves to specious results. When datasets span thousands of people and hundreds of pieces of information about them, researchers will inevitably find misleading correlations that occur by chance.

A search of leading academic databases Scopus and Pubmed showed that an average of four single-factor studies were published per year between 2014 and 2021. In the first ten months of 2024 alone, a whopping 190 were published.

These weren’t necessarily motivated by corporate interests – some could, for example, be the result of academics looking to publish more material to boost their career prospects. The point is more that with AI facilitating these kinds of studies, they become an added temptation for businesses looking to promote products.

Incidentally, the UK has just given some businesses an additional motivation for producing this material. New government guidance asks baby-food producers to make marketing claims that suggest health benefits only if supported by scientific evidence.

While well-intentioned, it will incentivise firms to find results that their products are healthy. This could increase their demand for the sort of AI-assisted “scientific evidence” that is ever more available.

Fixing the problem

One issue is that research does not always go through peer review prior to informing policy. In 2021, for example, US Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, in an opinion on the right to carry a gun, cited a briefing paper by a Georgetown academic that presented survey data on gun use.

The academic and gun survey were funded by the Constitutional Defence Fund, which the New York Times describes as a “pro-gun nonprofit”.

Since the survey data are not publicly available and the academic has refused to answer questions about this, it is impossible to know whether his results are resmearch. Still, lawyers have referenced his paper in cases across the US to defend gun interests.

One obvious lesson is that anyone relying on research should be wary of any that has not passed peer review. A less obvious lesson is that we will need to reform peer review as well. There has been much discussion in recent years about the explosion in published research and the extent to which reviewers do their jobs properly.

Over the past decade or so, several groups of researchers have made meaningful progress in identifying procedures that reduce the risk of specious findings in published papers. Advances include getting authors to publish a research plan before doing any work (known as preregistration), then transparently reporting all the research steps taken in a study, and making sure reviewers check this is in order.

Also, for single-factor papers, there’s a recent method called a specification curve analysis that comprehensively tests the robustness of the claimed relationship against alternative ways of slicing the data.

Journal editors in many fields have adopted these proposals, and updated their rules in other ways too. They often now require authors to publish their data, their code and the survey or materials used in experiments (such as questionnaires, stimuli and so on). Authors also have to disclose conflicts of interest and funding sources.

Some journals have gone further, such as requiring, in response to the finding about the use of AI-optimised datasets, authors to cite all other secondary analyses similar to theirs that have been published and to disclose how AI was used in their work.

Some fields have definitely been more reformist than others. Psychology journals have, in my experience, gone further to adopt these processes than have economics journals.

For instance, a recent study applied additional robustness checks to analyses published in the top-tier American Economic Review. This suggested that studies published in the journal systematically overstated the strength of evidence contained within the data.

In general, the current system seems ill-equipped to cope with the deluge of papers that AI will precipitate. Reviewers need to invest time, effort and scrupulous attention checking preregistrations, specification curve analyses, data, code and so on.

This requires a peer-review mechanism that rewards reviewers for the quality of their reviews.

Public trust in science remains high worldwide. That is good for society because the scientific method is an impartial judge that promotes what is true and meaningful over what is popular or profitable.

Yet AI threatens to take us further from that ideal than ever. If science is to maintain its credibility, we urgently need to incentivise meaningful peer review.

David Comerford currently receives funding from Open Philanthropy for a project to design a system that incentivizes meaningful and timely peer review. He has previously received funding from UKRI, IDRC and the Chief Scientist’s Office of the Scottish Government.

– ref. We risk a deluge of AI-written ‘science’ pushing corporate interests – here’s what to do about it – https://theconversation.com/we-risk-a-deluge-of-ai-written-science-pushing-corporate-interests-heres-what-to-do-about-it-264606

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Heba Ghazal, Senior Lecturer, Pharmacy, Kingston University

A dangerous new drug adulterant is spreading through America’s illicit opioid supply, and it’s making overdoses significantly harder to reverse. Medetomidine, a veterinary sedative normally used to sedate pets, is increasingly being mixed with heroin and fentanyl, creating a cocktail that experts warn could be far deadlier than previous street drug combinations.

Known as “flysky” on the streets, this animal tranquilliser has already been linked to at least two overdose deaths in Pennsylvania and represents a troubling evolution in the continuing opioid crisis. Unlike traditional opioid overdoses, those involving medetomidine can’t be effectively treated with naloxone, the medication paramedics use to reverse overdoses.

The emergence of medetomidine mirrors the earlier spread of xylazine, another veterinary sedative that earned the nickname “zombie drug” for its ability to cause severe, treatment-resistant skin wounds. The earliest confirmed detection of medetomidine as a street drug adulterant occurred in Maryland, where it was found in a synthetic opioid mixture probably containing fentanyl.

From there, the drug spread rapidly. Traces appeared across multiple US states and into Canada, and by early 2024, medetomidine was linked to overdose clusters in Philadelphia and other locations, following the same geographical pattern that xylazine had taken years earlier.

What makes medetomidine particularly concerning is its extraordinary potency. Medetomidine is an alpha-2 adrenergic receptor agonist – a type of drug that affects the nervous system. While approved only for veterinary use in the UK to sedate animals and provide pain relief for pets, experts estimate it may be 200 to 300 times more potent than xylazine when used as a drug adulterant.

This extreme potency means that even tiny amounts can have devastating effects. Users experiencing medetomidine-laced drug overdoses typically display extreme drowsiness, muscle twitching, dangerously low heart rate and blood pressure, and laboured breathing.

Chicago cases from 2024 revealed additional concerning symptoms: extremely high blood pressure, severe confusion and critically low blood oxygen levels – often dropping below 90%, a threshold that can cause organ damage.

Perhaps most alarming is medetomidine’s resistance to naloxone, the opioid overdose-reversal drug that has saved countless lives. While naloxone can counteract heroin and fentanyl by blocking opioid receptors in the brain, medetomidine affects the body through entirely different pathways. This means there is no approved antidote for medetomidine poisoning, leaving healthcare professionals with limited options when treating overdoses involving this adulterant.

The withdrawal process is equally tricky. Philadelphia health officials report that people withdrawing from medetomidine-laced drugs experience dangerous spikes in blood pressure and heart rate – symptoms severe enough to trigger a heart attack in some cases. Users also endure uncontrollable nausea and vomiting, intense anxiety, restlessness and violent shaking.

Understanding why dealers add these veterinary drugs to street opioids requires examining the economics of the illicit drug trade. According to a 2022 DEA report, a kilogram of xylazine powder can be bought from Chinese suppliers for as little as U$6.00 (£4.44). This rock-bottom pricing allows drug traffickers to increase their profit margins significantly while making weak or diluted opioid batches feel more potent to users.

These sedatives also serve as effective cutting agents (substances used to add bulk and weight to drugs without requiring expensive active ingredients). For dealers, it’s a win-win. They can stretch their supply while creating a product that feels stronger and lasts longer than pure opioids alone.

Managing new drug adulterants like medetomidine presents unique difficulties for both medical professionals and law enforcement. The drugs make intoxication and withdrawal symptoms more severe and complicated, while also making it harder to identify which specific substance is causing particular symptoms in a patient.

Medetomidine compounds these problems because it’s rapidly metabolised by the body, making it difficult to track the timing and duration of its effects. Additionally, these veterinary sedatives are not included in routine drug screenings or toxicology tests, meaning their presence often goes undetected by medical professionals and law enforcement, despite their potentially lethal effects.

UK response

While no cases of acute medetomidine toxicity have been published in the UK, the country has already experienced problems with xylazine, a similar veterinary sedative.

British health authorities have detected xylazine in 35 cases through toxicology tests and drug seizures. Of 16 people found to have xylazine in their systems, 11 cases proved fatal – deaths that occurred primarily during May 2022 and August 2023.

In response to the growing threat, the government has taken decisive action. Over 20 dangerous substances have been banned as part of efforts to combat synthetic drugs and improve public safety.

Xylazine is now controlled as a class C substance, carrying penalties of up to two years in prison for possession and up to 14 years for production and supply.

The government is also working to better equip police, healthcare workers and Border Force agents to tackle this evolving threat through improved training and detection capabilities.

The case of medetomidine highlights a disturbing reality about modern drug policy: the illicit drug supply continues to change in unpredictable and dangerous ways. Neither medetomidine nor xylazine was developed for human consumption, and there are no human studies examining their drug interactions, lethal doses or safe reversal protocols.

As these veterinary sedatives become more common in street drugs, the challenge for healthcare professionals continues to grow. Traditional overdose response protocols, built around reversing opioid effects with naloxone, become inadequate when faced with multi-drug combinations that affect the body through completely different mechanisms.

Read more:
‘There has never been a more dangerous time to take drugs’: the rising global threat of nitazenes and synthetic opioids

For users, families and communities already devastated by the opioid crisis, the emergence of medetomidine represents yet another layer of risk in an already dangerous landscape.

As the drug supply becomes increasingly unpredictable, the need for comprehensive approaches to drug policy – encompassing everything from harm reduction to treatment access to law enforcement – becomes ever more urgent.

Heba Ghazal 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. An animal sedative keeps turning up in opioid deaths – what you need to know about medetomidine – https://theconversation.com/an-animal-sedative-keeps-turning-up-in-opioid-deaths-what-you-need-to-know-about-medetomidine-264080

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Audrey O’Grady, Associate Professor in Biology, University of Limerick

Imagine a mum who can have children from two different species. Family gatherings would be interesting, to say the least. In the insect world, this is no joke. A new study published in Nature shows that queens of the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) routinely lay eggs of not just to their own kind, but also of males of another species, Messor structor.

The researchers even coined a word for it, xenoparity, meaning “foreign birth”. It pushes the boundaries of what we mean by “species”. And this is the first known case in the animal kingdom of this happening as part of an animal’s life cycle.

The most typical reproduction strategy in the natural world involves a mother and father of the same species who breed and produce sons and daughters, also of the same species.

However, there are exceptions to the rule. Social insects, ants in particular, are known to violate it. A 1999 study found that 17 out of 164 central Europe ant species are known to create hybrid offspring.

Typically, in ant colonies, fertilised eggs develop into workers and queens and unfertilised eggs develop into males. All the ants that we usually see foraging are females who cannot reproduce (workers), but do all the other work. Ants that breed, female queens and males, normally have wings and can be seen during mating flights. Afterwards, males often die while the females found new colonies.

However, in some ant species, unfertilised eggs develop into female clones of the mother. This process is called parthenogenesis.

Generally, ant colonies which include different ant species may contain either one or several queens that can mate with either single or multiple males. Some ant species produce only wingless males that mate inside the nest and never participate in nuptial flights.

In 2002 an even more interesting reproduction strategy was found in two seed harvester ant species, common in southwestern US, whose queens lost their ability to produce female workers of their own kind. They need to mate with a male from a different species to lay eggs that develop into hybrid species female workers. This cross-species mating is essential for the survival of both species.

The new discovery

The article provides startling insights into ant reproduction. Workers (females) in these colonies are hybrids. Like the seed harvester ants, the Iberian harvester queens can’t make workers on their own. They need sperm from M. structor, and the daughters are half M. ibericus, half M. structor. This is similar to social hybridogenesis documented in other harvester ants, where only cross-species daughters become workers.

But the fascinating part is that Iberian harvester queens produce ordinary M. ibericus sons as well as M. structor sons. These males aren’t hybrids. They’re clones, carrying only their father’s DNA. Iberian harvester queens act almost like a rental womb. This resembles male-only cloning known from some clams and a stick insects.

The researchers sequenced the DNA of hundreds of Iberian harvester ants and repeatedly found this same pattern.

M. ibericus and M. structor split from a common ancestor millions of years ago. They look and behave differently in the wild, with M.ibericus having smaller queens. Yet one is now literally producing the other. Multiple colonies of M.ibericus live together in habitats ranging from pastures to suburban areas. But M.structor ants are a mountain species and their colonies live separately. The two ant species can live close together in overlapping habitats in lanes and fields near mountains.

The cloned M. structor sons raised inside M. ibericus colonies don’t just differ genetically, they even look odd. Compared with their wild cousins, they appear almost hairless.

The most probable explanation of how this reproduction strategy evolved is a phenomenon called sperm parasitism. This is when females of one species use sperm of the males of another species to stimulate asexual reproduction or even partially incorporate the male’s genome into their offspring.

Over time, they cut out the middleman (adult M.structor males) and started making their own supply of cloned M. structor males. Instead, they mate with these clones that hatch in the colony nest.

It shows that evolution can re-engineer reproduction in radical ways. People sometimes like to think nature follows straight paths. Parents make their own species. Colonies stick to one lineage.

But evolution doesn’t care about our rules. So the next time you see ants marching across a path, remember, somewhere in southern Europe, there’s a queen casually running a two-species household. And you thought your family tree was complicated.

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. One queen ant, two species: the discovery that reshapes what ‘family’ means in nature – https://theconversation.com/one-queen-ant-two-species-the-discovery-that-reshapes-what-family-means-in-nature-264384

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tomas Jernberg, Professor, Clinical Sciences, Karolinska Institutet

As a cardiologist, I frequently meet patients who have stopped taking medicines that could keep them alive. Often it’s because they’ve seen a dramatic headline or a worrying TV report about a drug they rely on. But sometimes, patients are right to pay attention: new studies really can overturn decades of medical practice.

Few drugs illustrate this tension better than beta blockers. Long prescribed after heart attacks, these medicines can be life-saving for some people, helpful for others and useless – or even harmful – for the rest.

Beta blockers have been used for more than 40 years in almost all patients with heart attacks. But this practice was based on studies done before modern treatments were available, and before we could detect very small heart attacks that do not affect the overall function of the heart.

Recently, two studies on beta blockers in patients with heart attacks were reported in the news. The Spanish-Italian study received the most attention. Media reports suggested that most heart attack patients did not benefit from beta blockers, and that in women the drug might even increase the risk of hospitalisation and death.

Reports like this can make people stop taking their medication.

At the same symposium in Madrid, the second study – which got less attention – showed almost the opposite. Patients with heart attacks did benefit from beta blockers. And if there were differences between the sexes, women might actually have had more benefit than men.

The heart of the matter: ejection fraction

A key to understanding the different results is something called the left ventricular ejection fraction. This is the percentage of blood in the left chamber of the heart – its main pumping chamber – that is pushed out into the body with each heartbeat. Normally, ejection fraction should be at least 50%.

If we look at all the studies together, including one I led and presented last year, the picture becomes clearer. Patients with an ejection fraction of 50% or higher after a heart attack do not benefit from beta blockers. But patients with an ejection fraction below 50% do benefit. And this is true for both men and women.

The European guidelines from 2023, as well as the recently published American guidelines, still recommend beta blockers after most heart attacks. Many doctors are therefore reluctant to change a therapy tradition that has been in place for 40 years.

My colleagues and I are now planning to pool data from the recent large studies on patients with heart attacks and an ejection fraction of 50% or more. The results, expected later this year, will probably give definite answers about beta blockers in this population and change future guidelines.

But many patients clearly benefit from beta blockers, including those with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (with or without a prior heart attack), angina pectoris (chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart), or various heart rhythm disturbances.

Beta blockers can also be prescribed for other reasons, such as high blood pressure, migraine prevention, tremors, as well as off-label use for stress and anxiety. For patients, it’s not easy to know all the reasons why beta blockers are prescribed, and in some cases, they may not be suitable at all. So I’ll end with a good, if not very novel, piece of advice: always consult your doctor before making any changes to your medication.

Tomas Jernberg’s employer (Karolinska Institutet) has received a grant from MSD for a research project performed by Dr. Jernberg but not related to this article.

– ref. Heart attack patients: do you still need beta blockers? A cardiologist explains – https://theconversation.com/heart-attack-patients-do-you-still-need-beta-blockers-a-cardiologist-explains-264409

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Ireland, Senior Lecturer in Energy Geoscience, Newcastle University

“We are going to get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea”, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said recently. Her promise to “maximise extraction” sets up a clash between political ambitions, economic reality and geological limits.

Reform UK has also said drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a “day one” priority. But even if the Conservatives or Reform were to be elected and lifted the current moratorium on new exploration licenses, there might not be the promised prizes of oil and gas under the seabed – or enough appetite from investors – to deliver on that promise.

BP, in those days British Petroleum, first extracted gas from under the North Sea in 1967. It marked the start of what was to become, for decades, one of the most valuable sectors of the UK economy, with more than 400 separate oil and gas fields developed to date.

But production peaked in 1999 and the North Sea now produces less than half as much as in its heyday.

It is now a “mature” basin: most of the biggest and easiest-to-develop fields have already been discovered and depleted. What remains are smaller, sometimes more remote, and often more technically challenging or expensive resources and reserves.

This is typical of ageing oil and gas provinces, where production declines even as operating costs rise. New projects must compete with oil and gas extracted from other parts of the world where it is easier and cheaper and more appealing to investors.

Finding oil and gas

Historically, only one in eight exploration wells in the North Sea led to a field producing oil and gas. That ratio has improved: between 2008 and 2017, a bit more than one in four wells led to a commercial success.

But far fewer wells are being drilled today. Even with the advances in technology, such as improved geophysical imaging which allows us to better define opportunities ahead of drilling, the big discoveries were probably made decades ago.

UK exploration wells vs offshore fields by year:

The UK government’s North Sea Transition Authority estimates there could still be around 3.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent in more than 400 undeveloped prospects. But most of these potential fields are small, isolated or technically complex. Developing them will require high oil and gas prices, fiscal stability, and a lot of investor confidence.

Politics vs geology

Even if a future government relaxes exploration licensing rules, geology will remain the bigger constraint. The North Sea is simply not as cheap as it was, and global fossil fuel giants have many other options. It is currently far cheaper to produce oil and gas in other regions, the Middle East or North Africa for example. Projects in these countries are all competing for the same capital.

Volatility in the energy sector will continue to make investors cautious. The 2015 oil price crash cut activity in the UK sector to its lowest level in decades, and it has never fully recovered. As fossil fuels are sold on the global market, political volatility, international and national, can lead to rapid shifts in investor confidence.

In the UK the introduction of a windfall tax in 2023 and changing requirements for environmental impact assessments are all making decision making on long-term projects riskier. And while the UK still needs considerable volumes of gas in future (and more modest amounts of oil) both are declining as our energy system evolves and renewable energy expand.

The UK’s mix of economic uncertainty, mature geology and smaller discoveries will make it harder to attract major international energy firms.

The future of the North Sea

That doesn’t mean the North Sea has finished as a source of oil and gas. For instance, undeveloped discoveries – where oil or gas has been confirmed but not yet produced – represent a lower-risk opportunity. But returns may be modest as many are relatively small and isolated from existing infrastructure.

New exploration licenses, if issued, might extend production modestly, but they are unlikely to deliver another game-changing discovery.

Some analysts argue that future licensing should be highly strategic, limited to projects with clear economic importance or climate compatibility. That approach could reduce reliance on imported gas, which tends to be more carbon-intensive than gas produced domestically. This would certainly make more sense than restarting fracking. But it would still not recreate the industry’s heyday.

Easy oil is over

The North Sea will still produce oil and gas for years to come, but its role will shrink. Even with friendlier policies, the era of big discoveries and rapid growth isn’t coming back.

Maximising extraction may sound appealing to politicians, but geology, economics and climate commitments all point to the North Sea’s best oil and gas days being behind it. The real challenge now is managing the investment during decline while investing in the cleaner solutions that will replace it.

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Mark Ireland has previously received funding from companies with fossil fuel interests.

– ref. Plans to ‘maximise extraction’ of North Sea oil and gas would soon run into geological limits – https://theconversation.com/plans-to-maximise-extraction-of-north-sea-oil-and-gas-would-soon-run-into-geological-limits-264614

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

Why do health stories about food and cancer grab so much attention? Because they offer an enticing promise: that a single item on your plate, or even a sudden change in what you crave, might hold the key to spotting disease early.

It’s a compelling idea, but in reality the science of appetite, taste, and cancer is far messier than the headlines suggest.

This eye-catching idea oversimplifies reality. While cancer can change appetite and taste, there’s no solid evidence that a sudden craving, such as an abrupt fixation on sweets, serves as a dependable early warning signal for undiagnosed cancer.

This is a classic case where interesting clinical anecdotes and stories have been stretched into a sweeping rule that doesn’t work as a screening tool.

The grain of truth behind these headlines comes from clinical observations. Some cancer patients do report altered taste and appetite. In older case studies, patients described dramatic changes – tea suddenly tasting awful, or favourite foods becoming repulsive – sometimes before diagnosis, sometimes after treatment began.

These accounts seem compelling, but they were never designed to prove that a particular craving reliably predicts cancer. They show that cancer can affect how we taste and eat, not that a single symptom can replace proper diagnosis.

Modern research paints a more complex picture. Studies examining “altered food behaviour” around cancer cover a wide range of changes: cravings, aversions, emotional eating and treatment-related appetite shifts.

These studies look at different cancers, stages, and time points – before, during and after treatment. The overall message is that eating behaviour can change in the context of cancer, influenced by biology (inflammation and metabolism), physiology (changes to taste and smell) and psychology (stress and mood).

Read more:
Why a daily glass of milk really could reduce bowel cancer risk – an oncologist explains

What we don’t see is a specific craving pattern that reliably warns of cancer in healthy people. Appetite changes can be part of the cancer story, but they’re not a diagnostic shortcut.

It’s worth bearing in mind how common appetite changes are in everyday life. Many ordinary factors affect what tastes good and what the body wants, including medications, pregnancy, stress, quitting smoking and anaemia.

A sudden enthusiasm for a particular food might be interesting, but it rarely points to a single cause. That’s why doctors look for clusters of symptoms and lasting patterns rather than drawing conclusions from one change.

Chewing ice

There is one area where cravings connect meaningfully to health: ice chewing. Constantly chewing ice (called pagophagia) can signal iron deficiency, which has treatable causes that should be found and addressed. This is completely different from claims that tumours program sugar cravings.

Ice chewing represents a well-established link between unusual eating behaviour and a specific, testable condition. Iron deficiency itself is both common and often missed.

Iron is essential for making haemoglobin, which carries oxygen in red blood cells, and plays broader roles in energy and immune function. When levels drop, symptoms are often vague: persistent fatigue despite adequate sleep, exercise intolerance, shortness of breath and headaches, to name a few.

These overlap with many other conditions, which is why testing matters rather than guessing. Iron comes from red meat, poultry, seafood, beans, lentils, leafy greens, and fortified cereals and breads. However, a “good” diet doesn’t always guarantee adequate iron if losses are high, needs are elevated, or absorption is poor – another reason to confirm and treat the problem with proper testing.

No magic clues

Returning to the headlines, it’s easy to see why supposed tell-tale cravings capture attention. They promise a simple signal in a confusing health landscape. But medicine rarely offers magic clues.

The sensible approach is twofold. First, treat new, persistent, and unexplained changes in taste or appetite as worth noting – not panicking about. Consider the full picture: other symptoms, recent illnesses, medications, stress and overall health. If behaviour like ice chewing appears or fatigue becomes stubborn, checking for iron deficiency makes sense.

Second, for cancer risk concerns, rely on established warning signs and screening tests. Unexplained weight loss, unusual bleeding, changes in bowel habits, swallowing difficulties, new or changing lumps and age-appropriate screening catch far more cancers than chasing a single craving ever will.

Read more:
King Charles is changing his diet to keep his cancer at bay – here’s what the evidence says

The craving narrative carries another danger: it can fuel harmful behaviour, like trying to “starve” a tumour by cutting out major nutrients.

Severe restriction can cause dangerous weight loss, malnutrition and, worse, treatment tolerance, undermining recovery rather than helping. Tumours don’t outsmart sensible nutrition. What helps most is maintaining strength with a balanced diet, staying active when possible, following evidence-based screening and treatment, and using targeted tests – like iron studies – when symptoms suggest they might be helpful.

Appetite and taste are sensitive measures of health and their changes deserve attention. They’re part of the medical conversation, not a crystal ball.

If something feels wrong and stays wrong – whether that’s a new aversion to familiar foods, an odd fixation that won’t go away, or constant ice chewing – the next step isn’t to search Google for hidden meanings. Instead, talk with a doctor.

Simple tests can quickly rule out common problems, and if something more serious is happening, acting on established warning signs and screening guidelines offers the best chance of catching it early.

Justin Stebbing 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 certain food cravings predict a cancer diagnosis, up to three months before other symptoms appear? – https://theconversation.com/can-certain-food-cravings-predict-a-cancer-diagnosis-up-to-three-months-before-other-symptoms-appear-264378

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hiroki Shin, Associate Professor of History, University of Birmingham

The confusion and commotion over cryptocurrency often reminds me of the 19th-century German drama Faust. In Goethe’s masterpiece, the devil Mephistopheles offers an emperor the tantalising vision of limitless wealth through the printing of paper money.

The emperor grasps the idea (unheard of at the time the play is set), and the magical wealth which paper creates brings brief prosperity to his troubled dominion.

But what appeared to be an inexhaustible source of value soon proves illusory. A combination of misunderstanding and hype leads to economic and moral corruption, and the empire descends into chaos.

It is a tale which could well have parallels for digital currencies now. People use them despite not fully understanding how they work, sometimes to their financial loss.

And history shows us that we should be wary of the idea that currency systems always change for the better, following some sort of natural evolutionary path. In fact, new currency systems don’t always succeed, and even when they do, monetary regime change can be a long and arduous process.

Coins and tokens were used more than 2,000 years ago, and continued through to the 19th century before paper finally dominated. Rather than a clean, irreversible shift from coins to notes, nations often alternated between the two systems.

There were failed experiments with paper money in 14th-century China, 17th-century Sweden and 18th-century France, to mention just a few.

Research on these problematic attempts suggests that social division also makes new currency shifts especially vulnerable.

During the American war of independence for example, a currency (the “continental dollar”) was briefly introduced in 1775. It was later abandoned due to mismanagement and misunderstanding, but had also served to sharpen political tensions between the patriots who supported it, and the loyalists to Britain, who detested it.

Similarly, in the 1750s and 1760s, the Swedish government issued non-redeemable paper money to pay its war debts. The consequent extreme inflation coincided with intense social division and led to a period of political chaos.

In 1789, at the start of the French Revolution, a paper form of government bond was issued, which rapidly lost its value. Seven years later, the “assignat” had become virtually worthless.

Britain fared slightly better, as I explore in my book The Age of Paper. Its departure from the metal standard in 1797, amid the financial pressures of the Anglo–French war, did not produce a collapse of the nation’s paper currency.

But the paper-based regime came to a halt in 1819, a year of bitter class conflicts, which culminated in the Peterloo massacre, where at least 18 people were killed and hundreds wounded by the cavalry at a peaceful rally for democratic reform. The public had come to detest Bank of England notes, which became a symbol of economic depression and political oppression.

Britain then followed the pattern of other nations, reverting to a traditional monetary system that rested on the solid value of precious metals.

These cases of failed paper currencies – and there are many more – show that the general acceptance of currency ultimately requires shared values and social solidarity. Paper currency works when people trust it, knowing that it has been valued and accepted by others in the past, and will be valued and accepted in the future.

It would otherwise be unlikely for a piece of paper to become a reliable means of payment and value. Once such shared values are lost, there is usually a downward cycle of currency depreciation.

Cryptic currency

In the 21st-century, cryptocurrencies challenge the conventional idea of money as something of value – or at least linked to something of value, like gold. And as something that is issued and managed by a trusted central authority.

For cryptocurrencies exist only in the realm of blockchain technology. Their value is created and maintained not by central banks, but by complex computer algorithms.

To many, all of these abstract computational processes make cryptocurrencies as mysterious as Mephistopheles’ dark magic in Faust.

Even so, with Donald Trump’s strong support, cryptocurrencies are enjoying a surge in popularity. This trend will undoubtedly be reinforced by further deregulation which means requirements for transparency will be relaxed, and safeguards for consumer protection weakened.

The rise in popularity has coincided with the US government’s apparent preference for weakening the dollar in the international currency markets as a way of boosting US exports by pushing down the prices of US goods abroad.

These events may lead to a profound transformation in the monetary system on a global scale. As the US dollar loses value and crypto regulations are relaxed, countries and investors around the world may be enticed to diversify their assets and increase their holdings of cryptocurrency.

But the combination of social division and rapid expansion may not be a positive sign for the future of cryptocurrency. Far from establishing it as a dominant medium of exchange in a new decentralised regime, history suggests that its rapid growth in a fractured society might instead accelerate its self-destruction.

Hiroki Shin 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. History is full of failed attempts to establish new currencies. So what makes crypto different? – https://theconversation.com/history-is-full-of-failed-attempts-to-establish-new-currencies-so-what-makes-crypto-different-258867