Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Manuel Suter, Postdoctoral Researcher in Ecological Economics, Lund University

Imagine someone has chronic pain. One doctor focuses on the body part that hurts and keeps trying to fix that single symptom. Another uses a more comprehensive brain-body approach and tries to understand what’s keeping the nervous system stuck in alarm mode – perhaps stress, fear of symptoms or learned triggers. Because they’re looking at the problem differently, they’ll resort to completely different treatments.

Something similar happens in environmental debates. Experts sometimes argue about which solutions work best and often disagree about priorities and trade-offs. But my colleagues and I recently published a study suggesting that the divide may start even earlier: economists and environmental scientists have different perceptions of which environmental issues are most relevant.

In a global survey of 2,365 researchers who publish in leading economics and environmental science journals, we asked them to list up to nine environmental issues they think are most relevant today. The answers show two fields looking at the same planet through different lenses.

The environmental issues that researchers notice are linked to the solutions they recommend. If they mainly recognise climate change, they are more likely to see potential in conventional, market-based solutions (such as introducing a carbon tax). If they recognise further environmental issues such as biodiversity loss or pollution, they are more likely to see potential in broader, more systemic solutions.

Climate change was by far the most often mentioned issue category across the entire sample. About 70% of respondents listed it. The second most common category mentioned by 51% was biosphere integrity, which is essentially the loss of nature.

Several environmental pressures that are critical for our planet’s stability were mentioned by far fewer researchers. Novel entities, which include synthetic chemicals and plastics, were listed by about 43%. Biogeochemical flows, which include fertiliser, were at about 9%. Ocean acidification was about 8%.

Economists and environmental scientists have different problem maps. When we compared fields, environmental researchers listed more and broader issue categories than economists.

Both were equally likely to mention climate change and other closely related issues like greenhouse gas emissions or air pollution. The gaps appeared for issues less directly tied to carbon such as biodiversity, land system change, novel entities and pollution.

One possible reason for these differences is that distinct disciplines are trained to notice different things. Like photographers, we tend to focus on what our field puts in the frame. Economists often study prices, incentives and policies around carbon emissions, so climate change is a natural centre of gravity.

Different solution preferences

We also asked respondents to rate the potential of seven approaches for mitigating environmental issues. All approaches were rated with at least moderate potential.

Overall, technological advances were rated highest and non-violent civil disobedience lowest. Economists rated market-based solutions and technological advances higher than environmental researchers. Environmental researchers rated degrowth of the global economy and non-violent civil disobedience higher than economists.

Then, we looked at whether researchers who named a broader range of environmental issues also tended to favour different kinds of solutions, even after accounting for things like political orientation and research field.

A pattern emerged: naming more categories was associated with higher perceived potential for more systemic approaches such as environmental regulation, degrowth and non-violent civil disobedience. Naming more issues was also associated with lower perceived potential for technological advances.

Economists and environmental scientists often advise governments, sit on expert panels and shape what counts as a solution. If two influential expert groups are starting from different shortlists of what the problem is, it’s no surprise they end up championing different fixes.

It also helps explain why some debates feel stuck. If climate change is the only relevant issue you see, it’s easier to put your faith in cleaner tech and market incentives. If you also see biodiversity loss, chemical pollution and land system change as problems, it no longer looks like an engineering issue. It starts to look like lots of connected pressures that need changes in how we produce, consume and organise the economy.

That topic comes up in our related work on green growth, the idea that countries can keep increasing GDP while reducing environmental harm. Using data from our survey, we found that researchers across disciplines were far from convinced that societies can keep growing GDP while cutting emissions and resource use fast enough.

Economists were generally more optimistic than Earth, agricultural and biology scientists. Those differences lined up with faith in technology and markets.

You can’t agree on the route if you don’t agree on the map. A more shared picture of the environmental crisis, beyond carbon alone, might not magically solve it. But it can lead to more fruitful research and discussions about trade offs and widen the scope of solutions being considered.

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Manuel Suter receives funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Postdoc Mobility Fellowship: P500PS_225579) and is a member of the organisation “Degrowth Switzerland”.

– ref. Economists and environmental scientists see the world differently – here’s why that matters – https://theconversation.com/economists-and-environmental-scientists-see-the-world-differently-heres-why-that-matters-275032

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David L. Suber, Departmental Lecturer in Criminology, University of Oxford

The UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, recently visited China to announce what was described as a reset in relations between London and Beijing. Among the economic and diplomatic announcements was a surprising element: a new agreement on border security.

Under the deal, the UK and China committed to closer cooperation to disrupt the supply of engines and equipment used in small boat crossings of the English Channel.

Numbers of small boat arrivals to the UK in 2025 were the second-highest on record. The prime minister is under pressure to deliver on his commitment to “smash the gangs” and reduce unauthorised arrivals.

At first glance, China might appear an unlikely partner in this regard. Chinese nationals are nowhere close to the top nationalities crossing the Channel by small boat.

But the agreement is part of the British government’s efforts to tackle people smuggling by targeting the global supply chain of small boats and engines used for crossings. The aim is to disrupt Channel crossings well before migrants reach the French coast.

Engines and dinghies recovered in the Channel often carry serial or registration numbers. These can be traced back through distributors and intermediaries to manufacturers, many of which are based in China. The UK-China agreement broadly involves sharing intelligence to identify suspect sales of engines by Chinese manufacturers.

For several years, disrupting supply chains has been a central pillar of UK countersmuggling policy. From an enforcement perspective, this approach has obvious appeal. If there are no boats, engines, life vests or fuel, crossings cannot happen.

The logic behind this strategy is to drive up the prices of crossing the Channel, making it unaffordable for migrants and refugees and hijacking the smugglers’ business model.

The deal with China builds on a growing web of agreements the UK has with countries along the migration routes leading to the Channel. In 2023, it signed a similar border security deal with Turkey, focused on sharing intelligence to allow the Turkish authorities to intercept shipments of dinghies and engines manufactured in China.

Both Conservative and Labour governments then went on to expand Project Invigor, the National Crime Agency-led international taskforce, to target organised immigration crime. Border security deals were extended with countries in the western Balkans as well as Iraq, Tunisia, Romania and Bulgaria, and France.

Last year, the Labour government also expanded its global sanctions list, allowing asset freezes, travel bans and other financial restrictions against individuals and companies involved in smuggling from abroad.

Stopping the boats

The crucial question is whether these strategies will achieve the stated goal of reducing Channel crossings. Disrupting supply chains only works if partner states are willing and able to investigate, prosecute and seize.

Research on migrant smuggling consistently shows that deterrence rarely eliminates demand. On the contrary, it increases demand for smugglers’ services. People still attempt the journeys – what changes is how they travel.

Years of independent monitoring by journalists and migrant support groups – including Alarmphone, Captain Support and Calais Migrant Solidarity – point to a clear link between the surge in British and European investment aimed at stopping unauthorised maritime crossings, and the rising number of deaths in the Channel.

Efforts to choke off equipment supplies and intensify policing might lead to reduced number of crossings, but also create the conditions in which they become more lethal: overcrowded inflatables, rushed departures, violence on beaches and a narrowing of options for those unable to pay smugglers.

Read more:
Deaths of 31 people in UK’s worst small boat disaster caused by government’s ‘systemic failure’ – the Cranston inquiry conclusions explained

Supply-chain crackdowns in the central Mediterranean, often driven by European agreements with key transit countries such as Tunisia and Libya, have coincided with shifts towards heavier, improvised and less seaworthy vessels. For example, “metal boats” used to cross the Mediterranean are often assembled by migrants themselves, and are much more prone to sinking than wooden boats.

When more than 380 people shipwrecked in the Central Mediterranean last week during cyclone Harry, political responses focused on accusing smugglers for allowing departures in dangerous weather.

Yet organisations working on the ground, as well as migrants themselves, point out that setting off during rough weather conditions has increasingly become a strategy to evade coastal patrols and pushbacks from Tunisian or Libyan police. Similarly, migrants have reported crossing mountainous borders during winter blizzards to avoid detection on the Turkey-Iranian border.

In the Channel, this pattern is already evident. As boats and engines become harder to obtain, supply tightens while demand remains. The result has been chronic overcrowding, deteriorating equipment quality, and increasingly chaotic launch conditions. Fewer boats do not mean fewer people attempting to cross – they mean more people per boat.

From the government’s perspective, cooperating with China fits neatly into its “smash the gangs” approach to people smugglers. But supply-chain disruption is not a neutral technical fix. In practice, it is likely to make those attempting to cross borders turn to more dangerous methods.

If the UK wants to reduce irregular arrivals and deaths in the Channel, supply chain crackdowns and enforcement will not be enough. The visa schemes for Hong Kong residents, and Ukrainian and Afghan refugees suggest that when lawful pathways are available, irregular journeys like small boat crossings lose their appeal.

Expanding safe and legal routes for the main nationalities seeking asylum to the UK should be tested to see if this holds true.

David L. Suber receives research funding from the Leverhulme Trust and from the John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford.

– ref. Why the UK has announced a border security deal with China – and what it could mean for small boat crossings – https://theconversation.com/why-the-uk-has-announced-a-border-security-deal-with-china-and-what-it-could-mean-for-small-boat-crossings-275590

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sara Read, Lecturer in English, Loughborough University

With Pancake Day fast approaching, let’s go back in time to look at the history of the humble dish.

Recipes from the first published cookbooks show that in England, pancakes were made very thinly – hence the phrase “flat as a pancake” – from lots of wet ingredients that were forbidden during the impending pre-Easter Lenten Fast. Eggs, cream, butter and animal fats are all products from which people were meant to abstain, alongside all other meats.

It makes sense, then, that the dish, generally eaten year-round, became associated with Shrovetide – the days before Lent – when cooks wanted to clear out their pantries to avoid temptation in the long fast before Easter.

Early pancakes were cooked until crispy and served warm with butter and sprinkled with sugar.

It’s common to see a recipe in old cookbooks that used ale, much like the coating of beer-battered fish we’re familiar with today. One recipe from a book published in the reign of Elizabeth I is a rich affair which mixes:

A pint of thick cream
4 or 5 egg yolks
A handful of flour
2 or 3 spoonfuls of ale

This is seasoned with “a good handful of sugar, a spoonful of cinnamon, and a touch of ginger”.

The batter is set aside while the cook takes a knob of butter “as big as your thumb” in a frying pan and heats it until it is “molten brown”. Now tip the fat out and ladle the batter into the tilted pan as thinly as possible over a low heat. Flip when one side is “baked” and cook the other until the pancake is as dry (crispy) as possible, but not burned.

English poet and writer Gervais Markham’s bestselling book of household management The English Housewife, which ran to at least nine editions from its first publication in 1615, has a recipe for “the best pancakes”.

In this dish, there are two or three beaten eggs to which you mix in “a pretty quantity of fair running water”. The eggy mixture is seasoned with salt, cloves, mace, cinnamon and nutmeg, and thickened with “fine Wheate-flower”. You then fry a thin layer of batter in sweetened butter or seam (pig lard) and serve sprinkled with sugar.

Markham recommends using water over milk or cream because dairy “makes them tough, cloying and not crisp, pleasant and savoury as running water”.

Fritters or pancakes?

On Shrove Tuesday in 1661, which fell on February 26, diarist Samuel Pepys paid a visit to his cousin Jane Turner’s house, where he found her mixing pancake batter with her daughters Theophila and Joyce. After leaving them to their preparations, he later returned to dine “very merry and the best fritters that ever I eat in my life”.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the names pancake and fritter were often used interchangeably, although fritters (like the modern incarnation) were cooked with fruit in them.

One of the reasons Pepys enjoyed his pancakes so much might be found in a contemporary recipe book, The Gentlewoman’s Cabinet Unlocked (1675), which boasts in its title that it will provide “directions for the best way of making pancakes, fritters, tansies, puddings, custards, cheesecakes; and such like fine knacks and other delicate dishes, which are most frequently used in gentlemen’s houses”.

The author doesn’t include a specific pancake recipe, since there is one for fritters. A glance through the ingredients listed shows why these were more likely to end up on the table of a gentleman than a that of a labourer:

Take nine eggs, yolks and whites, beat them very well, then take half a pint of sack [Spanish wine], a pint of ale, some ale yest. Put these to the eggs and beat them all together, put in some spice and salt, and fine flower. Then shred in your apples and let them be well tempered, and fry them with beef-suet, or half beef and half higs-suet dried out of the leaf.

While earlier recipes mention topping pancakes with sugar and sometimes things like rose water, it isn’t until the 19th century that the combination of lemon juice and sugar appears in print. But lemon juice had probably been used for a long time before then.

Elizabeth Hammond’s Modern Domestic Cookery (1819) includes this pancake recipe: “Take eggs, flour and milk, with which make a light batter. Add nutmeg, ginger and salt, fry them in plenty of hot lard. Serve with lemon juice and powdered loaf sugar.”

A modern cook might be surprised to see Hammond recommending substituting “snow” for eggs during the winter, “when they are generally very dear”. This is a tip for making eggs go further by using just the whites beaten until fluffy, leaving you free to use the yolks in another dish.

While Markham and many other cookbooks recommend it, refined wheat flour was the most expensive of grains and largely something that more affluent families ate regularly. It only gradually became the ubiquitous ingredient it is today.

In 1923, the flour brand Be-Ro (founded in 1880 in the north-east of England) began giving away a recipe book to encourage sales of the relatively novel self-raising flour. This small cookbook ran to over 40 editions and is still available.

Like many northern homes, my family still have our copy, which is the 16th edition from 1953. While pancakes aren’t normally made with a raising agent, Be-Ro still offered a recipe for them.

5oz Be-Ro flour
Quarter teaspoonful salt
One egg
Half a pint of milk

The very thin batter was cooked on a “fairly brisk fire” in lard which had been heated to smoking point, and served with sugar or syrup and lemon or orange.

We can see from this how modern recipes became much more precise with their measurements. The pamphlet ends with a warning that all its recipes are especially designed for Be-Ro self-raising flour: “Ladies are warned that unless Be-Ro is used, satisfactory results may not be obtained.”

Whether you’re planning to have a rather austere Be-Ro style pancake or are tempted to switch things up with something a little boozier, perhaps the key takeaway from history is that there is no reason to reserve pancakes just for Shrove Tuesday.

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

– ref. A history of pancake recipes – from Elizabethan ale to the invention of self-raising flour – https://theconversation.com/a-history-of-pancake-recipes-from-elizabethan-ale-to-the-invention-of-self-raising-flour-275708

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

Another cold snap is approaching. Some people deal with it by taking an invigorating walk outside, while others hibernate with a cozy blanket and biscuits.

But one thing seems to be common when temperatures drop: we like talking about how cold it feels. Comments such as “I am so cold, I can feel it in my bones” are a common greeting in wintertime.

So, is there any truth to this particular complaint?

In the UK, the relatively high humidity even in cold temperatures means moisture in the air moves the warm air next to our bodies away quite quickly. It also sees moisture absorbed into our clothes, which then conducts heat away from the body. Water has an almost 70-fold higher rate of heat transfer than air.

The body is most efficient at approximately 37°C, but our extremities can be up to 6°C cooler. And there are variations around this body temperature dependant on sex, age and health status. Older people tend to feel the cold more, and women are more sensitive to the cold than men.

How cold affects our bones

Our bones don’t actually feel the cold as we sense it. They lack the same temperature-sensitive receptors that we have in our skin. There is a good reason for this, given our major bones are buried under layers of muscles, connective tissue and skin, so temperature sensing isn’t really key for them.

However, just because bones don’t “feel” the cold, it doesn’t mean the cold doesn’t have an affect on them. They can sense temperature change, particularly cooling, from nerves in the outermost lining of bone, known as the periosteum. This layer has what many scientists view as a net of neurons (cells that transmit signals) arranged in a fishnet-like pattern that senses distortion or injury of the underlying layers of bone.

Although short-term exposure of the body to the cold isn’t a problem for bones, prolonged exposure over a number of weeks can shorten their length, reduce their thickness, and decrease bone mineral density.

Other musculoskeletal tissues are much more susceptible to the changes in temperature and pressure. Synovial fluid, the lubricant of most major joints, becomes thicker when temperatures decline. This makes it harder and more uncomfortable for joints to move normally, which is exacerbated in people with underlying joint conditions such as rheumatoid or osteoarthritis.

The cold also causes contraction of tissues, making things tighter and stiffer. Tendons, which connect muscles to bone, increase in stiffness. Ligaments, which attach different bones around joints, also become stiffer.

Both of these changes make it harder for muscles to exert their action to move bones, requiring more force and decreasing their range of motion. This is exacerbated with humidity, which is common in the UK all year round.

These effects happen in tandem with reduced blood flow to our extremities. This protective mechanism is designed to ensure our core, where all our critical major organs are, doesn’t drop from the optimum operating temperature of 37°C. Reduced blood in these tissues also contributes to the tissue contraction, as less blood is entering them.

All of these changes result in an increase in mechanical strain or pressure upon receptor cells in the bones and surrounding tissues. This can trigger pain receptors, which may be perceived as cold.

The brain also plays a role. In the UK, grey skies often accompany the cold and damp. London averages 3.4 hours of sunshine in December, for example, while the US state of Colorado averages around eight hours of sunlight in the same month.

These dark winter months in the northern hemisphere mean many of us don’t get sufficient sunlight to synthesise enough vitamin D. You may know vitamin D deficiency is associated with poor bone health and conditions such as rickets (in children) and osteomalacia (adults). But it also has other implications in how cold feels.

Research suggests that people with low vitamin D levels have increased sensitivity to pain, particularly musculoskeletal pain.

This isn’t the only nervous-system effect that vitamin D has on cold perception. It is also linked with increased anxiety and depression symptoms. People with these conditions have altered tolerance when it comes to temperature.

Sunlight exposes the skin to the Sun’s radiation and visible light, both of which have a natural warming effect. So sunny and dry cold feels very different to damp, grey cold.

The good news is that taking on extra calories can help you ride out the latest cold snap. Wearing lots of layers and moving around as much as possible will also help keep you warm, by generating and trapping as much heat as possible against the body.

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. Does the cold really ‘seep into your bones’? – https://theconversation.com/does-the-cold-really-seep-into-your-bones-275870