Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dominique Townsend, Visiting Researcher, School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Southampton

At the end of the last ice age, billions of boulders and cobbles were left scattered over southern Scandinavia. Huge ice sheets had dragged the rocks from mountainous regions further north down to the Baltic Sea areas. When those ice sheets retreated and sea levels rose, these colossal boulders became rocky reefs, rich with marine life. These rocks formed part of a naturally resilient coast, proving a rugged structure for waves to break and reducing pressure on the seashore.

For centuries these reefs have been exploited as building materials. This practice of “stonefishing” occurred extensively across Denmark and was only banned in 2010 by which time the rocky shore had been depleted, leaving only smaller rocks on the seabed. Now that it’s illegal, Denmark is scrambling to recover marine life and prepare for rising sea levels by restoring these reefs.

In the century between 1900 and 2000, approximately 8.3 million cubic metres of rock covering an area of about 21 square miles were extracted from Danish shallow coastal waters for building purposes on land. Although this is a relatively small area, boulder reefs are biological hotspots, supporting hundreds of marine species. These rocky reefs act as a base for everything from oysters to seaweed to thrive, plus a safe haven for young fish.

Read more:
How Denmark’s oysters are transforming foodies into citizen scientists

Now numerous projects are being carried out to bring the stones back to coastal areas. At least eight stone reef restoration projects are currently underway, with the earliest having begun even before stonefishing was prohibited. The first project happened in northern Denmark, conveniently close to Norway where a quarry provided the needed rocks. Since then, interest in restoring lost reefs has grown tremendously.

The restoration projects reveal that marine life returns when given the time, space and right conditions to do so. Seaweed forests recover, creating necessary structural complexity and associated species reenter the restored areas. Atlantic cod, once a culturally and economically important species in the region, are especially attracted to the restored reefs. One study showed cod numbers increased by 60-129 fold over the course of the five to six months after a rock reef was rebuilt.

While working on a stone reef restoration project on the island of Als, in southern Denmark, one of us (Jon C. Svendsen) spotted an opportunity. With rising sea levels, weather getting more severe and being a low-lying country, Denmark is becoming increasingly concerned with coastal erosion. Rocky reefs can help dissipate wave energy, providing a form of protection and so it just made sense to combine the two.

Although Denmark is not as low lying as the nearby Netherlands, the coastline is 4,600 miles long. This makes it one of the longest coastlines in Europe, with around 40% of the population living within a couple of miles of the sea. As sea levels rise, larger waves will be able to reach the shore, leading to increased risk of flooding and erosion, especially on coasts with very small variation in tide levels such as Denmark.

Our stone barrier reef project tests the idea of combining both the protection of the coastline and enhance biodiversity along a section of coast on the island of Samsø. The boulder reef was constructed earlier this year, and extends about 100m long and 16m wide. Sitting roughly 1m below the sea surface, it resembles a medieval rock wall rising from the seabed and runs parallel to the shore.

This reef design is expected to partially shelter the coastline from waves, causing large waves to break along its crest. This reduces the amount of energy available for coastal erosion and encourages the build up of sediment. It is hoped that within this newly created sheltered area, meadows of seagrass (a marine flowering plant) can colonise and flourish.

We’ll be monitoring the progress through an extensive monitoring programme, recording changes in species richness and the sea bed. By snorkelling, we can survey the changes in marine plant and animal life. Underwater cameras will be used to unobtrusively identify and count the number of species moving around the reef over the next three years. With evidence of how marine life recovers, we’ll explore whether these rocky reefs can jointly stabilise the coastline and improve biodiversity in the area.

Globally the fundamental problem with coastal management is that we cannot see vast changes as they occur below the sea surface. Various initiatives across the UK are also trying to make amends for the large historic loss of marine habitats.

Oyster reefs are one such example. Following the collapse of the oyster industry in the 1980s, there are now more than a dozen restoration projects underway in a bid to restore populations of these ecologically and environmentally important species. By working with nature, not extracting from it, we finally stand a chance of building truly resilient coastlines.

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Jon C. Svendsen receives funding from the Velux Foundation and Vattenfall to conduct the BARREEF project.
Research is further funded by A) the Danish Rod and Net Fish License Funds, Denmark, B) the Horizon Europe project MARHAB (grant no. 101135307) (Improving marine habitat status by considering ecosystem dynamics), and C) the BlueBioClimate project (Interreg, grant no. 2021TC16RFCB025).

Dominique Townsend 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. Stones have been ‘overfished’ from the sea – here’s how Denmark’s rocky reefs are being restored – https://theconversation.com/stones-have-been-overfished-from-the-sea-heres-how-denmarks-rocky-reefs-are-being-restored-263151

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicholas Dickinson, Lecturer in Politics, University of Exeter

Conservative party leader David Cameron gave a speech in 2007 on social justice which is remembered as the “hug a hoodie” moment. In it, he laid out the foundations of what would become the “big society” social programme and called for more compassion towards young people. The speech was written by his adviser Danny Kruger – the MP who has just defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform party.

Back then, Kruger, Philip Blond and Steve Hilton were seen as the key intellectual forces behind compassionate conservatism. But we now realise that the big society was really informed by a much darker vision of society than the hug a hoodie speech implied.

It was based on the belief that the country had been hollowed out by the moral vacuousness of governments (both left and right) since the 1960s. The picture the Conservatives painted even at the time was not one of optimism and progress but of crisis and decline.

This was exemplified by Kruger in particular. As he puts it in his essay On Fraternity, published the same year as Cameron’s speech: “Our culture is in the grip of this pernicious alliance, between … self-seeking individualism … and the bloated, all-aggrandising, all-powerful state … Between the two, society is being squeezed to death.” The political left is apportioned the majority of the blame for this state of affairs.

Blond was critical of every post-war government for creating a managerial welfare state which destroyed the old mutualism of the British working class while facilitating social permissiveness. This, he thought, had led to the commodification of sex and the creation of “empty pleasure-seeking drones” who looked to the state to solve problems. Today the right calls this being an NPC – a non-player character.

As a result of his links to Cameron, Blond became a feted public intellectual, founding a think-tank to promote his ideas. Kruger, meanwhile, pursued a career in the third sector before moving into politics. He became an MP in 2019 after a stint at the pro-Brexit Legatum institute.

Reading Cameron’s speech alongside Kruger’s essay today reveals not a coherent political philosophy but a carefully sanitised version of traditional conservatism designed for public consumption. What emerges is not genuine conservative compassion, but social conservativism dressed in progressive language.

The vanishing act

Kruger’s essay is replete with references to classic thinkers and concerns itself primarily with the abstract concept of fraternal bonds in society. Like Cameron, he defines British nationalism as primarily civic and not ethnic. Yet cultural change, including immigration’s effect on social cohesion, are rarely far from the surface.

He identifies “the presence of large communities with different national origins” as one of Britain’s three major challenges, contrasting today’s diversity with an allegedly more homogeneous past. This anxiety about rapid demographic change runs quietly throughout his analysis of social breakdown.

Cameron’s speech, by contrast, made these concerns disappear almost entirely. While discussing youth crime he avoids any suggestion that cultural diversity might complicate social cohesion. The “hoodie” instead becomes a deracinated symbol of alienated youth. Likewise, Cameron avoided golden age rhetoric by focusing entirely on the present and future.

Both texts struggle with a fundamental question: who gets to define the social values that supposedly bind communities together? Kruger writes extensively about “social authority” but rarely distinguishes benevolent community pressure from oppressive conformity except by implication. His requirement that “acts of public liberty” be “compatible with the interests and values of British society as a whole” sounds reasonable until you ask who determines that compatibility.

Cameron dodges this entirely by focusing on consensual values as well as, somewhat ironically, an appeal to expertise. But serious social problems often involve contested values around family structure, sexual morality, work ethic, and cultural integration. Compassionate conservatism had no mechanism for addressing these conflicts beyond hoping voluntary organisations would somehow resolve them.

This vagueness wasn’t accidental. It was essential to the compassionate conservative project. Specific policies force difficult choices between competing values. Better to speak in generalities about “love” and “relationships” while avoiding the hard questions about resources, priorities and trade-offs.

The collapse of compassionate conservatism

Understanding the collapse of compassionate conservatism requires recognising its primary function: electoral coalition-building. It allowed conservatives to appeal to socially liberal voters while maintaining traditional supporters. The problem is that this coalition was always unstable because it papered over genuine philosophical disagreements rather than resolving them.

Kruger’s defection represents the collapse of this synthesis. When migration pressures intensified, cultural conflicts sharpened, and mainstream conservative parties failed to address underlying tensions, the intellectual architects of compassionate conservatism abandoned the project for more explicitly populist alternatives.

Hilton abandoned British politics in the 2010s for Fox News, eventually siding with Trump and the MAGA movement. He is presently running for governor of California against progressive incumbent Gavin Newsom.

Blond still comments on British politics, using his X account in support of a variety of socially conservative positions on abortion, assisted dying, and trans rights. Today he believes the “most oppressed groups in the UK are white working-class males”, though he still interprets this as a progressive position.

Cameron’s speech worked as political rhetoric because it tells everyone what they want to hear – conservatives get individual responsibility and support for voluntary organisations, while progressives get structural understanding and emotional empathy. But when it comes to actual governance, these tensions become impossible to ignore.

Compassionate conservatism wasn’t a serious attempt to synthesise liberty and social justice. It was a marketing campaign that promised voters they could have conservative economics and progressive social policy simultaneously. The intellectual incoherence was a feature, not a bug. Politicians could avoid making difficult choices by pretending they didn’t exist.

The result was a politics of good intentions that consistently failed to deliver meaningful change, leaving both conservative and progressive goals unmet. Now that the electoral rewards of this approach have diminished, even its creators seem to have moved on to more authentic (or lucrative) expressions of their actual beliefs.

Nicholas Dickinson 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. The latest Tory defector to Reform wrote David Cameron’s ‘hug a hoodie’ speech – here’s why that matter now – https://theconversation.com/the-latest-tory-defector-to-reform-wrote-david-camerons-hug-a-hoodie-speech-heres-why-that-matter-now-265561

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Bloxham, Lecturer in Psychology, Nottingham Trent University

Why do we dream? Vishnu, aged nine, Kerala

That’s a really interesting question, and people have been asking it for thousands of years. But it’s difficult to answer because dreams are difficult to study scientifically.

Think about it: how easy do you find it to remember your dreams every night? Not everyone can do this. If we can’t remember our dreams, we can’t study them.

Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation that gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.com and make sure you include the asker’s first name, age and town or city. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best.

Some ancient cultures like the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans believed that dreams were important messages from the gods. But even they could not agree about exactly where dreams come from, why they happen or what they might mean.

In the last 100 years, many scientists across the world have learned a lot about the science of dreaming. But even still, there is disagreement.

Some scientists think dreams have an important job, others do not. I’ll explain some of the most well-known ideas.

Around the year 1900, an Austrian psychologist (someone who studies how we think) called Sigmund Freud published an influential book called The Interpretation of Dreams. In it, Freud wrote about his experiences of talking to other people about their dreams (and his own dreams too).

He believed that dreams came from wishes or desires buried deep in the mind. He thought these wishes were usually transformed in some way to disguise them in the dream, as they could be quite scary or rude.

Freud would help people to work out what these hidden wishes and desires might be, so they could address them in waking life. He also wrote that dreams are a part of the process that helps keep us asleep, that dreams protect sleep from disturbances. And there is some evidence to support that idea.

Freud’s ideas had a great influence on thinking about dreams for many decades. But since Freud’s time, we have learned much more about how sleep works. And that has inspired new ideas about what dreams might (or might not) be doing.

In the 1970s, scientists like Allan Hobson started to reject Freud’s ideas about dreams, and suggested that perhaps dreams don’t do anything important. In Hobson’s view, dreams had no hidden meaning or function to them.

He thought they might just be random side-effects of chemical processes going on in the brain during sleep. It is one good explanation for why dreams often seem so strange. Hobson thought little bits and pieces of knowledge and imagination get activated and merge together meaninglessly.

But other scientists since then have noticed that not all dreams are strange. Many of them are in fact quite ordinary, and some have content that is important to the dreamer.

Perhaps you have dreamed about something that happened in your life recently, like a fun day out with your school friends or family, or maybe you dreamed you were in a film you watched the day before.

We often dream about things that had a significant effect on us in waking life, or are related to worries we carry with us. And this I think is the most important thing we need to realise: our dreams are connected with our waking lives.

Some scientists now believe that dreaming about these things might help us to process them, or give us new ideas about what to do in our waking life. This is still difficult to test though. Whether or not this is what dreams are really doing by themselves, you have the choice to look at your dreams and decide what new ideas you can draw from them.

Another interesting idea is that dreams evolved long ago to help us survive threats. A lot of people seem to report dreaming about being chased by monsters or dangerous animals. Maybe you have too.

Some scientists see this as evidence for a threat simulation system that emerged back when we were living in caves and had to hunt for our food while trying not to be hunted ourselves.

If we survive a threatening encounter in a dream, that could better prepare us for surviving real threats when we are awake. The problem with this idea though is that it is too dangerous to test properly.

Even if someone dreams about fighting a tiger, for example, scientists cannot then lock people in a cage with a real tiger and see how well they survive!

That’s one of the exciting things about being a scientist. There are still lots of questions to answer and we’re learning new things all the time.

Anthony Bloxham 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. Curious kids: why do we dream? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-we-dream-264817

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura O’Flanagan, PhD Candidate, School of English, Dublin City University

After 15 years on screen, Downton Abbey limps to its conclusion with The Grand Finale. Directed by Simon Curtis and billed as the ultimate farewell, it reunites the ensemble cast for one last bow.

Marketed as the crowning chapter of a much-loved, award-winning series that once defined Sunday night television in Britain and became a transatlantic hit, the film carries a weight of expectation.

What audiences have been given, however, is a perfunctory epilogue, as though everyone involved knew something had to be delivered but couldn’t quite summon the spark to make it worthwhile.

At the film’s centre lies the long-anticipated moment when Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) prepares to hand the reins of Downton Abbey to Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery). This plot is further complicated by Mary’s divorce, a scandal rippling through society as she assumes leadership of the estate.

This culmination of a story where responsibility is passed on, continuity is assured and change is accepted ought to feel momentous, but it is bogged down by dozens of minor storylines, quickly raised and neatly resolved. The slack pacing and uneven tone reduce it to a carousel of passing titbits. The Grand Finale seems determined to include all of the characters at once, and in doing so, loses its way.

With such a sprawling cast, there is no room to dig deeply. Scenes are crowded with so many characters that the effect often resembles a curtain call – each actor stepping forward for a line or two, then retreating again. It keeps faces in circulation, but it does not serve the audience.

This lack of focus highlights how far the films have drifted from what once made Downton Abbey irresistible. The television series thrived on a delicate balance of upstairs-downstairs drama. Modest conflicts, such as who might inherit, who might marry and whether a servant’s job was secure, were magnified through sharp writing and careful pacing into something greater than the sum of their parts.

It was a series about character, rhythm and mood as much as Edwardian glamour. The series let tensions simmer, mysteries unfold and gave its ensemble cast space to shine without overwhelming the story. Enormously popular, Downton Abbey became woven into Sunday nights in the UK, the kind of viewing that people looked forward to.

After a long week, Sunday evening would come, curtains were drawn, tea was brewed, and Downton Abbey was on TV. The familiar grand Victorian house with its rituals upstairs and downstairs helped close out the weekend with something warm, elegant and comforting. For me, it was a balm earlier this year while I was waiting on medical results and caught in restless uncertainty.

In this limbo, I returned to Downton Abbey on TV. It was comforting and familiar, yet still compelling enough to hold my attention when little else could. Back in good health, however, The Grand Finale could barely hold my attention for the two-hour running time.

Still, there is some pleasure in seeing the actors again. Michelle Dockery settles effortlessly back into Mary, and her warm exchanges with Laura Carmichael’s Edith highlight the positive development of the sisters’ relationship. Joanne Froggatt has a gentle and kind presence as Anna, and there are glimmers of the magic of the series in the scenes with Daisy (Sophie McShera) and Mrs Patmore (Leslie Nicol).

Maggie Smith’s absence is deeply felt; without the dowager countess’s sharp wit and perfectly timed barbs, the film misses the comedy of her character and veers too far towards sweetness and politeness.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale should have been the story’s crowning achievement, a chapter that tied its themes together and gave long-time viewers reason to cherish the journey one last time. Instead, it is a poor imitation of past glories.

A series that once made the smallest stakes feel monumental ends with an instalment that is both thin and tedious. Lord Grantham, resorting to cliche, remarks: “So this is how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”

The whimper of this finale plays out in orchestral swells, becoming glossy and hollow, with a sentimental montage at the end which resembles a John Lewis Christmas advert. On the other hand, if you have found yourself invested in Downton over the years, how can you not take this chance to wave off old friends and find out how it ends? Just don’t expect a bang.

Laura O’Flanagan 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. If you’re a fan of Downton Abbey, this Grand Finale is a big letdown – https://theconversation.com/if-youre-a-fan-of-downton-abbey-this-grand-finale-is-a-big-letdown-265434

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sophia Komninou, Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition, Swansea University

Protein is everywhere nowadays. From yogurt to breakfast cereal, bread to pasta or even chocolate bars, the obsession with making sure we get enough protein has seemingly taken over our diets.

This push for protein has even started to trickle down to children, with parents now worrying their kids aren’t getting enough of it. While protein is certainly an important nutrient for growing children, most will already get more than enough protein from their regular diet and won’t need fortified foods to “boost” their intake.

Adults usually need between 0.8g and 1.2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. But infants, toddlers and children all have high protein needs relative to their body size because of their very rapid growth – so this factor is much higher.

That might lead to parents to think they need to provide large amounts of protein to their child or worry that if their child isn’t getting enough it will stunt their development. But because children have a much lower body weight compared to adults, the amount they actually need is still significantly less than what the average adult needs daily.

For babies under a year old, recommended protein intake is between 12-15g of protein per day. They require such a high amount of protein in proportion to their body weight because of how fast they grow – doubling their birth weight in the first six months and tripling it by their first birthday. Their protein needs are usually covered by their normal breast milk or formula intake.

Up to three years of age, as their development gets less rapid, children need around 15g of protein a day. From age four to six, children need around 20g of protein per day as their body weight increases. From six to ten, they need around 28g of protein per day.

From then on, the recommendations differ between boys and girls as they reach puberty at slightly different rates. From the ages of nine to 13, boys and girls both need around 34g of protein per day. But from age 14-18, girls need approximately 46g of protein while boys need 52g.

Protein intake

Your child’s daily protein needs are probably already being adequately met through their usual diet. To illustrate how when it comes to actual food intake, a cup of milk (240ml) or half a cup of lentils or beans contains 8g of protein, an egg or one slice of cheese has around 6g of protein and 100g of Greek yoghurt or 40g of chicken contains 10g of protein.

There’s also protein in many foods that we don’t normally associate with protein. For instance, pasta has 5g of protein per 100g, rice around 3g per 100g and bread has around 2g per slice.

So, unless your child is an extremely picky eater, it’s unlikely you need to actively count their protein intake daily or find ways of sneaking extra protein in with fortified foods, protein powders or adding high-protein ingredients to recipes. Their diet alone should be sufficient.

What’s more, focusing too much on specific nutrients could create a stressful environment around mealtimes. This could affect a child’s relationship with food in the long term.

Focusing solely on protein consumption could also potentially lead to under consumption of other nutrients that offer different health benefits. For example, when focusing on high-protein diets for toddlers and children, the rest of their diet might end up lacking fruits and vegetables as they’re considered low protein. But fibre is essential for gut health, so this could lead to health problems such as constipation.

Fast-growing toddlers and children also need more that just protein for growth and development. They need a combination of many macro- and micronutrients – including carbohydrates and unsaturated fats, which are often found in foods that aren’t protein rich.

Protein increases feelings of fullness by slowing stomach emptying. This could reduce hunger and overall food intake – including intake of these other nutrients that are important for development. For more picky eaters that could lead to even more restricted diet.

Too much protein has also been shown to have a negative effect on the kidneys, liver and bone density in adults. However, the evidence is still not there yet for children on how much is too much. But what we do know is that high animal protein diets have been associated with excessive weight gain early in life so too much protein may best be avoided.

Protein is an essential part of your child’s diet, important for their growth and development. But most will get more than enough from the foods they normally eat and won’t need products such as protein shakes or protein supplements.

Sophia Komninou 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 your child need more protein? The answer is probably not – https://theconversation.com/does-your-child-need-more-protein-the-answer-is-probably-not-263744