Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeremy Howick, Professor and Director of the Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare, University of Leicester

Artificial intelligence has mastered chess, art and medical diagnosis. Now it’s apparently beating doctors at something we thought was uniquely human: empathy.

A recent review published in the British Medical Bulletin analysed 15 studies comparing AI-written responses with those from human healthcare professionals. Blinded researchers then rated these responses for empathy using validated assessment tools. The results were startling: AI responses were rated as more empathic in 13 out of 15 studies – 87% of the time.

Before we surrender healthcare’s human touch to our new robot overlords, we need to examine what’s really happening here.

The studies compared written responses rather than face-to-face interactions, giving AI a structural advantage: no vocal tone to misread, no body language to interpret, and unlimited time to craft perfect responses.

Critically, none of these studies measured harms. They assessed whether AI responses sounded empathic, not whether they led to better outcomes or caused damage through misunderstood context, missed warning signs, or inappropriate advice.

Yet even accounting for these limitations, the signal was strong. And the technology is improving daily – “carebots” are becoming increasingly lifelike and sophisticated.

Beyond methodological concerns, there’s a simpler explanation: many doctors admit that their empathy declines over time, and patient ratings of healthcare professionals’ empathy vary greatly.

Inquiries into fatal healthcare tragedies – from Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust to various patient safety reviews – have explicitly named lack of empathy from healthcare professionals as contributing to avoidable harm. But here’s the real issue: we’ve created a system that makes empathy nearly impossible.

Doctors spend about a third of their time on paperwork and electronic health records. Doctors must also follow pre-defined protocols and procedures. While the documentation and protocols have some benefits, they have arguably had the unintended consequence of forcing the doctors to play the bot game. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised when the bot wins.

The burnout crisis makes this worse. Globally, at least a third of GPs report burnout – exceeding 60% in some specialties. Burned-out doctors struggle to maintain empathy. It’s not a moral failing; it’s a physiological reality. Chronic stress depletes the emotional reserves required for genuine empathy.

The wonder isn’t that AI appears more empathic; it’s that human healthcare professionals manage any empathy at all.

What AI will never replicate

No carebot, however sophisticated, can truly replicate certain dimensions of human care.

A bot cannot hold a frightened child’s hand during a painful procedure and make them feel safe through physical presence. It cannot read unspoken distress in a teenager’s body language when they’re too embarrassed to voice their real concern. It cannot draw on cultural experience to understand why a patient might be reluctant to accept certain treatment.

AI cannot sit in silence with a dying patient when words fail. It cannot share a moment of dark humour that breaks the tension. It cannot exercise the moral judgment required when clinical guidelines conflict with a patient’s values.

These aren’t minor additions to healthcare; they’re often what make care effective, healing possible and medicine humane.

Here’s the tragic irony: AI threatens to take over precisely those aspects of care that humans do better, while humans remain trapped doing tasks computers should handle.

We’re heading toward a world where AI provides the “empathy” while exhausted humans manage technical work – exactly backward. This requires three fundamental changes.

First, we must train doctors to be consistently excellent at empathic communication. This cannot be a brief module in medical school. It needs to be central to healthcare education. Since AI already matches humans in many technical skills, this should free doctors to focus on genuine human connection.

Second, redesign healthcare systems to protect the conditions necessary for empathy. Dramatically reduce administrative burden through better technology (ironically, AI could help here), ensure adequate consultation time, and address burnout through systemic change rather than resilience training.

Third, rigorously measure both benefits and harms of AI in healthcare interactions. We need research on actual patient outcomes, missed diagnoses, inappropriate advice, and long-term effects on the therapeutic relationship – not just whether responses sound empathic to raters.

The empathy crisis in healthcare isn’t caused by insufficient technology. It’s caused by systems that prevent humans from being human. AI appearing more empathic than doctors is a symptom, not the disease.

We can use AI to handle administrative tasks and free doctors’ time and mental space, and even provide tips to help healthcare professionals boost their empathy. Or we can use it to replace the human connection that remains healthcare’s greatest strength.

The technology will continue advancing, regardless. The question is whether we’ll use it to support human empathy or substitute for it – whether we’ll fix the system that broke our healthcare workers or simply replace them with machines that were never broken to begin with.

The choice is ours, but the window is closing fast.

Jeremy Howick receives funding from the Stoneygate Trust.

– ref. AI is beating doctors at empathy – because we’ve turned doctors into robots – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-beating-doctors-at-empathy-because-weve-turned-doctors-into-robots-269108

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aiden Hoyle, Assistant Professor in Intelligence and Security, Institute for Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University

When we talk about disinformation – the intentional spreading of misleading information – we usually picture blatant lies and “fake news” pushed by foreign governments. Sometimes the intention is to sway voters in elections, and sometimes it’s to sow confusion in a crisis.

But this is a somewhat simplified version of events. In fact, authoritarian countries, such as Russia and, increasingly, China, are engaged in continuous and more expansive projects aimed at creating a tilted political reality. They seek to subtly undermine the image of western democracies, presenting themselves, and their growing bloc of authoritarian partners, as the future.

Crafting this political reality includes the use of blatant falsities, but the narrative is typically grounded in a much more insidious manipulation of information. Positive facts are highlighted to a disproportionate degree, while inconvenient ones are ignored or taken out of context, so that they appear more in line with the narrator’s goals.

The Kremlin has, for a long time, used state-sponsored media outlets, proxy media outlets or bots to disperse a consistent stream of stories – news articles, tweets, videos or social media posts – designed to subtly steer and antagonise political discussions in democratic societies. Reports show that these stories can reach audiences far beyond their original Russian outlets. They are unknowingly (or sometimes, knowingly) repeated by local or national media, commentators or online users.

A common trope is the idea that democratic societies are chaotic and failing. Coverage might exaggerate crime, corruption, and social disorder, or highlight public protests, economic stagnation, or governmental instability as evidence that democracies are not working. The underlying message is that democracy leads to chaos.

Some stories focus on making progressive values in western societies seem weird. They ridicule progressive social change regarding, for example, LGBTQ+ rights or multiculturalism, making them seem illogical or silly.

Others use real grievances but frame them to amplify feelings of discrimination and victimhood. In the Baltic states, for example, Russian media frequently highlights the alleged persecution of Russian speakers, suggesting they are being treated as second-class citizens and giving far less space to other perspectives.

If we look at the growing online “manosphere”, this mechanism is also in evidence – messaging that reinforces a collective sense of victimhood that fuels division and distrust.

An authoritarian alternative

These types of stories, portraying western societies as dysfunctional and strange, have long been used by the Kremlin to damage the image of democracy. Increasingly, however, we are also seeing Russia and China collaborating in the global online media space to jointly present the authoritarian world as stable and principled alternative powers.

Both Russia and China are critical of the “international rules-based order”, a framework of liberal rules and political norms that emerged after the second world war. They see this order as western-centric and want to reshape the global order in their interest.

Military and economic collaboration form part of their efforts to challenge this order, but global media and online spaces are important too. Both states, for example, frequently disseminate stories that portray western countries as neo-colonial powers.

Another theme is that democracies are hypocritical actors who preach equality and fairness but do not practice it. Stories of a lack of unity in western alliances like Nato or the EU are also consistent in Russian and Chinese narration. Conversely, Russia and China are presented as logical and sane countries, seeking to protect other, more vulnerable nations from western exploitation.

Why are these stories effective?

These stories seem to resonate, especially with audiences in developing countries. That’s often because they have a kernel of truth. Storytellers might focus on real issues, like inequality, foreign policy missteps or double standards and, of course, it’s true that many western countries are indeed dealing with cost of living crises and that foreign policy is not always consistent. Memories of colonial rule make accusations of current exploitation all the more believable.

It’s often the way a story is told that misleads. Details are withheld or taken out of context. Speculative information is presented as fact. This creates a distorted version of the truth.

The stories are often told in emotive terms in a bid to trigger our anger, shock, fear or resentment. For example, in the context of the war in Ukraine, disinformation might suggest that our governments are betraying us by getting involved in foreign wars, or that ordinary citizens are the ones paying the price for the ambitions of a corrupt elite.

They are laden with scandal and sensationalism, skipping nuance in favour of emotional resonance. This ensures the stories are shared and promoted across social media.

The truth can be complex and, at times, boring. Yet by capitalising on our tendency to gravitate towards the sensational, Russia and China can drip-feed a specific worldview into our own – where democracy is ineffective and chaotic and where they offer a fairer, functional future.

In this way, disinformation today is less about outright falsehoods and more about the subtle sculpting how we see the world. Over time, this quiet reshaping can reach far beyond what a false headline might do, and make us doubt the very value of democracy itself.

Aiden Hoyle 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. How authoritarian states sculpt a warped alternative reality in our news feeds – https://theconversation.com/how-authoritarian-states-sculpt-a-warped-alternative-reality-in-our-news-feeds-266092

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeremiah Stanley, Postdoctoral Researcher, Viral and Cancer Genes, University of Limerick

Serotonin is often described as the happiness chemical because of its well-known role in regulating mood. However, recent research suggests this familiar molecule may play an unexpected role in cancer development. Not through its effects on the brain, but through a completely different mechanism in other parts of the body.

Despite serotonin being commonly associated with the brain, almost 95% of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut. From there, it enters the bloodstream and travels to various organs and tissues, including the liver, pancreas, muscles, bones, fat tissue and immune cells.

Gut serotonin helps regulate blood sugar levels through its actions on the liver and pancreas, and regulate body temperature by acting on fat tissue. It also contributes to maintaining healthy bones, stimulating appetite and gut motility, stimulating sexual health, promoting wound healing, and supporting immunity against harmful microbes. It essentially drives the functions of many cells throughout the body, and its effects extend far beyond mood regulation.

In 2019, scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York discovered that serotonin can enter cells and interact directly with DNA. They found that it binds to molecular “switches” that control whether genes are active or inactive – and this binding can turn specific genes on.

Studies since then have shown that serotonin can switch on genes involved in cancer growth. This mechanism has been seen in brain, liver and pancreatic cancers – and it may play a role in many other types of cancer.

My colleagues and I at the University of Limerick in Ireland are currently investigating the interaction between serotonin and DNA to better understand how it influences cancer. Identifying the specific sites where serotonin binds to cancer-related genes could support the development of targeted “epigenetic” therapies – treatments that control which genes are switched on or off.

Epigenetic therapies aim to reprogramme cancer cells by adjusting their gene activity directly. They can specifically turn off the harmful genes and turn on the beneficial ones in cancer cells without altering the DNA sequence itself. Such therapies may one day attack cancer cells with greater precision than current methods: surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. (While these approaches can be life-saving, they are often aggressive, carry significant side-effects and do not always prevent recurrence.)

Scientists are also exploring how serotonin produced in the gut reaches cancer cells. Understanding this pathway could allow doctors to manage serotonin levels in patients. Approaches might include dietary changes, maintaining a healthy gut microbiome, or using antidepressant drugs called “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs).

Cells take up serotonin through tiny “transport channels” and the SSRIs block these channels, limiting serotonin’s entry into cancer cells. These drugs increase serotonin levels in the body but prevent it from reaching the DNA to cause their cancer-promoting effects. This strategy could complement existing therapies and possibly improve their effectiveness.

Untangling serotonin’s double life

Brain and gut serotonin operate largely independently. The serotonin that influences mood does not appear to drive cancer growth. For instance, people with depression may have lower serotonin activity in the brain, but the serotonin produced in the gut doesn’t seem to have a clear effect on brain serotonin. SSRI antidepressants, such as Prozac, Celexa and Zoloft, act by increasing serotonin levels in the brain and, therefore, people taking these pills need not worry that their pills may be driving cancer.

On the contrary, as mentioned above, early studies suggest that SSRIs could have beneficial effects against certain cancers – although larger clinical trials are needed to confirm this.

Our research aims to build a detailed understanding of serotonin’s role across different tissues and cellular pathways, potentially opening new avenues for treatment. However, significant challenges remain.

A clearer understanding of how serotonin interacts with cancer-related genes is needed to determine which targets are most effective. Accurate delivery systems must also be developed to ensure epigenetic drugs reach their intended sites of action. Most importantly, encouraging results from cell-based experiments must be validated in ethically designed animal studies and human clinical trials before meaningful progress can be claimed.

If therapies can be developed to target serotonin’s activity specifically in cancer cells, tumours could become less aggressive and easier to remove surgically, with a lower risk of recurrence.

A more complete understanding of serotonin’s functions in the body – across mood, metabolism and cancer – may guide the development of more precise and effective therapies in the future.

Jeremiah Stanley receives funding from the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme of the European Commission.

– ref. Scientists are uncovering serotonin’s role in cancer – here’s what we know – https://theconversation.com/scientists-are-uncovering-serotonins-role-in-cancer-heres-what-we-know-266199

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pragya Agarwal, Visiting Professor of Social Inequities and Injustice, Loughborough University

The Land Sings Back, a new exhibition at the Drawing Room gallery in London, is a gorgeous evocation of our rights to our lands and our symbiotic relationship with nature.

Thirteen artists with ancestral lands in south Asia, Africa and the Caribbean are subverting the role that sketching and drawing have played in conquest and colonialism. Instead, they have reimagined it as a way to reclaim indigenous knowledge for environmental justice. Drawing on archival research, soundscapes, zines, ceramics, found objects and ephemera, the work on show dissolves the boundaries and lines between various media, questioning the institutionalisation of knowledge.

The exhibition draws on the concept of ecofeminism, first coined by French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne in her 1974 book Feminism or Death. Ecofeminism maintains that patriarchy and colonialism are inherently interlinked. The subjugation of women and marginalised people, which has severed their connection to the lands and the oppression of their myths and stories, has created an imbalance between nature and humans.

The exhibition opens with the work of Lado Bai, a Bhil artist from Madhya Pradesh in India. Bai combines traditional motifs with contemporary symbolism to show a deep connection to the natural world. The Bhil religion is deeply rooted in animism. Animism is the belief that everything from trees and rivers to rocks and animals possesses a spiritual essence and that these entities must be respected through rituals and offerings.

In the 1901 census, 97% of Bhils identified as animists, and they retain this connection through stories and folklore. This forms the basis of Bai’s work. Like so much of indigenous art from India, there is a deceptive simplicity to her work, but within the dots and lines, there is a deeper story of ancient knowledge. Every painting presents an episode in the larger story of Bhil ritual and tradition.

Another Indian artist on display is Manjot Kaur. Kaur reimagines the historical miniature paintings from Mughal art and Rajasthani tradition and uses anthropomorphism to challenge black-and-white thinking. It’s a hopeful response to the climate crisis and extinction. Not merely content with representing the traditional stories and rituals, Kaur is reimagining the mythologies for a post-queer world – a world where people no longer feel the need to define themselves through queer labels – or even a post-human one.

This series is titled Chthonic Beings. The title comes from the Greek mythological creatures of the underworld. These monstrous looking beings are gods of fertility – but also of death. Both coexist, fluidly merging into one another. And so, here too, Kaur decentres the human, instead imagining many of the local Indian species such as blackbuck and great Indian bustard playing the roles of protectors and care givers.

Whose truth and whose land?

Every artist in this exhibition is unique in their approach and response, but drawing is the thread that weaves their stories together. There are broad questions at play: what does a line on the paper mean? Whose labour is hidden? Who has the power to imbue meaning in these lines?

Historically, lines have been drawn to divide people, marginalise them and push them away from the mainstream of society where power lies. Here, the lines are doing the opposite. They are discordant, but only to challenge the disharmony and oppression of the past and the present.

The lines are uncomfortable at times, as in Anupam Roy’s work, which uses satirical imagery and protest posters to draw attention to the land rights movement against the many mining projects in rural Bengal. In February 2025, local activists from west Bengal’s Birbhum district demanded the mining work in the Deocha-Pachami-Dewanganj-Harisingha coal block be cancelled.

It led to the displacement of thousands of indigenous people from their lands. Roy’s drawings demand urgent action for the subaltern subjects (those people who have been historically marginalised and excluded from the dominant power structures) and their precarious condition in the contemporary capitalist system.

But the larger question in Roy’s work is the matter of truth, and whose truth we see represented in images around us. Truth and propaganda are very much on the same axis, as we are seeing today in our current political climate.

The Land Sings Back is beautifully curated by Natasha Ginwala, artistic director of Colomboscope. And it is an emotional experience too, which left me with more questions than answers. But then, that is what good art always does.

The Land Sings Back is on at Drawing Room, London until December 14 2025

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Pragya Agarwal 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 Land Sings Back: a gorgeous exhibition of drawings inspired by ecofeminism – https://theconversation.com/the-land-sings-back-a-gorgeous-exhibition-of-drawings-inspired-by-ecofeminism-269033

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Theo Stanley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Geography, University of Southampton

Until the end of October, China had refused to purchase a single soya bean from the US’s 2025 harvest. It usually spends tens of billions of dollars on the crop, which is a key ingredient in animal feed, so the boycott hit US farmers hard – and affected food systems far beyond US and Chinese borders.

Since then, a meeting between the countries’ two presidents has meant that the soya bean trade is back on for the time being. But the stand-off is yet another reminder of the vulnerability of global trade to geopolitical crises.

Shocks in supply chains often lead to rising prices, and expensive soya beans can quickly push up the cost of meat elsewhere. This happened after the price of wheat, another animal feed ingredient, spiked in 2022 following Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Many countries are completely reliant on imported soya. In the UK, around 70% of the cost of producing a chicken is what farmers feed them, and soya is a vital ingredient.

Last year the UK imported 2.4 million tonnes of soya beans and “meal” (made from grounding and heating the beans after their oil has been extracted), mostly from Argentina and Brazil, two of the world’s largest exporters. China imported 105 million tonnes, including 27 million tonnes from the US.

If China switched to buying more, or even all, of its soya from South America, prices could increase for UK companies whose import infrastructure is locked in to the South American supply chain. To keep chicken prices low, some supermarkets and wholesalers may start selling fresh chicken produced overseas, which can be reared to much lower welfare and environmental standards than in the UK.

One of the reasons for the high demand in the UK for soya beans is that the meal used to feed chickens has an extremely high concentration of protein, at around 48%. Similar produce made from sunflower seeds or fava beans is about 30%.

It is this high protein content which allows modern meat (“broiler”) chickens to grow quickly and efficiently.

In the 1950s, chickens required around 4.4kg of feed per 1kg of meat produced. Improvements in the sciences of genetics and nutrition mean that today that ratio can be as low as 1.3kg of feed for the same amount of meat. The most common chicken strain, known as the Ross 308, can grow to 2.5kg in just six weeks.

For many in the industry, these developments are a triumph of science and biotechnology. Less feed means lower costs and a smaller environmental footprint. But animal welfare experts have highlighted that these efficiency gains can come at the expense of welfare and lead to increased mortality rates.

And there are also fears about a national protein shortage if the soya supply were to be compromised. This might be the result of drought in soya-growing regions, geopolitical tensions, trade blockades or war. As part of ongoing government-funded research into the resilience of the UK food system, I have been interviewing animal feed experts, and many expressed concern that the UK does not have a domestic protein source in sufficient quantities.

Protein fix

Currently the UK chicken industry – and all the roast dinners, nuggets, curries and sandwiches it provides – relies on soya beans. But because they struggle to grow in the UK’s cool and wet climate, they have to be imported.

Attempts to grow a domestic alternative protein for chicken feed have struggled. Peas, beans, sunflower and rapeseed, all of which grow in the British climate, have a much lower protein content than soya beans, are harder to grow predictably, and are difficult to digest.

Distillers’ grain, the byproduct leftover from bioethanol production, could be a promising high-protein alternative. But the largest bioethanol plant in the UK shut down in August 2025 because of changing US-UK tariff agreements, and cheap imports have now made domestic production economically non-viable.

Insect meal is promising in theory but cannot be scaled to anywhere near the same quantities as soya, which arrives in Liverpool from South America every week in huge amounts.

Modern supply chains have been built on systems of logistics which are incredibly efficient when things go right, but are not necessarily resilient to things going wrong. And while the “soya bean war” might not end up drastically disrupting the UK food system, it does highlight the precarious framework of international trade.

MI5 has a saying that the UK is “four meals away from anarchy”, suggesting any serious interruption to the country’s food supply chain would lead to mass disorder. Chicken, the county’s most popular meat, is completely dependent on overseas imports. And although global commodity supply chains have stayed generally stable throughout the 21st century, that stability can never be taken for granted.

Theo Stanley receives funding from the UK Government (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation; and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).

– ref. How the China-US trade war could push up the cost of British chicken dinners – https://theconversation.com/how-the-china-us-trade-war-could-push-up-the-cost-of-british-chicken-dinners-268040

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jamie Thompson, Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, University of Reading

Every mind-bending molecule in nature has an evolutionary origin; a defence against being eaten, a lure for pollinators, or perhaps a happy biochemical accident. Though they seem extraordinary, life has evolved psychedelic molecules that alter consciousness across almost every ecosystem.

Let’s take a tour of our surprisingly psychedelic planet.

The tropical rainforests hum with chemical diversity. Among the 10,000 tree species living in the Amazon are several which produce dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the molecule that makes psychedelic brew ayahuasca so powerful. DMT is a naturally occurring tryptamine molecule, which derives from the same chemical building block that gives us serotonin and melatonin, chemical messengers that change our mood and help us sleep.

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One of these tree species, the Psychotria viridis, or chacruna, is a small understory tree from the plant family that also gives us coffee. Other DMT-producing species include yopo (Anadenanthera peregrina), a tree native to the Amazon that is also found in the Caribbean. Yopo is in the legume family, a close relative of beans, chickpeas and lentils. Scientists aren’t sure why some species in the same family develop psychedelic compounds while others don’t.

Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.
This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

Many tryptamine compounds like DMT are thought to have evolved in plants as chemical defences against herbivores and pathogens, the result of an evolutionary arms race going back millions of years. Scientists are not yet sure which species the plants were trying to defend against.

The deserts may not appear to hum with life. Their extreme heat, punishing aridity and sparse vegetation make survival seem improbable, and the organisms that persist often look strange.

However, deserts have given rise to powerfully psychedelic organisms. The peyote cactus is small and round and lives in the deserts of Mexico and south Texas, where it grows extremely slowly, often taking decades to reach maturity. Peyote is threatened as it is subject to intense poaching by collectors and recreational users of the mescaline it produces, a psychedelic alkaloid.

Alkaloids are part of the same chemical class as caffeine and nicotine, and are also thought to have evolved to defend plants against herbivores. Desert-living peyote are not the only psychedelic cactus though. A distant cousin of the high Andes, the San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus macrogonus var. pachanoi), also produces mescaline. But unlike peyote, San Pedro grows fast and tall.

Beyond cacti, the Sonoran desert is host to the Sonoran Desert toad, which produces one of the most potent hallucinogens known to scientists, 5-MeO-DMT.

Tundra and toadstools

Like the deserts, the tundra hardly appears a friendly place to live. But even in the frozen north of Siberia, psychedelics can be found. When asked to visualise a
toadstool, many of us will picture a red-capped mushroom with white spots. This is the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), a species complex with a distribution in the boreal and temperate forests of the northern hemisphere including the UK, that originated in Siberia or Beringia.

Fly agaric produces psychedelic compounds including muscimol and ibotenic acid, which differ chemically from the more well-known psilocybin, but are also hallucinogenic. Like the psychedelic trees of the Amazon, mushrooms probably evolved these molecules specifically to put off animals that might eat them.

This mushroom has plenty of lore, spanning Viking berserkers, early Christianity and even the Father Christmas tradition. Whether these stories are true is up for debate, but we know there is deep use in indigenous cultures. We also know how important the fly agaric is for many trees including birch and oak, with which it forms symbiotic relationships, helping trees survive in the soil.

The world’s grasslands might appear serene, but they host one of nature’s darker psychedelic stories.

Hidden among the grains lives ergot (Claviceps purpurea), a tiny fungus which fills grass seeds with ergot alkaloids. These compounds, the chemical cousins of LSD, have haunted humanity for centuries. In the middle ages, outbreaks of ergot poisoning caused mass hallucinations and hysteria throughout Europe. Entire villages succumbed to visions and manic dancing, often attributed to demonic possession.

In 1938, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesised LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) from ergot molecules. The consequences of this discovery shaped modern culture and technology, even inspiring a Nobel prize winner to invent the PCR reaction that underlies modern genetic research and COVID testing.

Beyond ergot, the temperate grasslands are host to the liberty cap (Psilocybe semilanceata). This is a common and unassuming mushroom that produces some of the highest concentrations of psilocybin and psilocin, powerful psychedelic molecules. It is one of the most abundant mushrooms in some regions and grows undetected in many back gardens. The liberty cap recycles decaying grass and sedge roots, playing an important role in its ecosystem. And lab studies in the early 2000s discovered it also produces antimicrobial compounds, to prevent pathogens growing on it.

Some psychedelic species are found all over the planet. The psilocybin and psilocin producing mushrooms of genus Psilocybe can be found in regions as diverse
as the Mexican highlands, Australia, India and Japan. Several species of common ornamental grasses (Phalaris) living in the US and Eurasia produce DMT, as do certain Australian species of Acacia and South American Mimosa, which are in the legume family.

Curiously, DMT has also been found in small amounts in mammals, including humans, where it may possibly act as a neuromodulator, a molecule facilitating communication between neurons.

This is only scratching the surface of Earth’s psychedelic supply. The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants by Amazon explorer Richard Evans Schultes, published in 1976, describes over 100 plant and fungi species.

And this field of research is still young. Two new Psilocybe mushroom species, which both produce psilocybin, were scientifically recorded in southern Africa only in 2023. Recent work suggests that the 400,000 plant species alone may produce millions of unique molecules, with more than 99% of these unknown and not characterised in a lab. We do not even know how many fungal species there are, but there are likely to be millions, most yet to be discovered.

Jamie Thompson 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 psychedelic tour of Earth’s ecosystems – from the desert to Siberia – https://theconversation.com/a-psychedelic-tour-of-earths-ecosystems-from-the-desert-to-siberia-268719

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Boylan, Professor of Education, Sheffield Hallam University

Proposed changes to England’s national curriculum aim to ensure it is fit for the future, writes Professor Becky Francis in her introduction to the final report of the government’s independent curriculum review. The panel that conducted the review sought to address the “rich knowledge and skills young people need to thrive in our fast-changing world”.

From the outset, the review limited itself to “evolution not revolution”, and in the report the changes are described as a “refresh” to the current curriculum rather than a new one. This is understandable given the current challenges education faces of tight budgets and teacher supply.

The present curriculum came into use in 2014. It tended to look more to the past, with the aim to “introduce pupils to the best that has been thought and said”.

The proposed revised curriculum looks more to the future. It expands the idea of a curriculum rich in knowledge to value “applied knowledge”, including life skills.

The review’s recommendations highlight the importance of financial literacy, digital literacy and media literacy, as well as education on climate change and sustainability, as well as oracy (speaking skills).

England is currently an outlier in not including life skills in the curriculum. Other countries, such as Singapore and Estonia, combine high standards with explicitly addressing these skills.

One way of doing this is to treat life skills as a whole in a similar way to a main curriculum subject. The other is to embed them as cross-curriculum themes within all subjects: making sure that every subject includes communication or digital skills.

The report is notable for recommending more of a hybrid approach. Citizenship is currently only taught as a subject in secondary schools, but in future will be taught in primary schools too. In both secondary and primary schools many of these life skills will be taught in citizenship lessons.

Some skills will be more explicitly addressed as part of other subjects, such as financial literature literacy? in maths and digital literacy in computing. But a new oracy framework will support communication skills across the whole curriculum.

The curriculum assessment review also uses recommendations specific to school subjects to promote a new way of combining knowledge and skills. Many of these changes are about addressing inconsistencies, gaps or weaknesses in the current subject curricula.

What counts as important cultural knowledge is expanded from the current curriculum to reflect current times and the diverse nation we live in. This is reflected in changes in the English curriculum with the inclusion of modern texts with authors from more diverse backgrounds.

Knowledge, the review recommends, should be “powerful” to support young people to collectively address the issues they face. This does not mean a dramatic rewriting of each subject curriculum but translates, in some subjects, to a shift in emphasis. This includes highlighting to pupils how relevant certain content is to their lives and to give them more opportunity to use what they know.

A standout way in which skills are valued in the report are recommendations in 16-19 curriculum and assessment. The introduction of new V-levels, already proposed in the government’s recent post-16 education and skills policy paper, intends to allow students to combine vocational and academic learning.

Other changes in the post-16 sector, such as different ways to support young people to gain GCSE-equivalent maths and English qualifications, also recognise that qualifications designed partly as gateways to A-level study are not appropriate for all learners.

These recommendations might well improve the experience of learners, in particular those who find secondary school demotivating. But the proposals in the curriculum review are limited. They are unlikely to do much to address the needs of those young people who are far from thriving in the current system.

The review notes the comparatively good performance by England on international tests. However, the same tests indicate that young people in England report low levels of life satisfaction. Enjoyment of school is falling, and school is affecting young people’s mental health.

The report’s final recommendation is for another review in ten years’ time. Even if the report is fully implemented, it is likely that in ten years a significant number of young people will still not be thriving in school. To address that we may need a much more fundamental curriculum change.

Mark Boylan receives funding for research from the Education Endowment Foundation

– ref. New national curriculum’s skills agenda starts to bring England in line with world-leading education systems – https://theconversation.com/new-national-curriculums-skills-agenda-starts-to-bring-england-in-line-with-world-leading-education-systems-268961