Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lorna Stevens, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Strategic Marketing, University of Bath

The 2026 Oscars saw Jessie Buckley win best actress for her searing portrayal of a mother’s grief in Hamnet. But the film is also a story about a “green witch”, for Agnes Hathaway is no ordinary woman. She is a herbalist, healer and daughter of a “forest witch”.

In Maggie O’Farrell’s prize-winning novel of the same name, we first meet Agnes in her “witch garden” as her stepmother disparagingly calls it. We learn of her love of nature and that she has the gift of second sight, tuning into nature’s signs. There are other hints too: she has a “familiar”, a kestrel, which represents Agnes’s wild nature.

When her future husband Will Shakespeare first meets her he is struck by her direct gaze, her almost masculine energy. Her searching fingers grip the flesh between his thumb and forefinger to glean his essence. Agnes is independent, unruly, a creature of the forest. In the film’s opening scene she is curled up asleep among the tangled roots of a huge tree which serves as an arresting motif in the film.

The powerful story of Agnes the healer and forest witch highlights an aspect of witchcraft often overlooked in more sensationalised and darker versions of witchcraft, such as in the TV series Mayfair Witches. It also points to a growing form of modern witchcraft today, known as “green witchcraft”.

This form has its roots in “natural magic” – the practice of using plants, herbs and the natural world for benevolent purposes. Doreen Valiente, who wrote the book Natural Magic in 1975, refers to “green magic” in her text, foreshadowing what was to become a popular form of witchcraft 40 years later.

Green witchcraft also has close links with goddess spirituality, which celebrates the divine feminine as a counterbalance to the divine masculine dominance of traditional religions.

As the name suggests, green witchcraft draws on environmental concerns and often has an eco-feminist emphasis – women caring for the earth and all living entities on it, and opposing the exploitation of nature for human ends.

Green witchcraft has become so popularised that my colleague Pauline Maclaran and I devote a chapter to it in our forthcoming book, Bewitching Consumer Culture: Witchcraft, Feminism and Markets.

Historically in Britain, the witch figure inspired fear, fascination and suspicion. The brutal witch-hunts and widespread persecution of women that occurred from the mid-16th to the mid-18th centuries have made the witch a powerful figure for feminism. Our book explores the growing interest in witchcraft in the marketplace, revealing how the witch has evolved into a feminist heroine for our times.

Growing interest

Interest in the subject has burgeoned in recent years. When working on our book, a google search on “green witchcraft” resulted in 675 million hits, and “green witch” had 705 million hits. An Amazon search returned over 2,000 publications, mostly published in the last five years. There is now a plethora of books on the topic, and numerous podcasts, blogs and YouTube videos devoted to the subject.

Many green witches have huge followings, and share their practices on social media sites such as TikTok (aka WitchTok), YouTube and Instagram. These visual mediums enable them to share potions, spells, tips and advice on their practice of walking the green path. They also display their green witch aesthetic in terms of lifestyle, home décor, and especially green altars or shrines dedicated to nature. Posts often take the form of inspirational quotes, invocations or affirmations.

Green witchcraft particularly attracts young women concerned about climate change and living sustainably. This might include organic gardening, growing plants and foraging, appealing to those seeking alternative, nature-based spiritual paths. Its emphasis on balance, wellbeing and mindfulness is another important part of its appeal.

It speaks to a feminist perspective too, as it advocates a feminine ethic of care and respect for nature and living in harmony with the earth, as well as offering a means for empowerment, self-determination and self-growth.

Central to green witchcraft practices is the creation of ritual altars dedicated to nature. These shrines may be inside on a windowsill or outdoors in a corner of the garden. The altar faces the direction of the element the green witch most identifies with (north for air, south for water, east for fire and west for earth).

Ritual artefacts used by green witches include white-handled knives (bolines) for cutting herbs, cauldrons, chalices, wands, candles, crystals, smudge sticks for cleansing energy (using white sage, juniper, lavender or cedar), and divination tools such as oracle cards and witches’ runes. These are a set of symbols, such as the sun, moon or other elemental designs that each have their own meaning. The symbols are inscribed on things like candles or stones and are then “cast” to answer a question asked.

Some practices, when shared, also enable green witches to inspire others in the community to follow the green path. Common to other forms of contemporary witchcraft, green witchcraft has its grounding and centring practices, setting intentions, manifesting, affirmations and of course “spellcasting”.

In many ways green witchcraft reinforces the age-old association of women as nature’s guardians. Importantly, it also recasts the witch figure as a caring, benign force for good. The green witch plants, tends and respects nature. She is nature’s healer, close to nature’s secrets and respectful of its power, much like Agnes in Hamnet.

In their solitary practices and through their online and offline communities, green witches can be seen as powerful counter-cultural influencers. They encourage young women in particular to feel empowered to harness the healing power of the feminine aspect through a spiritual practice rooted in respect for nature and its cycles.

Across a variety of social media platforms, ever-growing numbers of green witches inspire others to follow the nurturing, soulful and environmentally kind green path. The sympathetic and moving portrayal of Agnes in the 16th-century setting of Hamnet will probably be an additional source of inspiration.

Lorna Stevens 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. Hamnet’s forest witch: how Agnes Hathaway chimes with the growing interest in ‘green witchcraft’ – https://theconversation.com/hamnets-forest-witch-how-agnes-hathaway-chimes-with-the-growing-interest-in-green-witchcraft-278634

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Abigail Marks, Professor of the Future of Work, Newcastle University

Worries about the British economy have long been dominated by one persistent concern – weak productivity. Since the financial crisis of 2008, growth has stagnated, leaving the UK trailing well behind the US, France and Germany across that whole period.

One familiar response to this problem is to suggest that if the British workforce could somehow produce more in less time, prosperity would follow and all would be well. New technology, particularly AI, is often presented as the solution.

The UK government certainly seems to like the idea, placing AI and technological innovation at the centre of plans to boost economic performance. At a speech to business leaders on March 17, chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves promised £2.5 billion of investment in AI and quantum computing to get things moving.

But what if productivity is not the problem we should be solving?

Increasing the country’s “output per hour” – the unit by which productivity is measured – does not necessarily make work more secure, more fairly rewarded or more socially useful. And nor does it make the UK more economically resilient.

In fact, it can do the opposite. Prioritising efficiency to boost productivity – by cutting costs and relying on tightly configured supply chains – can make economic systems extremely fragile.

Productivity problem

The problem with focusing too much on productivity is most obvious in some of the sectors that are central to our day-to-day lives. The effectiveness of care work, healthcare and education, for example, all depend on human interaction.

But teaching a class, caring for an elderly person or treating a patient require time, attention and professional judgment, making it difficult to increase “output” in the same way as in more automated sectors. There are limits to how much faster a nurse or teacher can work without undermining the quality of what they do.

Economists have long recognised that services which depend on human interaction – referred to as being “labour intensive” – face limits to productivity growth, because many of the tasks involved cannot be significantly sped up or automated without affecting quality.

This dynamic is referred to as “Baumol’s cost disease” – an economic theory which shows that costs will inevitably rise over time in labour-intensive sectors, despite little or no productivity growth.

Yet these sectors are essential to long-term social wellbeing and economic stability. They sustain everyone’s health, skills and security.

Another issue with increasing productivity comes down to the fact that for quite some time, the UK economy has been heavily weighted towards areas like finance, education and the creative industries. Manufacturing plays a much smaller role.

But in manufacturing, technological improvements can translate more directly into higher output per worker. This is what happens when industrial robots automate assembly-line tasks, allowing a single worker to oversee machines producing far more units than manual labour alone could achieve.

In contrast, much of the work undertaken in the UK, from management to care, depends on interaction, judgment and time. Its value is real but not easily measured.

The UK is therefore trying to solve a productivity problem in sectors where productivity is inherently difficult to define and improve.

Alternatives to output

This in turn points to a broader issue. The future of work is not just about how much we produce, but about how work is organised, how its rewards are shared, and how it fits into the rest of life.

None of this means productivity should be ignored – but it is a narrow measure. When treated as the primary goal of economic policy, it can produce an economy that appears efficient on paper yet fragile in practice, with rising output alongside stagnant living standards.

This was evident in the UK after the global financial crisis, when employment and GDP recovered while real wages stagnated for much of the 2010s. Productivity growth alone does not guarantee broadly shared prosperity.

The UK’s productivity slowdown is often framed as a failure to generate enough output per worker. A more uncomfortable possibility is that it reflects a mismatch between what the economy measures and what society needs.

Technology like AI may increase what workers can produce in an hour. But if the problem lies in how work is organised and valued, greater efficiency alone will not be enough.

Questions about the future of work should not begin with productivity statistics alone. They should begin with a simpler inquiry: what do we want the work we do to achieve in the first place?

Abigail Marks received funding from UKRI Rapid response COVID funding

– ref. Yes, AI could boost productivity, but work is about more than maximising output – https://theconversation.com/yes-ai-could-boost-productivity-but-work-is-about-more-than-maximising-output-278121

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Heather Heap, Phd Candidate, Department of Psychology, Aberystwyth University

For many older people, humour can be a lifeline. It’s not easy to discuss the challenges of ageing – from loneliness and the loss of a loved one to dealing with chronic pain. But laughter can be an invaluable way of opening up about how hard life sometimes feels.

“I struggle to get round at times, but I have to,” a 72-year-old man told me during my research with colleagues into older people’s experiences of humour. “If I didn’t laugh at myself, I’d cry.”

Past research has suggested that cognitive decline can reduce older people’s ability to be funny. But our study offers an alternative explanation for the reduced amount of humour in their lives. It’s not so much about older people losing their sense of humour, as about changes in their opportunities to use and enjoy it.

We interviewed 20 people aged 60 and over about the role of humour in their lives, having already asked them to rate their wellbeing. What emerged was a complex picture: humour can be a key part of life for some older people, but a source of distress and discomfort for others.

Many participants living alone explained they simply had fewer opportunities to share humour. Without partners or regular companions, it diminishes not due to inability but isolation.

“Now I live by myself, it’s a bit more awkward,” said a 75-year-old male interviewee. “But as soon as I’m meeting anybody, that’s when the humour surfaces with other people. Not when I’m by myself.”

Fears of causing offence

Many older people highlighted shifting social attitudes about the humour they wanted to use and find funny. They felt that while younger generations could use profanity and edgy humour freely, their preferred humour was increasingly seen as unacceptable.

Many said they self-censor around unfamiliar people for fear of causing offence, resulting in a decline in their overall use of humour. A 62-year-old male told us:

If it’s somebody you don’t know, you could use [humour] to break the ice – but there’s the social barriers. You don’t know them, so you don’t really want to use too much. You don’t want to use humour which they might not find acceptable.

When pressed on what kind of humour was no longer considered acceptable, our older interviewees were often wary in their replies. One 71-year-old man suggested that ageist humour was no longer possible among elderly people: “I think it’s a subject people are a little bit wary of making jokes about these days … Just as anti-Jewish or anti-Irish humour has gone out of fashion, I think possibly the same thing about elderly people.”

Equally, some interviewees complained about stereotypes that portray older adults as “coffin dodgers” or “old grannies”. Research shows these can negatively affect psychological wellbeing when older people internalise such stereotypes.

Reactions in our study were mixed: some found these jokes offensive and harmful, mainly women. Others, particularly men, argued that jokes should be accepted in good spirit and that negative effects stem from misunderstanding, rather than the joke itself.

Familiarity played a role too: while ageist jokes from friends felt relatable and funny, the same jokes from strangers were more often seen as offensive.

Our interviewees said they enjoyed a wide variety of humour, from political comedies and dry wit to slapstick comedy (many referenced Monty Python). However, many found it easier to pinpoint what they disliked: profanity, and humour where someone becomes the “butt” of the joke.

Comedians like Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais were frequently mentioned as examples of humour they didn’t enjoy, with one explaining: “I like laughing at situations, not at people.”

The darker side of humour

Humour serves important social functions, helping people of all ages to navigate difficult conversations, reduce tension and maintain connections. Our study found that older people who said they frequently used humour as a social tool also tended to rate themselves higher in terms of their wellbeing.

This concurs with many studies showing humour has a positive affect on mental health and enhances wellbeing.

In contrast, those declaring lower wellbeing were more likely to admit using humour in a defensive way. As one woman aged 62 put it: “I think I’m aware that I use humour to deflect things. I use humour as a mask.” Relying on humour to deflect emotional needs can in turn restrict the depth of a person’s connections.

Whether it is the freedom to joke without fear of causing offence or the ability to laugh together at the challenges associated with ageing, our interviewees repeatedly stressed that most humour surfaces in the company of others. When you’re on your own, it’s much harder to keep on laughing.

Heather Heap 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. What humour means to older people – and why some find it hard to keep on laughing – https://theconversation.com/what-humour-means-to-older-people-and-why-some-find-it-hard-to-keep-on-laughing-278038

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nikhil Datta, Assistant Professor, Economics, University of Warwick

The US-Israel strikes on Iran in late February caused an immediate spike in oil prices, and volatility has only increased since then. It quickly led to fears among motorists of “price-gouging” – petrol retailers raising their prices to take advantage of consumer panic.

In the UK, Chancellor Rachel Reeves asked the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to remain on “high alert” for profiteering by petrol retailers. Trade body the Petrol Retailers Association quickly hit back, saying her language was “incorrect and inflammatory”.

But what does the economic evidence suggest about retailers’ behaviour at times when oil prices are fluctuating wildly? As part of our yet-to-be-published research into UK petrol retailers and large oil price shocks, we examined Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The invasion led to a large and sudden increase in global oil prices, providing a valuable context in which to determine how shocks to crude oil supply filter through to prices at the pump.

The first striking pattern we found was that wholesale unleaded and diesel price changes closely tracked crude oil price changes. When oil prices rose, wholesale fuel prices increased almost immediately. Our estimates suggest that roughly 80% of changes in oil prices are reflected in wholesale fuel prices within a few days.

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Read more:
What oil, stocks and bonds are telling us about the Iran conflict and how long it might last

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Retail prices, however, react quite differently. Prices at the pump adjusted more slowly and were considerably smoother than wholesale prices. In periods where wholesale prices increased sharply, retail prices typically rose by less and with a delay.

At the immediate peak of the shock in the weeks following the invasion, wholesale diesel prices rose by about 39 pence per litre, while pump prices increased by only about 16 pence per litre.

The implication is that retailer margins compressed during price spikes as the gap between retail and wholesale prices narrowed temporarily. In other words, although consumers experienced higher petrol prices, the evidence does not suggest that retailers increased their markups during these periods.

But why would retailers reduce their margins when prices spike? One explanation is that consumers become more aware of petrol prices at these times. Using data from price comparison site PetrolPrices.com, we found that when average petrol prices rose above £1.50 per litre during 2022, search activity increased dramatically. The growing number of daily searches indicated that consumers were actively seeking out cheaper filling stations when prices increased.

The crossing of the £1.50 threshold also attracted media attention, increasing people’s awareness and encouraging consumers to compare prices. By using geographically granular data on search activity, combined with daily petrol price data from nearly all petrol stations in the UK, we can causally link this increase in consumer attention with intensifying price competition.

As prices began to stabilise, we found that search intensity on the price comparison site dropped. Search activity itself did not return to pre-shock levels, but instead dropped and plateaued at a higher level than before, consistent with predictions from well-established economic models.

Correspondingly, price impacts narrow over time. At the peak of increased search activity following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a 10 percentage point increase in search activity was associated with roughly a 2% reduction in local area petrol prices. We then found that this was driven primarily by stations that already had higher prices in January 2022. These higher-priced petrol stations cut their prices the most as consumers became more price-sensitive.

The research suggests that when oil prices increase and there is lots of media attention, consumers make more effort to search for better prices. Competition then increases and this puts downward pressure on retail prices. So retailers may actually experience falling margins when oil prices spike.

Rockets and feathers

It seems that it is not the level of prices that drives consumer attention, but whether those prices are rising rapidly. As price increases slow or reverse, consumers search price-comparison sites less intensively, reducing the sense of competition between petrol stations.

But then a clear asymmetry emerges: retail prices rise more quickly following cost increases than they fall following cost decreases. This pattern is known as the “rockets and feathers” effect: prices rise like rockets but fall like feathers.

In our study, we examined the transmission from wholesale to retail prices over a period of more than ten years. As expected, when wholesale costs fell, pump prices dropped more slowly. This temporarily increased the gap between wholesale and retail prices – meaning retailers’ profits grew.

This pattern means if wholesale prices go up by ten pence per litre and then come back down, over the entire adjustment time motorists end up paying about a penny more per litre than they would if prices adjusted evenly.

But this varied across petrol stations. For some, there was very little additional cost to consumers. For others, it was up to five times larger, meaning that the same increase and subsequent decrease would cost consumers up to five pence per litre more.

Taken together, our findings point to a clear conclusion. Petrol retailers do not appear to profiteer during periods when oil prices are rising rapidly. If anything, their margins tend to be squeezed. If concerns about excess profits are warranted, the evidence suggests that it is more likely to occur when oil prices are falling than when they’re spiking.

Nikhil Datta receives funding from ESRC, Nuffield Foundation, Research England the and British Academy.

Johannes Brinkmann 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. Do petrol retailers really ‘price-gouge’ during oil price spikes? – https://theconversation.com/do-petrol-retailers-really-price-gouge-during-oil-price-spikes-278843

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Philippe Cullet, Professor of International and Environmental Law, SOAS, University of London

World Water Day on March 22 is intended to be a celebration. Yet, for many in the UK, it brings up images of rivers and beaches contaminated with raw sewage, with 450,000 discharges recorded in England in 2024. It’s become a major political scandal, and is now the subject of a bleak Channel 4 docudrama.

But what if rivers themselves could take legal action against this pollution?

A growing movement of campaigners and researchers say rivers should be granted their own rights, independent of their value to humans. In this framework, rivers are not just resources to be used, but entities with the legal right to flow and to remain unpolluted. Crucially, those rights could be enforced in court by designated human guardians. Advocates of these “rights of nature” say it could give rivers a powerful new way to challenge pollution.

The problem of raw sewage dumping is directly linked to the privatisation of water companies in 1989. In theory, an independent regulator would protect rivers and the environment and ensure that monopoly companies, such as Thames Water, would not abuse their powers. But in practice, the system has struggled to prevent widespread pollution or hold companies to account – leaving rivers with no direct legal voice of their own.

The push for privatisation came alongside the relatively new idea that water should be treated as an economic good. For water companies, water is a commodity like oil or coal. They make money by charging for it, while pollution control is a cost they seek to minimise. When oversight is weak, dumping sewage in rivers becomes a cost-cutting or profit-making part of their business model.

Failings like these are why, since the beginning of the century, many people have started thinking about legal rights as an alternative to privatisation and ineffective protection.

There are valid questions about how it would work in practice. The guardian, for instance, is still a human voice but their mandate would be specifically to protect the rights of the river, including the ability to take cases to court.

This would change how sewage dumping is handled. At present, discharges are treated as a regulatory breach and are managed through permits and fines. If rivers had legal rights, repeated pollution could instead be challenged as a violation of those rights – and of the river’s “personhood”. A rights-based framework mandates that the person (in this case, the river) must be restored to their previous position, before their rights were violated. This could mean polluters being forced to restore the river and its ecosystems to their previous state, or to pay compensation to the river itself (rather than a fine that disappears into an overall government budget).

This sounded like wishful thinking only a few years ago, but in some places it is already becoming a reality. In 2025, Lewes District Council in East Sussex, England, backed the Rights of River Ouse Charter, which acknowledges the right of the river to exist, its right to flow and to be free from pollution – the equivalent of the right to life for human beings.

However, a single local council cannot create rights that would replicate the rights you or I might have. That would require major national legal changes. For now, the charter is a statement of intent and a guide for local policy, and the River Ouse has some way to go before its new status can be enforced.

A case from the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia shows how hard it is to enshrine such changes. After the Loyalty Islands Province adopted a legislative amendment to recognise the rights of sharks and marine turtles, the measure was challenged and the Conseil d’Etat – France’s highest court of appeal – determined that the province lacked the power to grant legal personhood to natural entities.

But in New Zealand, the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River) really does have full “legal personhood”. In 2017, national legislation – the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act – gave the river full legal rights and duties, to recognise the local Māori tribe’s spiritual connection to what some describe as a living ancestor.

Back in the UK, the recognition of river rights may help avoid a repeat of the catastrophic regulatory failures that the Channel 4 docudrama illustrates. As long as rivers are treated as assets to be managed, pollution remains negotiable – and ultimately acceptable. Recognising their rights would shift the priority from managing pollution to preventing it, and would make environmental protection a legal obligation, not a policy or business choice.

Philippe Cullet receives funding from UKRI.

The WATCON project (watcon.org) was assessed by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It has received funding from UKRI under the UKRI Frontier Research grants scheme.

– ref. If rivers had legal rights, sewage scandals would be much harder to ignore – https://theconversation.com/if-rivers-had-legal-rights-sewage-scandals-would-be-much-harder-to-ignore-278819

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, University of Cambridge

Chronic pain has long been known to be associated with depression.

Among adults with chronic pain, around 40% exhibit clinical symptoms of depression. But why is it that only some people with chronic pain develop depression?

Researchers have long been wondering why this happens – and what goes on in the brain. If we can answer this question, we may be able to prevent depression from developing.

Our recent article, published in Science, suggests the answer to this question does indeed lie in the brain.

To conduct our study, we analysed neuroimaging brain scans from 14,462 participants from the UK Biobank cohort. We compared the following groups of participants: people with chronic pain for at least seven years who did not have symptoms of depression, and people with chronic pain who also developed depressive symptoms.

For the latter, the depressive symptoms were present either for the entire seven-year period, or they developed after two years or four years. This enabled an analysis of the development of depression associated with chronic pain, using brain imaging.

These neuroimaging analyses revealed something surprising was taking place in the brain – specifically in a structure called the hippocampus. The hippocampus has important functions in learning and memory.

In the participants who reported chronic pain without depressive symptoms, they showed modest increases in hippocampal volume and improved memory performance. This is consistent with the brain attempting to cope with the stress of the pain.

In contrast, people experiencing both chronic pain and depression exhibited reduced hippocampal volume and impaired cognitive performance. Further analyses of these scans suggested these changes developed progressively over time. This indicates that the hippocampus may initially adapt to persistent pain, but it gradually becomes vulnerable when pain continues over long periods.

Importantly, similar patterns were observed across multiple categories of chronic pain – including back, stomach, knee and hip pain, as well as headaches. This suggests that the findings were not specific to a single type of chronic pain condition.

We then studied how these brain changes unfolded in people with chronic pain by using rodent animal models. This research found that in animals there was a similar sequence of changes in the volume of the hippocampus, accompanied by increased neural activity. Moderate improvements in cognitive functioning occurred initially, but this was then followed by anxiety-like behaviour, which later transitioned to depressive-like symptoms and poorer memory.

The hippocampus has long been known to be involved in emotional memories and is highly susceptible to chronic stress. The hippocampus’s plasticity (the ability to form new nerve cells) is known to be involved in coping with chronic stress.

Chronic stress has also been implicated in exacerbating apoptosis (nerve cell death) and suppressing adult neurogenesis – the process of producing new nerve cells in the hippocampus.

We found that a region of the hippocampus known as the dentate gyrus – one of the few areas where new brain cells continue to form in adulthood – emerged as the critical regulatory hub and the pivot for the transition from chronic pain to depression.

Early in the pain process, newly generated neurons in the dentate gyrus showed increased activity – suggesting the brain initially mounts a protective response to persistent pain. Over time, however, immune cells, known as microglia, became abnormally activated and disrupted normal neural signalling in the hippocampus.

This abnormal microglial activation appeared to mark the tipping point at which the brain’s initially protective response to pain began to fail.

Importantly, an antibiotic treatment, minocycline, suppressed abnormal microglial activation and reduced depression-like behaviour in the animal models. This treatment also preserved the structure of the hippocampus and cognitive function.

Treating pain and depression

Our findings suggest that a treatment such as minocycline could help prevent depression in people living with persistent pain — particularly if treatment is introduced early.

Of course, other psychosocial, socio-economic and genetic factors play a role in the perception of pain. Therefore, it’s likely that in some people these factors will exacerbate chronic stress and the experience of pain.

However, there are other evidence-based ways to reduce the risk of depression. In another collaborative study between Fudan University and the University of Cambridge, it was shown that seven healthy lifestyle factors, including good sleep, exercise and diet, could reduce the risk of depression by 57%. Importantly, these lifestyle factors were also associated with increased hippocampal volume, consistent with our new study.

Mindfulness training may be another strategy. This focuses on being present in the moment and minimising distraction from competing thoughts and memories. The practice is shown to improve working memory and increase hippocampal density.

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Read more:
How mindfulness therapy could help those left behind by depression treatment

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A recent review showed that mindfulness meditation experts have increased brain grey matter, including the hippocampus. Mindfulness meditation training was also shown to lead to increased hippocampal volume.

Mindfulness practice has also been found to be beneficial for improving quality of life – not only when coping with chronic pain – and for reducing symptoms of stress and depression.

Our discovery has answered an important question that has long puzzled researchers. We showed the key role the brain’s hippocampus plays in why some chronic pain sufferers develop depression. This discovery also points to potential treatments that may prevent depression in people with chronic pain.

The brain’s coping mechanisms that we discovered may also apply more generally to other conditions where the brain has to cope with chronic stress – such as in psychological trauma.

Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian receives funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Lundbeck Foundation. Her research work is conducted within the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Mental Health and Neurodegeneration Themes. She receives Royalties from Cambridge University Press for Brain Boost: Healthy Habits for a Happier Life.

Jianfeng Feng receives funding from nsfc

Trevor Robbins he is a consultant for Cambridge Cognition, and Blandaris.

Xiao Xiao receives funding from 2030 China Brain Project.

– ref. Why does chronic pain often lead to depression? Our research shows the answer is in the brain – https://theconversation.com/why-does-chronic-pain-often-lead-to-depression-our-research-shows-the-answer-is-in-the-brain-278697

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Philip Broadbent, Wellcome Multimorbidity PhD Fellow & Public Health Registrar, University of Glasgow

By twelve votes, the Scottish parliament rejected the assisted dying for terminally ill adults bill on March 17.

The debate that preceded it was emotionally charged and, at moments, genuinely moving. MSPs spoke of parents, partners, faith and fear. Much of it turned on the contents of the bill – safeguards, eligibility criteria and conscience clauses. The structural conditions in which terminally ill people in Scotland actually make decisions received less attention, and what attention they did receive struggled to translate into demands that any future legislation must meet.

Scotland is an unequal place to live. In its most deprived communities, life expectancy has been falling since 2013; a gap of more than 13 years now separates the richest and the poorest. And the people at the bottom of that gap do not simply die younger.

A 2012 study of 1.72 million Scottish patients found that having multiple long-term conditions begins ten to 15 years earlier in the poorest communities than in the wealthiest. Among the most disadvantaged of our society, the diseases that lead to terminal illness arrive sooner, in greater number and are compounded by poverty.

Scotland is also, by the measures that matter most, a deeply unequal place to die. Around 6,400 terminally ill Scots spend their final months below the poverty line. One in five die in fuel poverty. The additional costs of dying (equipment, housing adaptations, heating, transport, care) amount to between £12,000 and £16,000 in the final year of life for many households at precisely the moment income collapses.

Simultaneously, new research finds that almost one in three people in Scotland die with unmet palliative care needs. Around 18,500 people a year. A separate 2024 Scottish government service mapping survey found that three NHS boards have no specialist palliative medicine doctor at all, that out-of-hours advice is unavailable in around half of Scotland’s health and social care partnerships and that over half of specialist palliative services depend on charitable rather than public funding.

Following the vote, former prime minister Gordon Brown described a “moral obligation” to make urgently needed improvements to end-of-life care, warning that the “postcode lottery” means high levels of hospice and community care are available in some areas but not others.

These are not footnotes to the assisted dying debate. They are its foundation.

When safeguards aren’t enough

The standard case for assisted dying rests on autonomy: people should be free to choose, provided they have mental capacity and are not being coerced. The Scottish bill included extensive safeguards: two independent doctors, reflection periods, requirements to discuss alternatives and enquiries into social conditions.

Safeguards are designed to detect individual coercion: the controlling relative, the financial pressure applied by a family member. What they cannot detect is a different kind of pressure. That of a person who requests an assisted death, not because dying is what they want, but because the system has left them nothing else they can bear.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which submitted evidence at every stage of the bill’s passage, put the problem precisely: “coercion or pressure is not always something applied directly by other individuals. People with disabilities may feel subtle coercion to end their lives prematurely due to attitudinal barriers as well as the lack of appropriate services and support.”

It is instructive to look at Canada, which has had legalised assisted dying since 2016. Consider Sean Tagert, a Canadian man with motor neurone disease, who chose medical assistance in dying after his local health authority refused to fund the full hours of home care his doctors said he needed. The shortfall cost £200 a day, which he could not afford. He said, explicitly, that his decision was shaped by the failure of care funding.

A female veteran with military service related mental health conditions reported being offered assisted dying when she asked for a wheelchair lift.

A woman in Ontario died after years of failing to find housing that didn’t worsen her chronic illness, four doctors wrote to the government describing their response as “unconscionable”.

In none of these cases did safeguards fail. The issue is that the safeguards were not designed to ask whether people were choosing death because every other option had been removed removed by systemic failure.

In the US, Oregon has had assisted dying since 1997. Its 27-year dataset (the longest-running of any jurisdiction) provides a further, troubling signal. The proportion of patients on government insurance – a strong proxy for lower income – has grown steadily over the law’s lifetime, reaching 77% in 2024. This is nearly double the state average.

Financial concerns stated as a reason for requesting assisted dying reached a record high that same year. Psychiatric evaluation, required in 27% of cases in 1998, now occurs in less than 1%. Oregon does not collect income data; it destroys case records annually. Patterns of inequality are difficult to find when nobody is looking for them.

I do see Scotland returning to this question (the bill failed by only twelve votes). When it does, the inequality argument must do more than determine how people vote. It must shape what is proposed.

Any future bill deserves scrutiny not just of its safeguards, but of the conditions those safeguards operate in: whether palliative care is genuinely available, whether dying people are financially supported, and whether the data exists to know, in real time, whether structural disadvantage is shaping who requests an assisted death and why.

A choice made because there is no other bearable option is not a free choice. In Scotland today, for thousands of people at the end of their lives, that is precisely the situation. The assisted dying debate has the wrong question at its centre. The right one is: what kind of dying does Scotland currently provide, and for whom?

Philip Broadbent receives funding from the Wellcome Trust Multimorbidity Doctoral Training Programme 223499/Z/21/Z

– ref. One in three Scottish people dies with unmet palliative care needs – what that means for assisted dying – https://theconversation.com/one-in-three-scottish-people-dies-with-unmet-palliative-care-needs-what-that-means-for-assisted-dying-278700

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rossella Pulvirenti, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Manchester Metropolitan University

A former colonel in Syria’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate appeared in court this month in a landmark crimes against humanity case.

Salem Michel Al-Salem, 58, faces multiple charges, including murder as a crime against humanity and torture. The charges relate to his alleged participation in violent crackdowns on anti-government protests in Damascus in 2011. Al-Salem appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in London earlier this month, where his case was sent to the Old Bailey. He has yet to enter pleas to the charges.

The court heard that Al-Salem had reportedly sought indefinite leave to remain in England.

This case is significant, not just because of the global effects of the Syrian conflict, which caused the deaths of more than 400,000 people and displaced 13 million. It is also the first case of prosecution in the UK for crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the defendant abroad.

For 25 years, the UK has had the power to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity under the International Criminal Court Act 2001. It does not matter where in the world the alleged crimes took place, as long as the accused is a UK national or resident.

In recent years, there has been a wave of related prosecutions in Europe and beyond. In 2022, Germany sentenced a former Syrian intelligence colonel, Anwar Raslan, to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Similarly,France successfully convicted three Syrian senior officials to life imprisonment. Sweden held accountable a Swedish national who joined Islamic State in Syria, sentencing her to 12 years in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Many other countries have carried out similar investigations.

These have all been under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”. This principle is recognised in customary international law – unwritten rules that arise from established practice. It gives criminal courts in any state the power to prosecute for serious crimes under international law, regardless of where they were committed.

Universal jurisdiction applies only to the most heinous crimes recognised as such by the international community: crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and torture, for example. It reflects the idea that such crimes harm the international community as a whole and cannot go unpunished.

The UK’s legal framework falls slightly short of universal jurisdiction, which is why it has – until now – been absent from the list of countries prosecuting for alleged crimes against humanity in Syria. The reason for this lies in the UK’s legal framework under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.

A limited legal approach

The 2001 Act was introduced by the Tony Blair government to enable the UK to ratify the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. It made it an offence in England and Wales for any person to commit genocide, a crime against humanity or a war crime. It applies to offences committed after 2001, in England and Wales or abroad. However, for crimes committed outside the UK, prosecution is only possible if the alleged offender is a UK national or resident.

Before 2001, these crimes were not absent from UK law. Genocide and war crimes were prohibited under the 1969 Genocide Act and the Geneva Conventions Act 1957.

However, these did not allow for prosecution if the crime was committed abroad. Additionally, no UK law specifically criminalised crimes against humanity. Even if someone had committed an act identifiable as a crime against humanity, the UK courts had no power to charge them with that specific offence.

After 2001, the UK courts could finally prosecute crimes against humanity, but only if the alleged offender is a UK national or resident. This rule does not apply if the person is travelling through the UK or staying in the UK for a short period of time. The UK chose a minimalist approach for genocide and crimes against humanity.

In the UK, full universal jurisdiction is reserved only for crimes recognised by certain international treaties, like grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, or the UN Convention against Torture. For these crimes, it does not matter where the alleged perpetrator lives.

There is a reason for this limited approach. At the time it introduced the 2001 Act, the government did not want UK courts to assume a broad role as global enforcer. From a practical perspective, prosecuting foreign nationals for offences committed abroad requires costly investigations across multiple jurisdictions.

However, it does create loopholes for potential perpetrators. First, a suspect of these crimes can freely visit the UK without fear of prosecution, as they need to be either a resident or a citizen to be prosecuted. Second, the UK has no jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed before 2001.

Before the Al-Salem case, the International Criminal Court Act 2001 had only been used once. In 2006, seven British soldiers were charged with war crimes following the death of Iraqi civilian Baha Mousa. Corporal Donald Payne, pleaded guilty to inhumane treatment, while the other six soldiers were acquitted.

The Al-Salem trial is a landmark moment, but it appears to be an exception, rather than a turning point. A single prosecution for crimes against humanity in 25 years reflects the UK’s limited commitment to accountability for mass atrocity crimes. Survivors from Syria, Ukraine, Darfur, Myanmar and Palestine have been directly affected by the UK’s inertia.

The UK legal framework needs structural reform. The International Criminal Court Act 2001 should be amended to allow prosecution regardless of the nationality, residence status or location of the alleged perpetrator – committing to true universal jurisdiction like so many other countries.

Rossella Pulvirenti 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. Syrian ex-colonel faces crimes against humanity charges in landmark case for UK – expert explains – https://theconversation.com/syrian-ex-colonel-faces-crimes-against-humanity-charges-in-landmark-case-for-uk-expert-explains-278699

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

An Australian tech entrepreneur has helped create what appears to be a made-to-measure cancer vaccine for his dog, Rosie, using artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT as part of the process.

The science behind this sounds intimidating – DNA sequencing, mRNA vaccines, “neoantigens” – but at its core, it is about reading the instructions inside a tumour and then writing a new set of instructions to help the immune system see it.

Rosie is an eight-year-old rescue Staffordshire bull terrier cross that developed aggressive mast cell cancer, a common skin cancer in dogs. She had surgery and chemotherapy, but the disease kept coming back and she ended up with large, ugly tumours on her leg.

Vets told her owner, Paul Conyngham, that she probably had only months to live. Instead of accepting that, he decided to use the tools he knew from his day job in tech – data analysis, AI and coding – and apply them to his dog’s cancer.

Decoding the tumour

The first step was to understand what made Rosie’s tumour different from her healthy cells.

Every cell in the body carries DNA – a long, chemical molecule that acts like a biological instruction manual. You can think of DNA as a very long string of letters written in a four-letter alphabet. Cancer happens when enough of those letters change, by chance or through damage, so that some cells start to grow and divide out of control.

Sequencing a tumour’s or normal cell’s DNA is essentially reading through that long string of letters and comparing it to the “normal” version to see where it has gone wrong. A lot of my own research has focused on this. Conyngham paid a university lab to sequence the DNA from Rosie’s tumour. That produced a huge file listing the mutations – the spelling mistakes in the cancer’s instruction manual – that set her tumour apart from her healthy tissues.

On their own, those files are just data. The question is what to do with them. This is where he turned to an AI chatbot. He asked it how scientists design personalised cancer vaccines and how he might go from a list of mutations to specific targets for a vaccine for Rosie.

A cancer vaccine in this context is different from the childhood vaccines we are used to. Traditional vaccines prevent infections: you give someone a harmless version or fragment of a virus or bacterium so their immune system can “learn” to recognise it in advance. A cancer vaccine, by contrast, is usually therapeutic rather than preventive. It is given to someone who already has cancer, with the aim of training their immune system to spot markers on the cancer cells that it has previously ignored and then attack them.

This is where mRNA comes in. If DNA is the master instruction book, mRNA (messenger RNA) is more like a photocopied page that gets sent to the cell’s protein-making machinery – think of it as a short piece of code that carries a single command: “make this protein”.

Some of the COVID vaccines use mRNA: they deliver a strand of mRNA that tells our cells to make the spike protein from the coronavirus, so the immune system can practise on it. The body then breaks down the mRNA; it does not change your DNA.

For a personalised cancer vaccine, scientists choose small parts of proteins that are unique to a particular tumour – so-called neoantigens – and encode them in an mRNA sequence.

When this mRNA is injected, cells take it up and briefly make those tumour-linked protein fragments. The immune system can then see these fragments and, ideally, begins to treat any cell displaying them as abnormal and dangerous. In effect, it is using mRNA to give the immune system a “most wanted” poster for that individual cancer.

With help from AI tools, Conyngham sifted through Rosie’s tumour mutations to pick out candidates that might make good neoantigens. He also used protein structure prediction software to model how some of these mutated proteins would look, trying to guess which ones would be visible to her immune system.

Crucially, he did not manufacture a vaccine in his garage. Once he had a shortlist of targets, he approached researchers at the University of New South Wales, including experts in RNA technology, who reviewed the data and designed an mRNA construct based on it. Their team turned this digital design into a physical mRNA vaccine in the lab.

It was a one-off product, made just for Rosie, encoding several of the mutations in her tumour. She then received this experimental vaccine at a veterinary research centre, with booster doses over the following months.

Reports from her vets and owner suggest that several tumours shrank markedly, her overall tumour burden fell, and her energy and behaviour improved. One resistant tumour has prompted a second round of analysis and a follow-on vaccine targeting a different set of mutations.

Promising, but not a cure

It should be noted that this is a single dog, not a controlled study, and mast cell tumours can behave unpredictably. We cannot be sure how much of Rosie’s improvement is due to the vaccine, how long it will last, or whether the same approach would help other dogs, let alone humans.

The AI did not “cure cancer” by itself. It acted as an always-available guide and assistant, but qualified scientists still had to check its work and do the hard parts in the lab.

Even so, this case is a vivid example of several ideas coming together. DNA sequencing allows you to read the specific mutations in an individual cancer. mRNA technology lets you quickly write a custom set of instructions to show those mutations to the immune system.

AI systems make the complex biology more navigable for non-experts, suggesting possible targets and explaining concepts – though their outputs still require expert scrutiny. Put those together, and something that would once have required a major pharmaceutical programme – a bespoke cancer vaccine – can now be attempted, at least experimentally, for a single animal.

For the informed public, perhaps the most important point is not that AI has magically solved cancer, but that the basic ingredients of high-end personalised medicine are becoming more accessible. A motivated dog owner can now order tumour DNA sequencing, ask an AI to help interpret it, and partner with an academic lab to turn that interpretation into an mRNA vaccine.

A significant scientific and ethical challenge ahead is to develop methods for testing such approaches properly, protect patients and animals from false hope and unsafe experiments, and determine who should have access if they prove to be effective.

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

– ref. A man used AI to help make a cancer vaccine for his dog – an oncologist urges caution – https://theconversation.com/a-man-used-ai-to-help-make-a-cancer-vaccine-for-his-dog-an-oncologist-urges-caution-278735

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vincent Durac, Associate Professor, School Of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin

One of the most notable aspects of the war in Iran so far has been the extent of Tehran’s isolation in the region. This has been exemplified not only by the widening divide between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbours, but also by the highly variable responses to the conflict by Iran’s proxy groups.

Iran has relied on a network of proxies to protect and bolster its position in the region since the earliest days of the Islamic Republic in 1979. The most important elements in this network have been Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Syria under the rule of the Assad family, Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

However, this network is in serious disarray as a result of various conflicts in the region since late 2023. Hamas has been devastated by the Israeli onslaught that followed the October 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, with a succession of its leadership killed during the conflict. This has left the group unable to play a part in the Iran war.

Hezbollah, on the other hand, entered the conflict early on. The group has launched rockets, missiles and drones at Israel since March 2 in response to the killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in an Israeli airstrike days earlier. But Hezbollah finds itself damaged to the point it constitutes a far greater threat to Lebanese stability than it does to Israel.

Hezbollah was subjected to an Israeli military campaign after attacking Israel following the start of the war in Gaza. Its political and military leadership were targeted, culminating in the assassination of the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in 2024. Hezbollah’s capacity to launch missiles into Israel was also degraded.

The resumption of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel now poses a very significant threat to Lebanon on political and humanitarian levels, while being largely ineffective in Israel to date. Lebanon’s health ministry says Israeli attacks have killed 968 people since March 2. No deaths have been reported in Israel, though two Israeli soldiers were killed in a Hezbollah ambush in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, announced on March 2 that Hezbollah’s actions were unlawful. He also demanded that the group hand over its weapons, and spoke of Lebanon’s willingness to engage in formal negotiations with Israel to avoid the Israeli military imposing new security arrangements on the country.

But the current conflict has exposed the Lebanese state’s limited capacity to control events in its own territory. Meanwhile, Israel has announced plans for an expanded ground campaign in southern Lebanon, fuelling fears of an extended occupation and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

Like Hezbollah, Iran-aligned militias in Iraq joined the conflict soon after the US and Israeli assault on Iran began. They have targeted Israel, as well as US military bases in Jordan and Iraq, with drones and missiles. Iranian Kurdish groups in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq have also been attacked following reports that the US might arm them to fight the regime in Tehran.

In response, Iraqi militias have been targeted by US and Israeli airstrikes. As in Lebanon, a weak central government in Iraq is struggling to maintain a balance between domestic and external forces. Elections in November 2025 saw a coalition of Shia parties emerge as the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament.

However, their nominee for prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has been rejected by the US. This is due to the widely-held perception that he stoked sectarian tensions when he was last in office from 2006 to 2014 and is too close to the regime in Tehran.

In the meantime, the caretaker government is struggling to contain the influence of pro-Iran militias while the war devastates Iraq’s oil sector. The Iraqi economy is heavily dependent on the sale of hydrocarbons, with oil revenues accounting for roughly 90% of government revenue. Oil production has reduced sharply since the start of the conflict.

Houthis in Yemen

The final Iranian ally of substance in the region, the Houthis, have been conspicuous by their absence from the fray. When the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023, the Houthis mounted a series of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The group also targeted Israel with long-range missile strikes, which were largely ineffective.

The outbreak of the current war with Iran has led to protests and declarations of condemnation in Yemen, with Houthi leadership warning on March 5 that their “fingers are on the trigger”. But, so far, this has not been followed with concrete action. There are a number of possible explanations for this apparent reluctance to offer support to the regime in Tehran.

Analysts such as Nadwa al-Dawsari of the US-based Middle East Institute have suggested that Iran may be holding any intervention by the Houthis in reserve. She argues that Tehran may be doing so on the basis that longer-range missile and drone attacks against the Gulf states and Israel will prove more effective later in the conflict.

But it is also possible that Houthi leadership are fearful of the impact of US and Israeli retaliation should they become directly involved in the conflict. Previously, in August 2025, Israeli attacks killed at least 12 senior members of the Houthi leadership ranks. This included Ahmed al-Rahawi, the prime minister of the Houthi-controlled government in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

However, whether the Houthi leadership has the capacity to withstand Iranian pressure to enter the conflict is doubtful. So they may ultimately be dragged in, if somewhat reluctantly.

Vincent Durac 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 active have Iran’s proxy groups been since the start of the war? – https://theconversation.com/how-active-have-irans-proxy-groups-been-since-the-start-of-the-war-278355