Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ahmed Elbediwy, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Biology & Clinical Biochemistry, Kingston University

Cancer treatment follows a familiar pattern: doctors spot symptoms, diagnose the disease and start treatment. But scientists are now exploring a radical shift in how we tackle cancer. Instead of waiting for tumours to appear, they want to catch the disease decades before it develops.

This approach is called “cancer interception”. The idea is simple: target the biological processes that cause cancer long before a tumour ever forms.

Researchers are hunting for subtle early warning signs. These include genetic mutations that quietly build up in our cells, giving them advantages against our immune defences.

They’re also looking at precancerous lesions like moles or polyps, and early visible changes in tissue. All of these appear long before cancer becomes obvious.

Large genetic studies reveal that as people age, their bodies accumulate small groups of mutated cells called clones that grow silently. Scientists have studied this particularly well in blood. These clones can help predict who might develop blood cancers like leukaemia, and the genetics, inflammation and environmental factors strongly influence them.

Crucially, doctors can measure and track these changes over time. This opens up possibilities for early intervention.

A 16-year study followed around 7,000 women and uncovered how these mutations work. Some mutations helped clones multiply faster, while others made them particularly sensitive to inflammation.

When there was inflammation, these sensitive clones expanded. Breaking down these patterns helps researchers identify people with a higher chance of developing cancer later.

Not a sudden event

The research reveals something fundamental about cancer. It’s not a sudden event that instantly produces a tumour.

Instead, cancer develops through a slow, multi-step process with detectable warning signs along the way. These early signs could become powerful targets for stopping cancer before it starts.

Scientists are developing blood tests to spot cancer long before symptoms appear. These tests, called multi-cancer early detection tests (MCEDs for short), search for tiny fragments of DNA in the blood.

MCEDs work by looking for circulating tumour DNA, or ctDNA – DNA fragments that cancerous or precancerous cells release into the bloodstream. Even very early cancers shed this DNA, so the tests might detect disease long before it shows up on a scan.

The results so far look promising. MCEDs can boost survival rates through early detection, especially for colorectal cancer. When doctors diagnose colorectal cancer at stage one, 92% of patients survive five years. But when they catch it at stage four, only 18% survive that long.

The tests aren’t perfect, though. They miss some cancers entirely, and positive results still need follow-up tests to confirm.

Even so, research suggests MCEDs could become crucial for catching cancers that usually go unnoticed until much later. The potential to save lives is significant.

Heart doctors already use a similar approach. They calculate a person’s risk using age, blood pressure, cholesterol and family history, then prescribe drugs like statins years before a heart attack happens.

Cancer researchers want to copy this model. They envision combining genetic mutations, environmental factors and MCED results to guide early cancer prevention.

But cancer differs from heart disease in important ways. Cancer doesn’t follow a predictable path, and some early lesions shrink or never progress.

There’s also the risk of over-diagnosis. Being told you’re at higher risk when you feel perfectly healthy creates anxiety.

Cancer prevention tools also vary widely in their effectiveness, unlike statins that work broadly across different cardiovascular risk groups. The risk-based model shows promise, but needs careful handling.

Treating cancer risk instead of cancer itself raises difficult ethical questions. When someone feels completely healthy, judging whether intervention will truly help them becomes harder.

There’s a danger of causing unnecessary worry or harm. Scientists warn that doctors sometimes overestimate benefits and underestimate risks, particularly for older adults.

MCED tests bring their own ethical concerns. Accuracy isn’t the only issue that matters.

The tests sometimes flag cancer when none exists, leading to follow-up scans and biopsies that patients don’t actually need. The anxiety from all of this carries a high cost, both for patients and the healthcare system.

If these tests are expensive or only available privately, they could make health inequalities worse. This concern hits hardest in low-income countries.

In the US, the medicines regulator is investigating how MCED blood tests should work. They’re examining how reliable the tests need to be and what follow-ups doctors should require to keep patients safe.

The UK is following suit. The National Cancer Plan for England, published on February 4, 2026, commits to providing 9.5 million extra diagnostic tests through the NHS each year by March 2029.

The plan also states that ctDNA biomarker testing will continue in lung and breast cancer. It will extend to other cancers if proven to be cost effective.

What all this shows is clear. Cancer doesn’t suddenly appear; it’s a steady process that begins decades earlier. Catching it before it grows could save countless lives. The question now is how to do that safely, fairly and effectively.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The next cancer breakthrough may be stopping it before it starts – https://theconversation.com/the-next-cancer-breakthrough-may-be-stopping-it-before-it-starts-275453

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Liam Kennedy, Professor of American Studies, University College Dublin

The case of Seamus Culleton – who was detained by US immigration agents in Boston in September 2025 – is proving a diplomatic headache for the Irish government ahead of a visit to the White House on St Patrick’s Day.

Culleton arrived in the US in 2009, overstaying his visa. He married a US citizen last year and obtained a valid work permit, and was in the process of applying for permanent residency when he was apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and detained. He has remained in detention in Texas since. A US court has now issued a temporary order staying his deportation.

Culleton’s case shines a rare light on the “undocumented” Irish in the US, a group that is rarely mentioned in US discussions around illegal immigration. The very idea of being undocumented in the US is associated with people from Mexico and Central and South America, not white people of European descent.

That perception reflects the racial exceptionalism that has long shadowed the Irish push for immigration reform in the US.

This history largely began in 1965, when the Immigration Reform and Nationality Act, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, radically changed conditions of immigration into the US. One effect was to reduce the numbers of Irish able to legally settle in the US.

Since the late 1960s, there have been efforts by successive groups to push for immigration reform that would advantage Irish immigration. While this work led to some successes, there was ultimate failure to secure comprehensive immigration reform.

Since the 1980s, advocacy has been primarily driven by Irish-born immigrants. At that time, the US saw an influx of immigrants leaving an economically impoverished Ireland. Many overstayed their tourist or student visas, and became undocumented – having no legal status in the US. It is estimated that there are 10,000 undocumented Irish living in the US today.

During research I was involved with in Chicago in 2017, a number of undocumented Irish consented to be interviewed anonymously. They were notably uneasy due to the recent election of President Trump and his avowedly anti-immigrant stance, expressing a sense of increased fear and uncertainty.

Equally, they were conscious that their race made them less visible to the authorities than the large numbers of undocumented people of Hispanic heritage. One interviewee commented: “People don’t think that we would be undocumented. I’m white, I can speak English, I’m Irish … that is not what the Americans are thinking of.”

The majority of our interviewees and survey respondents favoured immigration reform for undocumented Irish. But several observed that there can be opposition to such reform within the Irish community. A first generation Irish priest who had close relations with Irish communities, including the undocumented, commented: “Those who have legal status in the Irish community are not supportive, and sometimes opposed to the undocumented Irish. There’s pushback more so than in the Latino community … the Irish are quite divided.”

This schism between settled and sojourner Irish in the US is rarely mentioned, yet significant. The undocumented Irish take on a symbolic resonance, disrupting the common success narrative of how the Irish “made it” in the US.

In the past, the law was applied leniently to overstays who were building a life in the US, giving them opportunity to regularise their status. But in the second Trump administration, as ICE more rigidly and aggressively apprehends people who are deportable, the unease of undocumented Irish is even more heightened.

A St. Patrick’s Day dilemma

Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin is in a difficult position as his visit to Washington approaches. According to a statement by Martin, there are “five to six” cases of Irish citizens currently detained by ICE. There is little clarity on how many have already been deported or how many have elected to quietly return to Ireland.

Irish opposition politicians and others in Ireland have taken up Culleton’s case to berate Martin for not doing enough to stand up to Trump. Some have demanded he pull out of the visit, which would be diplomatically awkward – Martin does not want to pull out of the scheduled meeting with Trump and all it entails for Ireland-US relations.

This is a volatile period in those relations. Trump is deeply unpopular in Ireland. Underneath this is a growing Irish disconnect with the US, including a notably conservative Irish America.

Martin can’t admit any of that, of course. His job is to steer a safe and prosperous course, making his visit to the White House without causing headlines. On the Culleton case, he is adamant that a softly-softly diplomatic approach is best, saying: “Let’s not do anything that could make that even more difficult. This cannot be resolved in the public domain.”

That approach appears to have been made more challenging by Culleton’s decision to speak out about his case and about conditions in the Texas detention centre. He described it to national Irish broadcaster RTE as “a modern-day concentration camp” and said he feared for his life.

The discovery that Culleton was facing drug charges in Ireland at the time he moved to the US may further complicate the story, perhaps diminishing popular Irish support. It is also likely to harden the determination of US homeland security officials to deport him.

The story also has resonance due to the fact that Culleton is white. The last year has seen much debate about whether ICE’s actions have been targeting people of colour. Some conservative commentators are pressing for Culleton’s deportation to signify that ICE is colour-blind – “Yes, Even White, Irish Illegal Immigrants Must Be Deported” runs the headline of a Fox News opinion piece.

Whatever the outcome of Culleton’s case, it has already turned a spotlight on the fraught racial politics around being Irish and undocumented in America.

Liam Kennedy 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. ICE arrest shines light on undocumented Irish population in Trump’s America – https://theconversation.com/ice-arrest-shines-light-on-undocumented-irish-population-in-trumps-america-276139

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

Many people assume that medicines sold over the counter are inherently safe. After all, if you can buy something in a supermarket or high street pharmacy, how dangerous can it really be?

The reality is more complicated. Several commonly used over-the-counter medicines carry a real risk of dependence, misuse or harm when taken in higher than recommended doses, for longer than needed, or for the wrong reasons. Here are five medicines it is worth knowing about.

1. Codeine-based painkillers

Codeine is an opioid medicine used to treat mild to moderate pain and, in some formulations, to suppress coughing. Over the counter, it is usually combined with either ibuprofen or paracetamol. Once swallowed, the body converts codeine into morphine, which produces its pain-relieving effects.

Common side effects include drowsiness, constipation, nausea and dizziness. At higher doses, codeine can slow breathing and impair coordination. Some people are particularly vulnerable. Ultra-rapid metabolisers carry a genetic variant that causes them to convert codeine into morphine much faster than usual. This trait is more common in people of North African, Middle Eastern and Oceanian backgrounds and can lead to dangerous side effects even at standard doses.

With repeated use, the body can also become tolerant to codeine, meaning the same dose no longer provides the same relief. This process, known as tolerance, occurs as the brain’s opioid receptors adapt to the drug. People may then increase their dose, raising the risk of physical dependence. Stopping suddenly can cause withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, restlessness, sweating and sleep problems.

To reduce these risks, codeine should be used for the shortest time possible. In the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency limits pack sizes to 32 tablets and advises non-prescription products should be used for no more than three days.

2. Decongestants

Decongestants are available as tablets containing pseudoephedrine or as nasal sprays and drops such as xylometazoline and oxymetazoline. Both work by narrowing blood vessels in the nasal passages, reducing swelling and mucus.

Overusing nasal sprays can lead to rebound congestion, known medically as rhinitis medicamentosa. Over time, the medication becomes less effective, a phenomenon called tachyphylaxis. This can trap people in a cycle of increasing use, worsening congestion and dependence.

Long-term overuse can damage the lining of the nose, causing dryness, nosebleeds and, in severe cases, perforation of the nasal septum. Many users also develop a psychological dependence on the spray. Most guidance recommends limiting use to three to five days.

Pseudoephedrine also has mild stimulant effects. Although evidence for improved athletic performance is mixed, its stimulant properties mean it appears on the list of substances banned in competition. It is also used illicitly to make methamphetamine, which is why strict sales controls remain in place following a 2016 review.

3. Sleeping tablets

Promethazine and diphenhydramine are sedating antihistamines sold as short-term sleep aids. Recent research has linked sedating antihistamines to rising numbers of deaths, prompting calls for a review of how they are supplied.

Promethazine can quickly lead to tolerance, meaning higher doses are needed to achieve the same effect. Some long-term users report severe rebound insomnia when they try to stop.

It is also used recreationally in “purple drank”, a mixture of cough syrup that contains promethazine and soft drinks. This combination can cause extreme sedation, slowed breathing and serious harm.

4. Cough syrups

Dextromethorphan (DXM) is a common cough suppressant. A 2021 review found it was the most frequently misused over-the-counter medicine studied. At high doses, it blocks NMDA receptors in the brain, which can cause dissociative effects similar to ketamine. While safe at recommended doses, its psychoactive effects have raised concerns about misuse.

5. Laxatives

Stimulant laxatives trigger the gut muscles to move stool along. They are often misused by people with eating disorders, athletes in weight-restricted sports, or those who believe daily bowel movements are essential. In reality, constipation is usually defined as fewer than three bowel movements a week.

Research shows stimulant laxatives do not prevent calorie absorption, despite common myths. Instead, misuse can cause dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and long-term damage to the gut, with serious effects on the heart and kidneys in severe cases. In 2020, the MHRA introduced new rules on pack sizes and warnings.

The common thread linking these medicines is not that they are inherently dangerous, but that their risks are often underestimated. Over-the-counter availability can create a false sense of security, particularly when medicines are bought online without professional advice. While regulators have taken steps, research suggests misuse persists. Over the counter does not always mean risk free, and better awareness could help keep these medicines useful rather than harmful.

Dipa Kamdar 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. Five everyday over-the-counter medicines with potential dangers – https://theconversation.com/five-everyday-over-the-counter-medicines-with-potential-dangers-271664

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jack Shelbourn, Senior Lecturer and Director of Photography, University of Lincoln

The Bafta film awards are brilliant at making film feel like it matters. The clothes, the cameras, the applause, the shared cultural moment. That spectacle is the point.

But it also has a climate shadow. Not just from the night itself, but from the behaviour it effectively rewards and normalises in the weeks around it.

Here’s the awkward truth: the biggest carbon impact in film and TV isn’t the red carpet. It’s travel. And awards season is, in effect, a celebration of travel.

Industry data backs this up. Bafta Albert is the film and TV industry’s sustainability organisation which supports productions to measure and reduce their environmental impact.

It highlights that productions that report their emissions find that around 65% come from travel and transport, with flights alone accounting for roughly 30% of the total. Energy use – mainly from studios and on-location generators – makes up about a fifth, while materials and waste account for the rest. In short: the carbon is mostly off camera.

So what about the Bafta film awards themselves?

Bafta has made visible efforts to reduce the negative environmental effects of the ceremony. This year, organisers are using diesel-free generators at the venue and green electricity tariffs at Royal Festival Hall in London, plus reusing existing sets and props. Red meat won’t feature on the menu and guests are encouraged to rewear or hire an outfit for the occasion.

A spokesperson for Bafta and Bafta Albert explained that the carbon emissions and the footprint of the awards have been measured and reduced using Bafta Albert resources and guidance. “Proactive steps taken this year include the use of [hydrotreated vegetable oil] HVO generators, hosting the awards at a venue also dedicated to reducing its own carbon emissions, encouraging sustainable travel, banning single use plastics, sustainable menus and minimising waste,” they said.

Previous awards have been described as carbon neutral, with changes such as removing nominee goody bags and introducing vegan menu options. More recently, sustainability messaging has extended to catering and packaging choices.

These changes aren’t meaningless. They’re also the easiest things to photograph.

The problem is scale. If flights dominate emissions, then the biggest wins won’t come from menus or outfits. They’ll come from changing how people get there in the first place.

I research sustainability in film production, including how cinematography and production practices can reduce environmental impact, and one thing is clear: framing sustainability as removal or punishment rarely works. People resist. They dig in. Or they swing hard in the opposite direction.

At the same time, the glamour of awards season is precisely why people watch and pay attention. Strip that away entirely and the cultural power goes with it. The real challenge is finding a balance: keeping the spectacle while changing the behaviour it endorses.

One practical way to do this is to stop treating awards travel as an unfortunate side-effect and instead make it part of the event itself.

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Read more:
The hidden carbon cost of reality TV shows like The Traitors

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Rather than dozens of individual long-haul flights – and, yes, sometimes private jets – designated flights from major hubs could be coordinated from places like Los Angeles, New York, Paris or Amsterdam. If you’re attending, you take the shared flight. If you can’t, you accept your award remotely, as people have done perfectly well in the past.

This wouldn’t eliminate flying. But it would reduce per-person emissions, remove the prestige of flying separately and turn collective travel into something visible and intentional.

I’ve experienced this kind of shared travel firsthand. Years ago, flying back from a film shoot in Budapest, Hungary, I found myself on a completely ordinary commercial flight that happened to be carrying athletes travelling to London ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games.

There was press at the airport, excitement in the cabin and a palpable sense of shared purpose. These were people at the top of their fields, travelling together, not separately, on the same flight as everyone else. It didn’t feel like a compromise. It felt anticipatory, slightly chaotic, yet collective.

This is not an unprecedented idea. Sport already does this. Politics does this. Even music tours do this. Film just pretends it can’t.

During COVID, awards ceremonies and press circuits moved online or became hybrid events. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Research comparing in-person and virtual international events shows that moving online can cut carbon footprints by around 94%, largely by removing travel. Awards aren’t conferences, but the lesson is clear: if travel is the biggest source of emissions, reducing travel is the biggest lever.

Greenwash v real change

A simple test helps separate meaningful sustainability from greenwash. Does an action reduce high-emissions activities – flights, fuel, power, logistics – or does it mainly change how things look?

Carbon offsetting, for example, is often used to claim climate neutrality without changing underlying behaviour. But many offset schemes have been criticised as ineffective or misleading. The EU has moved to restrict environmental claims based on offsetting alone.

That doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Bafta Albert’s Accelerate 2025 roadmap is a UK-wide plan developed with broadcasters and streamers to cut film and TV emissions.

It focuses on cutting flights and encouraging train travel, cleaning up on-set power and changing production norms. This is being echoed by trade coverage calling for practical, immediate action to cut carbon emissions across the film and TV sector.

A spokesperson for Bafta and Bafta Albert stated: “There is a clear dedication to continually increasing the sustainability of the awards, behind the scenes, at the event itself and on screen.”

Awards culture still matters. The Baftas don’t produce most of the industry’s emissions. But they help define what success looks like. If success looks like frantic long-haul travel and personal convenience, that becomes the aspiration. If it looks like coordinated travel, cleaner power and credible data, that becomes the norm.

So keep the glamour. Keep the ceremony. But redesign the signals. If we can make the journey part of the story, we might finally start shrinking the part of film’s footprint that nobody sees – until the planet sends the bill.

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Jack Shelbourn is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales.

– ref. The Bafta film awards are going greener – but some climate problems are hiding off camera – https://theconversation.com/the-bafta-film-awards-are-going-greener-but-some-climate-problems-are-hiding-off-camera-273121

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jessica Irving, Associate Professor in Global Seismology, University of Bristol

When we dream of landscapes, we might imagine rolling valleys or rugged mountains. But there is a whole landscape hidden from human view: the secret world of the seafloor.

Half of Earth’s oceans are more than 3.2km deep. Beneath them lie cavernous plains untouched by sunlight, vast gaping trenches made by Earth’s tectonic plates shifting, and ranges of underwater mountains on which no human has ever set foot.

We have better maps of the surface of the Moon than of these secret landscapes of the seafloor. However, the international 2030 seafloor project has an ambitious aim: to create a definitive map of our oceans.

To date, despite huge efforts, less than a third of our oceans have been fully mapped. But one unexpected way to help understand what’s beneath the surface may come from a project one of us (Jessica) works on called Mermaid – a mission that was originally designed to detect earthquakes.

Earth’s deepest region, the Marianas Trench, plunges 2km deeper than
Mount Everest is high. But along the ocean floors, there are also tens of thousands of mountains which rise upwards: seamounts. Traditionally mapped by ships, modern satellite missions are revealing more information about these – indeed, it’s estimated that the number of known seamounts may double thanks to these space-based observations.

What’s on the seafloor?

The seafloor is, typically, geologically much younger than the continents that make up Earth’s dry land. New rock is formed at mid-ocean ridges that snake across the Earth’s major oceans. These host hydrothermal vents where conditions are so different to the surface that astrobiologists compare them to other planets.

While the major mid-ocean ridges were being mapped 70 years ago, other underwater mountains dotted across the oceans are much less well known. These seamounts are often of volcanic origin and can grow so large that their summits escape the ocean, becoming islands. From its summit to its base at the floor of the Pacific Ocean, for example, Hawaii’s dormant volcano Mauna Kea is taller than Everest.

Many seamounts are topped with coral reefs which have drowned as they sank too far below the ocean surface. But these drowned reefs remain important hotspots of biological diversity in our oceans, hosting both bottom-dwelling and swimming lifeforms.

A small number of seamounts are currently growing – some of which will eventually become Earth’s newest islands. For example, if Vailuluʻu seamount keeps growing, it will become the newest island in the Samoan Archipelago.

New seamounts are still being discovered. It may seem odd to miss a mountain when you’re making a map of a landscape, but they can be hard to find below the ocean.

How are scientists trying to map the seafloor?

Traditional methods of mapping the seafloor involve using ships to estimate the ocean’s depth. New advances involve autonomous underwater vehicles, which can estimate seafloor depth, and satellite missions, which can “feel” the changes in gravity caused by seamounts.

Another indirect approach comes from EarthScope-Oceans, the consortium which operates Mermaid – a project sending small robots deep below the ocean surface to detect earthquakes.

Mermaid robots float at depths of about 1.5km, where the water pressure is 150 times that at the surface. These robots listen for pressure waves generated by signals from distant earthquakes in Earth’s solid interior. Since 2018, one fleet of Mermaid sensors, deployed in the South Pacific Ocean, has recorded thousands of waves associated with earthquakes.

But in 2022, scientists realised that Mermaid robots had recorded something else: waves travelling through the ocean from a volcano. The violent underwater eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, a South Pacific underwater volcano, was the biggest in nearly 150 years. As well as causing volcanic lightning and sending plumes of ash tens of kilometres into the sky, the eruptions sent pressure waves into the waters of the Pacific.

Mermaid sensors heard these waves thousands of kilometres away from the volcano. At some of these sensors – scattered across the ocean over vast distances – the sounds were virtually identical. But where the sounds were different, recent research has revealed that seamounts were often to blame.

Seamounts block energy travelling through the ocean. This opens the prospect of using pressure waves from underwater explosions and eruptions to listen for “acoustic shadows” caused by unknown seamounts. In other words, finding seamounts by listening to the pressure waves they interrupt.

The future of deep ocean landscapes

As we explore the seafloor, human impact on it will become more apparent. While some researchers are discovering exotic lifeforms such as deep-sea snailfish in the oceans’ deep trenches, others are detecting signs of microplastic waste in trench-dwellers such as deep sea scavenging amphipods (which look a bit like shrimp).

The seafloor is rich in mineral deposits, many of which are elusive on land – including minerals critical for battery construction. For example, polymetallic nodules rich in rare earth elements litter the ocean floor.

Areas of elevated seafloor like seamounts are especially likely to host cobalt-rich deposits – one of many critical minerals needed for the green energy transition and to meet UN sustainability goals.

However, exploration and active mining in the delicate ecosystems that surround these hidden worlds is controversial, because of the harm it can cause.

If we want to know where resources lie – and where the ocean floor most needs our protection – it is vital we understand the landscapes of the seafloor.

Jessica Irving has received funding from the National Science Foundation to work with MERMAID. She is a member of the Earthscope Oceans Science Committee and was involved in the research study described in this article. Dr Irving acknowledges useful input from Dr Joel Simon of Bathymetrix, who led the MERMAID research into the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai eruption.

Elizabeth Day is part of the Membership Committee of the Royal Astronomical Society and also sits on the Royal Astronomical Society’s Education and Outreach grants panel.

– ref. Deep sea landscapes are a new frontier of human exploration – here’s what we may find – https://theconversation.com/deep-sea-landscapes-are-a-new-frontier-of-human-exploration-heres-what-we-may-find-275046

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Karin Book, Associate Professor, Department of Sports Sciences, Malmö University

Italy’s 2026 Winter Olympics have been described as the most regionally distributed Winter Games ever staged. Events are spread across more than 22,000 km², taking in Milan, as well as the towns of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Valtellina, Val di Fiemme and Livigno in the Alps.

Geographical dispersion is not entirely new. In 1956, the equestrian events of the Melbourne summer Olympics were actually held 15,500 km away, in Stockholm, Sweden, five months before the rest of the games. This was due to Australia’s quarantine rules. More recently, surfing during Paris 2024 was done in Tahiti, 15,727km from the French capital. The competition was duly labelled “most distant Olympic event ever”.

As a sports management specialist with a human geography background, my research looks at how new spatial solutions and distribution of sport activities and events across a territory increases their sustainability and long-term viability. What distinguishes Milano–Cortina is the way it has been organised across the regions of Lombardy, Veneto and the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano. This represents a strategic shift towards what geographers would term a “dispersed, multinodal model”. More than 90% of the venues being used already existed or are temporary. The goal is to reduce construction, minimise environmental impact and reduce any long-term maintenance burdens. In other words, the games have adapted to the territory rather than reshaping it.

Learning from past Games

The approach adopted for this year’s games indicates that national organising committees, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), are willing to adapt. Research shows such a shift is long overdue.

Olympic planning has long involved sustainability rhetoric. Recent reforms emphasise reduced environmental footprints and the use of existing facilities. Yet, events including the Paris 2024 summer games, have been accused of greenwashing.

Italy’s own experience, during the Torino 2006 winter games, highlighted the risks of overbuilding in fragile mountain environments. Many of those purpose-built facilities faced long-term operational and ecological challenges.

Organisers are getting much better at designing flexible venues that can be adapted by the host city for use after the event. In Paris, 95% of the venues were either pre-existing or temporary. The games notably transformed the river Seine into a venue for the opening ceremony and aquatic events. It was expensive to pull off, but as a demonstration of public space reuse and long-term urban ecological investment, it was symbolically powerful. The Place de la Concorde was also converted into a temporary street-sport hub. This showcased how urban environments can host dynamic youth events that blend competition with city life.

Winter games, of course, face different constraints. Where summer hosts can absorb scale, winter hosts rely on natural landscapes that are already under severe climatic pressure. This increases both the stakes and the complexity of sustainable design.

On one hand, spreading events across regions makes them more accessible to multiple communities. It involves more municipalities and regional bodies in planning, implementation, and legacy building, which in turn can foster stronger local engagement and a more distributed sense of ownership.

On the other hand, the model requires robust coordination between diverse actors. It also poses the risk of a fragmented Olympic identity. And it makes media coverage more complex. While this drives innovation in terms of hybrid reporting tools and local storytelling, it can lead to platforms prioritising some events over others.

The transport challenge

The most significant sustainability challenge remains transport. A dispersed model inherently requires athletes, officials, media and spectators to travel more between places. According to the IOC, Milano–Cortina 2026 relies heavily on trains and shuttle systems to minimise private car use, with the goal of reducing car use by 20%, compared to Torino 2006.

Overall travel demand is, however, more complex. A 2022 study on preparations for Milan–Cortina, showed that the larger the host territory, the more complex its mobility planning. Participants still have to get to events and the people who live there, meanwhile, “still expect to inherit benefits from any investments made”. Infrastructure upgrades, from rail modernisation to enhanced alpine transit, are duly central to the 2026 games’ legacy strategy.

Long-distance spectator travel, in particular, remains a huge factor in the games’ carbon footprint, whether the event is geographically concentrated or dispersed. Research published by the French government showed that international travel accounted for almost 50% of the Paris 2024 summer games’s carbon footprint.

In sum, from a resource, climate and environmental perspective, Olympic winter games are not justifiable. They inevitably intrude into the natural landscape and despite all sustainability-led reforms, implementation on the ground is spotty. Milano–Cortina 2026 has included some infrastructure projects which reportedly lack environmental assessments or long‑term utility. To what extent this will be offset by the benefits of its geographical dispersion model remains to be determined.

But the public loves them. The Milano–Cortina 2026 approach signals a vital willingness to adapt. As snowpacks retreat, temperatures rise and young people scrutinise what leaders are doing to the environment with ever greater acuity, this might well be the only thing keeping this event alive.

Karin Book 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 2026 Winter Olympics are the most geographically dispersed ever —— here’s why that could be a good thing – https://theconversation.com/the-2026-winter-olympics-are-the-most-geographically-dispersed-ever-heres-why-that-could-be-a-good-thing-276092

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Mead, Professor of UK Human Rights Law, University of East Anglia

The High Court has ruled that the UK government’s proscription of the group Palestine Action was unlawful. This is a welcome decision for advocates of free speech and the right to protest, but it is not the end of this story.

Organisations can be proscribed (banned) if the home secretary believes they are “concerned in terrorism” under the definition in the Terrorism Act 2000. But the home secretary’s power to do this has restrictions – chiefly, that such a ban must be “proportionate”.

The court decided Yvette Cooper, home secretary when the ban was introduced, was inconsistent with her own policy on this front, including by unlawfully considering that proscribing the group would offer “significant disruptive benefits” to the police.

The court also found that the proscription unlawfully interfered with the right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. A decision to proscribe is subject to human rights law. The home secretary cannot make a decision that disproportionately restricts the free speech rights of the group or, critically, others who might incidentally get caught up in the ban.

Journalists, academics and other campaigning groups presented evidence they felt “chilled”, deciding not to act or to speak when it would have been perfectly lawful to do so.

Furthermore, the court found Palestine Action’s activities had not yet reached the level, scale and persistence that would justify proscription, and the extra criminal law measures that follow. Proscribing a group makes it a crime publicly to show support for that group. Thousands of people were arrested following the proscription – most for holding placards saying “I support Palestine Action”.

How we got here

Cooper announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action in June last year, following the group taking direct disruptive action aimed at halting arms exports to Israel. The proscription came into force on July 5 2025 in secondary legislation passed by Parliament.

Palestine Action has focused its activity on Elbit Systems – what it termed “corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex”. But it was their break-in at RAF Brize Norton and spraypainting of two Voyager planes that prompted Cooper to act.

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Read more:
Palestine Action: what it means to proscribe a group, and what the effects could be

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Cooper argued Palestine Action had “orchestrated a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action against businesses and institutions, including key national infrastructure and defence”, with methods becoming more aggressive and its members demonstrating a willingness to use violence.

This was the first time the power to proscribe had been used against a domestic protest group that had been involved in non-violent direct action – actions aimed at causing serious damage to (certain) property – and whose use of occasional violence was not a strategy or tool.

In the words of the defence counsel for six Palestine Action members activists accused of aggravated burglary at a 2024 break-in, their use of violence in that case was “clearly unplanned”, a panicked response to being confronted unexpectedly by security guards. The accused were cleared of aggravated burglary, but now face a retrial over alleged criminal damage and violence.

What next for protest rights?

Despite the court’s ruling, the ban remains in place for now, with Palestine Action remaining on the proscription list. The Met has announced they would monitor potential offences related to support for Palestine Action, and gather evidence rather than arrest.

The current home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced her immediate intention to appeal the ruling. At a further hearing later this month, her lawyers will have to persuade the court not to quash the proscription order – as it has indicated it is minded to – but instead to suspend it pending the outcome of that appeal. The future of the criminal cases against the thousands arrested is uncertain and messy.

This is an important ruling with implications for the future of protest rights in the UK, which have been eroded in recent years. It stands in stark contrast to the recent slew of measures designed to quell political discontent, such as the last Conservative government’s sentencing and public order laws. These have been followed by various planned extensions under the current Labour government’s crime and policing bill.

No one would sensibly suggest the state should not be using its enormous weight to keep its citizens safe, alive and well. But there remain legitimate questions about the scope of its coercive power to defend national security further upfield – several steps away from the obvious and horrific harms of loss of life or limb.

Allowing a government minister to place a group outside the protection of the ordinary criminal law by categorising them as “terrorists”, bringing greatly increased detention times and reverse burdens of proof, is a momentous step for any democracy to permit.

The clear thrust of the court decision is that the state should have dealt with Palestine Action through the ordinary criminal law: charges for criminal damage, entering a prohibited place or assault. Only if there were a significant ramping up – in scale, impact and frequency – might the home secretary start to wonder about proscribing.

If that stands true for Palestine Action, it must do so even more for Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, anti-abortion protesters and anti-fracking groups. This judgment remains, for now, a welcome reclaiming of the civic space where contentious politics does, and sometimes must, play out.

The decision has prompted some to claim that ministers should be able to ban groups dedicated to criminal sabotage, without having to label them as terrorists. Such a proposal fails to explain why the ordinary criminal law is not up to the task, and ignores likely overreach.

The price of human rights in a democracy is not simply eternal vigilance, nor even “eternal dirt”, as George Orwell added. It is eternal mutual solidarity lest there be “no one left to speak out for me”.

David Mead is affiliated with the Labour Party, UCU and Netpol Lawyers’ Group. He gave evidence on behalf of Palestine Action in its JR, testifying to the impact on academic freedom – research and teaching – and drew on his own research on the history of UK direct action protests

– ref. Palestine Action: why the High Court ruled against the government, and what it means for the future of protest – https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-why-the-high-court-ruled-against-the-government-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-protest-275976

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eef Hogervorst, Professor of Biological Psychology, Loughborough University

Air pollution has long been linked to heart and lung disease. But a large US study suggests it may also raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease – the most common form of dementia.

Researchers tracked nearly 28 million older adults over six years nationwide. They found that those exposed to higher levels of fine particulate air pollution were more likely to develop Alzheimer’s.

These fine particles come mainly from burning fossil fuels, wildfires, deliberate field burning for agricultural clearing and industry. Known as PM2.5, they are smaller than 2.5 micrometres and small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.

The US study used Medicare insurance claims to confirm Alzheimer’s diagnoses and area data by postcode for fine particle pollution levels. It also looked at other factors that could explain the link, such as the proportion of smokers or overweight people living in more or less polluted areas.

But using postcode data has limitations. It doesn’t account for how close individual homes are to motorways, industry or forests. It also doesn’t capture indoor pollution from things like cleaning products, wood burners or candles – all of which can vary hugely from house to house.

Postcodes also don’t always identify poverty accurately. Poverty is linked to many Alzheimer’s risk factors – lower educational attainment, poorer access to good food and healthcare, and living in more polluted areas.

In this study poverty and deprivation was taken into account by looking at Medicaid eligibility (which was the case for 26% of the group investigated). This type of insurance is for people over 65 who have low incomes or significant disability, or both.

The findings are particularly concerning because pollution levels in the areas studied were, on average, about twice as high as the limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO advises that annual levels of PM2.5 should not exceed five micrograms per cubic metre of air.

The researchers found that the increased Alzheimer’s risk in polluted areas remained even after taking high blood pressure, stroke and depression into account. These conditions were linked both to air pollution and to Alzheimer’s, but they didn’t fully explain the relationship between the two.

There are biological reasons why this link makes sense. Air pollution with fine particles may harm the brain by increasing inflammation and promoting oxidative stress, which causes brain cells to malfunction. The polluting particles are small enough to enter the bloodstream, and they can block bloodflow to the brain.

This study is alarming, but it isn’t the first to find a link between air pollution and dementia. When researchers combined data from 20 studies across America, Europe and Asia, they found a clear pattern: the more PM2.5 particles in the air, the higher the risk of dementia.

For every extra ten micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre of air, the risk of dementia rose by around 40%. The risk of Alzheimer’s disease went up by about 47%, and the risk of vascular dementia – a type caused by reduced blood flow to the brain – doubled entirely. Taken together, the evidence is hard to ignore.

The global picture

PM2.5 pollution is especially high in some countries in Africa, India and China. Dementia risk is also increasing at alarming rates in these regions.

Indonesia has areas with very high pollution levels. Research suggests it may have double – or possibly even triple – the percentage of people over 65 with suspected dementia compared to the EU. And China faces very high costs from its growing number of people with dementia. Initially, policy changes in China were able to reduce fine particle emissions. But in more recent years, this seemed less effective.

With the US increasing what was considered a safe fine particulate limit, there’s an urgency to act. These and other countries need to reduce pollution sooner rather than later to prevent the current and future human and economic costs of dementia.

Eef Hogervorst receives funding from ISPF to investigate pollution in Indonesian neonates and stunted growth, a risk factor for later life dementia

– ref. Air pollution may directly contribute to Alzheimer’s disease – new study – https://theconversation.com/air-pollution-may-directly-contribute-to-alzheimers-disease-new-study-275873

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Pfeffer, Research Fellow in Early Modern History, University of Oxford

The Moon crossed the Sun’s path on February 17, causing what is known as an annular solar eclipse. The Sun was not covered completely, but the Moon blocked enough of its light to leave a fiery ring. Unless you’re deep in the southern hemisphere, you won’t have noticed.

However, astrologically speaking, eclipses have effects regardless of who is watching. In astrology, an ancient tradition that lacks scientific grounding, eclipses are regarded as being powerful and politically significant celestial events. They are traditionally associated with the destiny of rulers – and some astrologers think Donald Trump is no exception.

Astrologers interpret the meaning of eclipses through horoscopes, celestial maps that locate the Sun, Moon and planets within the 12 signs of the Zodiac that encircle our solar system. During the eclipse, the Sun and Moon were at the edges of the sign Aquarius, a position astrologers associate with endings and shakeups.

This, alongside various other factors including Trump being born during a lunar eclipse in 1946, has led some astrologers to suggest that the eclipse could mark the start of a severe crisis for the US president – even his death.

Predictions like this come around fairly often, and Trump has outlasted many of them before. But these extreme forecasts follow a very old script. For thousands of years, eclipses have been treated as political events, read as omens about kingdoms and their rulers.

Bad omens

Eclipses have been connected with the fate of rulers since at least ancient Mesopotamia, around 4,000 years ago. Keen observers there, in what is now modern-day Iraq, kept lists of phenomena they believed were linked to specific outcomes.

“If a lizard gives birth in the walkway of a house, the household will fall” and “if a white partridge is seen in the city, commercial activity will diminish” are two examples. But one omen has long outlived the others: “if there is an eclipse, the king will die”.

With such high stakes, ancient astronomers invested in systematic observation, record-keeping and calculation to predict eclipses with ever-greater accuracy. This enabled the so-called “substitute king” ritual, where royals tried to avoid their fate by temporarily making someone else king until an eclipse passed.

The link between eclipses and the death of kings spread widely in the ancient world. Egyptian papyri show evidence of this belief, and Greek and Roman history is full of stories connecting eclipses with prominent deaths.

Roman historian Cassius Dio recorded a solar eclipse around the death of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, in AD14, during which “most of the sky seemed to be on fire”. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the death of Jesus is also marked by darkened Sun.

In the medieval period, when Arabic chroniclers recorded eclipses, they usually noted concurrent deaths of rulers. And in Europe, a solar eclipse in 1133 was so closely associated with the 1135 death of King Henry I of England that it became known as “King Henry’s Eclipse”.

Premodern rulers often hired astrologers to interpret their birth charts – the horoscope cast for the moment they were born. Ideally, the astrologer would pick out an aspect of the chart they could say justified the ruler’s leadership and foretold a long and prosperous reign. This was useful astrological propaganda.

But rulers were less happy when astrologers did this without authorisation – especially if they forecast illness or death. Astrologers were expelled from ancient Rome on numerous occasions for doing just that.

In his book, Lives of the Caesars, Roman historian Suetonius recounted the fate of an astrologer called Ascletarion (or Ascletario). Ascletarion’s predictions of the Emperor Domitian’s imminent downfall in the first century AD prompted the angry emperor to order his execution.

More than 1,400 years later, an astrologer in Oxford was executed for predicting the death of the reigning English monarch, Edward IV. And in 1581, Queen Elizabeth I of England made it a felony to use horoscopes to predict her death or her successor.

Similarly in France, royal pronouncements in 1560, 1579 and 1628 prohibited astrological predictions about princes, states and public affairs. Around the same time, astrologers in Italy got into serious trouble for predicting the deaths of popes.

This was not just a matter of anxiety on the part of rulers. It was also a question of maintaining public order and political stability. State powers were concerned with the ability of astrological predictions to cause general chaos and even prompt protests and rebellions.

They were right to worry. In a time when astrology was taken very seriously, predictions could cause collective panic. During the so-called wars of the three kingdoms, a series of conflicts fought between 1639 and 1653 in England, Scotland and Ireland, astrologers’ radical political predictions about the fate of the English monarchy fed revolutionary sentiment.

One of these astrologers, Nicholas Culpeper, published predictions of the downfall of all European monarchies on the basis of a solar eclipse in 1652.

Astrology left the world of universities and political courts in the 17th century, but astrologers did not stop making political predictions. In 1790s London, an astrologer called William Gilbert predicted the death of King Gustav III of Sweden. His prophecy was fulfilled a few months later.

And after his attempted assassination in 1981, the then-US president, Ronald Reagan, asked astrologer Joan Quigley whether she could have predicted it. She said yes. Quigley worked for the Reagans for many years, and claimed that she provided advice not just on personal affairs but also on matters of the state, including the best timing to make political announcements.

Although astrology is no longer counted as a science, it remains a player in contemporary politics. Whether or not eclipse predictions come to pass is almost besides the point. Historically, what made eclipses politically dangerous was the speculation often attached to them.

Michelle Pfeffer 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. For thousands of years, solar eclipses have been associated with the fate of rulers – https://theconversation.com/for-thousands-of-years-solar-eclipses-have-been-associated-with-the-fate-of-rulers-275515

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cooper Malanoski, Postdoctoral research associate, University of Oxford

As the Atlantic warms, many fish along the east coast of North America have moved northwards to keep within their preferred temperature range. Black sea bass, for instance, have shifted hundreds of miles up the coast.

In the Mediterranean, the picture is very different. Without an easy escape route towards the poles, many species are effectively trapped in a sea that is warming rapidly. Some native fish are even being replaced by more heat-tolerant species that have slipped in through the Suez Canal.

It’s a process affecting coastal species around the world: without a continuous pathway to cooler waters, many are in trouble. Escape becomes difficult where coastlines run east–west or are broken into enclosed basins and islands. In these settings, species have to move huge distances just to gain a few degrees of latitude – the so-called “latitudinal trap”.

It’s also a process that has repeated throughout history. When we analysed 540 million years of fossil data for a recent study published in the journal Science, we found that species along east-west coastlines were more likely to go extinct than those with easier movement north-south.

We hypothesised that the shape and orientation of coastlines could help species escape – or trap them. If coastlines provide direct, continuous pathways to move north or south, species should be able to better track shifting climates. But, where species have to travel a long way for minimal latitude gain, their extinction risk is raised during episodes of environmental change.

Coastlines themselves are not fixed. Over millions of years, plate tectonics rearrange continents, sometimes producing long north-south coasts, like those of the Americas today, and at other times sprawling east-west seaways such as during the Ordovician a bit over 400 million years ago.

This means climate shocks can produce very different extinction outcomes depending on the layout of continents at the time.

To test this hypothesis, we analysed fossil data for about 13,000 groups of related shallow-marine invertebrate species, such as clams, snails, sponges and starfish, spanning the last 540 million years. We then paired these records with reconstructions of ancient geography.

For each fossil, we estimated how difficult it would have been for that species to shift its latitude along shallow coastlines. We measured this as the shortest number of steps to travel 5°, 10°, or 15° latitude north or south. (For context, Great Britain covers about 9° from top to bottom). Short distances imply a relatively direct escape; long distances imply a long or maybe impossible escape route.

We found that, over the last 540 million years, extinction risk was consistently higher for marine animals with long escape routes.

Geography amplifies catastrophe

This pattern intensified during Earth’s five mass extinction events. In our models, species with longer distances showed increases in extinction risk of up to 400% during mass extinctions, compared with about 60% during other intervals, highlighting that geography becomes far more consequential when climate change intensifies.

Although our analyses focused on geologic timescales, our results help us understand how shallow marine species may respond to climate change today. Species living in the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico or other regions with semi-enclosed geography, or around the margins of islands, may have more difficulty as the ocean warms.

Coastline geometry may matter less for species that are good at dispersing themselves, however, especially those that have a long planktonic larvae phase where they drift around the ocean before becoming fixed in place. The survival of those species depends more on factors like ocean currents than coastline orientation.

Estimating whether a species is at risk of extinction is typically done with reference to attributes such as body size or geographic range size. But our work shows that extinction risk also depends on geography. Survival during climate upheaval depends not only on a species’ biology – but on whether the map itself offers an escape.

Erin Saupe receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Leverhulme Trust.

Cooper Malanoski 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. Species on east-west coastlines are more likely to go extinct than those on north-south shores – new study – https://theconversation.com/species-on-east-west-coastlines-are-more-likely-to-go-extinct-than-those-on-north-south-shores-new-study-275280