Category: The Conversation – UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whose truth and whose land?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protein fix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation

This newsletter was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

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It’s probably just as well that the Doomsday Clock is only changed once a year. The clock, which measures existential risks to humankind, was moved forward by one second at the end of 2024 to 59 seconds to midnight. This was in large part because of the war in Ukraine and the very real risk that it might bring a confrontation between the US and Russia which could turn nuclear.

As things stand you would get fairly short odds on the second hand nudging even closer to midnight at the end of 2025. And what would probably prompt a hollow laugh from the scientists that decide where the hands should point is that the latest crisis appears to be the result of some characteristically wayward talk from the US president, Donald Trump.

Flying home from South Korea after his summit with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Apec conference on October 30, Trump announced that “because of other countries’ testing programs”, he had ordered the Pentagon to restart the process for testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

His statement followed an announcement by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, about recent tests of a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik. Days later, Putin announced that Russia had tested a nuclear powered drone torpedo called Poseidon.

Potent weapons both, no doubt. And both capable of carrying nuclear payloads. But neither are nuclear weapons in themselves. Russia has not carried out nuclear tests since the end of the cold war and nor has China, the third largest nuclear power after Russia and the US.

So now Putin has responded by announcing Russia will also resume testing, citing Trump’s statement and the ongoing modernisation of America’s nuclear forces. But at the same time, Russian diplomats are talking with their US counterparts to clarify Trump’s intention, reporting that the White House and the State Department “evaded a specific response”.

It’s a reminder from the cold war of just how delicate the balance can be with two leaders at loggerheads who control the means to destroy the planet several times over.

Tom Vaughan, a lecturer in international security at the University of Leeds, notes that the UK is pressing ahead with its procurement of F-35 stealth fighter aircraft. These can carry nuclear bombs but, as Vaughan notes, would require US authorisation before they could be used. Equally, Britain’s nominally independent nuclear weapons system, Trident, is reliant on US support and maintenance.

As Vaughan points out, it makes the UK into “a target in any nuclear war that might be started by two unpredictable and violent superpowers”.

For anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, these are familiar themes. But we heaved a sigh of relief when, thanks to leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it felt as if we were stepping back from the brink of an unthinkable conflagration. And when the fall of the Berlin Wall was followed by the end of the cold war, it felt as if those days might be gone for good.

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Read more:
Talk of new atomic tests by Trump and Putin should make UK rethink its role as a nuclear silo for the US

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Nor has the rapidly increasing diplomatic temperature escaped Hollywood film-maker Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow, whose successes include The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, has a new film streaming on Netflix which addresses this theme. A House of Dynamite imagines how officials in the US might respond if it looked like a nuclear strike was imminent.

Mark Lacy, a philosopher at the University of Essex, who has written for us several times about the future of war, says the film paints an imaginative picture of the confusion and complexity of such a situation, in which it’s more than likely that an enemy which is capable of disrupting communications – something we are already seeing in the forms of repeated cyberattacks by inimical state-sponsored enemies.

To paraphrase Lacy’s conclusion, it’s just as well this is fiction. But Trump and Putin’s latest exchanges have made it just that little bit more easy to imagine things getting out of hand.

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Read more:
Netflix’s A House of Dynamite sounds the nuclear alarm, but how worried should we be?

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Mamdani: a politician who listens

The other big US news this week was from Big Apple, where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election. He was up against Andrew Cuomo, the former Democrat governor of New York state who won 41.6% of the vote, and Republican Curtis Sliwa, who won just 7%.

Mamdani is the first Muslim mayor of New York city, the youngest since 1892 and the first mayor born in Africa. He won on a platform of lowering the cost of living, introducing rent controls and providing free buses and childcare for all. To do this, he proposes taxing millionaires more.

Predictably Trump, who has launched regular attacks on Mamdani in recent months, calls him a communist and has said he will defund New York (something he doesn’t have the constitutional power to do – not that this would stop him trying, of course). Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called him a “mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda”. Which is all very predictable.

But most New Yorkers weren’t in the mood to listen to either criticism. Which is apt, as one of the refreshing features about Mamdani’s style of politics is his ability to listen to others, says Daniel Hutton Ferris, a lecturer in political theory at Newcastle University.

Hutton points to Mamdani’s habit on the campaign trail of soliciting people’s views, especially those of people who weren’t intending to vote for him. He says this is a smart tactic, not only because people like to be heard and respect politicians who listen, but also because of the voting system in New York.

Similar to the single transferable vote system used for Australia’s federal elections, New York’s voting system asks voters to rank candidates in order of their preference rather than choosing just one. That way they can put the candidate who they dislike most at the bottom of the list. If their candidate doesn’t win, the vote goes to the person next on the list of a voter’s preferences.

As Hutton says, it’s a great way of dealing with polarising candidates. It penalises people who rely on taking extreme and divisive positions to attract the support of a core base of passionate supporters. The UK spurned a chance to switch to something like this in the 2011 referendum.

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Read more:
How Zohran Mamdani’s ‘talent for listening’ spurred him to victory in the New York mayoral election

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Mamdani wasn’t the only winner on Tuesday. The Democratic party scored victory in two gubernatorial elections and successfully passed proposition 50 in California, which allows for the “redistricting” of voting areas. It’s a move that could provide the party with as many as five seats in next year’s midterm elections.

It’s a sign, says Andrew Gawthorpe, an expert in US politics at Leiden University, that the coalition that delivered Trump to the White House in 2024 might be beginning to collapse. Close analysis of the voting patterns shows that groups like Latino voters, who came out in unexpectedly high numbers for Trump in the 2024 election, may be moving back to the Democrats. Equally, many suburban areas of Virginia and New Jersey, which turned out for Trump in 2024, voted heavily for the Democrat candidates.

It’s premature to predict the outcome of next year’s elections based on Tuesday night’s results, cautions Gawthorpe. But it’s certainly a sign that the self-styled “highest polling Republican President in HISTORY!” may not be as popular as he likes to tell himself.

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Read more:
US election results suggest Trump’s coalition of voters is collapsing

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– ref. What will the UK do in a new nuclear arms race? – https://theconversation.com/what-will-the-uk-do-in-a-new-nuclear-arms-race-269224

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham University

A government-appointed review panel has just released its long-awaited report on England’s national curriculum. Its stated intention is to improve curriculum quality for all children, but particularly those “for whom the system is currently not working well,” such as children with special educational needs and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A new national curriculum will be published in 2027 and will come into force in September 2028. The review panel wanted this phased in, but the government says that it will happen in one go. The review’s recommendations for the curriculum include an oracy framework to join the reading and writing frameworks, to encourage children and young people to become confident, effective speakers.

It proposes a shake-up of literacy testing in year six. It suggests that primary tests could be revised to make them more accessible to children with special educational needs and disabilities. Schools are encouraged to make use of existing optional tests at the end of key stage one, for children aged seven.

The report also recommends greater representation of ethnic and other diversity in the subject matter of GCSEs, religious education to be better integrated in a national curriculum, and a substantial reduction in the length of GCSE examinations. In its response to the report, the government has committed to reducing GCSE exam time by two and a half to three hours on average – less than the “at least 10%” the review suggested.

Confusingly, the government has made a number of additional suggested changes to education and entitlement at around the same time as the publication of the review’s final report. The review suggests new diagnostic maths and reading tests for year eight. But these are presumably not in addition to the new year eight reading tests already proposed by the government.

Each proposal may have merit, and making primary tests more accessible for children with special educational needs might work. But overall there is little here that will directly help overcome disadvantage.

It is not clear that encouraging more schools to use key stage one tests, rather than abolishing them or making them mandatory, will help. Schools with more resources will be better able to make use of the tests. Nor is it clear that poor children are especially disadvantaged by religious education not being part of the national curriculum.

Triple science

The report proposes that all students should be entitled to study the three separate traditional sciences at GCSE – physics, chemistry and biology. This proposal has been accepted by the government. The argument here is that for those students wanting to continue in a scientific career, or enter university to study a science, access to the individual specialist subjects is crucial.

Schools in some disadvantaged areas have offered only GCSE qualifications in dual or combined science. This is a double qualification covering all three traditional sciences, but in two thirds of the time.

In some respects, therefore, this reform should be welcomed. It offers parity for pupils of all backgrounds across schools. However, in other ways it is already out of date. Students pursuing science careers beyond school aren’t necessarily going to take a degree in physics, biology or chemistry. They may well study degrees in combined sciences, more specialist topics such as cybernetics, or subjects such as nursing science, forensic science or psychology.

The biggest barrier to success in the “hard” sciences may actually be the lack of specialist teachers. Currently it is estimated that over half of all physics lessons are not taught by specialists in those subjects. And, as with dual science, this is more likely to occur in disadvantaged, remote or otherwise hard-to-staff schools.

Even if all schools were to offer three sciences, perhaps by relocating new and existing specialist teachers more evenly between schools, there would still not be enough specialist teachers to teach everyone. What would happen instead is that only some students in each school would be able to study three separate sciences (with appropriate teachers). This could lead to social or other stratification within schools. The policy could only work as intended if recruitment of specialist teachers were rapidly improved.

In truth, changes that fall outside the national curriculum – such as recruiting better qualified teachers in remote areas, or increasing funding for areas with high proportions of long-term disadvantage – would be better bets to tackle disadvantage. If this new proposed curriculum is to have any chance, it must be met with a seismic shift in teacher funding and recruitment.

Stephen Gorard receives funding from DfE and ESRC. But none is relevant to this article.

– ref. What the review of England’s national curriculum means for disadvantaged schools – https://theconversation.com/what-the-review-of-englands-national-curriculum-means-for-disadvantaged-schools-268960

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Turns, Senior Environment Editor, The Conversation

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.

A close friend of mine escaped her home in the British Virgin Islands during Hurricane Irma in September 2017. She and her young family had to grab their passports and not much else when they fled 200mph winds. At the time, she described the total devastation as “like a bomb going off”. Every hurricane season, she and so many other people relive the trauma of that experience. Eight years on, the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica has been particularly terrifying because the storm intensified so rapidly as a result of global warming.

“Once the winds fall silent, anxiety and grief settle in,” write psychology researchers Gulnaz Anjum and Mudassar Aziz. “The fear, disconnection and exhaustion that follow a disaster of this scale are not fleeting. They can shape lives for years.”

Anjum and Aziz describe how hurricanes like Irma and Melissa can trigger a form of distress known as “deep anticipatory anxiety”. Combine that fear of this disaster happening again with the psychological isolation associated with an experience like this, and it’s clear that every subsequent storm compounds mental strain. This, they explain, leaves people more vulnerable to lasting emotional distress.

An invisible toll

Aid is often quickly sent to rebuild communities, fix infrastructure and reconnect telecommunications. But the mental health toll is not so tangible. Perhaps that’s why it’s so often overlooked.

Only as recently as 2022, the UN’s climate authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted that climate change poses serious risks to mental wellbeing. And we’re not all equally affected.

“Some people and communities are most at risk for increasingly worsening mental health outcomes due to their proximity to the hazard, their reliance on the environment for livelihood and culture and their socioeconomic status,” write three Canadian researchers, who study the mental health implications of climate change.

That includes farming communities already experiencing drought and people living in areas most at risk of floods or wildfires.

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Read more:
Ukraine’s massive nature project is helping veterans and land recover

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The bullseye effect?

Collective trauma is currently being felt across the Caribbean and way beyond.

Psychiatry experts at Florida International University in the US, Jonathan S. Comer and Anthony Steven Dick point out that more studies now show that the negative mental health effects of disasters extend far beyond the immediate disaster area.

That goes against the once-dominant theory of disaster mental health, sometimes called the “bullseye model”, which proposed that the negative mental health effects of a disaster were directly related to how close the person was to the centre of the event – the bullseye.

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Read more:
Mental health distress in the wake of Bangladesh cyclone shows the devastation of climate-related loss and damage

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When Hurricane Irma struck in 2017, they used a national long-term research project that was already underway to study how 11,800 children were coping both before and after the disaster.

“Greater media exposure was associated with higher reporting of post-traumatic stress symptoms – and the link was just as strong in San Diego youth as it was in Florida youth,” write Comer and Dick, who advise limiting exposure to social media because “extended exposure to such content rarely provides additional actionable information”.

Narratives and neurons

Climate trauma can result “from knowing about or experiencing climate change crises”, according to education researchers at the University of Regina in Canada who point out that young people are particularly susceptible. Focusing on responses to problems can guide people to imagine better futures rather than teaching doomsday clock narratives: “It is more helpful to share concrete examples of community-led climate mitigation, adaptation and financing initiatives,” they write.

Trauma from experiencing extreme weather can change the way our brains function. In 2023, Jyoti Mishra, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Diego, studied how climate change-related trauma affected the memory, attention and ability to process distractions of people who survived the 2018 wildfire that destroyed the town of Paradise, California.

“People who were exposed to the wildfire had greater frontal lobe activity while dealing with distractions,” she writes. The frontal lobe is the brain’s hub for higher-level functions and frontal brain activity can be a marker for cognitive effort. People exposed to the fires may be having more difficulty processing distractions and compensating by exerting more effort.

Rebuilding resilience

Globally, over a billion people already live with a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization. Climate catastrophe will “intensify” that, according to researchers at the United Nations University who explain that “mental health support systems should be a fully integrated part of any plan to adapt to climate change and respond to disasters”.

Usually, mental health is considered in relation to emergency response and disaster management but support needs to go beyond that, into the long term. That’s because psychological wellbeing enables people to withstand adversity and build constructive relationships.

Acting as part of a collective, rather than alone, helps people achieve a sense of agency and solidarity while driving positive change. The researchers also explain that funding for mental health support should also be part of the debate at global climate summits, like the UN’s Cop30 climate summit that begins next week in Brazil. That would help transition “from a state of fear and anxiety for many and create hope to build more resilient societies, leaving no one behind and empowering future generations to take climate action”.

As Mishra, the psychiatry professor, outlines: “Resilient mental health is what allows us to recover from traumatic experiences. How humans experience and mentally deal with climate catastrophes sets the stage for our future lives.”

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– ref. How to build mental resilience to climate change – https://theconversation.com/how-to-build-mental-resilience-to-climate-change-268811

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

A new study suggests that even low levels of physical activity could protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease – but not in the way scientists expected.

The researchers tracked almost 300 older adults with early brain signs of Alzheimer’s for nine to 11 years using pedometers. They found that physical activity didn’t reduce the toxic amyloid plaques that most Alzheimer’s treatments now target.

Instead, in people who already had these plaques, physical activity reduced the accumulation of misfolded tau proteins in specific brain areas. These proteins appear later in Alzheimer’s disease and are more closely linked to cognitive and functional decline. These signs of dementia were reduced by almost half in more active participants.

Benefits appeared at just 3,000 steps – roughly half an hour of walking at a moderate pace. The optimal range was 5,000 to 7,500 steps daily, after which the effect plateaued. More steps didn’t necessarily mean greater protection, which suggests a realistic target for older, sedentary people, rather than the often-cited 10,000 steps.

The study had limitations, however. It involved a fairly small group of mostly white, well-educated people in the US, and it didn’t take other lifestyle or health factors into account. Also, there may be other protective mechanisms of walking at play. But it does support other research suggesting that being physically active may lower the risk of dementia.

A UK study of 1,139 people over 50 found that those who were moderately to vigorously active had a 34-50% reduction in dementia risk when followed over eight to ten years. Among those who developed dementia, staying active reduced their memory decline, particularly in older women.

A larger 2022 UK study tracked 78,430 people for seven years using wrist accelerometers. It found a 25% reduction in dementia risk with just 3,800 steps daily, rising to 50% at 9,800 steps.

However, people who walked more also had better cardiovascular health – lower cholesterol, better sleep and blood pressure and reduced diabetes risk. Since these heart and stroke risk factors also increase dementia risk, the picture is complex.

Healthy habits often go together. People who exercise are more likely to eat well, not smoke, look after their heart health and have fewer financial stresses. This makes it hard to know which factor is having the biggest effect. The researchers tried to account for this, but because these habits are so closely linked, it’s difficult to say that exercise alone is responsible.

However, there is a strong case for this as there are multiple ways exercise might support the brain: improving cardiovascular health, increasing blood flow and boosting chemicals that promote brain-cell connections.

One such substance is irisin, a hormone produced by muscles that acts on almost all faulty brain mechanisms associated with Alzheimer’s, including inflammation. This and other chemicals, such as BDNF, associated with exercise, provide plausible biological pathways for how physical activity might directly influence brain health beyond its cardiovascular benefits.

But the relationship might work in reverse, too. People may become less active because of early Alzheimer’s symptoms. Those with hearing problems, for instance – itself a dementia risk factor – often report barriers that make them stop being active before other dementia symptoms appear.

Vicious circle

Reduced activity then accelerates memory decline. This creates a vicious circle. Early disease symptoms – such as not hearing – can affect self-esteem and reduce engagment in physical activity, which in turn worsens cognitive decline.

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Read more:
How your vision can predict dementia 12 years before it is diagnosed – new study

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Brisk walking might be particularly beneficial. A small trial of 15 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s who did Nordic walking (an enhanced walking technique that uses poles to work your upper body as well as your legs) maintained brain function over 24 weeks, with some functions even improving.

The 15 who received only standard care showed decline or no improvement. Though small, the trial suggests that even people already diagnosed with Alzheimer’s might benefit from increased physical activity, including brisk walking.

Getting outside, particularly in nature, may be especially beneficial for preventing dementia – possibly because it improves mood and sleep while reducing isolation – all dementia risk factors. The combination of physical movement, natural light exposure and social interaction when walking outdoors may create multiple protective effects that complement each other.

The challenge now is helping people overcome barriers to outdoor activity, such as safety concerns, fear of falling, or simply preferring the comfort of the sofa – particularly during wetter, colder months. But the evidence suggests that even a few minutes of walking could make a difference, and that modest, achievable targets – a half-hour stroll rather than a marathon training regime – may offer substantial protection against cognitive decline.

Eef Hogervorst has received funding from Economic and Social Research Council, Road Safety Trust, Alzheimer’s Research UK, ISPF, Dunhill Medical Trust. She was affiliated with NICE as expert on menopausal hormone treatment and dementia risk.

– ref. Even a few thousand steps a day can reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s – new study – https://theconversation.com/even-a-few-thousand-steps-a-day-can-reduce-your-risk-of-alzheimers-new-study-269020

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Patrick Diamond, Professor of Public Policy, Queen Mary University of London

There is increasingly bad blood between ministers and civil servants in the UK government. The trend has been apparent for at least a decade, with the mood between officials and ministers darkening during the Conservative administrations of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, fuelled by conflict over Brexit.

It was anticipated that the arrival of Keir Starmer’s government would mark a renaissance in civil service-ministerial relations. To symbolise a new era, Starmer instructed ministers to write welcome notes to their civil servants.

Yet, so far, there has been little visible improvement in the relationship, as ministers have become increasingly frustrated. The prime minister denounced the British state as slow-moving, “flabby” and ineffectual.

Rumours are circulating in Whitehall that Starmer and his allies regret appointing Chris Wormald, a civil service traditionalist, as the new cabinet secretary. In July, the Guardian reported the prime minister had “buyer’s remorse” in the light of Wormald’s apparent inability to get the ship of state moving in the right direction.

But it’s not one-way traffic. Civil servants have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of politicians. Moazzam Malik, a former director-general in the Foreign Office, reflected that “our system of government is built on the principle that civil servants provide impartial, evidence-based advice and ministers make decisions. But when ministers behave badly, it is usually because they don’t like what they are being told – and decide to take it out on the messenger.”

An obvious factor in the growth of this animosity and ill-feeling between ministers and civil servants is the prevailing belief that the British state is failing and that, in the current climate, “nothing works”.

All recent governments have struggled with delivery. Politicians castigate bureaucrats for being slow-moving and incompetent. Civil servants respond by insisting there is insufficient clarity from ministers who are prone to favour disruptive public sector reorganisations rather than focusing on the hard slog of continuous improvement. And when blunders happen, the two sides are liable to blame each other.

Another element is confusion within the civil service about what it exists to achieve. Is the role of officials to advise and support ministers, or oversee practical implementation at the front line? Different ministers patently want different things from their officials, while too few politicians arrive in office with a clear understanding of how to get the best out of civil servants.

At the same time, there is a belief that officials are rarely held accountable, while senior leaders can too easily evade responsibility for high-profile failures. Not surprisingly, the modern civil service has suffered an identity crisis.

On top of this, politicians of all parties are less likely to respect prevailing institutional norms. Historically, civil servants and ministers in Britain formed a strong bond based on a mutually beneficial partnership, depicted by academics as a “public service bargain”. This idea was elaborated in the 1970s by social scientist Bernard Schaffer to analyse the characteristics of civil service bureaucracy.

That bargain, encapsulated in the 19th century Northcote-Trevelyan report, meant that officials “exchanged overt partisanship, some political rights and a public political profile in return for permanent careers, honours and a six-hour working day”. Ministers had to accept merit-based appointment in return for the loyalty, obedience and dedication of civil servants.

The Whitehall model was predicated on a “governing marriage” between ministers and bureaucrats reflecting the ethos of “club government”. Both sides knew one other through educational and social ties based on class background and there was implicit ideological consensus. This was articulated in the post-war era through support for liberal civil service Keynesianism. Above all, there was the prevailing belief in the “Rolls-Royce” Whitehall machinery as the most effective in the world.

End of the bargain

The shift to a “them and us” model began in earnest during the 1980s as the consensus shattered and politicians became more critical of civil servants. Increasingly, ministers sought to create an entourage of advisers and consultants, marginalising career officials.

The monopoly over policy advice was eroded, as thinktanks and non-governmental organisations were encouraged to enter the policy-making arena. Civil servants were incentivised to become managers overseeing delivery rather than policy advisers – a trend reinforced by subsequent governments.

The cumulative effect was to create distance between ministers and officials. Yet such developments were scarcely unique to Britain. A recent survey revealed that across the world, bureaucracies are struggling to provide impartial advice to ministers.

This was the consequence of “political interference, where there are increasing instances of political agendas overshadowing expert advice worldwide”. Alongside that is the growth of “misinformation, where the rapid spread of incorrect or partial information in the digital age is undermining the credibility of factual, unbiased advice”.

The problem is that in this environment, Britain is in danger of losing one of its most trusted institutions: an impartial, capable civil service. For all its faults, this service acts as a bulwark against the overweening power of the executive, while supporting ministers to achieve their goals.

Rather than castigating officials behind closed doors, the new administration should produce a reform agenda that will improve civil service performance, acting as a catalyst for wider public sector transformation.

Patrick Diamond receives funding from the UKRI/ESRC Productivity Institute.

He is a member of the Labour Party.

– ref. Why have relations between civil servants and ministers turned so sour – and can they be repaired? – https://theconversation.com/why-have-relations-between-civil-servants-and-ministers-turned-so-sour-and-can-they-be-repaired-269025

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elias Michaut, PhD Researcher in Archaeology & Heritage, UCL

The 1969 Stonewall riot, a pivotal episode of LGBTQ+ resistance to a police raid, was a turning point in the western gay rights movement. Today, Pride events are held each year at the end of June in memory of this uprising. Yet, Stonewall was not the first queer rebellion.

My recent research, published in the Journal of Homosexuality, uncovered a queer uprising which took place in 1905, more than 60 years before Stonewall, at a youth detention site in France.

In 19th-century France, an underground queer scene was developing around bars and brothels in Paris. Same-sex relationships were also common in single-gender institutions, like in the military or in prisons, although frowned upon. The late 19th century saw rising anxieties surrounding queer sexualities, which were increasingly being labelled as medical disorders.

Same-sex relationships had become commonplace in some French youth penal colonies. These were institutions where working-class youths aged between eight and 21 years old were incarcerated, for several months to several years, often after an arrest for vagrancy or theft. There they were forced to perform agricultural and industrial labour under very harsh conditions.

Les Douaires was a youth penal colony for detained boys in Normandy (northern France). In the 1900s, a growing number of boys aged over 16 were sent to Les Douaires. Rumours spread of frequent sexual interactions between detained boys, supposedly happening in the courtyards of the penal colony.

The penal administration reacted by instituting a compulsory afternoon nap. This was an explicit attempt to cut down time spent in the courtyards and therefore reduce the frequency of same-sex relationships.

This measure was clearly not to the liking of the detained population. On July 31 1905, 200 detained boys refused to take the nap and instead gathered in the courtyard.

Several hours of open riot ensued, during which the boys smashed over 200 windows, attacked staff members, forcing them to retreat, and ripped some of the fences surrounding the courtyards. They also tried to escape together, but a staff member managed to close the main gates of the penal colony just as the riot was breaking out.

The staff who had retreated telegraphed the police and the army for backup, and the riot calmed down within a few hours. A small military outpost of ten soldiers was established nearby, and additional warders were sent from Paris. In the following days, 26 detained boys identified as leaders of the insurrection were transferred to another penal colony.

The 1905 riot was not the first episode of collective resistance to erupt at Les Douaires. In June 1880, the boys had rebelled after a warder had hit a child. Staff brutality was omnipresent, and in the 1870s the penal colony’s director had been reprimanded for routinely whipping the inmates. The harsh living conditions led to recurrent outbreaks of diseases, and the boys at Les Douaires were several times more likely to die than free young people outside.

In the months preceding the July 1905 riot, socialist ideas had started spreading among the older boys at Les Douaires. A letter from the penal colony’s director written a few days after the uprising points to the growing political climate and the refusal of the nap, instituted to limit homosexual relationships, as causes of the riot.

It must be noted that while the detained youth engaged in same-sex behaviour that we might now describe as queer, there is no reason to believe this translated into any sense of queer identity. Not least because contemporary western notions of sexual identity are a relatively recent development. Nonetheless, the July 1905 mutiny at Les Douaires remains a significant event in LGBTQ+ history, as one of the earliest documented episodes of overt collective resistance to anti-queer repression.

Although the late 19th and early 20th centuries were marked by increasing police raids on LGBTQ+ venues and the emergence of early campaigning groups, there is little evidence for similar moments of mass collective resistance to homophobic policies and repression.

From the 1905 Les Douaires riot to the 1969 Stonewall riot, queer uprisings most often took place in reaction to police repression or, as in this case, within the walls of a prison. In a now-famous speech on the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 1973, transgender activist Sylvia Rivera reminded the crowd of their “gay brothers and gay sisters in jail”.

In countries like the UK, the US, or France, LGBTQ+ people in prison, especially those who are not white, are still at higher risk of sexual assault and violence and have high rates of suicides.

The 1905 Les Douaires riot stands as an early chapter in this unfinished history of resistance to anti-queer and state violence.

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Elias Michaut received doctoral funding for this research from the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP).

– ref. A queer uprising 60 years before Stonewall: the 1905 Les Douaires riot – https://theconversation.com/a-queer-uprising-60-years-before-stonewall-the-1905-les-douaires-riot-266856

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kevin Olsen, UKSA Mars Science Fellow, Department of Physics, University of Oxford

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin have submitted simplified plans to Nasa designed to return US astronauts to the Moon’s surface.

These plans focus on Nasa’s Artemis III mission, which will see the first US astronauts walk on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

SpaceX was awarded the contract to build the lunar landing vehicle for Artemis III in April 2021, using a version of their Starship spacecraft. On October 20, 2025, Nasa’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, said he was reopening the contract to competitors, such as Blue Origin, citing delays with Starship. So what has gone wrong?

At the heart of the issues are Starship’s size and ambition. The massive spacecraft will tower over the moonscape at 50m (165ft) tall and aim to bring 100,000kg of payload to the lunar surface.

Space vehicles designed to carry humans undergo a process of certification to become “human-rated” – safe to put crew and passengers on board. Most undergo numerous tests of their component parts, followed by a few tests of the full vehicle.

However, Starship’s test flight programme is now the longest in space launch history. The Starship upper stage is the part that will carry astronauts. It underwent seven small launches up to 12.5km in altitude between 2020 and 2021. Only the last of these flights, SN15, survived touchdown.

There have now been 11 test flights to orbit of the full Starship system, where the upper stage is paired with a Super Heavy rocket booster. Most have ended poorly for the upper stage, with the last two surviving re-entry before tipping over after landing on the ocean and exploding.

It is hard to forget the first time the pair of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket’s boosters returned to the launch pad and landed successfully, or the first time the Starship Super Heavy booster was caught by the arms (or “chopsticks”) on its launch tower. But it is also hard to forget the live video of Starships losing material during re-entry, the fiery remains of their break up streaking across the sky during Starship’s test flights 7 and 8, or the upper stage that exploded in a fireball on the pad in June 2025.

The development of Starship vehicles is unique and SpaceX aims for frequent launches with as much progress as possible in between them. It is accepted that these losses will lead to improved technology and safety down the line. However, the line is short.

Nasa’s acting chief Sean Duffy has expressed concerns about Starship’s progress towards the Artemis III mission, which is scheduled for 2027. A few days after Duffy’s comments, SpaceX posted an entry about the Moon programme on its blog. In it, the company said: “Starship continues to simultaneously be the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the Moon and a core enabler of the Artemis programme’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface. SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible.”

SpaceX also said that it had completed 49 milestones aimed at landing astronauts on the Moon and that “the vast majority” of contractual milestones had been achieved “on time or ahead of schedule”.

Starship’s advertised payload to orbit of 100,000kg sounds impressive. But on its most recent test flight, Starship carried a dummy payload of just 16,000kg – less than the 22,000kg maximum payload for SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, and Starship promises ten times that. Engineers have a long way to go before the system can carry the equipment needed for a Moon mission, let alone astronauts. The bottom line is that the payload-to-orbit promise has not yet been demonstrated.

Design philosophy is a major reason we have arrived here. SpaceX isn’t designing and building a lunar landing vehicle. They are building a do-anything super-heavy-lift launcher capable of sending payloads to Earth orbit, to the Moon, or even to Mars, and landing on any one of those bodies.

The success of past and current space missions comes from focus. Spacecraft are designed to solve a number of very specific problems, overcoming their missions constraints. A recent experience at the European Space Agency’s (Esa) Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) showed how this works in practice. This is where scientists and engineers collaborate to find trade offs for mass, power, propulsion and budget until a spacecraft design is finalised. Spaceflight succeeds through clever fixes to specific problems, not grand gestures.

Because Starship needs to refuel in Earth orbit before travelling to the Moon, a single lunar mission will require a dozen launches or more. The additional flights will launch versions of Starship intended solely to refuel another vehicle. If Starship works, it will be fantastic, but aiming for size instead of application is why it is not ready for Artemis III.

Nasa’s trajectory

Another aspect to this is the leadership and direction of the US government, which guides Nasa. The current American Moon programme was started under the George W. Bush administration over 20 years ago and has been undergoing drastic reconfigurations every few years.

With a major US election every two years (presidential and congressional), Nasa’s direction hasn’t been stable enough to manage long-term, large-scale planning. Esa, conversely, sets objectives on a ten-year scale, and moves towards them steadily. It is hard to see problems easing with the US Artemis lunar programme, especially under a president who has requested the agency’s budget be dramatically slashed.

The budget proposal would terminate US participation in many international space missions, such as EnVision, Lisa and NewAthena. Additional funding would be needed from other nations to make up the shortfall; otherwise the programmes could end. The loss of US participation in these projects will, in turn, affect how other countries are involved in Artemis.

Artemis relies strongly on international support for a number of elements, such as the Orion service module that carries astronauts to the Moon and segments of the Lunar Gateway space station, where astronauts would board their SpaceX or Blue Origin lunar landing vehicles.

Whichever company ends up carrying astronauts to the Moon on Artemis III, and whatever their “simplified plans” look like, there will be exciting things to see in the next year or two. These include the Artemis II mission (which will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby), the first launches of Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy lift rocket, and commercial payloads launched to the Moon by both SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Kevin Olsen 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’s gone wrong between Nasa and Elon Musk’s SpaceX? – https://theconversation.com/whats-gone-wrong-between-nasa-and-elon-musks-spacex-268577

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amy Cano Prentice, Senior Research Officer, ODI Global

Global emissions need to peak this year to stay within 1.5°C of global temperature rise since pre-industrial levels. This means that starting now, countries need to emit less greenhouse gas. Emissions also need to be cut in half by 2030 to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

For many nations, 1.5°C is a benchmark for survival. At that temperature, small island states in particular risk becoming uninhabitable due to rising sea levels, ecosystem loss, water insecurity, infrastructure damage and livelihood collapse.

To safeguard their futures, Vanuatu and 17 other countries spent six years campaigning to get the highest court of the UN system, the International Court of Justice, to give its opinion on whether countries have specific legal obligations when it comes to climate change. This year, the court agreed that they do, and the obligations are stringent, meaning that states are required to use all available means to prevent significant harm to the climate system.

Because the court’s advisory opinion is an articulation of existing law and legal obligations (rather than a binding legal decision in itself), it has to be given legal effect through national legislation, climate-related litigation, international treaties and conventions. In other words, it has to be kept alive.

My research identifies how to keep the advisory opinion alive via a few avenues to hold countries to account for failing to protect the climate system.

Cop30, the UN climate summit taking place in Brazil this November, is the first opportunity to hold countries accountable for collectively failing to reach stay within the 1.5°C limit with their 2025 national pledges.

In my recent paper, I outline which countries are upholding their climate change obligations and which are not, and what can be done about it.

Time is running out but climate diplomacy can be slow. Under the Paris agreement, the legally binding international treaty on climate change agreed in 2015, countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.

Since then, many countries have pushed at every annual UN climate summit for the 1.5°C goal to be the maximum temperature increase. After years of negotiation, the International Court of Justice clarified that 1.5°C is unequivocally the legal target of the Paris Agreement. This hinges on the fact that the Paris agreement uses a science-based approach, so decisions are made according to the best available science of the day. Currently, that science indicates that a warming of 2°C would be catastrophic.

Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are plans created by each country outlining how they will reduce their emissions (in order to collectively meet the Paris agreement’s temperature goal) and adapt to climate change. The court ruling made it clear that countries not only are obliged to submit NDCs, but these NDCs also need to represent a country’s highest possible ambition.

The court also clarified that all NDCs need to, by law, add up to enough emissions reductions globally to meet the 1.5°C. This can be used to lobby for more ambitious pledges among countries that claim to support the interests of the most vulnerable states.

Every country must update its NDC every five years. Each one needs to be more ambitious than the last. The past round of NDCs was insufficient. Even if fully implemented, they would only limit global warming to a 2.6°C increase. This year, after extending the deadline for NDC submission, only about 30% of countries submitted a new NDC. That covers less than one-third of global emissions.

I found that out of ten countries that are friends of small island states, only one – the UK – submitted a new NDC that is in line with 1.5°C. Four of these countries – Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand – submitted new NDCs which are not on track to meet the temperature goal. Three did not submit a new NDC at all – China, India and the EU – despite having made high-level political statements.

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Read more:
Only 15 countries have met the latest Paris agreement deadline. Is any nation serious about tackling climate change?

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Seven of these friends of small island states (and the EU) are required to provide climate finance to developing countries under the Paris agreement. All of these spend more public money on the fossil fuel industry than on climate mitigation and adaptation finance internationally.

According to the international court, fossil fuel subsidies may constitute an internationally wrongful act, in breach of the obligation to protection the climate system from significant harm. In 2022, the UK spent almost 14 times more on fossil fuel subsidies than on international climate finance.

Australia spent over six times as much. France and New Zealand spent over twice as much. Japan spent almost twice as much. Removing fossil fuel subsidies would free up much needed fiscal resources to target those most in need, especially given the urgency of the situation.

Other legal avenues

Beyond Cop30, other legal avenues exist. The first strategic decision is whether to bring a case before domestic or international courts. For example, in Canada, two houses of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation took the government to court for failing to meet its international commitments to reduce emissions, citing the International Court of Justice.

Internationally, a highly polluting country can be brought before international legal courts by another country. In 2019, the Gambia sued Myanmar for genocide due to the universal legal nature of the obligation to prevent genocide. Similarly, one country can sue another on climate-related legal grounds.

As the window to stay within 1.5°C closes, Cop30 and the courts must become twin areas of action, where creativity, strategy and the law converge to make climate justice enforceable, not aspirational.

Concrete diplomatic gains in Belém could include a suite of ambitious NDCs, operational guidance to launch the fund for responding to loss and damage, plus bold climate finance commitments, but the work cannot end in the negotiation halls. It must continue beyond Cop30 to turn pledges into action.

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Amy Cano Prentice 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 countries can be held responsible for staying within new legal climate target of 1.5°C – https://theconversation.com/how-countries-can-be-held-responsible-for-staying-within-new-legal-climate-target-of-1-5-c-268160