Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Judith Roberts, Lecturer in Psychology, Aberystwyth University

Speeding along an open road on my motorcycle, flanked by the great outdoors, the engine hums and the noise in my mind disappears. Riding a motorcycle demands total presence. Focus isn’t optional. It’s a matter of survival. After all, a wandering mind could lead to disaster.

But it’s not fear or panic that sharpens my attention. It is something else entirely. As a clinical psychologist, I understand fear well. I know how danger activates the fight-or-flight response. And yet, paradoxically, it is on my motorcycle that I feel most calm. This is where I experience the greatest joy. It is where I find what I would describe as a state of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the present moment, on purpose and without judgment. In psychological therapy, it is usually cultivated through meditation. People are encouraged to sit quietly, focus on the breath and observe thoughts and sensations as they arise.

Mindfulness is not an “in the moment” technique to reduce immediate distress. It is a skill developed through regular practice. Research shows that it activates brain areas involved in emotional regulation and focused attention. Studies also suggest mindfulness can improve emotional health, reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, and help people respond to difficult situations more thoughtfully rather than reacting on impulse.

Mindfulness can be practised in many ways. Some approaches rely on stillness, such as body scans and breathing exercises. Others involve movement, including yoga, tai chi and walking meditation. What unites them is deliberate attention to the here and now.

Because mindfulness is accessible, cheap and relatively easy to learn, it has spread far beyond therapy rooms. It now appears everywhere, from healthcare settings to social media reels and YouTube tutorials promising calm in minutes. This popularity is not necessarily a problem. But mindfulness is not without its limits.

Mindfulness is not a cure for serious mental illness. It cannot resolve structural problems such as poverty, trauma or unsafe environments. For some people, particularly those with a history of trauma or certain mental health conditions, sitting still with their thoughts can be distressing. Mindfulness practices can sometimes intensify intrusive or triggering thoughts rather than soothe them.

As with all types of psychological therapy, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. That is why it is worth broadening how we think about attention, emotional regulation and mental wellbeing.

Attention under pressure

Motorcycling offers one such alternative. It’s a mentally and physically demanding activity. The bike itself is heavy and a rider needs strength and balance, particularly when riding at slow speeds and when stopping. Core muscles are engaged when manoeuvring and all limbs are engaged in braking, clutch control and gear changes.

Mentally, the demands are even greater. Riders must remain continuously alert to road conditions, traffic, weather and the unpredictable actions of other road users. Decisions often need to be made in seconds, like when to brake, when to accelerate, how to navigate a bend, how to respond to an unexpected hazard. All of this takes place knowing that the rider’s protection is limited to their clothing.

These demands may explain why riding a motorbike can feel so absorbing. Research supports this. A study exploring the mental and physical effects of motorcycling showed improvements in focused attention, sensory awareness and the ability to ignore distractions.

Riders become better at scanning their environment and predicting what might happen next. This is a skill known as “situational awareness”. Many riders also report these benefits in their own accounts of riding motorbikes.

Perhaps most strikingly, despite motorcycling being a high-risk activity, research found reductions in stress hormones while riding. The proposed explanation is that the intense concentration required leaves little room for ruminating on everyday worries. Attention is fully captured by the task at hand.

Rethinking mindfulness

Unlike traditional mindfulness practice, motorcycling does not require deliberate non-judgment of thoughts or sensations. There is no effort to observe the mind. The activity itself does the work. Similar effects have been observed in other high-demand pursuits, such as rock climbing and athletic performance.

Clinically, this matters. While traditional mindfulness practices may not be suitable or achievable for everyone, there are alternatives. Activities which demand full engagement – mentally and physically – may offer similar psychological benefits. Purposeful, absorbing activities can help regulate emotions, sharpen attention and reduce stress over time.

For some people, stillness is not the route to being present. Sometimes, mindfulness is found not by slowing down, but by moving – fully, deliberately and with purpose.

Judith Roberts 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. Finding stillness in motion: how riding a motorcycle can teach us mindfulness – https://theconversation.com/finding-stillness-in-motion-how-riding-a-motorcycle-can-teach-us-mindfulness-272396

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephan Blum, Research Associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

Imagine a city that thrived for thousands of years, its streets alive with workshops, markets and the laughter of children, yet that is remembered for a single night of fire. That city is Troy.

Long before Homer’s epics immortalised its fall, Troy was a place of everyday life. Potters shaped jars and bowls destined to travel far beyond the settlement itself, moving through wide horizons of exchange and connection.

Bronze tools rang in busy workshops. Traders called across the marketplace and children chased one another along sun‑warmed footpaths. This was the real heartbeat of Troy – the story history has forgotten.

Homer’s late eighth‑century BC epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, fixed powerful images in western cultural memory: heroes clashing, a wooden horse dragged through city gates, flames licking the night sky. Yet this dramatic ending hides a far longer, far more remarkable story: centuries of cooperation embedded in everyday social organisation. A story we might call the Trojan peace.

This selective memory is not unique to Troy. Across history, spectacular collapses dominate how we imagine the past: Rome burning in AD64, Carthage razed in 146BC and the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán falling in AD1521. Sudden catastrophe is vivid and memorable. The slow, fragile work of maintaining stability is easier to overlook.

The Trojan peace was not the absence of tension or inequality. It was the everyday ability to manage them without society breaking apart, the capacity to absorb pressure through routine cooperation rather than dramatic intervention.

When catastrophe outshines stability

Archaeology often speaks loudest when something goes catastrophically wrong. Fires preserve. Ruins cling to the soil like charcoal fingerprints. Peace, by contrast, leaves no single dramatic moment to anchor it.

Its traces survive in the ordinary: footpaths worn smooth by generations of feet; jars repaired, reused and handled for decades, some still bearing the drilled holes of ancient mending. These humble remnants form the true architecture of long‑term stability.

Troy is a textbook example. Archaeologists have identified nine major layers at the site, some of which are associated with substantial architectural reorganisation. But that isn’t evidence of destruction. Rather it simply reflects the everyday reality of a settlement’s history: building, use, maintenance or levelling, rebuilding and repetition.

Instead, I argue that Troy’s archaeological record reveals centuries of architectural continuity, stable coastal occupation and trade networks stretching from Mesopotamia to the Aegean and the Balkans – a geography of connection rather than conflict.

The only evidence for truly massive destruction that can be identified dates to around 2350BC. Against the broader archaeological backdrop, this stands out as a rare, fiery rupture – one dramatic episode within a much longer pattern of recovery and continuity.

Whether sparked by conflict, social unrest or an accident, it interrupted only briefly the long continuity of daily life – more than a thousand years before the events portrayed by the poet Homer in his tale of the Trojan war were supposed to have taken place.

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Read more:
Fall of Troy: the legend and the facts

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But what actually held Troy together for so long? During the third and second millennia BC, Troy was a modest but highly connected coastal hub, thriving through exchange, craft specialisation, shared material traditions and the steady movement of ideas and goods.

The real drivers of Troy’s development were households, traders and craftspeople. Their lives depended on coordination and reciprocity: managing water and farmland, organising production, securing vital resources such as bronze and negotiating movement along the coast. In modern terms, peace was work, negotiated daily, maintained collectively and never guaranteed.

When crises arose, the community adapted. Labour was reorganised, resources redistributed, routines adjusted. Stability was restored not through force, but through collective problem solving embedded in everyday practice.

This was not a utopia. Troy’s stability was constrained by environmental limits, population pressure and finite resources. A successful trading season could bring prosperity; a failed harvest could strain systems quickly. Peace was never about eliminating conflict, but about absorbing pressure without collapse.

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Read more:
Troy’s fall was partly due to environmental strain – and it holds lessons for today

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Archaeologically, this long-term balance appears as persistence: settlement layouts maintained across generations, skills refined and passed down, and gradual expansion from the citadel into what would later become the lower town. These developments depended on negotiation and cooperation, not conquest, revealing practical mechanisms of peace in the bronze age.

Why we remember the war

Stories favour rupture over routine. Homer’s Iliad was never a historical account of the bronze age, but a poetic reflection of heroism, morality, power and loss. The long, quiet centuries of cooperation before and after were too distant – and too subtle – to dramatise.

Modern archaeology has often followed the same gravitational pull. Excavations at Troy began with the explicit aim of locating the battlefield of the Trojan war. Even as scholarship moved on, the story of war continued to dominate the public imagination. War offers a clear narrative. Peace leaves behind complexity.

Reexamining Troy through the lens of peace shifts attention away from moments of destruction and towards centuries of continuity. Archaeology shows how communities without states, armies, or written law sustained stability through everyday practices of cooperation. What kept Troy going was not grand strategy, but the quiet work of living together, generation after generation.

The real miracle of Troy was not how it fell – but for how long it endured. Rethinking the cherished narrative of the Trojan war reminds us that lasting peace is built not in dramatic moments, but through the persistent, creative efforts of ordinary people.

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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.

Stephan Blum 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. Rethinking Troy: how years of careful peace, not epic war, shaped this bronze age city – https://theconversation.com/rethinking-troy-how-years-of-careful-peace-not-epic-war-shaped-this-bronze-age-city-272833

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Scott, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Royal Holloway, University of London

Please can I ask how old is fire on earth, not tamed by people but since when has there been fire and flames on the planet.

Samuel, 5, London

You ask a very interesting question. For many years, scientists assumed that fire and humans were so connected that few of them gave any thought to what happened to fire before humans evolved.

Even now, after many years of research, you won’t find much information in books
about ancient fire. Indeed, I first started to become interested in this question of fire in the geological past more than 50 years ago, but my work was largely ignored until recently.

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

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Your question is important today as the Earth’s weather is changing quickly and we are seeing deadly wildfires around the world. Humans may have used fire for a long time but they have never been able to tame fire. The challenge for scientists at the moment is to work out which fires are caused by humans and which ones are natural. To do this, we need to understand ancient fire in the first place.

A lot of our knowledge comes from studies of charcoal found in rocks more than 350 million years old, in a period geologists call the Carboniferous Period. As I say in my book Burning Planet: The Story of Fire Through Time, charcoal preserves the detail of different parts of the plant charcoal is made from. If you visit a place where there was a recent fire that burned a lot of plants, or collect some charcoal from the remains of a bonfire and look at it under a magnifying glass you may be able to see some of this amazing detail.

Over many years I, together with my students at Royal Holloway University of London, have been collecting information on ancient charcoal to help us understand fires of the past.

The key to understanding when fire appeared on Earth comes from what we call the fire triangle and I have discussed this in my small book Fire: A Very Short Introduction.

The first side of the triangle is fuel. Fire needs plants to burn. So we would not expect to have fire on the Earth before plants evolved. Plants first lived in the sea and started to spread on to the land around 420 million years ago. So there couldn’t have been fire before then.

The second side is heat – we need heat or a spark to start the fire – and that in the ancient past would be lightning. There has always been lightning and we can see evidence of this from fused sand grains found in some ancient sediments.

Finally, we need oxygen to allow the burning process to happen, the same way we need oxygen to breathe. We know this from simple ways we might put out a fire. You can cover the flames to stop oxygen or use sand, water or other materials to cut off the oxygen from the fire. Today the air we breathe has 21% oxygen. But experiments have shown that if you reduce the level to below 17% fires will not spread.

And above 30% it would be hard to put out a fire as even wet plants can burn with that level of oxygen. That is also why no fire or smoking is allowed in hospitals where there is oxygen used for the patients.

The level of oxygen in the Earth’s air has changed a lot over time. Scientists have shown that around 350-250 million years ago was a time of high levels of oxygen between 23 and 30% in the atmosphere and a lot of fire.

Evidence of the first fires was around 420 million years ago from charcoal in sedimentary rocks. But plants were small and there weren’t many places on Earth where they could grow. That meant there weren’t many places fire could burn. It was not until around 350 million years ago that fires started burning in lots of places and burnt in some of the first forests to grow on Earth.

Another time period of high fire was between 140 and 65 million years ago when many of our famous dinosaurs such as triceratops and tyrannosaurus were living and also when flowers first appeared. Around 40 million years ago oxygen levels in the atmosphere stabilised to modern levels. Proper tropical rain forest spread widely. This probably made fire rarer as wet rain forests don’t catch alight easily.

But around 7 million years ago grasslands spread, and these were easily burned. The grass-fire cycle began. This is where regular fire kills the saplings of trees, stopping grasslands turning into forests.

It is into this fiery world that humans evolved around 1.5 million years ago.

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.

Andrew Scott has previously received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust.

– ref. Curious kids: how old is fire on Earth? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-old-is-fire-on-earth-270701

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bamo Nouri, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

Reports of a growing US naval presence in the Gulf have prompted speculation that the US could be preparing for another Middle East war, this time with Iran.

The US president, Donald Trump, has warned of “serious consequences” if Iran does not comply with his demands to permanently halt uranium enrichment, curb its ballistic missile program and end support for regional proxy groups.

Yet, despite the familiar language of escalation, much of what is unfolding appears closer to brinkmanship than preparation for war.

The US president’s own political history offers an important starting point for understanding why this is. Trump’s electoral appeal, both in 2016 and again in 2024, has rested heavily on a promise to end America’s “forever wars” and to avoid costly overseas interventions.

And Iran represents the very definition of such a war. Any all-out conflict with Tehran would almost certainly be long and drag in other countries in the region.

It would also be hard to achieve a decisive victory. For a president whose political brand is built on restraint abroad and disruption at home, a war with Iran would contradict the central logic of his foreign policy narrative.

Meanwhile Iran’s strategic posture is rooted in decades of preparing for precisely this scenario. Since the 1979 revolution, Tehran’s military doctrine and foreign policy have been shaped by survival in the face of potential external attack.

Rather than building a conventional force able to defeat the US in open combat, Iran has invested in asymmetric capabilities: ballistic and cruise missiles, the use of regional proxies, cyber operations and anti-access strategies (including missiles, air defences, naval mines, fast attack craft, drones and electronic warfare capabilities). Anyone who attacks Iran would face prolonged and escalating costs.

This is why comparisons to Iraq in 2003 are misleading. Iran is larger, more populous, more internally cohesive and far more militarily prepared for a sustained confrontation.

An attack on Iranian territory would not represent the opening phase of regime collapse but the final layer of a defensive strategy that anticipates exactly such a scenario. Tehran would be prepared to absorb damage and is capable of inflicting it across multiple theatres – including in Iraq, the Gulf, Yemen and beyond.

With an annual defence budget approaching US$900 billion (£650 billion), there is no question that the US has the capacity to initiate a conflict with Iran. But the challenge for the US lies not in starting a war, but in sustaining one.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offer a cautionary precedent. Together, they are estimated to have cost the US between US$6 and and US$8 trillion when long-term veterans’ care, interest payments and reconstruction are included.

These conflicts stretched over decades, repeatedly exceeded initial cost projections and contributed to ballooning public debt. A war with Iran – larger, more capable and more regionally embedded – would almost certainly follow a similar, if not more expensive, trajectory.

The opportunity cost of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were potentially greater, absorbing vast financial and political capital at a moment when the global balance of power was beginning to shift.

As the US focused on counterinsurgency and stabilisation operations, other powers, notably China and India, were investing heavily in infrastructure, technology and long-term economic growth.

That dynamic is even more pronounced today. The international system is entering a far more intense phase of multipolar rivalry, characterised not only by military competition but by races in artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and strategic technologies.

Sustained military engagement in the Middle East would risk locking the US into resource-draining distractions just as competition with China accelerates and emerging powers seek greater influence.

Iran’s geographic position compounds this risk. Sitting astride key global energy routes, Tehran has the ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Even limited disruption would drive oil prices sharply higher, feeding inflation globally. For the US, this would translate into higher consumer prices and reduced economic resilience at precisely the moment when strategic focus and economic stability are most needed.

There is also a danger that military pressure would backfire politically. Despite significant domestic dissatisfaction, the Iranian regime has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to mobilise nationalist sentiment in response to external threats. Military action could strengthen internal cohesion, reinforce the regime’s narrative of resistance and marginalise opposition movements.

Previous US and Israeli strikes on Iranian infrastructure have not produced decisive strategic outcomes. Despite losses of facilities and senior personnel, Iran’s broader military posture and regional influence have proved adaptable.

Rhetoric and restraint

Trump has repeatedly signalled his desire to be recognised as a peacemaker. He has framed his Middle East approach as deterrence without entanglement, citing the Abraham Accords and the absence of large-scale wars during his presidency. This sits uneasily alongside the prospect of war with Iran, particularly the week after the US president launched his “Board of Peace”.

The Abraham Accords depend on regional stability, economic cooperation and investment. A war with Iran would jeopardise all of these. Despite their own rivalry with Tehran, Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar have prioritised regional de-escalation.

Recent experience in Iraq and Syria shows why. The collapse of central authority created power vacuums quickly filled by terrorist groups, exporting instability rather than peace.

Some argue that Iran’s internal unrest presents a strategic opportunity for external pressure. While the Islamic Republic faces genuine domestic challenges, including economic hardship and social discontent, this should not be confused with imminent collapse. The regime retains powerful security institutions and loyal constituencies, particularly when framed as defending national sovereignty.

Taken together, these factors suggest that current US military movements and rhetoric are better understood as coercive signalling rather than preparation for invasion.

This is not 2003, and Iran is neither Iraq nor Venezuela. A war would not be swift, cheap or decisive. The greatest danger lies not in a deliberate decision to invade, but in miscalculation. Heightened rhetoric and military proximity can increase the risk of accidents and unintended escalation.

Avoiding that outcome will require restraint, diplomacy and a clear recognition that some wars – however loudly threatened – are simply too costly to fight.

Bamo Nouri 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. Why it would be a big mistake for the US to go to war with Iran – https://theconversation.com/why-it-would-be-a-big-mistake-for-the-us-to-go-to-war-with-iran-274592

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

Cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are two of the most feared diagnoses in medicine, but they rarely strike the same person. For years, epidemiologists have noticed that people with cancer seem less likely to develop Alzheimer’s, and those with Alzheimer’s are less likely to get cancer, but nobody could explain why.

A new study in mice suggests a surprising possibility: certain cancers may actually send a protective signal to the brain that helps clear away the toxic protein clumps linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s is characterised by sticky deposits of a protein called amyloid beta that build up between nerve cells in the brain. These clumps, or plaques, interfere with communication between nerve cells and trigger inflammation and damage that slowly erodes memory and thinking.

In the new study, scientists implanted human lung, prostate and colon tumours under the skin of mice bred to develop Alzheimer‑like amyloid plaques. Left alone, these animals reliably develop dense clumps of amyloid beta in their brains as they age, mirroring a key feature of the human disease.

But when the mice carried tumours, their brains stopped accumulating the usual plaques. In some experiments, the animals’ memory also improved compared with Alzheimer‑model mice without tumours, suggesting that the change was not just visible under the microscope.

The team traced this effect to a protein called cystatin‑C that was being pumped out by the tumours into the bloodstream. The new study suggests that, at least in mice, cystatin‑C released by tumours can cross the blood–brain barrier – the usually tight border that shields the brain from many substances in the circulation.

Once inside the brain, cystatin‑C appears to latch on to small clusters of amyloid beta and mark them for destruction by the brain’s resident immune cells, called microglia. These cells act as the brain’s clean‑up crew, constantly patrolling for debris and misfolded proteins.

In Alzheimer’s, microglia seem to fall behind, allowing amyloid beta to accumulate and harden into plaques. In the tumour‑bearing mice, cystatin‑C activated a sensor on microglia known as Trem2, effectively switching them into a more aggressive, plaque‑clearing state.

Surprising trade-offs

At first glance, the idea that a cancer could “help” protect the brain from dementia sounds almost perverse. Yet biology often works through trade-offs, where a process that is harmful in one context can be beneficial in another.

In this case, the tumour’s secretion of cystatin‑C may be a side‑effect of its own biology that happens to have a useful consequence for the brain’s ability to handle misfolded proteins. It does not mean that having cancer is good, but it does reveal a pathway that scientists might be able to harness more safely.

The study slots into a growing body of research suggesting that the relationship between cancer and neurodegenerative diseases is more than a statistical quirk. Large population studies have reported that people with Alzheimer’s are significantly less likely to be diagnosed with cancer, and vice versa, even after accounting for age and other health factors.

This has led to the idea of a biological seesaw, where mechanisms that drive cells towards survival and growth, as in cancer, may push them away from the pathways that lead to brain degeneration. The cystatin‑C story adds a physical mechanism to that picture.

However, the research is in mice, not humans, and that distinction matters. Mouse models of Alzheimer’s capture some features of the disease, particularly amyloid plaques, but they do not fully reproduce the complexity of human dementia.

We also do not yet know whether human cancers in real patients produce enough cystatin‑C, or send it to the brain in the same way, to have meaningful effects on Alzheimer’s disease risk. Still, the discovery opens intriguing possibilities for future treatment strategies.

One idea is to develop drugs or therapies that mimic the beneficial actions of cystatin‑C without involving a tumour at all. That could mean engineered versions of the protein designed to bind amyloid beta more effectively, or molecules that activate the same pathway in microglia to boost their clean‑up capacity.

The research also highlights how interconnected diseases can be, even when they affect very different organs. A tumour growing in the lung or colon might seem far removed from the slow build up of protein deposits in the brain, yet molecules released by that tumour can travel through the bloodstream, cross protective barriers and change the behaviour of brain cells.

For people living with cancer or caring for someone with Alzheimer’s today, this work will not change treatment immediately. But the study does offer a more hopeful message: by studying even grim diseases like cancer in depth, scientists can stumble on unexpected insights that point towards new ways to keep the brain healthy in later life.

Perhaps the most striking lesson is that the body’s defences and failures are rarely simple. A protein that contributes to disease in one organ may be used as a clean‑up tool in another, and by understanding these tricks, researchers may be able to use them safely to help protect the ageing human brain.

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

– ref. People who survive cancers are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s – this might be why – https://theconversation.com/people-who-survive-cancers-are-less-likely-to-develop-alzheimers-this-might-be-why-274304

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Williams, Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Leicester

The age of humans is increasingly an age of sameness. Across the planet, distinctive plants and animals are disappearing, replaced by species that are lucky enough to thrive alongside humans and travel with us easily. Some scientists have a word for this reshuffling of life: the Homogenocene.

Evidence for it is found in the world’s museums. Storerooms are full of animals that no longer walk among us, pickled in spirit-filled jars: coiled snakes, bloated fish, frogs, birds. Each extinct species marks the removal of a particular evolutionary path from a particular place – and these absences are increasingly being filled by the same hardy, adaptable species, again and again.

One such absence is embodied by a small bird kept in a glass jar in London’s Natural History Museum: the Fijian Bar-winged rail, not seen in the wild since the 1970s. It seems to be sleeping, its eyes closed, its wings tucked in along its back, its beak resting against the glass.

A flightless bird, it was particularly vulnerable to predators introduced by humans, including mongooses brought to Fiji in the 1800s. Its disappearance was part of a broad pattern in which island species are vanishing and a narrower set of globally successful animals thrive in their place.

It’s a phenomenon that was called the Homogenocene even before a similar term growing in popularity, the Anthropocene, was coined in 2000. If the Anthropocene describes a planet transformed by humans, the Homogenocene is one ecological consequence: fewer places with their own distinctive life.

It goes well beyond charismatic birds and mammals. Freshwater fish, for instance, are becoming more “samey”, as the natural barriers that once kept populations separate – waterfalls, river catchments, temperature limits – are effectively blurred or erased by human activity. Think of common carp deliberately stocked in lakes for anglers, or catfish released from home aquariums that now thrive in rivers thousands of miles from their native habitat.

Meanwhile, many thousands of mollusc species have disappeared over the past 500 years, with snails living on islands also severely affected: many are simply eaten by non-native predatory snails. Some invasive snails have become highly successful and widely distributed, such as the giant African snail that is now found from the Hawaiian Islands to the Americas, or South American golden apple snails rampant through east and south-east Asia since their introduction in the 1980s.

Homogeneity is just one facet of the changes wrought on the Earth’s tapestry of life by humans, a process that started in the last ice age when hunting was likely key to the disappearance of the mammoth, giant sloth and other large mammals. It continued over around 11,700 years of the recent Holocene epoch – the period following the last ice age – as forests were felled and savannahs cleared for agriculture and the growth of farms and cities.

Over the past seven decades changes to life on Earth have intensified dramatically. This is the focus of a major new volume published by the Royal Society of London: The Biosphere in the Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene has reached the ocean

Life in the oceans was relatively little changed between the last ice age and recent history, even as humans increasingly affected life on land. No longer: a feature of the Anthropocene is the rapid extension of human impacts through the oceans.

This is partly due to simple over-exploitation, as human technology post-second world war enabled more efficient and deeper trawling, and fish stocks became seriously depleted.

Partly this is also due to the increasing effects of fossil-fuelled heat and oxygen depletion spreading through the oceans. Most visibly, this is now devastating coral reefs.

Out of sight, many animals are being displaced northwards and southwards out of the tropics to escape the heat; these conditions are also affecting spawning in fish, creating “bottlenecks” where life cycle development is limited by increasing heat or a lack of oxygen. The effects are reaching through into the deep oceans, where proposals for deep sea mining of minerals threaten to damage marine life that is barely known to science.

And as on land and in rivers, these changes are not just reducing life in the oceans – they’re redistributing species and blurring long-standing biological boundaries.

Local biodiversity, global sameness

Not all the changes to life made by humans are calamitous. In some places, incoming non-native species have blended seamlessly into existing environments to actually enhance local biodiversity.

In other contexts, both historical and contemporary, humans have been decisive in fostering wildlife, increasing the diversity of animals and plants in ecosystems by cutting or burning back the dominant vegetation and thereby allowing a greater range of animals and plants to flourish.

In our near-future world there are opportunities to support wildlife, for instance by changing patterns of agriculture to use less land to grow more food. With such freeing-up of space for nature, coupled with changes to farming and fishing that actively protect biodiversity, there is still a chance that we can avoid the worst predictions of a future biodiversity crash.

But this is by no means certain. Avoiding yet more rows of pickled corpses in museum jars will require a concerted effort to protect nature, one that must aim to help future generations of humans live in a biodiverse world.

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. Welcome to the ‘Homogenocene’: how humans are making the world’s wildlife dangerously samey – https://theconversation.com/welcome-to-the-homogenocene-how-humans-are-making-the-worlds-wildlife-dangerously-samey-274092

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Haslett, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Physical Geography, Bath Spa University; Swansea University

People living on the low-lying shores of the Bristol Channel and Severn estuary began their day like any other on January 30 1607. The weather was calm. The sky was bright.

Then, suddenly, the sea rose without warning. Water came racing inland, tearing across fields and villages, sweeping away the homes, livestock and people in its path.

By the end of the day, thousands of acres were underwater. As many as 2,000 people may have died. It was, quite possibly, the deadliest sudden natural disaster to hit Britain in 500 years.

More than four centuries later, the flood of 1607 still raises a troubling question. What, exactly, caused it?

Most early explanations blamed an exceptional storm. But when my colleague and I began examining the historical evidence more closely in 2002, we became less certain that this was the full picture. For one, eyewitness accounts tell a more unsettling story.

The flood struck on January 30 1607 – or January 20 1606, according to the old Julian calendar, which was still in use at that time. The flood affected coastal communities across south Wales, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Devon, inundating some areas several miles inland. People at the time were no strangers to storms or high tides – but this was different.

Churches were inundated. Entire villages vanished. Vast stretches of farmland were ruined by saltwater, leaving communities facing hunger as well as grief. Memorial plaques in local churches and parish documents still mark the scale of the catastrophe.

Much of what we know about how the event unfolded comes from chapbooks, which were cheaply printed pamphlets sold in the early 17th century. These accounts describe not just the damage, but the terrifying speed and character of the water itself.

One such pamphlet, God’s Warning to His People of England, describes a calm morning suddenly interrupted by what witnesses saw approaching from the sea:

Upon Tuesday 20 January 1606 there happened such an overflowing of waters … the like never in the memory of man hath been seen or heard of. For about nine of the morning, many of the inhabitants of these countreys … perceive afar off huge and mighty hilles of water tombling over one another, in such sort as if the greatest mountains in the world had overwhelmed the lowe villages or marshy grounds.

Our interest in the event arose from reading that account. It gives a specific time for the inundation – around nine in the morning – and emphasises the fair weather and sudden arrival of the floodwaters.

From a geographer’s perspective, this description is striking. Sudden onset, wave-like forms and an absence of storm conditions are not typical of storm surges. To us, the language was reminiscent of eyewitness accounts of tsunamis elsewhere in the world. This suggested a tsunami origin for the flood should be evaluated.

Until the early 2000s, few researchers seriously questioned the storm-surge explanation. But as we revisited the historical sources, we began to ask whether the physical landscape might also preserve clues to what happened in 1607. If an extreme marine inundation had struck the coast at that time, it may have left geological evidence behind.

In several locations around the estuary, we identified a suite of features with a chronological link to the early 17th century: the erosion of two spurs of land that previously jutted out into the estuary, the removal of almost all fringing salt marsh deposits, and the occurrence of sand layers in otherwise muddy deposits

These features point to a high-energy event. The question was what kind?

Testing the theory

To explore this further, we undertook a programme of fieldwork in 2004. We examined sand layers and noted signatures of tsunami impact such as coastal erosion, and analysed the movement of large boulders along the shoreline. Boulder transport is particularly useful, as it allows estimates of the wave heights needed to move them.

Some fieldwork was filmed for a BBC documentary broadcast in April 2005, which featured other colleagues too. It included an argument for a storm, but also another suggesting it isn’t fanciful to consider that an offshore earthquake provided the trigger.

Our results were published in 2007, coincidentally the 400th anniversary of the flood. In parallel, colleagues published a compelling model supporting a storm surge. The scientific debate, rather than being resolved, intensified.

An updating of wave heights based on boulder data using refined formula was published in 2021, suggesting a minimum tsunami wave height of 4.2 metres is required to explain the coastal features – whereas, according to the calculations, storm waves of over 16 metres would be required. This is perhaps unlikely within the relatively sheltered Severn estuary.

The low-lying coasts around the Bristol Channel remain vulnerable to flooding. Storm surges occur regularly, though usually with more limited effects. Climate change is now increasing the risk through rising sea levels and more intense weather systems.

Tsunamis, by contrast, are rare. A report by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs found it unlikely that the 1607 flood may have been caused by one. However, it also noted that offshore southwest Britain is among the more credible locations for a future tsunami, triggered by seismic activity or submarine landslides.

This distinction matters. Storm surges can usually be forecast. Tsunamis may arrive with little or no warning.

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Read more:
From Noah’s flood to Shakespeare’s storms, what literature reveals about our changing relationship with the weather

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Scholarly and public interest in the flood has not waned. In November 2024, a Channel 5 documentary brought together several strands of recent research, concluding that the jury is still out on the flood’s cause.

That uncertainty should not be seen as a failure. Evaluating competing explanations is essential when trying to understand extreme events in the past – especially when those events have implications for present-day risk.

Whether the flood of 1607 was driven by storm winds, unusual tides or waves generated far offshore, its lesson is clear. Coastal societies ignore rare disasters at their peril.

The sea has come in before. And it will do so again.

Simon Haslett 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. Did a tsunami hit the Bristol Channel four centuries ago? Revisiting the great flood of 1607 – https://theconversation.com/did-a-tsunami-hit-the-bristol-channel-four-centuries-ago-revisiting-the-great-flood-of-1607-274135

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate Bayliss, Research Associate, Department of Economics, SOAS, University of London

Government plans published earlier this month around the water sector in England and Wales were heralded as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to transform the system. However, despite the confidence of UK environment secretary Emma Reynolds, the long-awaited plans raise significant concerns. This is a reform agenda for water as a business – but not a vision for managing a vital public and environmental resource.

The fully privatised water system in England and Wales has been facing two (self-inflicted) crises in recent years. First, companies have failed to invest enough in infrastructure and have been pouring untreated sewage into rivers and seas.

Second, some companies (acting primarily in the interests of their shareholders) have hiked up debts while still paying out dividends. The largest company, Thames Water, has been teetering on the brink of financial collapse since 2023.

Occasional but serious interruptions of water supplies prove that all is not well in water service delivery, and there is growing recognition that the water system is unfit for purpose. We, as academics who helped set up a research body called the People’s Commission on the Water Sector, would have to agree.

But crucially, missing from the government’s white paper detailing the new policy is any reflection on the processes that led to this situation. It acknowledges that companies have behaved badly and that some water companies and their owners have prioritised short-term profits over long-term resilience and the environment.

This is a serious understatement. Underlying the outcomes of the past few years are the profit-seeking activities by private investors. Private companies cut back on costs and manipulated finances to benefit shareholders.

Water users and the environment suffer the consequences. And the regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, were ill-prepared for the scale of the private sector’s extractive practices.

The bottom line is that the profit motive is incompatible with treating water in a way that is socially and environmentally equitable.

Now, the government is proposing a new single regulator with dedicated teams for each company, rather than the four institutions that have been in place until now. In addition, there are plans for better regulation and enforcement for pollution, and improvements to infrastructure (the white paper reveals how little is known about water company assets).

However, the language around regulation is confused and contradictory. On the one hand there is talk of being tough: Reynolds says there will be “nowhere to hide” for errant water companies. And there could be criminal proceedings against directors, who may also be deprived of bonus payments.

But on the other, the language is remarkably accommodating in its approach to the firms that have put the whole system in jeopardy.

Those that were behind the sewage crises and the perilous state of water company finances are to be helped to improve through a “performance-improvement regime”. Considerable attention is devoted to creating an attractive climate for investors, where returns will be stable and predictable. This, despite the fact that recent unpredictability was largely due to the activities of private companies.

Power and politics

If water in England and Wales remains in private hands, the unresolvable tension between the drive for profits alongside controls to protect consumers and the environment will persist. The demands of capital tend to prevail, with considerable government attention devoted to ensuring that the sector is attractive to investors.

As an example, the government claims that the next five years will see £104 billion of private investment. But this ultimately is funded by the planned 36% rise in bills (plus inflation). And a fifth of this (£22 billion) is set aside for the costs of capital, to cover interest payments and dividends.

The focus on regulatory and management measures obscures issues of power and politics in water governance. Water is supplied by companies whose shareholders have immense political power.

Private equity investors BlackRock, the biggest asset manager in the world, has stakes in three water companies – Severn Trent, United Utilities and South West Water (via Pennon). Keir Starmer, the prime minister, entertained BlackRock’s CEO in November 2024 where an overhaul of regulation was reportedly promised.

And Hong Kong-based CKI, once a contender to take over Thames Water, is the majority owner of Northumbrian Water. It also has stakes in Britain’s gas, electricity and rail networks, as well as owning Superdrug and the discount store, Savers.

A similar story is told in other companies. These are global behemoths that have influence and huge resources, and as such may seek to shape regulation in their own interests.

The system in England and Wales is an outlier. No other country has copied this extreme privatised model. In fact, many have taken privatised water back into public hands. In Paris, the public water operator Eau de Paris is an award-winning example of transparency, accountability and integrity in public service.

It demonstrates that it is possible to create public services that are fair, sustainable and resilient. Key to this process has been the vision of water as a vital common good rather than a commodity.

The government’s plans will patch up the water system, particularly with the boost in revenue from bill payers. But the private sector has found unanticipated ways to maximise profits in the past and may well do so again. Rather than continually tweaking the failed private model, the only real route to operating water in the public interest is for it to be in public ownership.

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 plan to clean up England and Wales’ water industry ignores the sector’s biggest problem – https://theconversation.com/the-plan-to-clean-up-england-and-wales-water-industry-ignores-the-sectors-biggest-problem-274382

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cora Lingling Xu, Associate Professor in Sociology of Education, Durham University

In November 2012, during my first year as a PhD student, a 23-year-old medical student knocked on my door. Earlier that day, we had been discussing our ages in our shared kitchen. At 30, I had stayed silent, feeling a sharp sting of embarrassment next to my 20-something housemates.

But this student was determined to get an answer from me. He shoved his passport in my face and demanded to see mine. When I admitted my age, he laughed and said: “Wow, you’re so old.”

In that moment, I felt a deep sense of shame and failure. But after a decade of research tracking more than 100 young people, I want to tell my younger self: you weren’t failing. You simply hadn’t inherited the same amount of time as your peer.

My work with students in China shows that social inequality isn’t just about money or status. It’s also about time inheritance.

I started my PhD at 30 only after spending five years working to clear my family’s debts and move my parents out of a house where sewage regularly flooded their floors. My housemate, whose father and grandfather were doctors and Cambridge alumni, had inherited “banked time” – a cushion of security that allowed him to glide straight to the academic starting line.

Banked time v borrowed time

To make sense of this, I distinguish between two kinds of time inheritance.

Some young people receive banked time. They start life with a “full tank”: parents who can afford to support them through unpaid internships, gap years, or an extra degree, and the freedom to change course or repeat a year without financial ruin. This creates a sense of temporal security that allows them to take measured risks, explore their interests, and wait for the best opportunities to arise. They have “slack” in the system that actually generates more time in the long run.

Others live on borrowed time. They start with an “empty tank,” already owing years of labour to their families before they even begin. Because their education often relies on the extreme sacrifices of parents or the missed opportunities of siblings, these students carry a heavy debt-paying mentality.

A delay in earning feels dangerous because it isn’t just a personal setback; it is a failure to repay a moral and economic debt to those who supported them. This pressure works in two punishing ways.

Some make “self-sabotaging” choices by picking lower-tier degrees or precarious jobs just because they offer immediate income. Others find their education takes far longer as they are forced to pause their studies to work and save, trapped in a cycle of paying off “time interest” before they can finally begin their own lives.

Take Jiao, a brilliant student from a poor rural family in China. He scored high enough to enter one of the country’s top two universities: Peking or Tsinghua, the equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge. Yet he chose a second-tier university.

He felt he could not afford the “time cost” of the mandatory military training that was required at the elite universities at the time he was applying. This would have delayed his ability to earn money and support his parents. On paper, this looks like a self-sabotaging decision. In reality, it was a survival strategy shaped by time poverty: he simply did not have months to spare.

In contrast, Yi, born into a comfortable Beijing family, dropped out of university after just one year because she didn’t like the teaching. She didn’t see this as a failure, but as “cutting her losses”. With her parents’ backing, she quickly applied to an elite university in Australia. Yi had inherited banked time, which gave her the security to try again.

Both students were capable. What differed was how much time they could afford to lose.

Lost learning

Although my research focuses on China, these temporal mechanisms are not culturally unique. They show up in different forms in other countries.

We saw this during post-pandemic debates about “lost learning”. In the UK, for example, tutoring programmes and extra school hours were offered as fixes. But these only work if pupils have the spare time to use them.

For those already caring for siblings or parents, working part-time or commuting long distances, the extra provision can become another burden: deepening, rather than reducing, time debt.

In universities, the cost-of-living crisis has pushed more students into long hours of paid work during term. They get through their degrees, but at a price: less time to build networks, take internships or simply think about their next steps.

Rigid career “windows” also matter. Age-limited grants, early-career schemes that expire a few years after graduation and expectations of a seamless CV all act as a time tax on those who took longer to reach the starting line. They might have been caring for relatives, changing country, or working to stay afloat.

Making education fairer means being aware of this time disparity. This could mean designing catch-up and tutoring schemes around the actual schedules of working and caring students, not an idealised timetable.

Within academia, extending age and career-stage limits on scholarships, fellowships and early-career posts would mean that those who started “late” are not permanently penalised. And more recognition of the burden of unpaid care and emotional labour in both universities and workplaces would be a valuable step.

Ultimately, doing well in education is not just about how we spend our time. It is about who is allowed to have time in the first place, and who is quietly starting the race already in debt.

Dr Cora Lingling Xu receives funding from the Cambridge International Trust, the Sociological Review Foundation, the ESRC Social Science Festival,the British Academy and various grants from Queens’ College Cambridge, Cambridge University, Keele University and Durham University.

– ref. Another kind of student debt is entrenching inequality – https://theconversation.com/another-kind-of-student-debt-is-entrenching-inequality-274142

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Ince, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University

As winter set in across the UK, the flags strung up during 2025’s controversial Operation Raise the Colours were becoming tatty and grey. Yet, they continue to send an important message: despite increasingly digitally connected lives, neighbourhoods still matter when it comes to political views.

The strength of feeling among those putting up flags since summer 2025 and those who objected to them is proof that people filter big political issues through the places where they live and work. People measure their lives through local heritage, memories and a sense of home. So these areas are also battlegrounds for competing visions of what it means to belong.

Reform UK has clearly recognised this. It has worked hard to win council elections in England, appealing to concerns held across the political spectrum about the character and decline of neighbourhoods. But such tactics tend to to push people’s buttons on sensitive issues such as immigration and encourage resentment.

Historically, local civic institutions – pubs, working men’s clubs, trade union halls, church halls – came into their own when communities faced hard times. They acted as emergency shelters and dining halls, information points and advice services, they gave emotional and practical support, as well as being spaces for enjoyment and celebration. Some such spaces still exist, but today, much of this social infrastructure has declined or been dismantled.

Into this vacuum steps populist right and far-right parties. They generate support by offering some residents a renewed sense of community, security or hope. In Epping, a recent site of major anti-immigrant protests, some residents have established Essex Spartans, a vigilante patrol group to “protect women, children and the elderly”.

Offering help to vulnerable residents in a spirit of community and care is laudable but these groups risk exaggerating local feelings of “stranger danger” towards migrants and minorities. And with alleged connections to both Reform UK and other rightwing groups, Essex Spartans and initiatives like them could create pathways to more extreme perspectives.

Far-right groups such as Homeland are also actively seeking to enter the mainstream civic life of communities. This has included joining parish councils, church congregations and sports clubs, distributing food to homeless people, and establishing litter-picking groups.

Communities pushing back

But it is a common mistake to assume that the political winds are blowing only in the favour of the right and far right, and that working-class white communities are hotbeds of racism or xenophobia. The research I’ve conducted in two of Bristol’s poorest suburbs has revealed the huge efforts made by neighbourhood groups to show that communities targeted by far-right messaging can be inclusive, imaginative and progressive.

These communities fit the profile for an area at risk of far-right influence: working-class, peripheral, declining and predominantly white. Far-right and anti-immigrant sentiments are shared openly on local social media groups, as stickers and graffiti on walls and lampposts, and in conversations in the few pubs and cafes that remain.

So they are not unusual communities, but they are also home to impressive levels of hidden work being done by community activists who want to turn the tide.

In one community that abuts a major logistics zone, British-born and migrant job-seekers and low-waged workers are crammed into overcrowded and low-quality homes. They are drawn there by a promise of plentiful work which does not always materialise.

Instead of simply blaming immigration for negative side effects, several community groups are working together to support the residents, challenge the council and landlords to improve their conditions, and clean up the neighbourhood’s streets.

Monica, manager of the community hall, explains her approach: “Just work on the ground, and person by person.” This is how she helped a longstanding older people’s club and the migrant women learning English down the hallway to start sharing lunch together. Now this semi-regular lunch date has become an unthreatening way for these very different groups to mingle.

In a neighbourhood on the other side of Bristol, decades of neglect, disinvestment and stigma have left the area in decline. But rather than blaming immigration, networks of residents and organisations are leading the charge on neighbourhood renewal.

By pooling resources, skills, and ingenuity, finding workarounds to divert resources where they are needed, they are rebuilding dignity and agency from below. This isn’t dramatic transformation but small changes that benefit everyone, such as reintroducing bins in the park.

Community groups are also safer spaces for difficult conversations about local identity and sense of place that acknowledge residents’ feelings of loss or injustice. Darren, a youth worker, explains that well-loved community spaces are “vital” for keeping conversations respectful.

Bristol’s identity – a vibrant and exciting city with a troubled colonial past – rarely fits their own experience of growing up at its forgotten peripheries. Instead of becoming mired in these citywide “culture wars”, groups in both areas celebrate their neighbourhood’s unique heritage in response to this desire for pride and belonging.

Looking to the future

Community activists nationwide are defying assumptions about working-class neighbourhoods as being “on benefits, uneducated, having loads of kids, racist”, as Trish, a tenants’ group member told me.

With elections around the UK in 2026, the future of the country’s neighbourhoods is up for grabs. But trust in any politician is at rock bottom in these Bristolian communities and elsewhere. One resident told me, if any party set up a stall outside the local shops, “that table’s getting flipped”.

Reform UK doesn’t have a foothold like Labour here, but its candidates could still be in contention here if they can ride their national party’s wave. For now, the hard work of community activists appears to be having some effect.

This fight won’t just play out in the halls of power or the ballot box – it will unfold in streets, parks, and community halls.

Anthony Ince has received research funding from the British Academy and the Independent Social Research Foundation.

– ref. How ordinary neighbourhoods became battlegrounds in the politics of ‘broken Britain’ – https://theconversation.com/how-ordinary-neighbourhoods-became-battlegrounds-in-the-politics-of-broken-britain-271663