The Conversation – UK – Page 154 – MIL Submissions Engine

October 9, 2025

When chimps helped cool the planet

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will de Freitas, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

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

As the world mourns Jane Goodall, the pioneering chimpanzee scientist and campaigner who died last week aged 91, it’s worth asking what chimpanzees can still teach us about climate change. They not only have a few tricks for surviving a warming planet – they’ve also helped to cool it.

Most of the world’s 200,000 or so wild chimpanzees live in the huge rainforests of west and central Africa, the second largest in the world.

As recently as 2,500 years ago, much of this rainforest had withered away, broken into scattered fragments by a sudden lengthening of the dry season. Yet within five centuries, the forest had largely recovered.

Trees didn’t do this by themselves.

Chimpanzees, among other species, had acted as the forest’s “proto-gardeners”. That’s according to Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a paleoecologist then the University of Cambridge (now at the University of Sussex).

Chepstow-Lusty looked at the oil palm tree, which “demands a lot of light and so thrives in open areas or in the gaps created in forests when the canopy opens up rather than in the dense centre”. This means it often acts as a “‘pioneer species’ allowing the forest to regrow”.

But, he notes a problem: the oil palm’s large seeds are too heavy to be blown in the wind. “They therefore need to be dispersed in the poo of animals such as chimpanzees which are able to swallow the large seeds and for whom the bright orange flesh can be an important part of the diet. And this is how chimps and other seed-dispersers played a crucial role in regenerating Africa’s rainforests.”

Chimp eating fruit — Chimps will eat almost anything – but fruit is their favourite.
Sam DCruz / shutterstock

Without chimpanzees, the forest would have taken far longer to recover – if it ever did. “Maybe we need to consider the true value of chimp poo, and those that produce it”, says Chepstow-Lusty.

But if chimpanzees once helped the planet heal itself, today that partnership is under strain.

Adaptation written in their genes

Across Africa’s mix of forest and savanna, chimpanzees have evolved with their habitats. Harrison J. Ostridge of UCL Genetics Institute and his co-authors recently wrote about their work with a team who collected faecal samples from “hundreds of wild chimpanzees across 17 African countries”.

They found different populations have developed distinct adaptations: those in wetter regions have to survive infectious diseases, for instance, while others have to cope with life in hotter and drier open woodland.

This, they suggest, means chimpanzee populations across Africa are “not interchangeable”. Genetic diversity is typically a form of resilience, but as climate zones shift and habitats shrink, some chimpanzees may find themselves trapped in the wrong place. And while it takes thousands of years for genes to change, the climate is changing in decades.

Variable habits, variable behaviour

If DNA adapts over millennia, behaviour can adapt within a lifetime.

A team from UCL, Harvard and Liverpool John Moores wrote about their work compiling data from 144 wild chimpanzee communities across Africa’s forests and savanna. They found populations that had learned to dig wells, or to take refuge from extreme heat in caves. Some chimpanzee populations used all sorts of tools, while others barely used any.

The common thread was an adaptation to local circumstances. “Chimpanzees meet variable habitats with variable behaviour”, in their words.

Chimpanzees grooming each other — Chimpanzees teach each other new tricks.
Paco Forriol / shutterstock

This flexibility may help chimpanzees weather the next degree or two of climate breakdown. But behavioural diversity depends on a strong social life. Young chimps learn by watching others, by playing and imitating. And if that social culture is lost, so is some of their ability to adapt to climate change.

A cultural collapse

That same UCL–John Moores team have documented a “cultural collapse” in chimpanzees. “The more that humans had disturbed an area”, they write, “the less behavioural variants are exhibited by nearby chimpanzees”. Animals are forced to forage in smaller groups, with less long distance communication through hoots or drumming on tree trunks. This “lowers the chance of learning socially from one another” and makes it harder to spread any culture.

Why does it matter, they ask, “if the species is gradually merging into a single cultural entity that stretches all the way from Senegal to Tanzania”? After all, most animals don’t have distinct cultures.

One reason is that a loss of social learning makes chimpanzees more vulnerable: “A loss of behavioural diversity [could compromise how they respond] to changes in food availability and how they adapt to climate change.”

Carrying on Goodall’s legacy

Jane Goodall bridged science and society in a way very few others have managed since. One of those few is Ben Garrod, a professor of evolutionary biology and science engagement at the University of East Anglia. A BBC television presenter and a primate scientist, he’s worked with Goodall and her foundation and says we need more Jane Goodalls.

“There will be countless ways we can carry on with Jane’s legacy”, he writes, “but one of the most powerful is to encourage more of us to make science accessible for all of us”.

– ref. When chimps helped cool the planet – https://theconversation.com/when-chimps-helped-cool-the-planet-267043

October 9, 2025

Attachment to our home town runs deep – so what happens when it faces dramatic change?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aled Mark Singleton, Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University

When the news broke in the autumn of 2023 that the blast furnaces at the steelworks in Port Talbot, south Wales, were closing, the headlines were laced with emotion: “devastating”, “fear”, “end of an era”. For many in the town, it wasn’t just the loss of 3,000 jobs, it was as though part of the town’s identity was being taken away.

Such emotional reactions are not just nostalgia or sentimentality. They’re a powerful example of what researchers call “place attachment”, the deep, often unspoken bonds we form with the places that shape our lives.

My own research has explored how people in Newport formed emotional attachments to the former Llanwern steelworks from when it was built in the 1960s.

We develop attachment to the places where we grow up, live, work and socialise. They could be your childhood street, the corner shop where you bought sweets, or the estate where you raised your children. These places hold memories, routines and milestones.

But our attachments aren’t just personal. As we age, they can become shared and tied to a town, a city, or a region. In south Wales, where industries like coal and steel once shaped generations, those attachments are often linked to pride, identity and social connection.

Sometimes, they’re hopeful, but other times they carry a sense of loss.

An uncertain future

In September 2024, the giant blast furnaces in Port Talbot were shut down, marking the end of traditional steelmaking in the town. A new, greener arc furnace is being built in its place, but the transition has brought fear and uncertainty. Will the next generation have jobs here? Will the town still feel like the place people knew?

Even before the closure, Cardiff University researchers described a “lingering sense of indignity and insecurity left by recent history” in the area. The emotional bonds people have with Port Talbot aren’t just rooted in the past; they’re being tested by what the future promises – or fails to.

To understand how people form and carry place attachments over time, I carried out research in Newport in 2019, nearly 50 miles east of Port Talbot. In 1962, a vast steelworks opened in Llanwern, just outside the city. Thousands of people moved there for work, and entire neighbourhoods were built around the promise of a better life. The plant remained a major employer for nearly 40 years, before most of it closed in 2001.

I wanted to understand how people who had lived through that era remembered it and how their feelings about the area had changed over time. Instead of conducting conventional interviews, I walked with residents through their neighbourhoods. We revisited places from the 1960s and 1970s, letting memories rise to the surface.

To share public feelings, I curated two events in the community that also included guided walking tours. An important component was public performances that brought people’s stories to life, made by artist Marega Palser.

The walks and events revealed powerful stories.

A man remembered the feeling of something being taken away as habitats were destroyed to make way for houses. Another described the thrill of buying a first home near the steelworks, when “everything seemed possible”. One woman pointed out the exact spot where a car once crashed into her garden.

A close up of people's hands with a small toy lorry in the middle. — Artist Marega Palser creates a paper roadway with toy lorry to depict Llanwern steelworks opening in the 1960s.
Jo Hayock, CC BY-NC

One participant recalled how, in the early 1970s, “people were almost fulfilling their dreams: home ownership … people getting access to cars, things like tellies”. Others remembered the chaos caused by shale lorries rumbling through the nearby town of Caerleon in the 1960s, delivering material for the foundations of the steelworks.

For many, the steel industry hadn’t just shaped their town, it had shaped their life story. But these stories weren’t only about loss. They were also about pride, belonging and everyday joys.

Why these stories matter

Place attachment helps explain why people feel so strongly when things change. It’s why the closure of a factory, the demolition of a housing estate, or the decline of a high street can hit so hard. It’s not just about jobs or buildings but identity, memory and meaning.

In Port Talbot, these feelings are still raw. The town’s future is being recast by government policy, corporate decisions and global economics. But the emotional landscape mustn’t be overlooked. Understanding how people feel about a place can help us listen more carefully to what’s at stake when that place changes.

In Newport, where the industrial decline came earlier, the picture is more mixed. The city’s population is growing, and employment levels are above the national average. Today, people may form attachments through the independent music scene, or events connected to the city’s radical history, such as the Newport Rising festival.

These newer narratives matter just as much. Without them, older identities can become frozen in time, and communities may find it harder to imagine a different future.

Of course, our homes and neighbourhoods will always matter. But we also carry bigger attachments, to towns and cities, to shared pasts and imagined futures. Understanding those attachments means looking beyond headlines about economic loss or regeneration. It means listening to what people remember, what they still cherish and what they fear losing.

As Port Talbot’s steelworks are greatly reshaped and Newport continues to evolve, one thing is clear – we don’t just live in places. We feel them too.

Aled Mark Singleton received funding the Economic and Social Research Council: Grant Number ES/W007568/1. This work was supported by Swansea University Geography Department.

– ref. Attachment to our home town runs deep – so what happens when it faces dramatic change? – https://theconversation.com/attachment-to-our-home-town-runs-deep-so-what-happens-when-it-faces-dramatic-change-263667

October 9, 2025

Gaza ceasefire and Donald Trump’s ‘dead cat diplomacy’

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.

There were emotional scenes in both Gaza and across Israel this week as people celebrated the prospect of an end to a war which has cost so many lives. Israel and Hamas agreed the first phase of a ceasefire deal which, if it holds, will bring an end to nearly two years of bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip.

The latest casualty count is devastating. On the Palestinian side, more than 67,000 people, most of them civilians and among them an estimated 20,000 children. Israel lost more than 1,800 people: about 1,200 – mainly civilians – during the Hamas attack of October 7 2023 and the rest killed during the assault on Gaza.

Footage and images from both sides show relief, joy and hope that this deal, for which Donald Trump can rightly claim much credit, will hold, that the Israeli hostages will be returned and that a process of healing can begin. For Palestinians there is also the hope that they can return to their homes and begin the process of rebuilding.

But what comes next is far from certain, as Scott Lucas, an expert in Middle East politics from University College Dublin, explains. For the ceasefire to hold, particularly once the 22 remaining live hostages and the bodies of 26 who have died in captivity are released to Israel, assumes a great deal of good faith on both sides. But particularly from Israel.

The release of the hostages removes any leverage Hamas might have had, Lucas writes. And the fact that Israel was still hitting Gaza with airstrikes hours after the US president announced that a deal had been done must cast some doubt on that good faith.

Nevertheless, the ceasefire is due to begin on Friday, after Israel’s cabinet meets to sign off on the hostage agreement. This is when the hard part begins, says Lucas. Hamas will be unwilling to comply with Israel’s demand to disarm and disband and take no further part in Palestinian politics. We don’t know how the future governance covered in Trump’s 20-point plan will work. We don’t know when and to what extent Israel will withdraw its troops.

And Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, still has to get the deal past the two far-right cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich has already said he will oppose the deal.

But, for now at least, there is reason to hope. And this is something that has been in painfully short supply in Gaza of late.

Trump’s idiosyncratic style of diplomacy may often appear hasty, clumsy and ill-judged. But it’s questionable whether this particular deal could have happened without him. Asaf Siniver believes Trump was key to getting both Israel and Hamas into line. Siniver, an expert in international security from the University of Birmingham, highlights Trump’s apparent mastery of what is known as “dead cat diplomacy”.

This is a foreign policy approach identified by James Baker, former US secretary of state, in the late 1980s. He recalled in his memoir that he employed it during his own attempts at securing a peace deal between Israel and a delegation of negotiators from Palestine.

Siniver says dead cat diplomacy requires three things: “It must be perceived by the intransigent parties as a last-chance threat, it must be perceived as a credible move by the third party and there must be internal factors which limit the intransigent party’s capacity to ignore the threat.”

All three of these were met in the case of the recent negotiations between Israel and Hamas. It was just a case, to paraphrase Baker, of “laying the dead cats at Israel’s and Hamas’s doorsteps”. In other words, to publicly blame and shame both parties for any reluctance to advance the deal.

Trump did this famously by reporting he’d told the Israeli prime minister he was “always fucking negative” about the peace process. He made sure that everyone knew that he’d forced Netanyahu to apologise to Qatar for launching the airstrikes in early September to try to kill Hamas leaders.

His constant social media messaging to Hamas that it was the major obstacle to Middle East peace fulfilled the same principles. He told Hamas that he’d given Netanyahu carte blanche to “finish the job” and was aware of quite how isolated Hamas had become – not just from its former allies in the Arab states, but with the people it was ostensibly fighting to protect, the Gazans themselves.

Two years of tragedy

There can be no doubt that, whatever the leaders on both sides thought, most ordinary people in Israel and Gaza just wanted the war to end. This week marked the second anniversary of the brutal October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. Yuval Katz, whose research has involved speaking to a lot of Israeli citizens about the war and examining social media reports from Gaza, feels that both sets of people were caught between two visions of what peace might mean.

For the politicians, particularly for Donald Trump, a solution for Gaza was part of something else. Trump saw it as the cornerstone of a broader US-sponsored deal for the Middle East: “I’m not just talking about Gaza … the whole deal, everything getting solved. It’s called peace in the Middle East.”

For the Israeli prime minister, the war was part of a delicate political manoeuvre to retain the backing of his far-right allies and keep himself in power.

Neither gave the impression they were in touch with the trauma of the ordinary people. Israelis felt the October 7 massacre and the hostages as a constant pain. Cases of PTSD and suicide among those who served in the military have soared over the two years.

Two years of war have also reshaped the Middle East, writes Simon Mabon. Mabon, a scholar of Middle East politics at Lancaster University, outlines the profound ways the region has changed over two years. Iran and its proxies have had their wings severely clipped. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been crippled. In Syria, Israel has taken advantage of the turmoil following the fall of Assad in December 2024 to carve itself out a buffer zone around the Golan Heights in the south.

Meanwhile, normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia – an extension of the Abraham accords which Trump saw as one of his major foreign policy achievements in his first term – has been set back considerably, certainly for years. A lot, says Mabon, will hang on what happens next in Gaza.

Donald Trump: Nobel peace laureate?

It’s highly unlikely Trump would be recognised at Friday’s Nobel peace prize announcement for a ceasefire deal that hasn’t even yet come into force. But if it does lead to a lasting peace, there will be plenty of speculation about whether the Nobel committee will recognise the US president in the future.

After all, there have arguably been more controversial choices. Colin Alexander, an expert in political communication at Nottingham Trent University, walks us through some of them.

Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

– ref. Gaza ceasefire and Donald Trump’s ‘dead cat diplomacy’ – https://theconversation.com/gaza-ceasefire-and-donald-trumps-dead-cat-diplomacy-267155

October 9, 2025

AI, drone ships and new sensors could leave submarines with few places to hide in the ocean

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Stupples, Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Director of Electronic Warfare Research, City St George’s, University of London

A US Virginia-class attack submarine during sea trials in the Atlantic Ocean. US Navy courtesy of General Dynamics Electric Boat

For over a century, the ocean has been the ultimate refuge for those who wished to disappear. From the U-boats of the first world war to the nuclear-powered leviathans that glide through today’s deep waters, the submarine has thrived on one simple principle: stealth.

Sound waves travel further and faster in water than light or radar waves. This means sound is the most effective way to detect underwater objects. Modern anti-submarine warfare (ASW) is an ongoing cat-and-and-mouse game of detecting, tracking and deterring enemy submarines. With sound as the ocean’s only reliable language, ASW has primarily been a contest of listening.

But the game is changing. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), sensor networks, and autonomous vehicles are eroding the acoustic monopoly that submarines once enjoyed.

A new generation of tireless, networked and increasingly intelligent machines is beginning to patrol the seas. This promises a future where even the quietest submarine will find it harder to remain unseen.

As the ocean’s soundscape becomes more crowded, navies are increasingly turning to non-acoustic methods. These technologies detect the effects of a submarine rather than its noise. Satellites equipped with synthetic aperture radar can detect subtle ripples and temperature gradients on the sea surface caused by subsurface movement.

Until recently, magnetometers, which can measure the minute disturbances a submarine creates in Earth’s magnetic field, were constrained by physics and sensitivity limits. The magnetic anomaly detectors used for ASW could only operate effectively at low altitude and at short range.

Emerging quantum magnetometers, which make use of the strange science of quantum mechanics, promise orders-of-magnitude improvements in sensitivity. They could, in theory, detect the presence of a steel hull tens of kilometres away, especially when deployed in swarms aboard uncrewed aircraft or sea surface vessels.

A technique called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) could turn ordinary undersea cables – primarily used for internet traffic – into vibration sensors. It works by measuring subtle changes in strain in the cables’ optical fibres.

Through DAS, a single transoceanic cable could, in effect, become an enormous underwater microphone (hydrophone). In principle, this would allow a submarine crossing a major ocean basin to be detected by subtle pressure waves recorded in the fibres beneath it.

Autonomous vessels

At the heart of the revolution in ASW are uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs). These autonomous vessels range from small, solar-powered craft to large, long endurance ships capable of spending weeks or months at sea.

Unlike crewed ships, USVs can be built cheaply and in large numbers. Armed with sonar, radar, magnetometers and communications links, they are the mobile nodes of an ocean-scale sensor network that can listen, learn and adapt in real time.

US Navy Sea Hunter — The Sea Hunter is an autonomous anti-submarine vessel built for the US Navy.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Aleksandr Freutel.

The US Navy’s Sea Hunter, an autonomous trimaran, has demonstrated its ability to track a diesel-electric submarine for extended periods without human intervention. In the UK, the Royal Navy’s Cetus project and its experimental uncrewed fleet at Portsmouth are exploring similar ideas.

But it is the integration of AI with autonomy that reshapes the picture. A single USV, even a sophisticated one, can only observe a small patch of ocean. A swarm of hundreds, each communicating via satellite, laser, or acoustic link, can share information and act cooperatively.

AI is a game changer

AI does things that human operators and legacy systems cannot. It fuses data from multiple sources into a coherent picture. A single acoustic anomaly may mean little, but when combined with other data, it may form a high confidence detection.

AI operates continuously and without fatigue. Persistence is vital when hunting for the fleeting signature of a submarine designed to operate silently for weeks.

And by learning how submarines navigate, avoid detection, and exploit environmental features, algorithms can forecast likely positions and movements. This could prompt ASW to move from being primarily reactive to predictive – a shift comparable to how meteorology evolved from observation to forecasting.

Through these capabilities, AI could move from simply assisting detection to orchestrating it.

Humans are not leaving the loop, however. The role of human operator is shifting from hands-on detection to oversight, strategy, and what’s known as trust management.

Trust is a key challenge: in this context, it’s about ensuring human decision makers understand what AI is doing and why it recommends certain actions.

Navies are therefore investing heavily in explainable AI – systems that can account for their decisions – and robust communications systems that allow human operators to intervene when needed.

A connected ocean

By the 2030s, the world’s oceans may become as transparent to sensors as the skies became to radar in the 20th century. With help from AI, multiple transmitters and receivers – mounted on ships, aircraft and USVs – will be able to triangulate the positions of submarines in real time.

Swarms of autonomous underwater vehicles – relatively small robotic drones – will patrol close to shore, relaying data to surface craft. Satellites will flag anomalies for local sensor networks to investigate. And the fibre-optic infrastructure that spans the seabed may double as a global array of undersea microphones.

For now, such a vision remains technically ambitious. The ocean is extraordinarily complex: temperature gradients, salinity layers, and seabed topography all distort signals and confound algorithms. But with every incremental improvement in AI modelling and computational power, those obstacles shrink.

As detection grows more sophisticated, so too will the submarines. The future may see submarines using propulsion systems and materials in their hulls that leave minimal thermal or acoustic signature. Decoy drones could be used to confuse detection systems.

Some analysts predict that submarines will operate deeper and slower to evade wide-area surveillance. A shift towards autonomous undersea drones that can saturate defences through sheer numbers is also possible.

An unarmed Trident II D5 missile launches from the USS Nebraska. Submarines have long been the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence.
US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ronald Gutridge

The strategic implications are profound. Submarines have long been the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence and covert power projection. Their ability to vanish beneath the waves gave nations second-strike capability (the ability to retaliate after absorbing a nuclear attack) and freedom of manoeuvre.

The result of AI-driven transparency could be greater stability – reducing incentives for surprise attack – or, paradoxically, new instability as nations race to preserve secrecy.

The submarine will remain a formidable weapon, but it will no longer move unseen. The ocean, once humanity’s final hidden frontier, is becoming transparent to the eyes of machines.

David Stupples 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. AI, drone ships and new sensors could leave submarines with few places to hide in the ocean – https://theconversation.com/ai-drone-ships-and-new-sensors-could-leave-submarines-with-few-places-to-hide-in-the-ocean-266973

October 9, 2025

What could burst the AI bubble?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Whittle, University Fellow in AI and Human Decision Making, University of Salford

Some of the world’s biggest tech firms have soared in value over the last year. As AI evolves at pace, there are hopes that it will improve lives in ways that people could never have imagined a decade ago – in sectors as diverse as healthcare, employment and scientific discovery.

OpenAI is now worth US$500 billion (£373 billion), compared with US$157 billion last October. Another firm, Anthropic, has almost trebled its valuation. But the Bank of England has now warned of a possible rapid “correction” due to its concerns about these staggering valuation rises.

The question is whether these values are realistic – or based on hype, excitement and unfounded optimism for the potential of AI. Put simply, is AI’s value today a product of what AI will do in future or what people hope it may do? Ultimately, we will only really know if it’s a bubble if it bursts – though the warning signs are evident today.

With hindsight, many things that happen in a bubble may sound exceedingly optimistic. If you take many headlines and replace the word AI with the word computers it often sounds a lot more naive.

But, predicting the path of technological change is hard. Back in 2000 the Daily Mail declared the internet could be a passing fad. Just a few months earlier the dotcom boom had peaked.

A burst bubble may not change the end of the journey. The internet was not a passing fad. However, bubbles are extremely disruptive and affect people in very real ways. Stocks fall, pensions suffer, unemployment rises and investment is wasted. Real potential is crowded out in the hype and mania to focus all investment in a small number of stocks and firms.

Right now, we have the first sign of a bubble – a rapid rise in valuations. If these correct and fall we will have a bubble. If these valuations continue to rise we could be seeing a new sustained market that is focused on the technology of the future.

Of course, it might be that these valuations plateau. What happens then depends on whether people have invested in the belief that prices will always rise.

Consider a situation where people believe – as the Bank of England does – that AI firms’ valuations may be “stretched”. It’s helpful to consider what these valuations are based on. Investment is simply a bet that AI increases profitability for the firms involved. These massive valuations are bets that AI will hugely increase future profitability.

In some cases these are bets that AI will improve in capabilities towards some kind of “artificial superintelligence” that can do everything a human can do – or more. This could raise the living standards of everyone on Earth. Leading computer scientist Stuart Russell estimates the value of that at US$14 quadrillion – investors are buying a claim on that outcome too.

If investors begin to fear that AI profits won’t materialise then they will try to get their money back. This realisation can appear quite suddenly and can be prompted by seemingly minor events. It doesn’t require a big needle to pop a bubble.

close-up of a 1990s desktop computer screen as it connects to internet. — Excitement at easy internet access in the 1990s fuelled the dotcom bubble.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

A US article published in March 2000 warned that internet companies were fast running out of money. This caused many people to rethink their investments

At this stage of the bubble, investment excitement had spread to everyday investors. These regular people balanced their fear of missing out with a fear that they were investing in something new that they didn’t know much about. For many, an article in a popular magazine suggesting they may have made a mistake tipped the scales towards caution. They began to sell their dotcom stocks.

In search of profit

It may come as a surprise to some that, despite its increasing valuations, OpenAI does not yet make a profit. It may require ten times more revenue to do so.

A US$500 billion valuation is quite something for a company that reportedly lost US$7.8 billion in the first half of this year. Some of this value appears to flow from a new deal between OpenAI and Nvidia where Nvidia will invest in OpenAI and OpenAI will buy Nvidia chips. This circular financing keeps everything afloat for now, but at some point investors will need to see returns.

AI firms more generally do not appear to be profitable at the moment. Investors are not putting their money into today’s losses – they are betting on an AI future.

It is of course perfectly feasible that AI firms will develop business models to increase their profitability. OpenAI is exploring advertising options and allowing chatbots to recommend products.

Using AI to deliver these messages is a viable option, though they will have to avoid the tricks and manipulations associated with online platforms, such as when hotel websites announce that rooms are about to sell out. We believe that AI can increase the power of these manipulations and we wonder how persuasive chatbots may be in their recommendations.

However, the big four – Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon – are this year spending the equivalent of the GDP of Portugal on AI infrastructure. This is not investment in new targeted ads, it is investment in an AI future. The bubble will burst if and when this future is in doubt.

Richard Whittle receives funding from several standard sources including UKRI and Research England. No funders are likely to benefit from, or influence this work

Stuart Mills 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 could burst the AI bubble? – https://theconversation.com/what-could-burst-the-ai-bubble-267136

October 9, 2025

Should we decide by lottery who gets a medical treatment first?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Philip Clarke, Professor of Health Economics, University of Oxford

For decades, ethicists have argued that lotteries could be the fairest way to decide who gets life-saving treatment when there isn’t enough to go around. Yet our research suggests that most people would rather leave the choice to medical experts than to luck.

Our recent study involving more than 15,000 people across 14 countries found that the public preferred allocation by expert medical committees over lotteries for scarce COVID vaccines.

Respondents were presented with a scenario: a hospital wanted to vaccinate all 1,000 of its nurses but had only 500 doses of a COVID vaccine available. Some were asked whether they agreed that an expert committee was an appropriate way to make the decision; others were asked whether they agreed that a lottery was an appropriate way. Agreement with each method was measured on a scale from zero (strongly disagree) to 100 (strongly agree).

On average, expert committees scored 61, compared with just 37 for lotteries. While expert allocation was more acceptable everywhere, support for lotteries varied sharply across countries – from strikingly low in France and Chile to relatively high in China, India and the US.

Distribution of agreement with the appropriateness of allocation by lottery and expert committee.
CC BY

In theory, lotteries are fair when used for people who would benefit equally from treatment. They treat people with equal need equally and avoid rewarding those who happen to live closer to hospitals or who are better connected.

Many ethicists have proposed using them when it is hard to make decisions about life-saving treatments. For example, when kidney dialysis first became available in the 1960s, lotteries were discussed as a tie-breaker for equally eligible patients.

While ethicists often focus on fairness in principle, our results suggest that fairness alone may not be enough to persuade the public if the process feels random or impersonal.

During the early COVID pandemic, ethicists again argued for random allocation of potentially life-saving treatments. In the US, several National Academies even recommended lotteries for prioritising vaccines when “no further identifiable risk-based differences” existed between groups – that is, patients of the same age and health status.

Despite these arguments, lotteries were rarely used in practice during the pandemic. Our study suggests that the public was not supportive.

But cultural familiarity with lotteries also matters in terms of which nations will or won’t accept them. In India, lotteries are used to allocate school places and public housing. In China, they decide who gets car licence plates in crowded cities. And in the US, a green card lottery allocates immigration visas. In these countries, support for healthcare lotteries was noticeably higher.

A hand holding a green card. — In the US, some green cards are allocated by lottery.
kurgenc/Shutterstock.com

Luck of the draw

It is difficult to know whether existing lotteries for public services create acceptance, or whether they were introduced because public attitudes were already favourable. Either way, familiarity seems to make lotteries more acceptable.

Scepticism about healthcare lotteries is understandable. Yet committees are not perfect either – they can be slow, inconsistent, or swayed by politics or prejudice. Importantly, during the COVID pandemic, government expert committees in different countries came up with a wide variety of recommendations on who should be prioritised to receive the vaccine first.

If used, lotteries should be implemented in conjunction with medical guidelines. For example, during the COVID pandemic, the UK government prioritised access to vaccines largely based on five-year age bands starting with the oldest groups.

While allocating COVID vaccines based on age criteria was seen as appropriate medically, the order in which people should be vaccinated within an age group is less clear. For example, when rolling out the initial COVID vaccine, there were around 3 million people aged 65 to 69 in the same risk-based priority group, and vaccinating them all simultaneously was impossible.

To avoid vaccinating on a “first-come, first-served” basis that could reward proximity or privilege, a lottery could have been used to decide when each person in this group would receive their vaccine. Such a vaccine lottery featured in the 2011 film Contagion, but was hardly used during the actual pandemic.

The COVID pandemic is over, but future disease outbreaks are inevitable. We should think now about whether lotteries should play a role in allocating scarce treatments or vaccines next time.

For lotteries to be seen as a legitimate way to allocate healthcare, governments need to engage with the public and trial the approach. In 2008, the US state of Oregon used a lottery to select participants for limited Medicaid (a public health insurance programme) slots.

Lotteries remain one of the fairest tools we have when medical differences are otherwise equal. Next time, rather than treating lotteries as unthinkable, we should be ready to use them, with public understanding and trust already in place.

Philip Clarke receives funding from the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre and Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre and previously the Department of Health and Social Care, for the evaluation of the COVID-19 Oxford Vaccine Trial.

Rhys Thomas declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The study presented in this article was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre and the COVID-19 Oxford Vaccine Trial.

– ref. Should we decide by lottery who gets a medical treatment first? – https://theconversation.com/should-we-decide-by-lottery-who-gets-a-medical-treatment-first-265454

October 9, 2025

The Nobel peace prize has a record of being awarded to controversial nominees

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Colin Alexander, Senior Lecturer in Political Communications, Nottingham Trent University

The Nobel peace prize is rarely awarded to the most humble, modest or compassionate nominee. Instead, it all-too often ends up in the hands of high-profile figures who want it.

US president Donald Trump has said several times that he thinks he is deserving of it. And calls for him to win the award have only intensified since Israel and Hamas signed off on the first phase of Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.

The predicament is that, if the Nobel committee were to give the prize to Trump, they would be awarding it to a man whose administration has armed Israel’s continuing aggression in Gaza. This has led to devastating loss of life and, as confirmed by UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, the area suffering famine.

Still, he has managed to engineer at least a ceasefire, which after two years of bitter conflict feels like a significant achievement.

But as a political communications analyst, I often worry that the Nobel peace prize committee has been too hasty to judge. I also worry that, while the institution might want to claim it is fully independent and works on the principle of group consensus, the reality is that its decision is often a political one.

Indeed, many previous recipients of the Nobel peace prize have, like Trump, not been the most peace-loving of people either.

High-profile controversies

In Nobel’s more than 120 years of awarding its prize, one of its most controversial decisions came in 1973. The award that year was given to Henry Kissinger, the then-US secretary of state. It is a decision that still divides opinion today.

Kissinger had been instrumental in the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam in 1973. But he had also spent much of his political and academic career advocating for the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the development of a smaller “battlefield” range – Kissinger’s thesis that nuclear weapons could be used and were not just for deterrence.

He was a key decision-maker in the US’s “secret war” in Laos, which ran parallel to its operations in Vietnam, and in the US military’s invasion of Cambodia in 1970. More broadly, though, Kissinger’s political philosophy of realpolitik – politics based on practical objectives rather than ideals – appeared to have had little care for individual human life and saw global politics as a game between superpowers.

Kissinger was a man of great ego – the epitome of someone who wanted his own actions to be important and remembered.

Four decades later, the 2013 Nobel peace prize was awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). When the announcement was made, it seemed a fitting acknowledgement for an organisation that had been trying to do good in the world.

It felt like an apt award at a time when western political leaders and news media had roundly condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war. A gas attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus in August 2013 was widely condemned on the international stage.

However, the credibility of the OPCW has come under scrutiny since then. In 2019, British journalist Peter Hitchens published several articles about how the OPCW had suppressed the findings of its own staff to support its conclusion that the regime of Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons in an attack on the Syrian city of Douma.

Hitchens and others who sought to bring this to public attention, most notably a small group of academics called the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, were targeted by a smear campaign in which they were called “war crime deniers” and “apologists for Assad”.

But the Nobel committee’s most controversial decision has perhaps not been in who to award the prize to, but in who it did not award one to. From the 1920s until his assassination in 1948, Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience against British colonial rule in India inspired many around the world. It led to his imprisonment on several occasions.

As I have detailed in my own work on the end of colonial rule in India, many British administrators privately acknowledged their deep admiration of Gandhi despite the extent to which his methods threatened their power. Gandhi is surely the individual most deserving of a peace prize who did not receive one.

Colin Alexander 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 Nobel peace prize has a record of being awarded to controversial nominees – https://theconversation.com/the-nobel-peace-prize-has-a-record-of-being-awarded-to-controversial-nominees-267152

October 9, 2025

How vaping primes the lungs for COVID damage

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Keith Rochfort, Assistant Professor, School of Biotechnology, Life Sciences Institute, Dublin City University

As colder months set in, respiratory infections begin to climb: everything from the common cold and flu to COVID. It’s a time when healthy lungs matter more than ever. Yet the very tissue that lets oxygen pass from air to blood is remarkably delicate, and habits such as vaping can weaken it just when protection is most needed.

The lungs are often pictured as two simple balloons, but their work is far more intricate. They act as a finely tuned exchange system, moving oxygen from inhaled air into the bloodstream while releasing carbon dioxide produced by the body’s cells.

At the centre of this process lies the blood–air barrier: a paper-thin layer where tiny air sacs called alveoli meet a dense network of hair-thin pulmonary capillaries. This barrier must remain both strong and flexible for efficient breathing, yet it is constantly exposed to stress from air pollution, microscopic particles and infectious microbes.

Vaping can add another layer of strain, and growing evidence shows that this extra pressure can damage the surface that makes every breath possible.

The cloud from an e-cigarette carries solvents such as propylene glycol, flavouring chemicals, nicotine (in most products) and even trace metals from the device itself. When this cocktail reaches the lungs it doesn’t stay on the surface. It seeps deeper, irritating the endothelium – the thin layer of cells lining the blood vessels that mesh with the air sacs.

Healthy endothelium keeps blood flowing smoothly, discourages unnecessary clotting and acts as a selective gatekeeper for the bloodstream – controlling which substances, such as nutrients, hormones and immune cells, can pass in or out of the blood vessels while blocking harmful or unnecessary ones.

Studies show vaping can disrupt these defences, causing endothelial dysfunction even in young, otherwise healthy people. Controlled human exposure experiments reveal rises in endothelial microparticles – tiny cell fragments released when vessel linings are under stress.

My own research group has linked these changes to surges in inflammatory signals and stress markers in the blood after exposure to vaping aerosols. Together these findings indicate that the endothelium is struggling to maintain its protective role.

Laboratory work shows that vaping aerosols (even without nicotine) can loosen the tight seal of pulmonary endothelial cells. When the barrier leaks, fluid and inflammatory molecules seep into the alveoli. The result: blood–gas exchange is disrupted and respiratory infections become harder to fight.

COVID is usually thought of as an infection of the airways, but the SARS-CoV-2 virus also injures blood vessels. Doctors now describe the condition as causing endotheliopathies – diseases of the blood-vessel lining. In severe cases, capillaries become inflamed, leaky and prone to clotting. That helps explain why some patients develop dangerously low oxygen levels even when their lungs are not full of fluid: the blood side of the barrier is failing.

The virus exploits a key protein called ACE2, normally a “thermostat” that helps regulate blood pressure and vessel health. SARS-CoV-2 uses ACE2 as its doorway into cells; once the virus binds, the receptor’s protective role is disrupted and vessels become inflamed and unstable.

Vaping and COVID: a dangerous combination

My team is using computer models to investigate how vaping may affect COVID infections. Evidence already shows vaping can increase the number of ACE2 receptors in the airways and lung tissue. More ACE2 means more potential entry points for the virus – and more disruption exactly where the blood–air barrier needs to be strongest.

Both vaping and COVID drive inflammation. Vaping irritates and inflames the blood-vessel lining while COVID floods the lungs with pro-inflammatory molecules. Together they create a “perfect storm”: capillaries become leaky, fluid seeps into the air sacs and oxygen struggles to cross the blood–air barrier. COVID also raises the risk of blood clots in the lung’s vessels, while vaping has been linked to the same, compounding the danger.

Vaping can also hinder recovery after a bout of COVID. Healing the fragile exchange surface requires every bit of support the lungs can get. Vaping adds extra stress to tissues the virus has already damaged, even if the vaper feels no immediate symptoms. The result can be prolonged breathlessness, persistent fatigue and a slower return to pre-illness activity levels.

The blood–air barrier is like a piece of delicate fabric: it holds together under normal wear but can tear when pushed too hard. Vaping weakens that weave before illness strikes, making an infection such as COVID harder to overcome. The science is still evolving, but the message is clear: vaping undermines vascular health. Quitting, even temporarily, gives the lungs and blood vessels the cleaner environment they need to heal and to keep every breath effortless.

Keith Rochfort receives funding from Research Ireland.

– ref. How vaping primes the lungs for COVID damage – https://theconversation.com/how-vaping-primes-the-lungs-for-covid-damage-266162

October 9, 2025

Without proper support, a diagnosis of dyslexia risks being just a label

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Penelope Hannant, Assistant Professor in Educational Inclusion, University of Birmingham

Whether and when to use the label “dyslexia” has been a perennial debate in education.

Some experts and academics argue that there is too much focus on the diagnosis of dyslexia, rather than on providing support for all children who struggle to learn to read. Others argue that children with the most significant difficulties have to fight to get the recognition they need.

Public figures, including celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, have called for all children to receive early screening for dyslexia.

We work together as researchers in psychology and education, with expertise in how children learn to read, dyslexia, neurodiversity, and how children with special educational needs should be supported. While calls for universal dyslexia screening are well intentioned, we believe this approach could lead to more problems than solutions.

One concern is the lack of accuracy in many screening tools, which can result in unclear or misleading outcomes.

Literacy difficulties are complex. Dyslexia is just one of many possible reasons a child might struggle with reading and writing. Focusing too narrowly on dyslexia risks missing other important learning needs.

Screening also has other limitations. A dyslexia screener is a tool used to flag potential indicators of dyslexia, which may involve one or more approaches such as teacher observations, structured audits, questionnaires or digital assessments. It offers only a brief snapshot of a child’s abilities, rather than a full picture of how they learn.

Small children raising hands in class — A range of factors influence how children learn.
PeopleImages/Shutterstock

Another crucial issue is what happens after screening. Without enough resources to follow up on screening results, teachers, parents and children may be left feeling frustrated and unsupported.

If there’s no clear plan for what happens next, it can raise expectations without delivering real help. This can leave families and educators disillusioned and children without the support they need to succeed.

We both strongly believe in the value of a dyslexia diagnosis in the right context. One of us (Julia Carroll) recently led a project to gain consensus about the most appropriate definition of dyslexia and the best approach to assessment.

On the basis of this research, we believe a multi-phase process should be used. For younger children, the focus should be on needs rather than diagnosis. Extra help should be available for any children starting to fall behind. Some of these children will progress well. Others will continue to struggle, and an assessment for dyslexia may be warranted.

This approach relies on a thorough understanding of a child’s needs, rather than prematurely categorising young children.

Holistic approaches

One of us (Penny Hannant) has developed a broad-based questionnaire to measure and aid development in early schooling. By gathering information about a child’s development, such as how they respond to sounds, move their body, react to sensory input and process what they see, we can build a clearer picture of what kind of support they might need.

This approach allows for teachers to intervene before educational gaps emerge, offering a more refined and responsive foundation for learning.

A full profiling of strengths and weaknesses is also crucial to diagnostic assessment. Recent research indicates that developmental disorders such as dyslexia tend to have multiple causes, and that there is a great deal of overlap between different disorders.

Research suggests that a significant proportion of children with dyslexia also meet criteria for developmental language disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which can significantly influence how dyslexia develops.

This means that any diagnostic process must take into account the whole child rather than relying on narrow or isolated criteria. To ensure this, schools need in-house specialists who are equipped to conduct holistic assessments and guide tailored support. A well-informed diagnosis not only helps children do better at school, but means they can continue to get the right support as they transition into adulthood.

Penelope Hannant is on the board of trustees with PATOSS, the dyslexia charity.

Julia M. Carroll receives funding from the Education Endowment Foundation and from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is on the board of trustees with PATOSS, the dyslexia charity.

– ref. Without proper support, a diagnosis of dyslexia risks being just a label – https://theconversation.com/without-proper-support-a-diagnosis-of-dyslexia-risks-being-just-a-label-264153

October 9, 2025

Research suggests rich people tend to be more selfish – but why is that?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University

From Disney’s Scrooge McDuck and Cruella de Vil to DC Comics’ Lex Luthor to and Mr Burns in the Simpsons, there are plenty of examples of wealthy people using their money and power in evil ways. But is there any truth to the stereotype that rich people are mean?

There are many rich people who act benevolently, including philanthropists who give a lot of their money away. However, research in psychology has found a clear link between wealth and unethical behaviour, including an increased tendency to cheat and steal.

One study found that wealthy upper class people were more likely to have a selfish focus on their interests. Conversely, another study found that people from lower social classes were more likely to feel compassion for other people’s suffering.

Researchers have also established that drivers of expensive cars are less likely to behave altruistically than other drivers. They are less likely to slow down to let pedestrians cross or to let other drivers join the road.

They are also more likely to drive aggressively and disobey traffic rules. One study found that the likelihood of the drivers slowing down to let pedestrians cross the road decreased by 3% for every US$1,000 (£738.50) that their car was worth.

But it’s not just that these people are bad drivers. A study by Finnish psychologists found that owners of luxury cars had a higher prevalence of negative personality traits such as being disagreeable, stubborn and lacking in empathy.

In simple terms, it seems that rich people are less likely to be altruistic.

What could explain this link? Perhaps wealth turns people bad, isolating them from others and making them more selfish. Or is it that people who are already ruthless and selfish are more likely to become extremely wealthy?

One way of clarifying this is to think in terms of what psychologists refer as dark triad personalities. These are people who have combined traits of psychopathy, narcissism and machiavellianism (acting immorally to get power). These traits – which all involve selfishness and low empathy – almost always overlap and can be difficult to distinguish from one another. They exist on a continuum in the population as a whole.

Research shows that dark triad personalities tend to possess higher levels of status and wealth. A study following participants for 15 years found that people with dark triad traits gravitated towards the top of the organisational hierarchy and were wealthier.

Man portrait with evil look isolated on black background. — Research suggests financially successful people are more likely to have dark traits.
CebotariN/Shutterstock

In line with those findings, according to some estimates, the base rate for clinical levels of psychopathy is three times higher among corporate boards than in the overall population. Research also indicates that young people with dark triad traits are more highly represented on business courses at university or college.

Why do mean people seek wealth?

In my view, the correlation between wealth and nastiness is quite easy to explain. In my book The Fall, I suggest that some people experience a state of intense psychological separation. Their psychological boundaries are so strong that they feel disconnected from other people and the world, which can come with a lack of empathy or emotional connection.

One effect of this state of disconnection is a sense of psychological lack. People feel incomplete, as if something is missing. In turn, this generates an impulse to accumulate wealth, status and power, as a way of compensating.

On the flip side, people who feel a sense of connection others and to the world don’t feel a sense of incompleteness and so don’t tend to have a strong desire for power or wealth.

At the same time, a lack of empathy can make it easier to attain success. It means you can be ruthless in your pursuit of wealth and status, manipulating and exploiting others. If other people suffer as the result of your actions – and lose their livelihood or reputation – it doesn’t concern you as much. Without empathy, you can’t sense the suffering you cause.

So psychological disconnection has two disastrous effects: it generates a strong desire for wealth and status, together with the ruthlessness that makes wealth and success easily attainable.

Wealth and wellbeing

Of course, I’m not claiming that all wealthy people are mean. Some people become wealthy by accident, or because they have brilliant ideas, or even because they want to use their wealth to benefit others. But given the factors described above, it is not surprising that there is a high incidence of meanness among the wealthy.

The studies cited above imply that the link seems to be proportional, in that the more wealthy a person is, the more likely they are to possess dark triad traits. And we know that most dark traits, such as psychopathy are linked to similar or lower levels of happiness to others. An exception is a certain type of narcissism, called grandiose narcissism, which is linked to higher happiness.

A great deal of research in psychology has shown only a weak correlation between wealth and wellbeing. A 2010 study by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that happiness increased in line with income up to around US$75,000 (£54,9612) a year (equivalent to US$110,000 in 2025). However, this is where the correlation ended. According to the study, after US$110,000 a year, it doesn’t matter how rich you become; it won’t make you any happier.

Newer research, however, has found slightly different results. A recent study by Kahneman and colleagues indicated that happiness continues to increase with income for a proportion of rich people – but not for an unhappy minority. A 2022 study also found that the threshold at which happiness plateaus depends on the country – in societies with greater inequality, there was a higher threshold.

What’s more, another study by Kahneman and other colleagues found that, for people who were preoccupied with striving for financial success, life satisfaction actually decreased as income increased.

Overall though, evidence suggests that wealthy people are unlikely to attain the contentment they seek through money alone. Their wealth and status don’t take away their sense of incompleteness.

This might be another reason why extremely rich people tend to act unethically – as their sense of disconnection grows stronger. In contrast, research shows a strong link between altruism and wellbeing. So perhaps that is where we should focus our attention – not on becoming rich, but becoming kind.

Steve Taylor 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. Research suggests rich people tend to be more selfish – but why is that? – https://theconversation.com/research-suggests-rich-people-tend-to-be-more-selfish-but-why-is-that-265794