Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel Kelly, Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry, Sheffield Hallam University

For more than 80 years, men have been told that testosterone helps prostate cancer grow. But a very different picture has emerged over the past two decades.

The prostate is a small gland that sits just below the bladder. Its job is to produce the fluid that helps transport sperm, and it relies heavily on testosterone to do so. In fact, the prostate is one of the body parts most affected by testosterone.

All prostate cells, whether healthy or cancerous, contain androgen receptors. These are the molecular switches that initiate testosterone’s action inside cells. When testosterone binds to these receptors, it helps the prostate grow and function normally.

This close hormonal control is important, but it also sets the stage for one of the most enduring assumptions in men’s health: because testosterone stimulates normal prostate growth, it must also stimulate cancer growth.

This belief rested largely on the Nobel prize-winning research of Charles Huggins in the 1940s. He found that prostate cancer shrank when testosterone levels were lowered and accelerated when testosterone was added, via injections.

Lowering testosterone levels, known as androgen deprivation therapy, became the standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer. It still is. Removing testosterone often shrinks tumours, slows disease progression and improves survival.

This belief became deeply embedded in medical practice, shaping decades of caution around testosterone replacement therapy for hypogonadism (testosterone deficienecy) because of fears it could trigger or drive prostate cancer.

Changing the narrative

In the early 1990s, Harvard urologist and testosterone pioneer Abraham Morgentaler began to challenge this view. He pointed out that some of the early research relied heavily on the response of just one patient.

In his clinic, he saw that men with very low testosterone still developed prostate cancer that was often more aggressive, while men receiving testosterone therapy did not show the expected rise in cancer rates.

This led to the proposal of the “saturation model”, which suggests that prostate tissue is sensitive to testosterone only at very low levels. Once androgen receptors are saturated, additional testosterone has little further effect.

At the same time, it was being shown that chronically low testosterone was associated with more aggressive prostate cancer, further challenging the idea that low testosterone is inherently protective.

Recent medical studies now show that testosterone treatment is safe. In multiple high-quality studies, testosterone therapy in men with low testosterone levels does not increase the risk of prostate cancer compared to men who didn’t receive the treatment. New long-term research even suggests that men whose testosterone levels are properly restored and monitored by doctors may actually have lower cancer rates.

But what about men who already have prostate cancer? This is where the discussion often becomes confused. For men with active prostate cancer, particularly early-stage disease, lowering testosterone remains an effective treatment. So how can this paradox exist with evidence that normal testosterone levels are not harmful?

The answer lies in how prostate cells react to different amounts of testosterone. When testosterone levels are very low, cancer cells can adjust by finding new ways to grow and survive. They become super-sensitive to any testosterone signals they can detect.

This is why many men eventually develop castration-resistant prostate cancer, where the disease progresses and can become more aggressive despite near-zero testosterone. Higher levels of testosterone may push these cancer cells into a more stable, slower growth state and, in some situations, may even destabilise them, promoting cell death.

Striking reversal

This discovery has led to a surprising change in treatment. In carefully chosen patients who are closely watched by doctors, testosterone is now being given back after prostate cancer treatment without increasing the chance of the cancer returning.

Even more surprisingly, doctors are testing a new approach in certain men with prostate cancer called bipolar androgen therapy, which switches testosterone levels between very low and very high. The idea is to use testosterone itself as a weapon to confuse and kill cancer cells that have learned to survive without it.

This is one of the most striking reversals in modern cancer treatment. Testosterone has shifted from a presumed villain feared to ignite prostate cancer, to a hormone whose effects are more complex than once believed, and even a possible ally in the fight against prostate cancer.

This evolution is finally reaching medical practice and drug regulation. On December 10, just one month after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the removal of black-box warnings from oestrogen products, the FDA organised an expert panel to consider whether longstanding warnings around testosterone use are similarly out of date. A large part of these discussions is about prostate safety and reflects how far the evidence has shifted.

None of this means testosterone replacement therapy – for men with low testosterone levels – is completely without risk. Men starting treatment should still get proper medical checks, have their prostate monitored regularly, and make decisions after talking things through with their doctor.

But the science has changed. The old belief that testosterone therapy increases prostate cancer or makes it worse is no longer backed up by modern research.

For men who genuinely have low testosterone, this change is important. It can remove unnecessary obstacles to getting care and gives them more safe, science-backed treatment options, which helps improve men’s health overall.

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

– ref. How testosterone went from prostate cancer villain to potential ally – https://theconversation.com/how-testosterone-went-from-prostate-cancer-villain-to-potential-ally-266519

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Magnus Marsden, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Sussex

The Taliban’s morality police recently summoned four young men in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan for a “rehabilitation programme”. Their offence: “imitating actors” and “promoting foreign culture”. The young men had formed what they called the “Thomas Shelby Group”, after Cillian Murphy’s character in the popular TV drama Peaky Blinders – and the week before their detention they’d been observed strolling confidently around Herat dressed in black three-piece suits and leather gloves, smoking cigarettes.

The Taliban are well known for actively policing what they refer to as “Afghan cultural and Islamic traditions”. And the morality police’s role is to ensure the “promotion of virtue and prevention of vice”, according to the Sharia, Islam’s legal code – as interpreted by the Taliban.

The Taliban also emphasise their role in preserving the purity and dignity of their conception of Afghan culture. In recent weeks, videos on social media have depicted the morality police in Kabul ordering shopkeepers to remove billboards that include English terms written in Persian. They are apparently seen as enabling the influence of foreign values on Afghan culture.

The detention of these young men for promoting foreign culture is but one instance of the Taliban seeking to enforce a purified form of Afghan culture on people in the country in recent months.

At first glance it may seem surprising to hear, not only of an interest in Peaky Blinders in Afghanistan, but also of young men in one of the country’s most historic cities going to considerable lengths to procure and wear the show’s signature outfits.

But the fact is that despite the Taliban’s best efforts to depict Afghan culture as static and traditional, there has always been a connection and awareness in Afghanistan of what is going on culturally in the rest of the world. Those who think of Afghanistan as backward and isolated culturally are very mistaken.

Much recent scholarship demonstrates that Afghanistan is best understood as a place shaped through historic and ongoing global circulations of people, things and ideas.

Cultural exchange

Far from being tradition-bound tribespeople who take pride in only wearing local clothing, from the days when Silk Road merchants moved goods between Europe and Asia, people in Afghanistan have long incorporated global fashion trends into their own ways of dressing.

In the early 20th century, Afghanistan’s ruler Emir Habibullah Khan, who ruled from 1901 to 1919, introduced a uniform for members of his court based on styles of dress popular in British India.

In the era leading up to the second world war, urban people effortlessly adopted styles they encountered through foreign visitors and residents in the increasingly international city of Kabul. Many who travelled also brought home new trends from across Asia, Europe and America.

Despite the obvious displeasure shown by the country’s religious authorities, in this period the neatly trimmed “French cut” beard became popular among Kabul’s intelligentsia.

This culture and fashion exchange was not a one-way process. Clothes designed in Afghanistan played a significant role in shaping fashion trends in some of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, including Paris, Los Angeles and London.

For much of the 20th century, the thirst for fur coats in Europe and America was quenched through the import from Afghanistan of Persian lamb pelts from the prized Karakul sheep.

The popularity of Karakul fur expanded in Britain after Nasr Allah Khan, a son of Afghanistan’s Emir Abdur Rahman Khan (who ruled from 1880 to 1901), presented Queen Victoria with a gift of 80 pelts during his 1894 visit to Britain.

Artisans in Afghanistan knew how to turn the pelts of Karakul lambs into a soft and glossy fur-like material. Millions of skins were used to make coats for sale across Europe and North America until as recently as the 1980s. These included the famed “Afghans”, beloved of hippies in Europe and North America in the 1960s.

Read more:
Friday essay: how ‘Afghan’ coats left Kabul for the fashion world and became a hippie must-have

Popular culture

In this way, culture in Afghanistan has been shaped by the circulation of people, capital, things and ideas – and this is embedded in the country’s social and cultural fabric. Even a movement as assertive as the Taliban will confront obstacles in its attempts to limit this circulation and impose rigid and bounded ideas of Afghan culture on the country’s diverse and globally oriented population.

A good example of how this attempt to control Afghan culture was subverted during the Taliban’s previous period of rule (1996–2001) was the craze for the Hollywood blockbuster, Titanic. Cinema, television and music were banned (as were barber’s shops).

But underground video shops flourished, and Titanic became a popular symbol to show that one was aware of the wider world. Some bakeries in Kabul are reported to have produced cakes decorated to resemble the ill-fated ocean liner for consumption by the city’s globally connected residents on occasions such as birthdays and weddings.

The young men whom the Taliban deemed to be in need of rehabilitation are hardly isolated mavericks. They represent a key facet of culture in Afghanistan – a fluidity born of, and informed by, the country’s historic global connectedness.

This aspect of the country’s cultural dynamics has long interacted in complex ways with attempts to construct, maintain, preserve and purify what the authorities see as “tradition”. The four young men got away with a warning.

Like the Titanic cakes of the 1990s, the Peaky Blinders outfits are a way of making a statement that challenges the Taliban’s understanding of “Afghan culture” without being enough of an offence to land their wearers in serious trouble.

Magnus Marsden has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

– ref. The Taliban may not like Peaky Blinders, but its Afghan fans are part of a long history of cultural engagement with the world – https://theconversation.com/the-taliban-may-not-like-peaky-blinders-but-its-afghan-fans-are-part-of-a-long-history-of-cultural-engagement-with-the-world-272084

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vahid Vahidinasab, Professor and Chair in Sustainability, Salford Business School, University of Salford

The amount of renewable energy produced around the world is increasingly exceeding demand – particularly from wind and solar sources. This presents a significant challenge when limited grid capacity and insufficient energy storage mean this clean power has to be curtailed, wasting the excess generation. The scale of this problem is substantial.

In the UK, for example, wind farms were forced to curtail 4.3 terawatt (trillion watt) hours of surplus energy – about 5% of their annual output – in 2023. This would have been enough to power 1.5 million homes for the year, so failing to harness it cost bill payers roughly £300 million and left some energy providers facing costly constraint payments.

Similar patterns are emerging across Europe, North America, Australia and other regions rapidly expanding their renewable capacity, where grid infrastructure has struggled to keep pace.

But on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast, a trial is under way that, in years to come, could help resolve this energy conundrum. It relies on “bidirectional charging” – the idea that electric cars don’t just have to be energy users; they can be energy storers and providers too.

By 2040, around 36 million electric cars and vans are expected on UK roads. Already, current models can store enough energy to power a typical UK household for between seven and ten days. All the anticipated electric vehicle (EV) batteries by 2040 would offer around 2.5 terawatt hours of storage – enough to store much of the UK’s surplus solar power generated at bright summer lunchtimes, or the excess wind on stormy winter nights.

For most of the time, of course, (about 95%, on average), these cars won’t be using any of that energy because they are parked. Our technology could put this EV downtime to use storing and recirculating surplus renewable energy.

EV owners won’t just be doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. It would also mean they could buy electricity at cheaper, off‑peak times, then store it for their own household use in peak times. A new study from the University of Michigan finds that vehicle‑to‑home (V2H) charging could save drivers up to US$5,600 (£4,200) over their EV’s lifetime – as much as 90% of its total charging costs.

Energy companies and grid operators also stand to gain. One analysis estimates that European power systems could save up to €4 billion (£3.5 billion) through the introduction of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and other smart‑charging schemes.

Two-way technology

Most EVs and chargers currently only move electricity one way – from source to car. But at the Centre for Self-Sustaining Systems and Societies, our focus is on two-way technology that enables energy to flow between EVs and homes, hotels, businesses, as well as the National Grid itself. This is complicated technology – not least because the form of electricity in which batteries store electricity, direct current (DC), needs converting into alternating current (AC) before it can be pumped back into a home, hotel or grid.

EVs will also need adapting to support bidirectional charging – currently, only a few models offer this capability. Widespread adoption will require all EVs to be factory-designed with integrated bidirectional hardware, supported by clear regulatory standards and strong market incentives.

On the Isle of Wight, our technology – part of the Europe-wide DriVe2X programme – is testing four bidirectional chargers at two hotels and a visitor boat mooring. One reason the Isle of Wight was selected for this test is its annual influx of tourists.

The island attracts more than 2 million visitors each year, meaning there are major fluctuations in demand for power between its low and peak tourism seasons. But many visitors bring EVs with them, and these could potentially store and circulate some of the extra power the island requires during their stay.

Our test drivers (a mixture of visitors and local residents) are able to schedule their departure times and minimum battery levels, so that our bidirectional charging system can store and circulate energy while retaining enough charge for the EV’s next trip. This addresses a fear that is sometimes expressed about this new technology – the risk of discovering a flat-battery just as you wish to set off on your journey.

The trial, which is moving into its final stage, has been given a community-first mindset through our local partner Future Isle of Wight, a community-owned company that is helping to shape how this technology can be scaled in a way that benefits local residents.

Across Europe, other DriVe2X test sites are exploring potential two-way energy hotspots. At Porto Airport in Maia, Portugal, a long-stay car park is testing how this technology can manage waves of passengers flowing in and out of an airport terminal. In Hungary’s capital Budapest, vehicle-to-home technology is being tested in a number of smart homes.

While there are now more than 100 V2G test projects around the world, they remain small in scale. Key challenges include developing affordable smart chargers and hassle-free grid connection regulations, as well as protecting consumer confidence on issues such as battery warranties, privacy, and fair payment for the power their EVs provide.

Nonetheless, I believe bidirectional EVs could move from niche pilots to everyday life within the next two decades. In July, the UK government suggested that households and businesses could be providing the country with up to 75 gigawatts of flexible power by 2050 – of which more than half (40 gigawatts) would come from EVs. That is roughly the output of 40 large nuclear reactors – enough to power Britain’s total electricity consumption during a peak winter period.

But this future depends on daily life working smoothly. EV drivers will need to wake up with enough charge, understand when their vehicle is powering the house, and see they are saving money – all without worrying about battery wear, confusing markets or privacy risks. We hope our Isle of Wight trial can play a small but important role in realising this energy-efficient future.

Vahid Vahidinasab receives funding for the DriVe2X research and innovation project, which is co-funded by the European Commission and UKRI under grant numbers 101056934 and 10055673, respectively.

– ref. Two-way electric vehicle charging at scale could stop renewable energy being wasted – here’s how it works – https://theconversation.com/two-way-electric-vehicle-charging-at-scale-could-stop-renewable-energy-being-wasted-heres-how-it-works-272373

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lee Mattocks, Senior Lecturer, Fashion, Knitwear and Textile design, Nottingham Trent University

With January sales around the corner, another flood of unwanted clothes risks drowning our wardrobes and the planet.

The average person now discards around 16kg of textile waste annually and a mountain of fabric equivalent to thousands of landfills accumulates each year.

But the EU is bringing in new laws surrounding fast fashion. More responsibility is being put on manufacturers to reduce material waste and it’s becoming more important to invest in clothes we’ll cherish.

That’s why the emotional value of fashion plays a crucial role in creating a more sustainable wardrobe.

By understanding why we keep certain garments, we can extend their lifespans and rethink sustainability. Designing fashion to be emotionally durable and less likely to be dumped will not just benefit personal connections to cherished items but also the brand’s bottom line because companies will be fined for non-compliance with regulations (for example, for the destruction of unsold textiles).

Emotional attachments could be as influential as sustainability regulations if they help us make more informed choices about what’s in our wardrobes.

After years of working in fashion, experiencing sample sales and loving the buzz of the Christmas bargain, I had my own mountain of clothes to confront during an unexpected house move last Christmas. Overwhelmed by clutter and house full of garments that didn’t “feel” good anymore I began Welcome to Our Wardrobe, a project exploring the reasons why people keep some items for longer than others.

Fashion professionals, designers, psychotherapists and everyday wearers contributed to my studies and reflected on the garments they kept the longest and shared personal stories and revelations through social media.

Each garment became a portal to an often candid story and an opportunity for self rediscovery through these hanged and folded moments. Very few items survived my own wardrobe study as most were redirected to charity shops after realising they were impulse buys or mostly ill-considered purchases that didn’t meet my needs. Most garments held strong family connections or were linked to a personal memory.

My own worn out but emotionally durable t-shirt held memories of a friendship that felt like a hug on those relentless days, reminding me my friend is always there at the end of the phone. Reflecting on these attachments shifted my own shopping habits. By focusing on meaningful purchases and connections rather than just this year’s must-have colour or trouser style, I felt better too.

Fast fashion, slow attachments

It’s not just about making clothes that last but about making clothes that matter. Jonathan Chapman, a leading professor of sustainable design, puts it simply: “We are consumers of meaning, not matter.” His theory of emotionally durable design suggests waste is not merely material problem but a symptom of a missing personal connection.

When our clothes have a deep emotional resonance they often endure. One participant reflected on a handmade gifted jumper that initially made her feel “too fat” and “too old” – she discovered she still loved it because it symbolised trust and important connections to a meaningful past relationship. Once she acknowledged her attachment to this jumper, she decided to wear it more often. That extended the garment’s life.

Otto von Busch, a Swedish professor of integrated design argues in his book The Psychopolitics of Fashion that clothing functions as a psychological tool through which people express identity, negotiate belonging and make sense of who they are.

Fashion designer and author Orsola de Castro co-founded Fashion Revolution, a fashion activism movement, in the wake of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh which killed more than 1,100 garment workers.

Fashion Revolution not only advocates for greater transparency in the fashion system but also endorses “radical mending” – the treasuring, reuse, rewearing and repairing of favourite items – to promote slow fashion. According to De Castro’s philosophy, the more we wear a garment, the more it becomes part of our lives.

Her call to mend and care for clothes while resisting fast fashion trends and production cycles echoes the findings of Welcome to Our Wardrobe. My research shows that inherited, classic or custom-handcrafted clothes were the most enduring pieces, not swayed by fast fashion or new sustainability strategies. Emotional attachment relies on items being present for a reason and not just a season. That can transform clothes into treasures that can be passed down through the generations.

To reduce consumption and encourage emotionally durable design, it’s important to consider how attachment between customers and clothing can increase a garment’s lifespan. Emotional durability may even underpin future legislation if adopted as a design principle rather than a post-purchase phenomenon.

Perhaps you own a top you just can’t throw away or a dress worn to a milestone moment that represents a happy memory. These garments often survive not just because they were well crafted but because they hold some emotional resonance relating to love, connection, comfort and friendship.

Reflecting on the clothes that we already treasure is the first step towards slowing down fashion. By understanding why certain pieces endure, the wardrobe begins to hold more meaning than just an unsustainable dumping ground for passing trends.

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Lee Mattocks runs Mattocks, a small sustainable leather bag company.

– ref. Treasure the emotional connections to the clothes you have and style could be a whole lot more sustainable – https://theconversation.com/treasure-the-emotional-connections-to-the-clothes-you-have-and-style-could-be-a-whole-lot-more-sustainable-270927

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David C. Gaze, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology, University of Westminster

A marathon pushes the human body close to its limits. Legs tire, lungs burn and the heart works hard for hours on end. For years, that strain has raised an uncomfortable question: does running 26 miles actually damage the heart?

The strongest reassurance comes from a new ten-year study of 152 recreational marathon runners, published in the journal Jama Cardiology. Researchers checked the runners’ hearts before and after races, then tracked their heart health over the next decade.

They found that although the heart’s right ventricle – the chamber that pumps blood to the lungs – showed a short-term drop in pumping ability straight after races, it recovered within days. Crucially, over the ten-year follow-up period, there was no sign of lasting damage to heart function in these runners.

This finding is important because earlier studies had raised worries that long-distance exercise might damage the heart. Much of that concern came from blood tests taken after endurance events.

After a marathon, many runners show higher levels of a substance called troponin in their blood. Troponin is released when heart muscle cells are put under strain.

Doctors normally use troponin levels to help diagnose a heart attack. So seeing these levels rise after a race can look worrying and sometimes make it harder to tell whether someone is having a genuine medical emergency.

When troponin levels mislead

But context matters. In hospitals, raised troponin levels are only judged alongside symptoms, heart tests and scans. After long-distance endurance exercise, troponin often rises even when there is no sign of blocked arteries, a heart attack or lasting heart damage.

Studies show that many healthy marathon runners have troponin levels above the usual medical cut-offs after a race, despite normal heart scans and no symptoms of a heart attack.

This rise seems to reflect temporary strain on heart muscle cells, rather than permanent damage. Heart scans using ultrasound or MRI show that these changes are usually linked to short-term changes in how the heart fills or pumps blood, which settles with rest.

The right side of the heart seems particularly affected during marathons. It pumps blood through the lungs, where pressure rises sharply during sustained exercise. Several studies have shown that the right ventricle becomes temporarily enlarged and less efficient immediately after long races, before returning to normal.

What the new ten-year outcome study adds is reassurance that these repeated short-term stresses do not inevitably lead to long-term damage in most recreational runners. Over a decade of marathon running, heart structure and pumping ability remained within normal ranges.

That does not mean endurance running is without risk. Marathon running can expose hidden heart disease, particularly coronary artery disease. A tragic example was reported recently in the UK press, where a 42-year-old runner with chest pain was initially reassured and later died from a heart attack. In that case, the problem was not exercise-related troponin release but underlying coronary disease that was not identified as the cause of the elevated troponin.

This distinction is vital. Chest pain, breathlessness or collapse during or after exercise cannot be dismissed simply because someone is fit. In people with symptoms, raised troponin levels usually signal a very different process than the benign rises seen after a marathon in otherwise well runners.

Deaths during marathons are very rare. Large studies suggest there is about one death for every 100,000 runners, and this risk has fallen over time as medical support at races has improved. When a sudden cardiac arrest does happen, it is usually linked to an undiagnosed heart condition, rather than damage caused by running itself.

Very high-level endurance exercise

There is still a debate about very high-level endurance exercise. While most recreational runners show no lasting harm, some studies have found signs of scarring in the heart – called fibrosis – in athletes who have trained at very high volumes for many years.

Heart MRI scans have shown that many older endurance athletes have small areas of scar tissue in their heart muscle. In the recent Ventoux study – named after Mont Ventoux, one of the toughest climbs in the Tour de France – researchers looked at 106 male cyclists and triathletes over 50. Almost half of these athletes had detectable scarring, compared with very few in non-athletic participants.

This scarring was linked to a higher chance of abnormal heart rhythms, including some that can be deadly. But serious problems are still rare, and results differ a lot between people, suggesting factors like genetics, training intensity and how long someone has trained all matter.

Taken together, the evidence suggests that for most recreational marathon runners, the heart adapts rather than deteriorates. Temporary changes after races and short-term rises in troponin reflect stress, not injury.

Being fit doesn’t mean you can’t develop heart disease, and test results only make sense when considered alongside symptoms and medical checks. The marathon runner’s heart is strong, but it still needs careful assessment.

For most recreational runners, the evidence is reassuring. The heart adapts to marathon running rather than breaking down under it. Those temporary spikes in troponin after races reflect hard work, not damage, and decade-long studies confirm that with proper training, the heart stays healthy.

But fitness isn’t immunity. Chest pain, unusual breathlessness or feeling faint during exercise always needs proper medical attention. The marathon runner’s heart is resilient – but it still deserves respect and careful monitoring.

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

– ref. Do marathons damage your heart? Decade-long study finally settles the debate – https://theconversation.com/do-marathons-damage-your-heart-decade-long-study-finally-settles-the-debate-272371

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marcelo R Santos, Senior Lecturer in Macroeconomics, University of Glasgow

When people talk about tax fairness, the focus is almost always on income. How much the rich earn, how heavily that income should be taxed, and how to make sure lower earners are protected. But there is an older idea that is quietly starting to get attention again. What if taxes were based not on what people earn, but on what they spend?

This is more than a technical tweak. A progressive consumption tax – where people who spend more face higher effective rates – can behave very differently from a progressive income tax. And according to economic research I co-authored with fellow researcher Carlos da Costa based on life-cycle behaviour, the consequences may be surprisingly large.

At first glance, taxing income and taxing consumption might look similar. If you earn £40,000 and spend £30,000, you could imagine taxing either amount and raising similar revenue. But people do not live one year at a time. They earn very unevenly over their lives – lower wages early in their career, higher wages later – and they tend to save in good years to stabilise their spending in leaner ones.

This basic feature of real life makes the choice between taxing income or taxing consumption much more important than it seems.

Progressive income taxes increase the marginal tax rate (the percentage applied within someone’s highest tax bracket) as earnings rise. This is designed to redistribute income towards lower earners. But it also creates an unintended effect: people are discouraged from working more in the years when they are most productive because those extra earnings are heavily taxed.

Over a lifetime, this discouragement flattens people’s earning patterns and reduces saving. When lots of people make these choices at once, the whole economy ends up with less investment, lower productivity and slower wage growth. These long-run effects are invisible in year-to-year statistics, but they matter greatly for overall prosperity.

What a progressive consumption tax does differently

A progressive consumption tax takes a different approach. It doesn’t penalise earning more in a particular year. Instead, it taxes people according to how much they spend overall. Someone who earns £70,000 but saves £25,000 would face a lower tax bill than someone who earns £50,000 and spends it all.

This creates an incentive to save in high-earning years. While higher saving might sound like it would slow the economy, in the long run it does the opposite. Saving provides the funds that businesses use to invest in new equipment, technology and expansion.

Over time, this raises productivity and – crucially – pushes wages up.
This mechanism is particularly important for lower-income households, who depend almost entirely on their earnings rather than capital income (from things like property) or investment returns.

Our analysis suggests that switching from progressive income taxation to progressive consumption taxation could make households noticeably better off. This could be roughly equivalent to a permanent 10% increase in living standards as a result of rising wages and families being better protected when their incomes fluctuate.

A policy reform that both strengthens the economy and improves financial security is rare. From our analysis, it looks like this approach could do both.

A common concern is that consumption taxes are regressive. A flat tax on spending would indeed fall more heavily on low-income households who spend all or almost all of the money they have coming in. But progressivity can be built into a consumption-based system.

In fact, our work shows that a progressive consumption tax can redistribute as much as a progressive income tax, but with fewer of the distortions that slow growth.

Put simply, it is possible to design a consumption-based system that is both fair and efficient. And it wouldn’t necessarily require radical reform. It may sound like a major overhaul, but many of the benefits could be achieved with practical, incremental reforms.

One example is income averaging. Instead of taxing each year’s earnings in isolation, consumption tax could be based on a multi-year average. The idea is that a person’s average income over time is a good proxy for how much they consume, since people tend to smooth spending even when earnings fluctuate.

Under this approach, taxes would be administered through the income tax system, and people would pay tax in much the same way as they do now. The key difference is that tax brackets would be applied to an income average rather than a single year’s pay. This better reflects how people actually spend over their lifetimes, and it reduces the penalty for working more or earning more in peak years.

The information needed to do this already exists in social security records, which track people’s earnings over time. Rather than collecting new data, governments would continue to use these records as they do now, while also using them to calculate income averages across several years as a proxy for how much they spend. No new bureaucracy would be required – it is simply an additional use of information that is already held.

But why does this matter now? Most advanced economies face the same long-term pressures: ageing populations, rising fiscal demands, stagnant productivity and intense debate about how to tax “fairly” without discouraging work and investment. These pressures are unlikely to disappear.

Rethinking not just how much to tax, but how to tax, offers a different way forward. A system that taxes consumption rather than income is not a silver bullet. But progressive consumption taxation deserves a far more prominent place in the public conversation about how to design a fair and prosperous tax system for the future.

Marcelo R Santos 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 if we taxed what people spend, not what they earn? – https://theconversation.com/what-if-we-taxed-what-people-spend-not-what-they-earn-272392

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alice Vernon, Lecturer in Creative Writing and 19th-Century Literature, Aberystwyth University

This year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas is an adaptation of E. F. Benson’s 1912 tale of vampiric horror and haunted sleep, The Room in the Tower.

The unnamed narrator begins the story by relating a recurring nightmare he has suffered for 15 years. In the dream, he has been invited to the mansion of the Stone family. The dream begins pleasantly, with card games, cigarettes and light conversation. But it always takes a turn when the family’s fearsome matriarch, Mrs Stone, tells the narrator that he’ll now be shown to his room for the night – the titular room in the tower. Upon entering the room, he is overwhelmed with abject horror, and wakes up before he sees the object of his fear.

While visiting a friend one stormy summer’s day, the narrator finds himself at the very home he saw at least once a month in his dreams. Sure enough, he’s led to the room in the tower, where he finds a hideous portrait of the demonic Mrs Stone. The portrait is removed from the room at his request, but leaves curious bloodstains on the narrator and his friend’s hands. During the night, however, the narrator’s sleep is once again disturbed by the nightmare made manifest.

Many ghost stories take place in bedrooms. One of the BBC’s first ghost stories adapted for television was M. R. James’ Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, which features a bumbling academic terrorised in his hotel room by a ghost quite literally wearing a bed sheet. Horror comes from a twisted reversal of what we expect to see and experience, and since the bed should be the place of utmost safety, it is ripe to be distorted into a place of existential dread.

Sleep, too, is a state of pure vulnerability. Those few breathless seconds after waking from a nightmare remind us just how defenceless we are. No tale of the supernatural from the early 20th century examines the way our troubled sleep can haunt us quite like The Room in the Tower.

Benson grew up with ghosts. His father, Edward Benson, was the archbishop of Canterbury. He was good friends with novelist Henry James, and allegedly told his son a spooky story he’d heard that James later turned into The Turn of the Screw (1898).

Benson’s mother was Mary Sidgwick, whose brother Henry was a founding member and first president of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). The SPR’s aim was to investigate strange and paranormal phenomena, with particular interests in thought transference (or telepathy), visions and hallucinations, and ghosts and hauntings.

Begun in 1882, the SPR almost immediately set about collecting a massive amount of data under their Census of Hallucinations. They sent out a questionnaire to the public, and received thousands of responses over several years, some with fascinating anecdotes about being terrorised by ghosts and monsters in the middle of the night. The SPR compiled these in an issue of their periodical in 1894.

To read them in light of The Room of the Tower, it seems that Benson, too, knew what it feels like to be haunted by hallucinatory sleep disorders. Indeed, perhaps he even took direct influence from some of the anecdotes. The narrator in The Room in the Tower, being visited by a vampiric monster at the end of the story, describes himself as being “paralysed” – a typical sensation of sleep paralysis, which is often accompanied by a terrifying hallucination.

In Benson’s story, the narrator sees a “figure that leaned over the end of my bed”. In the SPR’s Census, a respondent referred to as Miss H. T. describes a horrifying visitation similar to the experience of Benson’s narrator. She wrote that she had seen the same figure three times, just as the narrator has the same nightmare over and over again. It would happen the same way every time; she would believe herself to be awake, and she would see a shimmer in the air that gradually solidified. Paralysed, she couldn’t move or scream to defend herself as the shape “took the form of mist and then developed into a dark veiled figure, which came nearer to me” and bent over the bed. Finally, the paralysis would lift, and the figure disappeared just as Miss H. T. threw her hands out towards it.

What both the Census and The Room in the Tower show is that ghosts don’t need to come from graveyards, gothic houses, or local legends. Often the most terrifying encounters, the experiences that prove most fruitful for ghost stories, are those our sleeping minds conjure up on the ethereal boundary between dreaming and waking.

The Room in the Tower will air on BBC One on Christmas Eve at 10pm, and will star Joanna Lumley as the terrifying Mrs Stone. For those of us prone to experience troubled sleep, it may well summon a nightmare of our own.

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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.

Alice Vernon 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 Room in the Tower: the ‘real’ hauntings that inspired this year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation – https://theconversation.com/the-room-in-the-tower-the-real-hauntings-that-inspired-this-years-bbc-ghost-story-for-christmas-adaptation-272309

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Hanß, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of Manchester

What if the pages of an old book could tell us who touched them, what medicines they made, and even how their bodies responded to treatment?

Renaissance medical recipe books are filled with handwritten notes from readers who tested cures for everything from baldness to toothache. For years, historians have studied these annotations to understand how people experimented with medicine in the past. Our recent research goes a step further. My colleagues and I have developed a way to read not only the words on these pages, but also the invisible biological traces left behind by the people who used them.

Thousands of handwritten manuscripts and printed books survive from Renaissance Europe that record medical recipes used in everyday life. These were not rare or elite volumes. Many were printed medical “bestsellers” that circulated widely, then personalised by readers who added notes in the margins. Which recipes worked best? Which ingredients could be swapped or improved? Far from being static texts, these books were working documents. The Renaissance was an age of medical innovation, shaped by hands-on experimentation and repeated trials.

For the first time, we were able to sample and analyse invisible proteins left behind on the pages of these books by the people who handled them.

This work is a form of biochemical detective work. Every time a 16th-century reader touched a page, they deposited tiny traces of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. These traces can now be sampled using specialised film diskettes produced by SpringStyle Tech Design, which gently lift material from the surface of paper without damaging it. We sampled printed German medical books from the 16th century now held at The John Rylands Research Institute and Library at The University of Manchester. The protein samples were analysed in laboratories at the Universities of York and Oxford, while the Rylands Imaging Laboratory used advanced imaging techniques to recover faded or obscured text.

Focusing on printed books matters. Because these volumes were produced in multiple copies, we can compare biochemical traces across similar texts, helping us distinguish between what the book prescribed and what individual readers actually did with it.

This combined approach allowed us to recover remarkable information about the people who used these books, the substances they handled and the remedies they prepared. When read alongside archival sources, it offers new insight into how Renaissance medicine worked in everyday life.

On pages recommending specific remedies, we identified protein traces from the ingredients named in the recipes themselves. Watercress, European beech and rosemary appeared alongside instructions for treating hair loss or encouraging the growth of head hair and beards.

This focus on hair is not surprising. With the rise of portraiture and the expanding trade in combs and mirrors, the cultivation of beards and new hairstyles became fashionable in the Renaissance. Hair was highly visible, socially meaningful and deeply connected to ideas of health and masculinity.

Wasteful recipes

Some findings were more startling. Near a recipe proposing an extreme treatment for baldness, we detected traces of human excrement.

This closely reflects Renaissance ideas about hair. In medieval and early modern medical thought, hair was understood as a bodily excretion, grouped with substances such as sweat, faeces and nails. As scholars have bluntly put it, “hair was shit”. From this perspective, using human waste to treat hair was not grotesque but logically consistent.

We also identified proteins from bright yellow flowering plants near recipes for dyeing hair blond. These plants were not listed among the written ingredients. We cannot identify the species with certainty, but their presence suggests readers were experimenting beyond the instructions on the page, guided by colour symbolism and perceived medicinal properties. Here, experimentation becomes visible not just in marginal notes, but in the biological record itself.

Other protein traces point to the use of lizards in haircare remedies. Lizards were classified in Renaissance natural philosophy as poikilothermic animals, meaning their body temperature changes with the environment. Hair growth was believed to depend on internal bodily heat. Increasing heat was thought to stimulate hair growth, while excessive heat could destroy it. The presence of lizard proteins suggests practitioners were actively testing these competing theories by processing animal materials into remedies.

Hippo teeth

Then there is the hippopotamus. We recovered proteins consistent with hippopotamus material on pages discussing dental problems. In the margins, readers complained about foul-smelling teeth, toothache and tooth loss. In Renaissance medicine, hippopotamus bone was believed to strengthen teeth and gums and was sometimes used to make dentures. Its presence suggests that readers in 16th- and 17th-century Germany had access to exotic medical materials traded across long distances.

Our methods combine close historical reading with laboratory analysis, allowing historians to study medical practice in ways that were not previously possible. They bring together forms of evidence that are usually kept separate: texts, bodies and materials.

Perhaps most intriguingly, we also identified proteins with antimicrobial functions, including molecules commonly found in human immune responses, such as those associated with inflammation and defence against bacteria. These proteins help the body fight infection. Their presence suggests that the people handling these books were not only preparing remedies but were themselves experiencing illness or healing, leaving traces of immune activity behind.

In this sense, we can glimpse immune systems reacting to disease and treatment on the pages themselves. We are only beginning to understand what this evidence can reveal, but this work opens up entirely new ways of studying how Renaissance medicine was practised, tested and lived.

This research has been generously funded by a John Rylands Research Institute Pilot Grant 2020–21 (PI Stefan Hanß) and is a result of interdisciplinary conversations that originated at the British Academy-funded event ‘Microscopic Records: The New Interdisciplinarity of Early Modern Studies, c. 1400–1800’ (British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award BARSEA 19190084, PI Stefan Hanß, https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/microscopic-records/).

– ref. What Renaissance readers left behind in haircare books – https://theconversation.com/what-renaissance-readers-left-behind-in-haircare-books-271561

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil Saunders, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, Department of Mathematical Sciences, City St George’s, University of London

Mathematics is a “science which requires a great amount of imagination”, said the 19th-century Russian maths professor Sofya Kovalevskaya – a pioneering figure for women’s equality in this subject.

We all have an imagination, so I believe everyone has the ability to enjoy mathematics. It’s not just arithmetic but a magical mixture of logic, reasoning, pattern spotting and creative thinking.

Of course, more and more research also shows the benefits of doing puzzles like these for brain health and development. Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb’s theory of learning has come to be known as “when neurons fire together, they wire together” (which, by the way, is one of the guiding principles behind training large neural networks in AI). New pathways start to form which can build and maintain strong cognitive function.

What’s more, doing maths is often a collaborative endeavour – and can be a great source of fun and fulfilment when people work together on problems. Which brings me to these festive-themed puzzles, which can be tackled by the whole family. No formal training in maths is required, and no complicated formulas are needed to solve them.

I hope they bring you some moments of mindful relaxation this holiday season. We’ll publish the answers on Monday December 29 and add a link to them here. Good luck!

Festive maths puzzlers

Puzzle 1: You are given nine gold coins that look identical. You are told that one of them is fake, and that this coin weighs less than the real ones. You are also given a set of old-fashioned balance scales that weigh groups of objects and show which group is heavier.

Question: What is the smallest number of weighings you need to carry out to determine which is the fake coin?

Puzzle 2: You’ve been transported back in time to help cook Christmas dinner. Your job is to bake the Christmas pie, but there aren’t even any clocks in the kitchen, let alone mobile phones. All you’ve got is two egg-timers: one that times exactly four minutes, and one that times exactly seven minutes. The scary chef tells you to put the pie in the oven for exactly ten minutes and no longer.

Question: How can you time ten minutes exactly, and avoid getting told off by the chef?

Puzzle 3: Having successfully cooked the Christmas pie, you are now entrusted with allocating the mulled wine – which is currently in two ten-litre barrels. The chef hands you one five-litre bottle and one four-litre bottle, both of which are empty. He orders you to fill the bottles with exactly three litres of wine each, without wasting a drop.

Question: How can you do this?

Puzzle 4: For the sake of this quiz, imagine there are not 12 but 100 days of Christmas. On the n-th day of Christmas, you receive £n as a gift, from £1 on the first day to £100 on the final day. In other words, far too many gifts for you to be able to count all the money!

Question: Can you calculate the total amount of money you have been given without laboriously adding all 100 numbers together?

(Note: a variation of this question was once posed to the German mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss in the 18th century.)

Puzzle 5: Here’s a Christmassy sequence of numbers. The first six in the sequence are: 9, 11, 10, 12, 9, 5 … (Note: the fifth number is 11 in some versions of this puzzle.)

Question: What is the next number in this sequence?

Puzzle 6: Take a look at the following list of statements:

• Exactly one statement in this list of statements is false.

• Exactly two statements in this list are false.

• Exactly three statements in this list are false.

  … and so on until:

• Exactly 99 statements in this list are false.

• Exactly 100 statements in this list are false.

Question: Which of these 100 statements is the only true one?

Puzzle 7: You are in a room with two other people, Arthur and Bob, who both have impeccable logic. Each of you is wearing a Christmas hat which is either red or green. Nobody can see their own hat but you can all see the other two.

You can also see that both Arthur’s and Bob’s hats are red. Now you are all told that at least one of the hats is red. Arthur says: “I do not know what colour my hat is.” Then Bob says: “I do not know what colour my hat is.”

Question: Can you deduce what colour your Christmas hat is?

Puzzle 8: There are three boxes under your Christmas tree. One contains two small presents, one contains two pieces of coal, and one contains a small present and a piece of coal. Each box has a label on it that shows what’s inside – but the labels have got mixed up, so every box currently has the wrong label on it. You are now told that you can open one box.

Question: Which box should you open, in order to then be able to switch the labels so that every label correctly shows the contents of its box?

Puzzle 9: Just before Christmas dinner, naughty Jack comes into the kitchen where there is one-litre bottle of orange juice and a one-litre bottle of apple juice. He decides to put a tablespoon of orange juice into the bottle of apple juice, then stirs it around so it’s evenly mixed.

But naughty Jill has seen what he did. Now she comes in, and takes a tablespoon of liquid from the bottle of apple juice and puts it into the bottle of orange juice.

Question: Is there now more orange juice in the bottle of apple juice, or more apple juice in the bottle of orange juice?

Puzzle 10: In Santa’s home town, all banknotes carry pictures of either Santa or Mrs Claus on one side, and pictures of either a present or a reindeer on the other. A young elf places four notes on a table showing the following pictures:

    Santa   |   Mrs Claus   |   Present | Reindeer

Now an older, wiser elf tells him: “If Santa is on one side of the note, a present must be on the other.”

Question: Which notes must the young elf must turn over to confirm what the older elf says is true?

Bonus puzzle

If you need a festive tiebreaker, here’s a question that requires a little bit of algebra (and the formula “speed = distance/time”). It’s tempting to say this question can’t be solved because the distance is not known – but the magic of algebra should give you the answer.

Santa travels on his sleigh from Greenland to the North Pole at a speed of 30 miles per hour, and immediately returns from the North Pole to Greenland at a speed of 40 miles per hour.

Tiebreaker: What is the average speed of Santa’s entire journey?

(Note: a non-Christmassy version of this question was posed by the American physicist Julius Sumner-Miller.)

Neil Saunders is a supporter of the Campaign for Mathematical Sciences.

– ref. The magic of maths: festive puzzles to give your brain – and imagination – a workout – https://theconversation.com/the-magic-of-maths-festive-puzzles-to-give-your-brain-and-imagination-a-workout-272498

Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Painter, Research Associate, Reuters Institute, University of Oxford

In October 2024, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch declared herself a “net zero sceptic”, but “not a climate sceptic”. Most recently she doubled down, announcing plans to scrap the 2030 ban on new petrol cars in a 900-word Sunday Telegraph article that did not mention climate change once.

Badenoch is not an outlier. She’s following a similar script to one increasingly found in the British press.

My new research reveals a surprising trend: the linguistic divorcing of “net zero” from “climate change”. My colleague Will Vowell and I analysed more than 73,000 articles across nine UK media outlets and found that the two terms – once closely linked – are becoming more detached.

In 2018, when our data begins, the link was explicit. In that year, 90% of articles mentioning “net zero” also included the phrase “climate change” or a similar term like “global warming”. By 2024, this figure had fallen to just 42%.

We then looked at those articles where net zero appeared in the headline and at least two (other) mentions in the text. This was a more robust measure of whether the article included an important discussion about net zero, rather than a passing mention.

Here there was a similar pattern of a gradual decline. In 2018 – a year before the Conservative government brought a net zero target into law – 100% of net zero discussions also mentioned climate change. That dropped to 75% in 2022 and to 59% in 2024.

This trend was replicated in articles where net zero appeared in the headline along with at least four other mentions in the text. In this category, out of the broadsheet papers, the Times – often regarded as the UK’s paper of record – had the lowest percentage of articles referencing climate change, at 64%. Four articles in 2024 – across the Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Express – had as many as eight mentions of net zero, but no mention at all of the climate emergency it is designed to solve.

In 2018-19, there appeared to be a reasonable amount of support in newspapers for the net zero policy. For example, the Daily Mail published an article around the time of the 2019 youth climate strike headlined: “Net zero hero! How being carbon neutral will help the planet”. Fast forward to 2024, and in September the Mail published the headline “Bonkers’ net-zero target could cost 1 MILLION jobs, union chief warns”, which included four mentions of net zero but no mention of climate change.

The rise of ‘response scepticism’

Our new report was commissioned by thinktank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). Its director Peter Chalkley notes there is a “strong case” that certain papers or editors are driving an agenda to “divide climate change (an issue that the public greatly care about) from net zero (its solution, which is less understood)”.

This is part of a wider trend of “response scepticism” over the past decade in parts of the UK media. I co-authored a report published in early 2025 which found that scepticism of climate science has largely disappeared from opinion pieces and editorials, but criticism of the policies required to tackle climate change is pervasive.

“By removing the scientific and policy context,” argues Chalkley, “net zero risks being reframed – no longer the solution to stopping climate change, but part of a green culture war.”

A confused public

Despite the UK having a net zero target for more than six years, public understanding remains disappointing.

Awareness of the term is high (around 90%), but actual knowledge is low: around 50% say they knew a little, hardly anything or nothing at all about it.

In April 2025, Climate Barometer, an organisation that tracks public opinion on climate change, found 22% of people wrongly thought net zero meant “producing no carbon emissions at all”, a figure which rose to 41% among Reform supporters. The organisation argues that public confusion around the meaning of net zero and its implications for the country reflected attacks on net zero in the media and political debates.

Given these levels of public confusion and misunderstanding, reporters should remind audiences more frequently of why net zero is a necessity. At the very least, a simple statement outlining that scientists view net zero as essential to stopping global warming should be standard practice.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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James Painter receives funding from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. He is a senior visiting fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

– ref. We analysed 73,000 articles and found the UK media is divorcing ‘climate change’ from net zero – https://theconversation.com/we-analysed-73-000-articles-and-found-the-uk-media-is-divorcing-climate-change-from-net-zero-272527