Category: The Conversation – UK

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

The NHS is embarking on a trial that could cut prostate cancer diagnosis times from weeks to a single day. The initiative uses artificial intelligence to analyse MRI scans, potentially transforming care for men with the most commonly diagnosed cancer in England.

Up to 15 NHS hospitals, including Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, will pilot the system over the coming months, processing around 10,000 MRI scans. If successful, it could be rolled out nationally – though questions remain about accuracy, costs and whether faster diagnosis always means better outcomes.

The trial represents the NHS’s latest attempt to address both the emotional toll of prolonged uncertainty and the practical problem of late diagnoses that have long characterised prostate cancer care. For many men, the wait between initial suspicion and confirmed diagnosis is marked by weeks of anxiety, often while the disease progresses unchecked.

Currently, men suspected of having prostate cancer face a lengthy process. After a GP referral, it can take days or weeks to get an MRI scan, have it interpreted by a radiologist and undergo a follow-up biopsy if needed. A national shortage of radiologists has created significant bottlenecks, with some men waiting over a month for results.

The AI system changes this timeline. Once a man has had his MRI scan, the software analyses the images in minutes. Building on major researchstudies, it identifies abnormal areas and generates a probability score, mapping the exact location of suspicious lesions in the prostate.

When the software flags a scan as high-risk, it is immediately prioritised for review by a human radiologist, and the patient can be booked for a biopsy the same day. For lower-risk scans, men could receive reassuring news almost immediately rather than enduring weeks of anxious waiting.

The system aims to deliver what clinicians describe as accuracy and speed that rivals traditional methods. In some settings, AI analysis has matched or exceeded human radiologist performance, though real-world implementation will test whether laboratory results translate to busy NHS hospitals.

The case for speed

Prostate cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in England, with about one in eight men expected to be affected in their lifetime. The number of diagnoses has risen steadily, and too many men are still diagnosed when the disease is already advanced, making survival less likely and treatment more challenging.

Reducing diagnostic delay could save lives, though diagnosing some cancers earlier isn’t always better. Some slow-growing prostate cancers may never cause symptoms or shorten life, and early detection can lead to unnecessary treatment and its associated side effects. The challenge is distinguishing aggressive cancers that need urgent intervention from those that can be safely monitored.

There is also troubling variability in cancer diagnosis across the UK, with significant differences in waiting times and outcomes depending on where a patient lives. By making specialist analysis instantly available regardless of whether a hospital has a subspecialist radiologist on hand, every man, regardless of location, could theoretically benefit from the same standard of diagnostic assessment.

The system also promises to ease pressure on NHS teams. By handling initial MRI interpretation, the AI frees up radiologist time to focus on complex or urgent cases. This matters particularly given workforce pressures – the NHS has struggled to recruit and retain enough radiologists to meet growing demand.

As the NHS seeks to do more with strained resources, AI-driven tools have the potential to save time and money.

The AI won’t work alone

The technology is designed to work alongside clinicians rather than replace them. AI acts as a “second reader”, complementing radiologist expertise to ensure nothing is missed. The aim is faster and more reliable decisions – sparing men unnecessary biopsies for benign conditions while swiftly directing those with troubling signs to the right care.

This partnership approach is considered crucial. Although AI can process vast amounts of imaging data rapidly, human judgment remains essential for interpreting results in the context of each patient’s individual circumstances, medical history and symptoms. The technology is not intended to make final diagnostic decisions, but to augment clinical decision-making.

Recent research suggests that most men would welcome the invitation to take part in a national screening programme, countering assumptions about reluctance to engage with health checks. As confidence grows in AI-powered diagnostics, this could encourage more men to come forward for testing, potentially catching cancers earlier in those most at risk.

Whether the pilot delivers on its promise of reducing the time from referral to diagnosis – and whether speed translates to better outcomes – will become clearer over the coming months. The results will be closely watched by other health services considering similar approaches.

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

– ref. NHS trials AI tool for faster prostate cancer diagnosis – https://theconversation.com/nhs-trials-ai-tool-for-faster-prostate-cancer-diagnosis-268932

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tory Young, Associate Professor in Department of English Literature, Anglia Ruskin University

Canadian-born, Hungarian-British writer David Szalay has won the Booker prize for his novel, Flesh. It follows the eventful life of one Hungarian, István, from his teen years to middle age.

The novel begins when István, aged 15, and his mother move to a new town – “it’s not an easy age to do that”. Although he struggles to make friends, he hangs out with “another solitary individual” who asks him if he’s “ever done it”. This new friend sets him up with “a girl” but nothing happens. István is confused by this and his blank passivity sets the tone for the novel and his life.

Within only a few pages, an older woman neighbour for whom he’s undertaking chores at the behest of his mother, grooms him into a sexual relationship. It ends in tragedy when he falls in love with her and pushes her husband down the stairs, to his death.

Put crudely, István is motivated by sex and acts with violence. But this misrepresents the novel and its power. Rather than presenting a cliché of brute manhood, Szalay portrays a man who is simply responsive to the world around him. István’s emotions and tragedies are often left out of the third-person storytelling, as if they cannot be explained. Other men in the novel are equally uncommunicative.

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Read more:
Booker prize 2025: the six shortlisted books, reviewed by experts

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It’s a propulsive novel that’s quite quick to read because sparse dialogue is interspersed with István’s blank thoughts. He responds to declarations of love and desire with a mere “OK” or acknowledgement that: “He hadn’t actually known what he was about to say.” This is what is so singular about the storytelling of Flesh; it is spare rather than voluptuous, trimmed to the bone rather than fleshy.

There are jumps between chapters. We don’t hear about István’s time in a young offenders’ institution or anything at all about his father, for example. But we learn during an exit interview from the army that he’s “a brave man” and it’s clear that he is attractive to women, who perhaps perceive his taciturnity as masculine. We don’t hear what they think either.

Flesh wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test – a criteria for films that stipulates they should feature at least two named women who have a conversation about something other than a man. The novel is entirely focused on István’s point of view and all the women, apart from his mother, are those he chances upon – other men’s wives, the nanny employed by the family he works for – and then has a sexual relationship with. Sex comes his way; women try and fail to get him to talk.

Good fortune arrives along with the tragedies. István moves to London, working as a bouncer until, in another chance encounter and moment of fearlessness, he helps a man who wishes to repay this act. He offers to employ him in his private security agency. Like the women in the novel, men are also eager to exploit István’s physicality. This man grooms him for “higher-end work”, by paying for expensive suits and the necessary training courses, which István finds populated half by “foreigners, mainly from Eastern Europe”. It’s the start of his ascent into wealthy, sometimes corrupt, London society.

“Flesh” then refers to the way István is seen, as only a body, a member of the new working classes whose lives are defined by precarity. Kept outside, overhearing only his bare responses – “OK” – readers become complicit in this failure to consider all that man is. And it is precisely this innovative, spare narration that makes the novel so deeply affecting.

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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.

Tory Young 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. David Szalay’s Flesh wins the Booker prize – a deeply affecting novel about masculinity – https://theconversation.com/david-szalays-flesh-wins-the-booker-prize-a-deeply-affecting-novel-about-masculinity-269523

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor, The Conversation

Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is a podcast from The Conversation celebrating 250 years since Jane Austen’s birth. In each episode, we’ll be investigating a different aspect of Austen’s personality by interrogating one of her novels with leading Austen researchers. Along the way we’ll visit locations important to Austen to uncover a particular aspect of her life and the times she lived in. In episode 2, we look at Jane the romantic, through the pages of Pride and Prejudice.

Every heroine in a Jane Austen novel ends up married. It is the bow on the end of every story that ties up all the loose threads – seemingly the ultimate happy ending. However, while marriage is an conclusion she chose for her characters, it is not one she chose for herself.

Austen did have suitors – most famously the dashing Irishman Thomas Lefroy, with whom she had a brief but intense flirtation. There were even proposals, notably one in 1802 from Harris Bigg-Wither, the wealthy brother of a friend, which she accepted only to promptly break off the very next morning.

It seems likely that Austen chose singledom, even though she was clearly preoccupied with romance and marriage. Many readers consider her one of history’s greatest writers of romance.

That her novels centre on love and marriage has sometimes led critics to dismiss them as light or frivolous. But beneath every courtship and proposal lies a sharp commentary on class, money, morality and the limited choices available to women in Georgian England.

Austen’s heroines are smart, capable women – often more so than the men in their lives, many of whom have made choices that have left their families in financial straits. But these middle-class women are unable to work and so must pursue the only option really available to them, marriage.

Nowhere is this tension clearer than in Austen’s second novel, Pride and Prejudice. Published in 1813, it follows Elizabeth Bennet – bright, outspoken, and sceptical of society’s conventions. Unluckily for her, she has a mother who is obsessed with securing suitable marriages for her and her four sisters – an obsession that is sent into overdrive when the eligible Mr Bingley moves into the neighbourhood, bringing his arrogant but equally eligible friend Mr Darcy with him.

In the second episode of Jane Austen’s Paper Trail, as we explore romance in the world of Jane Austen, Naomi Joseph visits a Regency ball at the Grand Assembly Rooms in York with Meg Kobza. An expert in the Georgian social calendar, at Newcastle University, Kobza has produced similar recreations at the Bath Assembly Rooms – where Austen attended balls and was courted by several men.

As dancers in all manner of Regency dress attempt a minuet in the soft candlelight of the main ballroom, Kobza helps us understand the complicated relationship Austen had with romance.

Over the course of Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie, and the other women in her life, must navigate their feelings on the whole institution of marriage. There are marriages of convenience, potentially socially ruinous unions, hasty weddings, quiet passions and, of course, love matches – and Austen seems to have opinions on them all.

“Jane herself was dependent on her father and then later her brothers for financial security. And we see in many of her novels financial security is driving a lot of her heroines to opt for or against certain matches,” says Kobza. “If you didn’t get married at all, you became a spinster, you’re a burden to your family.”

Later on in the episode, Anna Walker takes a deeper dive into Austen’s view of romance in Pride and Prejudice with two more experts. Octavia Cox is a lecturer in 18th and 19th century literature at the University of Oxford, and founder of the popular YouTube channel All Things Classic Literature. Joining her round the table is Adam J. Smith, an associate professor in English literature at York, St. John University who researches satire and the gothic, romantic and sentimental genres.

As Cox explains, Pride and Prejudice is “a joyful love story in that the two central characters, Darcy and Lizzie talk about and value happiness and how to achieve happiness. But there’s a lot more going on too.” Smith agrees: “The more I read Austen, the more I feel that all of the books are really about how to read and understand and interpret the world.”

Listen to episode 2 of Jane Austen’s Paper Trail wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re craving more Austen, check out our Jane Austen 250 page for more expert articles celebrating the anniversary.

Disclosure statement:

Meg Kobza recieved funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy and the Society of Antiquaries funded the Bath fancy dress pop up ball and exhibition.

Adam J Smith sits on the Senate of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, which is a registered charity.

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

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Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is hosted by Anna Walker with reporting from Jane Wright and Naomi Joseph. Senior producer and sound designer is Eloise Stevens and the executive producer is Gemma Ware. Artwork by Alice Mason and Naomi Joseph.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

– ref. Jane Austen perfected the love story – but kept her own independence – https://theconversation.com/jane-austen-perfected-the-love-story-but-kept-her-own-independence-269048

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Heba Ghazal, Senior Lecturer, Pharmacy, Kingston University

A study presented at the American Heart Association’s scientific meetings has raised concerns about melatonin, one of Britain’s most commonly prescribed sleep aids. The findings suggest that long-term users face a higher risk of heart failure. But the preliminary data demands careful scrutiny before the alarm is sounded.

Melatonin has been prescribed in the UK for nearly two decades, with 2.5 million prescriptions issued in England last year alone. The drug is a synthetic version of the hormone naturally produced in the brain – the so-called “hormone of darkness” that regulates our sleep–wake cycle.

For years, it’s been considered safe for treating short-term sleep problems in adults and, under specialist supervision, for children with learning disabilities or ADHD.

The study, published only as a brief summary, analysed electronic health records of roughly 130,000 adults with sleep difficulties over five years – half of whom took melatonin and half of whom didn’t.

People who took melatonin for at least a year were roughly three times more likely to be hospitalised with heart failure than non-users (19% of people who took melatonin versus 6.6% of people who did not). Long-term users also faced higher rates of heart failure diagnosis and death from any cause.

The researchers attempted to balance their comparison by matching melatonin users with non-users across 40 factors, including age, health conditions and medications. Yet the study found only an association, not causation. This distinction matters. Correlation doesn’t prove that melatonin caused heart failure.

The devil, as ever, lives in the missing details. Only a 300-word summary of the study exists so far, meaning crucial information – melatonin dosage, insomnia severity, lifestyle factors – remains unreported.

The study’s methodology raises questions. It relied on electronic medical records rather than direct patient follow-up or interviews, which can leave gaps in the data. The research drew from TriNetX Global Research Network, a large international database. But healthcare practices and record-keeping vary wildly between hospitals and nations, potentially skewing results.

In the UK, melatonin requires a prescription for specific conditions. But in the US, it’s sold over the counter – purchases that are often not documented in medical records. This means some people categorised as non-users may actually have been taking melatonin, muddying the comparison.

The missing piece of the puzzle

Even assuming both groups were correctly identified and matched, a key question lingers: why did one group receive melatonin while the other didn’t? Perhaps those prescribed the drug suffered more severe or disruptive sleep problems – symptoms that might reflect underlying health issues, including heart problems. If so, melatonin might simply be a marker of existing risk rather than the cause of it.

Intriguingly, previous studies in heart failure patients suggested melatonin may actually protect heart health by improving psychological wellbeing and heart function. Other research indicated it could ease symptoms in people with heart failure and serve as a safe complementary therapy.

Since the study exists only as an abstract, it hasn’t undergone peer review. And information on the study’s methods and results remains limited. While the findings are noteworthy and raise legitimate questions about the long-term risks of using this supplement, they’re far from conclusive. Further studies are needed to determine whether prolonged melatonin use affects heart health, and if so, how.

Doctors face a familiar balancing act: weighing treatment benefits against potential risks. Poor sleep doesn’t just affect the heart; it’s linked to problems with metabolism, mental health and the immune system, among others.

Doctors typically start with lifestyle changes, better sleep habits and talk therapy. But when these fail to improve sleep quality, short-term medication may be necessary to restore healthy patterns and prevent further health complications.

The melatonin story isn’t over. It’s just beginning. Until fuller evidence emerges, panic seems premature.

Heba Ghazal 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. Should you worry about melatonin and heart failure? The evidence isn’t clear – https://theconversation.com/should-you-worry-about-melatonin-and-heart-failure-the-evidence-isnt-clear-269131

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gabrielle Samuel, Lecturer in Environmental Justice and Health, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London

Environmental deaths in the UK are primarily attributed to air pollution, which the Royal College of Physicians estimates contributed to around 30,000 deaths in 2025, costing the economy billions each year. Other environmental risks include climate-related events such as extreme heat, which could cause tens of thousands of deaths annually, and pollutants from diesel emissions or home wood-burning stoves.

But environmental harm does not fall evenly. It is shaped by race and social class. The unequal distribution of risk and damage, known as environmental racism, is systemic, not accidental. It is the product of decades of inequity and political neglect.

In many countries, marginalised communities are more likely to live with polluted air, unsafe water and toxic land. In England, for example, data shows people from ethnic minority backgrounds are around three times more likely than white people to live in neighbourhoods with high air pollution.

A joint Greenpeace UK and Runnymede Trust report found that communities of colour are disproportionately affected by waste incinerators, poor housing quality and limited access to green space.

Environmental racism shows up in decisions about where factories are built, whose neighbourhoods get green spaces, whose water systems are upgraded, and who lives next to landfills, toxic waste facilities or heavy-polluting industries. Put bluntly, some communities are forced to carry the weight of environmental damage so others do not have to.

The term gained prominence in the US in the late 20th century when low-income communities of colour mobilised around anti-waste and anti-dumping campaigns. The 1987 toxic wastes and race report by the United Church of Christ showed that hazardous waste facilities were overwhelmingly located in minority and low-income areas.

It helped launch the modern environmental justice movement, which crystallised in 1991 at the first National People of Colour Environmental Leadership Summit, where delegates drafted the seventeen principles of environmental justice.

Since then, evidence of environmental racism has been documented worldwide — from the siting of polluting industries and the dumping of waste in the global south to unequal access to renewable energy and the health impacts of climate change itself.

Where we live is one of the strongest predictors of our health. When environments are unsafe, polluted or neglected, the consequences are devastating. The World Health Organization estimates that environmental factors contribute to nearly one-quarter of all deaths worldwide and almost 20% of cancers. Living with constant exposure to hazards also takes a toll on mental health, fuelling stress, anxiety and despair.

In the UK, air pollution remains the single biggest environmental threat to health. It is linked to asthma, heart disease and respiratory illness.

Yet exposure is not equally distributed. Local emissions from transport, heating and industry are higher on average in more deprived areas. A 2024 study also showed that, even after accounting for deprivation, minoritised ethnic groups in England remain exposed to higher levels of harmful emissions.

These environmental burdens do not just damage lungs; they affect livelihoods. Poor health means missed work or school, deepening financial and educational struggles. Families who want to move to safer areas often cannot afford to, trapping communities in a cycle of disadvantage.

There are, however, signs of progress. Recent data show that ethnic minorities’ exposure to air pollution in England fell from 13% above the national average in 2003 to 6% in 2023.

This narrowing reflects two decades of cleaner-air policies: low-emission zones, stricter vehicle standards and tighter industrial regulation. Yet it also reflects residential shifts, as some families move away from heavily polluted urban centres, rather than the full dismantling of structural inequalities.

So while the trend is encouraging, it does not mean environmental racism has been solved. As the Race Equality Foundation warns, the UK still lacks a coordinated strategy that explicitly addresses race and class disparities in environmental exposure, community consultation and land-use decision-making.

Polluted air, toxic stress and systemic neglect become embodied as disease — quite literally getting “under the skin”, as public health scholar Nancy Krieger puts it. The damage accumulates across lifetimes and generations.

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Read more:
Who controls the air we breathe at home? Awaab’s law and the limits of individual actions

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Environmental racism is not just an environmental issue. It is a health issue, a justice issue and a life-or-death issue. That reality places a moral obligation on governments, institutions and industries to act.

But history shows that change rarely comes easily. Too often, action only follows public outrage, and solutions are framed as technical fixes — treating the symptoms rather than the causes. Those causes are about power: who holds it, who benefits from it, and who is left to suffer its consequences.

Dismantling environmental racism requires more than installing air filters or building treatment plants. It demands a reckoning with history and a redistribution of power – giving the communities most affected a real seat at the table when decisions are made. Only then can we begin to talk about health for all.

Gabrielle Samuel 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. Pollution, poverty and power: the real cost of environmental inequality in the UK – https://theconversation.com/pollution-poverty-and-power-the-real-cost-of-environmental-inequality-in-the-uk-263936

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maha Rafi Atal, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in Political Economy, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

The Cop30 climate summit is under way in Brazil under the shadow of US president Donald Trump’s second term. Delegates from around the world have poured into the Amazonian port of Belém for the conference, which promises to focus on economic development and the fight against global poverty, as well as green tech and finance.

For the first time in three decades of the talks, there are no high-level US officials expected at Cop30. Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate agreement, dismantled key environmental regulations, and scrapped Biden-era tax credits which were designed to promote wind and solar power.

And now Trump’s aggressive tariff policy is rippling through the global economy, forcing countries to rethink how they balance trade and climate commitments.

For the UK, the consequences are particularly acute. Post-Brexit, Britain must maintain close regulatory alignment with the European Union on many goods. This effectively means that despite having quit the EU, the UK voluntarily follows its single market rules in some sectors in order to minimise trade friction.

For its part, the bloc has made compliance with European environmental standards a requirement for firms in key sectors looking to export into the EU market. Under this regulation, a foreign company selling products to European consumers must report on the carbon footprint of their factories overseas. Companies are fined per unit of carbon emitted before the product gets to the EU.

To be exempt, companies will have to show that the foreign countries where the good was produced impose an equivalent type of carbon regulation to that in EU law.

These “carbon border” mechanisms are vital for cutting emissions in a globalised economy. The UK has committed to introducing a similar measure to some of the most polluting sectors (such as steel, aluminium, cement and fertiliser) in 2027.

At the same time, the UK government hopes that closer trade with the United States will drive economic growth. But the Trump administration is pressuring its European partners to relax environmental standards, or exempt US companies from complying with them, in exchange for tariff relief. This could leave the UK caught between its two most important allies.

Race to the bottom

The ripple effects extend far beyond Europe. With the carbon border increasing the cost of exports to the EU and Trump’s tariffs doing the same for access to US markets, many countries are seeking new trading routes.

This creates openings for major carbon emitters such as China, Russia and the Gulf states to expand their influence through deals with developing nations that are unable to pay the premium for entry into US or European markets.

The result could be the creation of “sacrifice zones” – regions that become dumping grounds for high-emission products such as electronics or vehicles made with steel or aluminium produced using cheaper, less sustainable production methods. This both damages local environments and deepens global inequality in the transition to a more sustainable economy.

Meanwhile, tariffs are expected to slow down global economic growth. Businesses are diverting funds from investment and job creation to cover the extra cost of trade barriers – potentially wiping US$2 trillion (£1.5 trillion) off world GDP over the next two years.

That shortfall could have serious implications for Cop30, where rich countries will be asked to increase financial support for poorer nations so that they can build renewable energy systems and recover from climate-related disasters such as floods and wildfires.

Amid all the uncertainty that Trump is creating with his impulsive and inconsistent approach to trade, governments may feel that they cannot afford to make these commitments right now. But the planet cannot afford for them to wait.

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The Conversation and LSE’s International Inequalities Institute have teamed up for a special online event on Tuesday, November 18 from 5pm-6.30pm. Join experts from the worlds of business, taxation and government policy as they discuss the difficult choices facing Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her budget. Sign up for free here

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Maha Rafi Atal 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 Trump’s trade policies are weakening international climate commitments – https://theconversation.com/how-trumps-trade-policies-are-weakening-international-climate-commitments-269409

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicola Walshe, Professor of Education, UCL

Education about climate change and sustainability is a vital part of responding to a rapidly changing world, including the negative effects of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

Teachers, including in Brazil and England, help young people live with futures shaped by local and global environmental challenges. However, despite expressing overwhelming concern about issues related to climate change and sustainability, many teachers do not feel equipped to teach it in schools.

Urgent action from policymakers is needed to support them.

Teachers shape how young people understand and respond to environmental crises. Without proper support, students risk leaving school unprepared for some of the most urgent challenges of our time: this is a societal risk, not just an educational issue.

Despite public demand for action in response to climate change, schools often lack the expertise and resources to realise this. Empowering teachers means building stronger communities: when well-equipped teachers foster agency and action, not just knowledge and skills.

Young people can bring ideas home, influence families and drive local change. So climate change and sustainability education becomes a catalyst for resilience and transformation, essential for preparing the next generation to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Leaders from across the world are coming together in Brazil to discuss progress and negotiate actions in response to climate change as part of an annual UN climate summit (Cop30). This provides a vital opportunity to underline for global leaders the support that teachers and schools need.

Over the last few years, we have worked with hundreds of teachers in both England and Brazil to explore their experiences of teaching climate change and sustainability. Teachers have shared with us the barriers they experience related to climate change and sustainability education and the support they need to overcome them. While there is diversity in terms of geographical context, there are many commonalities.

Barriers

Education systems which have a rigid national curriculum with an emphasis on high-stakes examinations create barriers for teachers in both England and Brazil. Existing systems require teachers to prioritise examination content which frequently has limited focus on climate change and sustainability topics.

Teachers in both countries reported challenges in teaching climate change and sustainability in ways that underlined the real-world relevance to the lives of the young people they teach.

Another limitation is the lack of opportunities for professional learning that support teachers in integrating climate change and sustainability into their teaching. This gap exists throughout their careers, such that they frequently share they have insufficient or insecure knowledge and understanding of climate change and sustainability issues. This lowers teachers’ confidence and limits their classroom practices.

Boosts

Governments can better support teachers by ensuring that climate change and sustainability is explicitly recognised and valued in local, regional and national policies that govern schools. This could include national curricula, professional standards for teachers and school leaders and school-inspection frameworks.

Teachers in both England and Brazil recognise how important it is to have school leaders who value climate change and sustainability and how – when school leaders provide a culture of support across the school community – this is transformational for climate change and sustainability education.

All teachers can benefit from high-quality professional learning focused on climate change and sustainability education from the beginning of their careers and throughout their professional lives. When teachers have the time and support to co-design learning – with each other and with their students – which draws on different ways of understanding climate change and sustainability issues, this builds teacher confidence and provides richer learning experiences for children and young people.

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Read more:
Three ways for schools to make climate education inclusive for all children

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Climate change and sustainability education is essential for preparing young people to navigate and shape a rapidly changing world, but teachers cannot carry this responsibility alone.

By embedding climate change and sustainability in curricula and supporting career-long professional learning for teachers, classrooms can be transformed into sites of agency and local action. This can amplify young people’s influence in their communities and reduce a wider societal risk of leaving a generation unprepared.

Cop30 offers a timely moment for leaders to commit to support for teachers so that policy matches public concern and evidence-based practice translates into real-world resilience.

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Nicola Walshe acknowledges the significant input of our co-researcher Lizzie Rushton, Danielle Aparecida Reis Leite for her support with the in-person workshop in Brazil, and the contribution of colleagues based at the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education in the creation and implementation of the Teacher survey. Thanks also go to the teachers in England and Brazil who contributed to the research. This work was supported by funding from UCL Institute of Education’s Strategic Investment Board.

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

– ref. How to empower teachers and help students prepare for a sustainable future – https://theconversation.com/how-to-empower-teachers-and-help-students-prepare-for-a-sustainable-future-268689

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ryann Donnelly, Assistant Professor in Art History, School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex

Today is the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith’s album, Horses. I feel honoured to reflect on this work, but also a tremendous amount of pressure to capture what it is for the people who love it, and – perhaps even more so – for those who are not yet familiar with Smith’s music.

I desperately want to convince you to listen to this album and to see her perform, as if your life depends on it. I want you to tremble under her spell. I recognise this aim suggests a certain level of bias, but I actually don’t consider myself a “super-fan”.

I have seen Smith several times across a significant amount of time, which should allow me to offer some insights about her work. I first saw her perform in 2000, when I was 14 years old. I saw her again on New Year’s Eve in 2011 at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC, and in London in 2015 and 2018. I’ve read her first memoir, Just Kids (her third, Bread of Angels is published this week). But I can’t recount her life story. I just think she’s cool as hell.

I clarify the particular angles of my vantage point to emphasise that the urgency and embrace I’m encouraging here, and indeed the transformation I’m just shy of promising, still feels quite measured. As someone who examines queer and feminist performance for a living, I’ve given it some thought: Patti Smith still cuts to the bone.

This is for a variety of reasons, but in my campaign to compel a new audience to her and perhaps galvanise some shared feelings among her existing appreciators, I’ll elaborate on three.

1. A sense of magic and incantation

Seriously: magic and incantation. I have a friend who immediately chants: “Horses! Horses!” whenever actual horses come up in conversation, regardless of context. The delivery is reminiscent of Smith’s on what I consider to be the title track of Horses (the actual title is the poetic, if longwinded: Land: Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances/La Mer[de]).

The song physically moves me. I nod my head and lift my heel, then drop it on the down beat and it feels good. I’m in it. It’s in me.
These are the aftershocks of possession. These songs have been put in us, along with a heat – I think the literal friction of joy and pleasure being stirred in us as we listen or recite.

What I’m describing relies on Smith’s singular way of building a sonic momentum. The rhythm, dynamics and crooked jangly tones of the guitar at times seem to competitively race the drums.

On Birdland, this black magic swells through pounding eighth notes on a slightly out-of-tune piano that collide with waves and washes of distorted guitar as Smith seems to chase words out of her mouth – poetry that rattles out breathlessly like a cautionary sermon: “White lids, white opals, seeing everything just a little bit too clearly. And he looked around and there was no black ship in sight. No black funeral cars, nothing except him the raven.”

I will acknowledge here her long-time guitarist and co-writer, Lenny Kaye, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, Horses bassist Ivan Král, and the album’s producer, John Cale – formerly of the Velvet Underground. But the brutal thrash of affect comes directly from Smith, and is more potent live than you could ever imagine from listening to the records alone.

I have been so overwhelmed by her spasm, the vibration of her bones, I worried her heart would explode. Through lyrical and rhythmic incantation, her music produces a trance, and she gets there, with you. This feels most dangerous and is most totally levelling when she performs Gloria: In Excelsis Duo.

It is an adaptation of Van Morrison’s Gloria, her best-known song next to her Bruce Springsteen collaboration, Because the Night, and one I couldn’t get past when I first heard Horses 26 years ago. I just kept playing it over and over and over. I still can’t listen to it just once. This song leads me to my second point though – the second reason Horses is so raw and compelling.

2. Sexuality and sensuality

It’s all over. It’s prismatic. It’s her cool masculine dress – her blazers paired with collared shirts or ripped cotton Ts – and her wiry, slinky form. It’s in the enveloping reggae sway of Redondo Beach. It’s the nakedness and aesthetics of her lyrics. It’s in the words – the story – but it’s in the horny, desperate, silky sounds she makes too, and how she signals sex with lewd, obvious motions.

In Gloria, she grunts, hisses, and does these snarling, vocal flips that play at the edges of the ecstatic with a delicate control, before she eventually just completely loses it as she describes the character of Gloria getting physically closer, walking toward the male character whom Smith has occupied, and psychically penetrated and exposed.

As she spells out Gloria’s name, she leans in gutturally to the “O” with an “Ohhhhh” and reduces the “R” to an “Ahhhhh”, slowing everything down to the vowels of sexual moaning, before speeding right back up, repeating in a raging, choral freakout: G-L-O-R-I-A!

3. Showing up

My final point is based on something Smith wailed the first time I saw her. She was getting totally worked up, shaking, freaking out, and started intoning: “I forget the words! I forget the words!”. She seemed totally lost and upset, grumbling in non-word noise for a bit before something emerged: “You better… you better… you better take care of your teeth for when the revolution comes!”

I was absolutely certain that she was having a psychotic episode. But, she said it again when I saw her in 2018, and when asked in a recent TV interview if she had any advice for young people, she repeated: “Take care of your teeth” (along with the self-deprecating: “Don’t listen to me”).

I think she does mean this literally, but also that you have to keep showing up: taking care of yourself, and contributing in small or even mundane ways to bigger things – stay creative, keep making art.

Smith has continued to write music, books and poetry, and tour and perform with the same shocking level of intensity past the peak of her commercial success. She has also continued to collaborate and engage with contemporary music. When I first saw her in 2000 a still-emerging version of the now legendary feminist punk band, Sleater Kinney opened her show, and Smith covered Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana.

Just this week, Rosalía, one of the biggest contemporary pop acts, included a clip of Smith from an interview in 1976 on her new song, La Yugular. Smith speaks about “breaking through” doors, and into levels of heaven, but says you have to keep breaking through: “One door isn’t enough. A million doors aren’t enough.”

This is the spirit that runs through Horses, through Patti Smith’s entire oeuvre, and has made her a lasting, powerful presence.

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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, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Ryann Donnelly 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. Horses at 50: three reasons why Patti Smith still cuts to the bone – https://theconversation.com/horses-at-50-three-reasons-why-patti-smith-still-cuts-to-the-bone-269418

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Harriet Earle, Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, Sheffield Hallam University

It has been a major year for Stephen King films. Four of his stories have hit cinemas in 2025: The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, The Long Walk and The Running Man. And two more have graced the small screen – The Institute and the Pennywise origin series It: Welcome to Derry.

Indeed, there was a moment in British cinemas earlier in the year, where you could watch The Life of Chuck and have the film preceded by trailers for the other three cinematic adaptations, making King’s work feel ubiquitous right now.

Both The Long Walk and The Running Man were originally written by King under his pseudonym Richard Bachman – a name he used to try out dark stories that leaned more towards speculative fiction. In his 1982 novella, The Running Man, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) takes part in a reality show that will earn him $1 billion (£750 million), provided he survives 30 days. No one ever has, but Richards’ daughter is gravely ill and his wife has turned to sex work to earn money to try to pay for her treatment.

Apt for its current adaptation, the novella takes place in an alternate 2025 and speaks of a future we recognise from other dystopias. A previous adaptation was released in 1987, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But as critics noted at the time, fidelity to the source material ended with the title. The 80s version was a glitzy action romp complete with gold spandex, but the book is far darker. In our current era of reality television and grasping fame, it has new things to say.

The new adaptation arrives against a backdrop of similar stories, such as the massively popular Netflix drama, Squid Game (2021-2025) and the Hunger Games franchise (2012-present). There have also been similar reality TV shows such as Squid Game: The Challenge (2023-2025), Take the Money and Run (2011), and Hunted (2015-present).

The Running Man ties into a popular survival sub-genre, that can be traced back to films such as The Most Dangerous Game (1936). Literary theorist Terry Thompson describes these films as having not only a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” quality, but also “an exotic setting, stereotypical characters, melodramatic acting, and a preposterous plotline”.

The Bachman books

There are seven books by King’s alter-ego, Richard Bachman. King reportedly came up with the pseudonym because the publishing industry at the time had an unspoken rule about releasing one book per year. He also had a desire to test his fame, and see whether books under a different name would sell as well.

In general, the Bachman books are bleaker than King’s other works. Rage, first published in 1977, concerns a violent and disaffected young man who commits a school shooting in response to his expulsion. Following a rash of similar shootings and, more importantly, copies of Rage being found among a perpetrators’ belongings, King asked his publisher to withdraw it from print.

The third Bachman Book is The Long Walk. It was published in 1978, and adapted into a film this year by Francis Lawrence, who has directed all of the Hunger Games sequels and prequels. Published in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam war, the novella follows an annual event where young men compete in a harrowing contest – a walk that lasts until only one remains. Anyone who stops walking is killed.

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Read more:
The Long Walk: a brutal, brilliant film about suffering in the name of patriotism

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It’s dystopian, violent, televised pseudo-entertainment, which contestants see as the only way to guarantee a decent quality of life. This feels like a heavy handed metaphor for the late 1970s when readers were exposed to the nightly televised horrors of the war in Vietnam.

Moreover, it speak to the current political moment, where exploiting oneself for entertainment purposes is seen as a viable (if not desirable) career choice and while huge numbers of people are barely subsisting. King was likely influenced by the 1969 adaptation of Horace McCoy’s novel They Shoot Horses Don’t They? about a lethal dancing competition to be won by the last woman standing.

It remains to be seen if Edgar Wright’s version of The Running Man will hold close to the original, dark novel or whether some glimmers of Arnie’s spandex will creep in – the trailer suggests it’s closer to the former.

The publication of The Running Man and The Long Walk were contemporaneous with the birth of predatory Capitalism, in which company profits are maximised by any means permissible within a society’s ethical norms, leading to Reaganomics in the 1980s.

This, combined with post-Vietnam atrocities taking place in the US itself, created the environment for King’s books. He combines satire and science fiction to criticise capitalism – showing TV shows where people compete for money even at the cost of humiliation or violence, and societies where people will kill innocents simply because they are told to.

In the present day, with troops in the US occupying cities due to Trumped-up myths about civil disobedience, and game shows inspired by dystopian fiction where contestants are allegedly getting “hypothermia and nerve damage”, these scenarios seem very relevant again.

There have been 57 adaptations of King’s work over the past 40 years, so he’s obviously a reasonable guarantee of healthy profits. And, It: Welcome to Derry even seems to suggest the birth of a King Cinematic Universe, with a character from The Shining also appearing in the series.

While The Running Man and The Long Walk are game show dystopias, this year’s other two King films mix cursed prophecy (predictions of inevitable character deaths to come) and visions of the apocalypse. Squint, and you could make a connection with the terrors facing humanity in general, such as climate change and the resurrection of potential nuclear conflict. However The Monkey treats the apocalypse as black comedy and The Life of Chuck’s world-ending vision (spoiler alert) turns out to be the sleeping fantasy of a dying man, in a film otherwise about the goodness and charm of mankind.

So, in a year that is the second most populous for King’s works on screen (only exceeded in 2017), there’s still something notable about his work. These adaptations hold a mirror up to society’s problems and treat them with horror and disdain. And since a number of these films show resistance to malevolent forces, perhaps they still offer hope for the future.

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

– ref. How Stephen King’s Bachman stories are fuelling 2025’s dark cinematic moments – https://theconversation.com/how-stephen-kings-bachman-stories-are-fuelling-2025s-dark-cinematic-moments-269244

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yolanda Lok Yiu Lau, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Queen Mary University of London

A ten-week online brain training programme helped older adults’ brains act as though they were a decade younger, a recent study has found.

Much like exercise for the body, regular mental workouts can help keep the brain in shape. As we age, brain processes that support memory, attention and decision-making can become less efficient. Keeping the mind active is thought to build a reserve that helps people cope better with these age-related changes.

Studies suggest that people who stay mentally, physically and socially active have a lower risk of developing dementia. For example, in a study involving 120 older adults, those who engaged in regular aerobic exercise had larger brain volumes and better cognitive performance than those who were less active, reversing age-related loss in brain volume over a couple of years.

Studies have also found that brain training can improve older adults’ cognitive performance.

The latest study adds to what we know by testing whether brain training programmes – BrainHQ, in this instance – can change the brain’s chemistry, offering biological clues about how brain training might work.

BrainHQ is a brain training app that offers short, game-like exercises that train cognitive skills such as attention, memory and brain speed. As users improve, the challenges get harder, pushing the brain to adapt – much like increasing the weights during a workout.

Ninety-two healthy adults from Canada, 65 and older, took part. Half of them completed brain training exercises using BrainHQ for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, over ten weeks. The other half, a comparison group, spent the same amount of time playing games designed just for entertainment, such as solitaire.

To see whether the programme made a difference to the brain, all participants had specialised scans before and after the ten weeks of training. These scans can detect tiny chemical changes in brain activity.

The researchers focused on a region called the anterior cingulate cortex, which plays an important role in attention, learning and memory. Those who completed the speed-based exercises showed stronger activity in this area compared to those in the comparison group. The change in brain chemicals seen is described by the researchers as equivalent to shaving ten years off their biological age.

Ageing and cognitive decline (including Alzheimer’s disease) are often linked to reduced activity in this part of the brain. Strengthening it may therefore help delay or reduce cognitive decline and lower the risk of developing dementia later in life.

Although the results look promising, we should be careful about how we interpret them. The study measured many different outcomes. Although the brain training group showed increased activity compared with their own baseline, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant.

Because the study looked at so many outcomes and involved only a small number of people, some of these changes may simply be due to chance rather than real effects of the training.

The bigger picture

This was a small study involving healthy, mostly white older adults, and it looked at one specific brain training app. The findings may not apply to people with memory problems or to other types of brain-training programmes, or to longer-term outcomes.

This intervention is relatively short. Research found that most interventions aiming to improve cognitive performance that are successful typically last at least four to six months. Longer-term participation is almost certainly key to achieving lasting improvement in brain health.

Studies like this rely on brain scans as early indicators of benefit, but it remains to be seen whether these biological changes translate into lasting improvements in functioning. Researchers are testing whether similar brain-training programmes can help people who show early signs of dementia. These studies will reveal whether boosting brain activity this way can slow cognitive decline in those already showing symptoms.

High-intensity interventions – such as the one tested that required two and a half hours of training per week – may not suit everyone.

For example, people with existing cognitive concerns who want to improve their cognitive wellbeing may struggle to access digital programmes. They may need more community-based, supportive and lower-intensity interventions. To be an effective dementia programme, recruitment needs to be inclusive, especially reaching people from underserved groups who are at the highest risk.

Cognitive ageing is shaped by many factors – including physical activity, social connection, healthy diet and mental wellbeing – so brain training is likely to be just one part of a broader approach to supporting brain health and dementia prevention. Keeping the mind active may not stop ageing, but it could help the brain stay younger for longer.

Yolanda Lok Yiu Lau 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. Can brain training really shave ten years off brain ageing, as a recent study suggests? – https://theconversation.com/can-brain-training-really-shave-ten-years-off-brain-ageing-as-a-recent-study-suggests-268904