Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ruth Barton, Professor in Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin

The recent death of Robert Redford was a reminder of just how much All the President’s Men unsettled old certainties about American democracy. An exposé of the Watergate scandal of 1972 (when members of the campaign to re-elect Richard Nixon were caught planting secret recording devices at the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate building), Alan J. Pakula’s film fed into an increasing sense that the institutions of American governance were riddled with corruption.

Maybe not everyone agreed with Pakula’s dark vision. But he was not alone. Over the years since, Oliver Stone could also be relied on to make state-of-the-nation cinema, as could Martin Scorsese – or before them, Frank Capra. Such films attempted to capture, usually to critique, the national mood at that moment in time.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, One Battle After Another, suggests that there is still a place for challenging filmmaking in today’s culture. Along with the recently released Eddington by director Ari Aster, these new state-of-the-nation films explore an America that is in crisis and throw it in our faces in staggering, epic narratives.

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

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Both films speak to the chaos of a social order that is falling apart. Both, but particularly Eddington, also threaten to be so overwhelmed by this chaos that they end up by falling into incoherence.

The term, “incoherence”, is not chosen at random. One of the seminal texts for film scholars of the 1980s was Robin Wood’s The Incoherent Text, Narrative in the 70s. Looking back at a series of films from this decade, Wood argued that “here, incoherence is no longer hidden and esoteric: the films seem to crack open before our eyes”. These two films do much the same, exposing through chaos something incomprehensible about our times and falling into incoherence in the process.

Set during the pandemic in a desert town, Eddington hurls itself from one flashpoint to the next. The sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) refuses to wear a mask and this apparently minor infraction soon pits him against his old enemy and competitor in love, Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Borrowing from Maga-style campaigning, Cross enters the election as candidate for new mayor.

At home, Cross is living with his conspiracy theory-loving mother-in-law, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell). His wife Louise (Emma Stone) is retreating further into mental illness and isolation.

On the edges of this, a mysterious conglomerate is building a data centre just outside of town. Race riots are also breaking out following the George Floyd killing. But there is much more to come.

Director Ari Aster could hardly have dreamed up more issues than he does here. With so much weight piling onto the narrative, Eddington concludes with an extended shoot-out that tips an already over-extended film into terminal disarray.

One Battle After Another, like Eddington, is a truly American film. Where Aster shot his neo-western in classic Panavision, Anderson goes one further, following The Brutalist in creating a VistaVision print, a format that is best experienced on a 70mm screen. These formats hark back to Hollywood’s grandiose epics of the 1950s, adding to the films’ evocation of history – both filmic and social.

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Read more:
One Battle After Another is the latest film shot in VistaVision, a 1950s format making a big comeback

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A further historical layering is Anderson’s source material for One Battle, Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. Anderson updates Vineland’s kaleidoscopic exhumation of the revolutionary movements of the 60s by casting his ageing hippie hero, now called Bob (Leonardo di Caprio), as a relic of a fictional noughties brigade, the French 75. Led by his lover Perfidia Beverley Hills (Teyana Taylor), they robbed banks, bombed buildings and liberated detention centres in the name of their ideology of “free borders, free choices, free from fear”.

Left to bring up their daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti) as a single parent, Bob spends his days off-grid unshaven, smoking weed, and watching the classic political drama, The Battle of Algiers. All is (somewhat) well until the brutal army veteran, Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who believes himself to be Willa’s real father, barrels back into their lives in pursuit of his “daughter”.

In common with Eddington, One Battle is at heart a family melodrama. It draws on the classic tropes of bad versus good father and conflicted mother, questioning the legitimacy of the family unit. On to these narratives bones, Anderson grafts a vision of a post-Obama America in thrall to shadowy corporate interests, a legacy of rounding up and deporting immigrants, and an old white male order hell-bent on its own agenda of personal revenge.

Robin Wood concluded his thoughts on American cinema of the 70s with the prognosis that in their incoherence they pointed to one inescapable solution: the logical necessity for radicalism.

Aster and Anderson have looked radicalism in the eye and dismissed it as yet another failed ideology. Neither names the forces behind their vision of the end of American democracy and, to be fair, the current political crisis postdates both films’ completion in early 2024.

Where Aster sees only bloodshed and impotence, Anderson clings on to a fragile utopianism that in the present day is as unlikely as it is consoling. After the lights have gone up, it may well be that what his film leaves behind is its terrifying imagery of detention centres and the horror of immigrant round-ups. It is this certainly that led Steven Spielberg to acclaim “this insane movie” as more relevant than Anderson could ever have imagined.

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Ruth Barton 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. One Battle After Another: this insane movie about leftwing radicals and rightwing institutions is a powerful exploration of US today – https://theconversation.com/one-battle-after-another-this-insane-movie-about-leftwing-radicals-and-rightwing-institutions-is-a-powerful-exploration-of-us-today-265818

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ioannis Kokkoris, Professor of Competition Law and Economics, Queen Mary University of London

A US judge recently decided not to break up Google, despite a ruling last year that the company held a monopoly in the online search market. Between Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Meta, there are more than 45 ongoing antitrust investigations in the EU (the majority under the new EU Digital Markets Act) and in the US.

While the outcome could have been much worse for Google, other rulings and investigations have the potential to cut to the heart of how the big tech companies make money. As such, these antitrust cases can drive real change around how the tech giants do business – with implications both for their competitors and for ordinary users.

Some investigations focus on potential breaches of longstanding competition legislation, such as restricting the ability of software to work with other software, while others address controversies that have emerged only in the last few years.

Previous antitrust cases have been based on decades-old competition legislation, namely the US Sherman Act, passed in 1890, and the EU’s treaty on the functioning of the European Union, the first iteration of which was signed in 1957. More recent cases in the EU have been based on the newer Digital Markets Act.

A quick search shows at least 15 different countries (including individual countries within the EU) where competition authorities have initiated or concluded investigations into Google’s business practices.

When US Judge Amit Mehta decided not to order a break up of Google in August, or to force the company to sell off its internet browser, Google Chrome – which had both been raised as potential outcomes – he instead imposed a number of other commitments on the company.

Hefty fines

In September 2025, the European Commission also imposed a fine of €2.95bn (£2.5 billion) on Google, in relation to its search advertising practices. The commission said that Google favoured its own online display advertising technology services “to the detriment of competing providers”.

In a statement, Google called the fine “unjustified” and said the changes would “hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money”.

These investigations are not limited to the search giant, however. In the last few years, Microsoft, Apple and Meta have also been under investigation by the EU. So how should we interpret this flurry of enforcement against the tech giants and what does the future hold for them?

Competition investigations hit at the core of these companies’ business activities, so they have an extremely high incentive to fight for every conceivable aspect of their business model. Voluntarily giving some parts of their business up would mean foregoing substantial profits.

Companies clearly have to weigh up the potential downsides of compromising over their business approaches against hefty fines and major restrictions over how they operate in particular territories. In the US case involving Google, major changes to the company had been on the table, including a sell-off of the Google Chrome browser. Needless to say, this would have dealt a major blow to the company.

In 2023, the European Commission started an investigation into Microsoft over the company tying its Microsoft Teams software to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software suites. The investigation was initiated following a complaint by Slack, which makes software that competes with Teams.

The way this case concluded is one example of how tech companies can mitigate damage to their business. Microsoft presented its own commitments to the European Commission over the Teams investigation.

The tech giant had to amend its original proposal following market testing by the European Commission, but in September, they were accepted by the Commission. The commitments include making available versions of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 without Teams and at a reduced price.

Behaviour change

Where possible, by offering their own commitments, companies can retain a degree of control and, potentially, avoid a fine. Other recent cases show that those fines can be substantial. In April, the Commission fined Apple €500m after it said the company had breached the Digital Markets Act by preventing app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the app store.

In July, Apple launched an appeal against the decision, saying that the Commission went “far beyond what the law requires” in the dispute.

The commission has also investigated Meta over the company’s “pay-or-consent” advertising model. Under the model, EU users of Facebook and Instagram had a choice between their personal data gathered from different Meta services being combined for advertising, or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service. Finding that the company had breached the Digital Markets Act, the Commission fined Meta €200 million.

The commission says that when it decides that companies are not complying with legislation, it can impose fines up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide turnover. Such fines can go up to 20% in case of repeated infringement.

In cases of continued non-compliance, the commission can oblige tech companies to sell a business or parts of it, or banning them from acquisitions of other companies involved in areas related to their non-compliance.

Such intervention is likely to place boundaries on any big tech company with regard to their business practices towards competitors and users. As discussed, we have already started to see some evidence of this.

Users are now able to use different services from the companies without having to give consent to their data. There will also be changes in how users engage with some of these services. For example, you may not be able to click on a hyperlinked hotel in a map contained in search results in order to go to its booking website.

Reduced linking was carried out in the EU for Google Maps because of perceptions about the company’s dominance in the search market.

But overall, the expectation is that in the not too distant future, big tech will be more constrained in the business models they adopt, especially where they relate to market competition.

Ioannis Kokkoris 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. Despite Google’s recent victory, a flurry of competition cases could still change how the tech giants do business – https://theconversation.com/despite-googles-recent-victory-a-flurry-of-competition-cases-could-still-change-how-the-tech-giants-do-business-264890

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna M. Zamorano, Assistant Professor, Aarhus University

It’s well known that learning to play an instrument can offer benefits beyond just musical ability. Indeed, research shows it’s a great activity for the brain – it can enhance our fine motor skills,language acquisition, speech, and memory – and it can even help to keep our brains younger.

After years of working with musicians and witnessing how they persist in musical training despite the pain caused by performing thousands of repetitive movements, I started wondering: if musical training can reshape the brain in so many ways, can it also change the way musicians feel pain, too? This is the question that my colleagues and I set out to answer in our new study.

Scientists already know that pain activates several reactions in our bodies and brains, changing our attention and thoughts, as well as our way of moving and behaving. If you touch a hot pan, for example, pain makes you pull back your hand before you get seriously burned.

Pain also changes our brain activity. Indeed, pain usually reduces activity in the motor cortex, the area of the brain that controls muscles, which helps stop you from overusing an injured body part.

These reactions help to prevent further harm when you’re injured. In this way, pain is a protective signal that helps us in the short term. But if pain continues for a longer time and your brain keeps sending these “don’t move” signals for too long, things can go wrong.

For example, if you sprain your ankle and stop using it for weeks, it can reduce your mobility and disrupt the brain activity in regions related to pain control. And this can increase your suffering and pain levels in the long term.

Research has also found that persistent pain can shrink what’s known as our brain’s “body map” – this is where our brain sends commands for which muscles to move and when – and this shrinking is linked with worse pain.

But while it’s clear that some people experience more pain when their brain maps shrink, not everyone is affected the same way. Some people can better handle pain, and their brains are less sensitive to it. Scientists still don’t fully understand why this happens.

Musicians and pain

In our study, we wanted to look at whether musical training and all the brain changes it creates could influence how musicians feel and deal with pain. To do this, we deliberately induced hand pain over several days in both musicians and non-musicians to see if there was any difference in how they responded to the pain.

To safely mimic muscle pain, we used a compound called nerve growth factor. It’s a protein that normally keeps nerves healthy, but when injected into hand muscles, it makes them ache for several days, especially if you’re moving your hand. But it’s safe, temporary, and doesn’t cause any damage.

Then we used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to measure brain activity. TMS sends tiny magnetic pulses into the brain. And we used these signals to create a map of how the brain controls the hand, which we did for each person who took part in the study.

We built these hand maps before the pain injection, and then measured them again two days later and eight days later, to see if pain changed how the brain was working.

A striking difference

When we compared the brains of the musicians and the non-musicians, the differences were striking. Even before we induced pain, the musicians showed a more finely tuned hand map in the brain, and the more hours they had spent practising, the more refined this map was found to be.

After pain was induced, the musicians reported experiencing less discomfort overall. And while the hand map in non-musicians’ brains shrank after just two days of pain, the maps in musicians’ brains remained unchanged – amazingly, the more hours they had trained, the less pain they felt.

This was a small study of just 40 people, but the results clearly showed that the musicians’ brains responded differently to pain. Their training seems to have given them a kind of buffer against the usual negative effects, both in how much pain they felt and in how their brain’s motor areas reacted.

Of course, this doesn’t mean music is a cure for chronic pain. But it does show us that long-term training and experience can shape how we perceive pain. This is exciting because it might help us understand why some people are more resilient to pain than others, along with how we can design new treatments for those living with pain.

Our team is now conducting further research on pain to determine if musical training may also protect us from altered attention and cognition during chronic pain. And off the back of this, we hope to be able to design new therapies that “retrain” the brain in people who suffer from persistent pain.

For me, this is the most exciting part: the idea that as a musician, what I learn and practise every day doesn’t just make me better at a skill, but that it can literally rewire my brain in ways that change how I experience the world, even something as fundamental as pain.

This article was commissioned by Videnskab.dk as part of a partnership collaboration with The Conversation. You can read the Danish version of this article, here.

Anna M. Zamorano has received funding from The Lundbeck Foundation and from the Danish National Research Foundation through the Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP).

– ref. Neuroscience finds musicians feel pain differently from the rest of us – https://theconversation.com/neuroscience-finds-musicians-feel-pain-differently-from-the-rest-of-us-265815

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Owton, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology, The Open University

As women’s sport surges on the global stage, hosts England have lit up the Women’s Rugby World Cup. But the tackles, speed and power fans see on the field are only part of the story. What we don’t see is what it takes – both physically and psychologically – to wear England’s emblem, the Red Rose.

The psychology of rugby shapes every performance. Behind the scenes lie early mornings, lonely and punishing rehab sessions, playing through pain, brutal setbacks, private doubts and personal sacrifices.

Before the whistle blows and the crowd roars, players stretch aching muscles, re-tape old injuries and mentally lock in. The changing room becomes a crucible – a place of intense pressure and transformation – where focus sharpens, rituals are repeated and the “game face” goes on.

That game face is more than a stare. It’s the product of years of physical and psychological battles. It’s the mindset that lets an athlete walk into the arena with purpose and conviction, no matter what pain or setbacks they’ve endured.

Consider Emily Scarratt, one of England’s most celebrated players. In 2023 a surgeon advised her to retire after a complex neck injury threatened her career. Opting for an artificial disc replacement near her windpipe was risky – any operation that close to the airway and spinal cord carries the danger of nerve damage or breathing complications – and career-defining because the operation’s success or failure would determine whether she could ever play again.

Her February 2024 return wasn’t just about regaining fitness. It was also about showing the mental steel that “game face” represents, blocking out fear and doubt to perform at the sport’s highest level. At 35, she became the first England player to feature in five Rugby World Cups.

Abi Burton’s comeback is equally astonishing. Just three years ago she was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis – a rare condition in which the immune system attacks the brain, causing inflammation and severe neurological symptoms – and placed in a medically induced coma. She woke four weeks later unable to walk, talk, read or write and more than 19 kg lighter. After years of rehabilitation, she made her World Cup debut against Samoa in 2025.

Rosie Galligan’s road back was just as brutal. She nearly lost her legs to meningitis in 2019, then fractured an ankle in early 2020, which sidelined her for over a year. Told by medical specialists and coaches more than once that she might never play again, she fought back to the delayed 2022 World Cup and is now a standout player for 2025.

These headline comebacks highlight something the public rarely sees: the daily grind of resilience. Managing concussions and torn ligaments, coping with the psychological toll of repeated setbacks; just staying in the game takes an immense toll and can lead to player burnout without strong support. Ellie Kildunne, ruled out of the quarter-final with head-injury symptoms, has spoken openly about the mental strength needed to survive the toughest moments, calling the internal battles “the hardest to win”.

So, while England may look clinical and composed on the pitch, every performance requires extraordinary emotional and mental strength. And the players are not doing it alone. Behind every recovery and every small gain is a network of coaches, physiotherapists, psychologists, doctors and support staff working to keep the foundations solid.

None of this happens by accident. It’s the result of years of sustained investment in the women’s game: not just in players, but in the infrastructure around them. Since 2009, nearly £50 million in National Lottery funding has gone into girls’ and women’s rugby.

The Impact 25 legacy programme – World Rugby’s initiative to grow the women’s game before, during and long after the 2025 tournament – is injecting a further £12 million to expand grassroots pathways: community-level coaching, clubs and player-development routes that help girls progress from school or local teams into elite rugby across England and the home nations.

Elsewhere the contrast is stark. Teams such as Samoa have had to fundraise just to get players on the pitch: a sharp reminder of the global inequalities that persist in women’s sport. While England can rotate two professional squads, other national teams are simply trying to cover basic costs.

England’s story shows what’s possible when talent is matched with belief and when belief is backed with resources and support. England’s success hasn’t come easy: it’s the product of years of grit, resilience and bold investment. If women’s rugby is to grow globally, England’s blueprint may be a powerful place to start.

Helen Owton 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. Blood, bruises and belief: how England’s women’s rugby team embody physical and mental endurance – https://theconversation.com/blood-bruises-and-belief-how-englands-womens-rugby-team-embody-physical-and-mental-endurance-264800

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aaron Edwards, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Leicester

The recent “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London shows how easy it is for the radical right to mobilise a mass protest by repackaging a perennial issue as a moral panic. It did so by fusing together fears of migration and crime with a rising distrust in government.

There were calls for “remigration”, mass deportation and even the dissolution of parliament as well as violent clashes with police. There was also a level of confusion among some of the thousands of people who attended as to whether they were protesting for freedom of speech or lending their voices to a racist cause.

Although the scale of the demonstration was surprising to many, far-right activism has a long history in the UK.

In the contemporary era, it dates back to the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. But it was the increase in immigration in the 1950s – the Windrush era – that saw a new generation of far-right activists emerge.

In the years that followed, Britain’s far right switched its focus from antisemitism to opposing migration from the country’s colonies and former colonies. This was captured best, perhaps, in the infamous “rivers of blood” speech delivered by Conservative MP Enoch Powell in 1968.

By the 1980s, the British National Party (BNP) emerged, growing to make considerable electoral headway in the 1990s and 2000s before its base ultimately crumbled due to its toxic image.

In its wake, the far-right morphed into street protest movements like the English Defence League (EDL) and the Football Lads Alliance. Extremist “direct action” groups like Combat-18, a neo-Nazi group that grew out of the BNP in the 1990s, would also be replaced by National Action and the Patriotic Alternative.

These violent fringe groups were banned but others have replaced them and grown in influence. They include the cultural nationalist movement coalescing around former EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known popularly as “Tommy Robinson” – the man behind the Unite the Kingdom rally in London.

Extremism expert Chris Allen has noted how the re-emergence of radical right protest activism had its medium-term origins in the 2016 Brexit referendum. This relates to how some pro-Leave politicians promoted issues that had “a clear resonance with the traditional and contemporary radical-right” – such as border security and sovereignty.

Rightwing extremist activity ranged from the murder of Jo Cox MP a week prior to the Brexit referendum to street agitation whipped up by other fringe far-right groups, like Britain First. According to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, these groups attempted to “dominate the narrative on key political and social issues, including immigration, Brexit and Islam”.

The anxiety around immigration had already found its way into mainstream political discourse on the doorsteps during the 2015 general election. Narrative tropes about “taking back control of our borders” became part of everyday political rhetoric. In the aftermath of the election of that year, prime minister David Cameron made cracking down on immigration a priority.

As antagonism towards the EU began to recede in the years after the Brexit referendum, the fear of irregular immigration came much more to the fore. So too did a rise in racism and race-related hate crimes.

Many of these hate crimes happened in the wake of Islamist terror attacks in 2017, though the arrival of the COVID pandemic superseded fears surrounding terrorism. And as the UK re-emerged from COVID lockdowns, little consideration was given by the British state to the growing security challenge posed by irregular immigration.

It was in this context that a tipping point was reached. In July 2024, after the murder of three children in Southport, radical-right social media influencers and other bad actors stirred up riots across 27 towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland. Thousands of people were radicalised by the language of a moral panic, played out in the new domain of social media.

Illegal immigration as a form of moral panic

Sociologist Stanley Cohen coined the term “moral panic” in his important 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. He described how a “condition, episode, person or group…emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” and is then presented in a stereotyped fashion by the media.

Perhaps the most famous of these moral panics came in the immediate aftermath of a huge 1964 brawl in the seaside town of Clacton between mods and rockers, two rival youth counter-cultures. Cohen’s argument was that the reaction ended up being wildly disproportionate to the severity of the original incident. Local authorities in towns and cities as far away as Belfast were forced to issue statements reassuring the public they did not have a “hooligan problem”.

In 2002, Cohen demonstrated how the same phenomenon was being playing out in relation to immigration. He remarked that the once morally untouchable category of political refugee was becoming “deconstructed”. In Cohen’s opinion, British governments were starting from a broad consensus that “we must keep out as many refugee-type foreigners as possible” and that “these people always lie to get themselves accepted”. To be accepted, they must be “eligible” and “credible”.

It was in the ensuing decades, one could argue, that moral panics centring on the triumvirate of migration, crime and security began to emerge in Germany, Italy and the UK.

The British tabloid media led this new moral panic, greatly aided by two intersecting and overlapping empirical realities: the rising tide of concern over increasing immigration in the UK – and Europe more broadly – and the repackaging of ethnically competitive politics as a new form of everyday reality. In the far-right worldview, politics is about the zero-sum nature of power relations between different ethnic groups.

Old tropes, new moral panics

What we are now seeing is a new politicisation of a long-running issue. Humanitarian responses to asylum seekers have been replaced with the trappings of a moral panic about irregular immigration.

Moral panics do not, as Cohen reminds us, necessarily reflect the reality of the situation, only the anxiety of those who spread it. That does not mean there are no serious concerns underpinning these issues, only that they have been magnified and, importantly, amplified by the far-right’s sophisticated embrace of new technology. This situation is, at its core, a crisis in confidence between a section of the population and the government.

As we move towards towards the next UK election, further disillusionment is more likely to manifest itself in increased electoral support for parties like Reform UK and Advance UK, particularly if they continue to play to hardline supporters. In a recent YouGov survey, 44% of those surveyed said Reform’s immigration policy, which includes mass deportation was about right or not tough enough.

While radical-right demonstrations promoting the totemic policy of “remigration” remain largely peaceful, there is a danger that the mainstreaming of such extremist rhetoric will only serve as a driver towards radicalisation for a new generation of far-right extremists.

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This article contains references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and this may include 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.

Aaron Edwards 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. A contemporary history of Britain’s far right – and how it helps explain why so many people went to the Unite the Kingdom rally in London – https://theconversation.com/a-contemporary-history-of-britains-far-right-and-how-it-helps-explain-why-so-many-people-went-to-the-unite-the-kingdom-rally-in-london-265805

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sergei Petrovskii, Professor of Applied Mathematics , University of Leicester

Almost everyone who has a garden knows what a nuisance slugs can be. They are also one of the most destructive crop pests in the UK. Studies show that yields of many major crops, such as wheat, are severely reduced by their feeding.

But recent research into slug movements may help farmers with their slug prevention strategies

A 2014 report from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board estimated that slugs would cost the industry up to £100 million per year in the UK alone, in the absence of effective control. And contamination makes produce undesirable to consumers – nobody wants to find a slug in their lettuce.

Making a living by growing food is already difficult because of labour shortages and rising costs, climate change and other challenges. The slug problem has been in the spotlight for a long time, but development of affordable and reliable solutions has proven to be difficult.

Good pesticides are available, but several aspects of slug behaviour means they can be hit and miss. For example, most pesticides target only slugs that are active on or very close to the surface. However, a large proportion of the slug population can be found at different depths in the soil. This is because they move up and down the soil depending on the weather, soil characteristics and several other factors.

During harsh weather they can become less active, remaining deeper in the soil or hiding themselves in concealed or hard-to-reach places under stones or in dense vegetation such as tussocky grass. This gives a false impression they have disappeared, but they can re-emerge fast and in large numbers once the weather improves.

Some of the chemical pesticides (such as metaldehyde) that work well on slugs are banned under UK legislation due to concerns about their damaging effect on the environment, in particular on rivers and lakes. Biological products, for example some nematodes, seem to work well but farmers consider them too expensive to be commercially viable. Nematodes are microscopic creatures also known as roundworms and some species can infect and kill molluscs such as slugs. They are a good option for gardeners, however, who normally need to apply a lot less because they have a smaller space to protect.

Tracking slug groups

One possible solution to the problem lies in studies showing that the distribution of slugs over an arable field is uneven. Previous studies of slugs in major crops including wheat and oilseed rape, as well as cover crops and fields left fallow, noticed large numbers of slugs tend to congregate together in patches interspersed with areas where slug numbers are sparse. Indeed our 2020 paper showed this was true in all the arable fields we studied.

Spatial distributions of animals in their natural environment are rarely uniform. You might expect animals to congregate in areas with a higher density of food. But in many cases animals form “patches” even in environments where features like food are evenly spread out. Researchers are unsure why this is.

If we can predict where those patches with the high density of the slugs will occur, farmers could concentrate pesticides and nematodes in those areas, which would be a lot more affordable and better for the environment. A separate 2020 study that two of us (Keith and Natalia) worked on found this could help farmers reduce pesticide use by about 50%.

However, this would only be feasible if the location of patches of high slug density doesn’t change much. Until recently information about slug patch formation and stability was scarce. Our 2022 study, however, reported stable slug patches formed in all the crops that we investigated. And these patches always formed in the same places throughout the growing season.

As part of a previous research project we put radio-tags on slugs to track their movements in the field. That paper found slugs exhibited collective behaviour which means they move differently when they move in a group. The changes are subtle. Their average speed and basic zigzagging of their movement paths doesn’t change much. Although, looking in detail, they make steeper turns when they “zig” and “zag” and individual slugs develop a slight bias in their direction of turn. They also tend to rest more when they’re together.

We used the data from the radio-tags to make a digital model of the slug populations we studied. This allowed us to look into factors that would be difficult or even impossible to investigate in the field.

Whether you like slugs or loathe them, we need to understand them if we want to help farmers grow our food in the future.

Keith Walters currently receives research funding from Innovate UK. In the past he has received research grants from UK government, research councils, industry levy bodies and a range of other sources.

Natalia Petrovskaya and Sergei Petrovskii 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. Why slugs are so hard to control – and how scientists are working to keep them in check – https://theconversation.com/why-slugs-are-so-hard-to-control-and-how-scientists-are-working-to-keep-them-in-check-259189

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mehebub Sahana, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Geography, University of Manchester

The Ganges, a lifeline for hundreds of millions across South Asia, is drying at a rate scientists say is unprecedented in recorded history. Climate change, shifting monsoons, relentless extraction and damming are pushing the mighty river towards collapse, with consequences for food, water and livelihoods across the region.

For centuries, the Ganges and its tributaries have sustained one of the world’s most densely populated regions. Stretching from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, the whole river basin supports over 650 million people, a quarter of India’s freshwater, and much of its food and economic value. Yet new research reveals the river’s decline is accelerating beyond anything seen in recorded history.

In recent decades, scientists have documented alarming transformations across many of the world’s big rivers, but the Ganges stands apart for its speed and scale.

In a new study, scientists reconstructed streamflow records going back 1,300 years to show that the basin has faced its worst droughts over the period in just the last few decades. And those droughts are well outside the range of natural climate variability.

Stretches of river that once supported year-round navigation are now impassable in summer. Large boats that once travelled the Ganges from Bengal and Bihar through Varanasi and Allahabad now run aground where water once flowed freely. Canals that used to irrigate fields for weeks longer a generation ago now dry up early. Even some wells that protected families for decades are yielding little more than a trickle.

Global climate models have failed to predict the severity of this drying, pointing to something deeply unsettling: human and environmental pressures are combining in ways we don’t yet understand.

Water has been diverted into irrigation canals, groundwater has been pumped for agriculture, and industries have proliferated along the river’s banks. More than a thousand dams and barrages have radically altered the river itself. And as the world warms, the monsoon which feeds the Ganges has grown increasingly erratic. The result is a river system increasingly unable to replenish itself.

Melting glaciers, vanishing rivers

At the river’s source high in the Himalayas, the Gangotri glacier has retreated nearly a kilometer in just two decades. The pattern is repeating across the world’s largest mountain range, as rising temperatures are melting glaciers faster than ever.

Initially, this brings sudden floods from glacial lakes. In the long-run, it means far less water flowing downstream during the dry season.

These glaciers are often termed the “water towers of Asia”. But as those towers shrink, the summer flow of water in the Ganges and its tributaries is dwindling too.

Humans are making things worse

The reckless extraction of groundwater is aggravating the situation. The Ganges-Brahmaputra basin is one of the most rapidly depleting aquifers in the world, with water levels falling by 15–20 millimeters each year. Much of this groundwater is already contaminated with arsenic and fluoride, threatening both human health and agriculture.

The role of human engineering cannot be ignored either. Projects like the Farakka Barrage in India have reduced dry-season flows into Bangladesh, making the land saltier and threatening the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. Decisions to prioritise short-term economic gains have undermined the river’s ecological health.

Across northern Bangladesh and West Bengal, smaller rivers are already drying up in the summer, leaving communities without water for crops or livestock. The disappearance of these smaller tributaries is a harbinger of what may happen on a larger scale if the Ganges itself continues its downward spiral. If nothing changes, experts warn that millions of people across the basin could face severe food shortages within the next few decades.

Saving the Ganges

The need for urgent, coordinated action cannot be overstated. Piecemeal solutions will not be enough. It’s time for a comprehensive rethinking of how the river is managed.

That will mean reducing unsustainable extraction of groundwater so supplies can recharge. It will mean environmental flow requirements to keep enough water in the river for people and ecosystems. And it will require improved climate models that integrate human pressures (irrigation and damming, for example) with monsoon variability to guide water policy.

Transboundary cooperation is also a must. India, Bangladesh and Nepal must do better at sharing data, managing dams, and planning for climate change. International funding and political agreements must treat rivers like the Ganges as global priorities. Above all, governance must be inclusive, so local voices shape river restoration efforts alongside scientists and policymakers.

The Ganges is more than a river. It is a lifeline, a sacred symbol, and a cornerstone of South Asian civilisation. But it is drying faster than ever before, and the consequences of inaction are unthinkable. The time for warnings has passed. We must act now to ensure the Ganges continues to flow – not just for us, but for generations to come.

Mehebub Sahana receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship. He is affiliated with The University of Manchester, UK.

– ref. The Ganges River is drying faster than ever – here’s what it means for the region and the world – https://theconversation.com/the-ganges-river-is-drying-faster-than-ever-heres-what-it-means-for-the-region-and-the-world-265891

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Freya Gowrley, Lecturer in History of Art and Liberal Arts, University of Bristol

The Netflix documentary Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser raises questions around the ethics of one the most popular US reallity TV series of the 2000s. From claims about the cruel treatment of its contestants and its callous endorsement of “fatphobic” narratives, the series sits at odds with feelings around body image and weight in a post body-positivity age.

Recently in the UK reality television shows such as Love Island have been under the spotlight for alleged bullying and misogynistic behaviour. This perhaps shows that a more sustained reckoning is on the horizon for programmes dealing with our bodies, and their long-term effects on the collective psyche.

The idea for The Biggest Loser came to its executive producer David Broome when he spotted a sign posted by an “obese person seeking a trainer” to help them get into shape. The show would eventually see contestants and trainers battling to see who could lose the most body weight through the show’s extreme methods, ultimately winning a prize of US$250,000 (£185,000).

This was a significant amount of money, especially for the time, but the real prize was supposedly the discipline and freedom gained through the process of radical body transformation. As such, the show is rooted in narratives of hard work, determination and ultimately the American dream – you can be anything you want, as long as you work hard enough.

Baiting and exploitation

Despite these seemingly wholesome aims, the documentary points out that the tone of the show was initially unclear. Indeed, its title seems to invite the ridicule of its participants. The first few seasons were presented by a comedian and stacked with challenges seemingly designed to humiliate contestants.

In one episode, the “losers” were asked to build a tower of food with their teeth. In another, they were asked to survive temptation challenges – they could eat as much as they wanted for the chance to see a loved one or go home, but they would still be weighed in at the end of the week.

While these challenges are justified in the documentary by producers as realistic scenarios replicating real-life temptations, commentators such as fat-acceptance activist Aubrey Gordon noted that these tests were based around the presumption that “fat people cannot be trusted around food”. Revelling in the spectacle of failure, such challenges encouraged moralising judgments.

In the temptation challenges, the visual pleasure of excess was clear. Key to such challenges was transforming weight loss into drama – a spectacle people would watch.

Extravagant display was necessary as the show revolved around the potentially slow process of losing weight. Indeed, while diet has been shown to be key for those hoping to reduce their body mass, a programme of extreme exercise was devised. Contestants, often on as little as 800 calories per day, were shown sweating, vomiting and collapsing, cameras shaking to convey the heft of their bodies.

As the seasons progressed, the weight of participants starting The Biggest Loser “journey” went up and, arguably, their ability to work out safely went down, much to the dismay of the show’s medical adviser, Dr Robert Huizenga.

On both the original show and the documentary, Huizenga is presented constantly at odds with trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, whose methods he challenged. In his obvious concern for the contestants, he became a voice of reason in a show that seemed focused on the entertainment value of those taking part.

The magic of TV transformation

The 2000s ushered in a new era of exposure – an abundant culture of images and television shows celebrating the glamorous lives of celebrities. But this was not limited to the the rich and the famous.

Shows like Pop Idol plucked everyday Joes from obscurity and placed them in the spotlight. These shows glamourised the self-help mentality of the American dream. Hard work, self-control and more than a dash of “natural” talent and beauty were all one needed to be propelled into relative superstardom.

Like rough stones turned into shiny gems, members of the public became top models, popstars and even Dallas Cowgirls as if at the click of a finger. This was a process of transformation, often centred on the visual. It was only logical that this be extended to the most extreme kind of bodily transformation that could be recorded. The message in all of these shows was clear: with extreme hard work and determination you too could achieve the body, the celebrity, the popularity or whatever you deserved.

The Biggest Loser was far from the only series promoting negative stereotypes around people’s bodies on TV at the time. As the virality of body-shaming clips from shows like America’s Next Top Model and 10 Years Younger shows, this was an all-encompassing entertainment culture that villainised gaining even a few pounds.

Today, weight loss is omnipresent once more thanks to the prominence of drugs like Ozempic. In the last two years, we have gone from a broad culture of bodily acceptance to one that seeks to achieve perfection. Celebrities are thinner and look younger than ever, and the abundance of these transformational narratives on social media suggests that we should all aspire to follow suit.

The changing reception of The Biggest Loser – once a very popular programme – revealed in Netflix’s documentary not only shows how influential the media can be in how we see our own bodies, but also reinforces how fickle bodily trends can be.

We can’t know how long it will be until we are told once more to embrace our curves and wrinkles – but you can be sure that it will be visual media that will drive the change.

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Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

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Freya Gowrley 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 Biggest Loser: how an aggressive entertainment culture normalised body-shaming – https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-loser-how-an-aggressive-entertainment-culture-normalised-body-shaming-265592

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Curran, Research Fellow: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding, Coventry University

The assembled United Nations dignitaries gave Donald Trump 13 seconds of applause as he approached the podium for his address to the 80th anniversary general debate on September 23. They clapped for 20 seconds when he finished speaking.

In between, having been asked to confine his remarks to 15 minutes (like all other speakers), the US president gave the room a lengthy address that lasted 57 minutes. It veered from the many shortcomings of the previous US administrations, to why UN migration policies were ruining the world, to the climate change “con job”, to a warning to the assembled leaders that “your countries are going to hell”.

At points in between, Trump congratulated himself, for turning the US into the “hottest country anywhere in the world”, for repelling a “colossal invasion” of migrants at America’s southern border and for ending seven wars – for which he repeated his line that he should have been given the Nobel peace prize.

He also savaged the UN, which he said “did not even try to help in any” of the conflicts. “The UN is such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential. For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up.” He added: “Empty words don’t solve war.”

Questioning whether the UN could play a productive role, Trump offered “the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world”. In other words, UN-led multilateralism is out, to be replaced, perhaps, by a series of bilateral relationships dominated by the US.

Eight decades after its founding in the wake of the second world war, it is not a good time for the UN. It is currently mired in a budget crisis: US$2.4 billion (£1.77 billion) in unpaid dues from member states against an overall budget of US$3.5 billion for 2025. Of this, the US owes the most, about US$1.5 billion.

The Trump administration is applying a much-reduced budget that includes zero funding for UN peacekeeping operations. This decision has been made despite the fact that the US has an obligation to pay at least one-quarter of the UN’s peacekeeping costs. It has also paused most other funding to the body.

Trump’s speech did not shy away from other issues of critical importance. He highlighted the need to “stop the war” in Gaza and negotiate peace. He also chastised Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But his views on these conflicts were largely aimed at individual states as opposed to the UN – and multilateralism – in general.

When it came to Gaza, he was critical of the states that “unilaterally” recognised Palestinian statehood. Talking about Ukraine, Trump criticised European states for not cutting off purchases of Russian energy and energy products. The UN, and its efforts in addressing these catastrophic situations, was not mentioned.

Migration and climate

But Trump was most savage when it came to migration. He opened his section on migration by stating that “your countries are being ruined”, stating: “The United Nations is funding an assault on western countries and their borders.” Claiming that the UN provides cash assistance towards migrants journeying to the US, Trump then stated: “The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them.”

The rest of his discussion on migration was aimed at Europe. Within that he offered unsubstantiated claims about London – with whose mayor, Sadiq Khan, he has a longstanding disagreement: “Now they want to go to sharia law” he said.

His language here will (rightly) cause considerable concern for many. It may reflect his belief in the role of sovereign borders, particularly in the US. But the attachment – in particular with regards to European states – of the idea of sovereignty to a way of life that is somehow endangered by migration is one which could embolden anti-migrant sentiment on a global level.

Trump’s views on climate change will also grab headlines. Interestingly though, given his other criticisms of the UN, while he called climate science and the idea of man-made global warming “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, his scorn wasn’t particularly aimed at the UN.

Granted, the UN has been in the driving seat for many of the steps taken in attempting to tackle the climate crisis – so by implication, the UN was in the US president’s sights. But he instead he took the opportunity to direct his slurs towards China which – he said – builds wind turbines “and they send them all over the world but they barely use them”.

So what can be taken from this? It may not have been a worst-case scenario for those who support international cooperation. He didn’t explicitly pull the US out of any other UN programmes.

But there’s very little to take reassurance from a multilateral perspective when viewing Trump’s 57 minutes at the lectern. In his view, the UN is not up to speed with attempts to build peace, it doesn’t function properly, it’s secondary to bilateral efforts, and – when it comes to the US – it has supported an “invasion” by migrants.

And, reading between the lines, Trump’s perspectives on sovereignty, climate change and migration may embolden other political leaders who want to push similar agendas. It has the danger of going beyond rhetoric.

The US president’s disdain for multilateralism and the UN system may mean other members reprioritise their budgets, cutting funding still further. This would further fracture a UN system which is already seriously under pressure.

David Curran received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Irish Research Council in 2022/23 to hold a series of workshops to better understand UN policies towards the Protection of Civilians

– ref. ‘Your countries are going to hell’: Trump’s UN speech explained by an expert – https://theconversation.com/your-countries-are-going-to-hell-trumps-un-speech-explained-by-an-expert-265944

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Olivia Carpenter, Lecturer in Literature, University of York

Jane Austen penned the last sentences of her unfinished manuscript for the novel we know as Sanditon in March 1817 before she died that July. Like me, many Austen fans often stumble upon this work after they have read all six of her completed novels.

At this point, readers of Austen feel like they know her and have sought out Sanditon because they want more of what they loved in her other works. However, they are often surprised by what they find.

In the final months of her life, Austen had moved away from writing about the English country house. The titular Sanditon is instead a seaside health resort, and the novel follows characters who spend a season there trying to get healthy or wealthy.

Austen’s most striking departure from the rest of her work, however, is in her inclusion of the character of Miss Lambe – a young heiress staying at the resort who is of African descent. Sanditon is the only Austen novel to contain an explicitly Black character.

Sanditon’s narrator explains that Miss Lambe is a mixed-race Black heiress of just 17 years old. Austen calls her a “chilly and tender” girl who attracts attention because she requires luxuries such as “a maid of her own”, and “the best room in the lodgings”.

Far from being disadvantaged because of race, Miss Lambe has more privileges than many of her white peers, and they react with interest and envy. The resort’s scheming foundress, Lady Denham, even fantasises about making an advantageous match for her nephew with the girl.

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This article is part of a series commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Despite having published only six books, she is one of the best-known authors in history. These articles explore the legacy and life of this incredible writer.

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Miss Lambe’s presence in Austen’s novel presents a stark challenge to any assumptions that Austen never wrote about people of colour. Many still assume that authors in Austen’s time simply weren’t writing about Black characters.

However, Miss Lambe is not the only character of this background to appear in books of the period. I am currently finishing up a book on the subject of Black representation in British marriage plots. I research Black characters who are heiresses, escapees, keepers of dark secrets, and participants in all manner of surprise twists and turns.

For example, in the anonymously authored 1808 novel The Woman of Colour, trouble ensues when a young Black woman, Olivia Fairfield, travels to England from Jamaica in order to marry according to her father’s wishes.

There have also been several rich and wonderful research projects demonstrating the enormous variety of Black British history in Jane Austen’s England. The writer and academic Gretchen Gerzina’s book Black England, for example, brings to life a vision of this world that included Black community, activism and intellectualism.

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Read more:
Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter captures the spirit of two great geniuses, born 250 years ago

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The Mapping Black London project, a stunningly detailed digital resource from Northeastern University, London, provides interactive maps demonstrating evidence of Black life in the city through the records of everyday people. We can see the proof of Black Britons being baptised, getting married, or being buried in London during Austen’s lifetime.

We can also turn to Black writers from the period who tell us their story directly, such as Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano, and Mary Prince. Black British writers like these commented directly on their experience of finding ways to survive the violence of transatlantic chattel slavery.

In contrast to these writers’ real experiences, however, Miss Lambe’s in Austen’s literary take on Regency England is markedly different. As an heiress, she has a lot more in common with real historical figures who were the children of white British enslavers and Afro-Caribbean women.

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Read more:
Jane Austen: why are adaptations of Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey so rare?

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The scholar of early American and Atlantic history, Daniel Livesay, has written extensively on these figures in his book Children of Uncertain Fortune, detailing the lives of the privileged few who were acknowledged by white fathers, and were either born free or granted their freedom. Such children were often educated on both sides of the Atlantic and might apply for special legal status, giving them similar rights to those of white British subjects.

Austen hints at this background for Miss Lambe in discussions of her wealth. Like the children Livesay discusses, Miss Lambe has left the West Indies and is now growing up in England. She is in the care of Mrs Griffiths, an older lady who treats her as “beyond comparison the most important and precious” client. This is because Miss Lambe “paid in proportion to her fortune”.

A wealthy family member would have needed to set up this arrangement with Mrs Griffiths. The family member also would have helped Miss Lambe gain the special legal status necessary for a Black person to inherit a fortune under colonial law.

While we can celebrate Austen’s inclusion of a Black character, we know that representation alone is not empowerment. As Kerry Sinanan, an academic in pre-1800 literature and culture, has insisted, we need to be careful about an uncritical celebration of Austen’s “radical politics”.

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Read more:
Jane Austen at 250: Why we shouldn’t exaggerate her radicalism

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When we think of Black life in Austen’s world we need to think both about the Black wealth and privilege Austen chooses to represent in Miss Lambe as well as the enslavement Austen never addresses. If we long for Austen to be a champion of all women, including Black women, we may be sorely disappointed by Austen’s ten brief sentences mentioning her sole Black character.

Nevertheless, Miss Lambe remains an important reminder as we celebrate Austen’s enduring legacy 250 years on: Black British life and experience have always been part of British literature and history. Remembering this character in Austen’s writing can only help to add urgency to the ongoing re-evaluation of how we teach, learn and understand that literature and history.

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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.

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Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

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Olivia Carpenter 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. Jane Austen’s real and literary worlds weren’t exclusively white – just read her last book, Sanditon – https://theconversation.com/jane-austens-real-and-literary-worlds-werent-exclusively-white-just-read-her-last-book-sanditon-264813