Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ed Hutchinson, Professor, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, University of Glasgow

The world is full of animal viruses, and we’re pretty sure that one of them will cause the next pandemic. To prevent pandemics, we need to predict which of the vast number of animal viruses are most likely to infect humans. A new study, published in Nature, sets out an elegant and powerful way for scientists to sift through the enormous diversity of animal viruses without risking being infected by them in the process.

In this study, a team of researchers in the UK used cutting-edge lab techniques to track down a previously obscure virus infecting bats in Kenya. Here’s what they did, and how they may have helped us to get ahead of the next pandemic.

Fortunately, most animal viruses will never cause pandemics because when they try to infect human cells, they fail at the first step.

To infect a cell, the first thing a virus has to do is to bind to an “entry receptor”. This is a specific molecule on the cell’s surface that the virus attaches to so it can enter the cell.

When a virus infects a new host species, it has a problem. The cells will be coated with different molecules from the ones the virus is used to, and often the virus has nothing to grab hold of. Viruses are adept at all the stages of cellular breaking and entering, but none of them matters if they can’t even get hold of the door handle.

If we could predict which viruses could use the entry receptors found on human cells, we would know which viruses we needed to take special care around to reduce the risk of pandemics. However, for most viruses, we don’t know what their entry receptors are, let alone if human cells carry them.

Finding the door handle

In this new study, the researchers set out on a hunt for viruses that could bind to human entry receptors. They chose the alphacoronavirus family. This group of viruses includes two common cold viruses, so clearly some of them can infect humans. They also include many viruses that infect other animals, particularly bats.

Alphacoronaviruses are distant cousins of the betacoronaviruses and hence of SARS-CoV-2, which famously jumped from bats to humans to cause the COVID pandemic. Could an alphacoronavirus do something similar?

The entry receptors of almost all alphacoronaviruses, like those of the vast majority of viruses, are not known. What we do have is the virus’s genome sequences. From these, the team identified the genes of the spike proteins. If you picture a virus, such as SARS-CoV-2, the spike proteins are the bits that stick out from the surface of the virus. Their job is to bind to entry receptors.

Not unreasonably, the scientists wanted to study viral receptor binding without spending any time in the presence of potentially dangerous pathogens. They did this by creating particles called “pseudotyped viruses”: dummy virus particles that carry the spike proteins of a real virus on their surface.

Pseudotyped viruses can bind to cells but cannot replicate. As a result, they are entirely safe to work with.

As expected, pseudotypes of the two common cold viruses grabbed firmly on to human cells. Comfortingly, most of the other alphacoronaviruses could not. But there was one exception. The coronavirus KY43, a rather obscure virus previously identified in heart-nosed bats in Kenya, bound very well to a protein found on human cells.

How worried should we be about KY43? Related viruses are found in bats around the world, but, fortunately, most of them are not very good at binding to the human version of their entry receptor. The ones that can bind to human proteins are found in a relatively small region of east Africa, and people living in the part of Kenya where the virus was first identified don’t seem to show any evidence of infection.

This is reassuring, though not surprising. There are multiple steps needed for a virus to break into a human cell, after all, and binding was just the first of them. But this work marks KY43 as a virus to keep an eye on.

More generally, this paper is a powerful proof of concept for how we could carry out pre-pandemic risk assessment. Screens like this can be safely applied to any virus that we have a genome sequence for. More broadly, it should be possible to design similar screens for many of the other things a virus needs to do in order to pose a threat to humans.

The world is overflowing with animal viruses, most of which will never hurt us. But some of them could. Work like this will help us spot the ones we need to take more care of.

Ed Hutchinson receives funding from the UK Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. He is a board member of the European Scientific Working group on Influenza and chairs the virus division of the Microbiology Society.

– ref. Scientists have found a safer way to hunt for the next pandemic virus – https://theconversation.com/scientists-have-found-a-safer-way-to-hunt-for-the-next-pandemic-virus-281287

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Kolstoe, Associate Professor of Bioethics, University of Portsmouth

The chief executive of the UK Biobank, one of the world’s largest biomedical databases, recently wrote to over 500,000 participants telling them that some of their data had been made available for sale online through a Chinese website. This wasn’t a data breach or hack, but rather researchers who had legitimately accessed the data trying to sell it.

Although it was stated that participants could not be identified, and there was no sign that the data had actually been bought by anyone, the fact that someone could even try to sell parts of the dataset is extremely concerning. Unfortunately, the failure was unlikely to be in the protection set up by the biobank itself, but rather in the honesty of the researchers accessing the data.

This raises the wider question of whether data – any data – can ever really be protected. Many databases, including the UK Biobank, operate secure research environments where restrictions are put on those accessing the information. This can be through secure computer portals or platforms (as used by the UK Biobank), or limiting researchers to only downloading the results of their analyses rather than the raw data itself.

But the problem is that once data exists, there is always a chance that it can be leaked through either accident or dishonesty. Legal restrictions, such as data protection laws, can give power to police or governments to try to stop this happening, or to subsequently prosecute. But in a world of international computer networks, and very different national views on privacy, even laws can only do so much. For instance, it has been claimed that data has been exposed accidentally from the UK Biobank 198 times before.

If this isn’t bad enough, the increasing availability of sophisticated AI tools means that even anonymised data can be de-anonymised. This is because AI tools are able to find complex patterns or links in data that no human would ever be able to discover.

So what is the answer? Do we revert to using pen, paper and filing cabinets, or do we need to keep evolving the way we think about our data and its security?

Harms v benefits

Possibly the main fear that people have with their data being made widely available is becoming the victim of fraud, bribery or perhaps a commercial organisation using it to make large profits or using it in other ways that we would not approve of. But the possibility of this depends on the type of data.

For instance, there are very clear reasons to keep data on personal finances, telephone records, or many other details about our personal lives confidential. However, when considering health data, including the types held in biobanks, does the potential for significant societal benefits change the way we think about risks and harms?

Medical confidentiality is considered a human right, certainly in Europe and the UK. This is because of the possibility of coercing or manipulating people if you have inside knowledge about their health. Doing this for nefarious gain is clearly wrong and must remain illegal.

Giving health data access to insurers or employers is less clear cut. While we all accept that their business practices mean that they do need to know a certain amount of information about us, many people feel uncomfortable with the idea of giving companies all of our healthcare information. This is where data protection laws come in that limit what and how commercial organisations use our data, albeit such laws require ongoing scrutiny as they are not always as effective as we may like.

However, looking beyond the individual, the real value of health data is at a group level. Humans are complex both biologically and psychologically, meaning that researchers need to look across a lot of people before patterns start to emerge. So how can this be balanced with personal privacy?

Veil of ignorance

The philosopher John Rawls proposed a thought experiment for considering issues of justice and society. His idea was to suggest people adopt a “veil of ignorance” by trying to forget their own personal position – including, race, gender, class, intelligence and health – when thinking about what might be best for society. So what would adopting a veil of ignorance mean when considering health data?

Aggregating health data is certainly not a new idea, and is the reason why organisations like UK Biobank exist, which to date has resulted in more than 18,000 research publications. So from the position of a veil of ignorance, the more data from the more individuals the better, as it does seem to lead to more research possibilities.

Second, research is very complex and now involves a wide range of disciplines, individuals and skills. Data from the UK Biobank has been used by 22,000 researchers in more than 60 countries. Again, from the veil of ignorance position, making data freely available to the widest range of researchers seems to be a good thing as the more people looking at it, in different ways, the higher the likelihood of discovering something useful.

Of course, safeguards do need to be in place to stop information being shared too widely, but these safeguards are becoming harder to implement as data processing software and AI is making it increasingly easy to identify individuals from otherwise “anonymous” data. Perhaps the issue is therefore focusing efforts less on controlling the availability of data, and instead increasing our focus on controlling how it is subsequently used.

This latest incident, alongside the wider context of daily cyber-attacks and leaks from other databases, seems to show that sooner or later most attempts at protecting data will fail. As a consequence, rather than trying to protect data, maybe we should start to accept that this type of data could now be considered a type of public good.

As with other public goods, the ethical obligation is to ensure how they are used. Yes, this may mean that commercial organisations, or even foreign governments, could use our data in ways we may not individually approve of, but disapproval of the actions of companies or other countries is hardly a new thing.

Political and international agreements regulate how all sorts of resources are used, and health data should now be included. Similarly, laws already exist to dictate what businesses can and can’t do with data.

It could be argued that if the potential benefits of fully open data sharing are truly enormous, and this incident among many others has shown we cannot protect such datasets, maybe we need to stop focusing on the futile task of trying to protect the data, and instead focus on working out how to ensure it is used in the right way.

Simon Kolstoe 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. UK Biobank records listed for sale in China: why open data might be the answer – https://theconversation.com/uk-biobank-records-listed-for-sale-in-china-why-open-data-might-be-the-answer-281388

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

Collagen has become a staple of skincare advertising and social media wellness trends. But it is not just a buzzword.

It is the most abundant protein in the body and helps support structures throughout the body, including skin and bone.

For women, collagen loss can become especially noticeable during perimenopause and menopause. Some studies suggest that skin collagen may fall by as much as 30% in the first five years after menopause, with further losses of around 2% a year after that. On social media, this is sometimes called the “collagen cliff”, but the underlying idea is not new. Researchers have been writing about the effects of menopause on skin for decades, with papers from at least the 1940s pointing to the connection.

This sharper drop happens on top of the gradual changes that come with ageing. Collagen appears to decline over time, with some estimates suggesting a fall of around 1–1.5% a year from early adulthood.

Oestrogen helps regulate many processes in the body, including the production of collagen. In animal studies, oestrogen has been shown to increase collagen production and skin thickness. Human research has also found benefits for skin thickness, elasticity and wound healing.

This is partly because oestrogen acts on fibroblasts, the cells responsible for making collagen in the skin. When oestrogen levels fall during perimenopause and menopause, this signalling becomes weaker. The result is less collagen being produced, along with thinner skin, reduced elasticity and lower water content.

Collagen loss cannot be stopped entirely, but some factors can speed it up. One of the most important is ultraviolet radiation from the sun and tanning beds. This increases enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases, which act like the skin’s demolition crew, breaking down structural proteins such as collagen. These enzymes are found at higher levels in skin that has been damaged by the sun.

Ultraviolet radiation reduces the amount of new collagen that fibroblasts produce. People with darker skin tones tend to show less wrinkling, probably in part because higher melanin levels offer some protection against ultraviolet damage. But darker skin is not immune to photo-ageing, which means skin ageing caused by sun exposure.

Smoking appears to accelerate collagen loss. One study found that smoking reduced skin production of type I and type III collagen by 18% and 22% respectively, contributing to premature ageing of the skin.

Vitamin C is essential for collagen production. Around 100mg per day is enough for most adults, although smokers may need more. Many wellness supplements provide much larger doses, often around 1,000mg a day, but more is not necessarily better; around 2,000mg a day causes unpleasant gastrointestinal issues.

Products that claim to boost collagen are increasingly popular, but the evidence behind them is mixed. Topical collagen creams are unlikely to replace collagen lost from the skin because intact collagen molecules are too large to get through the skin barrier. They may help moisturise the outer layers of the skin, but they are unlikely to make a major difference to the skin’s own collagen levels.

Oral collagen supplements have been linked in some studies to improvements in skin hydration and elasticity. However, the scientific literature remains mixed. Reviews point to limitations in the evidence, including small study sizes, potential conflicts of interest and inconsistent findings, leading researchers to urge caution when interpreting the results. In the same way that collagen can’t be absorbed through the skin, the body has to digest it to absorb the amino acids that make collagen and there is no way to ensure the amino acids that made that collagen go to the skin or wherever you hoped it would. Hydrolysed collagen is better for absorption but there is still no guarantee that the body uses it where you want it to.

Hormone replacement therapy may offer more consistent benefits. As well as helping with other symptoms of menopause, HRT has been shown in some studies to improve skin thickness, elasticity and hydration. One study reported that women receiving HRT had a 48% increase in skin collagen content compared with untreated women, and other studies have reported similar trends. Some evidence suggests that transdermal (through-the-skin) oestrogen may also have measurable effects on skin collagen. But the overall risks and benefits of HRT always need to be considered on an individual basis.

Some dermatologists and cosmetic practitioners also use procedures designed to stimulate collagen production. Laser resurfacing treatments aim to trigger repair processes in the skin and remove damaged collagen. Newer versions of these treatments are designed to reduce side effects.

Microneedling is another commonly suggested option, although it is not risk free. Potential complications include pain, bruising, bleeding, infection, changes in skin colour, and in rare cases abnormal growths. It can also cause hyperpigmentation, which means patches of skin become darker than the surrounding area.

By the time menopause begins, collagen has usually already been declining for years. Protecting the skin from ultraviolet damage, avoiding smoking and getting enough vitamin C may help support the body’s natural collagen levels.

Menopause may speed up collagen loss, but the picture is more complex than social media slogans suggest. While collagen supplements remain popular, the science behind them is still developing. HRT has a clearer scientific basis for improving skin thickness, elasticity and hydration in some women, although it is not suitable for everyone. When it comes to collagen, the science is more helpful than the hype.

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

– ref. Does menopause cause a ‘collagen cliff’? What you need to know – https://theconversation.com/does-menopause-cause-a-collagen-cliff-what-you-need-to-know-278127

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anwen Elias, Reader in Politics, Aberystwyth University

Plaid Cymru’s electoral hopes for May’s Senedd election are high. Polls suggest the party is competing with Reform UK to emerge as the largest group in the next Welsh parliament, putting it, for the first time, within reach of leading a government in Wales.

This marks a striking shift in Plaid’s electoral fortunes. At the first election to what was then the National Assembly for Wales in 1999, the party won 28.4% of the vote. That remains its strongest performance to date in what was widely described at the time as a “quiet earthquake” in Welsh politics.

Since then, Plaid has struggled to match that breakthrough in devolved elections. From 2011 onwards it has consistently been the third-largest party in the Senedd, behind Welsh Labour – which has led every government since devolution – and the Conservatives.

Even so, the arithmetic of Welsh politics has occasionally worked in Plaid’s favour. The party entered government in coalition with Labour between 2007 and 2011, and more recently struck a co-operation agreement from 2021 to 2024. But if Plaid ends up leading a government outright after May 7, it would truly set this election apart.

Positioning itself for power

Plaid Cymru’s strategy is to present itself as a credible government-in-waiting. Its focus is less about being a party of protest and more about delivery. In other words, what it would do in office, how it would tackle Wales’s major policy challenges, and how it would represent Welsh interests at Westminster after nearly three decades of Labour dominance.

In February, the party set out its plan for its first 100 days in government. This focused on improving healthcare, raising education standards, boosting the economy and reforming government.

Alongside these priorities, its manifesto calls for further powers to be devolved to the Senedd. These include greater tax powers, justice and policing, rail services and infrastructure, and the Crown Estate, which oversees things like the sea bed and mineral rights in much of the countryside.

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Yet there has also been a noticeable change in tone on the party’s long-term constitutional aims. Our research examined how Plaid Cymru covered these issues in the 2021 Senedd election. Compared with five years ago, Welsh independence is significantly less prominent in both its current manifesto and campaign.

The timetable has softened too. There’s no longer a commitment to holding a referendum on independence in its first term of government. Instead, Plaid describes Wales as being “on a journey” to independence. It has committed to producing a policy on Welsh independence but with no referendum timeframe.

By downplaying its long-term constitutional ambitions in this way, and focusing on the more immediate policy challenges facing Wales, Plaid Cymru is approaching this Senedd election as many other pro-independence parties have done across Europe. A similar strategy helped the Scottish National Party win power in 2007 and remain in government for the next 19 years.

From polling strength to political power

Strong polling does not guarantee power, however, and Plaid faces several obstacles. Opponents continue to highlight its commitment to independence.

Support for independence among the Welsh public remains relatively low – only 26% of respondents in a recent YouGov poll agreed that Wales should be an independent country. Plaid’s challenge is to persuade sceptical voters that this isn’t the most important issue in Wales for the next four years.

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Read more:
Voters in Wales face Senedd election amid confusion over who holds power over what

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The new electoral system also presents fresh uncertainties. This election will use a fully proportional model, with 96 members elected across 16 constituencies. Success will now depend on broad support across Wales. That’s a test for a party whose organisational strength has traditionally been concentrated in the north and west.

The new system is also likely to produce a more fragmented Senedd, with a wider range of parties represented. That could make post-election negotiations decisive, shaping who is able to lead a government and how stable it is.

Anwen Elias receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Elin Royles has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the broader research underpinning this publication formed part of an EU Horizon2020 project

– ref. A new Welsh electoral landscape puts Plaid Cymru within reach of power – https://theconversation.com/a-new-welsh-electoral-landscape-puts-plaid-cymru-within-reach-of-power-279628

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will Shüler, Vice-Dean of Education and Senior Lecturer, School of Performing and Digital Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London

Structurally, Romeo and Juliet is almost a Shakespearean comedy. The Bard’s comic plays tend to turn the world upside down and then neatly restore the social order, usually by means of marriage.

The world of Romeo and Juliet is turned upside down when two adolescents from warring families fall in love, and the world is set right when the families are united in marriage. But then there are three more acts and the plot veers towards tragedy, tallying six deaths by its end.

Robert Icke’s new production of Romeo and Juliet at the Harold Pinter Theatre thoughtfully interrogates the play’s structure by introducing moments of might-have-been throughout. Starring Noah Jupe (Hamnet) and Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) in the respective titular roles, Icke offers glimpses of how the story might have unfolded differently, in a kind of Sliding Doors version of the play.

Early in the production, Lord Capulet (Clark Gregg) gives the invitation list for his party to the Nurse (Clare Perkins). Then time freezes, we move backwards, and Capulet hands the note instead to an illiterate servant, who bumps into Romeo on the street and asks for his help reading it. Romeo learns of the party and decides to attend in order to see his current crush, Rosaline. Had the Nurse been given the task, she would never have needed help reading the list and Romeo would never have met Juliet.

In this way, the production is riddled with tiny moments that could have altered the plot’s trajectory away from tragedy. In doing so, we get to see alternate universes that make up a multiverse. The multiverse has been a regular device in recent popular storytelling, from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the adult cartoon Rick and Morty.

Plays like Nick Payne’s Constellations, which had a West End revival in 2021, stage a multiverse by showing how the same scene between two characters might have happened in several different ways, across an infinite number of timelines.

I have written about theatrical multiverses, demonstrating that they offer the audience space to reflect upon how things might have gone differently in their own worlds. In 2021, just after the third UK Covid lockdown, the audience of Constellations was likely attuned to contemplating a world in which they did not expect to find themselves.

With the tumultuous state of the world, it can sometimes feel like we are living in the wrong timeline. The popularity of multiverse stories may seen as ways of reconciling living in our own world, that often feels as if it has been turned upside down.

Romeo and Juliet’s multiverse

As Daniel Swift’s programme note attests, Romeo and Juliet is very much about time. The plot is compressed into five days and it includes more references to days of the week, hours and minutes than any of Shakespeare’s other works. This preoccupation with time is emphasised by Hildegard Bechtler’s set design, which includes two moving panels with illuminated clocks, presenting the precise time and date in fair Verona.

Along with helping the audience understand when we see alternate timelines, the constant reminder of time allows us to reflect on just how quickly things escalate for Romeo and Juliet.

The lovers marry within hours of meeting each other and Romeo is already banished in Mantua before they’ve been wedded for a full day. In this way, the clock points to the youthful haste which creates so much waste. This theme is developed in the emphasis on how quickly Lady Capulet (Eden Epstein) was was made a wife and mother (younger than Juliet, and based on the text she could be as young as 26). This comes through in her subtle portrayal of depression at the thought of lost youth and cowardice in the face of her much older husband.

Jupe’s performance is standout. He is able to capture a contemporary take on the lines without losing any of their rhythm and poetry. This is in contrast to Sink, whose staccato delivery and frequent line breaks (perhaps emphasised by the American accent) jar against the poetry.

Kasper Hilton-Hille’s Mercutio – Romeo’s closest confidant – is a convincingly arrogant scamp. Throughout the production he is an active agent of chaos, always looking for trouble, mooning the Nurse and shaking his crotch at the fiery Tybalt (Aruna Jalloh). In fact he has been so relentlessly seeking out trouble across every timeline explored, that it is curious when in his death throes he calls down a plague on both the houses of Montague and Capulet. Surely he himself is to blame for his own demise?

My one criticism of the use of the multiverse in this production relates to the parts of the plot in which it is deployed. Often, Icke’s alternate timelines relate to chance, rather than the decisions made by the characters. For example, a drink is accidentally spilled, preventing Tybalt from attacking Romeo before he meets Juliet at the party. Or a messenger evades quarantine and delivers a letter informing Romeo that Juliet is actually still alive.

But what if it was the decisions of the characters that played out instead? For example, it would have been interesting to see Romeo not take revenge on Tybalt because he values his duty to Juliet over Mercutio. This would elevate the importance of the actions we take over the randomness of external factors. By emphasising happenstance over agency, Icke’s multiverses situate humans as flotsam on the waves of fate.

A more powerful call to action in our turbulent times would be to emphasise that it is the choices we make that can shape whether our story is a comedy or a tragedy.

Romeo and Juliet is at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London until June 20.

Will Shüler 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. Romeo and Juliet: a ‘Sliding Doors’ production that plays with time to explore what might have been – https://theconversation.com/romeo-and-juliet-a-sliding-doors-production-that-plays-with-time-to-explore-what-might-have-been-281156

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Priyal Chitale, CHASE AHRC Doctoral Researcher and PhD student in the Department of Music, SOAS, University of London

Asha Bhosle, the last surviving singing legend of the golden era of Hindi cinema, has died at 92. She debuted in the industry shortly after Indian independence in the late 1940s and is now widely considered the best-known singer in India, with more than 12,000 songs to her name. Over the course of a long and prolific career, she demonstrated extraordinary enthusiasm for reinvention, and a range and versatility that still remain unmatched.

Fans of Bhosle found joy in her singing and intrigue in her tumultuous love life. She was often associated with the trope of the fallen woman in the public imagination and pitted against her singing elder sister, Lata Mangeshkar, who famously did her best to steer clear of “vulgar” songs and was seen to embody piety, modesty, and self-sacrifice.

The painting of Mangeshkar’s good sister to Bhosle’s bad reflected the distinct categorisation of female characters as either submissive women of virtue or self-serving women of vice, which prevailed in Hindi cinema well into the 1980s. This was mapped onto the singing voices of the sisters by music directors. For instance, Anil Biswas, the pioneer of playback singing, quipped that “Asha has body while Lata has soul”.

However, it was precisely this penchant for breaking the rigid bonds and boundaries of acceptable femininity that always drew me, as it did many other queer south Asian misfits, to Bhosle’s songs.

Possibility and Plenitude

Bhosle belonged to the first generation of star playback singers. These were singers who record songs for actors to lip synch over in films – a common practice in south Asian cinema. Although she was behind the scenes, the quality of her singing made her, in many cases, more famous than the actors who mimed along to her voice.

The hundreds of songs Bhosle sang in the voice of “the other woman” moved sapphic (women and non-binary people who are attracted to women) listeners like me not because they were literally addressed to women, but because they gave voice to women whom Hindi cinema often treated as excessive, dangerous or disposable.

The actors who lip-synched her pre-recorded vocals on screen were frequently women who stood just outside the moral centre of the film: cabaret dancers, courtesans, mistresses, club performers and women whose desire was too intense to be easily domesticated. In their films, such women were often punished, abandoned or contained. In Bhosle’s voice, however, they became vivid, thinking, feeling subjects.

This is why Aao Huzoor Tumko from romantic thriller Kismat (1968) is so revealing. Sung by Bhosle, composed by O.P. Nayyar and written by Noor Devasi, the song is an invitation into intoxicated romance during a seduction scene in the film. Its refrain may be translated as: “Come, my lord, let me take you among the stars; let me take you into such springtime that your heart begins to sway.”

The actor Babita Kapoor performs the song on screen for her beloved, who is played by the debonair Biswajit Chatterjee. But what I hear in Bhosle’s performance is not simply a woman offering herself to a man. I hear a woman luxuriating in the textures of her own desire.

Bhosle laughs, hiccups, sighs and croons languorously through the song. These are not merely ornamental flourishes, but also small acts of vocal acting: ways of turning a film song into a miniature performance of mood, body and selfhood.

When she lingers on the word “mein” (“in” or “into” ) in phrases such as “sitaron mein le chalun” (“let me take you among the stars”), “baharon mein le chalun” (“let me take you into springtime”) and “hazaaron mein le chalun” (“let me take you among thousands”), she makes each repetition feel slightly different. She carefully infuses each “mein” with a distinctive flavour of longing, turning an intoxicated declaration of desire into an intoxicating invitation into female interiority.

For me, the space of this song was never only straight. The song invited me into an elsewhere: into stars, springtime, crowds, intoxication, laughter and the strange privacy of a woman’s pleasure. It allowed me to imagine desire not as shame, sin, or plot device, but as atmosphere. This is what Bhosle so often made possible: the reimagining of a spectacle of seduction as a scene of emotional complexity.

Bhosle herself seemed to understand the power of such performances. In later years, when asked to name her favourite actor to sing for, she chose Helen, who appeared in countless films as a dancer. She remembered Helen as so beautiful that she would stop singing when she entered the room, and joked that, had she been a man, she would have eloped with her.

To me, this felt like a gift to queer women: not because the remark makes Bhosle queer in any simple biographical sense, but because it acknowledged the force of female beauty, female performance and female fascination without embarrassment.

Bhosle did not merely sing women who desired men. She made female desire itself sound artful and alive: playful, pensive, hungry, theatrical, contradictory. In her voice, levity became a mode of serious identity construction, melancholy a means of knowing, and seduction something more than a narrative device designed to punish the woman who performed it. Time and again, she made room for coyness, brazenness, restlessness, satisfaction, anger and hunger to coexist within the same sonic space.

If the pure and pious heroines of Hindi cinema were often permitted only dignity and devotion, Bhosle’s women were granted appetite, ambivalence and ambition. Her singing offered us possibility and plenitude: complex ways of feeling, sensing and relating to love and life that the moral world of Hindi cinema could neither name nor contain.

Her singing was often sinuous and sensuous, and deliberately so, but it was also playful, pensive and passionate in equal measure. She embraced and enlivened the full spectrum of femininity, and rendered women profoundly, excitingly and almost achingly human in ways that were often unthinkable in the narratives that her songs animated. For me, she will always be the greater sister.

Priyal Chitale 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. Asha Bhosle: the bad sister whose singing opened up a world of queer possibility for me – https://theconversation.com/asha-bhosle-the-bad-sister-whose-singing-opened-up-a-world-of-queer-possibility-for-me-281215

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesca Jackson, PhD candidate, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University

King Charles’s four-day state visit to the US is going ahead as planned, after a shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner raised doubts about security. The royal trip, which coincides with the 250th anniversary of American independence, is the first since 2007, when the late Queen Elizabeth II was hosted by President George W. Bush.

State visits are formal, international visits made by the heads of state, which in the UK is the king. In September 2025, the king hosted an inbound state visit for US President Donald Trump. Now, he and Queen Camilla will head to Washington DC, New York and Virginia.

The visit, which runs from April 27 to 30, has been controversial amid tensions between the White House and Downing Street. Trump has repeatedly criticised Keir Starmer over a lack of support for the US military operation in Iran. Trump’s threats to buy Greenland, and capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, have also received varying levels of criticism from the UK government.

Trump has also called the UK’s plan to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius an “act of great stupidity”, and reports suggest the US is reviewing its position on Britain’s claim to sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.

Diplomacy between the two countries is currently at an “all time low”, according to former Labour defence minister and Nato secretary general Lord Robertson. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has called for the visit to be cancelled, and Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee, has said it should be delayed while the war in Iran is ongoing.

In addition, the visit is difficult for the king personally. Charles’ brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was a close associate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The king has been urged to meet with Epstein’s victims. No such meeting is currently scheduled, although the queen is due to meet representatives of campaigns against violence against women.

The final decision over whether to cancel or proceed with a state visit lies with the government, not the king. It is constitutional convention that the monarch must ultimately accept the advice of the prime minister.

Indeed, the Buckingham Palace press release announcing the visit stated that it would take place “on advice of His Majesty’s Government”. This specific wording is rare – usually, there is no explicit mention of state visits being made on the advice of the government. Given Trump’s respect for the royal family, Starmer’s government likely sees this visit as a necessary opportunity to ease UK-US tensions.

How are state visits arranged?

Both inbound and outbound state visits are coordinated by the UK Royal Visits Committee (RVC), which is comprised of Cabinet Office officials. They pass the RVC’s recommendations to the prime minister, who offers formal advice to the monarch. The king’s representatives attend RVC meetings.

According to the 19th-century constitutional historian Walter Bagehot, the monarch has “the right to be consulted, the right to advise, and the right to warn”. This seems to at least give the monarch a bit of discretion over details of their state visits.

George VI – the first reigning British monarch to make a state visit to the US, in 1939 – made some changes to the itinerary originally presented to him, including requesting not to address Congress due to his stammer.

Following talks with the White House, Buckingham Palace have reportedly made some “modest operational adjustments” to a few engagements during this visit due to security concerns sparked by the shooting at the correspondents’ dinner.

Tricky political climate

It is not unusual for political events to cast a shadow over state visits. Queen Elizabeth II’s first US state visit took place amid the Suez crisis. Her presence helped to “preserve the special relationship” at a time when it was being tested like never before.

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Read more:
What to expect next from the ‘special relationship’ as Trump again lashes out at Keir Starmer

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Ahead of the US bicentennial celebrations in 1976, the British ambassador in Washington even warned against sending the queen to Washington due to political events. Amid the Watergate scandal, there was “a very real chance not only of embarrassment to Her Majesty, but of impairment to the dignity of the monarchy”. The RVC suggested that Charles, then Prince of Wales, should go instead.

The British government has long referred to state visits as their “big gun” thanks to the popularity of the monarchy and the symbolic power of a state visit.

Trump is known to admire the British royal family, describing the king as a “fantastic man”. Recent history suggests the king may even be one of the few people to whom Trump is willing to listen.

Just a week after visiting Windsor Castle in September 2025, the president went from urging Kyiv to make territorial concessions to insisting, at the UN General Assembly of Nations, that it could win back all of the territory captured by Russia since 2022. According to Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, King Charles was a “key influence” on this shift.

Most recently, private comments made by the king to the president were said to have encouraged Trump to backtrack from his comments about British soldiers “staying back” from the front lines in Iraq.

The king will address both houses of Congress and deliver a speech at the state banquet. These diplomatically chosen words, which are likely to have been carefully written for him by the government with the involvement of royal aides, will provide opportunities for him to quell the tensions of recent months. The government will hope that – just as Trump has claimed it can – the king’s visit will “absolutely repair” UK-US relations.

Francesca Jackson 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. King Charles embarks on state visit to the US – can he repair the special relationship? – https://theconversation.com/king-charles-embarks-on-state-visit-to-the-us-can-he-repair-the-special-relationship-281454

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Morey, Senior Lecturer in Music Production, Leeds Beckett University

International Dawn Chorus Day (May 3 for 2026) is a great time to hear the UK’s birds at their most vocal. While we can enjoy the variety and beauty of birdsong, for the birds themselves it serves more practical purposes – to attract a mate and establish and defend a breeding territory.

Birds can produce complex vocal sounds, which we refer to as “song” because they have a vocal organ called the syrinx – which, unlike the larynx possessed by mammals like the human, can make two distinct notes simultaneously. This ability to generate notes in rapid succession is helpful because birds hear their song and the songs of other birds differently to humans.

Research suggests that they are able to perceive small and rapid changes in sound much more clearly than we can, meaning what we may hear as a single or buzzy note will be distinguished by them as multiple notes. Birdsong to a bird is something of much greater complexity than we can apprehend.

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International Dawn Chorus Day brings casual bird appreciators, ornithological experts and dedicated twitchers together in a celebration of birdsong. In our series, experts give their insights on nature’s chorus.

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While I understand that I hear bird song very differently to the creatures that make it, my background as a music producer, field recordist, sound artist – and keen amateur birdwatcher (and listener) – has made me think about which notable musicians and pieces of music might have something in common stylistically with the songs of certain birds. The following is both speculative and entirely subjective and I would welcome other ideas and opinions.

Blackbird

Whether delivered from rooftop or treetop, their sweet, tender and calming song, which has been likened to human whistling, can often be heard book-ending our daylight hours. Bobby McFerrin’s whistled introduction to Don’t Worry Be Happy captures something both of the blackbird’s performance and sense of ease it can create in the listener.

Though joined by visitors from colder climes in autumn and winter, our breeding population of blackbirds are common year-round residents in UK gardens and woodlands.

Nightingale

There are few wildlife experiences in the UK that can match hearing a nightingale singing at close range, and this summer visitor – a scarcer cousin of the blackbird and song thrush – should be in full voice by International Dawn Chorus Day. The dynamics, dexterity and variation in its song are extraordinary, and it is no surprise that it has inspired poets such as Keats, Milton and Rossetti, and composers including Stravinsky, Beethoven and Rimsky-Korsakov.

When thinking about a musician who can get some way to matching the expressiveness of the nightingale, Italian American operatic soprano Amelita Galli-Curci’s 1927 recording of the Russian popular song The Nightingale (Solovey) by Alyabyev
captures something of the bird’s style with her nimble and vivid flourishes.

However, the nightingale is known for never performing the same song twice, and as
one of nature’s great musical improvisers, a better match might be the solos of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane.

In Bye Bye Blackbird Coltrane combines fast-paced bursts of melody with more thoughtful and lyrical sections, evoking something of the nightingale’s song. Coltrane is also quite a loud player and nightingales, as anyone who has heard one in the flesh will know, are loud – you can’t miss them.

Reed warbler

A wetland reedbed bird that arrives in the UK in mid-April, the reed warbler
couldn’t be further from the melodic and rhythmic variation of the nightingale. It prefers an almost monotonic song.

The hypnotic main riff on New York DJ and producer Joey Beltram’s Energy Flash comes to mind for its rhythmic solidity, while its subtle filter adjustments evoke the bird’s buzzy modulation.

Sedge warbler

The reed warbler, or at least its sound, might not be out of place in a subterranean Berlin techno club at 4am, but its reedbed neighbour the sedge warbler is much more of a bebop hep cat. Its fast and complex patterns combining staccato sections with more melodic phrases could recall the sharp accents and raid trills of “the Bird” himself – legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker.

But for me, the sedge warbler is too buzzy and raspy for the smooth tones of a tenor sax, and the rapid-fire delivery of trumpeter Fats Navarro on cuts like Wail or The Chase is a better fit.

Blackcap

One of our more common migrant warblers in the UK, the blackcap’s loud and
frequent song can be heard in wooded areas across the country. To my ears, its
volume and power is matched only by its tunelessness, with every note sounding just
a little flat or sharp in relation to what proceeds and follows.

It is reminiscent of an enthusiastic singing talent show auditionee belting out Anastasia’s I’m Outta Love. Nine out of ten for effort, but a much lower score for the precision of its pitching.

Bittern

The elusive bittern is usually a bird to be heard but not seen. Another denizen of the reedbed, its booming song can be likened to someone blowing across the top of a very large bottle or beginning to play a giant didgeridoo and then thinking better of it. Like the reed warbler, it prefers to stay hidden among the reeds where it provides some serious sub bass accompaniment to that other bird’s techno riffing. Think of a bleep-and-bass classic like LFO by LFO.

I hope you enjoy the variety and virtuosity of song on offer in your own garden, local park or woodland on International Dawn Chorus Day. Or like me, you can head for the rave going on at your nearest wetland nature reserve.

Justin Morey 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. Dawn Chorus Day: a composer on the musical styles of birdsong – https://theconversation.com/dawn-chorus-day-a-composer-on-the-musical-styles-of-birdsong-279870

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicolas Bellouin, Professor of Climate Processes, University of Reading

Contrails, short for condensation trails, are the white streaks often seen in the sky behind aircraft. The international cloud atlas, which classifies clouds, has a category just for them: cirrus homogenitus, an example of man-made clouds.

Contrails contribute to climate change, adding to the warming by the carbon dioxide emitted by aviation. Although the exact amount of warming caused by these wispy-looking clouds is uncertain, what is understood now suggests that reducing the number of contrails has the potential to reduce the climate impact of flights.

Contrails are made of ice crystals. These reflect sunlight, causing the Earth’s surface to receive less energy, but at the same time trapping some of Earth’s outgoing infrared radiation. Depending on the balance between those two opposite effects, a net loss of energy or a gain of energy, individual contrails can be either warming or cooling over their lifetime, but warming dominates once averaged over the global, annual contrail population.

How are they made?

Contrails form behind aircraft at around an altitude of 10-11km. They only form in sufficiently cold and humid regions of the atmosphere, where water vapour condenses on to the soot particles emitted by aircraft engines to form liquid droplets, which freeze into ice crystals. The regions with the most contrails are over Europe, the North Atlantic, and eastern North America. They are rarer in Asia.

Soot particles are needed to form contrails, yet even engines that emit very few soot particles still generate contrails. Other particles, often formed in the engine plume, take over and lead to contrail formation. But some combinations of fuel and engine technology may yet provide a way to form fewer contrails, or at least contrails with a smaller climate impact.

The characteristics of a contrail depend initially on the size, shape and engine position of the aircraft that created it, but atmospheric conditions are ultimately more important.

In a dry atmosphere, contrails only last a few minutes and cover a tiny surface area: their climate impact is negligible. But if the atmosphere remains cold and moist enough, many contrails form, grow, and come together to form fields of ice clouds, called contrail cirrus.

Contrail cirrus impact the climate because they last for several hours and can cover large areas, sometimes spanning entire countries, as has been observed over the UK and France, for example.

Some contrail cirrus clouds can exert the same climate impact as tens, even hundreds, of tons of carbon dioxide.

Two effects make contrails particularly potent. Although they initially form from the few hundred kilograms of water vapour and the
dozens of grams of soot released every minute of flight, contrails then gain mass from the humidity of the atmosphere. Also, ice crystals absorb infrared radiation at virtually all wavelengths, while carbon dioxide only absorbs in narrow wavelength ranges.

However, contrail cirrus strongly affect the flow of energy in and out of the Earth for a few hours. This is in contrast to the comparatively weaker changes caused by carbon dioxide, which last for centuries. So the warming caused by a flight will initially be dominated by contrails, but carbon dioxide will dominate a few years after the flight.

Routing aircraft to avoid flying in the regions where contrails form may slow down the climate warming caused by a growing aviation sector. But there are still many things scientists need to understand about how to predict which flights would see their climate impact reduced the most using this kind of planning.

Weather forecasts of humidity at flight altitude need to improve, and one way to do so is to have more accurate and more frequent measurements of humidity. This is the aim of the Mist research project, where I work with Honeywell Aerospace UK and Boeing UK to develop a humidity sensor to detect contrail formation, see how the sensor can be integrated on commercial aircraft, and evaluate how better humidity measurements affect the predicted climate impact of contrails.

Many research projects are seeking to better quantify the climate impact of contrails and find ways to form fewer warming contrails. Changing fuel or engine technology is slow. But optimising flight trajectories with weather forecasts to avoid the cold, moist regions of the atmosphere where contrails form might be achievable more quickly.

Nicolas Bellouin has received and receives funding for aviation non-CO2 climate research, which includes contrail research, from the UK National Environment Research Council, Innovate UK and the Aerospace Technology Institute, the European Union’s Horizon programme, the SESAR Joint Undertaking, and the French Civil Aviation Authority. He is a member of the Aviation Non-CO2 Expert Network (ANCEN) of the European Aviation Safety Agency.

– ref. Here’s what we know about the climate cost of white trails aircraft leave in the sky – https://theconversation.com/heres-what-we-know-about-the-climate-cost-of-white-trails-aircraft-leave-in-the-sky-279505

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Farooq Sher, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Energy Engineering, Nottingham Trent University

The Iran crisis is reshaping how the world produces, uses and secures energy. This is no temporary shock. It has become a structural stress test of energy systems, industrial production and government strategy.

We’ve seen this in the recent past: household energy bills in 2024 were still about 4% higher than in 2019,
even after the 2022 global energy crisis had eased (annual bills were up 16% at the peak). That crisis was driven by a combination of post-pandemic demand recovery, tight energy supplies and wider geopolitical disruption, including the Ukraine war, which pushed energy prices sharply higher.

Affordability remains fragile because many lower-income households still spend a disproportionately large share of their income on energy. It’s also a problem for business. Sustained energy costs continue to burden European manufacturing, for instance, affecting industrial competitiveness and long-term economic resilience.

At the same time, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects global electricity demand will have grown 3.3% in 2025 and then 3.7% in 2026. The pressure from the 2022 crisis therefore shifted rather than disappeared.

International fuel markets remain highly sensitive to geopolitical shocks, especially when households and industry depend on imported gas and oil. Around 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. This highlights how concentrated supply routes can transmit instability rapidly across global markets, causing not just rising energy prices but knock-on effects like increased fertiliser costs.

It’s also no longer just a question of fuel supply. Unpredictable, extreme weather conditions are compounding the problem of volatile prices of fossil fuels. Heatwaves raise electricity demand for cooling; drought weakens hydropower; storms disrupt transmission and distribution infrastructure; and low-wind periods test whether the system has enough backup power, storage and flexibility to maintain supply.

The IEA’s work on climate resilience in power systems makes clear that climate-related extremes are becoming more important across electricity generation, networks and demand. Price risk and weather risk are increasingly overlapping drivers of modern energy insecurity (the risk of energy becoming unaffordable, unreliable or unavailable).

The strain is emerging from a mismatch between how energy systems were built and the conditions under which they now operate. Electricity systems are being asked to integrate larger amounts of low-carbon power, but the supporting infrastructure has not developed at the same speed. This means there is still not enough grid capacity, energy storage, system interconnection or ability to match electricity demand with changing supply to move electricity efficiently, store surplus power or reduce pressure at times of peak demand.

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Read more:
The oil price surge is just one symptom of a supply chain network that is not fit for this age of global tensions

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At least 1,650GW of renewable electricity capacity worldwide is waiting in grid connection queues. That is equivalent to more than 40 times Britain’s recent peak electricity demand of about 38GW, which shows how large the backlog has become.

An estimated US$400 billion (£296 billion) is spent annually on grid infrastructure, including transmission lines, substations and distribution networks that carry electricity from where it is generated to where it is used.

This compares with roughly US$1 trillion spent on forms of energy generation, such as solar farms, wind farms, hydropower plants and gas-fired power stations. This shows how electricity-generating capacity has expanded faster than the systems needed to connect it, balance supply and demand, and keep the system secure.
When electricity demand is rising rapidly, there’s less of a buffer if the supporting infrastructure needed to manage it (such as grids or storage) is not expanding at the same pace.

Missed warning signs

Well before the Iran energy crisis, it was clear that we are overly dependent on internationally traded fossil fuels. The same goes for the slow pace of grid expansion relative to new generation capacity, and our failure to treat weather variability as a core energy-security issue rather than a secondary climate concern.

Recent European electricity data underlines this. Wind and solar generated 30% of EU electricity in 2025, slightly above the 29% from fossil fuels. Nevertheless, less windy and less rainy conditions contributed to a 12% fall in EU hydro output in 2025.

Cleaner systems do not automatically become more resilient. Network strength, flexibility and climate preparedness all need to advance at the same pace.

The strongest evidence points towards a more integrated response in which energy security and decarbonisation are treated as part of the same agenda. Lowering dependence on volatile fossil fuels, using energy more efficiently in homes, transport and industry, and strengthening system flexibility are increasingly central to long-term security. Yet many electricity systems remain too slow to adapt when supply drops, demand surges, or electricity must be shifted across regions or time periods.

You can see the implications with households. Heat pumps are typically three to four times more efficient than gas boilers in the sense that they can deliver three to four units of heat for each unit of electricity used, because they move heat rather than generate it directly.

However, the Climate Change Committee also notes that lower running costs depend on electricity prices and policy support, so greater efficiency does not always mean lower bills in the short term. Solar panels can help here. The UK government’s solar roadmap says a typical household installing rooftop solar could save around £500 per year on bills. Meanwhile, the IEA also estimates that electric vehicles displaced more than 1.3 million barrels of oil demand per day in 2024.

These are not only indicators of decarbonisation; they also show how cleaner technologies can reduce direct exposure to fossil-fuel price volatility.

At the policy level, the choice is between deeper structural resilience and repeated cycles of short-term crisis management. The European Commission’s REPowerEU plan is to make Europe’s energy system more secure, affordable and sustainable by reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels, accelerating clean energy and improving energy efficiency. It is intended to strengthen long-term energy resilience across the EU by diversifying energy supplies and speeding up the transition to domestically produced low-carbon energy.

What remains uncertain is the timing and scale of future shocks. What is certain is that the greatest vulnerabilities still lie in fossil-fuel dependence, weak infrastructure and delayed policy adjustment. The most credible route to a more secure energy future lies in efficiency, electrification, renewables, stronger grids, storage and policy that takes a longer-term approach.

Farooq Sher 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 freak weather and an old-fashioned grid exacerbate energy insecurity – https://theconversation.com/how-freak-weather-and-an-old-fashioned-grid-exacerbate-energy-insecurity-280502