Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham University

A government-appointed review panel has just released its long-awaited report on England’s national curriculum. Its stated intention is to improve curriculum quality for all children, but particularly those “for whom the system is currently not working well,” such as children with special educational needs and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A new national curriculum will be published in 2027 and will come into force in September 2028. The review panel wanted this phased in, but the government says that it will happen in one go. The review’s recommendations for the curriculum include an oracy framework to join the reading and writing frameworks, to encourage children and young people to become confident, effective speakers.

It proposes a shake-up of literacy testing in year six. It suggests that primary tests could be revised to make them more accessible to children with special educational needs and disabilities. Schools are encouraged to make use of existing optional tests at the end of key stage one, for children aged seven.

The report also recommends greater representation of ethnic and other diversity in the subject matter of GCSEs, religious education to be better integrated in a national curriculum, and a substantial reduction in the length of GCSE examinations. In its response to the report, the government has committed to reducing GCSE exam time by two and a half to three hours on average – less than the “at least 10%” the review suggested.

Confusingly, the government has made a number of additional suggested changes to education and entitlement at around the same time as the publication of the review’s final report. The review suggests new diagnostic maths and reading tests for year eight. But these are presumably not in addition to the new year eight reading tests already proposed by the government.

Each proposal may have merit, and making primary tests more accessible for children with special educational needs might work. But overall there is little here that will directly help overcome disadvantage.

It is not clear that encouraging more schools to use key stage one tests, rather than abolishing them or making them mandatory, will help. Schools with more resources will be better able to make use of the tests. Nor is it clear that poor children are especially disadvantaged by religious education not being part of the national curriculum.

Triple science

The report proposes that all students should be entitled to study the three separate traditional sciences at GCSE – physics, chemistry and biology. This proposal has been accepted by the government. The argument here is that for those students wanting to continue in a scientific career, or enter university to study a science, access to the individual specialist subjects is crucial.

Schools in some disadvantaged areas have offered only GCSE qualifications in dual or combined science. This is a double qualification covering all three traditional sciences, but in two thirds of the time.

In some respects, therefore, this reform should be welcomed. It offers parity for pupils of all backgrounds across schools. However, in other ways it is already out of date. Students pursuing science careers beyond school aren’t necessarily going to take a degree in physics, biology or chemistry. They may well study degrees in combined sciences, more specialist topics such as cybernetics, or subjects such as nursing science, forensic science or psychology.

The biggest barrier to success in the “hard” sciences may actually be the lack of specialist teachers. Currently it is estimated that over half of all physics lessons are not taught by specialists in those subjects. And, as with dual science, this is more likely to occur in disadvantaged, remote or otherwise hard-to-staff schools.

Even if all schools were to offer three sciences, perhaps by relocating new and existing specialist teachers more evenly between schools, there would still not be enough specialist teachers to teach everyone. What would happen instead is that only some students in each school would be able to study three separate sciences (with appropriate teachers). This could lead to social or other stratification within schools. The policy could only work as intended if recruitment of specialist teachers were rapidly improved.

In truth, changes that fall outside the national curriculum – such as recruiting better qualified teachers in remote areas, or increasing funding for areas with high proportions of long-term disadvantage – would be better bets to tackle disadvantage. If this new proposed curriculum is to have any chance, it must be met with a seismic shift in teacher funding and recruitment.

Stephen Gorard receives funding from DfE and ESRC. But none is relevant to this article.

– ref. What the review of England’s national curriculum means for disadvantaged schools – https://theconversation.com/what-the-review-of-englands-national-curriculum-means-for-disadvantaged-schools-268960

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Turns, Senior Environment Editor, The Conversation

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

A close friend of mine escaped her home in the British Virgin Islands during Hurricane Irma in September 2017. She and her young family had to grab their passports and not much else when they fled 200mph winds. At the time, she described the total devastation as “like a bomb going off”. Every hurricane season, she and so many other people relive the trauma of that experience. Eight years on, the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica has been particularly terrifying because the storm intensified so rapidly as a result of global warming.

“Once the winds fall silent, anxiety and grief settle in,” write psychology researchers Gulnaz Anjum and Mudassar Aziz. “The fear, disconnection and exhaustion that follow a disaster of this scale are not fleeting. They can shape lives for years.”

Anjum and Aziz describe how hurricanes like Irma and Melissa can trigger a form of distress known as “deep anticipatory anxiety”. Combine that fear of this disaster happening again with the psychological isolation associated with an experience like this, and it’s clear that every subsequent storm compounds mental strain. This, they explain, leaves people more vulnerable to lasting emotional distress.

An invisible toll

Aid is often quickly sent to rebuild communities, fix infrastructure and reconnect telecommunications. But the mental health toll is not so tangible. Perhaps that’s why it’s so often overlooked.

Only as recently as 2022, the UN’s climate authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted that climate change poses serious risks to mental wellbeing. And we’re not all equally affected.

“Some people and communities are most at risk for increasingly worsening mental health outcomes due to their proximity to the hazard, their reliance on the environment for livelihood and culture and their socioeconomic status,” write three Canadian researchers, who study the mental health implications of climate change.

That includes farming communities already experiencing drought and people living in areas most at risk of floods or wildfires.

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Read more:
Ukraine’s massive nature project is helping veterans and land recover

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The bullseye effect?

Collective trauma is currently being felt across the Caribbean and way beyond.

Psychiatry experts at Florida International University in the US, Jonathan S. Comer and Anthony Steven Dick point out that more studies now show that the negative mental health effects of disasters extend far beyond the immediate disaster area.

That goes against the once-dominant theory of disaster mental health, sometimes called the “bullseye model”, which proposed that the negative mental health effects of a disaster were directly related to how close the person was to the centre of the event – the bullseye.

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Read more:
Mental health distress in the wake of Bangladesh cyclone shows the devastation of climate-related loss and damage

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When Hurricane Irma struck in 2017, they used a national long-term research project that was already underway to study how 11,800 children were coping both before and after the disaster.

“Greater media exposure was associated with higher reporting of post-traumatic stress symptoms – and the link was just as strong in San Diego youth as it was in Florida youth,” write Comer and Dick, who advise limiting exposure to social media because “extended exposure to such content rarely provides additional actionable information”.

Narratives and neurons

Climate trauma can result “from knowing about or experiencing climate change crises”, according to education researchers at the University of Regina in Canada who point out that young people are particularly susceptible. Focusing on responses to problems can guide people to imagine better futures rather than teaching doomsday clock narratives: “It is more helpful to share concrete examples of community-led climate mitigation, adaptation and financing initiatives,” they write.

Trauma from experiencing extreme weather can change the way our brains function. In 2023, Jyoti Mishra, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Diego, studied how climate change-related trauma affected the memory, attention and ability to process distractions of people who survived the 2018 wildfire that destroyed the town of Paradise, California.

“People who were exposed to the wildfire had greater frontal lobe activity while dealing with distractions,” she writes. The frontal lobe is the brain’s hub for higher-level functions and frontal brain activity can be a marker for cognitive effort. People exposed to the fires may be having more difficulty processing distractions and compensating by exerting more effort.

Rebuilding resilience

Globally, over a billion people already live with a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization. Climate catastrophe will “intensify” that, according to researchers at the United Nations University who explain that “mental health support systems should be a fully integrated part of any plan to adapt to climate change and respond to disasters”.

Usually, mental health is considered in relation to emergency response and disaster management but support needs to go beyond that, into the long term. That’s because psychological wellbeing enables people to withstand adversity and build constructive relationships.

Acting as part of a collective, rather than alone, helps people achieve a sense of agency and solidarity while driving positive change. The researchers also explain that funding for mental health support should also be part of the debate at global climate summits, like the UN’s Cop30 climate summit that begins next week in Brazil. That would help transition “from a state of fear and anxiety for many and create hope to build more resilient societies, leaving no one behind and empowering future generations to take climate action”.

As Mishra, the psychiatry professor, outlines: “Resilient mental health is what allows us to recover from traumatic experiences. How humans experience and mentally deal with climate catastrophes sets the stage for our future lives.”

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– ref. How to build mental resilience to climate change – https://theconversation.com/how-to-build-mental-resilience-to-climate-change-268811

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eef Hogervorst, Professor of Biological Psychology, Loughborough University

A new study suggests that even low levels of physical activity could protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease – but not in the way scientists expected.

The researchers tracked almost 300 older adults with early brain signs of Alzheimer’s for nine to 11 years using pedometers. They found that physical activity didn’t reduce the toxic amyloid plaques that most Alzheimer’s treatments now target.

Instead, in people who already had these plaques, physical activity reduced the accumulation of misfolded tau proteins in specific brain areas. These proteins appear later in Alzheimer’s disease and are more closely linked to cognitive and functional decline. These signs of dementia were reduced by almost half in more active participants.

Benefits appeared at just 3,000 steps – roughly half an hour of walking at a moderate pace. The optimal range was 5,000 to 7,500 steps daily, after which the effect plateaued. More steps didn’t necessarily mean greater protection, which suggests a realistic target for older, sedentary people, rather than the often-cited 10,000 steps.

The study had limitations, however. It involved a fairly small group of mostly white, well-educated people in the US, and it didn’t take other lifestyle or health factors into account. Also, there may be other protective mechanisms of walking at play. But it does support other research suggesting that being physically active may lower the risk of dementia.

A UK study of 1,139 people over 50 found that those who were moderately to vigorously active had a 34-50% reduction in dementia risk when followed over eight to ten years. Among those who developed dementia, staying active reduced their memory decline, particularly in older women.

A larger 2022 UK study tracked 78,430 people for seven years using wrist accelerometers. It found a 25% reduction in dementia risk with just 3,800 steps daily, rising to 50% at 9,800 steps.

However, people who walked more also had better cardiovascular health – lower cholesterol, better sleep and blood pressure and reduced diabetes risk. Since these heart and stroke risk factors also increase dementia risk, the picture is complex.

Healthy habits often go together. People who exercise are more likely to eat well, not smoke, look after their heart health and have fewer financial stresses. This makes it hard to know which factor is having the biggest effect. The researchers tried to account for this, but because these habits are so closely linked, it’s difficult to say that exercise alone is responsible.

However, there is a strong case for this as there are multiple ways exercise might support the brain: improving cardiovascular health, increasing blood flow and boosting chemicals that promote brain-cell connections.

One such substance is irisin, a hormone produced by muscles that acts on almost all faulty brain mechanisms associated with Alzheimer’s, including inflammation. This and other chemicals, such as BDNF, associated with exercise, provide plausible biological pathways for how physical activity might directly influence brain health beyond its cardiovascular benefits.

But the relationship might work in reverse, too. People may become less active because of early Alzheimer’s symptoms. Those with hearing problems, for instance – itself a dementia risk factor – often report barriers that make them stop being active before other dementia symptoms appear.

Vicious circle

Reduced activity then accelerates memory decline. This creates a vicious circle. Early disease symptoms – such as not hearing – can affect self-esteem and reduce engagment in physical activity, which in turn worsens cognitive decline.

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Read more:
How your vision can predict dementia 12 years before it is diagnosed – new study

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Brisk walking might be particularly beneficial. A small trial of 15 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s who did Nordic walking (an enhanced walking technique that uses poles to work your upper body as well as your legs) maintained brain function over 24 weeks, with some functions even improving.

The 15 who received only standard care showed decline or no improvement. Though small, the trial suggests that even people already diagnosed with Alzheimer’s might benefit from increased physical activity, including brisk walking.

Getting outside, particularly in nature, may be especially beneficial for preventing dementia – possibly because it improves mood and sleep while reducing isolation – all dementia risk factors. The combination of physical movement, natural light exposure and social interaction when walking outdoors may create multiple protective effects that complement each other.

The challenge now is helping people overcome barriers to outdoor activity, such as safety concerns, fear of falling, or simply preferring the comfort of the sofa – particularly during wetter, colder months. But the evidence suggests that even a few minutes of walking could make a difference, and that modest, achievable targets – a half-hour stroll rather than a marathon training regime – may offer substantial protection against cognitive decline.

Eef Hogervorst has received funding from Economic and Social Research Council, Road Safety Trust, Alzheimer’s Research UK, ISPF, Dunhill Medical Trust. She was affiliated with NICE as expert on menopausal hormone treatment and dementia risk.

– ref. Even a few thousand steps a day can reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s – new study – https://theconversation.com/even-a-few-thousand-steps-a-day-can-reduce-your-risk-of-alzheimers-new-study-269020

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Patrick Diamond, Professor of Public Policy, Queen Mary University of London

There is increasingly bad blood between ministers and civil servants in the UK government. The trend has been apparent for at least a decade, with the mood between officials and ministers darkening during the Conservative administrations of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, fuelled by conflict over Brexit.

It was anticipated that the arrival of Keir Starmer’s government would mark a renaissance in civil service-ministerial relations. To symbolise a new era, Starmer instructed ministers to write welcome notes to their civil servants.

Yet, so far, there has been little visible improvement in the relationship, as ministers have become increasingly frustrated. The prime minister denounced the British state as slow-moving, “flabby” and ineffectual.

Rumours are circulating in Whitehall that Starmer and his allies regret appointing Chris Wormald, a civil service traditionalist, as the new cabinet secretary. In July, the Guardian reported the prime minister had “buyer’s remorse” in the light of Wormald’s apparent inability to get the ship of state moving in the right direction.

But it’s not one-way traffic. Civil servants have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of politicians. Moazzam Malik, a former director-general in the Foreign Office, reflected that “our system of government is built on the principle that civil servants provide impartial, evidence-based advice and ministers make decisions. But when ministers behave badly, it is usually because they don’t like what they are being told – and decide to take it out on the messenger.”

An obvious factor in the growth of this animosity and ill-feeling between ministers and civil servants is the prevailing belief that the British state is failing and that, in the current climate, “nothing works”.

All recent governments have struggled with delivery. Politicians castigate bureaucrats for being slow-moving and incompetent. Civil servants respond by insisting there is insufficient clarity from ministers who are prone to favour disruptive public sector reorganisations rather than focusing on the hard slog of continuous improvement. And when blunders happen, the two sides are liable to blame each other.

Another element is confusion within the civil service about what it exists to achieve. Is the role of officials to advise and support ministers, or oversee practical implementation at the front line? Different ministers patently want different things from their officials, while too few politicians arrive in office with a clear understanding of how to get the best out of civil servants.

At the same time, there is a belief that officials are rarely held accountable, while senior leaders can too easily evade responsibility for high-profile failures. Not surprisingly, the modern civil service has suffered an identity crisis.

On top of this, politicians of all parties are less likely to respect prevailing institutional norms. Historically, civil servants and ministers in Britain formed a strong bond based on a mutually beneficial partnership, depicted by academics as a “public service bargain”. This idea was elaborated in the 1970s by social scientist Bernard Schaffer to analyse the characteristics of civil service bureaucracy.

That bargain, encapsulated in the 19th century Northcote-Trevelyan report, meant that officials “exchanged overt partisanship, some political rights and a public political profile in return for permanent careers, honours and a six-hour working day”. Ministers had to accept merit-based appointment in return for the loyalty, obedience and dedication of civil servants.

The Whitehall model was predicated on a “governing marriage” between ministers and bureaucrats reflecting the ethos of “club government”. Both sides knew one other through educational and social ties based on class background and there was implicit ideological consensus. This was articulated in the post-war era through support for liberal civil service Keynesianism. Above all, there was the prevailing belief in the “Rolls-Royce” Whitehall machinery as the most effective in the world.

End of the bargain

The shift to a “them and us” model began in earnest during the 1980s as the consensus shattered and politicians became more critical of civil servants. Increasingly, ministers sought to create an entourage of advisers and consultants, marginalising career officials.

The monopoly over policy advice was eroded, as thinktanks and non-governmental organisations were encouraged to enter the policy-making arena. Civil servants were incentivised to become managers overseeing delivery rather than policy advisers – a trend reinforced by subsequent governments.

The cumulative effect was to create distance between ministers and officials. Yet such developments were scarcely unique to Britain. A recent survey revealed that across the world, bureaucracies are struggling to provide impartial advice to ministers.

This was the consequence of “political interference, where there are increasing instances of political agendas overshadowing expert advice worldwide”. Alongside that is the growth of “misinformation, where the rapid spread of incorrect or partial information in the digital age is undermining the credibility of factual, unbiased advice”.

The problem is that in this environment, Britain is in danger of losing one of its most trusted institutions: an impartial, capable civil service. For all its faults, this service acts as a bulwark against the overweening power of the executive, while supporting ministers to achieve their goals.

Rather than castigating officials behind closed doors, the new administration should produce a reform agenda that will improve civil service performance, acting as a catalyst for wider public sector transformation.

Patrick Diamond receives funding from the UKRI/ESRC Productivity Institute.

He is a member of the Labour Party.

– ref. Why have relations between civil servants and ministers turned so sour – and can they be repaired? – https://theconversation.com/why-have-relations-between-civil-servants-and-ministers-turned-so-sour-and-can-they-be-repaired-269025

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elias Michaut, PhD Researcher in Archaeology & Heritage, UCL

The 1969 Stonewall riot, a pivotal episode of LGBTQ+ resistance to a police raid, was a turning point in the western gay rights movement. Today, Pride events are held each year at the end of June in memory of this uprising. Yet, Stonewall was not the first queer rebellion.

My recent research, published in the Journal of Homosexuality, uncovered a queer uprising which took place in 1905, more than 60 years before Stonewall, at a youth detention site in France.

In 19th-century France, an underground queer scene was developing around bars and brothels in Paris. Same-sex relationships were also common in single-gender institutions, like in the military or in prisons, although frowned upon. The late 19th century saw rising anxieties surrounding queer sexualities, which were increasingly being labelled as medical disorders.

Same-sex relationships had become commonplace in some French youth penal colonies. These were institutions where working-class youths aged between eight and 21 years old were incarcerated, for several months to several years, often after an arrest for vagrancy or theft. There they were forced to perform agricultural and industrial labour under very harsh conditions.

Les Douaires was a youth penal colony for detained boys in Normandy (northern France). In the 1900s, a growing number of boys aged over 16 were sent to Les Douaires. Rumours spread of frequent sexual interactions between detained boys, supposedly happening in the courtyards of the penal colony.

The penal administration reacted by instituting a compulsory afternoon nap. This was an explicit attempt to cut down time spent in the courtyards and therefore reduce the frequency of same-sex relationships.

This measure was clearly not to the liking of the detained population. On July 31 1905, 200 detained boys refused to take the nap and instead gathered in the courtyard.

Several hours of open riot ensued, during which the boys smashed over 200 windows, attacked staff members, forcing them to retreat, and ripped some of the fences surrounding the courtyards. They also tried to escape together, but a staff member managed to close the main gates of the penal colony just as the riot was breaking out.

The staff who had retreated telegraphed the police and the army for backup, and the riot calmed down within a few hours. A small military outpost of ten soldiers was established nearby, and additional warders were sent from Paris. In the following days, 26 detained boys identified as leaders of the insurrection were transferred to another penal colony.

The 1905 riot was not the first episode of collective resistance to erupt at Les Douaires. In June 1880, the boys had rebelled after a warder had hit a child. Staff brutality was omnipresent, and in the 1870s the penal colony’s director had been reprimanded for routinely whipping the inmates. The harsh living conditions led to recurrent outbreaks of diseases, and the boys at Les Douaires were several times more likely to die than free young people outside.

In the months preceding the July 1905 riot, socialist ideas had started spreading among the older boys at Les Douaires. A letter from the penal colony’s director written a few days after the uprising points to the growing political climate and the refusal of the nap, instituted to limit homosexual relationships, as causes of the riot.

It must be noted that while the detained youth engaged in same-sex behaviour that we might now describe as queer, there is no reason to believe this translated into any sense of queer identity. Not least because contemporary western notions of sexual identity are a relatively recent development. Nonetheless, the July 1905 mutiny at Les Douaires remains a significant event in LGBTQ+ history, as one of the earliest documented episodes of overt collective resistance to anti-queer repression.

Although the late 19th and early 20th centuries were marked by increasing police raids on LGBTQ+ venues and the emergence of early campaigning groups, there is little evidence for similar moments of mass collective resistance to homophobic policies and repression.

From the 1905 Les Douaires riot to the 1969 Stonewall riot, queer uprisings most often took place in reaction to police repression or, as in this case, within the walls of a prison. In a now-famous speech on the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 1973, transgender activist Sylvia Rivera reminded the crowd of their “gay brothers and gay sisters in jail”.

In countries like the UK, the US, or France, LGBTQ+ people in prison, especially those who are not white, are still at higher risk of sexual assault and violence and have high rates of suicides.

The 1905 Les Douaires riot stands as an early chapter in this unfinished history of resistance to anti-queer and state violence.

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Elias Michaut received doctoral funding for this research from the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP).

– ref. A queer uprising 60 years before Stonewall: the 1905 Les Douaires riot – https://theconversation.com/a-queer-uprising-60-years-before-stonewall-the-1905-les-douaires-riot-266856

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kevin Olsen, UKSA Mars Science Fellow, Department of Physics, University of Oxford

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin have submitted simplified plans to Nasa designed to return US astronauts to the Moon’s surface.

These plans focus on Nasa’s Artemis III mission, which will see the first US astronauts walk on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

SpaceX was awarded the contract to build the lunar landing vehicle for Artemis III in April 2021, using a version of their Starship spacecraft. On October 20, 2025, Nasa’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, said he was reopening the contract to competitors, such as Blue Origin, citing delays with Starship. So what has gone wrong?

At the heart of the issues are Starship’s size and ambition. The massive spacecraft will tower over the moonscape at 50m (165ft) tall and aim to bring 100,000kg of payload to the lunar surface.

Space vehicles designed to carry humans undergo a process of certification to become “human-rated” – safe to put crew and passengers on board. Most undergo numerous tests of their component parts, followed by a few tests of the full vehicle.

However, Starship’s test flight programme is now the longest in space launch history. The Starship upper stage is the part that will carry astronauts. It underwent seven small launches up to 12.5km in altitude between 2020 and 2021. Only the last of these flights, SN15, survived touchdown.

There have now been 11 test flights to orbit of the full Starship system, where the upper stage is paired with a Super Heavy rocket booster. Most have ended poorly for the upper stage, with the last two surviving re-entry before tipping over after landing on the ocean and exploding.

It is hard to forget the first time the pair of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket’s boosters returned to the launch pad and landed successfully, or the first time the Starship Super Heavy booster was caught by the arms (or “chopsticks”) on its launch tower. But it is also hard to forget the live video of Starships losing material during re-entry, the fiery remains of their break up streaking across the sky during Starship’s test flights 7 and 8, or the upper stage that exploded in a fireball on the pad in June 2025.

The development of Starship vehicles is unique and SpaceX aims for frequent launches with as much progress as possible in between them. It is accepted that these losses will lead to improved technology and safety down the line. However, the line is short.

Nasa’s acting chief Sean Duffy has expressed concerns about Starship’s progress towards the Artemis III mission, which is scheduled for 2027. A few days after Duffy’s comments, SpaceX posted an entry about the Moon programme on its blog. In it, the company said: “Starship continues to simultaneously be the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the Moon and a core enabler of the Artemis programme’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface. SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible.”

SpaceX also said that it had completed 49 milestones aimed at landing astronauts on the Moon and that “the vast majority” of contractual milestones had been achieved “on time or ahead of schedule”.

Starship’s advertised payload to orbit of 100,000kg sounds impressive. But on its most recent test flight, Starship carried a dummy payload of just 16,000kg – less than the 22,000kg maximum payload for SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, and Starship promises ten times that. Engineers have a long way to go before the system can carry the equipment needed for a Moon mission, let alone astronauts. The bottom line is that the payload-to-orbit promise has not yet been demonstrated.

Design philosophy is a major reason we have arrived here. SpaceX isn’t designing and building a lunar landing vehicle. They are building a do-anything super-heavy-lift launcher capable of sending payloads to Earth orbit, to the Moon, or even to Mars, and landing on any one of those bodies.

The success of past and current space missions comes from focus. Spacecraft are designed to solve a number of very specific problems, overcoming their missions constraints. A recent experience at the European Space Agency’s (Esa) Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) showed how this works in practice. This is where scientists and engineers collaborate to find trade offs for mass, power, propulsion and budget until a spacecraft design is finalised. Spaceflight succeeds through clever fixes to specific problems, not grand gestures.

Because Starship needs to refuel in Earth orbit before travelling to the Moon, a single lunar mission will require a dozen launches or more. The additional flights will launch versions of Starship intended solely to refuel another vehicle. If Starship works, it will be fantastic, but aiming for size instead of application is why it is not ready for Artemis III.

Nasa’s trajectory

Another aspect to this is the leadership and direction of the US government, which guides Nasa. The current American Moon programme was started under the George W. Bush administration over 20 years ago and has been undergoing drastic reconfigurations every few years.

With a major US election every two years (presidential and congressional), Nasa’s direction hasn’t been stable enough to manage long-term, large-scale planning. Esa, conversely, sets objectives on a ten-year scale, and moves towards them steadily. It is hard to see problems easing with the US Artemis lunar programme, especially under a president who has requested the agency’s budget be dramatically slashed.

The budget proposal would terminate US participation in many international space missions, such as EnVision, Lisa and NewAthena. Additional funding would be needed from other nations to make up the shortfall; otherwise the programmes could end. The loss of US participation in these projects will, in turn, affect how other countries are involved in Artemis.

Artemis relies strongly on international support for a number of elements, such as the Orion service module that carries astronauts to the Moon and segments of the Lunar Gateway space station, where astronauts would board their SpaceX or Blue Origin lunar landing vehicles.

Whichever company ends up carrying astronauts to the Moon on Artemis III, and whatever their “simplified plans” look like, there will be exciting things to see in the next year or two. These include the Artemis II mission (which will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby), the first launches of Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy lift rocket, and commercial payloads launched to the Moon by both SpaceX and Blue Origin.

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

– ref. What’s gone wrong between Nasa and Elon Musk’s SpaceX? – https://theconversation.com/whats-gone-wrong-between-nasa-and-elon-musks-spacex-268577

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eva Nieto McAvoy, Lecturer in Digital Media, King’s College London

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to preserve the voices and stories of the dead. From text-based chatbots that mimic loved ones to voice avatars that let you “speak” with the deceased, a growing digital afterlife industry promises to make memory interactive, and, in some cases, eternal.

In our research, recently published in Memory, Mind & Media, we explored what happens when remembering the dead is left to an algorithm. We even tried talking to digital versions of ourselves to find out.

“Deathbots” are AI systems designed to simulate the voices, speech patterns and personalities of the deceased. They draw on a person’s digital traces – voice recordings, text messages, emails and social media posts – to create interactive avatars that appear to “speak” from beyond the grave.

As the media theorist Simone Natale has said, these “technologies of illusion” have deep roots in spiritualist traditions. But AI makes them far more convincing, and commercially viable.

Our work is part of a project called Synthetic Pasts, which explores the impact technology has on the preservation of personal and collective memory. For our study, we looked at services that claim to preserve or recreate a person’s voice, memories or digital presence using AI. To understand how they work, we became our own test subjects. We uploaded our own videos, messages and voice notes, creating “digital doubles” of ourselves.

In some cases, we played the role of users preparing our own synthetic afterlives. In others, we acted as the bereaved trying to talk to a digital version of someone who has passed away.

What we found was both fascinating and unsettling. Some systems focus on preserving memory. They help users record and store personal stories, organised by theme, such as childhood, family or advice for loved ones. AI then indexes the content and guides people through it, like a searchable archive.

Others use generative AI to create ongoing conversations. You upload data about a deceased person – messages, posts, even voice samples – and the system builds a chatbot that can respond in their tone and style. It uses a subset of AI called machine learning (which improves through practice) to make its avatars evolve over time.

Some present themselves as playful (“host a séance with AI”), but the experience can feel eerily intimate. All the platforms claim to offer an “authentic” emotional connection. Yet the more personalisation we attempted, the more artificial it felt.

When prompted by these systems we provided more information about ourselves, only to have the bot repeat the exact phrasing we had used in stiff, scripted replies. At times, the tone was incongruous, such as when cheerful emojis or upbeat phrasing appeared even when discussing death – a clear reminder that algorithms are poor at handling the emotional weight of loss:

Oh hun… 😔 it (the death) is not something I’d wish for anyone to dwell on. It’s all a bit foggy now, to be honest. 🌫️ Let’s chat about something a bit cheerier, yeah?

The more archival-based tools we tested offered a calmer experience but also imposed rigid categories and limited nuance. As digital media scholar Andrew Hoskins has observed, memory in the age of AI becomes “conversational” – shaped by interactions between human and machine. But in our experiments, those conversations often felt flat, exposing the limits of synthetic intimacy:

Human: You were always so encouraging and supportive. I miss you.

Deathbot: I’m right here for you, always ready to offer encouragement and support whenever you need it. And I miss you too… Let’s take on today together, with positivity and strength.

Behind these experiences lies a business model. These are not memorial charities, they are tech start ups. Subscription fees, “freemium” tiers and partnerships with insurers or care providers reveal how remembrance is being turned into a product.

As the philosophers Carl Öhman and Luciano Floridi have argued, the digital afterlife industry operates within a “political economy of death”, where data continues to generate value long after a person’s life ends.

Platforms encourage users to “capture their story forever”, but they also harvest emotional and biometric data to keep engagement high. Memory becomes a service – an interaction to be designed, measured and monetised. This, as the professor of technology and society Andrew McStay has shown, is part of a wider “emotional AI” economy.

Digital resurrection?

The promise of these systems is a kind of resurrection – the reanimation of the dead through data. They offer to return voices, gestures and personalities, not as memories recalled but as presences simulated in real time. This kind of “algorithmic empathy” can be persuasive, even moving, yet it exists within the limits of code, and quietly alters the experience of remembering, smoothing away
the ambiguity and contradiction.

These platforms demonstrate a tension between archival and generative forms of memory. All platforms, though, normalise certain ways of remembering, placing privilege on continuity, coherence and emotional responsiveness, while also producing new, data-driven forms of personhood.

As the media theorist Wendy Chun has observed, digital technologies often conflate “storage” with “memory”, promising perfect recall while erasing the role of forgetting – the absence that makes both mourning and remembering possible.

In this sense, digital resurrection risks misunderstanding death itself: replacing the finality of loss with the endless availability of simulation, where the dead are always present, interactive and updated.

AI can help preserve stories and voices, but it cannot replicate the living complexity of a person or a relationship. The “synthetic afterlives” we encountered are compelling precisely because they fail. They remind us that memory is relational, contextual and not programmable.

Our study suggests that while you can talk to the dead with AI, what you hear back reveals more about the technologies and platforms that profit from memory – and about ourselves – than about the ghosts they claim we can talk to.

Jenny Kidd has received funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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

– ref. Can you really talk to the dead using AI? We tried out ‘deathbots’ so you don’t have to – https://theconversation.com/can-you-really-talk-to-the-dead-using-ai-we-tried-out-deathbots-so-you-dont-have-to-268902

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rita Goyal, Assistant Professor, Centre for Resilient Business and Society, Coventry University

Women are increasingly occupying top leadership roles across organisations, political parties and even nations. This may seem unequivocally like a good thing. Yet, many of these roles are undertaken in precarious circumstances, with inherent risks that might make them unattractive to men.

High-profile examples illustrate this pattern. Sarah Mullally, the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury and first female leader of the Church of England, steps into a landscape marred by scandal. Sanae Takaichi has become Japan’s first female prime minister – albeit the fourth PM in five years. She inherits a stagnant economy, record inflation and a declining population.

Carly Fiorina became CEO of Hewlett-Packard during the bursting of the tech bubble. And Mary Barra took over as CEO of General Motors shortly before a major car recall. In the UK, politicians like Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch have also assumed high-profile roles during periods of heightened risk.

Two decades ago, this phenomenon was labelled the “glass cliff”. It highlighted a pattern where women are more likely than men to be placed in leadership positions during times of crisis.

But the perspectives of women leaders and those navigating organisations in precarious situations are rarely examined. Our study conducted in-depth interviews with 33 women in senior leadership positions in 2023 and 2024. Our goal was to explore the motivations behind appointing women to high-risk leadership roles and the strategies the women use to navigate challenges once they’re in post.

The study revealed that women are often selected because of their distinctive leadership style and ability to manage crises. In their early careers, women may be invited to lead organisations in distress (so-called “basket cases”). Yet, by focusing on collaboration and consensus, and by ditching egotism, they can often turn around precarious situations.

One woman who chaired boards told us: “Women are often given basket cases because they will often be more supportive, better listeners and more nurturing. They’re better able to cope in that environment.”

Key to this is a combination of intuition, humility and an ability to manage colleagues and associates. We found that in organisations facing scandals, inefficiency or financial mismanagement, women leaders often focus on human aspects rather than just operational factors.

Study participants consistently emphasised that people skills (such as empathy, communication and the ability to unify people) are critical for managing risk-laden environments. They felt that women often excel in these areas. For instance, Mullally has cited her background as a cancer nurse as providing a strong foundation for managing the challenges that the Church of England is facing.

Why go there?

Our study also explored why women accept these precarious roles. Early in their careers, the opportunity to lead a major organisation can be compelling, offering a sense of purpose and fulfilment – even if the organisation is in crisis.

But with experience, women become more discerning about accepting leadership positions. The research highlights that precarious appointments carry heightened reputational risks, as women are held to stricter standards (in the media, for example) than men.

One participant told us: “When a man fails or makes an error … it’s the individual man who failed; ‘he’ had no ethics. When a woman does it, it’s like, ‘Ah well, women’.”

The study also underscores the importance of networks, mentoring and alliances. Women leaders recommend having trusted advisers and mentors who can provide guidance, support and insight as they face challenges. Some emphasised that operational challenges is a normal aspect of leadership.

But women should think carefully about accepting a leadership role where problems of integrity or governance, for example, are more entrenched. As one participant in our study noted: “Don’t let challenges deter you if you believe you can lead effectively. But when structural or ethical challenges exist … leaders must assess them carefully.”

A mixed blessing

The conventional belief is that women are offered precarious roles because they are seen as expendable. But beyond this, our study identifies alternative reasons.

Speaking generally, women’s capacity to manage chaos, practise ego-less leadership, and encourage collective decision-making often makes them attractive candidates. Viewing it through this lens shifts the conversation from victimhood to capability. It suggests that women are not merely filling high-risk roles but are chosen for their leadership strengths.

The findings also have implications for strategy and talent management within organisations, who should recognise the specific competencies women can bring to complex, high-risk leadership scenarios.

Organisations can benefit from ensuring that women in challenging leadership roles receive appropriate support and resources, and that expectations are realistic.

At the same time, women leaders must balance ambition with caution. While challenging roles offer opportunities for development and recognition, taking a role that is not aligned with a woman’s values or if her due diligence comes up short can carry high professional risks.

The study’s participants recommend strong negotiation and careful assessment of the potential outcomes before accepting senior positions. When leaders align their expertise and values with the needs of the organisation, they can transform crises into opportunities for growth. This is based on our finding that women, before they accept precarious leadership roles, carry out due diligence, consider the pros and cons and negotiate.

Women in leadership are increasingly seen at the helm during organisational turbulence. While these roles come with greater risk, they also offer opportunities to demonstrate capability, strengthen reputations and improve the culture of an organisation.

Rather than a poisoned chalice, these opportunities can be reframed as a mixed blessing. Challenges, if navigated well, highlight and make use of women’s distinctive leadership styles. Women can lead organisations through uncertainty and at the same time redefine perceptions of leadership and expand opportunities for women in the future.

Rita Goyal received funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust.

Nada Kakabadse received funding from the Institute of Company Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA).

– ref. Why women land top jobs in struggling organisations – they may just be better in a crisis – https://theconversation.com/why-women-land-top-jobs-in-struggling-organisations-they-may-just-be-better-in-a-crisis-268592

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amy Cano Prentice, Senior Research Officer, ODI Global

Global emissions need to peak this year to stay within 1.5°C of global temperature rise since pre-industrial levels. This means that starting now, countries need to emit less greenhouse gas. Emissions also need to be cut in half by 2030 to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

For many nations, 1.5°C is a benchmark for survival. At that temperature, small island states in particular risk becoming uninhabitable due to rising sea levels, ecosystem loss, water insecurity, infrastructure damage and livelihood collapse.

To safeguard their futures, Vanuatu and 17 other countries spent six years campaigning to get the highest court of the UN system, the International Court of Justice, to give its opinion on whether countries have specific legal obligations when it comes to climate change. This year, the court agreed that they do, and the obligations are stringent, meaning that states are required to use all available means to prevent significant harm to the climate system.

Because the court’s advisory opinion is an articulation of existing law and legal obligations (rather than a binding legal decision in itself), it has to be given legal effect through national legislation, climate-related litigation, international treaties and conventions. In other words, it has to be kept alive.

My research identifies how to keep the advisory opinion alive via a few avenues to hold countries to account for failing to protect the climate system.

Cop30, the UN climate summit taking place in Brazil this November, is the first opportunity to hold countries accountable for collectively failing to reach stay within the 1.5°C limit with their 2025 national pledges.

In my recent paper, I outline which countries are upholding their climate change obligations and which are not, and what can be done about it.

Time is running out but climate diplomacy can be slow. Under the Paris agreement, the legally binding international treaty on climate change agreed in 2015, countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.

Since then, many countries have pushed at every annual UN climate summit for the 1.5°C goal to be the maximum temperature increase. After years of negotiation, the International Court of Justice clarified that 1.5°C is unequivocally the legal target of the Paris Agreement. This hinges on the fact that the Paris agreement uses a science-based approach, so decisions are made according to the best available science of the day. Currently, that science indicates that a warming of 2°C would be catastrophic.

Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are plans created by each country outlining how they will reduce their emissions (in order to collectively meet the Paris agreement’s temperature goal) and adapt to climate change. The court ruling made it clear that countries not only are obliged to submit NDCs, but these NDCs also need to represent a country’s highest possible ambition.

The court also clarified that all NDCs need to, by law, add up to enough emissions reductions globally to meet the 1.5°C. This can be used to lobby for more ambitious pledges among countries that claim to support the interests of the most vulnerable states.

Every country must update its NDC every five years. Each one needs to be more ambitious than the last. The past round of NDCs was insufficient. Even if fully implemented, they would only limit global warming to a 2.6°C increase. This year, after extending the deadline for NDC submission, only about 30% of countries submitted a new NDC. That covers less than one-third of global emissions.

I found that out of ten countries that are friends of small island states, only one – the UK – submitted a new NDC that is in line with 1.5°C. Four of these countries – Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand – submitted new NDCs which are not on track to meet the temperature goal. Three did not submit a new NDC at all – China, India and the EU – despite having made high-level political statements.

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Read more:
Only 15 countries have met the latest Paris agreement deadline. Is any nation serious about tackling climate change?

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Seven of these friends of small island states (and the EU) are required to provide climate finance to developing countries under the Paris agreement. All of these spend more public money on the fossil fuel industry than on climate mitigation and adaptation finance internationally.

According to the international court, fossil fuel subsidies may constitute an internationally wrongful act, in breach of the obligation to protection the climate system from significant harm. In 2022, the UK spent almost 14 times more on fossil fuel subsidies than on international climate finance.

Australia spent over six times as much. France and New Zealand spent over twice as much. Japan spent almost twice as much. Removing fossil fuel subsidies would free up much needed fiscal resources to target those most in need, especially given the urgency of the situation.

Other legal avenues

Beyond Cop30, other legal avenues exist. The first strategic decision is whether to bring a case before domestic or international courts. For example, in Canada, two houses of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation took the government to court for failing to meet its international commitments to reduce emissions, citing the International Court of Justice.

Internationally, a highly polluting country can be brought before international legal courts by another country. In 2019, the Gambia sued Myanmar for genocide due to the universal legal nature of the obligation to prevent genocide. Similarly, one country can sue another on climate-related legal grounds.

As the window to stay within 1.5°C closes, Cop30 and the courts must become twin areas of action, where creativity, strategy and the law converge to make climate justice enforceable, not aspirational.

Concrete diplomatic gains in Belém could include a suite of ambitious NDCs, operational guidance to launch the fund for responding to loss and damage, plus bold climate finance commitments, but the work cannot end in the negotiation halls. It must continue beyond Cop30 to turn pledges into action.

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Amy Cano Prentice 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 countries can be held responsible for staying within new legal climate target of 1.5°C – https://theconversation.com/how-countries-can-be-held-responsible-for-staying-within-new-legal-climate-target-of-1-5-c-268160

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gustav Cederlöf, Associate Professor of Environmental Social Science, University of Gothenburg

Hours before Hurricane Melissa roared towards Cuba’s second-largest city, Santiago de Cuba, the island’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, announced that 735,000 people had been evacuated – one in every 15 Cubans. The storm had already smashed into Jamaica, the most powerful to ever strike the island, causing landslides, power failures and deaths.

By the time Melissa hit Cuba, it was downgraded from a category 5 to a still incredibly dangerous category 3 hurricane. The sea was surging up to 3.5m, torrents of rain were half a metre deep, and winds were screaming at 200km per hour.

Hurricane Melissa shows what academics studying disasters have long emphasised: disasters are shaped as much by social vulnerability and governance as they are by violent winds.

Of the 75 deaths attributed to Hurricane Melissa, 43 occurred in Haiti and 32 in Jamaica, where the storm was strongest. Cuba has reported no fatalities – a result that reflects a long history of preparation.

Cuba has long stood out in regional comparisons for its ability to prevent deaths from hurricanes, often through mass evacuations. This has endured even through decades of US sanctions, and now an economic crisis featuring a prolonged recession, massive inflation and food shortages. Daily blackouts are making it more difficult for households and hospitals to prepare and recover from disaster.

Cuba’s focus on hurricane preparedness dates back to Hurricane Flora. Flora devastated the east of the island in 1963 – the same region now struck by Melissa. On the eve of its landfall, the government had introduced a sweeping land reform to nationalise all but the smallest farms. Party militants and soldiers had been dispatched across the island.

When Flora hit, people found these representatives of the revolution enduring the hurricane alongside them. Fidel Castro flew east to lead the rescue operations. Historian Mikael Wolfe argues that Flora transformed the rebel army from “a controversial force of expropriation” into “a nearly universally admired source of rescue”.

Disaster risk reduction has continued to be a priority for Cuban leaders. Each year, the local branches of civil society groups Committees for the Defence of the Revolution and the Federation of Cuban Women conduct vulnerability mapping, culminating in the nationwide drill Meteoro. These practices anticipate disaster in everyday life and guide mass evacuations when hurricanes strike.

And yet, mandatory evacuations remain controversial. Some argue they are a sign of collective welfare; critics say they are an infringement of individual rights. Either way, they demonstrate that disaster preparedness is as much about governance as it is about weather.

A revolutionary virtue

Preparedness is also rooted in culture. In the decades after Flora, literature, film and political speeches cast Cubans as protagonists in a national drama of struggle against nature. Just as they had repelled the US-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, citizens were called on to play their part and mobilise against hurricanes.

Cuban cultural life is full of images of former leader Fidel Castro wading through floodwaters. In these, he personifies an ethos framing disaster response as a revolutionary virtue: to be a revolutionary is to stand up to the storm. Or as Venezuelan statesman Simón Bolívar declared after the Caracas earthquake of 1812: “Well, if nature is against us, we will also fight against nature.”

This legacy still resonates. Appearing in olive green fatigues, favoured by Fidel Castro for decades, the current president addressed Cubans via Facebook as Melissa approached:

Dear compatriots of eastern Cuba, where #Fidel defied the dangerous hurricane #Flora and taught us forever what conduct to follow to protect life, which is the most important thing. I ask you to stay alert, be supportive, and never forget discipline in the face of threat. Venceremos (We will prevail).

Trust and mobilisation

Cuba’s historical success in saving lives is rooted in the ability to evacuate its population, and that citizens agree to participate in the system. Jamaica also has a well-established disaster governance system, where responsibility is spread across parish councils and community groups. However, participation in formal government-led processes has historically been much lower. Our research suggests this often stems from low trust in authorities and a lack of resources to support decentralisation.

We can see some of this in the response to Melissa. While the Jamaican government had ordered evacuations, many households stayed put, with a peak of around 25,000 people seeking refuge in emergency shelters. Conspiracy theories circulated saying Melissa was “manufactured” by humans, while Jamaican scientists called on the public to trust official information and ignore social media rumours. The Cuban and Jamaican cases jointly show the role of political culture in shaping how countries prepare for disasters and respond to them.

The challenge ahead

Melissa is a warning shot. Its sheer force was alarming, but so was how rapidly it became so strong. More intense storms with more precipitation are coming, and rising seas amplify the risks.

Caribbean nations need resources to rebuild and to protect themselves from future hurricanes. But disaster preparedness must also be about questions of politics and culture that mobilise action. In the decades ahead, culture and trust in authorities may prove as vital as levees and shelters in preparing for extreme weather.

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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

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For research in Cuba, Gustav Cederlöf has previously received funding from the ESRC, The Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), King’s College London Graduate School, and the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography.

Sophie Blackburn 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. Why hurricanes rarely kill in Cuba – https://theconversation.com/why-hurricanes-rarely-kill-in-cuba-268840