Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate Whitman, Research Fellow, Ethical Consumption, Revolution Plastics Institute, University of Portsmouth

Every week, the average UK household throws away dozens of pieces of plastic packaging. When people actually start counting them, they’re often shocked to discover just how much there is. And unfortunately, most of this plastic cannot be reused, refilled or recycled.

That’s one of the main findings from our new research on the Big Plastic Count, a nationwide citizen science campaign organised by social enterprise Everyday Plastic in collaboration with environmental campaign charity Greenpeace. Involving more than 160,000 UK households, it’s one of the largest efforts ever to track household plastic waste in the world.

Our analysis combined the Big Plastic Count data with an attitude survey of more than 8,000 plastic count respondents and an experiment on public engagement. It showed that taking part in “citizen science”, research carried out with the public rather than on the public, can do much more than generate data. It can bring a sense of urgency to an environmental problem, change behaviour, and even mobilise political action.

People tend to overestimate the positive environmental impact of recycling. Many participants began the project confident they were already making environmentally friendly choices, for example buying recyclable packaging. But when they actually counted their weekly plastic waste, the results told a different story.

The typical household generated 20-30 items of plastic in just one week, mostly soft plastics such as film lids, crisp packets and food wrappers. These items, despite often carrying positive environmental messages, are impossible to reuse or refill, and are rarely recycled in practice.

This gap between perception and reality, what we call “plastic blindness”, reveals a crucial barrier to tackling plastic pollution. People simply don’t see how much plastic they use or misunderstand, or perhaps are misled as to what happens to it after disposal.

This blindness was especially pronounced among online shoppers, who tended to underestimate their plastic consumption the most. Having packaging arrive neatly at the door seems to obscure the sheer volume of waste produced in the process. This suggests the need for more visible waste information – and better ways to help consumers choose lower waste options.

When we see it, we care more

The act of counting plastic waste had a powerful psychological effect. Participants who tracked their own waste reported feeling more aware and more concerned about the plastic waste they were generating – and more open to alternatives such as refill and reuse systems.

These models, where customers use their own containers or borrow returnable ones, are widely seen as essential to a circular economy. Yet their success depends, along with supportive policies, on public understanding of why recycling and other waste management strategies are not enough to tackle plastic pollution.

By making the invisible visible, citizen science can help close that understanding gap. Participants who saw their plastic waste laid out in front of them were far more likely to express concern about pollution and to support stronger policies on plastic reduction.

Citizen science can spark action

We found that awareness translated into political engagement. Participation in the Big Plastic Count coincided with a significant increase in signatures on a Greenpeace petition launched at the same time, calling for stronger action in the ongoing global plastics treaty negotiations.

This suggests that citizen science isn’t just a way to collect data. It can also mobilise public support for policy change. When people see clear evidence of a problem that they have limited control over, they’re more motivated to demand systemic solutions.

Our findings add to growing evidence that recycling alone cannot solve the plastic problem. In the UK, the Everyday Plastic study showed that only around 17% of household plastic waste is actually recycled, while most ends up being incinerated, exported or put into landfill.

Policies that focus solely on end-of-life solutions ignore the need to reduce plastic production at its source. That’s why policy must look upstream. The global plastics treaty, a United Nations initiative aiming to reduce plastic pollution worldwide, could commit countries to legally binding limits on virgin plastic production and enforce stronger requirements for reuse and refill systems.

The results of the Big Plastic Count show that when people are given the opportunity to see their own contribution to the plastic problem, they want to see change – and they expect policymakers to lead it.

Quite simply, we can’t fix what we can’t see. Plastic pollution is often hidden in plain sight – behind positive “eco” or “recyclable” labels, messages such as adverts normalising single-use plastic use, within supply chains and under the convenience of online shopping.

Citizen science initiatives such as the Big Plastic Count help to lift that blindfold, empowering citizens not just to count plastic, but to count in the movement for change.

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Cressida Bowyer receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Wellcome Trust, the Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution Programme (SMEP) and the Flotilla Foundation. She is a member of the British Plastics Federation Sustainability Committee.

Steve Fletcher receives funding from the World Economic Forum, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Aquapak Ltd, Defra, and the Flotilla Foundation. He is a member of the United Nations International Resource Panel and is the NERC Agenda Setting Fellow for Plastic Pollution.

Kate Whitman 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. Huge amounts of plastic waste goes unnoticed – here’s what to do about it – https://theconversation.com/huge-amounts-of-plastic-waste-goes-unnoticed-heres-what-to-do-about-it-268702

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Damian Bailey, Professor of Physiology and Biochemistry, University of South Wales

With each breath, four out of every five molecules we inhale are nitrogen. This colourless, odourless gas makes up nearly 80% of the air that sustains us – yet it plays no direct role in keeping us alive. This same inert gas is now being used to take life.

In the past year, several US states have adopted nitrogen gas as a method for inmate execution, and a nitrogen‑filled “Sarco pod” (short for sarcophagus) euthanasia device has made headlines in Switzerland. While both claim to offer a calm, painless death, the science tells a different story.

Nitrogen asphyxiation kills by replacing breathable air with pure nitrogen, starving the brain and body of oxygen. It is described by some commentators as humane – a supposedly peaceful fading into unconsciousness without pain or panic. But the physiological reality is far more disturbing.

As oxygen levels plummet, the body’s survival systems erupt into panic. People gasp, choke, thrash and experience terrifying air hunger as their cells suffocate. These are not the signs of a gentle passing but of a body desperately fighting for life.

What began as a speculative idea has now become practice. Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi have approved nitrogen executions, with several already carried out and more planned. Others, including Ohio and Nebraska, are considering legislation.

The shift has been driven by shortages of lethal-injection drugs and a search for seemingly “cleaner” methods. Yet eyewitness accounts from a recent execution reveal visible suffering lasting minutes before death: violent convulsions, heaving, gasping and desperate attempts to breathe.

Advocates claim that removing oxygen while keeping carbon dioxide levels low prevents panic – a claim rooted in misunderstanding. The body is exquisitely sensitive to oxygen deprivation. Tiny sensors in our neck, called carotid bodies, constantly monitor oxygen levels. When levels fall, they trigger powerful signals to breathe harder.

Air hunger

This response, known as air hunger, is one of the most distressing sensations humans can experience. Unlike drifting into unconsciousness under anaesthesia, oxygen starvation brings an overwhelming feeling of suffocation, panic and terror.

Even trained pilots, exposed to sudden oxygen loss at high altitude, describe severe breathlessness and confusion within seconds – that interval before incapacitating confusion constitutes a state known in aviation medicine as the “time of useful consciousness”.

At 50,000 feet, pilots have less than 12 seconds before confusion sets in – and those moments are anything but peaceful, equivalent to breathing almost pure nitrogen at ground level. The experience is so traumatic that military and commercial pilots undergo hypoxia recognition training precisely to avoid confusion and loss of control when oxygen fails.

In nitrogen executions, the situation is far worse. Prisoners are restrained, unable to expand their chest fully against straps that restrict breathing, amplifying the sense of suffocation. Witnesses have reported prolonged movements and vocalisations, consistent with the body’s involuntary struggle to breathe – unmistakable signs of physiological distress, not serene unconsciousness.

A similar claim of a “gentle” death has entered debates over assisted suicide. In Switzerland, the Sarco pod – a 3D‑printed capsule filled with nitrogen – has been marketed as an elegant, pain‑free way to die. Its inventor, Dr Philip Nitschke, has said users “drift off peacefully”. However, there is no substantial evidence to support this.

The first reported use in 2024 triggered a criminal investigation, and the lack of reported eyewitness accounts makes it impossible to know what the person experienced.

The notion that breathing pure nitrogen induces calm probably stems from confusion with nitrogen narcosis – the intoxicating effect deep‑sea divers feel under high pressure. Yet this “martini effect” occurs only when nitrogen is breathed at several times normal atmospheric pressure.

At sea level, nitrogen simply displaces oxygen, causing hypoxia and anoxia without any sedative properties. The result is not a blissful drift into unconsciousness, but a terrifying physiological fight for air.

Breathing pure nitrogen can cause loss of consciousness within about 20 seconds as blood oxygen falls below critical levels. But even in that brief window, there are several agonising seconds of confusion and suffocation. Death soon follows as the brain and heart are starved of oxygen. Far from being humane, this process resembles drowning without water – silent, invisible, yet equally violent.

The ethical implications are profound. In response to concerns, three major suppliers of medical‑grade nitrogen in the US have banned sales for executions. Yet some policymakers present the method as clean and clinical, even though medical evidence suggests the physical experience is far from peaceful. That is both scientifically and morally misleading.

Death by nitrogen is indeed invisible and silent in itself – no blood, no smoke, no residue. But that silence masks a violent physiological response from gasping and retching to brutal respiratory distress and convulsions.

To call this humane is to fundamentally misunderstand how the body works. As policymakers and the public confront these developments, decisions must be guided not by euphemisms or convenience but by evidence.

Science makes one fact clear: nitrogen itself may be quiet, but it most certainly is not kind.

If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, call Samaritans UK at 116 123.

Damian Bailey is supported by a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellowship (Grant No. WM170007).

Damian Bailey is Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Physiology, Chair of the Life Sciences Working Group, member of the Human Spaceflight and Exploration Science Advisory Committee to the European Space Agency and member of the Space Exploration Advisory Committee to the UK and Swedish National Space Agencies. Damian Bailey is also affiliated to Bexorg, Inc. (USA) focused on the technological development of novel biomarkers of cerebral bioenergetic function and structural damage in humans.

David Poole receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and Is the Elizabeth Chapin Burke Chair for the College of Health and Human Sciences.

Vaughan Macefield receives funding fromThe National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) and the National Institutes of Health (USA)

– ref. Silent but not serene: what science says about nitrogen death – https://theconversation.com/silent-but-not-serene-what-science-says-about-nitrogen-death-267692

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Jacobs, Professor of Political Economy, University of Sheffield

It is easy to be cynical about the annual circus of UN climate negotiations that takes place at “Cop” – the Conference of the Parties to the UN’s climate convention.

As delegates gather in the Amazonian port of Belém, Brazil for this year’s Cop30, familiar complaints have returned: the summits are too big and bureaucratic, and aren’t making enough progress. After three decades of annual conferences, global emissions are still rising – and critics say the process is failing.

But that misses the point. Emissions are rising much more slowly now than they would have been without the UN regime. In 2009, climate scientists were warning that, if countries did not curb their emissions, the world would face up to 6°C of warming.

Before the Paris agreement in 2015, the “business as usual” forecast was down to around 4°C. Today, the UN projects that without additional policies, the world will warm by around 2.5°C.

This steady decline has happened because, contrary to popular belief, the world really is acting on climate change.

Over the past 15 years the dramatically falling costs of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, have led to an astonishing rise in their use. This year or next, renewables will generate more electricity than coal for the first time.

The same rapid transition been happening with electric vehicles, which now represent more than a fifth of global car sales.

Sceptics say this is due to technological innovation, not UN conferences. But innovation doesn’t just “happen”: it is driven by policy which makes it profitable.

Over the past 20 years, governments all over the world have introduced fuel efficiency standards, renewable energy targets and subsidies that have spurred companies to improve the new technologies.

As prices have fallen – particularly since China started mass producing green technologies in the 2010s – the targets could be tightened, leading to still lower costs. It has been a virtuous circle: policy driving innovation and vice versa.

The quiet power of the Paris agreement

This is why the UN climate process matters. The Paris agreement obliges every country to produce ever-stronger climate targets and plans every five years.

Without this coordinated international framework, there would have been little chance that so many countries – with different political cycles and economic circumstances – would move simultaneously in the same direction. It is this global commitment that drives the growth of low-carbon markets.

But, continue the critics, the national plans are not enough. Around 2.5°C of warming may be better than 6°C, but it will still be catastrophic.

It is true that the Paris agreement has a fundamental (though politically necessary) flaw: it sets a global temperature goal, but then leaves it to each country to decide what they will do to meet it. When the new set of national pledges are added up, they don’t yet align with the 1.5°C-2°C target. The resulting “emissions gap” seems to prove the critics correct.

But that conclusion would be too hasty. The national pledges, known as “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs, are not forecasts.

Under a legally binding treaty, countries do not wish to set targets which unforeseen events mean they might not meet. But many, including China, see NDCs as floors not ceilings – a political statement of minimum intent.

China’s new NDC is a case in point. Many commentators described it as “disappointing”. But in announcing it, President Xi Jinping has explicitly said that the country would strive to exceed its targets. Its record over the past 15 years shows it tends to do just that.

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Read more:
When China makes a climate pledge, the world should listen

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Another reason for optimism is that developing countries still don’t know how much financial support they will receive. But that will become gradually clearer over the next few years. At Cop30, Brazil and last year’s host Azerbaijan will present the “Baku to Belém Roadmap”, a plan to raise US$1.3 trillion (£1 trillion) a year in international climate finance by 2035.

If even part of this is delivered, many emerging economies will be able to cut emissions faster (and do more to adapt to climate change) than their current plans suggest.

The summits have done their job

Finally, climate action is increasingly taking place outside the formal negotiations. The 2015 Paris agreement already established the architecture. Now, progress depends less on negotiating new rules and more on implementing them.

That’s why Brazil has described Cop30 as the “implementation Cop”, with a focus on the “real world” of economic development, poverty reduction, green technologies and investment finance. The conference is due to see announcements of major new initiatives in – among other areas – tropical rainforest protection, sustainable fuels, regenerative agriculture, carbon markets, methane emissions, combating wildfires, digital public infrastructure, airline ticket taxes and adaptation finance.

When critics attack the large numbers attending the summits, they miss the point that many of these attendees have a practical interest in these and other solutions to climate change.

In the future, Brazil and others hope, these big climate summits will be much more about such sectoral and financial initiatives than about the negotiation of ever-more detailed UN rules. Climate action is moving into a new era. And this is precisely the international regime working as it was designed: a framework to encourage ever-increasing ambition, coordination and accountability.

Of course, we cannot be complacent. As the US withdraws from the Paris agreement, its president is stepping up his counter-measures to boost fossil fuels and undermine renewables. Global climate policy has in this sense become a battle between alternative visions of our energy and industrial future, and it is now being waged in national governments and corporate boardrooms as much as in UN negotiating halls.

There is no doubt that the clean energy transition is happening. But its pace – and therefore how far global warming can be slowed – depends on businesses confidence that it will continue. And that requires governments remaining committed to climate goals so that green investment and innovation will remain profitable.

Undermining that confidence by dismissing UN climate conferences as pointless risks slowing this progress. Cop critics like to think of themselves as brave tellers of truth to power. They may end up merely being Donald Trump’s unwitting accomplices.

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Michael Jacobs is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sheffield and Visiting Senior Fellow at the thinktank ODI Global.

– ref. The UN climate summits are working – just not in the way their critics think – https://theconversation.com/the-un-climate-summits-are-working-just-not-in-the-way-their-critics-think-268953

Source: The Conversation – UK – By William Crozier, Duns Scotus Assistant Professor of Franciscan Studies, Durham University

During the 1240s, Richard Fishacre, a Dominican friar at Oxford University, used his knowledge of light and colour to show that the stars and planets are made of the same elements found here on Earth. In so doing he challenged the scientific orthodoxy of his day and pre-empted the methods and discoveries of the 21st-century James Webb space telescope.

Following the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, medieval physics affirmed that the stars and planets were made from a special celestial element – the famous “fifth element” (quinta essentia) or “quintessence”. Unlike the four elements found here on Earth (fire, water, earth and air), this “fifth element” is perfect and unchanging.

Fully transparent, it formed the basis of what were believed to be the nine concentric celestial “spheres” surrounding the Earth, as well as the various stars and planets attached to them. These, it was argued, were merely condensed versions of the “fifth element”, with each of the first seven spheres having its own planet, and the outermost eighth and ninth spheres containing the stars and heaven itself, respectively.

Colour, light and the stars

Lacking access to telescopes and rock samples, Fishacre – the first Dominican friar to teach theology at Oxford University – openly rejected the idea that the stars and planets were made from some special “fifth element”. In his opinion, they consisted of the same four elements found here.

His reason for asserting this position was his understanding of how colour and light behave.

Colour, Fishacre noted, is typically associated with opaque bodies. These, however, are always composite, meaning made up of two or more of the four terrestrial elements. When we look up at the stars and planets, however, we see that the light they emit often has a faint colour. Mars appears red, and Venus yellow, for example. This suggests, of course, that they are composite and thus made “ex quattuor elementis” – “out of the four elements”.

In Fishacre’s opinion the surest proof that the stars and planets were not made of some special “fifth element” came from the Moon. It has a very definite colour, and, crucially, every so often it eclipses the Sun. Were it made from the transparent fifth element – even a highly condensed version of it – then surely the Sun’s light would pass through it, just as it does a pane of glass. This, however, is not the case.

The Moon, Fishacre reasoned, must therefore be made of the same elements found on Earth. And if this was true of the Moon, which is the lowest celestial body, then it must also be true of all the other stars and planets.

A brave move

In arguing this, Fishacre knew that he was risking criticism. “If we posit this position,” he wrote, “then they, that crowd of Aristotelian know-it-alls (scioli aristoteli), will cry out and stone us”.

Sure enough, stones were thrown at Fishacre – and from high places.
In 1250, his teaching was denounced at the University of Paris by St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, a Franciscan friar who ridiculed in his lectures those “moderns” like Fishacre who foolishly questioned Aristotle’s teaching on the celestial fifth element.

Contemporary astrophysics has, of course, vindicated Fishacre’s position. The stars and planets are not made of some special fifth element, but rather from many of the same metals and elements found here on our home planet. The James Webb space telescope, for example, recently established that the atmosphere of the Neptune-like exoplanet TOI-421 b, some 244 light years away, contains high quantities of water and sulphur dioxide.

Remarkably, how the James Webb space telescope established this – a process known as transmission spectroscopy – is very similar, at least in principle, to the method which Fishacre employed. It detected subtle variations in the brightness and colour of the light emitted by TOI-421 b which could only be caused by water and sulphur dioxide.

Given how much criticism his claims received, Fishacre would no doubt have been delighted to know that nearly 800 years after his death, contemporary astronomy, just like him, is using light and colour to show that far flung stars and planets are all made from the same elements.

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William Crozier 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 a medieval Oxford friar used light and colour to find out what stars and planets are made of – https://theconversation.com/how-a-medieval-oxford-friar-used-light-and-colour-to-find-out-what-stars-and-planets-are-made-of-262652

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anne Irfan, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Race, Gender and Postcolonial Studies, UCL

The great Palestinian revolt, which began in 1936 and lasted three years, was a pivotal event in the modern history of both the Middle East and the British empire.

Often considered the biggest popular uprising in Palestinian history, it had far-reaching ramifications for Palestinian nationalism, Zionism and British colonialism. Despite this significance, it is typically absent from official accounts of British history. Few Britons today are aware of it.

In her latest film, Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir powerfully shows why this episode in history is so significant. The depiction of the revolt in Palestine 36 helps illuminate events in modern-day Palestine, including Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, which a UN human rights council commission of inquiry said amounts to genocide.

By 1936, the British had occupied Palestine for 18 years. The British army had first entered the country in 1917, the same year the British government declared its support for the Zionist movement’s campaign for a Jewish state in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration.

Five years later, Britain was granted a mandate to govern Palestine by the League of Nations, precursor to the UN. The text of the mandate incorporated the Balfour declaration, making the creation of a Jewish state part of its objectives. For this purpose, the British regime empowered a Zionist organisation subsequently known as the Jewish Agency and supported large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Unsurprisingly, these policies caused rising tensions with the Palestinians, whose own nationalist movement had been growing during the later years of the Ottoman empire that had previously ruled the country. By the 1930s, Palestinians were increasingly concerned about Zionist state-building and settlements in the country.

In 1936, the newly formed Arab Higher Committee called for a general strike. It was widely observed across the country and brought much of the economy to a standstill. Palestine 36 depicts the impact of the strike and the subsequent armed uprising in rural villages, alongside political debates among Palestinian elites in Jerusalem. We also see the brutal British repression of the uprising, as the mandate regime imports ruthless counterinsurgency tactics from elsewhere in the empire, including India and Ireland.

The film, which was selected as Palestine’s entry for the Academy Awards, intersperses archival footage with dramatised scenes by an ensemble cast. Real historical figures like Charles Tegart (Liam Cunningham) and Orde Wingate (Robert Aramayo) are depicted alongside fictionalised characters.

Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya) is a villager who begins working in Jerusalem and becomes politicised as he witnesses colonial machinations close up. Kholoud (Yasmine Al Massri) is a journalist and nationalist who writes under the pen name Ahmed Canaani. Kholoud’s husband Amir (Dhafer L’Abidine) colludes with the Jewish Agency (called the Zionist Commission) in the film while professing outward support for the Palestinian national cause.

One of the film’s most instructive elements is its clear depiction of the British mandate’s operations. The regime laid many of the foundations for the Israeli state, but has often avoided culpability in contemporary conversations.

In Palestine 36, we see the regime’s brutality alongside its contradictions and double standards. British officers violate Palestinian property while serving an empire that otherwise venerates ideals of private ownership. The mandate regime condemns Palestinian militancy while drawing its own power from deploying violence with impunity.

Early on, a British official implores Palestinian villagers to acquiesce to a new land registration system or risk losing everything. Nearly a century on – as Palestinians face similar pressures to comply with foreign demands – the viewer knows that acquiescence will provide no real protection.

It is one of many long-term continuities shown in the film, and Jacir largely avoids heavy handedness in how she depicts them. Wingate’s typically colonial tactics, including the designation of Palestinian villages as “good” or “bad”, the endorsement of collective punishment and disproportionate retaliation, and the control of movement via transit permits, checkpoints and curfews, are all practices that the Israeli state continues to deploy today.

Scenes showing Palestinians being incarcerated behind barbed wire and denied water will inevitably remind viewers of contemporary testimonies from Gaza and the Sde Teiman detention camp.

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Read more:
Israeli doctors reveal their conflicted stories of treating Palestinian prisoners held in notorious ‘black site’ Sde Teiman

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At the same time, many of the Palestinian slogans and symbols from 1936 remain resonant. The film depicts protesters chanting “Palestine is not for sale” outside the office of High Commissioner Wauchope (Jeremy Irons). And later on, Kholoud discusses the British ban on the keffiyeh (the traditional headdress made from a chequered scarf, which has become a symbol of Palestinian resistence). This was a move replicated by institutions in the US, Germany and Australia in the 2020s.

At the same time, the portrayal of Palestine before the establishment of Israel is an important rejoinder to ongoing denials of Palestinian national history. Jacir’s film shows a Palestine characterised by widespread agricultural village life before what is known as the Nakba forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into overcrowded and urbanised refugee camps.

Palestine 36 doesn’t shy away from the internal divisions of Palestinian society. The Jerusalem elites condescend to the fellahin (farmers), represented by Yusuf. Amir happily collaborates with the Zionist leadership in the hope of becoming mayor.

The film closes with continuing Palestinian insurrection, juxtaposed with intensifying British brutality. The informed viewer will know that by the end of the revolt, mandate repression had executed, wounded, imprisoned or expelled one in ten Palestinian men.

The fallout would have fatal repercussions for the Palestinians a decade later. As such, it is incomplete to survey Palestinian history since 1948 without taking account of the pivotal events of 1936. It’s a far too common oversight that Jacir’s film goes a long way to correcting.

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Anne Irfan 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. Palestine 36 tells a forgotten story of revolt – and how the legacy of colonialism endures in Palestine – https://theconversation.com/palestine-36-tells-a-forgotten-story-of-revolt-and-how-the-legacy-of-colonialism-endures-in-palestine-269052

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeremy Howick, Professor and Director of the Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare, University of Leicester

Artificial intelligence has mastered chess, art and medical diagnosis. Now it’s apparently beating doctors at something we thought was uniquely human: empathy.

A recent review published in the British Medical Bulletin analysed 15 studies comparing AI-written responses with those from human healthcare professionals. Blinded researchers then rated these responses for empathy using validated assessment tools. The results were startling: AI responses were rated as more empathic in 13 out of 15 studies – 87% of the time.

Before we surrender healthcare’s human touch to our new robot overlords, we need to examine what’s really happening here.

The studies compared written responses rather than face-to-face interactions, giving AI a structural advantage: no vocal tone to misread, no body language to interpret, and unlimited time to craft perfect responses.

Critically, none of these studies measured harms. They assessed whether AI responses sounded empathic, not whether they led to better outcomes or caused damage through misunderstood context, missed warning signs, or inappropriate advice.

Yet even accounting for these limitations, the signal was strong. And the technology is improving daily – “carebots” are becoming increasingly lifelike and sophisticated.

Beyond methodological concerns, there’s a simpler explanation: many doctors admit that their empathy declines over time, and patient ratings of healthcare professionals’ empathy vary greatly.

Inquiries into fatal healthcare tragedies – from Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust to various patient safety reviews – have explicitly named lack of empathy from healthcare professionals as contributing to avoidable harm. But here’s the real issue: we’ve created a system that makes empathy nearly impossible.

Doctors spend about a third of their time on paperwork and electronic health records. Doctors must also follow pre-defined protocols and procedures. While the documentation and protocols have some benefits, they have arguably had the unintended consequence of forcing the doctors to play the bot game. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised when the bot wins.

The burnout crisis makes this worse. Globally, at least a third of GPs report burnout – exceeding 60% in some specialties. Burned-out doctors struggle to maintain empathy. It’s not a moral failing; it’s a physiological reality. Chronic stress depletes the emotional reserves required for genuine empathy.

The wonder isn’t that AI appears more empathic; it’s that human healthcare professionals manage any empathy at all.

What AI will never replicate

No carebot, however sophisticated, can truly replicate certain dimensions of human care.

A bot cannot hold a frightened child’s hand during a painful procedure and make them feel safe through physical presence. It cannot read unspoken distress in a teenager’s body language when they’re too embarrassed to voice their real concern. It cannot draw on cultural experience to understand why a patient might be reluctant to accept certain treatment.

AI cannot sit in silence with a dying patient when words fail. It cannot share a moment of dark humour that breaks the tension. It cannot exercise the moral judgment required when clinical guidelines conflict with a patient’s values.

These aren’t minor additions to healthcare; they’re often what make care effective, healing possible and medicine humane.

Here’s the tragic irony: AI threatens to take over precisely those aspects of care that humans do better, while humans remain trapped doing tasks computers should handle.

We’re heading toward a world where AI provides the “empathy” while exhausted humans manage technical work – exactly backward. This requires three fundamental changes.

First, we must train doctors to be consistently excellent at empathic communication. This cannot be a brief module in medical school. It needs to be central to healthcare education. Since AI already matches humans in many technical skills, this should free doctors to focus on genuine human connection.

Second, redesign healthcare systems to protect the conditions necessary for empathy. Dramatically reduce administrative burden through better technology (ironically, AI could help here), ensure adequate consultation time, and address burnout through systemic change rather than resilience training.

Third, rigorously measure both benefits and harms of AI in healthcare interactions. We need research on actual patient outcomes, missed diagnoses, inappropriate advice, and long-term effects on the therapeutic relationship – not just whether responses sound empathic to raters.

The empathy crisis in healthcare isn’t caused by insufficient technology. It’s caused by systems that prevent humans from being human. AI appearing more empathic than doctors is a symptom, not the disease.

We can use AI to handle administrative tasks and free doctors’ time and mental space, and even provide tips to help healthcare professionals boost their empathy. Or we can use it to replace the human connection that remains healthcare’s greatest strength.

The technology will continue advancing, regardless. The question is whether we’ll use it to support human empathy or substitute for it – whether we’ll fix the system that broke our healthcare workers or simply replace them with machines that were never broken to begin with.

The choice is ours, but the window is closing fast.

Jeremy Howick receives funding from the Stoneygate Trust.

– ref. AI is beating doctors at empathy – because we’ve turned doctors into robots – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-beating-doctors-at-empathy-because-weve-turned-doctors-into-robots-269108

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aiden Hoyle, Assistant Professor in Intelligence and Security, Institute for Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University

When we talk about disinformation – the intentional spreading of misleading information – we usually picture blatant lies and “fake news” pushed by foreign governments. Sometimes the intention is to sway voters in elections, and sometimes it’s to sow confusion in a crisis.

But this is a somewhat simplified version of events. In fact, authoritarian countries, such as Russia and, increasingly, China, are engaged in continuous and more expansive projects aimed at creating a tilted political reality. They seek to subtly undermine the image of western democracies, presenting themselves, and their growing bloc of authoritarian partners, as the future.

Crafting this political reality includes the use of blatant falsities, but the narrative is typically grounded in a much more insidious manipulation of information. Positive facts are highlighted to a disproportionate degree, while inconvenient ones are ignored or taken out of context, so that they appear more in line with the narrator’s goals.

The Kremlin has, for a long time, used state-sponsored media outlets, proxy media outlets or bots to disperse a consistent stream of stories – news articles, tweets, videos or social media posts – designed to subtly steer and antagonise political discussions in democratic societies. Reports show that these stories can reach audiences far beyond their original Russian outlets. They are unknowingly (or sometimes, knowingly) repeated by local or national media, commentators or online users.

A common trope is the idea that democratic societies are chaotic and failing. Coverage might exaggerate crime, corruption, and social disorder, or highlight public protests, economic stagnation, or governmental instability as evidence that democracies are not working. The underlying message is that democracy leads to chaos.

Some stories focus on making progressive values in western societies seem weird. They ridicule progressive social change regarding, for example, LGBTQ+ rights or multiculturalism, making them seem illogical or silly.

Others use real grievances but frame them to amplify feelings of discrimination and victimhood. In the Baltic states, for example, Russian media frequently highlights the alleged persecution of Russian speakers, suggesting they are being treated as second-class citizens and giving far less space to other perspectives.

If we look at the growing online “manosphere”, this mechanism is also in evidence – messaging that reinforces a collective sense of victimhood that fuels division and distrust.

An authoritarian alternative

These types of stories, portraying western societies as dysfunctional and strange, have long been used by the Kremlin to damage the image of democracy. Increasingly, however, we are also seeing Russia and China collaborating in the global online media space to jointly present the authoritarian world as stable and principled alternative powers.

Both Russia and China are critical of the “international rules-based order”, a framework of liberal rules and political norms that emerged after the second world war. They see this order as western-centric and want to reshape the global order in their interest.

Military and economic collaboration form part of their efforts to challenge this order, but global media and online spaces are important too. Both states, for example, frequently disseminate stories that portray western countries as neo-colonial powers.

Another theme is that democracies are hypocritical actors who preach equality and fairness but do not practice it. Stories of a lack of unity in western alliances like Nato or the EU are also consistent in Russian and Chinese narration. Conversely, Russia and China are presented as logical and sane countries, seeking to protect other, more vulnerable nations from western exploitation.

Why are these stories effective?

These stories seem to resonate, especially with audiences in developing countries. That’s often because they have a kernel of truth. Storytellers might focus on real issues, like inequality, foreign policy missteps or double standards and, of course, it’s true that many western countries are indeed dealing with cost of living crises and that foreign policy is not always consistent. Memories of colonial rule make accusations of current exploitation all the more believable.

It’s often the way a story is told that misleads. Details are withheld or taken out of context. Speculative information is presented as fact. This creates a distorted version of the truth.

The stories are often told in emotive terms in a bid to trigger our anger, shock, fear or resentment. For example, in the context of the war in Ukraine, disinformation might suggest that our governments are betraying us by getting involved in foreign wars, or that ordinary citizens are the ones paying the price for the ambitions of a corrupt elite.

They are laden with scandal and sensationalism, skipping nuance in favour of emotional resonance. This ensures the stories are shared and promoted across social media.

The truth can be complex and, at times, boring. Yet by capitalising on our tendency to gravitate towards the sensational, Russia and China can drip-feed a specific worldview into our own – where democracy is ineffective and chaotic and where they offer a fairer, functional future.

In this way, disinformation today is less about outright falsehoods and more about the subtle sculpting how we see the world. Over time, this quiet reshaping can reach far beyond what a false headline might do, and make us doubt the very value of democracy itself.

Aiden Hoyle 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 authoritarian states sculpt a warped alternative reality in our news feeds – https://theconversation.com/how-authoritarian-states-sculpt-a-warped-alternative-reality-in-our-news-feeds-266092

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Abisola Olawale, PhD candidate, Centre for Migration, Diaspora, Citizenship and Identity, University of the West of Scotland

Moving and living abroad is one of the most exhilarating experiences you can have as a young adult. For the tens of thousands of people on youth mobility schemes or simply working abroad, it is a leap that can bring new adventures, career opportunities and friendships.

But underneath the excitement lies something much more complex: the challenge of figuring out your identity when your “home self” and your “new self” begin to evolve side by side.

I experienced this “dual identity” myself when I moved from Nigeria to Scotland at age 33. It’s what pushed me to my current academic path, researching Nigerian migration to Scotland. My ongoing work analyses how adults and young adults navigate cultures, form identities and settle into a new society, and how changing policies affect their experience of integration.

Cultural identity formation starts at a young age and continues throughout your development. For those who move abroad or are children of immigrants, this process is more complex, involving a negotiation between personal goals, cultural heritage and the social environment of the host country.

Your twenties and thirties are a time for self-discovery, marked by building a career, forming new friendships and romantic relationships, and shaping the adult you want to become. All of this while integrating into a new society adds an extra layer of complexity.

Navigating two identities

In the very first stage of migration, you may be excited by the new foods, people and ways of life you are exposed to. But as time goes by, the difficulty of adapting may become clearer. You may experience challenges like discrimination, an unwelcome political climate, visa restrictions, professional barriers, or simply feel homesick for the people and things back home.

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No one’s twenties and thirties look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

• Feel like you’re in a funk? Here’s what you can do to get out of it

• Moving back home doesn’t mean you’ve failed in life – here’s why

• Why losing a parent when you’re a young adult is so hard

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This is when the intrapersonal battle of cultural adaptation typically starts. You realise that migration is not merely about moving, but about living two lives. Half of you stays behind where you originally came from, and half of you moves to the host country. This duality is what many migrants experience as they struggle to belong to two worlds. Research shows that people or groups adopt the cultural norms of the host culture over, or at the expense of, their home country culture.

This negotiation of your dual migrant identity emerges in seemingly insignificant moments. At work, you might worry about what your colleagues think of the food you’ve brought from home. You may struggle to understand your colleagues and their patterns of speaking.

When you meet new people, you may pause or think in your head before introducing yourself. Do you say your name the authentic and cultural way, or say it the easier way so it is not mispronounced or laughed at? You laugh at jokes, but feel gutted when no one understands the humour you grew up with.

Some people accept their dual identity and integrate smoothly. Dual identity can give you flexibility and resilience as you learn and shift between languages, accents and cultural cues. This allows you to express a fuller version of yourself rather than hiding some part of your identity.

For others, the process is more difficult and prolonged, shaped by factors such as discrimination, isolation or limited social support. Some days, you may feel like you don’t fully belong in your new country of residence. To locals, you might seem “too foreign” and to people back home, you might appear “too changed”.

While there is no perfect guide to integrating, transitioning and navigating your identity after you move, there are ways to make it less overwhelming and more empowering.

First, allow yourself to grow without guilt. This new phase doesn’t erase your other self, it enriches it.

Second, keep the traditions that matter most to you. Consider joining support groups to connect with people who understand both sides of your experience. This could be fellow migrants or locals who are genuinely accepting and curious.

Third, say yes to experiences that push you. This will help you improve and build your resilience. Belonging is not about fitting into one box, it’s about finding your identity and thriving in a way that spans oceans, cultures and time zones.

Abisola Olawale 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. Moving abroad in your 20s can leave you with two identities – here’s how to cope – https://theconversation.com/moving-abroad-in-your-20s-can-leave-you-with-two-identities-heres-how-to-cope-262903

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Casper Laing Ebbensgaard, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of East Anglia

When you look at the promotional materials advertising luxury high-rise developments in London, it is obvious that the fantasy of living in the sky is fused by a desire for sunlight and “unobstructed” views of the city. Phrases such as “the brightest addition to London’s skyline” or apartments being “flooded with natural light” and offering “expansive sky views” are common.

It is a dream with a dark side, however, which plays out below in the shadows of London’s mushrooming cityscape. In a recent paper, I show how daylight and shadow are unevenly distributed across the urban population. Vulnerable and marginalised residents are disproportionately affected by overshadowing, a lack of privacy and the overbearing nature of new high-rise developments.

Dubbing such socially skewed access to daylight “light violence”, as I do, may sound dramatic. But it captures something insidious.

When you build tall buildings, it is no surprise that they cast shadows in the surrounding environment. In northern climates, where sunlight is scarce, especially during long, overcast winter days, the compounding effect of living in shadows can be potentially harmful. Scientific studies show that depriving people of daylight can lead to increased stress, sleep disruption and early onset of myopia or short-sightedness. Sudden changes in daylight are also linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.

To protect the health and wellbeing of residents, the UK’s Building Research Establishment (BRE) issue national planning guidance that sets out minimum daylight levels. Yet, in practice, the guidance is advisory. And in cases where a proposed development breaches the BRE guidelines, they are easily dismissed and breaches often deemed legally acceptable.

Take the example of Buckle Street Studio, a 13-storey apartment hotel that caused daylight to drop to levels in breach of BRE guidance for 201 windows across 166 rooms in 58 individual flats in neighbouring buildings. As I show in my paper, for each of these 58 homes, the drop in daylight levels amount to material harm. It is a deterioration of the living environment that will compromise the health and wellbeing of its residents.

Standing a mere nine meters from the newly built tower, Goldpence Apartments, a seven-storey housing block comprised of social and affordable homes, was the worst affected block. Of the 58 households in Goldpence apartments, 35 would be directly affected by the development. In fact, 33 residents submitted written objections that expressed both a concern for their individual homes and the lack of light for communal spaces in the neighbourhood.

The proposal was called in for a public inquiry, with a planning inspector assessing the reasons for the council’s refusal. In the final report, he sided with the developer and said that the existing levels of amenity and low levels of daylight in neighbouring buildings constituted a local norm, which the residents in Goldpence Apartments should expect

The research draws attention to the legal process through which the harm resulting from a drop in daylight is both neutralised in the planning inquiry and normalised through the planning process. Levels breaching the BRE regulations would be expected, because neighbouring flats already had poor living conditions.

I argue that this kind of race to the bottom amounts to a form of soft or light violence. It is a legally accepted and politically encouraged erosion of living conditions that disproportionately affects vulnerable and marginalised residents.

A dark future?

When Buckle Street Studios completed, the residents in Goldpence Apartments were not only exhausted from the lengthy planning process but had lost faith in the planning system’s ability to protect them. As I show in a related paper,
they had to come to terms with no longer being able to see the sky from inside their homes.

Many left their curtains drawn all day or rearranged furniture in their children’s bedrooms to prevent neighbours overlooking them. Instead of letting their defeat define them, the residents developed coping strategies that have allowed them to process and deal with the imposing presence of Buckle Street Studios.

This demonstrates how people deal with light violence in everyday life by developing innovative solutions to the challenges they face. And, if they can, so too can city builders.

The architects who design the towers of tomorrow should be able to uphold standards and produce healthy living environments rather than detract from them. More sensitive daylight design would include considering the orientation of buildings, the size and placement of windows and in some cases using reflective materials or diffusers.

Yet, to ensure healthy living environments for all the residents in the city – both those living on upper floors flooded in natural light, and those living below – city-builders must acknowledge the deeper challenge of addressing the socioeconomic divisions that are created as part of new developments. And, they should take the role of design more seriously in challenging residential segregation rather than smoothing over it.

Casper Laing Ebbensgaard 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. Daylight robbery? How London’s skyscrapers deprive marginalised people of light – https://theconversation.com/daylight-robbery-how-londons-skyscrapers-deprive-marginalised-people-of-light-267332

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adriana Marin, Lecturer in International Relations, Coventry University

When Claudia Sheinbaum — Mexico’s first woman president — was publicly groped during a walkabout recently, her response was striking in its restraint: “If this happens to the president, where does that leave all the young women in our country?”

The phrase ricocheted across Mexico and beyond. It captured both the routine nature of gendered harassment and the profound political implications of a society in which even the country’s most powerful woman can be violated in full public view.

The incident was trivialised by some as a momentary lapse of security. But it was emblematic of the deeper structures of machismo and misogyny that continue to shape political life across Latin America.

Viewed through a narrow lens, Latin America appears increasingly progressive on gender equality. Over the past two decades, the region has implemented some of the world’s most ambitious gender-parity laws. Countries including Mexico, Costa Rica, and Argentina have introduced sweeping legislative reforms requiring equal representation in party lists and public office.

As a result, Latin America consistently ranks among the regions with the highest proportions of women in national legislatures. The region has also produced several high-profile female heads of state.

In addition to Sheinbaum, there’s been Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. And were it not for some distinctly questionable electoral practices, we might be talking about this year’s Nobel peace laureate, Maria Corina Machado, as president of Venezuela.

Yet these advances in representation coexist with and often provoke virulent misogynistic backlash. The presence of women in power has not dismantled the patriarchal norms underpinning political life. Instead it has exposed how resilient they are.

Feminist scholars describe this phenomenon as “gendered political violence”. It’s a spectrum of practices aimed at punishing women who assume roles historically reserved for men.

Such violence is not confined to physical assault. It also manifests in smear campaigns, sexualised caricature, digital harassment and threats targeting both female politicians and their families. Misogyny here operates not simply as a cultural residue but as a political technology. It’s a way of disciplining women who disrupt established hierarchies.

Sheinbaum’s encounter illustrates this dynamic with unusual clarity. The groping was not merely an act of individual misconduct but a symbolic assertion of power over a woman whose very position challenges longstanding gendered expectations.

Public space across Latin America has long been shaped by the logic of machismo. Research conducted in Quito (Ecuador), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Santiago (Chile) suggests that street harassment is a pervasive facet of everyday life for women in the region’s cities.

But when the president herself is subjected to unwanted touching, the incident becomes more than a breach of protocol. It becomes a fleeting but potent reminder of the gendered vulnerability deeply embedded in public life.

Sheinbaum’s remark distils a troubling truth: if the nation’s most protected woman can be violated in plain sight, what protections exist for those without status, visibility, or security personnel? In Mexico, this question is particularly acute. The country continues to record some of the world’s highest rates of femicide (the killing of women or girls because of their gender), and gender-based violence is frequently met with institutional inertia.

Against this backdrop, the symbolic violation of a female president cannot be dismissed as trivial. It speaks to a continuum of violence in which women’s bodies remain contested terrain, regardless of their political authority.

Systemic machismo

Machismo, far from being a casual label for male bravado, is a wider ideological system that normalises male dominance in public and private life. It seeks to shape who is seen as credible, rational and fit to lead. It sets expectations that political authority should look and sound masculine.

This means that traits praised in men – decisiveness, assertiveness, toughness – are often judged as inappropriate in women. Within this logic, women entering politics do not simply take up official positions, but rather challenge a symbolic order built on the assumption that power belongs to men.

This helps explain why female leaders attract forms of scrutiny fundamentally different in tone and tenor from those directed at their male counterparts. This includes the policing of their appearance, voice, emotional expression and personal morality, reinforcing the ideological boundaries that machismo seeks to maintain.

Dilma Rousseff, for instance, experienced sustained misogynistic vitriol during and after her presidency. She had to put up with sexualised imagery, accusations of emotional instability and incessant commentary on her appearance — all documented by journalists and human rights organisations.

In Bolivia, women politicians have faced psychological, economic and symbolic aggressions, culminating in extreme cases such as the unsolved 2012 murder of councillor Juana Quispe .

The list is long and unedifying. And it reveals the limitations of formal gender parity. Legal frameworks have succeeded in bringing more women into public institutions, but they have not transformed the cultural logic that determines whose authority is respected and whose is contested.

In many cases, increased representation has heightened hostility, as women’s visibility exposes the fragility of entrenched patriarchal structures. Misogyny, in this sense, becomes a reaction to perceived disruption. It acts as a reassertion of dominance where male authority no longer appears guaranteed.

Ultimately, the episode underscores the gap between representation and transformation. Latin America has made significant strides in bringing women into positions of formal power, but the cultural and political structures that underpin misogyny remain deeply entrenched.

The groping of a sitting president encapsulates this contradiction. A woman can symbolise national authority and still be reduced, in an instant, to an object of public violation.

The future of gender equality in the region will depend not merely on increasing the number of women in political office but on confronting the cultural and political systems that enable misogyny to flourish.

Until machismo is challenged in legislation, public discourse, political culture and everyday life, women in power will continue to face the paradox embodied in Sheinbaum’s remark. Even at the highest level, authority does not guarantee respect, and visibility does not guarantee safety.

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

– ref. The groping of Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum was more than just a personal assault – https://theconversation.com/the-groping-of-mexican-president-claudia-sheinbaum-was-more-than-just-a-personal-assault-269298