Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel Hutton Ferris, Lecturer in Political Theory and Philosophy, Newcastle University

Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, has been elected as New York City’s mayor. He became the first New York mayoral candidate to win more than 1 million votes since 1969, and looks set to secure over 50% of the total vote.

With almost all of the votes counted, independent candidate Andrew Cuomo seems to have been backed by 41.6% of voters. Republican Curtis Sliwa has secured just 7%.

Mamdani, who has become New York City’s first Muslim mayor, swept to victory on what was characterised as a radical left-wing platform. He has promised to tax millionaires more in order to fund free buses and childcare for all.

He has also vowed to honour an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over alleged war crimes in Gaza if he visits New York. The Israeli foreign ministry has previously called Mamdani a “mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda”.

How did a figure on the far left of American politics, who is also a staunch critic of Israel, win in a city that is full of millionaires and home to a sizeable Jewish population?

The corruption and sexual harassment scandals affecting his main rival certainly helped, as did the focus of his campaign on making life more affordable for New Yorkers. Mamdani’s presence on social media raised his profile and attracted voters, too.

He posted slick videos on TikTok and Instagram throughout his campaign, including one where he criticised the rent increases seen under outgoing mayor Eric Adams while running the New York City marathon.

But journalists and commentators have noticed something else that has helped boost Mamdani’s appeal among New Yorkers. He has what the New York Times called in July “a rare talent for listening”.

Mamdani is unusually reflective in interviews, often thinking silently for more than 20 seconds before responding to questions. And after his successful primary earlier in 2025, Mamdani contacted every business and cultural leader in the city he could get hold of to hear about why they opposed him.

The viral campaign videos that made his name also see him walking the streets of New York, asking voters questions and listening to their answers at length without interruption. Mamdani may be a radical, but he really listens.

Talking to voters

Democratic theorists are likely to celebrate Mamdani’s approach. Many philosophers embrace what is known as the “deliberative theory of democracy”, which argues that talking – as opposed to voting – is the central democratic institution.

These people suggest that politicians should talk to a diverse range of voters respectfully about their decisions. Listening to diverse perspectives improves policy because it requires leaders to consider a range of ideas and arguments, relying less on their own gut intuitions.

As a respectful and inclusive political style, it can also help citizens feel heard and challenge the idea that politicians are interested only in power and will say whatever it takes to win. A more deliberative kind of responsiveness to voters can therefore increase political legitimacy and trust.

Political scientists are likely to point out that Mamdani has an important strategic reason for his deliberative political style. New York City uses a system of ranked choice voting, or “the alternative vote”, which asks voters to rank candidates in order of their preference rather than choosing just one.

This encourages politicians to find policy proposals that are supported by large majorities, such as taxing millionaires to pay for free childcare, and to communicate respectfully with people of all political persuasions in the hope they might win their second-preference votes.

Larry Diamond, a leading American democracy expert, has called ranked choice voting the “Archimedean lever of change” for solving the deep polarisation currently affecting US politics. This is because it penalises candidates who rely on divisive rhetoric to appeal to a passionate base of supporters.

They are unlikely to win second-preference votes from people whose first preference is for one of their rivals. Conversely, ranked choice voting rewards politicians who try to bridge political divides with respectful and inclusive campaigning.

Depolarising US politics

There are many lessons that the political left in the US and beyond can learn from Mamdani’s victory. Most obviously, it shows that a socialist and pro-Palestine candidate can win in a major US electoral contest by combining a lively digital campaign with a strong focus on the cost of living.

It also suggests that candidates perceived as being radical are more likely to succeed in elections when they are visibly willing to listen to and deliberate with voters from all sorts of backgrounds.

Mamdani’s rise should also encourage a wider embrace of ranked choice voting. The system has been used to elect members of Australia’s House of Representatives for more than a century and it is now used in the US states of Maine and Alaska, as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It should be adopted elsewhere too, as an antidote to political polarisation. The UK held a referendum on changing the electoral system to the alternative vote in 2011. However, UK voters unfortunately rejected the proposal.

Finally, Mamdani’s victory shows that radicalism and reflectiveness can come together, especially when the electoral system promotes it. Ranked choice voting is so good at encouraging a politics of respect and listening that it is sometimes accused of creating boring centrist candidates.

But Mamdani has reminded us that this does not have to be the case. Reforming US election systems could encourage deliberative responsiveness and depolarise American politics, without taking radical options off the menu.

Daniel Hutton Ferris 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 Zohran Mamdani’s ‘talent for listening’ spurred him to victory in the New York mayoral election – https://theconversation.com/how-zohran-mamdanis-talent-for-listening-spurred-him-to-victory-in-the-new-york-mayoral-election-268950

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies, Leiden University

Americans voted in elections on November 4 in the first major test of whether Republicans can hold together the coalition of voters that propelled Donald Trump to the White House in November 2024. The result was a Democratic party triumph.

Trump was not directly on the ballot in any of these elections, the most high-profile of which were to decide who would become the mayor of New York City and the governors of Virginia and New Jersey. But each race has been seen to varying degrees as a referendum on the president and the direction he has taken his party.

American politics is highly nationalised. This means that results in local and state elections are often heavily influenced by how voters feel about the national political situation. This is often frustrating to local politicians.

In New Jersey, for example, the Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli frequently complained that his Democratic opponent Mikie Sherrill was trying to make their recent race a referendum on the president rather than basing the campaign on the relative merits of their own proposals.

“If you get a flat tire on the way home tonight, she’s going to blame it on President Trump”, Ciattarelli said to voters at numerous campaign rallies. In the end, Sherrill won by 13%.

Republicans’ fraying coalition

None of the major races decided on November 4 were in the states usually regarded as the “swing states” – the ones that could reasonably be won either by the Democrats or Republicans and usually decide the outcome of presidential elections. But this doesn’t mean we cannot learn anything from them.

The nationalisation of US politics means that voters with similar demographic characteristics – for instance, what race they identify as or whether they live in the suburbs or rural areas – tend to vote in similar ways across state lines. If a party is improving its performance in the suburbs of New Jersey, the same is likely to be the case in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

In this respect, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City was the least surprising news of the night. For New York to have its first Muslim mayor is a historic milestone, and Mamdani’s achievement has electrified many. But Democrats usually dominate in urban areas, and he was no exception.

Republicans will be much more worried about what happened elsewhere. In both Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats won by double-digit margins – and they did so by winning back the groups that deserted them in the 2024 presidential election.

In 2024, Republicans were thrilled to make big inroads with Hispanic voters. Many saw it as proof that their party was extending its appeal beyond the white voters who make up its core supporter base. But in the recent elections, those inroads seemed to vanish.

Sherrill, a moderate Democrat who hasn’t generated nearly as much excitement as Mamdani, made her biggest gains in Passaic and Hudson counties, two of New Jersey’s most heavily Hispanic areas. Abigail Spanberger made the same inroads in Virginia.

Suburban voters, who often prove crucial to winning presidential elections, also deserted the Republicans in large numbers. Spanberger won Virginia’s Henrico County, a swathe of the suburbs of Richmond, by 40%. This was the Democrats’ biggest margin of victory in the county ever.

Some caveats

These results are great news for Democrats, and they exceeded the expectations of most observers before election night. Taken together, they seem to suggest that the coalition that won victory for the Republicans in 2024 is collapsing.

But it’s also not time for possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidates to start measuring the White House drapes quite yet. These results reflect a recent trend in US politics in which Republicans have struggled to win so-called off year elections – ones in which the presidency is not on the ballot.

In his ten years on the political scene, Trump has transformed the Republican party by expanding its appeal among less-educated white voters, younger voters and, to some extent, voters of colour.

But these are also groups that are less likely to vote than the average American. As a result, getting them to turn out when Trump is not on the ballot is a goal that Republicans have found elusive. So, we have to be careful about the conclusions we draw from these results.

At a minimum, we can safely say that the results of the recent elections suggest Democrats can expect to perform well in the midterms in 2026. That gives them the opportunity to win back one or two houses of Congress and act as a check on Trump’s agenda.

For their part, Republicans have some soul-searching to do. Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term in 2028. Unless some other Republican can reproduce Trump’s appeal to infrequent voters, the signs are that his party will struggle even in presidential election years.

Much also depends on Trump’s policies in the years to come. Voters are clearly fed up with the lack of progress on reducing the cost of living, the brutality of immigration raids, and the corruption and chaos that many perceive to exist under this administration.

Voter sentiment on these issues is unlikely to change unless Trump changes course. The question, given his political style and his personality, is whether he can – or whether he even wants to.

Andrew Gawthorpe 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. US election results suggest Trump’s coalition of voters is collapsing – https://theconversation.com/us-election-results-suggest-trumps-coalition-of-voters-is-collapsing-268967

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Tobin, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Manchester

This year’s UN climate summit (Cop30) in Belém, Brazil, begins with a familiar dilemma: how can we tackle a highly political, long-term problem that involves every country of the world?

Governments, experts and activists have been trying to address climate change since the early 1990s, yet global greenhouse gas emissions remain at record levels.

Emissions growth may be slowing, but even pro-climate action strategies seem to be pulling in different – or even, antagonistic – directions. Our new book presents these antagonisms as a choice between “stability” and “politicisation” in climate governance.

According to those favouring stability, governments should lock in steady, long-term policies that place us on a predictable and gradual track to much lower emissions. Creating policies that commit us to a certain path should help businesses to invest in ways that meet this predictable trajectory.

However, if it is weakened and made inadequate by pro-fossil fuel lobbyists and governments, then the stable path can still meander into climate catastrophe. This is the course we are presently on.

On the other hand, for those pursuing the politicisation of climate action, it is better to encourage political conflict and protests that constantly create pressure for more significant and rapid policy change.

Such strategies can disrupt pro-fossil fuel lobbyists’ grip and expose strategies used by some political figures to dismantle the hard-fought climate goals already in place. But by encouraging increased politicisation of these issues, we may open the door to anti-net zero populists and others seeking to slow or stop climate policy action altogether.

Both schools of thought – stability or politicisation – have their supporters and detractors. Both have benefits and downsides. However, these have rarely been discussed in conversation with one another, until now.

At Cop30, these distinct strategies will be under the spotlight.

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Read more:
Why countries struggle to quit fossil fuels, despite higher costs and 30 years of climate talks and treaties

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The stability or politicisation dilemma helps to explain why building a strategy that works over years and decades creates difficult questions, not only about policy design but approaches for different organisations and states. These challenges change according to which level of government, which country, and which economic sector is in play.

For instance, it is easier to push for politicisation and conflict when you’re not a member of a marginalised or racialised community already facing myriad hurdles to political participation.

Conversely, it is hard to avoid having to engage in politicisation and conflict in areas where there are deep historical power structures that need to be challenged. For example, in the UK, land ownership concentration blocks peat restoration – both because landowners want to keep peat moors dry to maximise their grouse shooting revenue, and because the land concentration means they are very powerful within the British state.

Tension between timeframes

Our book traces these dynamics across a range of cases, from the fossil fuel industry in the US to strategies used by the insurance sector and central banks; from China’s industrial policy to environmental justice social movements in Germany; and from arguments about Norwegian oil extraction to Brazilian and South African renewable energy generation.

International relations expert Jennifer Allan explains that previous UN climate summits have been shaped by this clash in strategies, right back to the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 agreement that set emissions targets for economically developed countries.

Whereas the EU was previously the driving force behind depoliticisation of negotiations, more recently, countries such as India and China are also pursuing such strategies. As Allan warns, this may delay the implementation of climate policies as more states debate how best to progress.

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Read more:
To address the environmental polycrisis, the first step is to demand more honesty

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In Belém at Cop30, similar dynamics will be at play. Efforts are ongoing to implement the 2015 Paris climate agreement agenda and process. Core issues remain on how to ensure regular reporting of emissions, alongside questions around who pays for the consequences of climate change.

At the same time, there will be a continued politicising push by certain countries and social movements. States such as the US, Saudi Arabia and their allies will be trying to politicise the negotiations to stymy progress. Meanwhile, social movements will be protesting to keep the pressure on negotiators and promote climate justice for those who are hardest hit by climate change.

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Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

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Paul Tobin has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Matthew Paterson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). He is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Stacy D VanDeveer as received funding from Independent Research Fund Denmark, MISTRA (Sweden), Research Council of Norway, Uppsala University (Sweden), German Marshall Fund of the United States, US National Science Foundation

– ref. Why even pro-climate action organisations may pull in different directions – https://theconversation.com/why-even-pro-climate-action-organisations-may-pull-in-different-directions-261047

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Preeti Mahato, Lecturer in Global Health, Royal Holloway, University of London

You may have heard that vaping is the “safer” choice than smoking. But what if the very thing designed to protect your health also puts your heart at risk?

Vaping does not exist in isolation. It is part of a wider story about smoking, inequality and the growing burden of heart disease in the UK. Even after years of public health campaigns, smoking remains common in England’s most deprived areas.

The reasons are complex. People living with financial strain, insecure jobs and chronic stress are more likely to smoke. Targeted marketing and limited access to stop-smoking services make it even harder to quit. At the same time, one in two UK adults have high cholesterol, and many do not know it.

Reports show that people in the poorest communities have the highest rates of smoking and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including raised cholesterol.

As vaping becomes more common in these same communities, a new form of nicotine use could be replacing one heart risk with another. Many people now switch from cigarettes to vapes to reduce harm, but growing evidence suggests the benefits may not be as clear-cut as once thought.

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Read more:
Popcorn lung: how vaping could scar your lungs for life

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Research shows that vaping can help some people quit smoking more effectively than other methods, but newer findings challenge the belief that e-cigarettes are a harmless substitute.

Several studies have now linked vaping to arterial damage in both the brain and heart, even among people who have never smoked traditional cigarettes. The cells that line our blood vessels, known as the endothelium, keep arteries supple, regulate blood pressure and stop fatty deposits from sticking to the walls. When these cells are damaged, arteries lose elasticity and blood flow becomes less efficient, raising the risk of cardiovascular problems.

One study found that regular vapers had impaired blood vessel function. Their arteries could no longer expand and contract properly. Other research on humans and animals exposed to vapour showed less flexible arteries, higher blood pressure and damaged endothelium in both the brain and heart. This arterial stiffening increases the likelihood of heart attack, stroke and dementia.

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Read more:
How vaping primes the lungs for COVID damage

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So what is behind this damage? When someone vapes, the vapour carries nicotine, chemicals and microscopic particles into the bloodstream. These trigger inflammation and oxidative stress, meaning the body’s defences go into overdrive and start attacking healthy tissue. Vaping also reduces nitric oxide, a molecule that helps vessels relax, while increasing harmful free radicals. Together, these effects make arteries less able to do their job and more prone to disease, increasing the risk of heart problems.

Vaping can also raise blood pressure and heart rate, even after a single session. Over time, this mix of irritation, inflammation and stress wears down the arteries, even in people who have never smoked before.

The UK’s NHS Health Check programme mainly screens people aged forty and over for heart-disease risks. Yet vaping is most common among people under 40, and routine screening is not designed to detect early vessel injury in this age group. Young vapers may therefore carry silent artery damage for years before any problem appears on standard tests. Evidence suggests that vaping can cause early artery changes similar to those caused by smoking, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) later in life.

That is why education and prevention are so important. Schools and public health campaigns play a vital role in showing young people that vaping carries long-term risks, including damage to the heart. Programmes that combine classroom learning with interactive activities have been shown to make a real difference. Initiatives such as Catch Your Breath and Essex’s Break the Vape aim to stop young people from vaping before they start, and to support those who want to quit, reducing their future risk of heart disease.

The wide differences in heart disease deaths across England show that prevention efforts are still not reaching everyone equally. A whole-system approach to CVD prevention is essential. Schools, councils, NHS services and local communities need to work together to tackle shared risk factors such as smoking and vaping.

Screening cannot yet detect early artery damage in younger adults, but education remains our best defence. Helping young people understand how vaping affects the heart can protect the next generation from the hidden dangers of nicotine addiction and cardiovascular harm.

Anusha Seneviratne previously received research funding from the British Heart Foundation.

Preeti Mahato 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. Vaping might seem safer than smoking but your heart could tell a different story – https://theconversation.com/vaping-might-seem-safer-than-smoking-but-your-heart-could-tell-a-different-story-268612

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Luis Angeles, Professor of Economics, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow

Tariffs on imports have been at the heart of Donald Trump’s economic policy since the start of his second term in the White House. And while the president believes that tariffs will be beneficial to the US economy, many eminent economists disagree. Here are three reasons why.

The first reason is that a US trade deficit should not necessarily be seen as a negative economic outcome. Trump certainly thinks it is. As he reportedly told Karin Keller-Sutter, president of Switzerland, earlier this year: “We have a US$41 billion deficit with you, madam….[and] we lose, because I view deficit as [a] loss.”

A trade deficit only means that one country buys more goods and services from another country than it sells to it. As a result, more money flows out of the country, to pay for the imports, than comes into the country, as a payment for exports.

Money flowing out of the country may sound bad, but for every dollar that the US spends abroad there is something else coming in: the goods and services it buys, which Americans get to consume. A “trade deficit” could very well be renamed a “surplus in goods and services consumed” – a positive outcome, reflecting the expressed preferences of the American public.

The second reason is that tariffs change what the economy produces – for the worse.

Tariffs are eventually passed on to consumers, making imported goods and services dearer. Trump’s hope is that making, say, Swiss watches more expensive will shift demand towards US-made watches, whose price remains the same. The US’s watchmaking industry would grow and employ more people, which sounds like a solid gain for the US economy.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. Foreign countries need to sell goods and services to the US in order to obtain the dollars that pay for American exports. If foreign countries sell less because of tariffs, they are also going to buy less American products.

This means that any expansion of the US watch industry would be matched by a contraction in other American industries, such as aircraft manufacturing or financial services, which the US successfully exports. Employment may increase in one sector, but it will decrease somewhere else.

And that’s not all. The reallocation of labour across industries is costly, as people lose industry-specific skills and need to be retrained. But more important, consider why the US was importing foreign watches in the first place. Clearly, because foreign manufacturers are better at watchmaking: they produce watches of any given quality for a lower price than America can.

The same is true for American export industries, which sell abroad because they are more productive than their foreign counterparts. The reallocation of labour away from American export industries, and towards other industries such as watchmaking, is a shift away from what Americans can do best. It renders the whole country less productive, making everyone poorer in the process.

Be grateful for the dollar

The third reason, finally, is that the US gets a very good deal when it comes to paying for its trade deficit.

When country A wants to buy goods and services from country B, a difficulty arises. Country A has its own currency to pay with, but this currency has no value in country B.

If trade is perfectly balanced between the two countries (they buy and sell the same amounts to each other), an easy solution is at hand. Country B will accept country A’s currency and immediately give it back, as payment for the goods and services it buys from country A, which are of the same value.

If there is a trade deficit, where country A imports more than it exports, country B will still accept country A’s currency if there is something else which can be bought with it. That “something else” is assets, which can be financial (stocks or bonds) or real (such as property). So a country with a trade deficit must sacrifice some of its assets to foreign ownership.

In the case of the US, however, there is one important difference. If a foreign country ends up with a positive balance of dollars because it sells more to the US than it buys, it may not use all these extra dollars to buy US assets.

Instead, it often wants to keep those dollars, in the form of banknotes, within the local economy. This happens because people around the world trust and value US dollars, often more than their own currency, and may prefer to use American notes for purposes such as savings and large transactions. A vast amount of dollar banknotes – currently worth over 1 trillion dollars – are in circulation outside the US economy.

This phenomenon translates into a great bonanza for the US. It has the unique privilege of being able to run a trade deficit with the rest of world, consuming more goods and services from other countries than it provides to them, and yet does not compensate those countries entirely with American assets.

Instead, it compensates them with pieces of paper it produces at essentially no cost. Foreigners are happy to hold these American pieces of paper because they have monetary status in their countries – something that would not be true for any other currency. Trying to shut down the US’s trade deficit also means trying to cut off this substantial source of wealth for the country.

Luis Angeles 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. Three reasons why so many economists disagree with Donald Trump’s tariffs – https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-so-many-economists-disagree-with-donald-trumps-tariffs-267046

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrea Scotti, Senior lecturer of Physical Chemistry, Lund University

Whether you prefer your spaghetti al dente or soothingly soft, it can be difficult to achieve perfection at home. Many of us will have experienced our pasta disintegrating into a beige mush – particularly for gluten-free alternatives.

So how much water and salt do you really need, and how long do you cook it for if you want optimal results? What’s more, how should you amend your cooking process when using gluten-free pasta? A recent study my colleagues and I conducted, published in Food Hydrocolloids, has provided answers by unveiling the physics behind the cooking process.

Turning to the Diamond light source, the UK’s national synchrotron (a circular particle accelerator) facility, we studied the scattering of X-rays off pasta (at low angles) to uncover its internal structure. Then we went to Isis and to the Institute Laue Langevin, which are neutron facilities in the UK and France, and used neutrons (which make up the atomic nucleus along with protons) to shed light on the microstructure of regular and gluten-free spaghetti under different cooking conditions.

The study shows how the hidden structure of pasta changes as it cooks, and why gluten-free versions behave so differently.

The setup enabled us to investigate the structure of starches and gluten within spaghetti on small scales that spanned from tens of times the radius of an atom to thousands of times. In this way, we could compare the transformation that happens in regular and gluten-free pasta while they are cooked in different conditions, such as being cooked for too long or cooked without salt.

Our experiments allowed us to “see” different components of the pasta separately. By mixing normal and “heavy water” (which contains an isotope called deuterium), we could make either the gluten or the starch invisible to the neutron beam. In this way, we could effectively isolate each structure in turn, and understand the effects of starches and gluten during cooking.

The power of gluten and salt

Our study reveals that, in regular pasta, the gluten acts as a strong scaffold that holds starch granules in place even during boiling, giving the pasta its firmness and slow digestion rate. In gluten-free pasta, the starch granules swell and collapse more easily – explaining the mushy texture and faster breakdown experienced when this kind of pasta is cooked in non-optimal conditions.

We also probed the effect of salt in the cooking water on the pasta structure. What we found is that salt doesn’t just make pasta taste better; it also strongly affects the microstructure of the spaghetti. When regular pasta is boiled in salted water, the gluten maintains its structure, and the starch granules are less deteriorated by the cooking process.

So how much salt should you add to preserve the pasta’s microscopic structure? Our study revealed that the optimal salt level is seven grams per litre of water, with more water required for larger amounts of pasta. The pasta should be cooked ten or 11 minutes in the case of regular and gluten-free altertnative, respectively. In contrast, when the salt concentration was doubled, the internal order broke down more rapidly and the structure within the starches granules was significantly altered by the cooking process.

In gluten-free pasta, the story was different again due to the lack of protection of gluten. Even small amounts of salt couldn’t compensate for the absence of gluten. Artificial compounds of processed starches, used by companies to substitute the gluten, degraded fast. The most extreme example of this degradation occurred when the gluten-free spaghetti was cooked too long, for instance, for 13 instead of 11 minutes, and in very salty water.

The main finding was therefore that gluten-free pasta is structurally more fragile and less tolerant of being cooked both for too long and with the wrong amount of salt.

Improving gluten-free alternatives

Understanding pasta’s structure on these very small scales, that are invisible even under a microscope, will help the design of better gluten-free foods. In particular, the hope is to obtain gluten-free alternative that are more resilient to bad cooking conditions and are more similar in texture to regular spaghetti.

Regular wheat pasta has a low glycaemic index because the gluten slows how starch granules are broken down during digestion. Gluten-free pasta, made from rice and corn flour, often lacks this structure, meaning sugars may be released faster. With neutron scattering, food scientists can now identify which ingredients and cooking conditions best recreate gluten’s structure.

This is also a story about how cutting-edge experimental tools, mainly used for fundamental research, are transforming food research. Neutron scattering played a fundamental role in advancing our understanding of magnetic materials, batteries, polymers and proteins. Now it is also helping us to explain how everyday foods behave at the microscopic level.

Andrea Scotti receives funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the Swedish Research Council.

– ref. How to cook the perfect pasta – we used particle accelerators and reactors to discover the key – https://theconversation.com/how-to-cook-the-perfect-pasta-we-used-particle-accelerators-and-reactors-to-discover-the-key-268416

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Cleave, Lecturer, Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology, University of Exeter

Growing up in rural Devon, I was introduced to its more remote villages, farmsteads and communities as a boy. In later life, I became interested in the food traditions of these places – finding out what was eaten, and how it was prepared and cooked. This became an important aspect of my research on the evolving relationship between food and tourism in Devon.

The food eaten in rural Devon up to the 1960s might appear frugal to us today, but it comprised of wholesome simple dishes. For example, Devonshire dumplings – apples wrapped in pastry and baked – were especially good when accompanied by a generous dollop of clotted cream.

Food was typically seasonal and sustaining, and fuelled hard work – especially through cold and often wet winters when a freshly baked “teddy cake”, prepared from mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, suet and dried fruit, made a welcome appearance at teatime.

I heard stories from family and friends of special food for Sundays – usually a roast dinner. And at teatime, perhaps something special like a “frawsy of junket” (milk set with rennet) or “thunder and lightning” – bread generously spread with clotted cream and anointed with treacle.

Before the introduction of coal- or wood-fired kitchen ranges and oil stoves, much cooking in Devon was done over an open hearth, with the bread oven fired up once a week for baking day.

Without refrigeration and mains water, preparing meals, baking and making clotted cream and butter was hard work. Clotted cream was a three-day process – milk was allowed to stand overnight in a cool dairy, then gently heated to form the thick crust of the cream the next day, which was carefully removed on day three.

Devonshire food and tourism

Devon’s farmhouse kitchens and food featured on postcards taken by enterprising early 20th-century photographers. With their humorous captions in Devonshire dialect, postcards were popular with visitors and now provide a visual record of what was eaten.

As transport by rail and road improved in the 19th and 20th centuries, more tourists were able to discover Devon’s resorts, moorland and countryside – as well as its food.

The John Keats poem Teignmouth, written in 1818, tells of how “you may have your cream all spread upon barley bread”. Devonshire teas evolved to become the now-ubiquitous cream tea, but its origins were the staple food stuffs of “splits”, sometimes known as Chudleighs – small buns made from a yeast dough, eaten with clotted cream and jam or honey.

The British author Douglas St Leger Gordon, writing in the 1950s, lamented the decline of Devon’s harvest teas, which involved rural rituals and ceremony. Traditionally, the farmer’s wife and daughters would host a feast for all who had helped with the harvest, usually comprising ham sandwiches, homemade cake, splits spread with cream and jam, and specially baked harvest buns – “all of which appeared as if by magic”. The food and tea was carried in baskets to the hay-field, and the sharing of labour was rewarded with farmhouse hospitality.

Devon’s larder of fine food was known out of the county, too. Devonshire butter was sold in Fortnum & Mason in London from the 18th century, and during the 1920s The Devonshire Dairy on Oxford Street traded butter and cream.

The word spread through cookery and travel books, too. In Alec Adair’s recipe book Dinners Long and Short (1928), salt cod fried for breakfast, apple-in-and-out (a baked pudding made with apples, suet, sugar and flour) and Devonshire fried potatoes appear alongside classic French cuisine.

Clovelly herrings, or “silver darlings”, feature in Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Devon and Cornwall (1859), which recommended visitors should stay in the cliffside village to “regale at breakfast on herrings which have been captured overnight”, and are at their best in autumn.

Some of the more intriguing Devon recipes, alas, were not recorded for posterity. We can only imagine the dish that in his journals, Reverend John Skinner called the “squab pie”. It was “four feet in circumference … composed of neck of mutton, apples and onions, and by no means a bad thing”.

Devon’s food tells an evolving story of tradition, and a culinary and cultural relationship with landscape, communities and seasons. It is a celebration of regional food heritage and history – a legacy I hope, through my research on Devonshire food and cookery, to share with future generations.

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Paul Cleave 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. Rural Devon cuisine has a rich history – from the origins of cream teas to squab pie – https://theconversation.com/rural-devon-cuisine-has-a-rich-history-from-the-origins-of-cream-teas-to-squab-pie-266511

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rob Lawlor, Lecturer in Applied Ethics, University of Leeds

When Britain abolished slavery in its empire in 1833, it paid the equivalent of hundreds of billions today in compensation – not to the enslaved, but to the slave owners. It was an imperfect, morally uneasy compromise, but it helped achieve a historic transition that had seemed impossible.

Today, as the world struggles to phase out fossil fuels, many doubt
such a transformation is still possible. Emissions keep rising, the Paris agreement isn’t properly enforced and powerful corporations continue to mislead the public and lobby against meaningful change.

Yet slavery was once seen as immovable. It was an institution that was accepted for thousands of years – far longer than fossil fuel-powered capitalism. Slavery was a significant source of wealth for many, and the rich and powerful opposed abolition. Yet it was abolished.

As a thought experiment, let us imagine a future where effective climate action unfolds the way slavery abolition once did. What might that look like?

Leadership and ‘persuasion’

Future historians might not point to a single moment of global unity, with all nations coming together to act as one. Rather, they’ll point to one nation – or a coalition – that took the lead. These early leaders might combine diplomacy, bribery and perhaps even the threat of military force or economic sanctions to “persuade” other countries to follow suit.

That’s how Britain pushed for the end of the slave trade: with a mix of idealism and hard power, with naval patrols and trade sanctions. A global fossil fuel phase out may unfold in a similarly non-ideal way.

Bottom-up pressure, top-down resistance

In this thought experiment, change will not start with governments. Rather, the demand for action will come from the bottom up. Activists will demand change and there will be huge public support but, at the same time, the rich and the powerful will continue to defend the status quo, lobbying against the introduction of stricter legislation.

The slavery abolition movement followed that pattern, with broad public support yet fierce opposition from those with most to lose. In Britain, slave owners were even compensated with £20 million (equivalent to “40% of state expenditure in 1834”) to secure their agreement to the loss of “their” property.

Something similar could happen in the climate fight. Perhaps fossil fuel companies will one day receive financial compensation to ease the transition away from fossil fuels – not because it is deserved, but rather as a pragmatic compromise.

The law as a tool for change

Legal action would also play a pivotal role. Governments and corporations will be (and, indeed, are already being) taken to court.

Abolitionists used the law in much the same way. A good example is a famous case in which enslaved Africans revolted and seized control of the ship La Amistad. The Africans were ultimately freed after reformers highlighted the contradiction between the idea of natural rights for all humankind in the US Declaration of Independence, and laws that allowed people to be private property.

As the historian David Brion Davis noted: “It was this contradiction that helped the reformers to pass laws for very gradual slave emancipation.” The Paris agreement, often dismissed as toothless, could gain real power through litigation in a similar way.

Why this thought experiment matters

Of course, this is not a real prediction. It is a thought experiment. Imagining that climate action will mirror the history of the abolition of slavery doesn’t guarantee that this is what will happen. But the comparison is valuable for several reasons.

It shows that historical precedent matters. Looking at what worked in the past can help us imagine what might work now. Massive moral change really has happened before, even despite entrenched interests working against it. As such, the example of the abolition of slavery offers hope.

It’s also realistic. Global cooperation would be ideal, but history suggests that change will be messier, potentially with some unpalatable compromise or confrontation.

The comparison poses some hard ethical questions. Is it ever justifiable to compensate fossil fuel companies? What forms of international pressure are morally acceptable?

The thought experiment can also sharpen our strategy. If this imagined future is unpalatable – if we’re ultimately not willing to send hundreds of billions to BP, Exxon and co – then it may motivate people to work for better solutions.

Perhaps most importantly, comparing slavery with climate change shows us that individual action still matters. You may feel powerless and want to know what you can do now. The history we have looked at suggests two things: support climate action publicly and, if you can afford it, provide financial support to groups like environmental law charity ClientEarth.

Abolishing slavery was messy and the strategy taken left many uneasy. Perhaps, when the time comes, significant action to mitigate climate change will involve similar controversies. But flawed solutions may be better than none.

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Rob Lawlor received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This funded a project and a number of events that allowed me to collaborate with researchers from other disciplines, including historians.

– ref. What if the path to ending fossil fuels looked like the fight to end slavery? – https://theconversation.com/what-if-the-path-to-ending-fossil-fuels-looked-like-the-fight-to-end-slavery-268162

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Gentle, Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University

Animals in children’s stories are often depicted as living in neat mum, dad and children family units. Examples include Fantastic Mr Fox, 101 Dalmatians and, more recently, Peppa Pig and Bluey. But, this might leave people feeling like outsiders if they don’t come from a traditional nuclear family set-up.

In reality, there is a huge diversity in what family looks like within the animal kingdom.

In biparental care, a male and female animal raise their offspring together. This type of parental behaviour is predominantly seen in birds and is rare in invertebrates, fish and mammals.

Mute swans are a good example, where mum and dad can share the responsibilities of incubating eggs, feeding the cygnets and teaching them to be independent.

Single-parenting represents the most common form of family in the animal kingdom.
Usually, males compete for access to females. This is because the female invests more in reproduction than the male. For example, in a typical mammal, the female is pregnant, suckles the young and raises it.

In some cases, such as leopards, the female raises the offspring completely on her own. In fact, single mothers are found in around 90% of mammals.

Such single-parenting is seen in children’s books like The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. Although, there are few stories where the mother chooses to single-parent, unlike in the animal kingdom where females of some species benefit from raising offspring alone.

For example, animals who are left in a nest while their parent or parents look for food may be safer from predators if only one parent is leaving scent trails as they come and go.

Sometimes the male raises the young on his own. This is more frequent in fish and amphibians, where the offspring hatch from eggs. The male midwife toad wraps his fertilised eggs around his back legs and carries them with him until they are ready to hatch.

Darwin’s frog has an alternative parenting tactic where the male carries his tadpoles in his vocal sac for six to eight weeks, until they are developed enough to face the world.

These types of behaviour allow the females to focus on feeding, which means she can produce more eggs for the next batch of young. Male parenting is also much less common in children’s books, but a popular exception is The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson.

Homosexuality

Scientists have observed same sex couplings in over 500 species, including vultures, dolphins, giraffe, bonobos, geckos and dragonflies. Although life-long homosexuality in the wild is rare, in which animals forego heterosexual relationships, permanent male-male couplings have been seen in sheep.

Also, female albatrosses are known to sometimes reject males once their eggs have been fertilised, choosing to raise offspring in female-female relationships.

One of the most famous cases of homosexuality in captivity is that of Roy and Silo, a pair of chinstrap penguins from Central Park Zoo in New York, who formed such a strong bond in the early 2000s that the keeper gave them an egg to hatch and raise.

This story was turned into a popular children’s book And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson. Unfortunately, Silo’s head was turned by a female named Scrappy, ending his six-year relationship with Roy.

Same-sex parenting can be extended to species where large family units develop, such as elephants. Generally, elephant family units consist of several related females and their calves, led by an older matriarch. Sisters and grandmothers undertake allomothering, babysitting the youngsters, teaching them foraging, vigilance and defence, and sometimes even take on communal suckling of infants.

The story of one of the most famous communal parent species, the honey bee, has been turned into a novel for adults. The Bees by Laline Paull is the story of worker bee Flora 717, who helps feed her newborn sisters, and her life in the hive.

Communal parenting doesn’t have to be restricted to one sex, though. Many animals, including meerkats, are cooperative breeders. The young stay at home to help their parents to raise their baby siblings rather than go off and breed on their own. Most cooperative breeders are totipotent, which means they choose to help out temporarily. But some, such as naked mole rats are permanent helpers, foregoing their own reproduction.

Fostering and adoption

There are plenty of cases of animals being manipulated into raising the young of another. The most famous case is the common cuckoo where the female lays its egg in the nest of a different species, leaving the foster parent to raise the chick.

This deceptive brood-parasitism also happens within a species. For example, sometimes female starlings dump their eggs in the nests of other starlings.

Deliberate fostering and adopting is surprisingly common in the animal kingdom. Occasionally, adoption even happens between species. In 2004, a wild capuchin monkey was seen caring, for a common marmoset although it is not known how long this relationship lasted.

One of my favourite children’s storybooks is The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett, where a mallard adopts an egg that eventually hatches an alligator.

There are also many animals that hang out in friendship groups for a decent part of their adolescence. This is common among long-lived species, such as red deer, where bachelor herds often stay together until they reach sexual maturity.

Like humans who are orphaned early, estranged from their parents, or just leaving home, animals find family among their peers, learning from them, and creating strong bonds. Young, swifts form “screaming parties” for protection while looking for places to breed in future years.

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Read more:
What fathers in the animal kingdom can tell us about humans

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The final type of parenting seen in the animal kingdom is one that is, thankfully, rarely seen in humans – no parenting. The young of these animals are generally numerous, to ensure that some survive. They are also born to be independent of others.

This parenting style is typical of species such as fish and reptiles, and invertebrates including butterflies and spiders. Some types of solitary wasp trap paralysed grasshoppers in their nest, plug it shut and then abandon the nest.

This ensures a food supply for their young when they hatch. But, if their mother hasn’t provided enough food, larger wasp larvae will snack on their siblings instead. Three quarters of wasp larvae in nests end up as food for their siblings.

So, nuclear families are definitely not the norm when it comes to the animal kingdom. Species adopt a variety of parental care methods to ensure that their genes are passed on to the next generation.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Louise Gentle works for Nottingham Trent University.

– ref. Children’s books feature tidy nuclear families – but the animal kingdom tells a different story – https://theconversation.com/childrens-books-feature-tidy-nuclear-families-but-the-animal-kingdom-tells-a-different-story-265532

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sojin Lim, Reader in Asia Pacific Studies, Co-Director of the International Institute of Korean Studies, University of Lancashire

From 150 titles to a longlist of 13, six novels have been shortlisted for the 2025 Booker prize. Our academics review the finalists ahead of the announcement of the winner on November 10.

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

Middle-aged Tom waits 12 years to keep his promise to leave his unfaithful wife when their youngest child starts college, then embarks on a roadtrip across an American landscape both vivid and commonplace.

Tom recounts the journey and his memories, his voice fluctuating between disclosure and holding back. The reader is the silent party, compelled to reflect: do you resemble the wife craving emotional impact, the son constructing amicable distance, the daughter thrust into change, the ex-partner successful but unsatisfied, or Tom himself? There is nothing really extraordinary, and yet the story is captivating.

Despite one significant obstacle, Tom never expresses regret for risks not taken. He has unanticipated glimpses of alternative paths, and learns the joys of routine, a steady career and ordinary family life. A film adaptation is inevitable; its challenge will be to capture the gentle melancholic tension of this thoughtful novel.

Jenni Ramone is an associate professor of postcolonial and global literatures at Nottingham Trent University

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Read more:
Orbital by Samantha Harvey wins the 2024 Booker prize – a short but powerful story urging us to save the planet

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The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

An atmospheric domestic drama set during 1963’s “Big Freeze”, the novel follows the lives of two married couples – Eric and Irene, Bill and Rita – in the south-west of England over a few bitter winter months. Due to the intensity of events taking place over a short period of time with just a few characters, The Land in Winter feels claustrophobic, almost soap opera-like.

The wives are both pregnant and they bond, albeit tentatively, over impending motherhood. Despite being the novel’s protagonists, Rita and Irene feel like characters who have things done to them, rather than having their own agency.

Their pregnancies compound this, presented as inescapable obligations as opposed to happy, wanted circumstances. In a novel thick with metaphor and symbolism (the women’s friendship begins when Rita gifts Irene freshly laid eggs) it is perhaps unsurprising that a third pregnancy, that of a cow on Bill and Rita’s farm, foreshadows the trauma and tragedy experienced by the novel’s end.

Stevie Marsden is a lecturer in publishing studies at Edinburgh Napier University

Flashlight by Susan Choi

Susan Choi’s Flashlight opens with a disorienting event. Ten-year-old Louisa and her father Serk walk along a seaside breakwater at dusk, a flashlight in hand. By morning, Louisa is found barely alive. Serk is missing and presumed drowned. Instead of offering immediate answers, the novel follows three intertwined lives – Serk, Louisa, and Anne – across continents and decades.

What begins as a mystery expands into intimate family drama that takes in broader historical shifts, spanning across the Pacific and from the 1970s onwards. Serk, an ethnic Korean born in Japan, emigrates to the US and navigates a life shaped by statelessness and historical upheaval. Anne, Louisa’s American mother, embodies another thread of rupture and inheritance. Together, their stories form a constellation of absence and unresolved loss.

Choi illuminates the hidden currents of identity, migration and disappearance with remarkable skill. Flashlight is an ambitious, emotionally resonant work that rewards close reading.

Sojin Lim is a reader in Asia Pacific studies at University of Lancashire

Flesh by David Szalay

The titles of Szalay’s two Booker-nominated novels, this year’s Flesh and 2016’s All That Man Is, could be interchangeable. Both explore contemporary European masculinity, but where All That Man Is did this through nine short stories, Flesh is a novel about the eventful life of one Hungarian, István, from aged 15 to mid-life.

Here is sex, infidelity, murder, war. But the novel is spare rather than voluptuous, trimmed to the bone rather than fleshy. István’s thoughts and tragedies are often absent from the writing. We don’t hear about his time in a young offenders’ institution or anything at all about his father, for example. We learn that he is physically brave and attractive to women. “Flesh” then refers to the way he is seen, as only a body, a member of the new working classes whose lives are defined by precarity.

Kept outside, overhearing only his bare responses – “Okay” – readers become complicit in this failure to consider all that man is. And it is precisely this innovatively spare narration which makes the novel so deeply affecting.

Tory Young is an associate professor of literature at Anglia Ruskin University

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

At 35, Kiran Desai became the youngest female author to be awarded the Booker prize when her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, won in 2006. The follow up, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, has been twenty years in the making.

Set between the 1990s and early 2000s, Desai’s elaborately structured novel deftly traverses the US, India, Italy and Mexico as it spins the tale of two Indian-born migrants: aspiring novelist Sonia Shah studying in Vermont and struggling journalist Sunny Bhati in New York. Their thwarted romance is instigated by their respective meddling north Indian grandparents, who reside in mouldering mansions symbolic of their declining fortunes and a decaying colonialism, making this 667-page love story an epic, multi-generational family saga.

It dramatises how nation, class, gender, race and history shape its large cast of characters, each explored in detailed vignettes. Desai shows formidable insight as she ponders the cultural values of the US and India, the nature of loneliness, ruthless liberal individualism, postcolonial disintegration and violence, but also creativity.

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Read more:
Kiran Desai’s first novel in nearly 20 years is shortlisted for the Booker. Last time, she won it

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Ruvani Ranasinha is a professor of global literature at King’s College London

Audition by Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura’s Audition (2025) consists of two seemingly contradictory parts. In the first, a stage and screen actress in her late 40s meets a much younger man in a Manhattan restaurant. He has asked for the meeting because he suspects he may be her secret son, given up for adoption as a baby. She reveals that this cannot be: she had an abortion.

In the second part, the young man is the woman’s son, and has grown up with her and her husband, although he has, as an adult, argued with them and left home. Now he wants to return with his girlfriend.

These two seemingly contradictory scenarios are balanced, played against one another, and the tension between these “sliding doors” variant realities throws into relief the uncertainties, intermittencies and variabilities of existence. A pared-down novella, directly written and intriguingly characterised, this is a memorably ambiguous meditation on parenthood, performance, relationship and commitment.

Adam Roberts is professor of 19th-century literature at Royal Holloway

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

– ref. Booker prize 2025: the six shortlisted books, reviewed by experts – https://theconversation.com/booker-prize-2025-the-six-shortlisted-books-reviewed-by-experts-267508