Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jack McNamara, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Exercise Physiology, University of East London

Exercise is like medicine for the heart, and just like with medication, you need the right “dose” for it to be effective. But a recent study suggests that the dose might not be the same for everyone. Researchers found that men need roughly twice as much exercise as women to see the same reduction in their heart disease risk.

This recent study asked over 85,000 UK adults aged 37-73 to wear an accelerometer (a device that measures body movement and activity levels) on their wrist for seven days. They then tracked each participant’s health outcomes for just under eight years.

The results are eye-opening.

Women who did roughly four hours of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week – activities, such as brisk walking, jogging, cycling or dancing, which raise your breathing and heart rate – had around a 30% lower risk of coronary heart disease. Men needed to do roughly nine hours of the same types of physical activity to see a similar reduction.

This was also true for people already living with heart disease. The paper estimated that women diagnosed with coronary heart disease needed to do around 51 minutes of physical activity each week to reduce their risk of death from any cause by 30% – while men needed to do around 85 minutes of exercise.

Although these findings might sound shocking to the average person, they confirm something that exercise scientists have suspected for years. There is also a clear biological reason that can partly help explain why women and men see such different results from physical activity.

Biological differences

Women typically have higher oestrogen levels than men. This hormone has important effects on how the body responds to exercise.

Oestrogen can help the body burn more fat for fuel during endurance exercise and helps keep the blood vessels healthy – partly by supporting their energy-producing mitochondria (the tiny powerhouses inside cells that generate energy for vital functions).

Women also tend to have more slow-twitch muscle fibres, which are efficient and fatigue-resistant. These muscles suit the kinds of steady, sustained physical activity most exercise guidelines recommend.

So the gap in “minutes needed” for similar heart benefits between women and men isn’t as shocking as the findings might suggest.

Since the study used device-measured activity, instead of asking people to recall from memory the amount of activity they did, this means the data on physical activity was accurate.

It’s also important to note the study still showed a graded benefit. More total weekly activity was linked to lower risk of coronary heart disease in both women and men. Everyone gains from moving more. The difference is just in how much activity buys the same reduction in risk.

The study does not claim that women should do less exercise – nor that men can’t reach similar benefits. It only shows that men may need more weekly activity to get there.

But there are limits to keep in mind. Activity was measured for only one week – then people were followed for about eight years.

And, as it’s an observational study, other factors that could have partly influenced the results were not taken into account – such as menopausal status (when oestrogen levels drop significantly) or whether a woman was using hormone replacement therapy (which can restore some oestrogen levels). These factors could influence how women’s bodies responded to exercise.

It’s also worth noting that the volunteers came from the UK Biobank study. These volunteers tend to be healthier and less deprived than the general population – factors which can affect baseline heart health, access to safe places to exercise and time available for physical activity. This can affect how widely the results apply to everyone.

Still, these results make an important point about current exercise recommendations and whether they need to be revised.

Exercise recommendations

Current exercise guidelines from the World Health Organization, the American Heart Association and the NHS are sex-neutral. But this new study challenges these recommendations – showing they might not apply equally to everyone.

For decades, most exercise research was done predominantly in men and results were often assumed to apply equally to women. As better device-based data arrives, we’re learning that women and men may get different returns for the same number of active minutes.

This matters because women and men experience heart disease differently – from symptoms to outcomes. If the amount of exercise needed to reach the same benefit also differs, our advice should reflect that while still keeping things simple and practical.

This isn’t about telling women to exercise less. The 150-minute baseline remains a useful target – and many people don’t yet meet it. What these findings suggest is that women who meet current targets may see more heart health benefits per minute of exercise. That’s encouraging news for anyone who struggles to find time for longer workouts.

For men, the message isn’t “double your gym time”. It’s to keep building activity in ways that fit your week – with more total minutes bringing even greater heart health benefits. Whether different types or intensities of exercise might be more efficient for men remains a question for future research.

Both men and women clearly benefit from regular physical activity. That’s not in question. But what does need to be recognised is the clear biological differences that influence the returns men and women see from the same types of exercise.

Cardiac rehabilitation and exercise referral schemes often set identical targets for men and women. This new research suggests we may want to rethink schemes and tailor goals to each person’s starting point.

But until cardiac rehabilitation becomes more personalised, the core message for now is: move more, sit less. Aim for the baseline 150 minutes of exercise each week if you can. More helps if you’re able to.

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

– ref. Why men need more exercise than women to see the same heart benefits – https://theconversation.com/why-men-need-more-exercise-than-women-to-see-the-same-heart-benefits-268624

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt Jacobsen, Senior Lecturer in Film History in the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s fourth film with actress Emma Stone finds the pair once again galvanising one another to extraordinary work. The partnership has produced two of the finest films of the last decade – The Favourite (2018) and Poor Things (2023) – as well as the less successful but still fascinating Kinds of Kindness (2024).

Like Alfred Hitchcock with Ingrid Bergman, or Ingmar Bergman with Liv Ullmann, this has emerged into a true creative partnership where director and actress are equals in the artistic process. This latest collaboration is a hugely funny, horrifying and intense experience that defies expectations even for audiences who are prepared for the unique absurdism, visionary style and flouting of narrative logic that marks Lanthimos’s film.

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Read more:
Bugonia: why some people’s brains cling to the idea that aliens are real

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Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is a paranoid, suggestible conspiracy nut who, fuelled by internet diatribes, abducts corporate CEO Michelle (Emma Stone). He is convinced Michelle belongs to an alien race planning to enslave and oppress humanity. What ensues in the confines of a grim suburban basement is a tense, close quarters negotiation between slickly posed, disingenuous corporate figurehead Michelle and delusional warped fantasist Teddy.

The core of the film and its greatest asset is Stone’s nimble, pivoting performance as her character tries any number of strategies to break Teddy’s resolve and make him reflect on the folly of his actions. “I think you’re in an echo chamber,” she says becoming increasingly desperate. She is driven to rationalising with a man clearly in no mental state to accept the accusation.

Plemons returns brilliantly to the toxic narcissism that he played so well in his standout Black Mirror episode “USS Callister” and its sequel. As in those superb pieces of satirical TV, he may be tragic and ridiculous, a man who feels the world has failed him utterly. But he is still frightening and dangerous, despite a surface of goofy comic ineptitude.

While Bugonia pointedly evokes contemporary ideological conflict, neither character espouses either left- or right-wing political leanings. It’s neither a satire of the woke debate or the culture wars. Nor does it jab at Trump and his voters.

Teddy’s feelings of abuse by the “system” (whatever that might comprise in the mind of this tragically paranoid and traumatised man) are scattershot and unfocused. His only recourse in the overwhelming noise of internet chatter is to assume that the situation is so dire it simply has to be aliens manipulating events to their own obscure purpose.

This deeply uncanny film keeps itself strange through tonal shifts between the silly and the shocking. The offbeat editing, full of sudden jarring cuts scored with orchestral stabs, keeps the audience in an uncomfortably uncertain position. Surely we should recognise Teddy as a deluded lunatic. But might he actually be right about Michelle’s origins? Her cool, collected corporate ease certainly seems so fluid and precise as to be jarringly alien.

Despite Lanthimos’s visionary style and absurdist tone, the film still sits firmly within the conventions of the subgenre of abduction horror films. These are sometimes called “bottle thrillers” for their confined locations (The Black Phone, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Green Room all mine effective scares from this setup). It is absurd and comic, but it still works well as a gripping if offbeat thriller.

Bugonia is a remake, fairly closely following the broader plot of South Korean film Save the Green Planet! (Jigureul Jikyeora!, 2003). Director Jang Joon-hwan was inspired by the film of Stephen King’s Misery, one of the most celebrated bottle thrillers, whose antagonist Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) he felt lacked complexity. To counter this, in Save the Green Planet! it turns out that the kidnapped CEO runs a pharmaceutical company that the kidnapper blames for personal tragedy – a narrative turn Bugonia preserves.

The often profoundly uncomfortable intensity of Bugonia ratchets up as the film progresses, pivoting the audience wildly between brash comedy and abject horror. This remake plays differently to the original in its casting of a woman as the CEO. From the moment when Teddy instructs cousin Don, his gullible and impressionable accomplice, to shave off Michelle’s hair – “to prevent her contacting her alien mothership” – the audience is clear on the possibility of shocking violence.

What the film’s title means is not really elucidated during its two-hour run. But knowing that bugonia is a ritual based on the ancient Mediterranean myth that bees spontaneously generate from the carcasses of cattle helps a little when it comes to the film’s central message.

Teddy keeps bees, a mindful activity that appears to offer some comfort to an otherwise cluttered mind, oversaturated and baffled by the cacophony of internet polemics. Falling somewhere between cynical nihilism and reflective mourning, Bugonia is clearly telling us that the world might be better off if we left it to the bees.

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Matt Jacobsen 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. Bugonia: a brilliant abduction thriller with Yorgos Lanthimos’s distinct absurdist stamp – https://theconversation.com/bugonia-a-brilliant-abduction-thriller-with-yorgos-lanthimoss-distinct-absurdist-stamp-268819

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jess Davies, Chair Professor in Sustainability, Lancaster University

UK government proposals to increase the cost of sending soil to landfill have received strong pushback from the construction industry. But there is a strong environmental case for protecting healthy soils in this way.

The Treasury plans to up the cost of sending rock, soil and other “inert” materials to landfill. Charges could rise from £4.05 to up to £125 per tonne of soil landfilled by 2030. Concerns have been raised that this tax increase will be damaging for the construction industry and a major hindrance to meeting the UK government’s targets on new homes.

But as soil scientists working with practitioners across the planning and construction industry in England, we see many benefits to increasing the cost of sending soil to landfill.

The amount of soil going to landfill in the UK is staggering. Soil is one of the largest components of our waste streams: in 2020, it made up almost 60% of the material received by UK landfills.

In England alone in 2021, around 25 million tonnes of soil went to landfill. That’s about eight times more than the total amount of soil thought to be eroded across all farmland in England and Wales annually.

Since most of this soil comes from construction sites, it’s easy to assume this is contaminated. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. Only 1.5% of soils arriving at waste facilities in England in 2021 were classed as hazardous, suggesting we are throwing away mostly healthy, usable soil.

This is a massive loss of a vital natural resource. Soil isn’t easily replaced. It can take hundreds to thousands of years to form a single centimetre.

And soil is not just inert dirt: it is thought to be the biggest biodiversity reservoir on Earth, hosting more than half of the world’s species. Every truckload sent to landfill is an ecosystem destroyed – a piece of our natural heritage more or less gone for good.

While some degree of soil removal during building is inevitable, a lot more is being removed than is necessary, according to our research, to “get the muck away” and make sites easier to work on. When soils are excavated, damaged or removed from construction sites, the vital functions they provide are also being stripped away.

Different types of soil help regulate the flow and storage of water in the landscape, for example. A metre of healthy soil can hold up to 60cm of rainfall. Maintaining healthy soils in the built environment can help reduce flood risk, making our towns and cities better able to cope with extreme weather.

Removing soils during development can also make it harder and more expensive to establish and maintain gardens, trees and shared greenspaces that play an important role in our wellbeing and urban cooling.

Soil-smart building

In our experience, many people in the construction industry recognise there’s a huge opportunity to manage soils better through the planning and construction process, producing benefits for both industry and communities.

By reducing the amount of soil that’s unnecessarily excavated or sent offsite, projects can cut both the financial and carbon costs associated with moving and disposing of this material. Better soil management could also save money later on, reducing the need to buy new topsoil for landscaping or costly remediation work to fix drainage and plant establishment problems.

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Read more:
How healthy soils make for a healthy life

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Increasing the cost of sending soil to landfill could act as a powerful incentive for developers to think more carefully about how soil is managed during construction.

At present, the price of disposal in the UK is up to ten times cheaper than in much of Europe and the US. This low cost makes it far too easy to simply dump soil, discouraging industry innovation and good practice.

However, increasing landfill costs need to go hand-in-hand with better support for soil reuse. Encouragingly, the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has committed to piloting a new soil reuse scheme across England, aimed at reducing the amount of soil that ends up being classed as waste – with a planned start date in 2026.

Ideally, this scheme would be rolled out alongside the landfill reforms. This could help the construction sector make better use of valuable soil resources, while preventing potential unintended consequences such as illegal dumping as landfill prices rise.

This is about establishing strong climate-resilient foundations for healthy green spaces which enhance our wellbeing and community connections. Sending soils to landfill is damaging to society and it should not be cheap and easy to do. It’s time we stop treating these amazing ecosystems like inert dirt.

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Jess Davies receives funding from UKRI research councils. She is affiliated with the Soils in Planning and Construction Task Force.

John Quinton receives funding from UKRI research council, the EU and Defra. He is affiliated with the Soils in Planning and Construction Task Force (soilstaskforce.com).

– ref. A landfill tax could halt the vast amounts of healthy soil that are needlessly thrown away – https://theconversation.com/a-landfill-tax-could-halt-the-vast-amounts-of-healthy-soil-that-are-needlessly-thrown-away-268687

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jane Lavery, Associate Professor in Latin American Studies, University of Southampton

Known in Spanish as Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead is celebrated every year on November 1 and 2. Blending Mesoamerican, Roman Catholic and pagan roots, this celebration sees families gather in many parts of Mexico and around the world to honour and commemorate their departed loved ones.

Enjoying a festive atmosphere, people build altars or visit cemeteries where they bring flowers and picnics, light candles and celebrate cherished relatives with storytelling and song.

The ritual is celebrated globally by many migrant Mexican and non-Mexican communities, and is in a process of continual reinvention responding to different social and cultural needs.

For example, during the COVID pandemic, women leaders from Mexican migrant communities in the UK and Ireland organised Day of the Dead events to celebrate their heritage and remember those who had succumbed to the virus. Elsewhere, a youth group in the US reimagined Día de Muertos as an expression for healing in their community following the killing of George Floyd.

The celebration has also been co-opted by Mexican grassroots feminist organisations protesting against gender-based violence, as our new book, Changing Configurations of Día de Muertos During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico and Beyond, explores.

With a focus on the tumultuous pandemic years of 2020-21, the book charts how the Day of the Dead evolved and changed in that period. These adaptations were also shaped by global anxieties surrounding the so-called “shadow pandemic” – a term used to describe the surge in gender violence over the same period.

La Catrina

The Day of the Dead is associated with the iconic image of the Catrina, depicted in the world-famous illustration La Calavera Garbancera (1910) by artist José Guadalupe Posada. Inspired by Mictēcacihuātl, the Aztec goddess of death, today the Catrina is probably Mexico’s most commodified visual emblem.

Since 2016, Mexico City’s spectacular Mega Desfiles de Catrinas y Catrines parade has also drawn millions of people, with women dressed in traditional Catrina costumes and men wearing skeleton-themed formal attire.

The Catrina has proved an appealing inspiration for women seeking to protest against the unacceptably high levels of gender-based violence in Mexico. The country has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world – a term used to denote deadly violence against women because of their gender.

Alongside the glitzy parade is an alternative event called the Marcha de las Catrinas. In Mexico City, this march follows a route between two monuments dedicated to female victims of violence, starting at the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan on Avenida Reforma and ending at the Anti-monumenta on Avenida Juárez.

There, protesters erect marigold-adorned altars and crosses bearing victims’ names, and post messages of solidarity. But unlike the traditional marigold and monarch butterfly-decorated Catrina costumes, many marchers wear dresses covered in photographs of murdered or missing women and girls.

Día de Muertos and the missing voices

Such was the momentum to channel the Day of the Dead to protest against gender-based violence in Mexico that a specific Día de Muertas (day of the dead women) was proposed by the NGO Voces de la Ausencia (the missing voices), led by journalist Frida Guerrera and held since 2018.

During the COVID pandemic, social distancing measures intended to protect public health inadvertently created conditions that increased the vulnerability of women and girls by sometimes isolating them with abusers and limiting access to support services.

Feminist protests held during these years were both national and international in scope, signalling global anger at the explosion in violence triggered by lockdown policies and social isolation. A strong intergenerational dimension characterises the collective resistance, as was attested by activist Norma García Andrade during the Marcha de las Catrinas in 2020:

I rejoice in the fact that young people have joined our struggle because before, the majority was just us mothers shouting. Now we are accompanied by all these young women who help us to scream for justice.

The practice of taking up public space with one’s own body to protest gender-based violence – known as acuerpamiento – has increased in intensity in Mexico, and is best showcased during International Women’s Day marches every March. Channelling an intergenerational rage, in 2020 and 2021 women dressed as Catrinas adorned themselves with feminist fist symbols and slogans such as #TruthAndJustice, #Niunamás (not one more) and #Nuncamas (never again).

Some wore green scarves around their necks, advocating for the decriminalisation of abortion – an increasingly prominent symbol of international feminist activism across Latin America. Many Catrinas lay on the ground emulating dead corpses, surrounded by marigolds and with photos of the victims placed on altars.

These interventions use what Hispanic studies scholar Francesca Dennstedt calls tactics of feminist disappropriation, and resonate with feminist anthropologist Rita Segato’s ideas around performative disobedience.

With this takeover of public space by protesting Catrinas, these feminist groups re-imagine Mexico’s most visually alluring representation of death for a 21st-century global audience.

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. How the Day of the Dead is being used to protest violence against women – https://theconversation.com/how-the-day-of-the-dead-is-being-used-to-protest-violence-against-women-267559

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Heffron, PhD Candidate in Geography, Lancaster University

Sean Matthews, the Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council, has said he’ll “lie down in front of bulldozers” to stop Britain’s largest solar farm being built in the county. He’s taking sides in a new rural culture war that pits green energy against the countryside’s traditional image of food and farming.

Reform’s opposition to renewables isn’t surprising. Fossil fuel interests have provided around 92% of the party’s funding according to research by DeSmog (when contacted by DeSmog, Reform did not comment on that finding). But solar farms have become a way for the party to mask these interests by presenting itself as a defender of farms, fields and “common sense” against what Matthews called the “nonsense” of net zero.

Meanwhile, the protest group Farmers to Action has urged supporters to “keep the land growing, not glowing”. Its leader, Justin Rogers, has called climate change “one of the biggest scams that has ever been told”, and the group now operates in lockstep with the Together Declaration, a rightwing campaign group with an explicit anti-net zero agenda.

Yet a recent protest organised by these groups in Liverpool, at the Labour party conference, suggests there is limited enthusiasm in the farming community for these culture wars. While most of the speakers were farmers, very few working farmers showed up. (One of us, Tom, who has been to around 15 of these protests, was there in person and estimates about 50 out of around 300 people present were farmers.)

Those mobilising the culture wars are trying to turn localised rural resentments against solar panels into a wedge issue, and in the process win over rural voters to Reform as the party of anti-net zero. If Reform wins the election, it will seek to impede necessary renewable energy projects.

However, this conflicts with the majority of farmer sentiment, which shows they are concerned by climate change. So, while Reform UK is positioning itself as anti-climate, is the party, despite the rhetoric, actually anti-farmer?

‘You can’t eat electricity’

Research by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) found 80% of UK farmers are “concerned about the impact of climate change on their ability to make a living”, while 87% have experienced reduced productivity due to heatwaves, floods or other climate change-induced extreme weather.

For farmers, productivity isn’t just about profit – it’s a central pillar of what sociologists have called the “good farmer” identity. This is the idea that being a successful food producer is central to how many farmers see themselves and their role.

Since the second world war, agricultural innovations have largely been aimed at producing more food, as a way to improve domestic food security.

Now, in essence, they are being asked to shift their identity to embrace energy production along with food production. But planting fields with solar panels clashes with the productivity aspect of what it means to be a good farmer. The truism that “you can’t eat electricity”, as Farmers to Action put it, is trying to speak to this sentiment.

The accusation is that taking land out of production threatens food security. In fact, only around 0.5% of UK farmland needs to be converted to solar to achieve the government’s target figure.

At the same time, as the research by ECIU has found, the very productivity of farming is being threatened by climate change. This presents an apparent tension.

Without urgent climate action, British farms will continue to bear the costs and consequences. Environmentalists and climate activists might wish to take advantage of this tension between what farmers need and what Reform is offering. While Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and co shake their fists at the sun, farmers suffer in the heat.

Corporate profits or community interest?

Many objections to large solar farms are driven by a sense of fairness. For example, a tenant farming family in Yorkshire is about to lose 110 acres of their best arable land – half their farm – to solar panels, without any compensation. This will have a devastating impact on their business – where they have lived and farmed for many decades.

For the landowner, the switch will probably be very lucrative, with energy companies reportedly offering rents as high as £1,000 per acre per year, on long-term contracts.

In this scenario, the landowner wins and the tenant loses, which goes against the principle of a just transition, the idea that those affected by the shift to net zero should not lose out. This is despite the prime minister, Keir Starmer, making a pre-election pledge that tenant farmers would be protected.

Effective green policy must ensure that green transitions benefit those doing the work or opposition will grow. Perhaps if the profits were recouped by local communities, not far-off corporations and large absentee landowners, nimbyism wouldn’t fester so easily.

There are fairer ways to deploy renewables, via initiatives which involve and benefit local communities. An example of this is Cwm Arian Renewable Energy, near to where one of us, Alex, lives. It has used the income from wind energy to support the local community in various ways, such as offering good employment, putting on community events and teaching land skills.

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Read more:
Family farmers say their way of life is an impossible dream when ‘the bread of life is worth less than rusty metal’

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Farmers, like the rest of society, are paying the price of high energy costs. Recent research has shown that wind energy alone has reduced British energy costs by at least £104 billion. Making clear that renewable energy developments can help with lowering energy bills could go some way to overcoming opposition.

Ultimately, farmers still want to farm and produce food. At the same time, agriculture must fit into broader green transitions. The challenge is to take on board the voices and concerns of farmers and see them as part of the transition – not treat them as obstacles to it. If not, there are plentiful voices on the right who are eager to offer them an alternative.

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Tom Carter-Brookes receives funding from Leverhulme Trust.

Tom Carter-Brookes is a member of the Green Party.

Alex Heffron 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. ‘You can’t eat electricity’: how rural solar farms became the latest battlefront in Britain’s culture war – https://theconversation.com/you-cant-eat-electricity-how-rural-solar-farms-became-the-latest-battlefront-in-britains-culture-war-268128

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation

This newsletter was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

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It was “12 out of ten”, Donald Trump reported on emerging from his meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in Busan, South Korea, this morning. It was the first time the two leaders have sat down face-to-face in since 2019 and a lot has happened to change the relationship between their two counties in the interim.

Particularly since April, when the US president launched his policy of applying punitive tariffs against countries he believes are “ripping off” the US, because of their trade imbalance. Trump’s policy placed Beijing firmly in the economic crosshairs. Having been gradually increasing tariffs in the first months of his second term on exports such as steel and restricting investors with links to China from investing in a range of important sectors, on Liberation Day, April 2, the US announced its plan to slap an extra 34% on export tariffs to China.

There followed a game of chicken, whereby each side saw the other’s announcement and raised them. At one point, US tariffs on exports to China reached 145%, while China raised theirs to 125%. Americans started to hurt: prices to ordinary consumers began to rise, something that Trump had campaigned on fixing, while farmers – a key Maga constituency – howled in pain when China stopped buying their soybeans. And the tech industry worried about China’s restrictions on the rare earth minerals they need to continue to manufacture so many high-tech products.

Thankfully that’s all fixed. For now. The two leaders emerged having agreed on a 12-month truce. China will start buying soybeans again and will relax many (not all) of its restrictions on rare earth minerals. The US will reduce its tariffs and relax some of its investment restrictions. Trump has said he will visit Beijing and Xi may well pay a visit to Mar-a-Lago.

But will this change the two countries’ trajectory? That’s hard to tell at this point, says Tom Harper, an expert in Chinese foreign policy at the University of East London. Fresh from catching up with details of the Busan meeting, he agreed to answer some of our key questions – namely: who will be happier, the two countries’ priorities, any remaining areas of tension and what appears to be the deliberate omission of any mention of either Taiwan or human rights.

This last point could be significant, marking as it does a major point of difference between the Trump administration and his predecessors going back decades, for whom a ticking off on the human rights front was always on the agenda.

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Read more:
What will Trump’s deal with Xi mean for the US economy and relations with China? Expert Q&A

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The analysis of the meeting between the two leaders released by China’s foreign ministry was revealing, in that while the US president’s post-meeting entry on TruthSocial celebrated the deals on soybeans, fentanyl and rare earths, China’s was more circumspect, stressing the country’s steady progress to a plan that had been in place for “generation after generation”.

Part of that plan involves self-reliance. “The Chinese economy is like a vast ocean, big, resilient and promising,” the foreign ministry commentary said. “We have the confidence and capability to navigate all kinds of risks and challenges.”

To be sure, writes Chee Meng Tan, an economist at the University of Nottingham, this ocean has had to weather some pretty serious storms of late. The vast real estate and infrastructure sector has been under huge pressure in recent years. So barriers to China’s export of manufactured goods – the other key component of Chinese economic growth – have also been extremely worrying for Beijing, even if, as Xi has insisted, the Chinese people are capable of “eating bitterness” (his way of saying that the people can thrive on hardship).

The continuing restrictions on Chinese access to US tech will also be a problem for Xi. China has set great store by its development into a high-tech behemoth and has telegraphed its intentions to become an AI giant in the next few decades. To do that, it either needs access to US know-how or will have to rapidly develop its own capabilities in the sector.

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Read more:
What will Trump’s deal with Xi mean for the US economy and relations with China? Expert Q&A

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Rise and fall of globalisation

It’s been fascinating over the past few years to watch the way global power has been shifting. Over the first 25 years of the 21st century, this has largely reflected two competing narratives. In 2000, when George W. Bush won his first term as president, his senior aides talked of a “new American century” dominated by Washington’s neo-conservative ideas. At the same time, in many people’s eyes, the 21st century seemed certain to be the “Asian century” as the region’s tiger economies woke up and began to fulfil their potential.

Xi’s meeting with Trump today and the two leaders’ apparently different approaches are the latest reflection of those competing narratives.

Steve Schifferes has been considering the global shifts in economic and political (and military) power that have shaped the world since the 16th century. Working with our Insights team, he has written a superb two-part analysis. The first instalment charts the rise and fall of the European mercantile empires and the irresistible rise of the US.

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Read more:
The rise and fall of globalisation: the battle to be top dog

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Part two considers the likely consequences of the end of US hegemony, warning that the shift away from French and British dominance brought painful consequences and imagining what a world without a dominant world power might look like.

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Read more:
The rise and fall of globalisation: why the world’s next financial meltdown could be much worse with the US on the sidelines

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Europe scrambles to help Ukraine

America’s apparent shift away from its old role as security guarantor in Europe has left its transatlantic Nato allies desperately trying to fill the vacuum. But, as Stefan Wolff and Richard Whitman point out, the fact remains that without US buy-in, Kyiv’s European friends are woefully short of the wherewithal to provide Ukraine what it needs to stem Russia’s advances on the battlefield.

Without substantial assistance, Ukraine will run out of money to fight this war next year, but talks at how to use the estimated €210 billion (£185 billion) in frozen Russian assets have stalled once again and the decision kicked down the road until December.

Like the US last week, Europe has announced a fresh package of sanctions – its 19th – against Russia in the hope that the considerable damage this conflict is doing to Russia’s economy will finally force Putin to the negotiating table. But that looks like a vain hope.

As Wolff and Whitman conclude: “There’s mounting evidence suggesting that [Europe] will not stretch themselves to go beyond securing Ukraine’s immediate survival. Unsurprisingly, a credible pathway to ending the war with a just and stable peace is still lacking.”

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Ukraine: another week of diplomatic wrangling leaves Kyiv short of defensive options

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– ref. Trump-Xi meeting: the key takeaways – https://theconversation.com/trump-xi-meeting-the-key-takeaways-268709

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

The man formerly known as Prince Andrew will now simply be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor after he was stripped of all his official titles. In a statement, Buckingham Palace said the king has “initiated a formal process” to remove his brother’s titles. This refers to letters patent – the mechanism by which the monarch can remove titles like “prince”.

At the heart of the matter is Mountbatten Windsor’s relationship with convicted paedophile sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the allegations by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre that she was forced to have sex with the then prince as a teenager. Mountbatten Windsor denies the accusations. The palace said:

Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.

Mountbatten Windsor will also be evicted from his Windsor residence, Royal Lodge, and will reportedly move to a property at Sandringham, the royal residence privately owned by the king.

But why was it, in the words of Buckingham Palace, “necessary” for King Charles to “censure” his brother in this way – and why now?

Ever since Mountbatten Windsor announced that he would no longer use his official titles, including Duke of York, public and political pressure had been mounting on the King to go further. There was a sense that the promise not to use the titles didn’t go far enough – and that they should be formally removed.

His titles were technically only in abeyance. They still existed, even if he was not going to use them. He was also still a prince and lived as such in his 30-bedroom Royal Lodge mansion.

Royal image tainted

The last royal to have his “prince” title removed was the Duke of Cumberland in 1917. But he was a traitor who fought for the Germans during the first world war. “De-princing” Mountbatten Windsor in this way conveys the sense that he has betrayed the confidence of his family and country.

Image is vitally important for the royal family, so the public perception that Mountbatten Windsor was tainting the brand will have added to the pressure on the king.

According to the 19th-century writer Walter Bagehot, known for his work on constitutional matters, the monarchy is the “dignified” part of the constitution which provides a “moral example” for people to follow by displaying “virtues”. King Charles is part of a long line of monarchs who have strained to project (and protect) this image.

Clearly it is unrealistic for royals to, in Bagehot’s words, “do no wrong” all the time. But historically where an individual member has been engulfed in scandal, the palace has been quick to take action to protect the rest of the institution. For example, in 1937 when Edward VIII wanted to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, he was forced to abdicate the throne and effectively exiled to the Bahamas as its governor (before later moving to Paris).

But the late queen allowed Mountbatten Windsor to try to control the narrative around his friendship with Epstein – and, in trying to continue to present a dignified account of himself, he failed spectacularly.

First came his infamous 2019 Newsnight interview in which he claimed that he “did not regret” his friendship with Epstein and did not end their friendship sooner because he was “too honourable”. The disastrous appearance forced him to step down as a working member of the royal family.

But he was allowed to continue to take what he saw as his rightful place, among the most senior royals at the grandest state occasions, including the queen’s funeral and the king’s coronation. He also continued to live a life of entitled luxury at the palatial Royal Lodge.

What seems to have made it necessary for the king to intervene now is the revelation that his brother remained in contact with Epstein for longer than he had previously claimed. In an email, Mountbatten Windsor also told Epstein – who by that point had been to prison for procuring a minor for prostitution – “Let’s play some more soon!”

This, coupled with the publication of his accuser Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous autobiography, which included damning new claims about their relationship, led to Mountbatten Windsor’s announcement that he would no longer use the title Duke of York. However, his statement on the matter lacked contrition and represented yet another missed opportunity for him to show sympathy towards Epstein’s victims. Instead, he said that, in deciding not to use his titles, he was “putting my duty to my family and country first”.

It all meant that he had become deeply unpopular with the public: 80% wanted him to be formally stripped of his dukedom. However, the formal removal of titles could only be done by either parliament or, as the public preferred, the king himself.

In failing to take this action against his brother, Charles risked being viewed as complicit in the scandal, as illustrated when he was heckled by a member of the public asking how long he had known about Mountbatten Windsor and Epstein.

Political pressure

Political pressure was also mounting on the monarch to act. Ministers initially said it was a matter for the royal family, but as public clamour grew the tone started to change. Rachael Maskell, MP for York Central, tabled a bill to strip Mountbatten Windsor of his title.

Unusually for a high-profile government minister, the chancellor Rachel Reeves also publicly criticised him, stating that he “shouldn’t have been associated with a convicted paedophile”. And the push by MPs to launch an inquiry questioning him about Royal Lodge – where he has effectively paid no rent for more than 20 years – was publicly backed by Keir Starmer.

The threat by Liberal Democrat MPs to “humiliate” Mountbatten Windsor by using their opposition day debate to discuss him in Parliament and bring him before a parliamentary select committee appears to have been the final straw.

Mountbatten Windsor was sparking wider scrutiny of the monarchy’s constitutional affairs more generally, from its secretive funding to outdated rules preventing MPs from criticising the royals in parliament.

That’s why Charles had to act now. Bagehot wrote that the monarchy needs to maintain an air of “mystery” in order to survive: “When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone.” The king appears to have shared Bagehot’s view that the “poking around” of politicians would be too damaging to the monarchy’s dignified façade.

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

– ref. Why was it ‘necessary’ for King Charles to take action on Andrew – and why now? – https://theconversation.com/why-was-it-necessary-for-king-charles-to-take-action-on-andrew-and-why-now-268797

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jane Wright, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Culture, The Conversation

The more I see Benedict Cumberbatch on screen the more I marvel at his talent as an actor. Recently I have watched him in Eric on Netflix, as an unravelling Sesame Street-style puppeteer looking for his abducted son; in old re-runs of smartypants Sherlock Holmes on the BBC; and as a humiliated husband in The Roses with a truly ghastly Olivia Colman.

His latest film, The Thing With Feathers, promises another affecting performance, this time as a bewildered father struggling to look after his two small sons after the sudden death of his wife.

Based on Max Porter’s beautifully written novella Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, Cumberpatch plays Dad, a graphic artist who is unbearably sad, overwhelmed and increasingly untethered. In a film that is part tender human drama and part horror, this grief manifests as a large black crow, menacing but benevolent in its presence as a kind of guardian figure.

Harry Potter actor David Thewlis voices the character of Crow with thick Lancashire-accented sarcasm, at one point berating Dad for listening to “middle-aged, middle-class, Guardian-reading, beard-stroking, farmer’s-market widow music”, which has got to be my favourite line. But gradually Crow’s hardness shifts Dad, leading him through his sadness and apathy to something at least more bearable and liveable. “I won’t leave until you don’t need me any more,” Crow hisses, almost like a threat.

Our reviewer Dan O’Brien says it is easily the most poignant film he has seen this year, praising it for its nuanced handling of the subject. “Rather than something to be vanquished, the film suggests grief must be accommodated, even befriended. It’s a persuasive portrayal of mourning that recognises grief not as a wound to be sealed, but a permanent, unpredictable companion that you learn to live with.” Definitely on my list this spooky weekend.

The Thing With Feathers is in cinemas now

Like many people I am mad for maps. I find them not merely useful but endlessly fascinating – there is always something new to spy on close examination. So writers who include maps and invented places as part of the fabric of their stories intrigue me.

JRR Tolkien springs to mind, of course, but now a new exhibition in London is showcasing the wonderful maps created by the revered sci-fi writer Ursula K Le Guin, who rooted her genre-defying stories in fantasy worlds. Cartographer Mike Duggan finds the exhibition a fascinating insight into Le Guin’s process of other-world building.

The Word for World: Maps of Ursula K Le Guin is showing in the Architectural Association Gallery, London until December 6

Lies, spies and sleazy lawyers

I can honestly say I am never happier than when I am settling down on the sofa with a big bag of Maltesers and the latest episode of Slow Horses on the telly. And season five has not disappointed. Based on the brilliant series of Mick Herron novels, the drama plays out against a sinister and depressing landscape of dodgy politicians, media manipulation, radical terrorism and moral panics. But this is offset by much lighter tone that mines a rich seam of humour running beneath the serious plotlines.

From the sneaky, snooty toffs at the top of MI5 to the bored office bantz at Slough House, all the real-world ghastliness is leavened by the japes, sarcasm and eyerolling that go on.

I just adore the obnoxious Jackson Lamb and his spectacular insults, holey socks and suspect personal hygiene. Gary Oldman is enjoying the role of his life – you can practically smell the reek from the TV. But you also occasionally get the impression that the more Lamb insults, the more he cares. Maybe.

Spycraft expert Robert Dover examines how the series has managed to pull of this tricky combo of tense drama and hilarity, while claiming Lamb as the 21st-century version of John Le Carré’s George Smiley.

Slow Horses is on AppleTV

In John Grisham’s latest novel The Widow, a sleazy lawyer with less than ethical motives finds himself the main suspect after an elderly woman with a secret fortune that he has been “advising” is found murdered. When his shady legal dealings are uncovered, Simon F Latch looks like a man with opportunity and motive. But he’s innocent – so how does Grisham create a dodgy victim character the reader can muster up some sympathy for? Expert in human rights law Sarah Jane Coyle examines this grey area.

The Widow is in bookshops now

Set in Paris, Souleymane’s Story follows an asylum seeker from Guinea as he seeks work as a delivery cyclist. Seen through his perspective, the French capital becomes an unforgiving landscape fraught with danger and hardship as he strives to find work and survive. But Souleymane’s days are constantly taken up with exhausting negotiations with technology, bureaucracy, racism and threats. First-time actor Abou Sangaré won a best actor award at Cannes in 2024 for his raw but restrained performance, making Souleymane’s Story a compelling watch.

Souleymane’s Story is in cinemas now

– ref. Benedict Cumberbatch, John Grisham and Ursula K. Le Guin’s fantasy maps: what to watch, read and see this week – https://theconversation.com/benedict-cumberbatch-john-grisham-and-ursula-k-le-guins-fantasy-maps-what-to-watch-read-and-see-this-week-263743

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

On January 14 2004, the United States announced a new “Vision for Space Exploration”, promising that humans would not only visit space but live there. Two decades later, Nasa’s Artemis programme is preparing to return astronauts to the Moon and, eventually, send humans to Mars.

That mission will last around three years and cover hundreds of millions of kilometres. The crew will face radiation, isolation, weightlessness and confinement, creating stresses unlike any encountered by astronauts before. For physiologists, this is the ultimate frontier: a living laboratory where the human body is pushed to, and sometimes beyond, its biological limits.

Space is brutally unforgiving. It is a vacuum flooded with radiation and violent temperature extremes, where the absence of gravity dismantles the systems that evolved to keep us alive on Earth. Human physiology is tuned to one atmosphere of pressure, one gravity and one fragile ecological niche. Step outside that narrow comfort zone and the body begins to fail.

Yet adversity drives discovery. High-altitude research revealed how blood preserves oxygen at the edge of survival. Deep-sea and polar expeditions showed how humans endure crushing pressure and extreme cold. Spaceflight continues that tradition, redefining our understanding of life’s limits and showing how far biology can bend without breaking.

To understand these limits, physiologists are mapping the “space exposome” – everything in space that stresses the human body, from radiation and weightlessness to disrupted sleep and isolation. Each factor is harmful on its own, but combined they amplify one another, pushing the body to its limits and revealing how it truly works.

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What happens to the brain in zero gravity?

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From this complexity emerges what scientists call the “space integrome”: the complete network of physiological connections that keeps an astronaut alive in the most extreme environment known.

When bones lose minerals, the kidneys respond. When fluid shifts toward the head, it changes pressure in the brain and affects vision, brain structure and function. Immune cells react to stress hormones released by the brain. Every system influences the others in a continuous biological feedback loop.

The body as a biosphere

The spacesuit is the most tangible symbol of this integration. It is a wearable biosphere: a miniature, self-contained environment that keeps the person inside it alive, much as Earth’s atmosphere does for all life. The suit shields the body from the lethal physics of space, protecting against vacuum, radiation and extreme temperatures.

Inside its layered shells of mylar (a reflective plastic that insulates against heat), kevlar (a strong fibre that resists impact) and dacron (a tough polyester that maintains shape and pressure), astronauts live in delicate balance. There is just enough internal pressure to stop their bodily fluids from boiling in a vacuum, yet still enough flexibility to move and work.

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Modern spacesuits have a compatibility problem. Astronauts’ lives depend on fixing it

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Every design choice mirrors a physiological trade-off. At too low pressure, consciousness fades within seconds. At too high pressure, the astronaut becomes trapped in a rigid shell.

Radiation remains spaceflight’s most insidious hazard. Galactic cosmic rays, made up of high-energy protons and heavy ions, slice through cells and fracture DNA in ways that biology on Earth was never built to repair. Exposure to these rays can cause DNA damage and chromosomal rearrangements that raise the risk of cancer.

But research into radiation biomarkers – molecular signals that show how cells respond to radiation exposure – is not only improving astronaut safety, it is also helping transform cancer treatment on Earth. The same biological markers that reveal radiation damage in space are being used to refine radiotherapy, allowing doctors to measure tissue sensitivity, personalise doses and limit damage to healthy cells.

Studies on how cells repair DNA after exposure to cosmic radiation are also informing the development of new drugs that protect patients during cancer treatment.

Microgravity presents another paradox. In orbit, astronauts lose 1–1.5% of their bone mass each month, and muscles weaken despite daily exercise. But this extreme environment also makes space an unparalleled model for accelerated ageing. Studies of bone loss and muscle atrophy in microgravity are helping uncover molecular pathways that could slow degenerative disease and frailty back home.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station spend more than two hours a day performing “countermeasures”: intensive resistance workouts and sessions in lower-body negative pressure chambers, which draw blood back towards the legs to maintain healthy circulation.

They also eat carefully planned diets to stabilise their metabolism. No single strategy is enough, but together these help keep human biology closer to balance in an environment defined by instability.

Digital physiology

Tiny sensors embedded in spacesuits, or even placed under the skin, can now track heart rate, brain activity and chemical changes in the blood in real time. Multi-omic profiling combines information from across biology (genes, proteins and metabolism) to build a complete picture of how the body responds to spaceflight.

This data feeds into digital twins: virtual versions of each astronaut that allow scientists to simulate how their body will react to stressors such as radiation or microgravity.

The astronaut of the future will not simply endure space. They will work with their own biology, using real-time data and predictive algorithms to spot risks before they happen – adjusting their environment, exercise or nutrition to keep their body in balance.

By studying how humans survive without gravity, we are also learning how to live better with it. Space physiology has already helped shape treatments for osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, and it is improving our understanding of age-related muscle loss.

Research into spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome – a condition in which fluid shifts in microgravity cause pressure to build inside the skull, sometimes leading to vision changes – is helping scientists understand intracranial hypertension on Earth.

Even studies of isolation and resilience in astronauts have advanced research into mental health and stress adaptation, offering insights that proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions faced confinement and social separation similar to life aboard a spacecraft.

Ultimately, Mars will test our biology more than our technology. Every gram of muscle preserved, every synapse protected, every cell repaired will be a triumph of physiology. Space may dismantle the human body, but it also reveals our body’s astonishing capacity to rebuild.

Damian Bailey is supported by grants from the European Space Agency, SpaceX and Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellowship. He is Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Physiology and outgoing Chair of the Life Sciences Working Group and outgoing member of the Human Spaceflight and Exploration Science Advisory Committee to ESA. He is also a current member of the ESA-HRE-Biology Panel and Space Exploration Advisory Committees to the UK and Swedish National Space Agencies, and consultant to Bexorg, Inc. (Yale, USA) focused on the technological development of novel biomarkers of cerebral bioenergetic function in humans.

Angelique Van Ombergen works as Chief Exploration Scientist for the Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency. She is an Associate Editor of NPJ Microgravity.

– ref. Mission to Mars: how space exploration pushes the human body to its limits – https://theconversation.com/mission-to-mars-how-space-exploration-pushes-the-human-body-to-its-limits-267837

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ian Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University

The United States and China are locked in a contest to be the first country to send humans to the lunar surface in half a century. But there’s a developing twist: an emerging competition between American companies to build the landing vehicle that could win this new Moon race for the US.

The dust-up over the lunar lander could pit Elon Musk against his billionaire rival Jeff Bezos. And it has already sparked a war of words between Musk and Nasa’s acting chief, Sean Duffy, which exposes fault lines over the direction and leadership of the US space agency.

In April 2021 Musk’s company, SpaceX, was awarded the contract to develop the landing vehicle for Nasa’s Artemis III mission – the first return to the lunar surface by Americans since Apollo 17 in 1972. The lander was to be based on the innovative Starship vehicle, already under development at the time at the company’s base in south Texas.

SpaceX has carried out 11 test flights of Starship since April 2023. While launches in August and October 2025 were successful, the previous three flights ended in failure for the upper stage, or “ship” – which is the part intended to carry astronauts.

With China mounting a formidable bid for supremacy on the Moon, pressure was growing on SpaceX to make greater progress (though milestones are to some extent subjective). On October 20, Sean Duffy announced that he was opening up SpaceX’s US$4.4 billion (£3.3 billion) contract to rival companies, citing delays with Starship. Duffy, who is also the US transportation secretary, has been Nasa’s acting head since July.

Musk’s company must still demonstrate consistent launch safety. It also has to test critical technologies, such as refuelling Starship in orbit, before the planned 2027 date for Artemis III. “They (SpaceX) do remarkable things, but they’re behind schedule,” Duffy claimed.

China plans to land its astronauts on the Moon by 2030 and key figures in the US space community have warned that America may lose the race.

In October 2025, Jim Bridenstine, who led Nasa under the first Trump administration, told a US Senate hearing: “Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline.”

Given that Nasa landed crews on the lunar surface six times in the 1960s and 70s, getting there now might seem as if it should be straightforward. Unfortunately the rockets and capsules used for the Apollo programme are no longer in service and would be extremely difficult to reproduce today. With advanced technology, however, we should be able to produce more efficient missions capable of launching heavier payloads.

Of course the big difference between now and the Apollo era is funding. At its peak (between 1965 and 1966) Nasa was being given 4.5% of all US spending annually. This dropped consistently over subsequent decades and, in 2024, sat at around 0.4%. This factor of ten less means fewer staff, reduced innovation and more reliance on international collaborations.

Nasa has an additional disadvantage that many other spacefaring nations do not.
The president helps determine the goals of the agency. With the office changing hands (and potentially party) every four to eight years, a singular vision can be difficult to establish. It can also make the agency slower to react to changing geopolitics.

New entrants?

With China’s planned Moon launch fast approaching, Duffy’s call for new landers might appear to be cutting it fine. One likely contender may be able to modify an existing vehicle rather than starting from scratch. Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, is planning an uncrewed launch of its Mark 1 lander to the lunar surface in early 2026. The vehicle was designed to transport cargo, not people. But a report in Ars Technica suggests Blue Origin is looking to redesign the spacecraft so that it can carry crew.

The company’s plan reportedly involves “multiple” Mark 1 vehicles to ferry crew to the Moon’s surface and then return to lunar orbit. Duffy has already told Fox News that he expects Blue Origin to “get involved”. Critically, the proposal from Bezos’ company would skip the technical challenge of refuelling in orbit, which is required of Starship (though it’s unclear at this stage how Blue Origin would avoid this).

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The US is now at risk of losing to China in the race to send people back to the Moon’s surface

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At the same time, aerospace giant Lockheed Martin has also been putting together a group of a dozen other unnamed industry players who would build a lunar lander from existing hardware. Lockheed’s vision for the Artemis III lander would take some design cues from the Apollo-era lunar module.

The day after Duffy’s lunar contract announcement, Musk launched an online tirade at Nasa’s acting chief. On X, Musk posted: “Should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America’s space program?”

Duffy is a former member of Congress and world champion lumberjack speed climber. He holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a law degree. When comparing qualifications, it should be noted that Musk holds a bachelor’s degree (in economics and physics) but pulled out of graduate studies at Stanford.

However, the SpaceX boss’s feud with Duffy may extend beyond the potential loss of the lander contract. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a “power struggle” over who will permanently lead Nasa under the second Trump administration. The SpaceX boss has long backed fellow billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to be in charge of the space agency.

Isaacman was previously nominated by President Trump to lead Nasa, but his nomination was later withdrawn. The Wall Street Journal report says Isaacman is still in contention to lead the agency. Ars Technica, meanwhile, has reported that Duffy wants to remain in charge.

Whoever is selected will help shape the agency’s priorities at a critical time. Opening up the Artemis III lander contract could lead to further infighting between Nasa and industry, endangering – rather than accelerating – the schedule. It will also cost money that is badly needed in other parts of the agency, such as its science division. This could, for example, be spent hiring researchers to analyse data from Nasa’s existing missions.

Defending his company’s track record on X, Elon Musk posted: “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry.” He added: “Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission, mark my words.”

As Sean Duffy posted in response: “Love the passion. The race to the Moon is ON.”

Ian Whittaker 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. New Nasa lunar contest could pit Elon Musk against Jeff Bezos, as US fears China will win race to Moon – https://theconversation.com/new-nasa-lunar-contest-could-pit-elon-musk-against-jeff-bezos-as-us-fears-china-will-win-race-to-moon-268361