Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Caroline Bond, Professor of Education, Manchester University

Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities are twice as likely as their peers to be persistently absent from school.

Persistent absence means that they miss up to 10% of school sessions (sessions are a morning or afternoon at school). For those with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) – a legal document that lays out support they are entitled to – the picture is even worse. They are up to seven times more likely to be severely absent, meaning that they are missing more than half of school sessions. Absence is higher still for pupils in special schools compared with those in mainstream education.

Suspensions tell a similar story. Pupils with special educational needs are almost four times more likely to be suspended than those without.

Engagement among pupils with special educational needs also drops sharply in secondary school. Only 45% say they like being at school. And it’s not just pupils who feel the system isn’t working: three-quarters of teachers in a recent survey said schools are not inclusive enough for all pupils.

The current approach to inclusion often relies on case-by-case fixes, but this isn’t sustainable. Since 2016, the number of EHCPs has risen by over 80%, yet the systems for assessing and meeting children’s needs have not kept pace. Many children’s needs go unidentified or unmet, leaving families feeling unsupported and forced to fight for help in an under-resourced system.

Schools, too, say they struggle to access the external professionals needed for assessments. In one survey, school staff ranked meeting the needs of pupils with special educational needs as their second-biggest challenge, just after budget pressures.

Lifelong effects

When needs go unmet, the consequences can be long-lasting. Persistent absence and suspension both increase the risk of young people leaving school without qualifications and not going into work or training. These issues can spill into adulthood, with poorer job prospects and a higher risk of involvement with the criminal justice system. Addressing special educational needs effectively isn’t just about education – it’s about improving life chances.

The solutions start with making mainstream education genuinely inclusive and properly funded. Schools need cultures that promote belonging and partnership with families to rebuild trust and confidence. National standards for inclusion would help, as would more training for school staff and leaders, alongside better access to specialist support professionals.

We also need to rethink what counts as success in education. A broader mix of qualifications and career paths would help young people play to their strengths and prepare for the future. Schools can also boost engagement by giving pupils more say in decisions that affect them, offering greater choice in the curriculum, and ensuring access to enrichment activities – sport, arts, volunteering and social opportunities – which are proven to improve attendance and wellbeing.

For pupils with special educational needs, timely, targeted support can make all the difference. Skilled mentors, smaller classes, adapted timetables and evidence-based support programmes can help pupils boost school attendance and academic progress. They can also help children manage their emotions and enable them to feel more connected to school. For those struggling with transitions – such as moving schools or preparing for work – proactive planning, supported internships and job coaches can ease the process and build confidence.

Even with good inclusive practice, some pupils will still struggle. In those cases, high-quality alternative provision can offer a temporary respite and a route back to mainstream education.

Unless we rethink what education is for – and how we support pupils to engage with it – thousands of young people will be denied their potential. One of us (Caroline Bond) contributed to the development of an approach that mainstream schools can use to help children feel safe in school. It was created with parents, autistic young people and professionals to offer a practical way for schools to understand and support pupils who find school attendance especially difficult.

With school attendance under national scrutiny and special educational needs funding under pressure, this is a crucial moment to ask how we can build a system that genuinely includes every young person – not just in name, but in practice.

Luke Munford receives funding from UKRI and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Caroline Bond 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. Children with special educational needs are more likely to miss school – it’s sign of a system under strain – https://theconversation.com/children-with-special-educational-needs-are-more-likely-to-miss-school-its-sign-of-a-system-under-strain-266942

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Wyver, Professor of the Arts on Screen, University of Westminster

The BBC’s Written Archives Centre (WAC) is housed in an unassuming bungalow on the outskirts of Reading, 40 miles west of London. It holds one of the greatest document collections of British and global history from the past century.

For half that time, researchers, storytellers and interested members of the public were able to mine its extensive resources for monographs, dissertations and broadcasts relating to the BBC. Recent changes to the conditions of access, however, mean that independent and exploratory research at the WAC is no longer possible.

The centre houses scripts, personnel files, production notes, meeting minutes, correspondence and other materials related to BBC radio and TV broadcasts since 1922. It reveals how politicians, pop stars, monarchs and artists have engaged with one of the most powerful media organisations of the past century. It also captures the debates, decisions, and everyday lives behind the BBC’s operations.

Because of the BBC’s importance, the WAC’s archives reflect countless aspects of our social, political and cultural history. The changing roles of women since the 1920s have been traced through the riches of the archive, as have transformations in ideas of class and social relations, in understandings of LGBT+ identities, and in celebrations and conflicts of race and immigration.

Even so, researchers know there is far, far more to be uncovered. The WAC is one of Britain’s most significant resources for revealing the history of the past century, second only to The National Archives housed at Kew.

But earlier this year, the WAC quietly introduced changes to who can use it and how. Personal enquiries from the public can no longer be answered, and the reading room is now only open on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Most significant for researchers was the decision to end the vetting and opening of files on request.

Many of the archive users, including myself, feel we were not involved in any meaningful consultation before these changes were made. In 2024, there had been a single online meeting at which a small number of users were asked for their suggestions for improvements. At that meeting there was no mention of the proposed changes and no sense of seeking feedback. No other consultation seems to have been undertaken.

Some two-thirds of the hundreds of thousands of WAC files have not yet been opened for use by researchers. Until early this year, the exceptional archivists there would, in response to an enquiry, identify relevant files. They would then read and, if necessary, minimally redact (removing certain personal details, for example) files that had not previously been opened.

In the work for my forthcoming history of television between the wars, Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, I estimate that roughly half of the 300-plus files I consulted were opened especially for me.

The ending of on-request vetting has been made by BBC managers for two reasons, which were shared in online meetings that I participated in. One is the straitened finances of the corporation, which have necessitated severe cutbacks to many services. Suggestions for how to help mitigate this, which were made in meetings by users, so far appear to have been ignored by those responsible for the change.

The other reason given for the ending of on-request vetting is an internal shift towards a more focused, curatorial approach to the WAC. Under the new arrangements, batches of files will be made available according to internal priorities decided, like the WAC’s new timetable, solely by the BBC.

Those objecting to this change were told that the new priorities will reflect more closely the BBC’s programming and business concerns. This aims to facilitate, for example, a smoother marking of “content moments” such as anniversaries.

More than 500 academics and independent researchers, including myself, have signed an open letter expressing “profound concern” about the changes. Recognising that the review of the BBC’s charter is fast approaching, the letter calls on the BBC “to publish a code of practice affirming continuing WAC access and the continued availability of files on request”.

Without on-request opening of files, many WAC users feel they are essentially barred from independent research and can no longer plan with any confidence new books or other projects. More generally, they point out that the BBC’s new conditions flout the generally accepted principle for responsible archives of clear separation between the provision of access and the practices of curation.

The campaigners also highlight that the WAC is a public resource paid for over decades by public funds through the licence fee. Closing down the channel for independent access, they suggest, infringes in a significant way one of the five public purposes of the BBC defined by the BBC’s Charter: “To support learning for people of all ages.”

The campaigners laid out their “public purposes” argument in a different, detailed letter sent directly to the BBC board’s chair, Samir Shah, in mid-August, and in individual letters to each of the members of the board, which has the mandate to deliver the BBC’s mission and public purposes. No response has been forthcoming.

The BBC has promised that “some” files will be newly vetted and opened up, decided solely by them, but they have not said how many or what they will be, nor have they outlined a timetable for this. The community of users who journey out to the reading room of the WAC bungalow remain frustrated in their concern to undertake meaningful independent research.

When contacted by The Conversation for comment on its changes to the WAC, the BBC responded:

We are taking on a new approach to make a wider selection of BBC history accessible and searchable, with an ambition to open up more of the written archive from 30% to 50% over the next five years.

Given the level of resource available, we are moving to a series of structured content releases rather than individual requests for specific content, which will open up the written archive further and deliver greater value for all licence fee payers.

The service will continue to offer access and reading room visits for researchers and support freedom of information and subject access requests.

Moving to a series of structured content releases rather than individual requests for specific content … will open up the archive and deliver greater value for licence fee payers and support learning for people of all ages.

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John Wyver has in the past received funding from the AHRC for a research project that has made use of the resources of the Written Archives Centre.

– ref. Changes to the BBC’s Written Archives Centre threaten open research – and might infringe on the broadcaster’s charter – https://theconversation.com/changes-to-the-bbcs-written-archives-centre-threaten-open-research-and-might-infringe-on-the-broadcasters-charter-267929

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Abnett, Research Fellow, University of Hertfordshire

Autism charities are important organisations. They provide essential services for autistic people, influence policy decisions, and often speak on behalf of autistic people.

This means that how these charities write about autistic people may influence how society understands what it means to be autistic. The words and pictures that autism charities choose to use affect how autistic people are understood, perceived and cared for. This really matters, as autism is still often stigmatised.

Our recent study shows that the language and images large autism charities use mainly portray autistic people as a problem. In contrast, charities represent themselves as the solution to this problem.

In England and Wales, different kinds of charity organisation are crucial providers of public services. Charities are often seen by government as the best way to meet the needs of less-heard or underserved groups, including autistic people. Some receive specialist care and education services from autism charities.

These charities also influence policy discussions and decisions. Research conducted by autism charities is regularly mentioned in parliament. The NHS refers autistic people and their carers looking for support to both national and local charities.

Previous research has shown how certain types of charities (particularly large international development charities) describe the people they are seeking to support in developing country communities in negative and problematic ways. People are often portrayed as “passive”, “voiceless” and “(culturally) backward”.

Similarly, a small amount of research demonstrates that autism charity advertising and websites consistently convey negative portrayals of autistic people. For example, one previous study describes how an advert for a UK charity depicted autism as “a child-enveloping monster that had to be destroyed to allow a boy to live a normal life”.

How we conducted our research

For our study, we identified the largest autism charities in England and Wales. We used data held by the Charity Commission to identify charities with incomes of £10 million or more and that only provided support to autistic adults, children or both. There were 11 charities that met these criteria. Then, we downloaded the most recent annual reports and accounts for these charities.

We explored how autism charities described autistic people, themselves and the government. We used critical autism studies – which seeks to question stereotypes, and views autism as a difference rather than a disorder – as an approach to evaluate and explain the reports, and suggest how things could be improved.

We found that autistic people are largely portrayed as problems, as challenging and as a burden. Autistic people are frequently depicted as being needy and infantile. Every single charity depicts autistic people as needing to change. Autistic people, they say, should be more communicative or resilient.

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Read more:
Why the autism jigsaw puzzle piece is such a problematic symbol

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We think that the use of this kind of language and imagery has negative consequences for wider societal attitudes towards autistic people. In contrast, in these documents, charities – who did not appear to be led by autistic people – represented themselves as experts, with the authority to act for and speak on behalf of autistic people.

This links to an overwhelming message in the reports that these charities need to be able to do more, to be bigger and often better-known, and that they need more funding to enable them to achieve this.

This seems to reflect the “non-disabled saviour” trope that has been found to be common in popular culture. This trope highlights the action, even heroism, of non-disabled people “saving” disabled people, rather than centring disabled people’s agency.

All these charities also describe themselves as being funded by government. Alongside this, however, government is primarily portrayed as a barrier to the effective provision of services for autistic people. Government funding and policy decisions are described as arbitrary and inconsistent. It suggests a government (at both local and national level) that is ineffective and unreliable.

What should change?

We hope our findings encourage autism charities to reflect on how they describe the people they exist to support. Words and imagery should convey the reality of autistic lives rather than leaning on outdated notions of pity or burden.

That starts with meaningful autistic representation at every level of charity leadership, including decision-making roles. Representation shouldn’t be tokenistic. It should shape how organisations operate and communicate.

Charities and governments also need to rethink the current system of service provision and funding, which often leaves charities overstretched and autistic people underserved.

Most of all, we hope our research helps to contribute to a society that recognises autistic people not as problems to be solved, but as people to be valued and understood on their own terms.

Helen Abnett has previously received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Aimee Grant receives funding from the Wellcome Trust, MRC and ESRC.

Kathryn Williams receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is also the research director for Autistic UK CIC, a non-profit Autistic-led organisation seeking to improve the representation and wellbeing of Autistic adults across the UK.

– ref. Autism charities can portray autistic people as helpless and a burden – our research shows why it matters – https://theconversation.com/autism-charities-can-portray-autistic-people-as-helpless-and-a-burden-our-research-shows-why-it-matters-267385

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eoin Daly, Lecturer Above The Bar, School of Law, University of Galway

Ireland is set to have a new president in the form of Catherine Connolly, an independent leftwing TD for Galway, and former deputy speaker of the Dáil.

The presidential election campaign was a colourful and eccentric spectacle. Since the Irish president isn’t an executive office with power over policy, the campaign focused on obscure ethical scandals around the two candidates, Connolly and Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys.

At times, though, the debate strayed into various policy issues despite the president having no power over these. The candidates’ views on everything from housing, disability, military neutrality and even foxhunting came under scrutiny.

For many, the campaign will have seemed awkward and profoundly odd. Ireland went through the rigmarole of a national election but for something for which the political stakes are undeniably low. This, in turn, reflects certain anomalies of the Irish presidency as a political institution.

The president of Ireland, a role created by the 1937 constitution, is the only national office elected directly by the people. The president will, therefore, have a very significant democratic mandate, and will tend to be a popular figure.

But this mandate is not matched by very much power. A president must campaign for a mandate from the people, yet once in office, finds no real conduit, other than speech itself, through which to make good on that mandate.

Presidential powers

In a parliamentary democracy such as the UK or Ireland – where the executive government is formed from within the parliament – the head of state will tend to have quite modest constitutional functions. Even where the head of state is a president, they will tend to have powers quite similar to those of a hereditary monarch. They formally sign bills into law and perform certain other strictly ceremonial constitutional functions, while serving as a symbol of continuity, national unity and so on.

One of the advantages of having an elective head of state, however, is that it becomes politically feasible to grant them more extensive powers of the sort that would be difficult to envisage for a monarch.

What exactly these powers are varies across parliamentary republics such as Germany, Italy or Greece. While Ireland’s post-independence constitutions mirrored many basic features of the British parliamentary system, they had elements of novelty and innovation as well. The office of the president was one of these.

Indeed, if someone were to read the constitution with no context, it makes the president seem like a potentially key player in the political system.

In particular, the constitution seems to envisage the president being a sort of arbiter in the legislative process, particularly in the event of deadlock between the two houses – the Dáil and Seanad (senate). These powers arise, for example, in the event of disputes over what counts as a “money bill”, or reducing the time the senate has to consider bills during a public emergency. The president also has, in theory, a power to refer bills to referendum, where petitioned by a majority of the Senate and one-third of the Dáil.

However, this potentially important umpire role has never really materialised in practice, mostly because these powers seem to envisage situations of dispute between the two houses that have hardly ever arisen in practice. The senate has never really posed much of a barrier to government legislation coming from the Dáil, partly because the taoiseach gets to nominate almost one-fifth of its members. Governments therefore have an almost guaranteed majority in the upper as well as lower houses. Any notional role of umpire for the president becomes redundant in a legislative system so dominated by the government.

The president does also have the power to refer bills to the Supreme Court to test their constitutionality, a power that has been used 16 times. However, relatively few constitutional controversies have been resolved through this process. The more common route to resolving any doubts about potentially unconstitutional laws has been through via advice from the attorney general.

Beyond legislation, the president is theoretically a potential kingmaker in the process of government formation. Unlike the British monarch, the president cannot “invite” anybody to form a government. But they can refuse a taoiseach’s request to call a snap election, if the taoiseach has lost the confidence of the Dáil. But again, the role notionally envisaged for the president, as a kind of arbiter within the political system, never really materialised in practice, as an expectation emerged of presidents having a passive and ceremonial role.

With many of their formal powers becoming more or less redundant, a president who was campaigned for and received the people’s trust must fulfil that mandate by some other means. More recent presidents, especially Mary Robinson and the outgoing president, Michael D Higgins, have sought to express their democratic mandate more in the realm of symbolism than in the exercise of any hard power. Higgins controversially used the presidency to speak out in the range of topics, from housing and inequality, to the issues of neutrality and genocide on the international stage.

But the controversies of Higgins’ tenure neatly reflected the wider paradoxes of the Irish presidency. Many of the powers of the office – at least the discretionary powers where the president has some choice – are almost redundant. Its legitimacy and clout is expressed almost exclusively in the symbolic realm. Higgins gave voice to widely held concerns of injustice and inequality both in Ireland and globally – but it would be difficult to argue that this shifted the political needle leftwards in Ireland during his tenure. It is in that context that another relatively radical figure will assume office as president of Ireland.

Eoin Daly 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. Catherine Connolly and the paradoxes of the Irish presidency – https://theconversation.com/catherine-connolly-and-the-paradoxes-of-the-irish-presidency-268245

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Abnett, Research Fellow, University of Hertfordshire

Autism charities are important organisations. They provide essential services for autistic people, influence policy decisions, and often speak on behalf of autistic people.

This means that how these charities write about autistic people may influence how society understands what it means to be autistic. The words and pictures that autism charities choose to use affect how autistic people are understood, perceived and cared for. This really matters, as autism is still often stigmatised.

Our recent study shows that the language and images large autism charities use mainly portray autistic people as a problem. In contrast, charities represent themselves as the solution to this problem.

In England and Wales, different kinds of charity organisation are crucial providers of public services. Charities are often seen by government as the best way to meet the needs of less-heard or underserved groups, including autistic people. Some receive specialist care and education services from autism charities.

These charities also influence policy discussions and decisions. Research conducted by autism charities is regularly mentioned in parliament. The NHS refers autistic people and their carers looking for support to both national and local charities.

Previous research has shown how certain types of charities (particularly large international development charities) describe the people they are seeking to support in developing country communities in negative and problematic ways. People are often portrayed as “passive”, “voiceless” and “(culturally) backward”.

Similarly, a small amount of research demonstrates that autism charity advertising and websites consistently convey negative portrayals of autistic people. For example, one previous study describes how an advert for a UK charity depicted autism as “a child-enveloping monster that had to be destroyed to allow a boy to live a normal life”.

How we conducted our research

For our study, we identified the largest autism charities in England and Wales. We used data held by the Charity Commission to identify charities with incomes of £10 million or more and that only provided support to autistic adults, children or both. There were 11 charities that met these criteria. Then, we downloaded the most recent annual reports and accounts for these charities.

We explored how autism charities described autistic people, themselves and the government. We used critical autism studies – which seeks to question stereotypes, and views autism as a difference rather than a disorder – as an approach to evaluate and explain the reports, and suggest how things could be improved.

We found that autistic people are largely portrayed as problems, as challenging and as a burden. Autistic people are frequently depicted as being needy and infantile. Every single charity depicts autistic people as needing to change. Autistic people, they say, should be more communicative or resilient.

---

Read more:
Why the autism jigsaw puzzle piece is such a problematic symbol

---

We think that the use of this kind of language and imagery has negative consequences for wider societal attitudes towards autistic people. In contrast, in these documents, charities – who did not appear to be led by autistic people – represented themselves as experts, with the authority to act for and speak on behalf of autistic people.

This links to an overwhelming message in the reports that these charities need to be able to do more, to be bigger and often better-known, and that they need more funding to enable them to achieve this.

This seems to reflect the “non-disabled saviour” trope that has been found to be common in popular culture. This trope highlights the action, even heroism, of non-disabled people “saving” disabled people, rather than centring disabled people’s agency.

All these charities also describe themselves as being funded by government. Alongside this, however, government is primarily portrayed as a barrier to the effective provision of services for autistic people. Government funding and policy decisions are described as arbitrary and inconsistent. It suggests a government (at both local and national level) that is ineffective and unreliable.

What should change?

We hope our findings encourage autism charities to reflect on how they describe the people they exist to support. Words and imagery should convey the reality of autistic lives rather than leaning on outdated notions of pity or burden.

That starts with meaningful autistic representation at every level of charity leadership, including decision-making roles. Representation shouldn’t be tokenistic. It should shape how organisations operate and communicate.

Charities and governments also need to rethink the current system of service provision and funding, which often leaves charities overstretched and autistic people underserved.

Most of all, we hope our research helps to contribute to a society that recognises autistic people not as problems to be solved, but as people to be valued and understood on their own terms.

Helen Abnett has previously received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Aimee Grant receives funding from the Wellcome Trust, MRC and ESRC.

Kathryn Williams receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is also the research director for Autistic UK CIC, a non-profit Autistic-led organisation seeking to improve the representation and wellbeing of Autistic adults across the UK.

– ref. Autism charities portray autistic people as helpless and a burden – our research shows why it matters – https://theconversation.com/autism-charities-portray-autistic-people-as-helpless-and-a-burden-our-research-shows-why-it-matters-267385

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aleh Cherp, Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University

Just 1% of the world’s coastal waters could, in theory, generate enough offshore wind and solar power to provide a third of the world’s electricity by 2050. That’s the promise highlighted in a new study by a team of scientists in Singapore and China, who systematically mapped the global potential of renewables at sea.

But turning that potential into reality is another story. Scaling up offshore renewables fast enough to seriously dent global emissions faces formidable technical, economic and political hurdles.

To reach global climate targets, the world’s electricity systems must be fully decarbonised within a couple of decades if not sooner. Wind and solar power have grown at record-breaking rates, yet further expansion on land is increasingly constrained by a scarcity of good sites and conflicts over land use.

Moving renewables offshore is therefore tempting. The sea is vast, windy and sunny, with few residents around to object. The team behind the new study identified coastal areas with enough wind or sunlight, and water shallower than 200 metres, that are relatively ice-free and within 200 kilometres of population centres.

They estimate that using just 1% of these areas could generate over 6,000 terawatt hours (TWh) of offshore wind power and 14,000TWh of offshore solar power each year. Together that’s roughly one-third of the electricity the world is expected to use in 2050, while avoiding 9 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually.

That sounds impressive as 1% of suitable ocean seems small. Many European countries, such as Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the UK, already allocate between 7% and 16% of their coastal waters for offshore wind farms. Yet what matters for climate mitigation is not only how much low-carbon energy could eventually be produced, but how fast that could happen.

At present, offshore wind generates less than 200TWh per year, less than 1% of global electricity. By 2030, that might rise to around 900TWh. Hitting 6,000TWh by 2050 would require annual installations – each year, for two decades – to be about seven times larger than they were last year.

Offshore solar requires an even steeper climb. The technology is still experimental, producing only negligible amounts of electricity today.

Even if 15TWh a year (an equivalent of some 15GW capacity) can be generated by 2030, to reach the estimated potential of 14,000TWh by 2050 would require sustained annual growth of over 40% for two decades. Such a rate that has never been achieved for any energy technology, not even during the recent record-breaking growth of land solar.

Achieving techno-economic viability

Around 90% of existing offshore wind capacity is located in the shallow, sheltered waters of northwestern Europe and China, where most turbines are directly fixed to the seabed. Yet most of the untapped potential lies in deeper waters, where fixed foundations are impossible.

That means turning to floating turbines, a technology that currently accounts for just 0.3% of global offshore wind capacity. Floating wind power faces serious engineering challenges, from mooring and anchoring, to undersea cabling and maintenance in rougher seas.

It currently costs far more than fixed-bottom systems, and will need substantial subsidies for at least the next decade. Only if early projects prove successful and drive down costs could floating wind become commercially viable.

Offshore solar is even further behind. The International Energy Agency rates its technology readiness at only level three to five on an 11-point scale — barely beyond prototype stage. The new study refers to research saying offshore solar could become commercially viable in the Netherlands only around 2040-2050, by which time the world’s power system should already be largely decarbonised.

Overcoming growth barriers

Even when low-carbon technologies become commercially competitive, their growth rarely continues exponentially. Our own research shows manufacturing bottlenecks, logistics and grid integration eventually slow expansion. And these challenges are likely to be even tougher for offshore projects.

Social opposition and the need for permits can also slow progress. Moving wind and solar offshore avoids some land-use conflicts, but it does not eliminate them. Coastal space close to populated areas is already crowded with shipping, fishing, leisure and military activities.

In Europe, approval and construction of offshore wind farms can a decade or more. Permits are not guaranteed: Sweden recently rejected 13 proposed wind farms in the Baltic Sea due to national security concerns.

What is realistic?

Offshore renewables will undoubtedly play an important role in the global energy transition. Offshore wind, in particular, could become a major contributor by mid-century if its growth follows the same trajectory as onshore wind has since the early 2000s.

However, that would require floating turbines to quickly become competitive, and for political commitment to be secured in the Americas, Australia, Russia and other areas with lots of growth potential.

Offshore wind (green) is tracking the growth rate of onshore wind (orange):

Offshore solar, by contrast, would need to achieve viability and then grow at an unprecedented rate to reach the potential outlined in the new study. It may be promising for niche uses, but is unlikely to deliver large-scale climate benefits before 2050.

Its real contribution may come later in the century, when we will still need to expand low-carbon energy for industries, transport and heating once the initial decarbonisation of power generation is complete.

For now, the world’s best bet remains to accelerate onshore wind and solar power as well as proven offshore wind technologies, while preparing offshore solar and floating wind power options for the longer run.

Aleh Cherp receives funding from Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) and Swedish Energy Agency.

Jessica Jewell receives funding from the European Union’s H2020 ERC Starting Grant programme under grant agreement no. 950408 project Mechanisms and Actors of Feasible Energy Transitions (MANIFEST), Mistra Environmental Research (MISTRA), and the Swedish Energy Agency.

Tsimafei Kazlou receives funding from the European Union’s H2020 ERC Starting Grant programme under grant agreement no. 950408 project Mechanisms and Actors of Feasible Energy Transitions (MANIFEST).

– ref. Just 1% of coastal waters could power a third of the world’s electricity – but can we do it in time? – https://theconversation.com/just-1-of-coastal-waters-could-power-a-third-of-the-worlds-electricity-but-can-we-do-it-in-time-268237

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate Spencer, Professor of Environmental Geochemistry, Queen Mary University of London

Think of ocean plastic and you may picture bottles and bags bobbing on the waves, slowly drifting out to sea. Yet the reality is more complex and far more persistent.

Even if we stopped all plastic pollution today, our new research shows that fragments of buoyant plastic would continue to pollute the ocean’s surface for more than a century. These fragments break down slowly, releasing microplastics that sink through the water column at a glacial pace. The result is a “natural conveyor belt” of pollution that links the surface to the deep sea.

Our new study set out to understand what happens to large pieces of floating plastic once they enter the ocean. We developed a computer model to simulate how these plastics degrade, fragment and interact with the sticky suspended particles known as “marine snow” which help transport matter to the seafloor.

Marine snow is the ocean’s natural snowfall: tiny, sticky flakes of dead plankton and other organic particles that clump together and slowly sink, carrying anything that sticks, like microplastics, down into the deep.

The new model builds on our previous work understanding the long-term fate of microplastics smaller than 1mm, which showed that plastics would only interact with suspended fine organic particles once they had broken down and reached a critical size threshold. But that simple one-dimensional model didn’t consider other physical processes, such as ocean currents.

By linking plastic degradation to ocean processes including marine snow settling, we have now provided a more complete picture of how small plastic particles move through the ocean system, and why some floating plastic appears to vanish from the surface.

The ‘missing plastic’ problem

When large plastics such as food wrappers or fragments of fishing gear reach the ocean, they can remain afloat for years, slowly battered by sunlight and waves and colonised by marine biofilm – microbial communities that live on the plastic surface.

Over time, they break into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming small enough to attach to marine snow and sink. But this is a slow transformation. After 100 years, around 10% of the original material can still be found at the ocean’s surface.

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Read more:
We’re witnessing last-ditch talks to secure a global plastic pollution treaty

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As for the rest, scientists have long noticed a puzzling mismatch between the amount of plastic entering the ocean and the much smaller quantities found floating at the surface. Floating plastics must be removed from the ocean’s surface layer through degradation and sinking, but so far the numbers have not quite added up. Our findings help explain this “missing plastic” problem.

We are not the first scientists to report the sinking of microplastics. But by combining experimental work on how microplastics associate with fine suspended sediments, with our modelling of plastic degradation and marine snow settling processes, we provide realistic estimates of how microplastics are removed from the ocean surface which account for the missing plastic.

The ocean’s natural biological pump, often described as a conveyor belt, moves carbon and nutrients from the surface to the deep sea. Our research suggests this same process also moves plastics.

However, there is a potential cost. As global plastic production continues to rise, the biological pump could become overloaded. If too many microplastics attach to marine snow, they may interfere with how efficiently the ocean stores carbon – an effect that could have consequences for marine ecosystems and even climate regulation.

A conveyor belt for pollution

Microplastic pollution is not a short-term problem. Even if we achieved zero plastic waste today, the ocean’s surface would remain contaminated for decades.

To tackle the problem effectively, we need long-term thinking, not just beach or ocean cleanups. Policies need to address plastic production, use and disposal at every stage. Understanding how plastic moves through the ocean system is a crucial step towards that goal.

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Read more:
‘Everywhere we looked we found evidence’: the godfather of microplastics on 20 years of pollution research and the fight for global action

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Large, buoyant plastic items degrade over decades, shedding microplastics as they go. These tiny fragments may eventually sink to the ocean floor, but only after going through multiple cycles of attachment and release from marine snow, a process that can take generations.

This means plastics lost at sea decades ago are still breaking down today, creating a persistent source of new microplastics.

The ocean connects everything: what floats today will one day sink, fragment and reappear in new forms. Our task is to make sure that what we leave behind is less damaging than what we have already set adrift.

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Kate Spencer receives funding from NERC, Lloyd’s Register Foundation and EU Interreg IV programme Preventing Plastic Pollution

Nan Wu works for Queen Mary University of London and the British Antarctic Survey. Nan Wu receives funding from Lloyds Register Foundation, UK, Queen Mary University of London Principal Studentships, EU INTERREG France (Channel) England project ‘Preventing Plastic Pollution’ co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund’.

– ref. Scientists have puzzled over what happens to plastic as it breaks down in the ocean – our new study helps explain the mystery – https://theconversation.com/scientists-have-puzzled-over-what-happens-to-plastic-as-it-breaks-down-in-the-ocean-our-new-study-helps-explain-the-mystery-268305

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Cornell, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Lancashire

As far back as 1980, the American philosopher John Searle distinguished between strong and weak AI. Weak AIs are merely useful machines or programs that help us solve problems, whereas strong AIs would have genuine intelligence. A strong AI would be conscious.

Searle was sceptical of the very possibility of strong AI, but not everyone shares his pessimism. Most optimistic are those who endorse functionalism, a popular theory of mind that takes conscious mental states to be determined solely by their function. For a functionalist, the task of producing a strong AI is merely a technical challenge. If we can create a system that functions like us, we can be confident it is conscious like us.

Recently, we have reached the tipping point. Generative AIs such as Chat-GPT are now so advanced that their responses are often indistinguishable from those of a real human – see this exchange between Chat-GPT and Richard Dawkins, for instance.

This issue of whether a machine can fool us into thinking it is human is the subject of a well-known test devised by English computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. Turing claimed that if a machine could pass the test, we ought to conclude it was genuinely intelligent.

Back in 1950 this was pure speculation, but according to a pre-print study from earlier this year – that’s a study that hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet – the Turing test has now been passed. Chat-GPT convinced 73% of participants that it was human.

What’s interesting is that nobody is buying it. Experts are not only denying that Chat-GPT is conscious but seemingly not even taking the idea seriously. I have to admit, I’m with them. It just doesn’t seem plausible.

The key question is: what would a machine actually have to do in order to convince us?

Experts have tended to focus on the technical side of this question. That is, to discern what technical features a machine or program would need in order to satisfy our best theories of consciousness. A 2023 article, for instance, as reported here in The Conversation, compiled a list of 14 technical criteria or “consciousness indicators”, such as learning from feedback (Chat-GPT didn’t make the grade).

But creating a strong AI is as much a psychological challenge as a technical one. It is one thing to produce a machine that satisfies the various technical criteria that we set out in our theories, but it is quite another to suppose that, when we are finally confronted with such a thing, we will believe it is conscious.

The success of Chat-GPT has already demonstrated this problem. For many, the Turing test was the benchmark of machine intelligence. But if it has been passed, as the pre-print study suggests, the goalposts have shifted. They might well keep shifting as technology improves.

Myna difficulties

This is where we get into the murky realm of an age-old philosophical quandary: the problem of other minds. Ultimately, one can never know for sure whether anything other than oneself is conscious. In the case of human beings, the problem is little more than idle scepticism. None of us can seriously entertain the possibility that other humans are unthinking automata, but in the case of machines it seems to go the other way. It’s hard to accept that they could be anything but.

A particular problem with AIs like Chat-GPT is that they seem like mere mimicry machines. They’re like the myna bird who learns to vocalise words with no idea of what it is doing or what the words mean.

This doesn’t mean we will never make a conscious machine, of course, but it does suggest that we might find it difficult to accept it if we did. And that might be the ultimate irony: succeeding in our quest to create a conscious machine, yet refusing to believe we had done so. Who knows, it might have already happened.

So what would a machine need to do to convince us? One tentative suggestion is that it might need to exhibit the kind of autonomy we observe in many living organisms.

Current AIs like Chat-GPT are purely responsive. Keep your fingers off the keyboard and they’re as quiet as the grave. Animals are not like this, at least not the ones we commonly take to be conscious, like chimps, dolphins, cats and dogs. They have their own impulses and inclinations (or at least appear to), along with the desires to pursue them. They initiate their own actions on their own terms, for their own reasons.

Perhaps if we could create a machine that displayed this type of autonomy – the kind of autonomy that would take it beyond a mere mimicry machine – we really would accept it was conscious?

It’s hard to know for sure. Maybe we should ask Chat-GPT.

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

– ref. The hardest part of creating conscious AI might be convincing ourselves it’s real – https://theconversation.com/the-hardest-part-of-creating-conscious-ai-might-be-convincing-ourselves-its-real-268123

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefano Arlaud, PhD candidate in Time Processing and Metacognition of Time Processing, SBBS, Queen Mary University of London

Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites.

Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm of the Moon. Both systems rely on light cues, and a recent study analysing women’s menstrual cycles shows that as the planet brightens from artificial light, the natural contrasts that once structured biological time are being blurred.

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Read more:
Five animals that behave differently in moonlight

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Plenty of research suggests the lunar cycle still influences human sleep. A 2021 study found that in Toba (also known as Qom) Indigenous communities in Argentina, people went to bed 30-80 minutes later and slept 20-90 minutes less in the three-to-five nights before the full Moon.

Similar, though weaker, patterns appeared among more than 400 Seattle students in the same study, even amid the city’s heavy light pollution. This suggests that electric light may dampen but not erase this lunar effect.

The researchers found that sleep patterns varied not only with the full-Moon phase but also with the new- and half-Moon phases. This 15-day rhythm may reflect the influence of the Moon’s changing gravitational pull, which peaks twice per lunar month, during both the full and new Moons, when the Sun, Earth and Moon align. Such gravitational cycles could subtly affect biological rhythms alongside light-related cues.

Laboratory studies have supported these findings. In a 2013 experiment, during the full Moon phase participants took about five minutes longer to fall asleep, slept 20 minutes less, and secreted less melatonin (a hormone that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle). They also showed a 30% reduction in EEG slow-wave brain activity – an indicator of deep sleep.

Their sleep was monitored over several weeks covering a lunar cycle. The participants also reported poorer sleep quality around the full Moon, despite being unaware that their data was being analysed against lunar phases.

Perhaps the most striking evidence of a lunar rhythm in humans comes from the recent study analysing long-term menstrual records of 176 women across Europe and the US.

Before around 2010 – when LED lighting and smartphone use became widespread – many women’s menstrual cycles tended to begin around the full Moon or new Moon phases. Afterwards, that synchrony largely vanished, persisting only in January, when the Moon-Sun-Earth gravitational effects are strongest.

The researchers propose that humans may still have an internal Moon clock, but that its coupling to lunar phases has been weakened by artificial lighting.

A metronome for other species

The Moon acts as a metronome for other species. For example, coral reefs coordinate mass spawning events with precision, releasing eggs and sperm under specific phases of Moonlight.

In a 2016 laboratory study, researchers working with reef-building corals (for example A. millepora) replaced the natural night light cycle with regimes of constant light or constant darkness. They found that the normal cycling of clock-genes (such as the cryptochromes) was flattened or lost, and the release of sperm and eggs fell out of sync. These findings suggest lunar light cues are integral to the genetic and physiological rhythms that underlie synchronised reproduction.

Other species, such as the marine midge Clunio marinus, use an internal “coincidence detector” that integrates circadian and lunar signals to time their reproduction precisely with low tides. Genetic studies have shown this lunar timing is linked to several clock-related genes – suggesting that the influence of lunar cycles extends down to the molecular level.

However, a 2019 study found that the synchrony of wild coral spawning is breaking down. Scientists think this may be due to pollutants and rising sea temperatures as well as light pollution. But we know that light pollution is causing disruption for many wildlife species that use the Moon to navigate or time their movements.

Near-permanent brightness

For most of human history, moonlight was the brightest light of night. Today, it competes with an artificial glow visible from space. According to the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, more than 80% of the global population – and nearly everyone in Europe and the US – live under a light-polluted sky (one that is bright enough to hide the Milky Way).

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Read more:
For medieval people, the Moon was both a riddle and a blessing

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In some countries such as Singapore or Kuwait, there is literally nowhere without significant light pollution. Constant sky-glow from dense urban lighting keeps the sky so bright that night never becomes truly dark.

This near-permanent brightness is a by-product of these countries’ high population density, extensive outdoor illumination, and the reflection of light off buildings and the atmosphere. Even in remote national parks far from cities, the glow of distant lights can still be detected hundreds of kilometres away.

In cognitive neuroscience, time perception is often described by pacemaker–accumulator models, in which an internal “pacemaker” emits regular pulses that the brain counts to estimate duration. The stability of this system depends on rhythmic environmental cues – daylight, temperature, social routines – that help tune the rate of those pulses.

Losing the slow, monthly cue of moonlight may mean that our internal clocks now run in a flatter temporal landscape, with fewer natural fluctuations to anchor them. Previous psychological research has found disconnection from nature can warp our sense of time.

The lunar clock still ticks within us – faint but measurable. It shapes tides, sleep and the rhythms of countless species. Yet as the night sky brightens, we risk losing not only the stars, but the quiet cadence that once linked life on Earth to the turning of the Moon.

Stefano Arlaud 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. Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it – https://theconversation.com/humans-have-an-internal-lunar-clock-but-light-pollution-is-disrupting-it-266717

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Rowe, Reader in European History, King’s College London

The Napoleonic wars were fought on a bigger scale than any conflict that had gone before. Though concentrated in Europe, their impact was global. They conjure up images of huge battles fought between armies in colourful and flamboyant uniforms. Given all this, it is unsurprising that Napoleonic-era military history still looms large in our cultural imagination.

It is the wider social and cultural effects of those wars, however, that dominates current historical research. This includes the impact of those wars on attitudes towards race.

The National Army Museum in London has recently identified the likely subject of a portrait of a black soldier in its collection as Private Thomas James. Speaking to the Guardian to mark both the identification and restoration of the portrait, curator Anna Lavelle highlighted the British army as a place of racial equality. Meanwhile, the museum’s director, Justin Maciejewski, suggests that the painting underscores the shared sense of purpose historically held by British soldiers when facing common enemies such as Napoleon.

The vast majority of ordinary privates who fought and died in the Napoleonic wars have left no record, irrespective of their ethnicity. This in itself makes the recent identification – though not with a 100% degree of certainty – of the subject of this portrait important. It might be taken as evidence for an argument already made by Napoleonic specialists: that the demands of war provided an opportunity for previously marginalised groups to improve their status.

This applied not only to enslaved men of African heritage, but to other groups including, for example, Jewish people in Central Europe who fought against Napoleon in the armies of Austria and Prussia. Like Irish Catholics in the British armed forces, they and their supporters used their patriotic engagement to justify greater equality in the emancipation debates that followed the end of the Napoleonic wars.

James’s experience was therefore far from unusual. Within the British armed forces of the time, the majority of black men served in the so-called West India Regiments, formed in the 1790s to fight the French in the Caribbean. These men were, in practice, “purchased” by a British government desperate for additional manpower. They served in an environment infamous for its horrendous attrition rates caused by tropical diseases. Whether this process can be heralded as a model of modern diversity and inclusion practices seems doubtful, to say the least.

That said, these black soldiers were by virtue of their military service freed from slavery. While wearing the king’s coat, they were subject to military disciplinary codes that were ostensibly colour-blind, unlike the colonial codes that had previously regulated their lives.

From their perspective, the British military effort in the Americas undoubtedly led to an improvement in status. At the same time, vast investments in naval infrastructure in the Caribbean created new economic opportunities for freed black people – both women and men. These opportunities were especially significant in the islands of that strategically vital region.

There is a further dimension to the portrait of James. The white colour of his uniform deviates from that of most of the regiment, which would have been dark blue. Taken together with the prominently displayed cymbals, this suggests James was part of the military band common to regiments in all the armies that fought the Napoleonic Wars.

Music was a feature not only of ceremonial occasions but an important ingredient to good morale. It even played a role in communications. Black musicians were often prominent in military bands in this period, and not only in the British army.

They were also common in the armies of German states even before the Napoleonic wars – somewhat surprisingly, given that these states, unlike Britain, did not possess any African or Caribbean colonies. The background to this fashion derives from the Ottoman origins of modern military music, and its adoption by European armies during the 18th century. Initially, western armies employed Turkish musicians in these bands, but over time they were replaced by men of African origin.

African musicians were much prized and respected. They added lustre to the regiment and prestige to the colonel. More widely, they fed into a wider societal demand for the “exotic”.

Within Napoleonic-era armies, this was manifested in the undue prominence given to military units that fed Orientalism – including, most famously, the Mamelukes of the Imperial Guard, who served close to the emperor himself, and who appear in almost every Napoleonic-era battle painting. Other examples include the Russian Cossacks, whose attire was so exotic that it inspired innovations in civilian fashion when the Tsarist army occupied Paris after Napoleon’s defeat.

Armies reflect the societies from which they are drawn. And while Napoleonic-era armies provided unusual, if not unique, opportunities for those otherwise on the margins, they also reinforced notions of difference that were fairly common at the time.

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

– ref. What a newly identified portrait of a black Napoleonic soldier reveals about British Army diversity – https://theconversation.com/what-a-newly-identified-portrait-of-a-black-napoleonic-soldier-reveals-about-british-army-diversity-268230