Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dylan Ryan, Lecturer in Mechanical & Energy Engineering, Edinburgh Napier University

The internet is awash with adverts for various portable heaters, with claims that they will heat your house for pennies. Some are marketed as the “Tesla of the heating industry” (despite being nothing to do with Elon Musk’s carmaker), while others claim they can “heat up a house in three minutes”.

It’s an appealing message, particularly during cold snaps when energy bills are high and many households are looking for quick fixes. But are any of these claims remotely true?

The short answer is no. And the reasons why are rooted in some very basic physics.

One key detail often missing from these adverts: almost all electric heaters are already close to 100% efficient. That doesn’t mean they are cheap to run – only that nearly all the electricity they use ends up as heat.

Electric heaters work by passing a current through a wire, which then heats up. That heat is then transferred to the room either by warming the air (distributed with a fan) or by radiating heat directly from a hot surface. Even things that sound like “losses”, such as friction in a fan motor, still end up as heat inside the room.

This means there is no clever design or secret component that can make one plug-in heater fundamentally more efficient than another. Electricity use is almost entirely converted into heat. So when a product claims to heat more while using less electricity, alarm bells should ring.

‘Heating a house in three minutes’ breaks the laws of physics

Some adverts go further, claiming a small portable device can heat an entire house in just a few minutes. This is where the numbers really matter.

Heating a typical home means warming hundreds of cubic metres of air, as well as countering heat losses to the outside. That takes lots of energy. To do it quickly would require tens of kilowatts of power – far more than can be drawn safely from a standard household plug socket.

In practice, most portable heaters are deliberately limited to around 2 kilowatts or less, to avoid overheating wiring and sockets. That’s enough to warm a small room, but nowhere near enough to rapidly heat a whole house. Claims otherwise simply don’t stack up.

What’s actually inside these devices?

Independent reviewers and engineers have tested many of these viral heaters, and are not impressed. In one teardown, electrical engineer and YouTuber Clive Mitchell found that a widely advertised “miracle” heater only produced just 500-800 watts of heat – less than half the output of a standard plug-in heater.

In another case, Mitchell looked at a device so badly built he described it as an “automatic house igniter” (though technically that really would heat up your home in three minutes…). He said it partly in jest, but it is a serious issue: badly made electrical products can pose genuine fire risks, particularly if left running unattended.

This is one reason why consumer groups consistently recommend buying heaters that meet established safety standards, rather than relying on anonymous online brands with big claims and little accountability.

Another internet trend involves using candles or tea lights to heat homes, often putting them inside various contraptions made from flower pots or tin cans. This is both dangerous and ineffective. Fire brigades have repeatedly warned against these setups, which pose obvious fire and carbon monoxide risks.

They are also expensive. A single tea light produces about 35 watts of heat. Even burning continuously, candles deliver heat at a far higher cost per kilowatt hour than electricity – and many times more than gas. Putting a tea light under a flower pot doesn’t change how much energy it releases.

What actually is the best way to heat your home?

Portable electric heaters do have a place. They are useful for short-term, localised heating, such as warming a home office or bedrooom for a few hours. Used carefully, they can be a practical supplement to central heating.

But they are not designed to heat entire homes continuously. Even if you rely on electricity for heating, wall mounted radiators are going to be much better for that. They are wired directly into the mains and can pull more power safely and reliably than you can get from a plugin device.

That said, even the best electric radiator is still expensive to run compared to a gas boiler. This brings us to a broader issue: households aren’t just missing a miracle heater. It’s that energy itself is too expensive.

Future solutions for home heating

Heat pumps are one electric technology that may genuinely change things. They work like a fridge in reverse, extracting heat from the outside air and pumping it into your home.

Because they move heat rather than generate it directly, a heat pump can move more heat than it takes electricity to operate. On average an air source heat pump will provide 2.7 kilowatts of heat for every kilowatt-hour of electricity expended. This works out to about a third of the carbon emissions of a gas boiler.

The downside is cost and complexity. Heat pumps are expensive to install and work best in homes that are already well-insulated. They’re not ideal for everyone, but they are one of the few technologies that genuinely offer long-term savings.

Wood burning stoves are another option, but there can be serious issues with air pollution. The price is highly variable and it is generally more expensive than regular heating.

Of course, the whole reason such adverts and social media trends pop up around now is because it’s cold and people are looking for solutions to heat their homes. But unfortunately, there aren’t any quick fixes.

The only real solutions are slower and unglamorous: better insulation, more efficient heating, and reforms to lower the cost of energy itself.

If a heater claims it can warm your whole home for pennies, it’s almost certainly too good to be true. Even the best heater cannot rewrite the rules of physics.

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

– ref. Can ‘miracle’ heaters really warm your home for pennies? The physics says no – https://theconversation.com/can-miracle-heaters-really-warm-your-home-for-pennies-the-physics-says-no-271818

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julie Posetti, Director of the Information Integrity Initiative, a project of TheNerve/Professor of Journalism, Chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy, City St George’s, University of London

The era of AI-assisted online violence is no longer looming. It has arrived. And it is reshaping the threat landscape for women who work in the public sphere around the world.

Our newly published report commissioned by UN Women offers early, urgent evidence indicating that generative AI is already being used to silence and harass women whose voices are vital to the preservation of democracy.

This includes journalists exposing corruption, activists mobilising voters and the human rights defenders working on the frontline of efforts to stall democratic backsliding.

Based on a global survey of women human rights defenders, activists, journalists and other public communicators from 119 countries, our research shows the extent to which generative AI is being weaponised to produce abusive content – in a multitude of forms – at scale.

We surveyed 641 women in five languages (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish). The surveys were disseminated via the trusted networks of UN Women, Unesco, the International Center for Journalists and a panel of 22 expert advisers representing intergovernmental organisations, the legal fraternity, civil society organisations, industry and academia.

According to our analysis, nearly one in four (24%) of the 70% of respondents who reported experiencing online violence in the course of their work identified abuse that was generated or amplified by AI tools. In the report, we define online violence as any act involving digital tools which results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, psychological, social, political or economic harm, or other infringements of rights and freedoms.

But the incidence is not evenly distributed across professions. Women who identify as writers or other public communicators, such as social media influencers, reported the highest exposure to AI-assisted online violence at 30.3%. Women human rights defenders and activists followed closely at 28.2%. Women journalists and media workers reported a still alarming 19.4% exposure rate.

Since the public launch of free, widely accessible generative AI tools such as ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the barriers to entry and cost of producing sexually explicit deepfake videos, gendered disinformation, and other forms of gender-based online violence have been significantly reduced. Meanwhile, the speed of distribution has intensified.

The result is a digital landscape in which harmful, misogynistic content can be generated rapidly by anyone with a smart phone and access to a generative AI chatbot. Social media algorithms, meanwhile, are tuned to boost the reach of the hateful and abusive material, which then proliferates. And it can generate considerable personal, political and often financial gains for the perpetrators and facilitators, including technology companies.

Meanwhile, recent research highlights AI both as a driver of disinformation and as a potential solution, powering synthetic content detection systems and counter-measures. But there’s limited evidence of how effective these detection tools are.

Many jurisdictions also still lack clear legal frameworks that address deepfake abuse and other harms enabled by AI-generated media, such as financial scams and digital impersonation. This is especially the case when the attack is gendered, rather than purely political or financial. This is due to the inherently nuanced and often insidious nature of misogynistic hate speech, along with the evident indifference of lawmakers to women’s suffering.

Our findings underscore an urgent two-fold challenge. There’s a desperate need for stronger tools to identify, monitor, report and repel AI-assisted attacks. And legal and regulatory mechanisms must be established that require platforms and AI developers to prevent their technologies from being deployed to undermine women’s rights.

When online abuse leads to ‘real-world’ attacks

We can’t treat these AI-related findings as isolated statistics. They exist amid broadening online violence against women in public life. They are also situated within a wider and deeply unsettling pattern – the vanishing boundary between online violence and offline harm.

Four in ten (40.9%) women we surveyed reported experiencing offline attacks, abuse or harassment that they linked to online violence. This includes physical assault, stalking, swatting and verbal harassment. The data confirms what survivors have been telling us for years: digital violence is not “virtual” at all. In fact, it is often only the first act in a cycle of escalating harm.

For women journalists, the trend is especially stark. In a comparable 2020 survey, 20% of respondents reported experiencing offline attacks associated with online violence. But five years later, that figure has more than doubled to 42%. This dangerous trajectory should be a wake-up call for news organisations, governments and big tech companies alike.

When online violence becomes a pathway to physical intimidation, the chilling effect extends far beyond individual targets. It becomes a structural threat to freedom of expression and democracy.

In the context of rising authoritarianism, where online violence and networked misogyny are typical features of the playbook for rolling back democracy, the role of politicians in perpetrating online violence cannot be ignored. In the 2020 Unesco-published survey of women journalists, 37% of respondents identified politicians and public office holders as the most common offenders.

The situation has only deteriorated since 2020, with the evolution of a continuum of violence against women in the public sphere. Offline abuse, such as politicians and pubic office holders targeting female journalists during media conferences, can trigger an escalation of online violence that, in turn, can exacerbate offline harm.

This cycle has been documented all over the world, in the stories of notable women journalists like Maria Ressa in the Philippines, Rana Ayyub in India and the assassinated Maltese investigative jouralist Daphne Caruana Galizia. These women bravely spoke truth to power and were targeted by their respective governments – online and offline – as a result.

The evidence of abuse against women in public life we have uncovered during our research signals a need for more creative technological interventions employing the principles of “human rights by design”. These are safeguards recommended by a range of international organisations which build in protections for human rights at every stage of AI design. It also signals the need for stronger and more proactive legal and policy responses, greater platform accountability, political responsibility, and better safety and support systems for women in public life.

Julie Posetti is the Director of the Information Integrity Initiative, a project of TheNerve, the digital forensics lab run by the Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, which is a partner associated with the UN Women study.

This research was funded by the EU-UN Women ACT to End Violence against Women programme, and the report was co-authored by Dr. Pauline Renaud, Nermine Aboulez and Nabeelah Shabbir.

Kaylee Williams and Lea Hellmueller 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. AI tools are being used to subject women in public life to online violence – https://theconversation.com/ai-tools-are-being-used-to-subject-women-in-public-life-to-online-violence-271703

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

The festive movie season is upon us, and one of my perennial favourites is Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I will die on this hill: it is better than the original. But rewatching it as an adult raises an awkward question. How on earth did the Wet Bandits survive the first film at all, let alone escape without lasting injuries?

Ten-year-old Kevin McCallister, the boy left home alone, sets up traps that are played for laughs, but many involve levels of force that would be catastrophic in real life. A 100lb (45kg) bag of cement to the head, bricks dropped from height, or heavy tools swung at the face are not things a human body can simply shrug off. High-impact trauma to the head and neck rarely ends well.

To understand why, it helps to know a little about skull anatomy. The skull has a protective “vault” that encases the brain, while the bones of the face contain hollow spaces called sinuses. These spaces reduce the weight of the skull but also act as a biological crumple zone, helping to absorb force and protect the brain during impacts. But that protection has limits.

A rough calculation of the forces involved when a 100lb bag of cement strikes the head suggests instant fatal injury. The neck simply cannot absorb that level of force. To put that in perspective, research shows that the cervical spine suffers severe damage above about 1,000 newtons of force. A 100lb (around 45kg) cement bag already exerts roughly 440 newtons under its own weight, and when falling, it decelerates over a very short distance on impact.

While the exact force depends on the height of the fall and how quickly the bag comes to a stop, even conservative assumptions place the impact well above 1,000 newtons, easily exceeding thresholds for catastrophic neck injury.

Beyond that, there is a high risk of brain herniation, where swollen brain tissue is forced into spaces it does not belong. This can compress areas that control breathing and movement, often leading to coma and death.

Head injuries are only part of the problem. Many of Kevin’s traps would also place enormous stress on the chest and major blood vessels. Falling forward from a height, being crushed by heavy objects, or being struck in the torso can cause severe internal injuries. These forces are commonly seen in high-speed, head-on car crashes. In extreme cases, the impact can rupture the aorta, the body’s main artery, which is almost always fatal.

Crush injuries elsewhere in the body can have serious and life-changing consequences. Even if they are not immediately deadly, they can cause internal bleeding that worsens over hours or days. Broken ribs, for example, can puncture the liver, kidneys or spleen, allowing blood to leak slowly into the abdomen. Damage to soft internal organs can also lead to infection, organ failure, or delayed death, depending on the severity.

Then there are the less obviously lethal moments. When Marv crashes into a shelf stacked with paint tins and the shelf falls on him, the impact alone could cause serious internal injury. And paint splashed into the eyes could cause chemical burns and blindness.

Simple slips and falls are not harmless either. The bones at the back of the skull are only about 6–7mm thick. A hard blow here can cause bleeding inside the skull. These brain bleeds do not always show symptoms immediately and may worsen over hours or days after what seemed like a minor bump.

Electricity is another recurring gag that would be anything but funny in reality. When Marv grabs the taps attached to an arc welder, he is exposed to electrical current that causes his muscles to contract uncontrollably. This is why people who touch live electrical sources often cannot let go. The current overrides the body’s normal nerve signals. Prolonged exposure increases the risk of disrupting the heart’s normal rhythm, potentially triggering cardiac arrest.

Despite what cartoons suggest, electricity does not make the skeleton visible – as we see happen to Marv. There is no X-ray radiation involved. To expose bone, you would need extremely high-voltage current, causing fourth-degree burns, which destroy skin, muscle and bone.

Piercing injuries also feature heavily. A nail through the foot is not just painful. It can damage nerves and soft tissues, fracture bones, and introduce bacteria deep into the wound. This raises the risk of serious infection, including tetanus.

Finally, there is Harry’s infamous blowtorch scene. Being set alight for 22 seconds is more than enough time to cause permanent nerve damage, potentially destroying pain sensation altogether. While scalp skin is among the thickest on the body, it has relatively little cushioning underneath. This makes the underlying tissue and bone more vulnerable to deep burns, reaching third or even fourth degree severity, which can be lethal.

Add combustible kerosene to the mix and the risks escalate further. Exposure is linked to kidney damage, heart problems, central nervous system depression and serious respiratory issues.

In short, Harry and Marv are walking medical impossibilities. Surviving a second round of Kevin McCallister’s festive booby traps would require extraordinary luck, immediate trauma care, and months of rehabilitation. Even if they appeared outwardly fine, the internal damage would probably be devastating. Perhaps those lingering injuries explain why the Wet Bandits never made it back for another sequel.

Adam Taylor 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. Home Alone’s ‘Wet Bandits’ are medical miracles – https://theconversation.com/home-alones-wet-bandits-are-medical-miracles-271538

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Harriet Fletcher, Lecturer in Media and Communication, Anglia Ruskin University

Based on the bestselling novel by Freida McFadden, The Housemaid is a dark, sexy and satisfying thriller with plenty of twists to enjoy along the way.

Millie (Sydney Sweeney) applies for a job as a housemaid for the wealthy Winchester family. We first meet her as she pulls up to the grand Winchester house in her run-down car – a gated mansion with echoes of the sinister and mysterious Manderley in Hitchcock’s Rebecca. What secrets might be contained behind these gates? Millie is about to find out.

She is interviewed by Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), an eccentric and over-familiar housewife who is so taken with Millie that she immediately offers her the job on a live-in basis. An alarmingly artificial family portrait looms large in this early scene, suggesting that the Waspy Winchesters are more artist’s impression than reality.

Millie is given a bedroom in the attic – a strange place to lodge a housemaid, considering the enormity and grandeur of the Winchester mansion. The attic is stark, claustrophobic and loaded with gothic literary connotations that the story knowingly leans into.

Also part of the Winchester household is Nina’s charming and sensitive husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and their cold, and at times creepy, daughter Cecelia (Indiana Elle). Sklenar expertly plays all the right notes as Andrew – the heartthrob husband, doting dad and even Millie’s patient confidant, routinely apologising for his wife’s erratic behaviour.

He grows even more compelling as the film gains momentum. Directed by Paul Feig of Bridesmaids and Spy fame, The Housemaid is a thriller tinged with comedy. Its best, darkly funny moments are often delivered by Sklenar in climactic scenes where his lines land with perfect timing.

Cecelia, meanwhile, is an archetypal creepy kid, often found tinkering with a rickety old doll’s house that uncannily resembles the Winchester mansion, or spouting cryptic and ominous messages. That said, she serves her purpose of dropping narrative breadcrumbs as we piece together the family’s secrets.

Sweeney is adept at portraying the enigmatic housemaid, Millie. Early on, Millie confesses to us via voice-over that she has lied on her resume: she is under-qualified, sleeps in her car and washes in public restrooms.

She is desperate to hold on to this job, no matter what. Sweeney excels in playing a character who seems broken and desperate, without veering into melodrama. Even in the most high-stakes moments, there is a captivating sense of control and subtlety to her performance.

Seyfried’s troubled housewife is the foil to Sweeney’s mysterious housemaid. It’s here that Seyfried’s notably expressive style of acting comes powerfully into play. Excessively warm but with sharp edges, Nina too is something of an enigma. From her interactions with so-called friends – a shallow coterie of Stepford-wife types who gossip about her the moment she leaves the room – we learn that Nina’s life is far from perfect.

The Housemaid is an adaptation of McFadden’s hugely successful novel. She has been dubbed the “queen of crime fiction” on BookTok (the TikTok subculture dedicated to discussing fiction) due to the immense popularity of her work among influencers.

As this origin story suggests, The Housemaid is an unapologetic crowd pleaser. It doesn’t reach the intellectual heights of a thriller like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which straddles genre and literary fiction. In fact, when I asked a friend why she’d read the novel, she said she’d Googled “what’s the easiest book to read?”

The Housemaid has less to say than Gone Girl about the complexity of gender roles and relationship dynamics, and I’d be surprised if any of the performances receive the kind of critical acclaim Rosamund Pike earned for her iconic turn in David Fincher’s adaptation. But let’s be clear: The Housemaid is a hell of a good time at the cinema.

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Harriet Fletcher 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 Housemaid: this dark, sexy thriller is a seriously satisfying watch – https://theconversation.com/the-housemaid-this-dark-sexy-thriller-is-a-seriously-satisfying-watch-272116

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Wasim Ahmed, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Hull

A criminal court recently pored over the social media posts of the ex-footballer Joey Barton and found them to be “grossly offensive”. So much so that he was handed a suspended prison sentence, ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work in the community and pay more than £20,000 in costs.

We also examined Barton’s comments on female footballers and pundits as part of our research into harmful online rhetoric against women and girls in sport.

Our study found that his posts not only targeted individual women – including Mary Earps, Eni Aluko, Lucy Ward and Ava Easdon – but also alleged that it fuelled a wider culture of online hostility toward female athletes.

This is part of a digital culture which normalises misogyny, which then encourages online violence against women. They help to legitimise harmful narratives that might otherwise remain at the fringes of online discourse and extremes of society.

When people with significant reach engage in abusive or inflammatory commentary, their posts act as catalysts that shape polarised and hostile digital environments.

During our research we noticed that this can often occur with the symbolic use of emojis, using seemingly trivial icons as coded tools of intimidation and ridicule. In the extensive online abuse aimed at female athletes and pundits, we found combinations of weapon emojis such as 🗡️ (knife), 🔫 (gun), or 💣 (bomb) which were often paired with female-identifying emojis or gendered slurs to imply threats or intimidation.

We also found animal emojis like 🐷 (pig), 🐽 (pig snout), or 🐕 (dog) used to dehumanise women. There were sexualised emojis such as 🍑 (buttocks), 🍆 (phallic symbol), or 👅 (tongue) deployed alongside derogatory comments to humiliate or objectify them.

These emojis are often used to mask hostility as humour, making abusive remarks appear playful, despite inflicting real harm. They were also employed as a strategic tool for evading moderation systems, meaning that they can avoid having their comments and messages removed.

Misogyny influencers

Digital violence functions as a mechanism of professional exclusion and economic sabotage. When female pundits are bombarded with threats of rape and death simply for analysing a football match, the goal of the abuse is clear: to silence them and drive them out of the industry.

This creates a violent effect where aspiring female journalists may self-censor or abandon their careers to avoid becoming the next target of a misogynistic pile-on.

And while celebrities can themselves be the victims of online abuse, our research shows that they can also use their status to incite hate. Networked misogyny and the mass circulation of anti-women and anti-feminist sentiments online have been perpetuated by popular online figures such as Barton, creating a new form of influencer known as “misogyny influencers”.

These influencers wield disproportionate cultural power. And when they engage in misogynistic or aggressive rhetoric, they reinforce and embolden harmful norms in online communities. Their influence can mobilise thousands of users and create hostile environments that women in sport must navigate daily.

For our research shows that when public figures attack women online, their followers often replicate and escalate the abuse. This turns personal hostility into a much broader campaign of misogyny.

Barton’s conviction – which he is appealing – demonstrates that status or celebrity does not shield individuals from responsibility when their words could incite hate. It affirms that online violence carries consequences and that public figures who weaponise their influence to target women can no longer assume impunity.

However, we must also confront a paradoxical reality. For someone like Barton, a suspended sentence may not be a deterrent, but a marketing asset. In the “manosphere” economy, legal censure often validates the influencer’s status as an anti-establishment truth-teller being “silenced” by the state.

By avoiding immediate jail time, Barton could spin this verdict to his supporters as a battle scar in a “war on free speech”. This allows him to use the controversy to his advantage, framing himself as a martyr while facing minimal restrictions on his liberty.

It is evident that online abuse is a persistent and highly significant societal issue that requires attention. It should be recognised as a direct threat to the safety of recipients and those exposed to such violence through online platforms.

Protecting athletes will require stronger policies, clearer sanctions for repeat offender and support for those targeted. Addressing this growing threat is essential if women and girls are to participate safely and fearlessly in sport.

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 figures like Joey Barton could fuel a culture of online hostility toward female athletes – new research – https://theconversation.com/how-figures-like-joey-barton-could-fuel-a-culture-of-online-hostility-toward-female-athletes-new-research-271878

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Jones, Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience at Aston Business School, Aston University

For many families at Christmas, the one time of year when everyone finally ends up in the same room, suggesting a game is often the best strategic move for a fun evening. At its best, this sparks an hour of genuine connection. At its worst, it revives old rivalries faster than you can say “draw four” or break into your favourite victory dance.

Games endure at Christmas because they offer structure. They give people a shared activity that’s not work or chores. Psychologists have long noted that shared play strengthens social bonds through joint attention, where people’s focus aligns around a single task. Research also shows that play can reduce stress and support wellbeing by increasing positive emotion and laughter, which are key ingredients in social bonding.

Play allows families to step outside their usual roles for a while. A normally serious parent might relax into silliness. A teenager might surprise everyone with a clever strategic move. These small shifts make interaction feel new again during a season when emotional expectations are high.

But the choice of game matters. Some games draw people closer. Others reveal how differently we communicate. And a few are almost scientifically engineered to start arguments. With that in mind, here are five psychologically informed recommendations to help you choose the right kind of festive fun.

1. Best for communication skills: Codenames

Codenames looks simple. In the game two teams, red and blue, compete to describe their team’s words on a 5×5 grid of tiles with one on each space such as “disease”, “Germany” or “carrot”. Each team has one spymaster who gives a clue to help their teammates guess the right words. The aim of the game is to be the first team to guess all of your words and to avoid incorrectly guessing the one that represents the assassin, which automatically ends the game.

The challenge for the spymaster is balancing breadth and precision in the clues. They can only use one word as a descriptor, and the number of tiles it refers to. For example, if it were “carrot” they could say “orange” and would add “three” if there were three words on the grid it could refer to. This makes it a great example of how humans actually communicate.

Psychologists call this pragmatics, the study of how we extract meaning beyond literal wording. It connects to what are known as “Gricean maxims*, which describe how people use shared assumptions to interpret one another.

When Codenames goes smoothly, you can feel a group forming a shared mental model. When it does not, it shows how differently people process the same information.

2. Best for strengthening family bonds: Telestrations

Telestrations is a drawing-based game for four to eight players. It’s a bit like pictionary meets telephone where each player is given a secret word which they have to draw. That drawing is then passed on to the player on their left who has to guess the word. That word is then passed on again to the next player who draws what they think it is and so on. By the time this has gone around the group the starting word has usually transformed into something joyfully off track.

This harmless confusion is exactly why it brings people together. Research shows that shared laughter acts as social glue. The benign violation theory of humour explains why playful misunderstandings are funny rather than stressful, because they break expectations without causing harm.

Telestrations turns mistakes into a collective in joke, reducing self-consciousness and encouraging relaxed, positive connection.

3. Best for emotional regulation: Uno

A classic game in which players compete to rid themselves of all their cards but face setbacks depending on what pther players do. Uno’s rapid reversals, colour changes and Draw Four cards create sudden shifts in advantage. Even though it is all chance, it can feel personal.

This taps into well studied psychological processes. People are highly sensitive to fairness, and research on loss aversion shows we react more strongly to setbacks than gains. Studies on emotional regulation also suggest that unpredictable rewards and punishments increase frustration.

Uno creates exactly this environment. It is why the game is exciting and why it also reveals how differently people handle stress and mild competition.

4. Best for teamwork and cooperation: Pandemic

Pandemic asks players to work together to stop fictitious global diseases from spreading. Each player has a unique role and success depends on coordinated planning.

This aligns with research on collective efficacy, the belief that a group can achieve more together than alone. It also demonstrates shared mental models, where teams perform better when they hold a common understanding of the task and each other’s strengths.

Pandemic offers a compact example of distributed cognition, the idea that problem solving improves when thinking is shared across people and tools.

5. Best for non-verbal attunement: The Mind

The Mind removes spoken communication entirely. A cooperative game where two to four players try to lay numbered cards in ascending order (one to 100) without talking, gesturing or planning. The only cue is timing.

This creates a striking demonstration of social entrainment, the process by which people unconsciously synchronise with one another. Research on non-verbal communication shows that humans continually attune to each other, even in silence.

The Mind turns that process into a game. When a group finds the rhythm, it almost feels like mind reading. When they do not, it becomes an entertaining reminder of how easily our internal timing falls out of sync.

Game, set and reconnect

In the end, the game itself matters less than what it makes possible. Christmas can be emotionally complicated, yet play offers a simple way to reconnect, laugh together and see one another differently for an hour.

Whether you want teamwork, clear communication or harmless chaos, the right game creates a small pocket of shared space. And that might be the most valuable gift on the table.

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Paul Jones 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. Five family Christmas games that reveal how we think, communicate and connect – https://theconversation.com/five-family-christmas-games-that-reveal-how-we-think-communicate-and-connect-271984

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Quynh Hoang, Lecturer in Marketing and Consumption, Department of Marketing and Strategy, University of Leicester

Switching off can be surprisingly expensive. Much like the smoking cessation boom of the 1990s, the digital detox business – spanning hardware, apps, telecoms, workplace wellness providers, digital “wellbeing suites” and tourism – is now a global industry in its own right.

People are increasingly willing to pay to escape the technology they feel trapped by. The global digital detox market is currently valued at around US$2.7 billion (£2bn), and forecast to double in size by 2033.

Hardware manufacturers such as Light Phone, Punkt, Wisephone and Nokia sell minimalist “dumb phones” at premium prices, while subscription-based website blockers such as Freedom, Forest, Offtime and RescueTime have turned restraint into a lucrative revenue stream.

Wellness tourism operators have capitalised too: tech-free travel company Unplugged recently expanded to 45 phone-free cabins across the UK and Spain, marketing disconnection as a high-value experience.

However, my new research, with colleagues at Lancaster University, suggests this commercialised form of abstinence rarely extinguishes digital cravings – instead merely acting as a temporary pause.

We carried out a 12-month netnography focusing on the NoSurf Reddit community of people interested in increasing their productivity, plus 21 in-depth interviews (conducted remotely) with participants living in different countries. We found that rather than actively confronting their habits, participants often reported outsourcing self-discipline to blocker apps, timed lockboxes and minimalist phones.

Joan*, a NoSurf participant, explained how she relies on app-blocking software not to bolster her self-control, but to negate the need for it entirely. “To me, it’s less about using willpower, which is a precious resource … and more about removing the need to exert willpower in the first place.”

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek defines this kind of behaviour – delegating the work of self-regulation to a market product – as “interpassivity”. This produces what he calls “false activity”: people thinking they are addressing a problem by engaging with consumer solutions that actually leave their underlying patterns unchanged.

Several of our detoxing participants described a cycle in which each relapse prompted them to try yet another tool, entrenching their dependency on the commercial ecosystem. Sophia, on the other hand, just wished for a return to “dumb phones with the full keyboard again, like they had in 2008”, adding: “I would use one of those for the rest of my life if I could.”

Individualised digital detox interventions have been found to produce mixed and often short-lived effects. Participants in our study described short breaks in which they reduced activity briefly before resuming familiar patterns.

Many users engaged in what sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls “oases of deceleration” – temporary slowdowns intended not to quit but recover from overload. Like a pitstop, the digital detox offered them momentary relief while ultimately enabling a swift return to screens, often at similar or higher levels of engagement than before.

Community-wide detox initiatives

While the commercialisation of digital detox is often portrayed as a western trend, the Asia-Pacific region is the world’s fastest-growing market for these goods and services. But in Asia, we also see some examples of community- or country-level, non-commercial responses to the problem of digital overload.

In central Japan, Toyoake has introduced the country’s first city-wide guidance on smartphone use. Families are encouraged to set shared rules, including children stopping device use after 9pm. This reframes digital restraint as a community practice, not a test of individual willpower.

In western India, the 15,000 residents of Vadgaon are asked to practise a nightly, 90-minute digital switch-off. Phones and TVs go dark at 7pm, after which many of the villagers gather outdoors. What began during the pandemic is now a ritual that shows healthy tech habits can be easier together than alone.

And in August 2025, South Korea – one of the world’s most connected countries – passed a new law banning smartphone use in school classrooms from next March, adding to the countries around the world with such a rule. A similar policy in the Netherlands was found to have improved focus among students.

The commercial detox industry thrives because personal solutions are easy to sell, while systemic ones are much harder to implement. In other areas ranging from gambling addiction to obesity, policies often focus on personal behaviour such as self-regulation or individual choice, rather than addressing the structural forces and powerful lobbies that can perpetuate harm.

How to avoid detox industry traps

To address the problem of digital overload, I believe tech firms need to move beyond cosmetic “digital wellbeing” features that merely snooze distractions, and take proper responsibility for the smartphone technologies that offer coercive engagement by default. Governments, meanwhile, can learn from initiatives in Asia and elsewhere that pair communal support with enforced rules around digital restraint.

At the same time, if you’re considering a digital detox yourself, here are some suggestions for how to reduce the chances of getting caught in a commercial detox loop.

1. Don’t delegate your agency

Be wary of tools that promise to do the work for you. While you may think you’re solving the problem this way, your underlying habits are likely to remain unchanged.

2. Beware content rebound

We found that digital detoxers often seek real experiences like going outdoors and “touching grass” – but then feel pulled to translate them back into posts, photos and updates.

3. Seek solidarity, not products

Like the villagers of Vadgaon, try to align your disconnection with other people’s. It’s harder to scroll when everyone else has agreed to stop.

4. Reclaim boredom

We often detox to be more “productive” – but try embracing boredom instead. As the philosopher Martin Heidegger has noted, profound boredom is a space where reflection becomes possible. And that can be very useful indeed.

*Names of research participants have been changed to protect their privacy.

Quynh Hoang 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. Digital detox: how to switch off without paying the price – new research – https://theconversation.com/digital-detox-how-to-switch-off-without-paying-the-price-new-research-272037

Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Beale, Senior Lecturer in Sport Psychology, University of East London

Across the UK and far beyond, a quiet shift in midlife exercise is underway. A decade ago, the cultural image of midlife fitness was the Lycra-clad cyclist speeding along suburban roads. Now, a different scene has emerged: women in hats and tow-floats stepping into freezing lakes at dawn – especially through the winter.

Outdoor swimming participation has risen sharply worldwide, and women make up a striking proportion of regular year-round swimmers. To many observers, this seems counterintuitive. Why would busy women in midlife choose cold water as their weekly reset?

A new qualitative study published in the European Journal of Ecopsychology set out to understand what this practice does for wellbeing – not just physically, but psychologically. Rather than simply asking swimmers how they feel, the research examined “flourishing”. This is a term from positive psychology that describes a sense of thriving. It includes positive relationships, confidence, vitality, emotional balance and coping with challenges.

Nine women aged 39 to 59 who swim year-round at a monitored lake in south London took part in in-depth interviews. These conversations were led by a female interviewer who became familiar with the swimming setting – someone who spent time at the lake, observed routines, and created a space where women felt comfortable talking about personal themes that are often hidden.

What emerged was a detailed picture of how nature based outdoor swimming becomes woven into identity, social life and emotional resources. Several women contrasted the lake with indoor pools – chlorine, noise and confinement made some feel uncomfortable, while the lake felt expansive and calming. They described the atmosphere as “low-key”, “homely” and grounded in quiet mutual support rather than competition.

Flourishing showed up in many ways. Women spoke of uplifting emotion after swimming and a calmer outlook that stayed with them long after leaving the water. Some felt better able to face demanding days. Strong social bonds formed too, with swimmers talking about a caring female community built around shared routines.

Nature played an important role. The lake environment – light on water, wildlife, weather and seasons – was part of the experience, not decoration. Immersion helped women feel like “physical, natural beings”, suggesting that being in nature helped them connect with themselves differently.

Safety mattered. Lifeguards, water-quality checks and visibility gear created conditions where women could come alone and still feel secure – enabling regular participation without fears that might deter them elsewhere.

One of the most surprising findings surfaced without prompting: menopause.

Participants repeatedly linked open-water swimming with easing symptoms or navigating emotional changes at midlife. This is the first scientific study to show women themselves spontaneously connecting cold lake swimming with relief during menopause – something not widely reported in wellbeing research.

Opportunity and equality

The sample – white, middle-class women – reflects a common pattern in outdoor swimming communities internationally. This highlights opportunity and inequality: access to safe places to swim, time and equipment often depend on geography and resources.

Later exploratory work from the same research group has begun examining how Black women experience outdoor exercise differently, where belonging, safety and visibility can be harder to achieve.

Taken together, these findings help explain why so many middle-aged women are flocking to cold lakes. Outdoor swimming offers challenge, community, soothing immersion, confidence, nature connection and, unexpectedly, support during menopause.

Instead of being defined by deficit or decline, the women in this study through open-water swimming framed midlife as a period of growth, connection and resilience.

As open-water swimming continues to rise, from New Zealand’s harbours to Scandinavian fjords, the stories emerging from this London lake shed light on why women keep stepping into icy water: not just to exercise, but to flourish.

This article draws on research conducted with co-researcher JJ Fisher, who led participant interviews. The author has also previously published research on wellbeing among middle-aged recreational cyclists, indirectly referenced here.

– ref. How open-water swimming can transform midlife wellbeing – new research – https://theconversation.com/how-open-water-swimming-can-transform-midlife-wellbeing-new-research-271589

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thomas White, Lecturer in China and Sustainable Development, King’s College London

Dust storms regularly affect northern China, including its capital Beijing. In recent years, Chinese scientists and officials have traced the source of the dust storms to its neighbour Mongolia.

Much of the dust over Beijing in the spring of 2023, for example, originated from parts of Mongolia, seemingly driven by the warming and drying of the climate in the region.

Mongolia’s environment has come to be seen as China’s problem. Chinese netizens have blamed Mongolia’s herders and miners for the exploitation of natural resources and environmental destruction.

In pointing the finger at Mongolians, they ignore the role that Chinese demand for Mongolian resources plays in Mongolia’s environmental problems. In the south of Mongolia, it is dust churned up by mining trucks carrying coal to China on unpaved roads that locals are concerned about.

In August 2026, a major UN conference will be held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital, on the subject of tackling desertification. According to the Mongolian organisers of the conference, the country is one of the most severely affected by this process, whereby fertile land becomes like a desert and vegetation disappears, with almost 77% of its land now classified as degraded.

In recent years, China has sought to export its own expertise in preventing and tackling desertification to Mongolia, and this conference will provide a platform for China to showcase its global leadership on tackling this phenomenon.

Questions remain, however, about how Chinese anti-desertification measures might work within Mongolia. In China, for instance, these measures have often targeted herders, while in Mongolia, nomadic herding is central to ideas of national identity.

In the spring of 2023, China was hit by a series of unexpectedly severe dust storms. Vulnerable residents of Beijing were told to remain inside their homes as the sky turned an apocalyptic orange.

Dust storms like these originate from dry bare soil exposed to seasonal winds in semi-arid regions, often hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

Increasing dust emissions are linked to climate change, reducing rainfall and increasing temperature, and to desertification. Land degradation due to poor management practices exposes bare soil, as well as leading to the expansion of huge areas of “sand seas”, which kick up dust.

In recent decades, China has adopted a series of measures within its own borders in an attempt to prevent desertification. Notable among these has been the “great green wall”, initiated in 1978, which seeks to constrain the many deserts and sand seas in the north, north-east and north-west of the country by stabilising the shifting sand with extensive tree-planting. These also act as windbreaks.

Building a relationship?

In 2023, the China-Mongolia desertification prevention and control centre was established in Ulaanbaatar. At a meeting between China’s president Xi Jinping and his Mongolian counterpart Khürelsükh Ukhnaa, Xi pledged support for Mongolia’s “billion tree movement”. This initiative aims to plant that number of trees across the country by 2030.

Cooperation with Mongolia has also offered China an opportunity to demonstrate its expertise in desertification control techniques outside its borders.

Besides using traditional tree-planting and straw checkerboard sand barriers, Chinese engineers have developed techniques for immobilising sand dunes, as well as significant expertise in steel and concrete sand fence designs – and increasingly, in the installation of extensive solar panel farms, including novel vertical panels that also act as wind breaks. However, stopping sand dunes at the desert’s edge doesn’t necessarily prevent dust blowing off the soil in sparsely vegetated semi-arid land.

More broadly, China’s efforts to control desertification within its borders have targeted the livelihoods of herders, who are often from one of China’s ethnic minorities.

Official narratives have blamed herders for desertification, claiming they mismanage rangelands by accumulating excessive numbers of livestock. China’s top-down, state-led environmental plan has seen herders resettled away from the grasslands in a policy known as “ecological migration”. Those who remain have often been subjected to grazing bans or strict limits on the number of animals they can keep.

These policies are based on the privatisation of grassland use, often accompanied by the erection of fencing. This has severely reduced the mobility of herders. Some researchers suggest it is, in fact, this privatisation of land that is primarily responsible for the degradation of China’s grasslands.

It increases localised grazing pressure by preventing the herders and their livestock moving around. Enclosing large tracts of grassland to be turned into forests or solar farms further reduces the land available to herders.

So will China’s model of desertification prevention and control be exported to its neighbours? A recent headline in the South China Morning Post describes the possible expansion of China’s great green wall into Mongolia. Further afield, China has been a model for a similar project in Africa.

The idea of a Chinese great wall, however “green”, expanding into Mongolia would be unpalatable to many Mongolians, because of their deep anxieties over China’s territorial ambitions.

Official announcements from China talk instead of the joint construction of an “ecological security barrier” on the Mongolian plateau, which straddles the border between the two countries.

Unlike China, Mongolia’s grasslands remain largely unfenced. The country is proud of its nomadic heritage, and the kind of large-scale fencing of rangelands and livestock reduction programmes that have been seen in China would be highly contentious in democratic Mongolia.

For now, cooperation remains confined to small, isolated “demonstration zones”, scientific exchange, and support for Mongolia’s own billion-tree movement – which, not surprisingly perhaps, makes no reference to walls.

The upcoming UN conference in Mongolia will take place during the UN’s International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. It remains to be seen how China’s environmental diplomacy there engages with the growing international recognition of the positive role that herders can play in fostering biodiversity, and in helping prevent grasslands becoming deserts.

Thomas White receives funding from UKRI (ESRC) (ES/W005433/1).

Andreas Baas has held a 2025 President’s International Fellowship (PIFI) with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Han Cheng 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. China and Mongolia are battling to control massive dust storms – https://theconversation.com/china-and-mongolia-are-battling-to-control-massive-dust-storms-267585

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Spence, President & Provost, UCL

Editor’s note: The Conversation’s operation in the UK is based at UCL in London, where around half of the 25-strong editorial team have desks. It is a physical representation of our integrated position within the institution and the UK Higher Education sector.

We were founded in the UK in 2013, to channel research-based knowledge to the wider public. More than 70 UK institutions are now members of the project, along with 13 worldwide. That means we’re keenly aware of the challenges facing the sector, as well as the incredible value it brings to society as a whole. Here, Michael Spence, President & Provost of UCL, writes about the necessity for higher education institutions to engage with their communities, and universities’ role in national and local life.

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UK universities are rightly respected around the world for their academic rigour, openness, and ingenuity. I’m proud of UCL’s close connection with The Conversation, which showcases this expertise daily.

As someone who has worked within this remarkable higher education sector for many years, I know how tempting it is to leap to its defence when it is criticised. However, there are moments when it is important to listen. With increasing dissatisfaction in institutions around the Western world, now is one of them. In doing so, we must be careful not to dismiss criticism or to exaggerate the sense of public dissatisfaction. We must meet the public where they are.

That’s why I was glad that UCL Policy Lab with More in Common, through a series of polls and focus group discussions, recently chose to look closely at how the public sees the role and value of universities today. Their work finds that the British public still hold a deep affection for our universities – indeed they remain a source of national, local and personal pride.

Around 60% of the public see universities as a benefit to the nation, a similar number see them as a local asset. Where many institutions are perceived to be fractured or in decline, universities stand out: globally respected yet deeply embedded in their communities.

In these turbulent times maintaining this trust is far from guaranteed. The report also makes clear where there is growing concern and division over the benefit and role of universities. This includes on the perception that some degrees do not prepare students for the workplace and the finding that only around half of the population say they are aware universities carry out research.

Yet the most striking finding of the report, and the one that should give us most pause for thought, is the gap between the affection of graduates for universities and the relative scepticism of those that have not attended higher education. Voters that see Reform as the answer to their frustrations are overwhelmingly non-graduates.

The clear challenge for us is therefore to show we are serving the whole country whether they attended university or not. It’s easy to respond to this by saying we need to tell a better story – to communicate more clearly the value we bring to the nation. That is true, but it’s not the whole picture. The message I take away is that the public expect change to address their concerns, but not a revolution of institutions that they remain proud of.

The public’s frustration with how many aspects of the country are working – or not working – is real. Universities must not be oblivious to that, and while the overall picture is a positive one, it will not remain so without our showing the requisite leadership to maintain and extend public trust. In setting out the Post 16 Education and Skills White Paper, the government has been clear that universities are expected to take the lead in defining their public purpose.

I have been heartened to see more university leaders start to tackle these challenges. For our part at UCL it starts with our deep commitment to our place in London and serving the communities around us. That includes our long-established partnership with our home borough, Camden Council, working with them on the variety of ways our university can serve the local community. Whether that is through a thoughtful approach to local planning, the “Good Life Euston” project measuring how regeneration affects Euston’s communities, supporting the curriculum development for young people at the London AI campus, or facilitating the volunteering work of our Students Union to distribute toys to families in need at Christmas.

More recently we have built an approach to civil society partnerships that recognises the university’s responsibility to communities across Britain. The focus has been on building deep and lasting regional partnerships in areas outside of London where our work can have the most benefit. In the North East of England, one ongoing project aims to support the development of social infrastructure in Sacriston, a former mining village in County Durham. Another project in Sunderland focuses on men’s mental health.

Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that the power of university research is that so much of it, by its very nature, is at the service of all. This is not just in the knowledge we make available freely to the public, but the transformative impact it can have on lives.

Nowhere is this clearer than in health research and clinical trials, an area where UCL does a huge amount. From aiding the development of medical breakthroughs like the first ever successful treatment for slowing the progression of Huntington’s disease, announced in October, to helping improve treatment approaches, as the STAMPEDE trial has done with over 12,000 men with prostate cancer, to the remarkable progress being made with gene therapies – with a “base-editing” technique shown to reverse incurable leukaemia, just this week. It does not matter to the patient where their treatment was developed, if it can save or improve their lives. Our report demonstrates that while the public have a clear sense of the importance of this research, universities’ role in it is not widely understood. This is something we must address.

No responses to demonstrate we serve the whole nation can engender trust if there is a perception that our doors are closed to some communities. Further work on widening participation is therefore fundamental. I am proud that a third of our recent undergraduate students entered through our Access UCL programme. However, this commitment means not only enabling attendance at university but attainment while here, on which we have a renewed focus.

It is equally important to demonstrate that we are welcoming of diverse views that reflect the whole nation. Genuine diversity of perspectives and backgrounds is fundamental to what we do as a university. Good-faith disagreement between informed participants with a range of views and experiences enhances university life, strengthens our research and makes us better able to serve the communities in which we are based. It is to this end we have developed our teaching of the skills of disagreement, hosted difficult conversations on campus and continue to work across our whole community on the challenge of social polarisation under the banner of our Disagreeing Well campaign.

At a time when public trust in institutions is under strain across the Western world, we can take heart from the continued public support for UK universities. While we cannot be complacent, I remain confident that we can make the necessary changes and demonstrate to the public, whether they attended university or not, that we serve their interests. The task of doing so starts with listening.

– ref. UCL President: Universities must show they bring benefits to everyone, locally and nationally – https://theconversation.com/ucl-president-universities-must-show-they-bring-benefits-to-everyone-locally-and-nationally-271785