Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Diogo Veríssimo, Research Fellow in Conservation Marketing, University of Oxford

They look like tiny monkeys peering out from the mist. Known to scientists as Dracula, the so-called “monkey-face orchids” have become online celebrities.

Millions of people have shared their photos, marvelling at flowers that seem to smile, frown or even grimace. But behind that viral charm lies a very different reality: most of these species are teetering on the edge of extinction.

A new global assessment has, for the first time, revealed the conservation status of all known Dracula orchids. The findings are dire. Out of 133 species assessed, nearly seven in ten are threatened with extinction.

Many exist only in tiny fragments of forest, some in just one or two known locations. A few are known only from plants growing in cultivation. Their wild populations may already be gone.

These orchids grow mainly in the Andean cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador, some of the most biologically rich but also most endangered ecosystems on the planet. Their survival depends on cool, humid conditions at mid to high altitudes, where constant mist wraps the trees.

Unfortunately, those same slopes are being rapidly cleared for cattle pasture, crops like avocado, and expanding roads and mining projects, activities that are directly threatening several Dracula species (such as Dracula terborchii. As forests shrink and fragment, the orchids lose the microclimates (the specific temperature, light and humidity conditions) that they depend on for survival.

Another threat comes from people’s fascination with these rare and charismatic plants. Orchids have been prized for their flowers for hundreds of years, with European trade starting in the 19th century, when “orchid fever” captivated wealthy collectors leading to huge increases in wild collection in tropical areas.

Today, that fascination continues, fuelled by the internet. Many enthusiasts and professional growers trade in cultivated plants responsibly, but others still seek wild orchids, and Dracula species are no exception. For a plant that may exist in populations of just a few dozen individuals, a single collecting trip can be disastrous.

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Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.
This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

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Turning popularity into protection

In Ecuador’s north-western Andes, a place named Reserva Drácula protects one of the world’s richest concentrations of these orchids. The reserve is home to at least ten Dracula species, five of them found nowhere else on Earth.

But the threats are closing in. Deforestation for agriculture, illegal mining and even the presence of armed groups now endanger the reserve’s staff and surrounding communities.

Local conservationists at Fundación EcoMinga, who manage the area, have described the situation as “urgent”. Their proposals include strengthening community-based monitoring, supporting sustainable farming and developing eco-tourism to provide income from protecting, rather than clearing, the forest.

When you see these flowers up close, it’s easy to understand why they attract such fascination. Their name, Dracula, comes not from vampires but from the Latin for “little dragon”, a nod to their long, fang-like sepals, the petal-like structures that protect the developing orchid flower.

Their strange shapes astonished 19th-century botanists, who thought they might be a hoax. Later, as more species were discovered, people began to notice that many resembled tiny primates, hence the nickname “monkey-face orchids”. They’ve been called the pandas of the orchid world: charismatic, instantly recognisable, but also deeply endangered.

That charisma, however, hasn’t yet translated into protection. Until recently, only a handful of Dracula species had had their conservation status formally assessed, leaving most of the group’s fate a mystery.

The new assessment was led by a team of botanists from Colombia and Ecuador, with collaborators from several international organisations including the University of Oxford and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commisso’s Orchid Specialist Group, finally closes that gap.

It draws on herbarium records (dried plant specimens collected by botanists), field data and local expertise to map where each species occurs and estimate how much forest remains. The results confirm what many orchid specialists had long suspected: Dracula species are in serious trouble.

Despite this grim outlook, there are reasons for hope. The Reserva Drácula and other protected areas are vital refuges, offering safe havens not only for orchids but for frogs, monkeys and countless other species.

Local organisations are working with communities to promote sustainable agriculture, develop ecotourism and reward conservation through payments for ecosystem services. These are modest efforts compared with the scale of the challenge, but they show that solutions exist, if the world pays attention.

There’s also an opportunity here to turn popularity into protection. The same internet fame that fuels demand for these orchids could help fund their conservation. If viral posts about “smiling flowers” included information about where they come from and how threatened they are, they could help change norms about the need to avoid overcollection.

Just as the panda became a symbol for wildlife conservation, monkey-face orchids could become icons for plant conservation, a reminder that biodiversity isn’t only about animals. Whether future generations will still find these faces in the forest, and not just in digital feeds, depends on how we act now.

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This work was carried out by a team including Cristina Lopez-Gallego, Santiago Mesa Arango, Sebastian Vieira, and Nicolás Peláez-Restrepo in Colombia, and Luis Baquero and Marco Monteros in Ecuador. Diogo Veríssimo receives funding from the UK Government Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund. Diogo is affiliated with IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group.

Amy Hinsley receives funding from the UK Government Darwin Initiative, and has received funding for work on Dracula from the IUCN SSC and SSC EDGE small grant funds, and from Indianapolis Zoo. Amy is the co-chair of the IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group.

Luis Baquero 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. Famous monkey-face ‘Dracula’ orchids are vanishing in the wild – https://theconversation.com/famous-monkey-face-dracula-orchids-are-vanishing-in-the-wild-266859

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Beth Johnson, Professor of Television & Media Studies, University of Leeds

Sally Wainwright’s new BBC drama Riot Women opens not with music, but with the sound of ice clinking in a glass and tonic fizzing as it’s poured over gin.

Beth (Joanna Scanlan) calmly prepares to end her life in a beautiful, light-filled room overlooking green gardens and a vista of rolling hills – a quiet, almost idyllic setting for an act of despair. It’s a devastating and deeply ironic beginning, setting the emotional stakes with precision.

Riot Women takes its name from, and subtly reworks, the 1990s Riot Grrrl feminist punk movement. This is no whimsical story of midlife reinvention. When Beth is drawn, almost accidentally, into forming a punk band with four other women of a certain age, the series unfolds as something richer: a fierce, surprising exploration of care-giving, menopause, resilience and the reclamation of voice.

The ensemble cast is crucial. Alongside Scanlan, Wainwright brings together a group of formidable performers including Amelia Bullmore, a frequent collaborator whose presence links this series to the distinctive tone of earlier work such as At Home with the Braithwaites (2000) and Happy Valley (2014-2023).

Lorraine Ashbourne is excellent as Jess, bringing dry humour and sharp, unfiltered observations that cut through the show’s darker moments. Tamsin Greig’s Holly, meanwhile, brings a brisk edge that undercuts sentimentality without ever losing emotional depth. Together, they capture the show’s tonal dexterity – its ability to let humour and anger sit side by side.

Rosalie Craig as Kitty – the youngest member of the group – adds another layer. In one striking scene, a hot flush during a chaotic arrest is portrayed without metaphor or euphemism: menopause as sudden, disruptive and inescapably public. These moments are neither played for comedy nor medicalised. They puncture the narrative with a kind of physical truth.

The decision to focus explicitly on midlife marks a shift. Where other dramas might hint or gesture, Wainwright places it at the centre – structurally, thematically and sonically.

Punk as midlife language

The punk framing is more than a stylistic flourish. The music, written by Brighton punk duo ARXX, is raw and deliberately unpolished. The cast learned to play their instruments from scratch, and their awkward early rehearsals mirror the hesitations and vulnerabilities of finding a new kind of voice.

Punk has historically been the sound of youthful rebellion; here, it becomes the medium for midlife articulation.

The music itself is extraordinary. It’s angry, raw and unexpectedly moving – a sonic expression of rage, frustration and survival that feels both personal and collective. There’s nothing glossy or performative about it: the songs grow out of the women’s experiences of family, work, menopause and friendship, and they hit with a force that’s as emotional as it is political.

Punk becomes not just a genre, but a way of giving shape to feelings that have been contained for too long. Its raw, unpolished energy cuts through irony and self-consciousness, allowing those emotions to be expressed openly and with unfiltered emotion.

Much of that energy is channelled through Kitty, who has only ever sung karaoke before joining the band. On stage, she’s electrifying: her voice is powerful, and she performs with the intensity of someone who has found a language for experiences that have never had an outlet. There’s a raw, unsettling power to her presence – the sense of a past that can’t be fully spoken, only channelled through sound.

Kitty embodies how midlife expression can be forged from pain, anger and survival, becoming something both personal and collective.

This punk-inflected turn also makes sense in the context of Wainwright’s career. As my colleague Kristyn Gorton and I explore in our recent book, Wainwright’s work consistently foregrounds women whose lives and voices fall outside television’s dominant storylines. Riot Women extends that project into new cultural territory.

Riot Women also arrives within a media landscape that has been slow to make space for older women. While there has been an uptick in midlife-centred stories, they are often muted in tone or treated as exceptions. Wainwright – one of the few high-profile British screenwriters consistently placing midlife women at the centre of her work – goes further. She integrates menopause into a broader story about midlife, giving it cultural and emotional weight without letting it define the story.

The series also gestures to the structural pressures shaping these lives: ageism in commissioning, the scarcity of roles for older women, narrow ideas about audience demographics. By weaving these industrial realities into the story, rather than commenting from outside, Wainwright makes Riot Women both a drama and a critique.

Set in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, the series carries her trademark sensitivity to place and class. These women are not celebrities or high-powered executives; they’re public servants – teachers, carers and community workers. This rootedness gives the show a political weight beyond its surface premise.

What’s most striking is the show’s tonal balance. The quiet despair of the opening scene isn’t erased by the band’s formation; it underpins everything that follows. Wainwright doesn’t romanticise midlife, but she refuses to render it invisible.

The series is unflinching about the realities of this life stage: divorce, care-giving for both parents and children, suicidal thoughts, bodies that are bleeding and ageing, anger that has nowhere to go and the fragile but sustaining force of female friendship. These are not neat storylines; they are ongoing negotiations with life. By giving these experiences space and weight, Wainwright re-frames midlife as a layered cultural terrain, situating menopause not as an isolated biological event but as part of a dense network of social, emotional and physical changes.

Where Amazon Prime drama The Assassin folded menopause into genre conventions, Riot Women is louder and more expansive. It doesn’t simply include menopause in television drama, it weaves it into the aesthetic, emotional and political fabric of the series. That is both culturally and industrially significant.

By centring midlife experiences in a punk-inflected drama, Wainwright opens a new televisual space for women: neither comic diversion nor medical case study, but fully realised creative protagonists. The series is less about a single transformation than about a shared refusal to stay quiet.

From its first scene, Riot Women makes clear that silence is no longer an option. In turning everyday experiences of midlife into collective, cultural expression, Wainwright has produced her boldest and most necessary work yet.

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Beth Johnson receives funding from the AHRC.

– ref. With Riot Women, Sally Wainwright is turning menopause into punk rebellion – https://theconversation.com/with-riot-women-sally-wainwright-is-turning-menopause-into-punk-rebellion-267045

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stuart Mills, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Leeds

Millions of motorists across the UK could be in line for payments of around £700 after car dealers mis-sold finance to earn commission. Finance providers stand to lose billions compensating consumers after the scandal.

The UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), recently announced that lenders must compensate buyers who took out finance for a new or secondhand car. Millions paid more than they should have because of secret fees paid by lenders to dealerships.

For many, this compensation will be a welcome surprise. For others, it will be hard-won compensation after a complicated legal battle. For others still, £700 may not be enough compensation for the time and stress involved – the sum is lower than the FCA had previously estimated – although the total paid out could top £8 billion.

This settlement begs an interesting question. What should recipients do with this money? This is hardly a trivial question. Organisations such as the National Lottery provide financial advice to big winners, recognising that a windfall involves a lot more than popping the champagne corks.

However, financial advice after winning the lottery – pay off debts, buy a house, invest in long-term assets – does not apply to the relatively small sum of £700. But neither is it smart to write off £700 as if it were only a small win. Economically speaking too, a spending boost of up to £8 billion would show up in UK GDP figures.

Behavioural economists have found that people’s decisions about money depend on their mental frame of reference. If they feel like they’ve lost money, their decisions to save or spend will be quite different to if they feel they’ve gained something. Precisely because many people will have already written off the costs of mis-selling, it is likely that they will choose to spend their compensation.

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Read more:
The car finance scandal proves that the financial sector still has trust issues that need to be sorted

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The psychology of winning can be pernicious because of what economists call “licensing” effects. Licensing happens when a previous event or behaviour influences future actions. If you’ve gone to the gym in the morning, you might choose to have a dessert in the evening – but only because you went to the gym.

Likewise, if you “win” £700 you had mentally written off, you will be more inclined to buy things you would otherwise avoid. In this mental state, small luxuries like eating out or buying designer shoes are likely to feel more tempting. Very quickly, that £700 could disappear.

Spending money is not a bad thing. It is only through spending that the economy grows, which to a lesser or greater extent benefits everyone. And using the money to invest in a new hobby, for instance, is likely to be personally rewarding in ways a cold financial outlook fails to appreciate.

But there is also a more sympathetic, and less explored perspective. Someone might understand what they ought to do financially, but reasonably decide that £700 is not worth the effort. For example, earning 3% on £700 means next year you’d be £21 richer, ignoring inflation. From this perspective, it is reasonable – if not economically rational – to decide spending is preferable to saving.

A growing issue

The question of how to use a windfall is fascinating because it’s an example of something economies like the UK are going to see a lot more of in the coming decades. The movement of wealth from retirees to their adult children (those aged around 30 to 50) has been called the greatest wealth transfer in human history.

It’s not going to be an even transfer. Some millennials will receive enormous sums as their parents pass on houses and savings pots. Others will receive very little. But a large group will receive something in the middle – an unexpected windfall, too large to write off but too small to lay down new financial roots by buying a house, for example.

In the years ahead, what this group does with its slice of a generational inheritance will shape the financial landscape of the UK, and many more countries, too.

This £700 settlement is therefore an interesting example. While people may feel they know what they ought to do with unexpected money, behavioural economics can tell us what people probably will do.

The “ought” depends on someone’s financial circumstances. For those set to receive £700, it might be a good idea not to treat it as a windfall. They had probably mentally written it off, so if they avoid seeing it as a gain they are more likely to pay off debts or save it.

Payments could start coming through from early next year. With that in mind, another sensible place for many to “invest” £700 might be in credit with their energy supplier. This could smooth out financial bumps in the road, given rising energy costs.

Many people dislike saving because it can feel like losing money, as they are moving the funds from a “fungible mental account” – where they can do anything with it – to a “non-fungible mental account” (such as a rainy-day fund).

For economists, examples like a £700 compensation are fascinating because they expose elements of human behaviour that we are all guilty of.

But this compensation scheme is also likely to be a precursor to a much bigger economic phenomenon. What will people do when they suddenly receive a sum that’s too big to ignore but too little to change their financial foundations?

Stuart Mills 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. Millions will get a windfall over car finance. Research helps us understand what they’ll do with it – https://theconversation.com/millions-will-get-a-windfall-over-car-finance-research-helps-us-understand-what-theyll-do-with-it-267244

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samuel Shaw, Lecturer in History of Art, The Open University

Earlier this year I found myself stood among a sea of swaying ox-eye daises in a floodplain meadow on the Attingham estate in Shropshire, on land owned by the National Trust. I noticed other plants growing here: the sunny yellows of meadow buttercup, the wine-reds of great burnet and the furry seed heads of meadow foxtail. The sounds of birds and insects bubbled in the background.

It felt like a thriving environment, but I knew that this meadow could be so much more. Floodplain meadows are hugely important spaces, supporting rare plant communities and providing food for animals to eat during the winter months.

The soils of floodplain meadows are recognised by scientists as an important carbon store, helping to slow floodwaters and absorb nutrients. Many remaining floodplain meadows have been managed in the same way for more than 1,000 years. However, such sites are rare and most meadows are in serious need of restoration.

The diversity and abundance of the plants and animals I encountered at Attingham did not indicate a flourishing ecosystem. While birds such as lapwing had been seen passing through the site, they not been encouraged to stay and breed. The quality of the soil was improving, but only slowly.

After leaving the meadow, I visited Attingham Park, the large house that lies at the heart of the estate. As an art historian with a keen interest in the history and visual cultures of natural sciences, I was hoping to make connections across the trust’s collections. I wanted to find objects in the house that related to what I had encountered in the meadows.

I wasn’t disappointed. Attingham’s collection is large and deep, encompassing paintings, ceramics, furniture, rare books and much more besides. Some objects relate specifically to the house and to the Berwick family who lived there, while others form part of a broader story.

Evidence of meadows and meadow ecosystems appears everywhere: in the famous paintings of cattle hanging on the walls, in the representation of grasses in an early 20th-century fan, and in the tiny beetles that adorned an Italian paperweight. In the delicate lithographic plates of a 19th-century guide to British birds, compiled by the ornithologist John Gould, I found the lapwings that had thwarted me in the meadow.

Perhaps the most interesting object I saw was the original Attingham Red Book. Created in 1798 by landscape gardener Humphry Repton, this red leather-bound book documented his plans for the estate, via a series of charming and clever before-and-after watercolours. Could Repton’s book help me understand how this meadow has changed over centuries, and how it might change again?

The art of meadow restoration

It can be tempting to divide the National Trust’s holdings and activities into natural heritage on the one hand, and cultural heritage on the other. But the trust’s highly significant art and cultural collections (what is found inside) can be used to draw attention to what is going on in the estates (what is found outside). The trust owns thousands of historic objects that can help engage audiences with the past, present and future of its natural spaces.

Since 2006, my colleagues at the Floodplain Meadows Partnership, an initiative at the Open University, have been working with conservation organisations and landowners to ensure that floodplain meadows are protected, restored and successfully managed. By feeding into government agricultural funding schemes such as the countryside stewardship higher tier, the partnership’s research supports sustainable farming and nature restoration across the UK.

Current partners include the National Trust which, as one of the UK’s largest landowners and with ambitious nature recovery targets, is uniquely placed to lead the way in meadow restoration. Together, we have identified 121 fields at English estates, including Attingham, that could be suitable for floodplain meadow restoration.

The trust’s current emphasis on people and nature, as laid out in its new ten-year strategy, hints at a certain nervousness over how to situate the organisation’s significant holdings of art, design and architecture. Yet there’s a strong argument for bringing cultural and natural heritage closer together. Historic objects, such as those I explored at Attingham, do not stand apart from nature restoration, but can stimulate and shape it.

For example, Repton’s Red Book designs directly tackle issues – such as how to manage rivers and their floodplains – that remain at the heart of the estate’s management. But Repton liked his rivers to be ample and majestic, cutting through the landscape cleanly, rather than meandering messily. This goes against what is needed to create thriving river habitats, such as those envisaged by Attingham’s current nature recovery project.

Looking through the Red Book and the collections at Attingham provides much more than a window into the past. These objects show how the past is still so entwined with the present, and how it may inform what we do in the future.

My research at Attingham, as highlighted in the short film above, shows how art and visual culture can help us better understand and engage audiences with nature restoration. Art objects offer a fresh perspective on environmental debates, helping people to visualise complex ideas in ways that inspire, surprise and change the direction of conversations.

The restoration of key environments such as floodplain meadows may be led by scientists, but the arts nevertheless have an essential role to play.

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Samuel Shaw has received funding from the AHRC in the past

– ref. How the National Trust’s art collections can shape meadow restoration – https://theconversation.com/how-the-national-trusts-art-collections-can-shape-meadow-restoration-266395

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jen Harvie, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London

American film actress Diane Keaton, who has died aged 79, was an icon of style but also character. She challenged the boundaries and range of what it was possible for women to play and be, especially in American cinema’s new wave of the 1970s and 80s.

Keaton was most famous for her performance as the title character in Woody Allen’s 1977 satirical romantic comedy-drama, Annie Hall. Her Annie could have been the love child of Katharine Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin.

She had Hepburn’s strength, intelligence, hair in a bun, and gender non-conforming trousers and tie; Chaplin’s comedy, goofiness and charm; and the idiosyncrasy of them both. Annie – like many more of Keaton’s characters – was kooky but smart, troubled and flawed, sweet but sensuous. And always endearing and complex.

Keaton won an Oscar for Annie. She physically overshadowed Allen despite being the same height (according to Allen), and her character’s awkward flirtatiousness, delight and curiosity balanced his character’s neurosis. Allen cast Keaton in eight of his movies and described her as, “with the exception of Judy Holliday”, “the finest screen comedienne we’ve ever seen”.

Keaton is better known as a comedian (or, as film critic Peter Bradshaw puts it, “a comic performer of ethereally self-aware genius”). But she had an impressive record in drama as well.

Five years before Annie Hall, Keaton played the marrying-in outsider Kay to the mob family in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). She appeared across the trilogy opposite Al Pacino.

Speaking to US broadcaster NPR in 2017, she explained that she drew on her experience as a young woman on The Godfather’s profoundly male-dominated set to understand Kay’s experience in the similarly male mob world.

The same year as Annie Hall, Keaton played Theresa Dunn in the much darker Looking for Mr Goodbar. Theresa leads a double life. By day she’s a Catholic teacher and by night, she cruises bars and discos for casual and sometimes rough sex.

Adapted from Judith Rossner’s 1975 novel, the film has been criticised for crude sensationalism, but Keaton’s portrayal of Theresa’s desire was broadly admired. Sight and Sound, for example, called her performance impressive “mainly because her strength and sensitivity as an actress seem to be operating apart from the underdeveloped character she is playing”.

Keaton also starred alongside Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson in Reds (1981), Beatty’s epic drama exploring political and personal commitment in the context of journalists’ engagement with the Russian revolution. Keaton played activist Louise Bryant, who leaves her family to join the political struggle and, let’s be honest, handsome journalist Jack Reed (Beatty).

New York Times journalist Alissa Wilkinson wrote of the performance: “We might not all be Reed, the charismatic idealist giving speeches, but we might be Bryant, just trying to catch hold as history barrels past and discovering who we are inside of it.

Keaton’s later career

It is an indictment of Hollywood that, as Keaton aged, her roles and films generally became more conventional and less challenging than some of her earlier work. That said, she admitted that her own confidence affected her career, mistakenly believing that “without a great man writing and directing for me” she was “mediocre”.

Despite this, she did find and create roles that continued to challenge expectations about how women can behave, and she made a series of successful collaborations with director Nancy Meyers.

In 1987’s Baby Boom, co-written by Meyers, Keaton played a career-committed businesswoman who inherits a baby that disrupts her life. Not only does she gradually cope, she eventually pulls off the hat-trick of growing her career, keeping the baby and snatching heartthrob Sam Shepard.

Keaton also starred in another tale of mainstream feminism triumphant, Meyers’ romantic comedy-drama Something’s Gotta Give (2003). Turning the tables on sexist stereotypes, Keaton’s successful playwright character “tames” playboy Nicholson while also attracting the much younger Keanu Reeves.

There is a sense that Hollywood couldn’t imagine Keaton’s early frisson in the body of an ageing woman. But she carried on doing what she could from within these more tame and often liberal feminist comedy-dramas, which sought gender equality but never questioned structures that were fundamentally sexist.

Keaton’s legacy persists. Some of the most influential American women television and filmmakers of the 21st century have sought to take up the mantle of her complex characterisations of smart, awkward and unconventional femininity, including Lena Dunham and Greta Gerwig. And we will always have Diane Keaton’s back catalogue to remind us of Hepburn and Chaplin’s strange, poignant, funny love child.

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Jen Harvie 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. Diane Keaton pioneered new kinds of complex femininity on screen – https://theconversation.com/diane-keaton-pioneered-new-kinds-of-complex-femininity-on-screen-267348

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maria Småberg, Senior Lecturer, Peace and Conflict Research, Department of HIstory, Lund University

In the hills of the southern West Bank, a Swedish cooking pot has become a symbol of trust, resilience and forgotten solidarity. Half a century after it was first distributed as emergency aid, the cooking pots still gleam in the kitchens of Beit Awwa – reminding villagers of a time when Sweden stood by them in the aftermath of war.

Today, that legacy stands in stark contrast to Sweden’s current policy: a sharp reduction in aid to Palestine which has been folded into a regional government strategy for all of the Middle East and north Africa region.

The origins of these pots – and the trust they symbolise – were uncovered through research into the history of Swedish civil society organisations in Palestine. In the aftermath of the six-day war in 1967, Beit Awwa was one of several villages destroyed by Israeli forces. Villagers lost their homes, belongings and livelihoods.

Beit Awwa was not alone. In the chaotic aftermath of the six-day war, entire Palestinian villages were razed. Few international observers were present to document what happened. Israeli authorities actively tried to prevent outside scrutiny.

One of the few who bore witness was Sister Marie-Thérèse, a French nun from the Companions of Jesus order, who later wrote about the devastation in her diary. Israeli journalist Amos Kenan also reported on the forced expulsions, describing elderly people and mothers with infants wandering with white flags.

By mid-July 1967, John Reddaway, Unrwa’s deputy commissioner-general, estimated that around 16,000 people had been made homeless by the destruction of villages in the West Bank. Altogether, between 200,000 and 250,000 people from the West Bank went into exile.

Just a week after the war ended, on June 10, representatives from the Swedish organisation Individuell Människohjälp (IM), including the then ambassador, Bo Siegbahn, and consul, Arnold Hjertström, visited the ruins of Beit Awwa and the neighbouring village of Beit Marsam. They witnessed the devastation and appealed for help.

Sweden’s foreign ministry did not respond. But IM acted. With funding from the Norwegian Refugee Council and donations from the Swedish public (raising more than kr544,000 (£343,000) in July alone), IM chartered two planes from Malmö.

They delivered blankets, clothing, 100 tons of wheat flour, powdered milk, food supplies, primus stoves, and kitchen utensils — including the now-legendary Skultuna pots, a brand dating back to 1607.

The village elder, or mukhtar, oversaw the distribution, ensuring that aid was shared fairly. One of the men who proudly showed the pots to a visiting development worker decades later turned out to be the mukhtar’s grandson. IM also set up two tent camps and later sent medical supplies, prosthetics, spectacles and wheelchairs.

Cleaning up

Many years after the humanitarian intervention in 1967, Sweden returned to the Beit Awwa area to help resolve a new and complex problem. Swedish representatives were met with goodwill by the villagers, apparently based on the role Sweden had played decades earlier, even though no one was old enough to have their own clear memories of what had taken place in 1967.

During the 2010s, the Swedish consulate-general in Jerusalem identified a growing environmental crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory. In the villages near Hebron, many families had turned to informal recycling of Israeli electronic waste, a hazardous livelihood born out of economic necessity and political exclusion.

After the second intifada, when Palestinian workers were largely barred from entering Israel, some turned to old contacts among Israeli junk dealers. They began importing discarded electronics, burning them to extract copper and other metals, and selling the materials back through informal networks.

The environmental cost was devastating. Thick black smoke from burning cables choked the air and toxic runoff seeped into the soil and groundwater. The intricacies of the dangerous trade were brought to light by a group of researcher led by Yaakov Garb at Ben-Gurion University. They were able to link the burn sites to rising rates of lymphoma and other illnesses among children in the area.

In response to the crisis, researchers and villagers, supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), developed a pilot project in 2015 to transform the informal recycling into a safer, small-scale industry.

The idea was to replace open-air burning with mechanical cable grinding, decontaminate the burn sites by removing toxic soil, and register the recycling operations as formal businesses with the Palestinian Authority. Local municipalities were also tasked with forming monitoring teams to prevent illegal burning.

The pilot project was a success. A significant area was cleaned, and a volunteer force of 60 people was quickly mobilised to enforce the new regulations. On both sides of the green line, the project earned praise – from Palestinian villagers, Israeli neighbours, and local authorities alike. In the villages, it became known as “the Swedish project”.

One cable-grinding machine remains in operation today – but like many well-intentioned initiatives in Palestine, the project eventually ran into political obstacles. Sustaining the success of the pilot project required a degree of formalised collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian authorities, but agreement on the details proved impossible and the structures of occupation left little room for long-term, trust-based governance.

Events since then, including the Israeli government’s declared intention to annex the West Bank and the trauma of October 7 2023 and its violent aftermath, have made any efforts at aid requiring collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian authorities virtually impossible.

Still, Sweden’s name continues to carry weight in Beit Awwa and beyond. The memory of those aluminium pots – still gleaming after half a century of use – speaks to a legacy of solidarity that transcends politics. As a historian and a development worker, we believe this legacy deserves to be remembered, and reconsidered, in light of today’s shifting aid policies.

Perhaps one day, that legacy will form the foundation for a renewed Swedish contribution to just peace and prosperity in the region.

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. The cooking pot that became a symbol of Sweden’s commitment to helping Palestine – https://theconversation.com/the-cooking-pot-that-became-a-symbol-of-swedens-commitment-to-helping-palestine-266488

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rosie Young, PhD Candidate, Gut Microbes in Health and Disease, Quadram Institute

Lifting weights just two or three times a week can significantly change the trillions of bacteria living in your gut, and it might happen in as little as eight weeks.

That’s according to a recent study – not yet peer-reviewed – finding that previously inactive people who began resistance training showed notable changes in their gut microbiome, the community of microbes living in the digestive system.

Your gut is home to bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microscopic organisms, most of which live in the large intestine. These microbes help break down food that your body can’t digest on its own, allowing you to access more nutrients and vitamins.

Some bacteria are considered beneficial because they’re often found in people who are healthy, both physically and mentally. They produce compounds that appear to support wellbeing.

The makeup of your gut microbiome isn’t fixed. It changes based on factors such as what you eat, how old you are, how well you sleep – and, as this study shows, whether you exercise.

Researchers at the University of Tübingen in Germany recruited 150 people who didn’t normally exercise and asked them to do resistance training two to three times a week for eight weeks. Participants used either lighter weights with more repetitions (15 to 20) or heavier weights with fewer repetitions (eight to ten).

Both approaches produced similar improvements in strength and body composition. The exercises included chest presses, abdominal work, leg curls, leg presses and back exercises – two sets of each.

The researchers collected stool samples at the start of the programme, after four weeks and after eight weeks to track changes in participants’ gut bacteria.

Some people gained strength much faster than others. The researchers divided participants into “high responders” – the top 20%, who increased their strength by more than 33% on average – and “low responders” – the bottom 20%, who gained less than 12.2%.

The biggest factor determining whether someone was a high or low responder appeared to be their initial strength level.

But the researchers also found something interesting: the people who gained the most strength showed subtle but significant changes in their gut bacteria that the others didn’t.

High responders showed increases in 16 types of bacteria and decreases in 11 others. Two bacteria in particular stood out: Faecalibacterium and Roseburia hominis.

Both produce butyrate, a type of compound called a short-chain fatty acid. These compounds are created when gut bacteria break down fibre, and they serve multiple purposes: they provide energy for the body and help maintain a healthy gut lining, which prevents harmful bacteria from entering the bloodstream.

Similar increases in these bacteria have been found in other studies looking at exercise and the gut. However, in this study, the researchers didn’t find an actual increase in short-chain fatty acids in the stool samples – only more of the bacteria that produce them.

Not that simple

It’s tempting to label certain bacteria as “good” or “bad”, but it’s not that simple. Throughout the study, some bacteria typically associated with good health decreased, while others previously linked to poor health increased.

This highlights an important point: everyone’s microbiome is unique. The same bacteria might perform different roles in different people, depending on the individual and their overall health.

We also can’t say for certain whether the changes in gut bacteria caused the strength gains, or whether getting stronger caused the bacterial changes. Studies like this can show associations, but they can’t prove cause and effect – the microbiome is influenced by too many factors to control them all.

Diet, for instance, has a major effect on gut bacteria. Participants were told not to change their eating habits during the study, but it’s extremely difficult to accurately track what people eat.

It’s possible that some high responders changed their diet as they became more focused on fitness, and this could have contributed both to their bacterial changes and their strength gains.

What we can say with more confidence is that exercise appears to benefit overall physical and mental health and should be part of a healthy lifestyle regardless of what it does to your gut microbes.

This was a small study that still has to go through the peer-review process of being officially looke at by other scientists. But it has the potential to add to growing evidence that our lifestyle choices, including how much we move, can influence the microscopic world living inside us.

Rosie Young 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. Does resistance training really improve your gut microbiome? – https://theconversation.com/does-resistance-training-really-improve-your-gut-microbiome-265221

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chris Waugh, Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology, Manchester Metropolitan University

When Andrew (not his real name) lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic, he turned to work as a courier. His days became a slog – cycling for hours in rain or shine, juggling Deliveroo, Uber Eats and JustEat.

Despite the grind, he couldn’t afford to rent even a single room in his city. After months of sofa surfing and crammed bunk-bed accommodation, a friend of a friend offered him a room at a rent he could actually manage.

The catch? He had to have sex with his new, live-in landlady once a week.

This is what’s known as a sex-for-rent arrangement: when someone offers free or discounted accommodation in exchange for sex. I’ve been studying the experiences of people in sex-for-rent arrangements, and will be publishing my findings over the coming year.

While such arrangements might come with a veneer of consent, research from the UK and US shows they are often exploitative and disempowering. They start with a power imbalance, usually economic, that allows one person to exploit another’s desperation for housing.

There is relatively little academic research on sex for rent in the UK. But what we do have so far is deeply concerning. A 2022 survey by campaign group Generation Rent estimated that over 200,000 women may have been offered free or discounted rent in exchange for sexual favours.

These offers sometimes appear on platforms like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, often couched in vague, euphemistic language: “reduced rent for suitable female tenant”, or “alternative arrangements can be discussed”.

Investigative journalism has shown that these ads typically target young women – especially students and those in insecure work.

While confirming that young women are heavily targeted, my ongoing research reveals how economically marginalised men are being exploited too. Through qualitative interviews with survivors of sex-for-rent, I am exploring how this exploitative practice occurs, who is targeted and why.

Participants like Andrew often work in the gig economy, where wages are low and unpredictable. Others are migrants with no access to benefits or housing assistance, making it near impossible to access stable accommodation. Their experiences of sex-for-rent are made worse by social stigma, masculine expectations of self-reliance and a lack of tailored support.

What I have found so far supports and expands on findings already established in existing research, which has found how sex-for-rent is advertised to young women online, and becoming a regular part of an insecure housing market.

Survivors told me that landladies as well as landlords were engaging in sexual exploitation via sex-for-rent. Landlords were often aware of participants’ financial struggles and framed the arrangement as “helping them out”. Participants who tried to leave said they were threatened with eviction – both legal and illegal – to trap them.

The 15 men I spoke to reported intense feelings of shame, degradation and emasculation. They were also often unaware of support services that might be able to help them, including housing charities or services for male victims of sexual violence. Many feared legal consequences, wrongly believing they had broken the law by “prostituting themselves” and doubted police would believe them.

The limits of the law

Sex-for-rent is technically illegal under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which states that sex-for-rent amounts to “controlling or inciting prostitution for gain”. Yet only two successful prosecutions have occurred – Christopher Cox in 2022 and Frederick Allyard in 2024.

It is unclear whether any further attempted prosecutions have occurred. But my research indicates that victims broadly believe that they themselves have committed an offence, rather than their landlords, grounded in the wrongful belief that sex work is a crime – it isn’t a crime to sell sex anywhere in the UK.

What is illegal is soliciting, brothel keeping and pimping, though these concepts are poorly defined in British law.

In 2023, the Home Office launched an open consultation on exchange of sexual relations for accommodation. While this is a welcome recognition of the issue, the consultation largely frames sex-for-rent as a matter of individual criminal landlords. It says little about why such exploitation persists – or how social conditions actively enable it.

Landlords hold far more power than tenants in the UK. Rents are among the highest in Europe, with projections suggesting that 2.2 million working adults could be priced out of the rental market by 2030.

The UK average rent is £1,339 per month, a more than 100% increase compared to ten years ago. People on lower incomes can spend up to 59% of their monthly wages on rent alone.

At the same time, wages have stagnated, housing benefit is inadequate, and those with insecure immigration status are locked out of public support entirely. Tenants begin from a position of reduced power, in a housing system that gives more power to the interests of landlords.

This system can be taken advantage of by predatory landlords, either through exploitation like sex-for-rent, or not keeping properties in liveable conditions.

Even if there were more prosecutions for sex-for-rent, it wouldn’t solve the problem alone. We can’t just focus on individual acts of criminality – sex-for-rent is the outcome of structural inequalities in housing, made possible by policy choices: the erosion of social housing, the deregulation of the private rental sector, the rise of precarious work and punitive immigration controls.

Properly addressing the problem would require more secure, affordable housing, an end to no recourse to public funds conditions and support services for all victims of sexual exploitation, not just women.

Over a decade of austerity has left many of these services hanging on by a thread. The current government could do worse than to reverse these trends. Sex-for-rent is not a fringe issue. It is a symptom of how deeply our housing and welfare systems have failed – and it demands a response as structural as the harm itself.

Chris Waugh 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. ‘Sex for rent’ is illegal in the UK. Why are thousands of people still affected? – https://theconversation.com/sex-for-rent-is-illegal-in-the-uk-why-are-thousands-of-people-still-affected-255744

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kristian Kongshøj, Associate Professor of Political Science, Aalborg University

After centuries of near-extinction, Europe’s wolves have made a remarkable comeback. Over the past decade, wolf populations have surged, increasing by nearly 60%. In 2022, more than 21,500 wolves were recorded across the continent.

Countries that have long been wolf-free are now home to thriving packs. Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Romania each have more than 1,000 wolves. For scientists, this is a rare conservation success story: a large predator reclaiming landscapes dominated by human activity.

Where we live in Denmark, the comeback has been more modest. Wolves disappeared from Danish forests in 1813, when they were hunted to extinction – remembered only in stories and fairytales. Then, in 2012, a lone male wolf crossed the border from Germany into Jutland, Denmark’s peninsula bordering Germany. More followed. By 2017, Denmark celebrated its first confirmed breeding pack in more than 200 years.

Today, Denmark’s wolf population is estimated to be just over 40 wolves, with at least seven breeding pairs known to have produced cubs.

Yet even this small number has sparked fierce debates over livestock and public safety in one of Europe’s most intensively farmed countries, with views on wolves seeming to reflect wider political divides across Denmark.

The EU recently downgraded the protection status of wolves, moving them from “strictly protected” to simply “protected”. This change makes it easier for member states to authorise local culling.

Earlier this spring, the Danish government announced that “problem wolves” can be legally shot if they repeatedly stray into towns or attack livestock behind secure fencing. And the first legal licence to shoot a wolf guilty of several attacks was handed out in September.

Experts have already suggested that mysteriously high mortality rates and “disappearing” wolves are most likely the result of illegal hunting. And it’s feared by conservationists that quotas on wolf numbers could be introduced, as is the case in neighbouring Sweden.

As political scientists, we wanted to understand how Danes feel about the return of wolves. This summer, we included a question on wolves in a YouGov survey on climate and the environment. We asked: “Do you agree with the statement that breeding wolf packs are beneficial for Danish nature?”

Of the 2,172 respondents, 43% disagreed, 30% agreed and 27% were neutral or unsure. Breaking the results down by politics reveals clear patterns. Supporters of left-leaning and green parties were the most positive, with nearly 45% agreeing that wolves are good for nature. Right-leaning voters were far more sceptical, with almost half of the supporters of new rightwing parties fully disagreeing. Even many Social Democrats voters (generally considered centre-left) leant toward disagreement, showing how this issue has become integrated into traditional political divides.

People in Copenhagen and other large cities were slightly more positive about the return of wolves than those in smaller towns or rural areas, but attitudes remain mixed everywhere. Living in the countryside does not automatically make someone a wolf sceptic, nor does city life guarantee support.

Age, however, was the strongest predictor of support. Young Danes (18–34) were overwhelmingly supportive, with over 50% agreeing that wolves benefit nature. Support declines steadily with age, however, with the majority of those over 55 – and nearly 60% of those over 73 – expressing outright disagreement.

We have spent more than a decade looking into more traditional political issues and have never seen age differences like these. In this way, the resurgence of wolves seems to have become more than just a wildlife issue.

Wolves, myths and reality

Few animals stir the imagination like wolves. They appear as villains in fairytales, sacred protectors as well as harbingers of apocalypse in Norse myths, and ecological superheroes in biology textbooks. Some wolves became intimately involved with humans as “man’s best friend”, while others became our worst enemy – see the big bad wolf.

Conservationists call wolves a “keystone species”. This means that because they naturally control numbers of deer and other prey, their presence can allow forests and grasslands to recover. Yellowstone Park in the US is a prime example: after wolves were reintroduced, aspen and willow trees flourished for the first time in decades.

But Denmark is not Yellowstone. Its countryside is a patchwork of farms, towns and highways with small, heavily managed nature reserves. Whether wolves can restore “wild balance” here is uncertain – and Danes’ views reflect that uncertainty. Indeed, for some farmers and rural residents, wolves are not symbols of rewilding – they are real predators, threatening livestock and livelihoods.

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Read more:
Wolves return to Europe: what to do about them is a people problem – podcast

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Fear also plays a role: parents worry about children walking in the forest, and dog owners worry about their pets. Statistically,wolf attacks on humans are extremely rare, yet perception often outweighs facts.

Incidents in neighbouring countries can add to the unease. Earlier this year, a wolf attacked a six-year-old boy in the Netherlands. And in Denmark this summer, two young boys spent hours up a tree after thinking an “aggressive wolf” was nearby. The story grabbed headlines, only for it to turn out that the animal was actually a large cat. It’s a reminder of how quickly fear spreads, whether the danger is real or not.

Our findings suggest that fears and myths about wolves are not mere folklore. They are expressed in real attitudes, reflecting deeply held values and cultural identities.

Wolves have come to represent much more than just wildlife. They are potent symbols of environmental ideals and societal perspectives – with attitudes toward them shaped less by geography and more by political beliefs and generational outlooks. For policymakers and conservationists, understanding these perceptions is essential to navigating the delicate balance between species recovery and public acceptance.

This article was commissioned by Videnskab.dk as part of a partnership collaboration with The Conversation. You can read the Danish version of this article here.

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Kristian Kongshøj currently receives funding from Green Societies, a faculty-funded research programme at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), Aalborg University, Denmark

Troels Fage Hedegaard 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. Wolves have returned to Denmark, and not everyone is happy about it – https://theconversation.com/wolves-have-returned-to-denmark-and-not-everyone-is-happy-about-it-266276

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Arrigo Moro, Postdoctoral Researcher, Galway Honey Bee Research Center, University of Galway

You might think honeybees are thriving – after all, the honey industry is growing and its bees are well looked after by beekeepers. But not all honeybees live in hives. Across Europe, colonies still live in the wild, nesting in tree cavities and other natural spaces, just as their ancestors did for millions of years.

Now, for the first time, these wild honeybee populations have been officially categorised as endangered within the European Union. That’s according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List, the world’s official database of species conservation statuses.

The western honeybee has a long history with humans. People have kept honeybee colonies for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Egyptians who kept them in rudimentary hives to harvest honey. But it’s modern beekeeping, with its mobile hives and commercial pollination, that has had the widest impact on the species.

Because of that, today the western honeybee exists in two forms: the managed colonies kept in hives, and the wild ones that live independently of people. Both belong to the same species, Apis mellifera, but their lives and their prospects are radically different.

Managed honeybees have faced widely reported crises since the 2000s, when beekeepers around the world started noticing alarming losses in their hives. Since then, scientists have been working with beekeepers to investigate the causes and reduce colony mortality.

Because of this, the species as a whole is generally perceived as being under threat. But the reality is more complex than that. While it is true that managed colonies continue to suffer high losses, they are actively cared for by beekeepers and studied by researchers. The same cannot be said for their wild counterparts, which, until recently were relatively unstudied, especially in Europe.

The gap in knowledge led several European researchers to start investigating honeybees living freely in the wild. Such colonies have now been documented throughout Ireland and the UK, in national parks in France, the forests of Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, up and down Italy, and even in cities such as Belgrade in Serbia. These now are under study to understand if they can form self-sustaining populations capable of living without human help.

Tracking bees across Europe

To connect these independent research projects, a global initiative called Honey Bee Watch was formed in 2020. Its goal: to better understand how honeybees live in the wild. Under this coalition, I have been part of a team of 14 scientists and experts, who have worked with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to reassess the conservation status of wild A. mellifera populations.

This formed part of a monumental effort to update the European Red List of Bees, led by researchers at the University of Mons in Belgium, which examined the conservation status of almost 2,000 species – many for the first time.

Back in 2014, wild A. mellifera populations had been listed as “data deficient” in Europe because there wasn’t enough information to answer a question that seemed simple enough: if a colony is found living in a tree, how can we tell whether it’s truly wild or has escaped from a managed hive?

A new definition of ‘wild’

Our new assessment took a different approach. Honeybees are not truly domesticated, since beekeepers have never been able to completely prevent them from breeding with other colonies, whether wild or managed. This means genetic differences between managed and wild colonies are often blurred.

Instead of trying to draw a genetic line separating the two, we adapted the IUCN’s definition of “wild” as it relates to honeybees. This meant we defined wild honeybee populations based on two criteria:

First, they live freely without management. And second, they can sustain their numbers independently without relying on the introduction of new colonies, such as those that escaped from managed hives.

Using ecology rather than genetics to define wild honeybees meant we could better evaluate their conservation status.

Endangered in the EU

Europe has the lowest density of free-living colonies in the world, as managed hives far outnumber wild ones. And, thanks to a recent analysis provided by our fellow assessors, we know that their numbers are declining.

Combined with evidence of habitat loss, invasive parasites, diseases, and human-mediated hybridisation, the picture that emerged was clear: wild honeybees are indeed in trouble.

That’s why their Red List status has now been updated to “endangered within the European Union.” However, for the wider pan-European region, they remain “data deficient” due to scarce data for areas such as the Balkans, the Baltics, Scandinavia and eastern Europe.

Protecting wild honeybees isn’t just about saving an iconic species – it’s about safeguarding our food security, biodiversity and ecosystems for the future. Populations surviving in the wild are those that naturally evolved the ability to cope with parasites, diseases and other harsh conditions that can devastate managed hives. They represent a vital genetic reservoir that could help make both wild and managed bees more resilient to future threats.

The new endangered assessment is a formal recognition that wild honeybees are native wildlife in need of conservation. We can no longer afford to leave them understudied and unprotected.

Arrigo Moro 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. Wild honeybees now officially listed as endangered in the EU – https://theconversation.com/wild-honeybees-now-officially-listed-as-endangered-in-the-eu-267239