Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Renee Gardner, Principal Researcher, Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet

United States President Donald Trump recently claimed that using the common painkiller acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol and by the brand name Tylenol in the US) during pregnancy is fuelling the rise in autism diagnoses. He then went on to suggest pregnant women should “tough it out” rather than use the common painkiller if they experience fever or pain.

This announcement has caused alarm and confusion worldwide. But despite Trump’s claim, there is no strong scientific evidence to back it up. Our study of nearly 2.5 million births in Sweden published in 2024 shows no evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy increases a child’s risk of autism. This is the largest study conducted on the subject to date.

To understand whether acetaminophen really poses a risk in pregnancy, we turned to Sweden’s national health registers, which are among the most comprehensive in the world. Our study followed nearly 2.5 million children born between 1995 and 2019, tracking them for up to 26 years.

Using prescription records and interviews that midwives conducted during prenatal visits, we could see which mothers reported using acetaminophen (about 7.5% of pregnancies) and which did not.

We also made sure to account for any variables that may have affected the results of our statistical analysis – including controlling for health factors, such as fever or pain, which would have influenced whether or not a mother used acetaminophen during her pregnancy. This was to ensure a more fair comparison between the two groups.

We then looked at the children’s neurodevelopmental outcomes – specifically whether they were diagnosed with autism, ADHD or an intellectual disability.

The real strength of our study came from being able to compare siblings. This allowed us to compare children born to the same mother, where acetaminophen had been used during one child’s pregnancy but not the other. We compared over 45,000 sibling pairs, where at least one sibling had an autism diagnosis.

This sibling design is powerful because siblings share much of their genetics and family environment. This allows us to tease apart whether the drug itself – rather than underlying family traits or health conditions – is responsible for any apparent risks for neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Acetaminophen use

When we first looked at the entire population, we saw a pattern that echoed earlier studies: children whose mothers reported using acetaminophen during pregnancy were slightly more likely to be diagnosed with autism, ADHD or an intellectual disability.

But once we ran the sibling comparisons, that association completely disappeared. In other words, when we compared sets of siblings where one was exposed in the womb to acetaminophen and one was not, there was no difference in their likelihood of later being diagnosed with autism, ADHD or an intellectual disability.

Our study is not the only one to put this question to the test. Researchers in Japan recently published a study using a similar sibling-comparison design, and their results closely matched ours.

Importantly, they replicated our findings in a population with a different genetic background and where patterns of acetaminophen use during pregnancy are quite different. Nearly 40% of mothers in Japan reported using the drug during pregnancy. In comparison, less than 10% of Swedish mothers had used it.

Despite these differences, the conclusion was the same. When siblings are compared, there is no evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy increases the risk of autism or ADHD.

These findings mark an important shift from earlier studies, which relied on more limited data, used smaller cohorts and didn’t account for genetic differences. They also did not fully account for why some mothers used pain relief during pregnancy while others didn’t.

For example, mothers who take acetaminophen are more likely to also have migraines, chronic pain, fever or serious infections. These are conditions that are themselves genetically linked to autism or ADHD, as well as a child’s likelihood of later being diagnosed with one of these conditions.

These types of “confounding factors” can create associations that look convincing on the surface, but may not reflect a true cause-and-effect relationship.

That brings us to the real question on many people’s minds: what does this mean if you’re pregnant and dealing with pain or fever?

It’s important to recognise that untreated illness during pregnancy can be dangerous. A high fever in pregnancy, for example, is known to increase the risk of complications for both mother and baby. “Toughing it out,” as the president suggested, is not a risk-free option.

That’s why professional medical organisations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency continue to recommend acetaminophen (paracetamol) as the safest fever reducer and pain reliever during pregnancy when used at the lowest effective dose and only when necessary. This has been the guidance for decades.

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Read more:
Paracetamol, pregnancy and autism: what the science really shows

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Of course, if someone finds themselves needing to take acetaminophen regularly over a longer period of time, that’s a decision best made in consultation with their doctor or midwife. But the idea that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes autism simply isn’t supported by the best available science.

The greater danger is that alarmist messaging will discourage pregnant women from treating pain or fever – putting both themselves and their babies at risk.

Renee Gardner receives funding from the Swedish Research Council; the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare; and the US NIH.

Brian Lee received funding from the NIH, Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, Department of Defense and Pennsylvania Department of Health CURE SAP, as well as personal fees from Beasley Allen Law Firm, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP and AlphaSights.

Viktor H. Ahlqvist receives funding from the Swedish Society for Medical Research

– ref. Paracetamol use during pregnancy not linked to autism, our study of 2.5 million children shows – https://theconversation.com/paracetamol-use-during-pregnancy-not-linked-to-autism-our-study-of-2-5-million-children-shows-265919

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Annayah Prosser, Assistant Professor in Marketing, Business and Society, University of Bath

There are lots of good reasons not to eat meat or dairy products. It might be for your health or for the sake of the environment. Or you might have moral concerns about consuming animals.

Yet many of us continue to eat meat, especially men, who eat more of it than women, and are less likely to opt for a vegetarian or vegan diet.

So is there a link between meat consumption and perceptions of masculinity? Does the mindset of the prehistoric caveman hunter live on in today’s restaurants and weekend barbecues?

To explore this idea, my colleagues and I conducted a survey of more than 1,000 men in the UK, which revealed that social ideas involving “avoidance of femininity” and status were indeed linked to higher levels of meat-eating and a notion that meat is masculine.

The survey showed that those sympathetic to traditional masculine norms consumed more red meat and poultry, and were less keen to part from the meat and dairy in their diet. We then followed up with some of the men who had high levels of “meat attachment” to join an online discussion, and used remotely moderated focus groups to listen in on their conversations about their diets.

So what did they talk about?

More often than not, men were reluctant to talk about the role of gender in meat consumption, or completely rejected the notion that there was any link, with one participant in his thirties saying: “I don’t think gender influences what I eat at all. If there’s something I want [to eat] I’ll just have it.”

He went on: “There’s no such thing as a manly or womanly dish if you ask me. It’s just food, so it’s literally got zero influence on whether I’d eat something or not.”

For others, the relationship between meat and masculinity was more complex. Some men noted for example that the women in their lives were more likely to reduce their meat consumption.

One man in his forties, said: “I live with five women and most of them would happily not eat meat at all. Also [the female] partners of quite a lot of my friends don’t eat a lot of meat. They would happily eat no meat at all. Whereas all of us [men], you know, we like our meat.”

For others, the link between meat and masculinity was explicit, with meat consumption linked to status within social groups. John, in his forties, commented on the obligation he sometimes feels when dining with what he called “alpha males” to “always go for a meat dish or a steak or something like that”.

He added: “Maybe I feel a slight obligation to go down [the meat] route sort of subconsciously. I’ve probably felt I need to have a steak here or need to have something that [perhaps] shows my masculinity.

“I feel sort of safer behind choosing something like that rather than, say, a pasta or a salad-based dish.”

What’s at stake?

We also found mention of an idea revealed in other research which describes meat being commonly understood in terms of “four Ns”: “natural”, “normal”, “necessary” and “nice”. These kinds of values came up in our groups’ discussions, but rarely applied to discussions of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives, which men seemed to consider “unnatural”, “insufficient” and “not nice”.

One participant in his twenties commented: “Chicken will just say ‘chicken’ on the back, whereas a plant-based [alternative to chicken] would have something like glycolic acid or something. I have no idea what that is.”

Another man commented: “I think if you switched maybe most of the time or full time to plant based diets, would you be missing out on certain nutrients?”

A fellow meat eater added: “The meat alternative options never taste very nice.

“I’ve always found that they just taste really bland [and] it’s an unusual texture.”

It was difficult for many of the men in our groups to imagine consuming a fully plant-based diet. They often spoke of extreme or specific situations as the only situations in which they would consider doing so.

“I’d need the doctor to tell me you’ve got six months [to live],” said one man in his fifties.

Another in his forties explained: “It would only really be health-related stuff. If someone said to me you’re gonna have to [cut down on meat] or it’s going to knock years off your life.”

One participant in the 18-29 age bracket said a meat diet was heavily linked to his social life where his friends relied on meat for protein because of their fitness regimes.

He said: “I would have to change my friends [if I stopped eating meat]. Basically, I have friends who are gym rats, who love to go to the gym together, who love to do strength training. So I would have to change my friends to people who are probably agriculturists – and have more interest in plants.”

These and many other contributions led us to conclude that men can have a mixed –and often contradictory – understanding of the role of gender in their food choices. And while our survey data reveals a strong link between masculinity and diet, our focus group data casts doubt on whether men are generally aware of this connection.

The research study reported here was funded by ProVeg International, a food awareness organisation working to transform the global food system. ProVeg had no role in the study in terms of design, analysis, and reporting. Annayah Prosser’s contributions to the project were not funded by ProVeg and she reports no conflicting interests.

– ref. Is meat masculine? How men really talk about being carnivores – https://theconversation.com/is-meat-masculine-how-men-really-talk-about-being-carnivores-265236

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Florian Neukart, Assistant professor of Physics, Leiden University

For more than a century, physics has been built on two great theories. Einstein’s general relativity explains gravity as the bending of space and time.

Quantum mechanics governs the world of particles and fields. Both work brilliantly in their own domains. But put them together and contradictions appear – especially when it comes to black holes, dark matter, dark energy and the origins of the cosmos.

My colleagues and I have been exploring a new way to bridge that divide. The idea is to treat information – not matter, not energy, not even spacetime itself – as the most fundamental ingredient of reality. We call this framework the quantum memory matrix (QMM).

At its core is a simple but powerful claim: spacetime is not smooth, but discrete – made of tiny “cells”, which is what quantum mechanics suggests. Each cell can store a quantum imprint of every interaction, like the passage of a particle or even the influence of a force such as electromagnetism or nuclear interactions, that passes through. Each event leaves behind a tiny change in the local quantum state of the spacetime cell.

In other words, the universe does not just evolve. It remembers.

The story begins with the black hole information paradox. According to relativity, anything that falls into a black hole is gone forever. According to quantum theory, that is impossible. Information cannot be ever destroyed.

QMM offers a way out. As matter falls in, the surrounding spacetime cells record its imprint. When the black hole eventually evaporates, the information is not lost. It has already been written into spacetime’s memory.

This mechanism is captured mathematically by what we call the imprint operator, a reversible rule that makes information conservation work out. At first, we applied this to gravity. But then we asked: what about the other forces of nature? It turns out they fit the same picture.

In our models assuming that spacetime cells exist, the strong and weak nuclear forces, which hold atomic nuclei together, also leave traces in spacetime. Later, we extended the framework to electromagnetism (although this paper is currently being peer reviewed). Even a simple electric field changes the memory state of spacetime cells.

Explaining dark matter and dark energy

That led us to a broader principle that we call the geometry-information duality. In this view, the shape of spacetime is influenced not just by mass and energy, as Einstein taught us, but also by how quantum information is distributed, especially through entanglement. Entanglement is a quantum feature in which two particles, for example, can be spookily connected, meaning that if you change the state of one, you automatically and immediately also change the other – even if it’s light years away.

This shift in perspective has dramatic consequences. In one study, currently under peer review, we found that clumps of imprints behave just like dark matter, an unknown substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe. They cluster under gravity and explain the motion of galaxies – which appear to orbit at unexpectedly high speeds – without needing any exotic new particles.

In another, we showed how dark energy might emerge too. When spacetime cells are saturated, they cannot record new, independent information. Instead, they contribute to a residual energy of spacetime. Interestingly, this leftover contribution has the same mathematical form as the “cosmological constant”, or dark energy, which is making the universe expand at an accelerated rate.

Its size matches the observed dark energy that drives cosmic acceleration. Together, these results suggest that dark matter and dark energy may be two sides of the same informational coin.

A cyclic universe?

But if spacetime has finite memory, what happens when it fills up? Our latest cosmological paper, accepted for publication in The Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, points to a cyclic universe – being born and dying over and over. Each cycle of expansion and contraction deposits more entropy – a measure of disorder – into the ledger. When the bound is reached, the universe “bounces” into a new cycle.

Reaching the bound means spacetime’s information capacity (entropy) is maxed out. At that point, contraction cannot continue smoothly. The equations show that instead of collapsing to a singularity, the stored entropy drives a reversal, leading to a new phase of expansion. This is what we describe as a “bounce”.

By comparing the model to observational data, we estimate that the universe has already gone through three or four cycles of expansion and contraction, with fewer than ten remaining. After the remaining cycles are completed, the informational capacity of spacetime would be fully saturated. At that point, no further bounces occur. Instead, the universe would enter a final phase of slowing expansion.

That makes the true “informational age” of the cosmos about 62 billion years, not just the 13.8 billion years of our current expansion.

So far, this might sound purely theoretical. But we have already tested parts of QMM on today’s quantum computers. We treated qubits, the basic units of quantum computers, as tiny spacetime cells. Using imprint and retrieval protocols based on the QMM equations, we recovered the original quantum states with over 90% accuracy.

This showed us two things. First, that the imprint operator works on real quantum systems. Second, it has practical benefits. By combining imprinting with conventional error-correction codes, we significantly reduced logical errors. That means QMM might not only explain the cosmos, but also help us build better quantum computers.

QMM reframes the universe as both a cosmic memory bank and a quantum computer. Every event, every force, every particle leaves an imprint that shapes the evolution of the cosmos. It ties together some of the deepest puzzles in physics, from the information paradox to dark matter and dark energy, from cosmic cycles to the arrow of time.

And it does so in a way that can already be simulated and tested in the lab. Whether QMM proves to be the final word or a stepping stone, it opens a startling possibility: the universe may not only be geometry and energy. It is also memory. And in that memory, every moment of cosmic history may still be written.

Florian Neukart 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. Information could be a fundamental part of the universe – and may explain dark energy and dark matter – https://theconversation.com/information-could-be-a-fundamental-part-of-the-universe-and-may-explain-dark-energy-and-dark-matter-265415

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jennifer Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Aberystwyth University

US president Donald Trump has said Ukraine could win back all of the territory it has lost in the ongoing war, but Russia’s president Vladimir Putin shows no signs of wanting a peace deal, or reducing the military offensive.

Instead, night after night Russia continues to launch hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukraine, killing civilians and destroying homes, public buildings and infrastructure.

Russia can only continue this war if it has enough workers. It has one of the world’s largest armed forces (composed of 1.32 million active military personnel), but its military recruiters face a challenging job in outpacing the enormous losses of soldiers who are killed or seriously injured in Ukraine.

However, the staffing needs of Russia’s military are tiny compared with its defence industry. Russian factories that produce weapons and equipment for the war employ approximately 4 million workers – and they have been suffering from a serious labour shortage.

According to a statement made in the Russian parliament in 2024, the country’s defence industry needs approximately 400,000 more workers than it currently employs.

But how can Russia, with a population of 143 million people have a labour shortage in a sector of the economy that is so crucial for the war?

There are a variety of reasons. An estimated 1 million Russian citizens fled Russia in 2022 – either because they opposed the war in principle or because they wanted to avoid being forced to join the military and fight – or both. Although as many as 45% of those who fled are believed to have returned to Russia over the past three years, that would mean Russia lost approximately 650,000 people from its workforce, at least for the duration of the war and perhaps permanently.

Russia’s defence industry is also in direct competition with the army for workers. The Russian state has substantially increased the salaries and various benefits that it offers to new military recruits. Salaries of 200,000 roubles – more than US$2,000 (£1,481) – a month are typical, putting combat soldiers in the top 10% of Russia’s earners.

The defence industry has had to raise the wages it offers during the war, increasing average salaries by 65% between 2022 and 2024, up to about 89,700 roubles per month. New recruits to the military, however, can expect a one-off signing bonus of as much as 4 million roubles in addition to their monthly salary.

Declining birth rate

Demographic patterns also play a part. There was a sharp drop in the birth rate in Russia in the 1990s, which means there are fewer people in their 20s and 30s seeking employment.

The defence industry has introduced a number of initiatives since the start of Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to cope with the increased demand for the production of new weapons and equipment along with the need to repair damaged and broken military hardware.

Many facilities are working around the clock: introducing compulsory 12-hour shifts and work weeks of six days on, one day off. Other parts of the defence industry are reportedly using inmates from local prisons to fill staffing gaps, including Uralvagonzavod, which is Russia’s largest manufacturer of tanks.

Russia has turned to ally North Korea to fill some of its military and labour shortages. Thousands of Koreans have been sent to Russia to work in factories and in construction, as part of a deal between Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. There have been reports of “slave labour” conditions and 18-hour days. North Koreans have also been sent to bolster the Russian military.

Attitudes to women

Despite all the shortages, the military industry is not recruiting Russia’s women to work in most roles. Although some Russian women do work in defence industry, labour regulations introduced in the 1970s exclude women from many roles that are important to defence production, such as working with hazardous chemicals or heavy metals.

These restrictions are designed to protect pregnant women and the fertility of future mothers. Considering Putin’s emphasis on increasing the birth rate and on presenting Russia as a bastion of traditional gender roles, this is unlikely to change.

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Read more:
Putin forced to send wounded back to fight and offer huge military salaries as Russia suffers a million casualties

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However, the reluctance to recruit Russian women into jobs in the defence industry does not extend to women from other countries. Around 200 women, mainly from central and west Africa, have been hired to work in defence industry factories located in the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan, a Russian republic located east of Moscow. Many of these factories build drones assembled from components imported from Iran – weapons that have been used extensively by Russia in its attacks on civilians in Ukraine.

The African women employed to build drones in Tatarstan were recruited through a programme called Alabuga Start, which targets young female migrant workers.

It is advertised extensively on social media, including through paid influencers on TikTok. The salaries offered are high in relation to the wages that these women could earn in their own countries. However, Alabuga Start recruits earn around 40,000 roubles a month – less than half the amount that Russian defence industry workers receive.

The programme is focused on recruiting foreign women for a mix of practical, financial reasons and gender stereotypes. African women will work for less money than Russians. They are also believed to be easier to control than foreign men, while women are perceived to be better than men at tasks that require patience and precision.

The Alabuga Start website appears to offer an attractive package of work experience, on-the-job training, accommodation, Russian language lessons and free flights to Russia. The sectors for employment identified include catering, hospitality and service jobs with no mention of drone assembly.

However, once they arrive, the young women can find themselves living very different lives to those they had anticipated. There are reports of working long hours and exposure to dangerous chemicals, with passports being withheld to prevent women from leaving. For instance, Kenya has launched an investigation into Alabuga Start, which may see the programme shut down in that country.

The difficulties of recruiting and retaining labour for Russia’s defence industry, including bringing in foreign migrant workers and their treatment, reveal some serious weaknesses in Moscow’s military planning. While those are probably not enough to stop Russia’s war effort, they do indicate some of the strains that the war is placing on the country’s economy.

Jennifer Mathers 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. Russia is turning to African women and conscripted North Koreans to tackle its defence worker shortage – https://theconversation.com/russia-is-turning-to-african-women-and-conscripted-north-koreans-to-tackle-its-defence-worker-shortage-264731

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ruth Barton, Professor in Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin

The recent death of Robert Redford was a reminder of just how much All the President’s Men unsettled old certainties about American democracy. An exposé of the Watergate scandal of 1972 (when members of the campaign to re-elect Richard Nixon were caught planting secret recording devices at the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate building), Alan J. Pakula’s film fed into an increasing sense that the institutions of American governance were riddled with corruption.

Maybe not everyone agreed with Pakula’s dark vision. But he was not alone. Over the years since, Oliver Stone could also be relied on to make state-of-the-nation cinema, as could Martin Scorsese – or before them, Frank Capra. Such films attempted to capture, usually to critique, the national mood at that moment in time.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, One Battle After Another, suggests that there is still a place for challenging filmmaking in today’s culture. Along with the recently released Eddington by director Ari Aster, these new state-of-the-nation films explore an America that is in crisis and throw it in our faces in staggering, epic narratives.

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The Long Walk: a brutal, brilliant film about suffering in the name of patriotism

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Both films speak to the chaos of a social order that is falling apart. Both, but particularly Eddington, also threaten to be so overwhelmed by this chaos that they end up by falling into incoherence.

The term, “incoherence”, is not chosen at random. One of the seminal texts for film scholars of the 1980s was Robin Wood’s The Incoherent Text, Narrative in the 70s. Looking back at a series of films from this decade, Wood argued that “here, incoherence is no longer hidden and esoteric: the films seem to crack open before our eyes”. These two films do much the same, exposing through chaos something incomprehensible about our times and falling into incoherence in the process.

Set during the pandemic in a desert town, Eddington hurls itself from one flashpoint to the next. The sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) refuses to wear a mask and this apparently minor infraction soon pits him against his old enemy and competitor in love, Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Borrowing from Maga-style campaigning, Cross enters the election as candidate for new mayor.

At home, Cross is living with his conspiracy theory-loving mother-in-law, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell). His wife Louise (Emma Stone) is retreating further into mental illness and isolation.

On the edges of this, a mysterious conglomerate is building a data centre just outside of town. Race riots are also breaking out following the George Floyd killing. But there is much more to come.

Director Ari Aster could hardly have dreamed up more issues than he does here. With so much weight piling onto the narrative, Eddington concludes with an extended shoot-out that tips an already over-extended film into terminal disarray.

One Battle After Another, like Eddington, is a truly American film. Where Aster shot his neo-western in classic Panavision, Anderson goes one further, following The Brutalist in creating a VistaVision print, a format that is best experienced on a 70mm screen. These formats hark back to Hollywood’s grandiose epics of the 1950s, adding to the films’ evocation of history – both filmic and social.

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Read more:
One Battle After Another is the latest film shot in VistaVision, a 1950s format making a big comeback

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A further historical layering is Anderson’s source material for One Battle, Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. Anderson updates Vineland’s kaleidoscopic exhumation of the revolutionary movements of the 60s by casting his ageing hippie hero, now called Bob (Leonardo di Caprio), as a relic of a fictional noughties brigade, the French 75. Led by his lover Perfidia Beverley Hills (Teyana Taylor), they robbed banks, bombed buildings and liberated detention centres in the name of their ideology of “free borders, free choices, free from fear”.

Left to bring up their daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti) as a single parent, Bob spends his days off-grid unshaven, smoking weed, and watching the classic political drama, The Battle of Algiers. All is (somewhat) well until the brutal army veteran, Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who believes himself to be Willa’s real father, barrels back into their lives in pursuit of his “daughter”.

In common with Eddington, One Battle is at heart a family melodrama. It draws on the classic tropes of bad versus good father and conflicted mother, questioning the legitimacy of the family unit. On to these narratives bones, Anderson grafts a vision of a post-Obama America in thrall to shadowy corporate interests, a legacy of rounding up and deporting immigrants, and an old white male order hell-bent on its own agenda of personal revenge.

Robin Wood concluded his thoughts on American cinema of the 70s with the prognosis that in their incoherence they pointed to one inescapable solution: the logical necessity for radicalism.

Aster and Anderson have looked radicalism in the eye and dismissed it as yet another failed ideology. Neither names the forces behind their vision of the end of American democracy and, to be fair, the current political crisis postdates both films’ completion in early 2024.

Where Aster sees only bloodshed and impotence, Anderson clings on to a fragile utopianism that in the present day is as unlikely as it is consoling. After the lights have gone up, it may well be that what his film leaves behind is its terrifying imagery of detention centres and the horror of immigrant round-ups. It is this certainly that led Steven Spielberg to acclaim “this insane movie” as more relevant than Anderson could ever have imagined.

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Ruth Barton 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. One Battle After Another: this insane movie about leftwing radicals and rightwing institutions is a powerful exploration of US today – https://theconversation.com/one-battle-after-another-this-insane-movie-about-leftwing-radicals-and-rightwing-institutions-is-a-powerful-exploration-of-us-today-265818

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ioannis Kokkoris, Professor of Competition Law and Economics, Queen Mary University of London

A US judge recently decided not to break up Google, despite a ruling last year that the company held a monopoly in the online search market. Between Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Meta, there are more than 45 ongoing antitrust investigations in the EU (the majority under the new EU Digital Markets Act) and in the US.

While the outcome could have been much worse for Google, other rulings and investigations have the potential to cut to the heart of how the big tech companies make money. As such, these antitrust cases can drive real change around how the tech giants do business – with implications both for their competitors and for ordinary users.

Some investigations focus on potential breaches of longstanding competition legislation, such as restricting the ability of software to work with other software, while others address controversies that have emerged only in the last few years.

Previous antitrust cases have been based on decades-old competition legislation, namely the US Sherman Act, passed in 1890, and the EU’s treaty on the functioning of the European Union, the first iteration of which was signed in 1957. More recent cases in the EU have been based on the newer Digital Markets Act.

A quick search shows at least 15 different countries (including individual countries within the EU) where competition authorities have initiated or concluded investigations into Google’s business practices.

When US Judge Amit Mehta decided not to order a break up of Google in August, or to force the company to sell off its internet browser, Google Chrome – which had both been raised as potential outcomes – he instead imposed a number of other commitments on the company.

Hefty fines

In September 2025, the European Commission also imposed a fine of €2.95bn (£2.5 billion) on Google, in relation to its search advertising practices. The commission said that Google favoured its own online display advertising technology services “to the detriment of competing providers”.

In a statement, Google called the fine “unjustified” and said the changes would “hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money”.

These investigations are not limited to the search giant, however. In the last few years, Microsoft, Apple and Meta have also been under investigation by the EU. So how should we interpret this flurry of enforcement against the tech giants and what does the future hold for them?

Competition investigations hit at the core of these companies’ business activities, so they have an extremely high incentive to fight for every conceivable aspect of their business model. Voluntarily giving some parts of their business up would mean foregoing substantial profits.

Companies clearly have to weigh up the potential downsides of compromising over their business approaches against hefty fines and major restrictions over how they operate in particular territories. In the US case involving Google, major changes to the company had been on the table, including a sell-off of the Google Chrome browser. Needless to say, this would have dealt a major blow to the company.

In 2023, the European Commission started an investigation into Microsoft over the company tying its Microsoft Teams software to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software suites. The investigation was initiated following a complaint by Slack, which makes software that competes with Teams.

The way this case concluded is one example of how tech companies can mitigate damage to their business. Microsoft presented its own commitments to the European Commission over the Teams investigation.

The tech giant had to amend its original proposal following market testing by the European Commission, but in September, they were accepted by the Commission. The commitments include making available versions of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 without Teams and at a reduced price.

Behaviour change

Where possible, by offering their own commitments, companies can retain a degree of control and, potentially, avoid a fine. Other recent cases show that those fines can be substantial. In April, the Commission fined Apple €500m after it said the company had breached the Digital Markets Act by preventing app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the app store.

In July, Apple launched an appeal against the decision, saying that the Commission went “far beyond what the law requires” in the dispute.

The commission has also investigated Meta over the company’s “pay-or-consent” advertising model. Under the model, EU users of Facebook and Instagram had a choice between their personal data gathered from different Meta services being combined for advertising, or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service. Finding that the company had breached the Digital Markets Act, the Commission fined Meta €200 million.

The commission says that when it decides that companies are not complying with legislation, it can impose fines up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide turnover. Such fines can go up to 20% in case of repeated infringement.

In cases of continued non-compliance, the commission can oblige tech companies to sell a business or parts of it, or banning them from acquisitions of other companies involved in areas related to their non-compliance.

Such intervention is likely to place boundaries on any big tech company with regard to their business practices towards competitors and users. As discussed, we have already started to see some evidence of this.

Users are now able to use different services from the companies without having to give consent to their data. There will also be changes in how users engage with some of these services. For example, you may not be able to click on a hyperlinked hotel in a map contained in search results in order to go to its booking website.

Reduced linking was carried out in the EU for Google Maps because of perceptions about the company’s dominance in the search market.

But overall, the expectation is that in the not too distant future, big tech will be more constrained in the business models they adopt, especially where they relate to market competition.

Ioannis Kokkoris 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. Despite Google’s recent victory, a flurry of competition cases could still change how the tech giants do business – https://theconversation.com/despite-googles-recent-victory-a-flurry-of-competition-cases-could-still-change-how-the-tech-giants-do-business-264890

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna M. Zamorano, Assistant Professor, Aarhus University

It’s well known that learning to play an instrument can offer benefits beyond just musical ability. Indeed, research shows it’s a great activity for the brain – it can enhance our fine motor skills,language acquisition, speech, and memory – and it can even help to keep our brains younger.

After years of working with musicians and witnessing how they persist in musical training despite the pain caused by performing thousands of repetitive movements, I started wondering: if musical training can reshape the brain in so many ways, can it also change the way musicians feel pain, too? This is the question that my colleagues and I set out to answer in our new study.

Scientists already know that pain activates several reactions in our bodies and brains, changing our attention and thoughts, as well as our way of moving and behaving. If you touch a hot pan, for example, pain makes you pull back your hand before you get seriously burned.

Pain also changes our brain activity. Indeed, pain usually reduces activity in the motor cortex, the area of the brain that controls muscles, which helps stop you from overusing an injured body part.

These reactions help to prevent further harm when you’re injured. In this way, pain is a protective signal that helps us in the short term. But if pain continues for a longer time and your brain keeps sending these “don’t move” signals for too long, things can go wrong.

For example, if you sprain your ankle and stop using it for weeks, it can reduce your mobility and disrupt the brain activity in regions related to pain control. And this can increase your suffering and pain levels in the long term.

Research has also found that persistent pain can shrink what’s known as our brain’s “body map” – this is where our brain sends commands for which muscles to move and when – and this shrinking is linked with worse pain.

But while it’s clear that some people experience more pain when their brain maps shrink, not everyone is affected the same way. Some people can better handle pain, and their brains are less sensitive to it. Scientists still don’t fully understand why this happens.

Musicians and pain

In our study, we wanted to look at whether musical training and all the brain changes it creates could influence how musicians feel and deal with pain. To do this, we deliberately induced hand pain over several days in both musicians and non-musicians to see if there was any difference in how they responded to the pain.

To safely mimic muscle pain, we used a compound called nerve growth factor. It’s a protein that normally keeps nerves healthy, but when injected into hand muscles, it makes them ache for several days, especially if you’re moving your hand. But it’s safe, temporary, and doesn’t cause any damage.

Then we used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to measure brain activity. TMS sends tiny magnetic pulses into the brain. And we used these signals to create a map of how the brain controls the hand, which we did for each person who took part in the study.

We built these hand maps before the pain injection, and then measured them again two days later and eight days later, to see if pain changed how the brain was working.

A striking difference

When we compared the brains of the musicians and the non-musicians, the differences were striking. Even before we induced pain, the musicians showed a more finely tuned hand map in the brain, and the more hours they had spent practising, the more refined this map was found to be.

After pain was induced, the musicians reported experiencing less discomfort overall. And while the hand map in non-musicians’ brains shrank after just two days of pain, the maps in musicians’ brains remained unchanged – amazingly, the more hours they had trained, the less pain they felt.

This was a small study of just 40 people, but the results clearly showed that the musicians’ brains responded differently to pain. Their training seems to have given them a kind of buffer against the usual negative effects, both in how much pain they felt and in how their brain’s motor areas reacted.

Of course, this doesn’t mean music is a cure for chronic pain. But it does show us that long-term training and experience can shape how we perceive pain. This is exciting because it might help us understand why some people are more resilient to pain than others, along with how we can design new treatments for those living with pain.

Our team is now conducting further research on pain to determine if musical training may also protect us from altered attention and cognition during chronic pain. And off the back of this, we hope to be able to design new therapies that “retrain” the brain in people who suffer from persistent pain.

For me, this is the most exciting part: the idea that as a musician, what I learn and practise every day doesn’t just make me better at a skill, but that it can literally rewire my brain in ways that change how I experience the world, even something as fundamental as pain.

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.

Anna M. Zamorano has received funding from The Lundbeck Foundation and from the Danish National Research Foundation through the Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP).

– ref. Neuroscience finds musicians feel pain differently from the rest of us – https://theconversation.com/neuroscience-finds-musicians-feel-pain-differently-from-the-rest-of-us-265815

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Owton, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology, The Open University

As women’s sport surges on the global stage, hosts England have lit up the Women’s Rugby World Cup. But the tackles, speed and power fans see on the field are only part of the story. What we don’t see is what it takes – both physically and psychologically – to wear England’s emblem, the Red Rose.

The psychology of rugby shapes every performance. Behind the scenes lie early mornings, lonely and punishing rehab sessions, playing through pain, brutal setbacks, private doubts and personal sacrifices.

Before the whistle blows and the crowd roars, players stretch aching muscles, re-tape old injuries and mentally lock in. The changing room becomes a crucible – a place of intense pressure and transformation – where focus sharpens, rituals are repeated and the “game face” goes on.

That game face is more than a stare. It’s the product of years of physical and psychological battles. It’s the mindset that lets an athlete walk into the arena with purpose and conviction, no matter what pain or setbacks they’ve endured.

Consider Emily Scarratt, one of England’s most celebrated players. In 2023 a surgeon advised her to retire after a complex neck injury threatened her career. Opting for an artificial disc replacement near her windpipe was risky – any operation that close to the airway and spinal cord carries the danger of nerve damage or breathing complications – and career-defining because the operation’s success or failure would determine whether she could ever play again.

Her February 2024 return wasn’t just about regaining fitness. It was also about showing the mental steel that “game face” represents, blocking out fear and doubt to perform at the sport’s highest level. At 35, she became the first England player to feature in five Rugby World Cups.

Abi Burton’s comeback is equally astonishing. Just three years ago she was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis – a rare condition in which the immune system attacks the brain, causing inflammation and severe neurological symptoms – and placed in a medically induced coma. She woke four weeks later unable to walk, talk, read or write and more than 19 kg lighter. After years of rehabilitation, she made her World Cup debut against Samoa in 2025.

Rosie Galligan’s road back was just as brutal. She nearly lost her legs to meningitis in 2019, then fractured an ankle in early 2020, which sidelined her for over a year. Told by medical specialists and coaches more than once that she might never play again, she fought back to the delayed 2022 World Cup and is now a standout player for 2025.

These headline comebacks highlight something the public rarely sees: the daily grind of resilience. Managing concussions and torn ligaments, coping with the psychological toll of repeated setbacks; just staying in the game takes an immense toll and can lead to player burnout without strong support. Ellie Kildunne, ruled out of the quarter-final with head-injury symptoms, has spoken openly about the mental strength needed to survive the toughest moments, calling the internal battles “the hardest to win”.

So, while England may look clinical and composed on the pitch, every performance requires extraordinary emotional and mental strength. And the players are not doing it alone. Behind every recovery and every small gain is a network of coaches, physiotherapists, psychologists, doctors and support staff working to keep the foundations solid.

None of this happens by accident. It’s the result of years of sustained investment in the women’s game: not just in players, but in the infrastructure around them. Since 2009, nearly £50 million in National Lottery funding has gone into girls’ and women’s rugby.

The Impact 25 legacy programme – World Rugby’s initiative to grow the women’s game before, during and long after the 2025 tournament – is injecting a further £12 million to expand grassroots pathways: community-level coaching, clubs and player-development routes that help girls progress from school or local teams into elite rugby across England and the home nations.

Elsewhere the contrast is stark. Teams such as Samoa have had to fundraise just to get players on the pitch: a sharp reminder of the global inequalities that persist in women’s sport. While England can rotate two professional squads, other national teams are simply trying to cover basic costs.

England’s story shows what’s possible when talent is matched with belief and when belief is backed with resources and support. England’s success hasn’t come easy: it’s the product of years of grit, resilience and bold investment. If women’s rugby is to grow globally, England’s blueprint may be a powerful place to start.

Helen Owton 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. Blood, bruises and belief: how England’s women’s rugby team embody physical and mental endurance – https://theconversation.com/blood-bruises-and-belief-how-englands-womens-rugby-team-embody-physical-and-mental-endurance-264800

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aaron Edwards, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Leicester

The recent “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London shows how easy it is for the radical right to mobilise a mass protest by repackaging a perennial issue as a moral panic. It did so by fusing together fears of migration and crime with a rising distrust in government.

There were calls for “remigration”, mass deportation and even the dissolution of parliament as well as violent clashes with police. There was also a level of confusion among some of the thousands of people who attended as to whether they were protesting for freedom of speech or lending their voices to a racist cause.

Although the scale of the demonstration was surprising to many, far-right activism has a long history in the UK.

In the contemporary era, it dates back to the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. But it was the increase in immigration in the 1950s – the Windrush era – that saw a new generation of far-right activists emerge.

In the years that followed, Britain’s far right switched its focus from antisemitism to opposing migration from the country’s colonies and former colonies. This was captured best, perhaps, in the infamous “rivers of blood” speech delivered by Conservative MP Enoch Powell in 1968.

By the 1980s, the British National Party (BNP) emerged, growing to make considerable electoral headway in the 1990s and 2000s before its base ultimately crumbled due to its toxic image.

In its wake, the far-right morphed into street protest movements like the English Defence League (EDL) and the Football Lads Alliance. Extremist “direct action” groups like Combat-18, a neo-Nazi group that grew out of the BNP in the 1990s, would also be replaced by National Action and the Patriotic Alternative.

These violent fringe groups were banned but others have replaced them and grown in influence. They include the cultural nationalist movement coalescing around former EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known popularly as “Tommy Robinson” – the man behind the Unite the Kingdom rally in London.

Extremism expert Chris Allen has noted how the re-emergence of radical right protest activism had its medium-term origins in the 2016 Brexit referendum. This relates to how some pro-Leave politicians promoted issues that had “a clear resonance with the traditional and contemporary radical-right” – such as border security and sovereignty.

Rightwing extremist activity ranged from the murder of Jo Cox MP a week prior to the Brexit referendum to street agitation whipped up by other fringe far-right groups, like Britain First. According to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, these groups attempted to “dominate the narrative on key political and social issues, including immigration, Brexit and Islam”.

The anxiety around immigration had already found its way into mainstream political discourse on the doorsteps during the 2015 general election. Narrative tropes about “taking back control of our borders” became part of everyday political rhetoric. In the aftermath of the election of that year, prime minister David Cameron made cracking down on immigration a priority.

As antagonism towards the EU began to recede in the years after the Brexit referendum, the fear of irregular immigration came much more to the fore. So too did a rise in racism and race-related hate crimes.

Many of these hate crimes happened in the wake of Islamist terror attacks in 2017, though the arrival of the COVID pandemic superseded fears surrounding terrorism. And as the UK re-emerged from COVID lockdowns, little consideration was given by the British state to the growing security challenge posed by irregular immigration.

It was in this context that a tipping point was reached. In July 2024, after the murder of three children in Southport, radical-right social media influencers and other bad actors stirred up riots across 27 towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland. Thousands of people were radicalised by the language of a moral panic, played out in the new domain of social media.

Illegal immigration as a form of moral panic

Sociologist Stanley Cohen coined the term “moral panic” in his important 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. He described how a “condition, episode, person or group…emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” and is then presented in a stereotyped fashion by the media.

Perhaps the most famous of these moral panics came in the immediate aftermath of a huge 1964 brawl in the seaside town of Clacton between mods and rockers, two rival youth counter-cultures. Cohen’s argument was that the reaction ended up being wildly disproportionate to the severity of the original incident. Local authorities in towns and cities as far away as Belfast were forced to issue statements reassuring the public they did not have a “hooligan problem”.

In 2002, Cohen demonstrated how the same phenomenon was being playing out in relation to immigration. He remarked that the once morally untouchable category of political refugee was becoming “deconstructed”. In Cohen’s opinion, British governments were starting from a broad consensus that “we must keep out as many refugee-type foreigners as possible” and that “these people always lie to get themselves accepted”. To be accepted, they must be “eligible” and “credible”.

It was in the ensuing decades, one could argue, that moral panics centring on the triumvirate of migration, crime and security began to emerge in Germany, Italy and the UK.

The British tabloid media led this new moral panic, greatly aided by two intersecting and overlapping empirical realities: the rising tide of concern over increasing immigration in the UK – and Europe more broadly – and the repackaging of ethnically competitive politics as a new form of everyday reality. In the far-right worldview, politics is about the zero-sum nature of power relations between different ethnic groups.

Old tropes, new moral panics

What we are now seeing is a new politicisation of a long-running issue. Humanitarian responses to asylum seekers have been replaced with the trappings of a moral panic about irregular immigration.

Moral panics do not, as Cohen reminds us, necessarily reflect the reality of the situation, only the anxiety of those who spread it. That does not mean there are no serious concerns underpinning these issues, only that they have been magnified and, importantly, amplified by the far-right’s sophisticated embrace of new technology. This situation is, at its core, a crisis in confidence between a section of the population and the government.

As we move towards towards the next UK election, further disillusionment is more likely to manifest itself in increased electoral support for parties like Reform UK and Advance UK, particularly if they continue to play to hardline supporters. In a recent YouGov survey, 44% of those surveyed said Reform’s immigration policy, which includes mass deportation was about right or not tough enough.

While radical-right demonstrations promoting the totemic policy of “remigration” remain largely peaceful, there is a danger that the mainstreaming of such extremist rhetoric will only serve as a driver towards radicalisation for a new generation of far-right extremists.

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

Aaron Edwards 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. A contemporary history of Britain’s far right – and how it helps explain why so many people went to the Unite the Kingdom rally in London – https://theconversation.com/a-contemporary-history-of-britains-far-right-and-how-it-helps-explain-why-so-many-people-went-to-the-unite-the-kingdom-rally-in-london-265805

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sergei Petrovskii, Professor of Applied Mathematics , University of Leicester

Almost everyone who has a garden knows what a nuisance slugs can be. They are also one of the most destructive crop pests in the UK. Studies show that yields of many major crops, such as wheat, are severely reduced by their feeding.

But recent research into slug movements may help farmers with their slug prevention strategies

A 2014 report from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board estimated that slugs would cost the industry up to £100 million per year in the UK alone, in the absence of effective control. And contamination makes produce undesirable to consumers – nobody wants to find a slug in their lettuce.

Making a living by growing food is already difficult because of labour shortages and rising costs, climate change and other challenges. The slug problem has been in the spotlight for a long time, but development of affordable and reliable solutions has proven to be difficult.

Good pesticides are available, but several aspects of slug behaviour means they can be hit and miss. For example, most pesticides target only slugs that are active on or very close to the surface. However, a large proportion of the slug population can be found at different depths in the soil. This is because they move up and down the soil depending on the weather, soil characteristics and several other factors.

During harsh weather they can become less active, remaining deeper in the soil or hiding themselves in concealed or hard-to-reach places under stones or in dense vegetation such as tussocky grass. This gives a false impression they have disappeared, but they can re-emerge fast and in large numbers once the weather improves.

Some of the chemical pesticides (such as metaldehyde) that work well on slugs are banned under UK legislation due to concerns about their damaging effect on the environment, in particular on rivers and lakes. Biological products, for example some nematodes, seem to work well but farmers consider them too expensive to be commercially viable. Nematodes are microscopic creatures also known as roundworms and some species can infect and kill molluscs such as slugs. They are a good option for gardeners, however, who normally need to apply a lot less because they have a smaller space to protect.

Tracking slug groups

One possible solution to the problem lies in studies showing that the distribution of slugs over an arable field is uneven. Previous studies of slugs in major crops including wheat and oilseed rape, as well as cover crops and fields left fallow, noticed large numbers of slugs tend to congregate together in patches interspersed with areas where slug numbers are sparse. Indeed our 2020 paper showed this was true in all the arable fields we studied.

Spatial distributions of animals in their natural environment are rarely uniform. You might expect animals to congregate in areas with a higher density of food. But in many cases animals form “patches” even in environments where features like food are evenly spread out. Researchers are unsure why this is.

If we can predict where those patches with the high density of the slugs will occur, farmers could concentrate pesticides and nematodes in those areas, which would be a lot more affordable and better for the environment. A separate 2020 study that two of us (Keith and Natalia) worked on found this could help farmers reduce pesticide use by about 50%.

However, this would only be feasible if the location of patches of high slug density doesn’t change much. Until recently information about slug patch formation and stability was scarce. Our 2022 study, however, reported stable slug patches formed in all the crops that we investigated. And these patches always formed in the same places throughout the growing season.

As part of a previous research project we put radio-tags on slugs to track their movements in the field. That paper found slugs exhibited collective behaviour which means they move differently when they move in a group. The changes are subtle. Their average speed and basic zigzagging of their movement paths doesn’t change much. Although, looking in detail, they make steeper turns when they “zig” and “zag” and individual slugs develop a slight bias in their direction of turn. They also tend to rest more when they’re together.

We used the data from the radio-tags to make a digital model of the slug populations we studied. This allowed us to look into factors that would be difficult or even impossible to investigate in the field.

Whether you like slugs or loathe them, we need to understand them if we want to help farmers grow our food in the future.

Keith Walters currently receives research funding from Innovate UK. In the past he has received research grants from UK government, research councils, industry levy bodies and a range of other sources.

Natalia Petrovskaya and Sergei Petrovskii 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. Why slugs are so hard to control – and how scientists are working to keep them in check – https://theconversation.com/why-slugs-are-so-hard-to-control-and-how-scientists-are-working-to-keep-them-in-check-259189