Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jon Gluyas, Professor of Geoenergy, Carbon Capture and Storage, Durham University

Imagine powering long-haul aircraft and heavy ships with fuels derived from just air, water and renewable electricity. This is moving from science fiction to the verge of reality, thanks to the falling price of renewables like wind and solar.

Whereas burning today’s fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere that has been sequestered underground for millions of years, these “e-fuels” would be more environmentally friendly, adding and subtracting carbon from the air in roughly equal quantities.

We’re seeing a glimpse of the future in HIF Global’s Haru Oni project in the south of Chile, backed by Porsche and ExxonMobil. It uses wind power to produce synthetic methanol and gasoline, marking one of the first commercial e-fuel ventures. Similar projects are under development in North Africa, Iceland and the Arabian peninsula, targeting export of e-methanol and e-kerosene.

E-fuels sit within the broader category of synthetic fuels, which are vital for sectors like aviation and shipping that won’t be able to switch to electric power or clean fuels such as hydrogen any time soon.

Synthetic fuels are chemically similar to the energy-dense liquid fuels these modes of transport currently rely on, though its equally possible to produce gases. They still only comprise a tiny share of fuels in these sectors – for instance, around 0.3% of global jet engine fuel was synthetic in 2024.

This is expected to change dramatically in the coming years, potentially rising as high as 50% by 2050. In the meantime, each synthetic fuel comes with trade-offs that affect their costs, scalability and the time to reach the market.

The alternatives

The two other main varieties of synthetic fuel are known as biochemical and thermochemical.

Biochemical fuels are derived either from processing waste fats and oils, or using fermentation or enzymes to transform things like crops and organic waste into alcohols. In both cases, there’s a final step that involves adding hydrogen, in a process called catalytic hydrogenation.

The supply chains are well established for this kind of production, but there’s a lot of competition for the raw materials. They have to be grown on land or water that would otherwise be used for food. Even under optimistic assumptions, these won’t satisfy global demand for sustainable fuels alone.

Thermochemical production uses high temperatures to convert wood residues, waste biomass or even plastics into syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen). This is then converted into liquid fuels through an industrial process such as Fischer–Tropsch, in which they are heated and run over a catalyst like cobalt.

There’s no need for food feedstocks here, and the industrial processes are proven. However, you must still collect and transport large volumes of feedstock, while the high-temperature plants are expensive. As it stands, the vast majority of today’s synthetic fuels are therefore biochemical, mostly from reprocessing oils.

E-fuels

E-fuels are the newest option. Many leaders in global energy expect them to play a central role in decarbonising aviation and shipping – especially as biomass feedstocks reach their limits. The challenge is that making e-fuels is energy-intensive and currently expensive, particularly where renewable power is scarce or costly. Here’s how it breaks down:

1. Carbon dioxide capture

Capturing and concentrating CO₂ requires about 1-3 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy per tonne, which is fairly significant. Using commercially supplied CO₂ is about one-third the cost of capturing it from the air, so hybrid approaches that use some commercial CO₂ will probably take off first. Commercial CO₂ is usually a byproduct from burning fossil fuels, so this has an environmental downside.

2. Hydrogen production

Even the best methods for extracting hydrogen from water operate at about 70% efficiency. This means that 50–55 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity are needed to produce 1kg of hydrogen, which stores only 33 kWh of chemical energy – in other words, considerably more energy goes in than out. This is one reason why making fuels from electricity will probably never be as cheap as using direct electrical power.

3. Compression, storage and transport

Hydrogen must be compressed or liquefied, consuming additional energy (for example, around 10–13 kWh per kg of hydrogen for liquefaction). Hydrogen is also prone to leakage and can embrittle steel pipelines, making long-distance transport difficult.

4. Converting carbon dioxide to fuel

The captured and concentrated C0₂ is converted into fuel by reacting it with hydrogen – or it can first be reduced to carbon monoxide in a catalytic “fuel synthesis” process. In both cases, the resultant product can be an alcohol such as methanol, or a more complex hydrocarbon such as a mixture of paraffins or waxes. Dependent on the desired final product, further processing may be necessary. These steps require high temperatures and pressures, adding energy demand and capital cost.

In sum, each of these four processes compounds energy losses. Until green electricity gets much cheaper, e-fuels will remain a premium product.

In the US and UK, electricity prices are currently around four times greater than natural gas, whereas in Europe it’s about 2.5 times greater. Roughly speaking, e-fuels will remain more expensive than fossil fuels until these prices reach parity. Electricity prices incorporate manufacturing and distribution costs as well as taxes, so we’ll need reductions across the board.

Synthetic fuels comparison

The good news is that the cost of green power should keep falling as the technology gets more efficient. In aviation, recent analysis predicts that most sustainable fuel will be biochemical or thermochemical until 2040, but after that most growth is likely to come from e-fuels. By 2050, these could make up over half of all synthetic fuels.

E-fuels could be made in regions rich in renewables such as North Africa, Patagonia and Iceland — creating new players in the global energy trade. A whole ecosystem involving everything from large-scale renewables to fuel logistics will have to be scaled rapidly to make this industry viable.

In short, the chemistry works but the economics are still catching up. And while e-fuels are an exciting prospect, they’re not a silver bullet. Governments and the energy industry will still need to prioritise the switch to electric power and greater energy efficiency wherever possible.

Jon Gluyas is a named but unremunerated director of sustainable aviation fuels startup Exergic Ltd. There was a significant contribution to this article from Jon’s friend Neil Fowler, a retired industrialist.

– ref. Fuel made from just air, power and water is taking off – but several things are holding it back – https://theconversation.com/fuel-made-from-just-air-power-and-water-is-taking-off-but-several-things-are-holding-it-back-269326

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Haomin Wang, Lecturer in Economics, Cardiff University

Whatever decisions Rachel Reeves makes in her second budget as UK chancellor, it is clear that she needs to find lots of money. Some argue that the best and fairest way of doing this is to raise the taxes of the country’s wealthiest people.

Others feel that such a move will do further harm to the UK’s longstanding problem with productivity, by discouraging investment and entrepreneurship.

Economists describe this as the “equity-efficiency trade-off”, where taxes designed to promote fairness may come at the expense of efficiency and growth, by distorting incentives for work and investment.

But our research suggests that some of the very highest earners can simply ignore that trade-off – because the tax system gives them so much flexibility and choice about what they pay. In the UK for example, the way a business is organised has major implications for how it is taxed.

Sole traders (like a plumber or a freelance writer) and partnerships (an accountancy firm or a garage) are known as “pass-through” businesses. They do not pay corporation tax, with profits instead being passed to the owners and taxed as personal income (at 20%, 40% or 45% depending on the amount).

Limited companies are taxed differently, with profits subject to corporation tax (currently 25% for most firms). And within these parameters, company owners can then choose how they get paid.

If they take a salary, these are taxed as employment income but are deductible from company profits, therefore reducing the corporation tax base. And if they take their pay in the form of dividends, a portion of the company’s profits, these are taxed at lower rates (8.75%, 33.75% or 39.35%).

This flexibility allows entrepreneurs to legally lower their tax bills by adjusting both their business structure and how they take income – whether as salary or dividends. In practice then, wealthy business owners can reclassify their income or reorganise their firms. This gives them much more scope to manage their tax liabilities than ordinary wage earners.

Another difference between the two set-ups is that limited companies tend to be more complex and costly compared to pass-through businesses. But they also enjoy better access to finance, which allows for greater investment and expansion. So when entrepreneurs choose their business structure primarily to reduce taxes, they may sacrifice growth opportunities.

Our research into how entrepreneurs respond to taxation found that when entrepreneurs choose a business structure mainly for tax purposes, it can have an adverse effect on investment.

For example, someone may prefer to avoid the “double taxation” of corporate profits and dividends by remaining a pass-through business. But this limits access to credit and constrains expansion, resulting in a business which operates below its potential.

Fairness and flexibility

We also found that tax avoidance undermines the effectiveness of higher top tax rates. For when governments increase personal income taxes, wealthy business owners can simply restructure their income – by taking less salary and more dividends.

As a result, higher rates do little to raise revenue from the very richest. And regular employees, who cannot reclassify their income, end up carrying a relatively heavier burden.

Our work also suggests that when avoidance opportunities are closed – by aligning the tax treatment of different business forms – governments can raise more revenue and, at the same time, improve productivity and welfare. In other words, well-designed tax policy can promote both fairness and efficiency.

So perhaps discussions about how to raise revenue should move on from its traditional focus on introducing new taxes on wealth or increasing top income tax rates. After all, these kinds of measures may not achieve their goals if those on high incomes can exploit gaps in the tax code to reduce their liabilities.

Instead, with the UK’s economic pressures and rising inequality, politicians should note how existing rules shape incentives and behaviour.

A more promising route may involve revisiting how different forms of income are treated within the current system. Aligning the taxation of salaries and dividends for business owners, and reducing distortions between business structures, could improve both fairness and efficiency.

This would ensure that the tax system rewards productive entrepreneurship – rather than financial engineering.

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. One small change Rachel Reeves could make to close tax loopholes and raise revenue – https://theconversation.com/one-small-change-rachel-reeves-could-make-to-close-tax-loopholes-and-raise-revenue-268079

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Turns, Senior Environment Editor, The Conversation

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.

As the UN climate summit Cop30 progresses in the Brazilian city of Belém, there’s much debate about the specifics of climate finance targets, whether the transition away from fossil fuels really can be ethical and how renewables are shaping the global economy. Luciana Julião, editor at The Conversation Brasil, has been busy meeting scientists and experts in Belém, the host city in the heart of the Amazon. She shares her behind-the-scenes insights.

What’s it really like on the ground there, aside from negotiations?

This is a huge event with two official venues. The first is the blue zone, where each country has a pavilion with their own event programme featuring academics, activists and environmental changemakers. This is also where the diplomatic negotiations are taking place.

It’s enormous – about the size of 17 football pitches. Discussions have ranged from the mathematical modelling being used to design disaster alerts to the new tech that’s bringing renewables to traditional communities.

About a mile away from that, the other official venue is the green zone which is open to the public. Slightly smaller (the size of 14 football pitches), this is where side events take place, with representatives from environmental charities and other movements plus universities.

Events are happening all over the city and free buses are shuttling delegates and participants between venues. For example, the free zone is a cultural space where there have been artistic gatherings, cultural shows and Brazilian food. The agrizone is a hub for discussions about farming and food production. The science house is inside the beautiful Emilio Goeldi museum of Pará, the first botanic garden in Brazil. And the Cúpula dos Povos (people’s summit) at the Federal University of Pará (home to the world’s biggest Amazon research centre) is where Indigenous communities are hosting events.

Which side events have been most fascinating?

Kerstin Bergentz, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is doing her PhD in physical oceanography. At an event in the ocean pavilion, we spoke about how, even though half of the air we breathe comes from plankton, the oceans don’t get a mention in the Paris climate agreement or in most Cop negotiation texts.

“[The ocean is] such an important part of our climate system and our global earth system, but it’s still not getting enough attention on the global climate agenda,” says Bergentz. “We are all 65% water, and billions of people around the world rely on the ocean for their daily food, for sustenance, for their way of life … [The ocean] has absorbed 30% of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions and 90% of the excess heat associated with those emissions.

“Why do we talk about the Amazon rainforest so much but we don’t talk about the ocean? Maybe [it’s partly] a marketing issue … [because the oceans don’t get as much attention as land-based climate issues]. I also think it’s the fact that 41% of the ocean is in what’s called EEZs or exclusive economic zones. So that’s 200 nautical miles from the coastline, right? And that’s governed by individual countries.”

That, she explains, leaves almost 60% of the ocean – the high seas – as no man’s land. “That’s the biggest ecosystem on this planet, but who’s going to be responsible for that?” Of course, in 2026, a new high seas treaty is due to come into force which heralds a new era of ocean governance – if states can balance conservation with a growing scramble for deep-sea resources.

Another session that really resonated with me was about environmental racism.

Mauricio Paixão, professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, is studying how the consequences of intense floods in 2024 in Brazil’s most southernmost state are far from fair. “We hear a lot in Rio Grande do Sul, that the disaster was democratic, that it affected rich and poor, white and black, but in practice, despite affecting everyone, the recovery was not and is not being equal for all these groups.”

He has been observing how environmental racism has unfolded in two badly affected neighbourhoods: Menino Deus, a wealthy part of the city, and Sarandí, a poor neighbourhood with a large presence of Black people among its residents.

While the disaster affected everyone, the cleanup took longer to reach the neighbourhoods with the largest Black population. Paixão says that it’s “impossible” to separate the economic issues from the social, ethnic and gender issues. “When the water receded two weeks later, it looked like Menino Deus had never experienced a flood before, while Sarandí was still covered in accumulated garbage and mud. This is a very clear indicator of environmental racism.”

He spoke about removing ideas of intention from the environmental racism debate: “I can’t conceive that someone in a management position would say or think, ‘I’m going to take an action thinking about harming the Black population.’ I don’t think that happens. The idea of environmental racism isn’t in the intention, it’s in the consequence. So the fact that people in management positions don’t consider the demands of Sarandí because they are unaware of the demands of Sarandí, shows a disconnect from reality. And if you’re not connected to what’s happening in the city, you’re going to commit an injustice, and injustice in a racialised context implies environmental racism.”

Who is here, who is not?

Officially, 194 parties are here (that is 193 countries plus the EU delegation, out of a total of 198), with 56,118 delegates registered. But there are not many leaders of those nations present. According to official stats, presidents or official representatives are here from only about 70 countries. The absence of the US president is the most noted and commented on. There are so many people here from Indigenous and traditional communities coming closer to climate negotiations than ever before.

What is the Amazon setting actually like?

Belém is in the forest. Take a small boat for a few minutes, and you can navigate through its rivers to an island covered in tropical forest. It’s a wonderful experience.

It’s a very hot city with temperatures around 30-34°C. It’s humid here so it feels so much hotter than that. It also rains a lot. People here in Belem have a saying that they have two different seasons in the year: one in which it rains every day and another in which it rains all day long.

Right now, it’s raining every day. There’s lots of sunshine but usually in the afternoon, rain is torrential and fast. Then within about 15 minutes, the sun is shining again. People often joke when making arrangements by asking, when are we going to meet, before or after the rain?

Is the atmosphere one of hope or frustration?

I’m not covering official negotiations, but the many scientists and participants I have been talking to have told me two things. First, this is the Cop with the highest presence of Indigenous and traditional people. This elevates their perspectives and contributes to a feeling of hope rather than frustration.

Second, this Cop30 needs to be the Cop of implementation, not just discussion. We already have enough paperwork and knowledge, now it’s time to put those decisions and insights into practice and make the changes happen.

So we still don’t know if there will be any significant advances, but I can tell you the feeling is of hope. Let’s see. Time will tell.

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– ref. Behind the scenes in Belém: The Conversation’s report from Brazil’s UN climate summit – https://theconversation.com/behind-the-scenes-in-belem-the-conversations-report-from-brazils-un-climate-summit-269869

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sheena Cruickshank, Professor in Immunology, University of Manchester

Peanut allergy is one of the most common food allergies, affecting between 1% and 2% of people living in the west. And, for many years, their prevalence has been rising.

But a recent study out of the US shows that the rate of peanut allergy diagnoses in infants has actually declined. It appears this decline may be due to changes in allergy guidelines – highlighting the importance of introducing this common allergen early on.

A food allergy is a type of allergic reaction which occurs when your immune system reacts inappropriately to things it should ignore – such as pollen or certain types of foods. The most common allergic condition is hayfever – a reaction to pollen. Peanut allergy is one of the most common true food allergies – and also the most common cause of fatal food reactions.

The proportion of people with food allergies in England has more than doubled between 2008 and 2018. Similar data in the US showed more than triple the number of people developed a food allergy between 1997 and 2008.

The reasons for these increases are complex and due to many factors – including exposure to environmental pollutants, alterations in the gut microbiome and genetic predisposition. There also appears to be a link between certain inflammatory health conditions (such as atopic dermatitis and an infant’s likelihood of developing a food allergy.

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Read more:
What’s behind the large rise in food allergies among children in the UK?

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But this latest study has shown that the US appears to have deviated from this overall trend, with peanut allergies actually falling in infants.

The study examined changes in the rates of peanut allergies since 2015. This was the year allergy guidelines in the US changed to encourage infants considered most at risk of food allergy (such as those with atopic dermatitis) to be introduced to peanuts early in life.

Previous research had shown that these guideline changes had resulted in an increase in the number of parents introducing peanuts into their child’s diet by one year of age. The research team wanted to assess whether this had had any affect on peanut allergy rates, too.

They enrolled almost 39,000 children during the pre-guidelines phase (when advice was to avoid peanuts) and around 47,000 in the post-guidelines phase (after 2015). Allergy incidence in both groups was tracked for one to two years.

The research showed that the total rate of peanut allergy decreased from almost 0.8% to 0.5%. This meant fewer at-risk infants developed a peanut allergy following the guideline change.

These findings mirror prior work in the UK showing that early exposure to peanuts before the age of five was linked to a reduced likelihood of developing an allergy.

Food allergy guidelines

In the late-1990s and early 2000s, the burgeoning incidence of food allergies and their life-threatening implications prompted sweeping policy changes in many western countries.

In the UK in 1998 and the US in 2000, guidelines changed to recommend high-risk allergens (such as peanuts) were completely avoided by pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and infants considered at high risk for allergy.

But these guidelines were made in the absence of any rigorous studies actually showing they’d have a positive effect. Indeed, animal studies had suggested there may be no benefits – showing that eating potential allergens early in life actually invokes an important phenomenon called oral tolerance.

Oral tolerance is where the immune system ignores a potential allergen after it has been introduced to the gut through diet. How oral tolerance develops isn’t fully understood, but involves several mechanisms that help immune cells to be effectively “switched off” so they don’t mistake certain foods for a threat.

But despite the change in advice to avoid peanuts, rates of peanut allergies did not fall.

A major UK review conducted in 2008 consequently showed there was no clear evidence that eating or not eating peanuts (or foods containing peanuts) during pregnancy, while breastfeeding or in early childhood had any effect on the chances of a child developing a peanut allergy. As such, the advice in the UK to avoid peanuts (and eggs) during pregnancy and early childhood was reversed in 2009.

A randomised trial conducted since this policy change came into place showed that among infants considered at high risk of allergy, consistent consumption of peanuts from 11 months of age resulted in an over 80% lower rate of peanut allergy by the age of five compared with children who had avoided peanuts.

Other studies confirmed these findings, which subsequently led to guidelines changing in the US in 2015.

Many questions remain

It’s now increasingly clear that the early introduction of potentially allergic foods may actually benefit us and reduce our risk of developing a life-changing allergy. Nonetheless, there’s much we still don’t understand.

For example, while the mechanisms underpinning oral tolerance are being elucidated, we still don’t know what the best window of age is for safely invoking it.

We also don’t understand why infants with atopic dermatitis are most at risk of developing a food allergy. The hypothesis is that early exposure to food proteins through a disrupted skin barrier is what leads to allergy, as the immune system becomes sensitised to the food.

It’s also important to note that overall, the incidence of food allergies is still increasing. While this recent US study offers hope for preventing some types of food allergies, questions still remain. For example, some people can develop food allergies during adolescence and adulthood. More must be done to understand why this happens.

There are also still barriers impeding access to diagnosis for severe food allergies. This means many at-risk patients have not been diagnosed, so they also have been prescribed potentially life-saving treatments. These trends are magnified for people living in more deprived areas of the country.

Much more needs to be done to answer these questions and tackle food allergies more broadly.

Sheena Cruickshank receives funding from EPSRC and MRC to investigate how environmental factors impact respiratory and gut conditions

– ref. Are peanut allergies actually declining? – https://theconversation.com/are-peanut-allergies-actually-declining-269739

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

Renewed talk of no-longer-secret negotiations between the Kremlin and the White House over a plan to end the war in Ukraine that heavily favours Russia adds to a broader sense of doom in Kyiv and among its western partners.

Coupled with the fallout from a sweeping corruption scandal among Ukraine’s elites and stalling efforts in Brussels to provide additional financial aid to Kyiv, a storm is brewing that may lead to Moscow prevailing in its war of aggression.

However, this is not a foregone conclusion. Ukraine is having a very difficult time at the moment on various fronts. The fall of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine is a question of when, not if, and of how many men both sides will lose before Russia captures the ruins of the city.

Russia has also upped pressure on the Zaporizhian part of the front and around Kherson on the coast. It is very likely that the Kremlin will continue to push its current advantages, with fighting possibly increasing in the north again around Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv.

For now, the war of attrition clearly favours Russia. But from a purely military perspective, neither the fall of Pokrovsk nor further Russian territorial gains elsewhere spell the danger of an imminent Ukrainian collapse.

However, war is never solely a military endeavour – it also requires political will and financial resources. A more existential threat to Ukraine’s war effort, therefore, is the continuing fallout from the corruption scandal. Here, too, certainties are few and far between.

A characteristic feature of political scandals in Ukraine is the difficulty of predicting the reaction of Ukrainian society. Some incidents can become a trigger for large-scale protests that lead to massive change.

This was the case with the Euromaidan revolution in 2014. The revolution triggered a chain of events, from the annexation of Crimea to the Russian-proxy occupation of parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, to the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Other political crises pass without major upheaval. This was the case with the dismissal of the popular commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in 2024. Widely seen as a possible challenger to Volodymyr Zelensky in future presidential elections, Zaluzhnyi was subsequently sent into exile as Ukraine’s ambassador to London.

So far, the current corruption scandal has not sparked mass protests in Ukraine. Nor has there been a very harsh response from European leaders. But the fact that virtually all of Zelensky’s inner circle is involved in corruption, according to Ukraine’s national anti-corruption bureau (Nabu), has forced the president to launch a comprehensive response.

Sanctions were imposed on Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s long-term friend and business partner, who fled the country just hours before Nabu raids on November 10. Then, a week after the latest scandal broke, Ukraine’s parliament dismissed the ministers of justice and energy, German Galushchenko and Svitlana Hrynchuk, who were both involved in the scandal.

Meanwhile, Zelensky himself has embarked on a whistle-stop diplomatic tour of European capitals to shore up support for his beleaguered government and country.

He managed to secure deliveries of US liquefied natural gas imports from Greece, which should help Ukraine through the difficult winter months. A landmark military deal with France also promises improved air defences for Ukraine in the short term, and the delivery of 100 fighter jets over the next decade.

Important as they are, these are stopgap measures rather than game changers. And not even all the necessary stopgap measures are done deals. The EU and its member states are still prevaricating on an urgently needed loan to Ukraine. If this loan does not materialise, Kyiv will run out of money in February to pay its soldiers, civil servants and pensioners.

In the meantime, Zelensky is also facing pressure from his own parliamentary faction, Servant of the People. He will be keen to present his tour of Europe to them as a vote of confidence by his western allies. Yet he may also still have to offer the resignation of his longtime ally Andrii Yermak, who was also implicated in the latest corruption scandal.

As head of the presidential office, Yermak is sometimes considered the de facto ruler of Ukraine. Dismissing him would probably please Zelensky’s domestic and foreign critics. Not doing so, on the other hand, should not be seen as a sign of strength. The very fact that the position of such a key ally is up for discussion is a further sign that Zelensky’s political power is, perhaps, fatally weakened.

Moving forward

Critically missing in all of this are three things. The first is a Ukrainian succession plan. Opposition politicians like former president Petro Poroshenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko are as unpopular as they are tainted by allegations of corruption during their reigns.

There is no clear route to replacing Zelensky if he refuses to step down. And even if he were replaced, a broader-based coalition government is unlikely to find a magic wand to turn Ukraine’s precarious military situation around.

The second unknown is the White House and its dealings with the Kremlin. Apparently, a 28-point US-Russia peace plan is in the making. Yet again, this plan requires major concessions from Ukraine on territory and the future size of its army, while providing no effective security guarantees.

European foreign ministers have been quick to insist that any peace plan needs Ukrainian and European backing. But their appetite to push back hard may be waning. If Kyiv’s western allies get the sense that Ukraine and Zelensky are lost causes, militarily and politically, they may cut their losses and retrench.

This would probably see these countries beef up their own defences and sign up to a US-backed plan that trades Ukrainian land and sovereignty for the extremely slim prospects of Russia accepting such a bargain.

The third critical unknown is whether Putin will cut a deal or drag out negotiations with Trump and push on regardless in Ukraine. Putin’s past track record of playing for time speaks for itself.

Recent comments by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov that there were no new developments to announce on a possible peace plan also strongly suggest that there has been no change in the Kremlin’s approach. Given what is apparently on the table, even if Putin were inclined to make a deal, it would hardly be of comfort for Kyiv and Brussels.

The danger for Kyiv and its European partners is that talk of Ukraine’s political and military collapse turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The consequence of that – Kyiv’s submission to a Russian peace dictate – would be the result of the dysfunctional nature of Ukraine’s domestic politics and the fecklessness of western support as much as any collusion between Trump and Putin.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

Tetyana Malyarenko receives funding from the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and the Research Council of Norway (project WARPUT, 361835, implemented by Norwegian Institute of International Affairs)

– ref. Ukraine and Europe’s weakness exposed as US and Russia again negotiate behind Kyiv’s back – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-and-europes-weakness-exposed-as-us-and-russia-again-negotiate-behind-kyivs-back-270104

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Smith, Associate Professor of Psychology, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Around a quarter of UK homes lie on disused coalfields. These abandoned coal mines are flooded with water that is naturally heated by the Earth.

This has enormous potential as a sustainable energy source. Schemes such as the mine water district heat network in Gateshead, in north-east England, are already providing low-carbon, cheaper heat and hot water to residential homes.

To maximise the full potential of this energy source by developing new schemes and expanding existing ones, it is critical that people have trust in new energy systems and are motivated to connect to them. This will speed up the number of homeowners signing up.

Communities built around former coal mines tend to have higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage compared to other areas of the UK, with more social housing. Mine water district heating is a potential source of cheaper energy for these communities, but social housing residents must be involved in the transition to new, sustainable energy systems. This will ensure a smooth transition and avoid people feeling like new systems are being imposed on them.

In our new research, we interviewed 18 Gateshead residents about what a switch to mine water heating would mean for them.

We spoke to people from a community where homes are scheduled to move from gas heating to the mine water district heat network. Residents told us about their awareness of mine water heat, their motivations to connect and resources which could support them through the transition. We heard from social housing tenants, homeowners, private renters and landlords to understand how specific issues would affect different people’s lives and homes.

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Read more:
How mine water could warm up the UK’s forgotten coal towns

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Our participants had limited awareness of mine water heat. Only around a third of participants in our study had previously heard of district heat networks. People had a range of incorrect assumptions about how they work. Improving awareness is clearly needed to enable homeowners to make informed decisions about whether to adopt the new technology. This could involve working with residents to design resources to increase their understanding and ensure that the issues most important to residents are addressed.

Residents we interviewed liked the idea of cleaner, greener energy, but many people said cost would be a barrier unless the mine water heat is cheaper than gas. They would happily “do their bit” for the environment, but not if it means higher bills.

One homeowner, a woman in her 70s, told us: “We like to do our bit with recycling and trying to save on energy costs, but that’s a luxury. If you’re a pensioner, you can’t. You don’t have unlimited resources … it shouldn’t [cost] any more than an ordinary gas boiler.”

The people we spoke to were proud that heat is being produced from old mines. They felt it connected the area’s coal mining heritage to a more sustainable future. Our participants liked the idea of generating energy from the disused mines in the area. When another 38-year-old resident discovered that the heat came from mine water, they said it “feels like a waste that we haven’t been tapping into that sooner”.

Community co-creation

Mine water district heating schemes provide an opportunity to involve communities in their energy futures. Community engagement ensures that people feel network expansion is being done with them, and not to them.

Raising awareness is important, but that isn’t enough to increase trust and acceptance. Addressing incorrect assumptions that sustainable energy will inherently be more expensive for consumers is key.

In Gateshead, there are cost savings through cheaper energy bills and no maintenance costs to the consumer. Communication of this information to consumers is vital to overcome resistance.

Building a narrative linked to the legacy of energy from coal mines can resonate with communities who are proud of their coal mining heritage. However, that needs to be achieved without glorifying mining history, because so many communities were adversely affected by the consequences of mine closures.

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Michael Smith receives funding from Innovate UK and Northern Net Zero Accelerator.

Faye Doughty 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. How heat from old coal mines became a source of local pride in this northern English town – new study – https://theconversation.com/how-heat-from-old-coal-mines-became-a-source-of-local-pride-in-this-northern-english-town-new-study-269959

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Luo Mai, Reader at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to make today’s artificial intelligence (AI) systems work at the scale required to keep advancing. They require enormous amounts of memory to ensure all their processing chips can quickly share all the data they generate in order to work as a unit.

The chips that have mostly been powering the deep-learning boom for the past decade are called graphics processing units (GPUs). They were originally designed for gaming, not for AI models where each step in their thinking process must take place in well under a millisecond.

Each chip contains only a modest amount of memory, so the large language models (LLMs) that underpin our AI systems must be partitioned across many GPUs connected by high-speed networks. LLMs work by training an AI on huge amounts of text, and every part of them involves moving data between chips – a process that is not only slow and energy-intensive but also requires ever more chips as models get bigger.

For instance, OpenAI used some 200,000 GPUs to create its latest model, GPT-5, around 20 times the number used in the GPT-3 model that powered the original version of Chat-GPT three years ago.

To address the limits of GPUs, companies such as California-based Cerebras have started building a different kind of chip called wafer-scale processors. These are the size of a dinner plate, about five times bigger than GPUs, and only recently became commercially viable. Each contains vast on-chip memory and hundreds of thousands of individual processors (known as cores).

The idea behind them is simple. Instead of coordinating dozens of small chips, keep everything on one piece of silicon so data does not have to travel across networks of hardware. This matters because when an AI model generates an answer – a step known as inference – every delay adds up.

The time it takes the model to respond is called latency, and reducing that latency is crucial for applications that work in real-time, such as chatbots, scientific-analysis engines and fraud-detection systems.

Wafer-scale chips alone are not enough, however. Without a software system engineered specifically for their architecture, much of their theoretical performance gain simply never appears.

The deeper challenge

Wafer-scale processors have an unusual combination of characteristics. Each core has very limited memory, so there is a huge need for data to be shared within the chip. Cores can access their own data in nanoseconds, but there are so many cores on each chip over such a large area that reading memory on the far side of the wafer can be a thousand times slower.

Limits in the routing network on each chip also mean that it can’t handle all possible communications between cores at once. In sum, cores cannot access memory fast enough, cannot communicate freely, and ultimately spend most of their time waiting.

We’ve recently been working on a solution called WaferLLM, a joint venture between the University of Edinburgh and Microsoft Research designed to run the largest LLMs efficiently on wafer-scale chips. The vision is to reorganise how an LLM runs so that each core on the chip mainly handles data stored locally.

In what is the first paper to explore this problem from a software perspective, we’ve designed three new algorithms that basically break the model’s large mathematical operations into much smaller pieces.

These pieces are then arranged so that neighbouring cores can process them together, handing only tiny fragments of data to the next core. This keeps information moving locally across the wafer and avoids the long-distance communication that slows the entire chip down.

We’ve also introduced new strategies for distributing different parts (or layers) of the LLM across hundreds of thousands of cores without leaving large sections of the wafer idle. This involves coordinating processing and communication to ensure that when one group of cores is computing, another is shifting data, and a third is preparing its next task.

These adjustments were tested on LLMs like Meta’s Llama and Alibaba’s Qwen using Europe’s largest wafer-scale AI facility at the Edinburgh International Data Facility. WaferLLM made the wafer-scale chips generate text about 100 times faster than before.

Compared with a cluster of 16 GPUs, this amounted to a tenfold reduction in latency, as well as being twice as energy efficient. So whereas some argue that the next leap in AI performance may come from chips designed specifically for LLMs, our results suggest you can instead design software that matches the structure of existing hardware.

In the near term, faster inference at lower cost raises the prospect of more responsive AI tools capable of evaluating many more hypotheses per second. This would improve everything from reasoning assistants to scientific-analysis engines. Even more data-heavy applications like fraud detection and testing ideas through simulations would be able to handle dramatically larger workloads without the need for massive GPU clusters.

The future

GPUs remain flexible, widely available and supported by a mature software ecosystem, so wafer-scale chips will not replace them. Instead, they are likely to serve workloads that depend on ultra-low latency, extremely large models or high energy efficiency, such as drug discovery and financial trading.

Meanwhile, GPUs aren’t standing still: better software and continuous improvements in chip design are helping them run more efficiently and deliver more speed. Over time, assuming there’s a need for even greater efficiency, some GPU architectures may also adopt wafer-scale ideas.

The broader lesson is that AI infrastructure is becoming a co-design problem: hardware and software must evolve together. As models grow, simply scaling out with more GPUs will no longer be enough. Systems like WaferLLM show that rethinking the software stack is essential for unlocking the next generation of AI performance.

For the public, the benefits will not appear as new chips on shelves but as AI systems that will support applications that were previously too slow or too expensive to run. Whether in scientific discovery, public-sector services or high-volume analytics, the shift toward wafer-scale computing signals a new phase in how AI systems are built – and what they can achieve.

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. These dinner-plate sized computer chips are set to supercharge the next leap forward in AI – https://theconversation.com/these-dinner-plate-sized-computer-chips-are-set-to-supercharge-the-next-leap-forward-in-ai-270094

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

The resounding victories in recent elections by Democrats Zohran Mamdani in New York, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey has reinvigorated the party after a dismal year since Donald Trump became president.

The victories were not a mandate for a sharp ideological shift to the left. This may be true for Mamdani, but it is not for Spanberger and Sherrill, since both are mainstream centrist Democrats. The main reason for the victories can be seen in the chart below.

Trends in presidential job approval and Donald Trump’s handling of the economy 2025:

The data comes from successive polls in the United States conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Economist magazine. All three candidates focused on the issue of the US economy which proved to be a winning strategy since it is clear the economy strongly affects Donald Trump’s job approval ratings.

As the president’s ratings on the economy decline, so does his job approval ratings. The result is that the Republicans took the blame for failing to deal with the issue.

The midterm Congressional elections in the US are due to take place in November 2026. Given the strong relationship between the economy and support for the president, it is interesting to examine how the economy is likely to influence support for the Democrats in those elections.

To investigate this, we can look at elections to the House of Representatives over a long period, given that they occur every two years.

The graph below compares the number of House seats won by the Democrats and economic growth in the US in all 40 House elections since 1946. Economic growth is weighted so that the Democrats benefit from high growth when they control the House but are penalised by this when the Republicans are in control.

This also works in reverse with low growth producing a poor electoral performance for the party when Democrats are in charge and a good performance when the Republicans are in control.

The relationship between economic growth and House seats won by Democrats 1946 to 2024:

The impact of the economy on voting in these elections is clearly quite strong, but the number of House seats won declines as the party’s majority gets larger. This is what is known as a “ceiling” effect meaning that when the majority is very large it is difficult to win more seats even in a thriving economy.

But this relationship can nonetheless be used to develop a forecasting model of the seats likely to be captured by the party in midterm elections next year.

When forecasting seats, an additional factor to consider is the inertia of party support over successive elections. If the Democrats did well in one year, they were likely to do well two years later.

For example, in 2008 when Barack Obama won the presidential election, the Democrats captured 233 House seats and the Republicans 202. In the following midterm election in 2010 the party won 257 seats while the Republicans won 178 and so the Democrats retained control of the House.

At the moment the House has a Republican majority of 219 against 213 Democrats. So Republican control is quite vulnerable to a surge in support for the Democrats.

Multiple regression analysis

The forecasting model involves a multiple regression analysis. This uses several variables to predict the behaviour of a specific variable – in this case the number of House seats won by the Democrats.

In addition to the two variables already mentioned, approval ratings and the performance of the economy, the fact that the incumbent president is a Republican is included in the modelling as well since this influences the vote for the Democrats.

We know the number of House seats from the 2024 election and the fact that Trump is a Republican, so to forecast Democrat House seats we need a prediction for economic growth in 2026.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis provides data which forecasts growth in the US economy up to 2028. It predicts that growth in real terms will be 1.8% in 2026 – and when this is included in the modelling, the overall forecast from these variables is 80% accurate.

If a variable is a perfect predictor of House seats it would score 1.0 and if it failed to predict any seats at all it would score 0. The impact of growth on seats when the Democrats controlled the House was 0.75, the inertia effect of past Democrat seats was 0.26 and Trump’s presidency was 0.19.

Low growth boosts Democrats’ prospects

Clearly economic growth dominates the picture showing that low growth rates next year will strengthen the Democrat challenge. This is likely to happen since a recent IMF report suggests that US growth is likely to slow next year.

Actual and predicted House seats in elections 1946 to 2026:

The third chart shows the relationship between Democratic House seats predicted by the model and the actual number of seats won by the party. The predictions track the actual number of Democrat House seats fairly closely and so the forecast should be reasonably accurate

It should be noted that all forecasting models are subject to significant errors. As the chart shows, the predicted number of seats is not the same as the actual number and if something unforeseen happens the predictions could be wrong. That said, however, the forecast is that the Democrats will win 223 seats – an increase of ten over their performance in 2024. This will give them enough to hand them control of the House.

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

– ref. Economic forecasts point to a Democrat win in the 2026 US midterm elections – https://theconversation.com/economic-forecasts-point-to-a-democrat-win-in-the-2026-us-midterm-elections-270178

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

The pancreas is essential for staying alive and healthy. This small organ sits behind the stomach and has two main jobs. It produces digestive enzymes that break down food and hormones such as insulin and glucagon that control blood sugar.

Everyday habits such as heavy drinking and unhealthy eating can gradually damage the pancreas. Once injured, the consequences can be serious and include inflammation, diabetes and, in some cases, cancer.

Several common lifestyle factors can put the pancreas under strain:

1. Alcohol

Regular heavy drinking is one of the leading causes of pancreatitis. Acute pancreatitis causes severe abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting and often needs hospital care. Repeated episodes can develop into chronic pancreatitis, where long-lasting inflammation and scarring permanently reduce pancreatic function. This can lead to malabsorption of fats, vitamins and other nutrients, diabetes and a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Researchers have several theories about how this damage occurs.

Alcohol can cause digestive enzymes such as trypsin, which normally work in the small intestine, to activate inside the pancreas before they reach the gut. Instead of digesting food, they digest pancreatic tissue and trigger severe inflammation.

Alcohol also makes pancreatic juices thicker and stickier. These thicker fluids can form protein plugs that harden into stones and block tiny ducts. Over time this causes irritation, scarring and the loss of pancreatic cells. When the pancreas breaks down alcohol it produces a toxic chemical called acetaldehyde that irritates and damages cells and triggers inflammation.

Alcohol also encourages the release of chemical messengers that switch on inflammation and keep it active. This makes tissue damage more likely.

Guidelines recommend drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol per week. It is safest to spread this across several days and to avoid binge drinking.

2. Smoking

Smoking increases the risk of both acute and chronic pancreatitis. Acute pancreatitis develops suddenly with severe pain and sickness. Chronic pancreatitis develops over many years and repeated inflammation causes permanent damage. Several studies show that the more someone smokes, the higher the risk. Another study found that quitting significantly reduces risk, and after about 15 years the risk can fall close to that of a non smoker.

Smoking is also strongly linked to pancreatic cancer. Scientists do not yet fully understand every mechanism, but laboratory studies show that nicotine can trigger sudden increases in calcium inside pancreatic cells. Too much calcium harms cells and worsens inflammation. Tobacco smoke also contains carcinogens that damage DNA.

One of the earliest genetic changes in pancreatic cancer involves a gene called Kras, which acts like a switch that controls how cells grow. In more than 90 percent of pancreatic cancers this gene is mutated, which locks the growth switch in the on position and encourages uncontrolled cell growth.

3. Diet

Diet affects the pancreas in several ways. Eating a lot of saturated fat, processed meat or refined carbohydrates raises the risk of pancreatic problems.

One major cause of acute pancreatitis is gallstones. Gallstones can block the bile duct and trap digestive enzymes inside the pancreas. When enzymes build up they begin to damage the organ. Diet contributes to gallstone formation because high cholesterol levels make bile more likely to form stones.

Another type of fat in the blood is triglycerides. When triglycerides rise to very high levels, large fat particles known as chylomicrons can clog tiny blood vessels in the pancreas. This reduces oxygen supply and triggers the release of harmful fatty acids that irritate pancreatic tissue.

Frequent spikes in blood sugar from high sugar foods also strain the pancreas. Constant surges in insulin over time reduce insulin sensitivity and may increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.

4. Obesity

Obesity increases the risk of acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Fat can accumulate in and around the pancreas, a condition called pancreatic steatosis or non-alcoholic fatty pancreatic disease. This build up can replace healthy cells and weaken the organ.

Excess body fat also increases levels of pro-inflammatory molecules such as TNF-alpha and IL-6, creating long-lasting inflammation that supports tumour growth. Obesity disrupts insulin sensitivity and hormone signals from fat tissue. Gallstones are more common in people who are obese and can increase the risk of pancreatitis.

5. Physical inactivity

A sedentary lifestyle worsens insulin resistance and forces the pancreas to produce more insulin. Without activity to help muscles absorb glucose, the pancreas remains under constant strain. This metabolic stress increases susceptibility to diabetes and pancreatic cancer.

Physical activity may lower pancreatic cancer risk both directly and indirectly. It supports immune function, improves cell health, reduces obesity and lowers type 2 diabetes risk. Regular movement strengthens antioxidant defences and increases the activity of disease fighting immune cells.

Pancreatic cancer may lead to diabetes, as a damaged pancreas cannot produce enough insulin. Diabetes can increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.

Adults are encouraged to include strength training at least twice a week and to aim for 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity each week.

Because pancreatic conditions can be life threatening, recognising early symptoms is important. Seek medical advice if you have persistent abdominal pain, unexplained weight loss, loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting that do not settle, jaundice, greasy or foul smelling stools or chronic fatigue.

Many risks are modifiable. Limiting alcohol intake, quitting smoking, eating a diet rich in fruit, vegetables and whole grains and being physically active all reduce the likelihood of pancreatic disease. Even small changes such as choosing plant-based protein or cutting back on sugary drinks help lighten the load on this vital organ.

By understanding how the pancreas becomes damaged and by noticing symptoms early, you can take simple steps to protect it. Look after your pancreas and it will look after you.

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

– ref. Five everyday habits that could be harming your pancreas – https://theconversation.com/five-everyday-habits-that-could-be-harming-your-pancreas-266647

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

The scandal of the religious-run Magdalene laundries, where young women deemed to have offended the moral code of the Catholic Church were incarcerated and put to work, is a stain on the public history of the Irish state. It has taken years of campaigning to bring this injustice to light.

Even now, it is more than feasible that further revelations will emerge. They did in 2012, when amateur historian Catherine Corliss uncovered evidence of a mass grave containing the remains of 796 infants at St Mary’s mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

Overall, it is estimated that a minimum of 10,000 women were sent to the institutions in the years from the founding of the state in 1922 to the closure of the final Magdalene laundry in 1996. Most were forced into unpaid, brutalising work in the profitable laundry system.

The new documentary, Testimony, directed by Aoife Kelleher, takes up where earlier campaigning films left off. Its most notable progenitor is Sex in a Cold Climate (1998), in which four women narrated to-camera their memories of the laundries. It was as shocking then as now to see elderly, dignified, smartly dressed women weeping at the memory of having their children taken from them.

The trauma they endured is unimaginable. Sex in a Cold Climate was the inspiration for The Magdalene Sisters in 2002. Since then, Philomena (2013), based on the real story of Philomena Lee, who also speaks in Testimony, shone a light on the trade in babies, many of them to homes in the US, perpetrated by the Magdalene institutions in collusion with the Irish state.

Most recently, Small Things Like These (2024), adapted from the novella by Claire Keegan, asked its viewers what they would have done if they had been confronted with the truth of what was going on in those grim buildings.

Testimony alternates to-camera interviews with survivors with the history of how the group, Justice for Magdalenes, was founded. We follow this collection of determined campaigners as they take on the Irish government and force them to acknowledge their historic complicity in this story.

Recognising that descriptions of slow, detailed legal work do not make for dynamic viewing, the filmmakers rely on explaining the legal process through the key figure of the Irish human rights lawyer, Maeve O’Rourke, an articulate, engaging presence on screen.

At the same time, the documentary acknowledges that the true heroes are the women whose stories of abuse and exploitation are as harrowing as when they were first heard. Regrettably, now as previously, the religious orders declined to participate.

Testimony is effectively a two-part film. One “ending” comes in at around the 55-minute mark with the triumphant arrival of a group of 220 Magdalene survivors and their families to a civic reception in Dublin. As the coaches roll in, they are greeted by cheering members of the public. This deeply moving sequence draws its strength from the women’s own emotions as they take in the faces and placards among the crowds. As one says: “That for me was my healing.”

The film then restarts with the stories of the children who were trafficked out of the state, interweaving this with the campaigners’ attempts to force the government into offering appropriate recompense. This segment opens with footage of the discovery of the Tuam burials and again returns to the voices of survivors, both mothers and children, including Philomena Lee. It also touches on the illegal vaccine trials conducted on children born in the homes.

Deprived of a similarly cathartic ending to the first segment, the film concludes by imploring the Irish government and the religious institutions to make available all the records held on the Magdalene laundries.

Testimony will never reach the audiences that fictional films on the subject can. At the same time, this campaigning documentary is an essential reminder of a society’s efforts to contain female sexuality, particularly that of its most vulnerable members. It is equally a demonstration of how the law can be used to fight injustice. We needn’t be so complacent as to assume none of this could happen again.

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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. Testimony: new documentary shows a stark reckoning with Ireland’s Magdalene past – and the long fight for justice – https://theconversation.com/testimony-new-documentary-shows-a-stark-reckoning-with-irelands-magdalene-past-and-the-long-fight-for-justice-270103