Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol

Some lovers try positions that they can’t handle – I’m referring to the bones of the wrist, of course. The phrase is a classic mnemonic used to remember the eight carpal (wrist) bones – scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate and hamate – whose initials form the memorable sentence.

One of the most curious features of anatomy education is that people often remember mnemonics for decades, long after the rest of their anatomical knowledge has faded. And it’s often the filthiest ones that work best.

These short phrases, rhymes or sentences – used to remember ordered lists of nerves, bones or arteries – have been a staple of anatomy teaching for generations. Some are harmlessly quirky. Others are decidedly less polite. What they share is an unusual staying power.

That persistence is not just a quirk of medical culture. It reveals something important about how learning works.

Anatomy requires understanding and applying the structure of the body. But it begins with something far less glamorous: learning a vast and specialised technical vocabulary. The online database Terminologia Anatomica lists around 7,500 standardised anatomical terms, a figure broadly similar to estimates of the active vocabulary used by fluent speakers in everyday language (often cited at 5,000-10,000 words).

Mnemonics emerged as a practical response to this challenge, helping students organise and retrieve unfamiliar terms while a deeper understanding of anatomical relationships develops. As generations of students have discovered, the more distinctive the phrase, the harder it is to forget.

Why the brain struggles with lists

Much of anatomy involves remembering sequences. The bones of the wrist, the branches of major arteries or the 12 cranial nerves must be recalled in a precise order. The problem is that the brain is not particularly well suited to remembering long lists of unfamiliar terms.

Working memory – the system that allows us to hold information temporarily in mind – has a limited capacity. When faced with a string of technical words, especially ones derived from Latin or Greek, it quickly becomes overloaded.

Mnemonics help solve this problem by converting a list into a structured phrase. Instead of remembering eight separate bones of the wrist, the learner remembers a single sentence whose first letters act as cues for each structure.

Chunking

This strategy is referred to as chunking – grouping several pieces of information into a single meaningful unit. Once the phrase itself has been learned, the brain can use it as a scaffold to reconstruct the original list.

It’s not new either. Renaissance students faced the same challenge of remembering large amounts of anatomical information, and they often relied on mnemonic techniques inherited from the classical ars memoriae, or “art of memory”.

Anatomical knowledge was sometimes taught through didactic Latin verse, making long lists easier to recall in an era when learning was largely oral. One example is the tradition of anatomia versificata, in which anatomical structures were described poetically so they could be memorised. Medical verses attributed to the 12th-13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil circulated in universities for centuries.

Early printed medical works, such as physician Johannes de Ketham’s Fasciculus Medicinae (1491), also reflected this culture of structured memorisation, pairing text with striking anatomical illustrations to aid recall. Behind these approaches lay classical memory techniques described by writers such as Cicero and Quintilian, who encouraged learners to organise knowledge using vivid imagery and spatial mental maps – an approach that aligns remarkably well with the inherently spatial nature of anatomy itself.

But structure alone does not explain why certain mnemonics, particularly the slightly outrageous ones, tend to stay with us for years.

Why the rudest mnemonics are the most memorable

If mnemonics simply organised lists into manageable chunks, almost any tidy sentence would do. Yet the more outrageous or slightly inappropriate the mnemonic, the more firmly it tends to lodge in memory.

This phenomenon is known as the distinctiveness effect. Information that stands out from its surroundings is more likely to be remembered than material that blends into the background. In a lecture full of unfamiliar Latin terminology, an unexpected or risque phrase becomes instantly distinctive. It interrupts the steady flow of technical language and draws attention to itself.

Attention is the gateway to memory. Information that captures attention is processed more deeply by the brain and is therefore more likely to be stored.

Humour adds another layer. When something makes us laugh, or even causes a moment of mild embarrassment, it activates emotional centres in the brain, including the amygdala, which plays a role in regulating how memories are consolidated. Emotionally marked information is often stored more strongly than neutral material.

There is also a social element. Mnemonics are often shared between students, repeated in revision sessions, and passed down through successive cohorts. The phrases become part of the informal folklore of medical education, remembered not just as words but as part of a shared experience.

Put these elements together – distinctiveness, humour, emotional reaction and social repetition – and it becomes clear why the slightly outrageous mnemonic tends to win out over its more respectable rivals.

Used well, these phrases act as scaffolding: temporary supports that help students organise unfamiliar vocabulary while a deeper three-dimensional understanding of the body gradually develops. In time, they become less necessary.

Michelle Spear 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. Why anatomy’s naughtiest mnemonics work so well – https://theconversation.com/why-anatomys-naughtiest-mnemonics-work-so-well-279171

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robin Styles, Researcher in the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein is Deborah Levy’s latest genre-defying novel. It is at once a compelling contemporary fiction and an extended meditation on the importance of Stein, who Levy describes as the godmother of modernism, a queer icon, a self-declared genius and a writer who has baffled readers and critics for a century.

The structure of Levy’s novel artfully embraces many of Stein’s concerns. Stein was an artist fascinated by methods of making, as shown in her magnum opus, The Making of Americans (1925). Levy embraces this approach, constructing a novel in which her protagonist is continually composing her essay on Stein, as she debates Stein’s works with her friends, recreates recipes from the cookbook of the American writer and Stein’s life partner, Alice B Toklas, and retraces the paths that Stein and Toklas followed around Paris. The form of the novel evolves as Levy’s characters are continually composing their thoughts and composing themselves.

Stein is thought to have coined the term “The Lost Generation” to describe the community of expatriate writers who made Paris their home in the early 20th century. Levy’s characters are similarly exiled from their homes; their lives split in important ways. Eva is an artist who has travelled to Paris to finish a graphic novel, leaving her husband in Toronto, Canada. They speak once a week. Fanny is a sexually adventurous financier from Paris attempting to conduct many simultaneous lives. Together they are searching for Eva’s missing cat.

There are wonderful moments, including when the narrator is walking through Pere Lachaise Cemetery searching for Stein’s grave and reflecting on the lives of great modernists. Some of the most impressive sections of the novel come when Levy expands upon the source material, riffing on her own version of Stein’s projects. In Wars I Have Seen (1945), Stein’s memoir of life in occupied France, she observed that “however near a war is it is always not very near. Even when it is here”. Levy crafts an updated vision, giving a sense of the simultaneous presence and absence of war in our own contemporary moment:

The 21st century was in its 20s. Always a turbulent time. We were the lucky ones. We were not under the rubble. We were on our screens, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through the various wars in the 24th year of the 21st century.

This duality of presence and absence haunts the novel, and the protagonist faces a similar crisis as she ruminates on Stein’s poetry, and returns to the archives, frustrated, lamenting “when I look at photographs of her, I cannot get into her eyes”. Stein’s eyes have meant so much to her critics and admirers. Picasso’s famous portrait of her hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, with its geometrically perplexing eyes that appear to gaze outwards, beyond the limits of its frame.

In Passionate Collaborations: Learning to Live with Gertrude Stein (2005), the poet and scholar Karin Cope ponders some of the questions which enter the viewer’s mind when faced with these unusual eyes, suggesting that Stein “does not look as one ought to”. This phrase holds its multiplicity of meaning, and figures Stein as a transgressor, looking out beyond the limits of the frame – and, by extension, beyond any fixed idea of what a portrait is or could be.

And here we return to Levy’s novel which is at once an extended portrait of Stein but also a contemporary fiction, and a nuanced reimagining of Stein’s ideas. It is playful, experimental, formally innovative yet also grounded in a realist approach. It is original. As Levy’s narrator observes of Stein: “Every century needs an artist to dismantle coherence as we have been taught it and make a space for something new to happen.”

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain 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.

Robin Styles 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. My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy – a boundary pushing work of which the modernist would be proud – https://theconversation.com/my-year-in-paris-with-gertrude-stein-by-deborah-levy-a-boundary-pushing-work-of-which-the-modernist-would-be-proud-280491

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Enrique Gaztanaga, Professor of Astrophysics at Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth

New research suggests that relic black holes from before the big bang may still shape galaxies today. These black holes could explain dark matter, one of the biggest unsolved questions in cosmology.

Generally speaking, black holes are regions of spacetime where matter is compressed into a tiny space. Dark matter, meanwhile, is matter that does not reflect or absorb light. We know it exists because of its gravitational influence on galaxies and other cosmic structures.

It can be viewed as the “glue” that holds galaxies together, but we do not know what it is made of at a fundamental level. Most physicists think dark matter is composed of an as-yet-undiscovered sub-atomic particle.

But ancient black holes from before the big bang also fit the bill. They are dark, but also carry mass – exactly the properties required.

I have explored this idea in a new paper. Of course, the idea of relic black holes also requires a re-think of the big bang itself.

For nearly a century, cosmologists traced the history of the universe back to this single, dramatic moment. But maybe this wasn’t the absolute beginning of time. Perhaps there was a universe before the big bang.

Under this scenario, the universe collapsed before undergoing an expansion. The big bang represents the transition between the two phases.

The big bang model has been remarkably successful. It explains the cosmic microwave background – the afterglow of the early universe – and predicts the large scale distribution of galaxies with astonishing accuracy.

But in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, it is also a singularity – a point where density becomes infinite and the known laws of physics break down.

Many physicists interpret this not as a physical reality, but as a sign that something is missing. Singularities are less like physical objects and more like mathematical warnings: they tell us that our current theories cannot describe the earliest moments of the universe.

A bounce, not a bang

One alternative is a bouncing cosmology. In this picture, the universe undergoes a phase of contraction before the big bang, reaching an extremely high – but finite – density. Instead of collapsing into a singularity, it rebounds, beginning a new expanding phase.

Bouncing models have been explored for decades, often requiring modifications to gravity or exotic new ingredients. But our work shows that a bounce can arise as a regular solution within standard physics, when gravity and the effects of quantum mechanics – the laws governing nature at the tiniest scales – are consistently taken into account.

In standard cosmology, the big bang is quickly followed by a period where the early universe undergoes a period of rapid and exponential expansion. This stage, known as inflation, effectively erases all traces of earlier structures.

The situation is different for a bouncing universe. In our work, we found that things larger than 90 metres could have survived the transition from collapse to expansion. This leaves behind “relics” that carry information from a previous cosmic epoch. These relics can include black holes, gravitational waves and density fluctuations.

Quantum physics contains a powerful clue to how this is possible. According to the Pauli exclusion principle – a cornerstone of quantum theory – matter becomes “degenerate” at extremely high densities. The matter generates a pressure that resists further compression even in the absence of heat.

In our model, a similar effect operates on cosmological scales. It may explain why the universe doesn’t collapse completely – and why structures formed before or during the bounce can survive into the expanding phase.

Surviving the apocalypse

We identify two main routes through which relic black holes can arise.

The first one is direct survival. Compact objects and perturbations (fluctuations in density or gravity) generated during the collapse phase of the universe can persist through the bounce.

The second route is even more intriguing. During contraction, matter naturally clumps under gravity, forming structures similar to the halos that host galaxies today. After the bounce, they are able to collapse efficiently into black holes.

Galaxies and stars from the contraction phase effectively collapse into black holes, erasing most of their detailed structure but preserving their mass.

Could these black holes be dark matter? For decades, the leading candidate has been a fundamental particle — but none has been detected despite extensive searches.

Relic black holes offer a compelling alternative. If the bounce produces enough of them, they could make up a significant — perhaps dominant — fraction of dark matter.

This idea may also connect to one of the most intriguing observational puzzles of recent years.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed a population of compact, extremely red objects in the early universe, sometimes called “little red dots”. These astronomical sources appear to be unexpectedly massive and luminous only a few hundred million years after the big bang.

Many astronomers suspect they are associated with rapidly growing black holes – perhaps the seeds of the supermassive black holes found at the centres of galaxies today. But their existence is difficult to explain within standard cosmology. How could such massive objects form so quickly?

Relic black holes provide a natural explanation. If massive seeds already existed immediately after the bounce, the early universe would not need to start from scratch. Supermassive black holes could grow from ancient survivors rather than newly formed objects.

In this sense, JWST may already be glimpsing the descendants of pre-bounce relics.

A new cosmological framework

Taken together, the bounce scenario offers a unified way to address several long-standing problems in cosmology.

• The big bang singularity is replaced by a quantum transition. This transition could be related to the concept of the “Einstein–Rosen bridge”: a mathematical link between two disparate regions of spacetime.
• Inflation emerges naturally from the dynamics near the bounce.
• Dark energy can be related to the global structure of a finite universe.
• Dark matter may be composed of relic black holes —perhaps our own universe started as one.
• Gravitational waves could carry signals from a previous cosmic phase.
• Supermassive black holes may have ancient origins consistent with recent JWST observations.

Much work remains to be done. These ideas must be tested against data – from gravitational-wave backgrounds to galaxy surveys and precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background.

But the possibility is profound: the universe may not have begun once, but may have rebounded. And the dark structures shaping galaxies today could be relics from a time before the big bang.

Enrique Gaztanaga receives funding from the Spanish Plan Nacional (PGC2024) and Maria de Maeztu (CEX2020-001058-M) grants. Enrique Gaztanaga is also a Professor at the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC/IEEC) in Barcelona and publishes a science blog called DarkCosmos.com.

– ref. Could dark matter be made of black holes from a different universe? – https://theconversation.com/could-dark-matter-be-made-of-black-holes-from-a-different-universe-278469

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Hargy, Visiting Research Fellow in International Studies, Queen’s University Belfast

The US is bracing for another cycle of elections, with November’s midterms determining the scope of Donald Trump’s power in the final two years of his presidency. All seats in the House of Representatives will be contested, as will one-third of the Senate.

Trump’s Republican party currently controls both branches of Congress. However, polls are indicating a swing to the Democrats that would see them retake the House. A current RealClear generic congressional vote poll, in which people are asked whether they will vote for Democrats or Republicans for Congress, gives the Democrats a five percentage point lead over the Republicans at 47.4% to 42%.

One major variable that is likely to affect the outcome of November’s elections is the war in Iran. Some Republican political operatives believe the conflict and its repercussions, namely the increased cost of living, could prove fatal to their party’s hopes of securing a slim retention of the House.

A March poll by the Pew Research Center revealed 61% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the conflict. One voting demographic of particular concern for Republicans is people aged 18 to 29. An Economist/YouGov poll also from March showed that 63% of these people opposed the war.

Men within this age bracket were an important factor in Trump’s 2024 election victory. Philip Wang, political reporter for Time magazine, argued in an article on April 8 that this “same voting bloc … is showing far less interest in voting in the midterms”.

William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has asserted that the affordability issue is affecting Trump’s standing. He has also stated that, for a majority of Americans, the president’s “priorities do not align with theirs”. A recent survey conducted by American non-profit Consumer Action for a Strong Economy revealed that voters’ most pressing concern was the price of groceries, with the cost of healthcare coming second.

Over the past year, both parties have also engaged in redistricting efforts designed to increase their respective chances of controlling the House. In a number of mainly – though not exclusively – Republican controlled states, legislators have redrawn congressional maps in an attempt to secure more seats.

The redistricting war has come down to two final states: Democratic-led Virginia and Republican-dominated Florida. On April 21, voters in Virginia will decide the fate of proposed new congressional boundaries heavily favouring Democrats. Florida’s legislature will vote days later on a revised Republican-leaning electoral map.

However, there are growing concerns in both political camps about these votes and their impact on the result of the midterms. Florida Republicans fear Trump’s low approval ratings could cost them redrawn districts, while Democrats are encountering tepid backing from their supporters for their aggressive redistricting in Virginia.

Growing Democrat momentum

There have already been significant election results in recent weeks that have shed light on the trajectory of the upcoming midterms. In Republican-led Texas, a fascinating race is shaping up between both parties for a Senate seat. The last time a Democrat won here was in 1988.

In primary elections in March, Democratic voters chose state representative James Talarico as their candidate for November’s election. Republicans are yet to confirm theirs, with incumbent Senator John Cornyn facing Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton in a run-off election in May.

Primary voting numbers in Texas are encouraging for Democrats. For the first time in six years, more of its supporters cast early vote ballots in a March primary than Republicans. Democrats also saw a major shift in Latino voters to their side, a voting bloc that had swung to Trump in record numbers in 2024.

According to analysis by American broadcaster NPR: “In the ten most populous counties in Texas that are also at least 50% Latino, votes in the Democratic primary increased by an average of 128%.” The same analysis concluded that, in those same counties, the Republican primary saw an average drop in votes of 4.8%.

Then, in early April, liberal judge Chris Taylor won a seat on the state of Wisconsin’s supreme court. She secured 60.1% of the vote to her conservative opponent’s 39.8%. Taylor’s statewide vote is an impressive 21 percentage points higher than Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s vote share was in the state in 2024.

Also in early April, an election took place in Georgia to fill the congressional seat vacated by former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene, who has publicly broken with Trump over his handling of the Epstein files, won in 2024 by almost 29 percentage points. Her replacement, Clay Fuller, held the seat for the Republican party by a much narrower margin of just 12 percentage points.

The forecasts for November’s midterm elections are moving in the Democrats direction, especially for taking control of the House. But there is some reason for hope among Republicans.

Figures from CBS News and CNN/SSRS show that at the same point in 2006 and 2018 – also midterm election years where a Republican president was in office – Democrats were ahead on party favourability by 18 points and 12 points respectively. At this stage in 2026, the data reveals Republicans are actually sitting with a five-point favourability lead.

Seven months out from November’s midterms, Democrats have momentum on their side as well as a Republican president whose poll ratings are plummeting. The most likely outcome is that the Democrats will emerge with control of at least one branch of Congress.

Richard Hargy 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. Will voters turn against Donald Trump in the US midterms? What we know so far – https://theconversation.com/will-voters-turn-against-donald-trump-in-the-us-midterms-what-we-know-so-far-280395

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lamya Elsabban, Doctoral Researcher in Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University

On religious festival mornings, Egyptians gather among tombs in Cairo’s City of the Dead, a four-mile medieval necropolis at the foot of the Mokattam Hills. They’re upholding a longstanding tradition of remembrance and honouring their deceased loved ones. Though you might expect this ceremony to be marked with silence, the necropolis’s narrow alleys are filled with life as inhabitants carry on with their everyday routines.

Dating back to the 7th century, the City of the Dead has been a Unesco world heritage site since 1979. It began as a burial ground, but over time it has grown into a complex, lived-in urban area. Today, it’s home to generations of families who have adapted the cemetery’s structures into places for everyday living.

The City of the Dead reflects different layers of Egypt’s history. Its early Islamic character can be seen in the domed tombs, mosques, shrines and burial complexes, often built around inner courtyards with carved stone details, all connected by narrow paths and passageways.

Living among the dead

People used to mourn the loss of a relative in the City of the Dead for 40 days – a tradition inherited from ancient Egyptians. During this mourning period, they would stay in small built structures at the cemetery. Over the centuries, more of these buildings were constructed in and around the graves and monuments. They were then transformed into homes.

Over time, the necropolis became home to hundreds of thousands of people looking for a place to live. Many were drawn there by the lack of affordable housing in Cairo, as well as its central location, which makes it easier to access jobs and city life. Today, families continue to pass down stories about the area through generations. To get by, they rely on small businesses and informal work, such as looking after tombs, running cafés and kiosks, or continuing traditional carving and craft skills.

Though this Unesco site contains centuries of architectural and social history, it faces increasing external pressures due to ongoing urban development interventions. In 2020, the Egyptian government decided to build a network of roads and bridges through the area to connect central Cairo with the New Capital, a new city about 60km to the east.

The site is now only partly protected and recognised. This is partly because nearby historic areas are seen as having more tourism value and better fit official ideas about the city. As a result, large development projects often ignore the social, cultural and everyday importance of the City of the Dead as a place where people still live and maintain traditions.

Hundreds of graves have been cleared, and several important structures have been demolished, including the locally significant Halim Pasha Dome. This 19th-century royal mausoleum was part of the burial complex for the family of Muhammad Ali Pasha, who is often regarded as the founder of modern Egypt. Over time, it became an important local landmark and a symbol of the area’s history and identity.

Beyond the loss of buildings, long-term residents are also being forced to leave, which breaks up established social networks and on-site livelihoods. Activists, NGOs, heritage experts and local residents managed to temporarily stop some demolitions in 2024, including in parts of the northern cemetery around the Sultan Qaytbay Complex, as well as areas of Bab al-Nasr and Sayyida Aisha Cemeteries. However, despite this pause, demolition work began again later that year.

Local community resilience

People living in the City of the Dead deal with outside pressures by using a mix of everyday strategies that help them manage uncertainty, make a living and keep their social and cultural traditions alive.

A big part of this is how they adapt spaces to suit different needs. A courtyard, for instance, might be used for work, socialising, or prayer at different times. Spaces shift depending on what’s needed. Some families even rearrange the inside of tombs and nearby buildings to make room for extended relatives.

Residents of the City of the Dead also deal with the threat of demolition through strong community ties and support networks. They get by in uncertain conditions by relying on informal work and helping each other out. Many also work with NGOs like the Sultan Foundation and Archinos to keep their traditions going and strengthen their belonging in the area.

As Cairo continues to modernise, the necropolis faces a difficult situation, caught between pressure to develop the city, the need to preserve its history and the rights of the long-standing community who live there.

The City of the Dead is a rare and fragile place where tombs, everyday life and cultural traditions exist side by side. What makes it special isn’t just its historic buildings, but the way people continue to live there and keep its traditions alive every day.

Lamya Elsabban 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. Cairo’s City of the Dead is more than a cemetery – it’s a living neighbourhood at risk – https://theconversation.com/cairos-city-of-the-dead-is-more-than-a-cemetery-its-a-living-neighbourhood-at-risk-277583

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Godfrey Kyazze, Professor of Sustainable Bioprocess Engineering, University of Westminster

It’s easy to see discarded plastic as nothing more than waste. Much of it ends up in landfill, breaking down into microplastics that seep into water supplies and threaten the environment, and potentially human health. But what if the same plastic waste could instead be transformed into life-saving medicines?

In a recent study published in Nature Sustainability, scientists at the University of Edinburgh have shown that everyday plastic waste is not just an environmental burden but an untapped source of embedded carbon – the carbon atoms locked within plastic’s chemical structure. They demonstrated that engineered E coli bacteria can convert polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – commonly used in bottles and food packaging – into levodopa, a key treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

This approach offers a promising alternative to traditional levodopa production, which relies on multiple fossil fuel–based chemical steps and is energy intensive, costly, and carbon heavy.

Parkinson’s affects more than 10 million people worldwide and becomes more common as populations age. Levodopa remains the most effective treatment for managing the disease’s hallmark symptoms, including tremors and muscle stiffness. As demand for the drug rises, finding sustainable ways to produce levodopa has become increasingly urgent.

In previous studies, the same Edinburgh researchers showed that plastic can be turned into paracetamol, a common painkiller. In the lab, they converted up to 90% of the plastic from a one-litre PET bottle into paracetamol in just 24 hours – an amount roughly the same as nine 500mg paracetamol tablets.

Early work in this area began to show that plastics could serve as chemical feedstocks for medicine. In 2022, researchers at the University of Southern California demonstrated that polyethylene (PE) – a different plastic from PET, commonly used in plastic bags and films – could be broken down by engineered fungi into useful compounds, including building blocks for antibiotics, antifungals and cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Building on this, more recent studies have focused on higher-value drugs. For example, a collaborative study led by the University of St Andrews with partners in the Netherlands and Germany showed that PET plastic could be converted into starting materials for cancer therapies and drugs that stop uncontrolled bleeding.

These results show that it’s possible to turn everyday plastic waste into useful medicines. This approach could cut down on the need for fossil fuels and support a more sustainable, circular economy where waste is reused instead of thrown away.

The road ahead

Turning this lab breakthrough into industrial-scale production won’t happen overnight. Engineers must develop cost-effective manufacturing processes, and regulators will need to be satisfied that the products meet strict safety standards.

Collecting enough plastic waste is another challenge, since it has to compete with traditional fossil fuels. Success will require long-term investment and close teamwork between scientists, industry and policymakers.

So, while the idea is exciting, it’s still at an early stage. It offers a glimpse of what might be possible in the future, where biology and engineering help turn some types of plastic waste into medicines.

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. Scientists make Parkinson’s drug from plastic in world first – https://theconversation.com/scientists-make-parkinsons-drug-from-plastic-in-world-first-279289

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Caroline Millar, Visiting Scholar, Queen’s Business School (Organisation, Work and Leadership), Queen’s University Belfast

The core premise of feminism is this: women can do anything. And yes, these days in developed economies, women without children earn about the same as men. The problem is not the opportunities available to them. It’s the opportunities that disappear as women become mothers.

This disconnect between paid work and care work is evident. In my research on work and motherhood, I have often found that organisations give little thought to the tensions that arise between women’s work and care identities.

A 2025 overview of how care is understood in feminist economic debates recognises the fundamental value of unpaid and underpaid care. But it doesn’t discuss how to reconcile paid work and care.

The unpaid work women do in the home alongside their paid work leads to reduced participation in the workforce, income inequality between the genders, time-poverty, and increased stress for women.

The challenges and constraints that women encounter in the workplace have long been recognised. But caring is also often viewed in a negative way – something that interrupts and stymies their participation in paid work. Motherhood is frequently framed as something that curtails ambition and income.

In contrast, paid work is valued because it generates financial resources. These perspectives speak to the outdated concept of the “ideal worker”, and the capitalist priorities of productivity and efficiency that underpin this idea.

Across academic research, financial resources are often seen as a means to buy exemption from some aspects of motherhood. Other research concedes that caring for older relatives can be rewarding, but then cites all the problems that caregivers may experience.

In short, it is almost impossible to find caring for children framed in a positive way. One paper positions care work as “responsibilities” and “obligations” that fall on women. But this framing is directly at odds with how the women I have spoken to understood their role as mothers: they talked fondly of their children, attended their needs and enjoyed spending time with them.

Rediscovering the value of care

The problem for both feminism and capitalism is that mothers must routinely combine paid work and caring responsibilities in order to make a living. This reflects the tensions that the research identifies but does not resolve: women are navigating systems that position care as a disruption rather than an important and valued form of work and identity.

Older women often recount their career success through a lens of sacrifice, while many younger parents resist long-hours cultures, experimenting with ways to share work and care. What this suggests is that there is a need for employers to have a more nuanced appreciation of parenting identities.

However, work structures often still rely on outdated breadwinner/caregiver identities – dictating how parents juggle paid work and care, and limiting the space for more flexible hybrid roles.

A model where the mother becomes the breadwinner and the father the caregiver is not ideal either. It may appear progressive, but in practice care work continues to be pressed to the margins and the financial precarity it leads to is not acknowledged or fixed. It is simply transferred to the male caregiver.

Breadwinner/caregiver norms are just not suited to society and family dynamics any more. But they can be dismantled and replaced by hybrid roles that allow people to combine work and care identities.

While the tensions of work and motherhood have not disappeared, other groups have emerged and are developing momentum. For example, fathers who understand and value their parenting role are prompting a groundswell of change.

In the UK, campaigns such as Parenting Out Loud, as well as demands for extended, government-funded paternity leave (for example, six weeks of leave paid at 90% of income), seek to enable fathers to care and bond with their children without worrying about work pressures. These movements imagine a future where care is equally valued and recognised for its importance to society.

Governments, employers and trade unions have an opportunity to create work cultures that enable parents to do their jobs well at the same time as caring. Structures that value both work and care will allow everyone to contribute to the economy while actively participating in their caregiving roles.

Acknowledging an employee’s care identity needs to extend far beyond workplaces begrudgingly accommodating a mother working from home to care for a sick toddler. It involves enabling and trusting parents to respond to routine parenting challenges in an appropriate way – without penalty or judgment. For example, a dad being able to take emergency leave to respond to his child’s sickness, or a mum arriving late to work after supporting a teenager who is stressed by exams.

Funded, high-quality and reliable care infrastructure is essential, alongside flexible working. The persistent motherhood wage penalty is a good barometer to see how things are changing: interventions that normalise combining work and care will narrow this pay gap, and give a clear indication of what works.

Caroline Millar received PhD funding from Department for the Economy (NI).

– ref. More joy, less juggle? Why workplaces should get on board with the value of care – https://theconversation.com/more-joy-less-juggle-why-workplaces-should-get-on-board-with-the-value-of-care-280179

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mags Lesiak, PhD Researcher in Psychological Criminology, University of Cambridge

Kimberly Milne was 28 when she climbed over the barrier of a motorway bridge and jumped to her death. That night, witnesses saw her cowering from her husband, Lee Milne, in a retail park in Dundee, as he trapped her against a wall. CCTV footage showed her trying to get away while he shouted, drove a car at her and pulled her back into his orbit.

In the year before her death, he had choked her, dragged her by the hair, hit her until she fell and lost consciousness, and apologised, promising he was “not that type of guy”. He went through her phone, controlled her movements and, according to messages shown in court, created a situation where leaving felt impossible: “How can I leave him if he’s saying he’s going to do himself in without me?”

In a first-of-its-kind case in Scotland, Lee Milne has now been held criminally responsible for his wife’s suicide. The 39-year-old was convicted of culpable homicide and sentenced to eight years in custody.

In Spain, Noelia Castillo, 25, underwent euthanasia after a long and highly contested legal battle. In early adulthood, she reported multiple incidents of sexual assault. Days after being gang-raped, she attempted suicide by jumping from a building. She survived, but with irreversible paraplegia, chronic physical pain, neurological damage and profound psychological suffering.

Her euthanasia was legally granted on the basis of that condition. But the question remains: if the injuries that made her life unbearable followed a suicide attempt triggered by sexual violence, can her death be understood without that violence?

Homicide has long been treated as the most extreme outcome of abuse. But recent evidence suggests that abuse-related suicide may be at least as common, if not more so. Yet it remains far less recognised in law, policy and public understanding.

In 2022, an England-wide study found that people who had ever experienced intimate partner violence were almost three times as likely to have attempted suicide in the previous year, even after adjusting for other adversities.

Data in England and Wales suggests that what might be termed “perpetrator-produced suicide” (where sustained abuse produces the conditions in which a person ends their own life) is not uncommon. The Domestic Homicide Project, a research project led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, recorded 98 suspected suicides following domestic abuse between April 1 2023 and March 31 2024. This was more than the 80 intimate partner homicides recorded, overtaking them for the second year in a row.

Read more:
Are women more safe today in England and Wales than they were in the past – or less? What the evidence shows

This suggests that fatal outcomes linked to domestic abuse may be being categorised as individual acts, rather than perpetrator-produced harm. The result is underrecognition of abusers’ role in their victims’ suicide. There have only been five prosecutions of this kind in England and Wales, leading to just one confirmed conviction for manslaughter.

In Kimberly Milne’s case, the court found that sustained physical and psychological abuse was a significant contributing factor in her death. The judge concluded that Lee Milne’s actions drove his wife to a point of despair, from which she took her own life.

In Castillo’s case, the question of responsibility remains unresolved. The violence that preceded her suicide attempt and ultimately led to her death sits outside the frame of legal accountability. The law breaks these events apart: the assault is treated as a crime, the suicide attempt as her own act, and the later death as a medical decision, rather than recognising how violence can set the whole chain in motion.

‘Choice’ under coercion

To understand the link between suicide and domestic violence or coercive control, we must ask: what does it mean to “choose” to end one’s life, when that choice is made under coercion or threat?

My research explores weaponised attachment, where perpetrators of abuse deliberately use emotional bonds to control their victims. They form attachment through grooming, trauma-sharing and vulnerability, and then use that attachment to influence decisions about whether to stay, leave or seek help. Coercion often operates by shaping how decisions are made – narrowing the options a person can see and making the choice to leave feel impossible.

Read more:
How domestic abusers use emotional bonding to control their victims – new study

Research in behavioural economics and cognitive psychology shows that people make choices within the set of options they perceive as available, not the set that objectively exists. Under threat and loss, people seek more risk and are more likely to choose extreme options to escape unpleasant states.

When coercion shapes what a person sees as their obligations and options, a resulting decision cannot be treated as fully self-authored. It is made, but under conditions structured by another. In cases of perpetrator-produced suicide, the issue is not simply whether a victim “chose” to die, but whether that choice was made with the authority required for responsibility. The same mechanism operates in cases where victims are said to have “consented” to abuse.

Justice for victims

This conviction could change how criminal justice systems approach perpetrator-produced suicide. It could lead to more homicide-style investigations where suicide follows coercive control. In investigations, this would mean greater emphasis on patterns of abuse over time, rather than isolating the final event.

For this shift to be meaningful, changes are needed. First, there is a need for better recording of perpetrator-produced suicides, which are currently fragmented or likely misclassified as individual deaths. Second, what police consider as evidence must expand to include patterns of coercion, digital traces and how the relationship unfolded over time, rather than focusing only on what happened in the final moments.

Third, the law needs to be clearer about when sustained abuse leads to responsibility for a death, moving beyond vague labels like “vulnerability” and focusing on how a person’s options were restricted.

Finally, risk assessment practices should move away from predicting isolated incidents towards identifying coercive environments that generate escalating harm. Without these changes, this landmark ruling risks remaining an exceptional case, rather than a foundation for future accountability.

If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, the following services can provide you with support: In the UK and Ireland – call Samaritans UK at 116 123. In the US – call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or IMAlive at 1-800-784-2433. In Australia – call Lifeline Australia at 13 11 14. In other countries – visit IASP or Suicide.org to find a helpline in your country.

Mags Lesiak 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. Man convicted of causing his wife’s suicide – why this is a landmark moment for abuse victims – https://theconversation.com/man-convicted-of-causing-his-wifes-suicide-why-this-is-a-landmark-moment-for-abuse-victims-280480

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Carl Singleton, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Stirling

Football fans, broadcasters and even head coaches have been complaining this season about excessive time-wasting spoiling the flow of the men’s game.

In the Premier League, the proportion of a match where the ball is in play is at a near-record low. Football’s world governing body Fifa has a target of 60 minutes of ball-in-play per game. Yet two Premier League matches this season had only just above 45 minutes of action – less than half the total match time.

There are numerous factors explaining this decrease. One is the length of time players are taking over each corner, throw-in and free-kick. Repeated injury stoppages (including some that are allegedly faked by players seeking to delay a game) are also blamed – along with lengthy decision-making by each game’s video assistant referee (VAR).

Video reviews have increased the number and length of stoppages, particularly for penalties, red cards and goals. There is now a benefit to staying down after contact in the penalty area while officials check for possible infringements. What might once have been a marginal appeal can trigger a lengthy interruption that, according to our research, is not always fully accounted for in the time added by the referee at the end of each half.

With concerns mounting about how time-wasting could turn off viewers of the men’s World Cup in North America this summer, new rules are being introduced allowing referees to start five-second countdowns at throw-ins and goal-kicks. Teams may also face sanction if their substituted players take longer than ten seconds to leave the field of play.

So, will this make a difference to the amount of action fans see this summer?

Our research, published in the Journal of Sports Economics, suggests no amount of rule-tightening will solve football’s issue with time-wasters until referees are properly supported to withstand the psychological pressure placed on them by players, team officials and fans during each game.

We found that the time taken up by stoppages is often added inaccurately, depending on unconscious biases of referees who alone decide how much time is added. This can especially benefit home teams with stronger support in the stadium.

The “natural experiment” of playing football without fans during the COVID pandemic showed that referees are susceptible to the social pressure exerted by stadium crowds, especially for more subjective or marginal calls like awarding yellow cards and added time.

Football’s early history

Football has always been played in continuous rather than active time. Unlike sports where the clock stops, football absorbs interruptions rather than isolating them. This design goes back to the sport’s early history.

When the match length was standardised in the 19th century, a simple running clock was practical. One interpretation is that 90 minutes became the standard because it reliably produced 60 minutes of ball-in-play action. By the 1890s, this length of match was ingrained in the official rules by the International Football Association Board (Ifab).

The concept of added time was formally adopted in 1891 and applied at the referee’s discretion. It was – and still is – supposed to correct the most obvious losses of time during the 45 minutes of each half.

But added time is not measured mechanically. It is estimated by humans who often apply rules of thumb under pressure from players, managers and spectators.

At the last World Cup in 2022, Fifa extended the amount of added time referees could add at the end of each half in an attempt to discourage players from time wasting. It came close to delivering Fifa’s 60-minute target for ball-in-play. But it came at the expense of games that seemed to go on forever.

Decisions were not the same

We analysed the 2022 World Cup and 2024 European Championship for differences in how referees added time on at the end of the first and second halves. According to Fifa and Ifab, added time should be applied consistently across both halves, since the rules governing stoppage time are identical.

In practice, these decisions were not the same. Referees added on substantially more time in the second half than the first – in part because of the rising stakes of each game as it nears a conclusion. These patterns were stronger at the World Cup, which probably related to Fifa’s edict to increase ball-in-play time.

In particular, we found that referees allowed substantially more stoppage time in tight second halves, while first halves in close (low-scoring) contests were sometimes cut short. This can advantage the trailing team in second halves, giving them a greater chance of getting back to parity since the rate of goal-scoring generally increases as football matches near their conclusion.

Added time is often framed as a technical adjustment. But it is truly where football’s human element is exposed.

Should football introduce a stop-clock?

Does this mean football should follow the path of sports like basketball, American football and rugby and adopt a stop-clock, ending each half when the official time expires (with stopped-clock pauses along the way)? The appeal might seem obvious. But it would also change the nature of football.

We believe matches would grow even longer, interruptions would multiply and lengthen, and the continuous flow that gives the game its rhythm and tension would be under even greater threat.

The temptation to factor in television commercial windows might also grow. This summer’s World Cup will already include three-minute hydration breaks in the middle of every half to mitigate high temperatures in games.

Ultimately, added time is a reminder of what football is: a sport played in running time that cannot be perfectly measured. Referees will never be fully consistent, because the moments they arbitrate are charged with uncertainty – despite VAR’s best (and worst) efforts.

But the game’s authorities are still right to be addressing the issue of time wasting ahead of this summer’s World Cup. One of football’s great attractions is the pace at which it is played. Lose this and the game becomes a lot less beautiful.

Carl Singleton receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UKRI). He is affiliated with the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research through the IZA@LISER network.

David Butler and Robert Butler 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. Football is being spoiled by time-wasting – what can be done ahead of the World Cup? – https://theconversation.com/football-is-being-spoiled-by-time-wasting-what-can-be-done-ahead-of-the-world-cup-280501