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April 14, 2026

A justice department opinion arguing the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional could revert the nation to a time when presidents freely burned their papers

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

At least one past president burned his papers. Stephen Hyun/Getty Images

Prior to 1978, U.S. presidents could do what they pleased with the records from their time in office. They owned them.

But in 1978, the Presidential Records Act established new rules for the official records of a president. Passed in the wake of Watergate, when President Richard Nixon tried to keep incriminating materials from being made public, the law changed who legally owned the papers: It was now the American public.

Under the act’s terms, “all records must be furnished to the White House Archivist and ultimately made subject to public disclosure … and the President may not discard or destroy records without the express agreement of the Archivist.”

When he signed the act, President Jimmy Carter heralded it as a way to “make the Presidency a more open institution” and ensure “that our Government … merits the trust of the people from whom a President and his Government derive their power.”

But now the Trump administration wants to undo the reform that put presidential papers in the hands of the public.

On April 1, 2026, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, known as the OLC, released an opinion claiming that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. Its opinion says that Congress lacks authority to regulate what happens to documents maintained in the executive branch and, as a result, the Presidential Records Act violates the separation of powers.

Public interest groups and some historians responded to the OLC memo with alarm. The watchdog group American Oversight called the Presidential Records Act a bulwark against the possibility that presidents will “hide evidence of corruption, abuse of power, and misconduct from the public …” On April 6, 2026, the group filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the president from acting on the OLC memo.

Whether the Trump administration or American Oversight is right about the Presidential Records Act is likely to be determined by a judge. In the meantime, the significance of the OLC’s opinion cannot be overstated.

That’s because the Office of Legal Counsel is “the Executive Branch’s preeminent legal advisor,” wrote federal judge Florence Pan in 2025. “Executive Branch agencies treat OLC’s legal conclusions as binding.”

I’ve written about secrecy in government, and the argument about the Presidential Records Act has a familiar ring. It is the latest version of an ongoing conflict about how much transparency is necessary and desirable in American government.

A man at a desk with two men standing behind him as he signs a piece of paper. — President Jimmy Carter, seen here at his Oval Office desk, signed legislation in 1978 that he said would ‘ensure that Presidential papers remain public property after the expiration of a President’s term.’
Corbis/Getty Images

Neglected, burned, sold, vanished

Throughout most of U.S. history, presidential records have been treated as the president’s personal property. They could dispose of them as they wished.

The Indiana University library’s Guide to Presidential Papers, Congressional Papers, and Classified Materials says, “Sometimes the Library of Congress purchased a president’s papers from his heirs, as in the case of George Washington. Sometimes the president’s heirs sold off or donated various parts of the collection to different collectors and organizations.”

Some presidential materials were neglected and vanished. And one president, Martin Van Buren, burned some of his papers.

The idea that presidential papers had some public value began to emerge in the 20th century. In 1934, Congress passed legislation establishing the National Archives. It charged the new agency with preserving the official records of the federal government.

However, that legislation did not require that the president turn over his records to the archives. So in 1955, Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act.

That law was designed to encourage presidents to turn over their records to the federal government. It also provided funding for presidential libraries to provide places to keep presidential records and make them available to the public. But here again, there were no teeth: The law did not require a departing president to give anything to the government, nor to build a library to house his papers.

All that changed in the wake of the Watergate scandal. That’s when it became clear that, but for the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1974 United States v. Nixon case, Nixon intended to cover up what had happened and would have gotten rid of his incriminating White House tapes.

The passage in 1978 of the Presidential Records Act was a response to the Nixon scandal. Yet as attorney Sara Worth writes in a blog post for Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, Congress “declined to include an enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance,” instead envisioning “future Presidents’ good-faith cooperation with the statutory mandate.”

DOJ: It’s a negotiation

After the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022 uncovered a trove of classified documents that had been removed from government premises, then former-President Trump argued that the Presidential Records Act didn’t apply to what he had done. He said he was actually complying with the act by refusing to relinquish presidential records.

In March 2023, Trump told Fox News that the law is “very specific”: “It says you are going to discuss the documents. You discuss everything – not only docu– everything – about what’s going in NARA, et cetera, et cetera. You’re gonna discuss it. You will talk, talk, talk. And if you can’t come to an agreement, you’re gonna continue to talk.”

A man in white shirt, red tie, blue jacket holds up a folded piece of paper. — President Donald Trump says the ultimate disposition of presidential papers should be a negotiation.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Trump apparently meant that there would be negotiation over what constituted a presidential document that could be kept by the former president and what didn’t. That view is hard to reconcile with one of the Presidential Records Act’s unambiguous provisions: “Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.”

Now, the Office of Legal Counsel is telling Trump that he can ignore that provision.

In addition, in its consideration of the Presidential Records Act, the OLC embraced Trump’s expansive view of presidential power. It argued that the Presidential Records Act is “unconstitutional for two independent but interlocking reasons: It exceeds Congress’s enumerated and implied powers, and it aggrandizes the Legislative Branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the Executive.”

The Justice Department’s lawyers appealed to history and tradition to buttress their conclusion: “Over the first two centuries of the American experiment in self-government, Presidents owned and controlled presidential papers, and Congress obtained such papers through political negotiation and interbranch accommodation, rather than as a matter of right. That historical practice was interrupted by the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act.”

‘Let the people know the facts’

The idea that citizens have a right to access information of the kind made possible by the Presidential Records Act can be traced back to the Enlightenment. American revolutionary Patrick Henry observed in 1788, “The liberties of people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

Seven decades later, Abraham Lincoln echoed Henry when he said, “Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.”

In our era, that is what laws like the Presidential Records Act make possible. The Presidential Records Act plays an important role in preserving the liberty and security that Henry and Lincoln spoke about.

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

– ref. A justice department opinion arguing the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional could revert the nation to a time when presidents freely burned their papers – https://theconversation.com/a-justice-department-opinion-arguing-the-presidential-records-act-is-unconstitutional-could-revert-the-nation-to-a-time-when-presidents-freely-burned-their-papers-280078

April 14, 2026

Using atomic nuclei could allow scientists to read time more precisely than ever – what this research could mean for future clocks

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Eric R. Hudson, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles

Atomic clocks exploit the properties of atoms to create incredibly precise ‘ticks.’ Nate Phillips, NIST

Most clocks, from wristwatches to the systems that run GPS and the internet, work by tracking regular, repeating motions.

To build a clock, you need something that ticks in a perfectly repeatable way. In a pendulum clock, that tick is the regular swinging of the pendulum: back and forth, back and forth, at nearly the same rate each time.

Our team of physicists studies whether an even better kind of clock could one day be built from the atomic nucleus. Today’s best clocks already use atoms to keep extraordinarily accurate time. But in principle, a clock based on a nucleus – the tiny, dense core at the center of an atom – rather than an atom’s electrons, could keep a steadier rhythm because it would be less sensitive to environmental disturbances such as temperature changes. In our research, published in the journal Nature, we measured and interpreted a unique nuclear property of thorium-229 in a crystal that could help make such nuclear clocks possible.

Ultraprecise clocks are more than scientific curiosities. They play key roles in navigation, communications and international timekeeping. Improvements in timing accuracy can also open doors to new science.

How atomic clocks work

In an atomic clock, researchers shine a laser on a material and carefully tune the light until it triggers a specific atomic response, typically by pushing or exciting an electron from one energy level to another. They can tell this has happened because the atoms absorb the laser light most strongly when its energy is exactly right.

That absorption happens at an exquisitely precise frequency. Frequency is how often something repeats over time. For a pendulum, it is the number of back-and-forth swings each second. For light, it is the number of wave cycles that pass each second. A light wave’s frequency also determines its energy and, in the visible light range, its color.

By detecting when atoms absorb the laser light most strongly, scientists can use the laser as a metronome. Rather than counting swings, these clocks count light waves.

To ensure the tick rate stays constant and the clock remains accurate, scientists closely match the laser’s energy to the energy needed to excite an electron in an atom.

Because the electron excitation energy is set by the laws of physics, atomic clocks based on the same atom tick at the same rate everywhere in the universe – even E.T. would agree with your clock.

Using this energy to calibrate a clock, like atomic clocks do, does not come without consequence, though. If anything changes the energy of the atom, like an unaccounted for magnetic field or the temperature of the room, the clock will tick at a different rate.

Deep inside every atom is something even smaller: the nucleus. Today’s atomic clocks keep time by tracking changes in an atom’s electrons. A nuclear clock, by contrast, would use an excitation in the nucleus itself, which is far more compact.

Because a nucleus is 10,000 times smaller than an atom, it is much less sensitive to temperature, electric fields and other environmental disturbances than the electrons in an atom. That makes it an appealing candidate for an even more stable clock.

The challenge is that nature does not make such a clock easy to build. The unique property we found in our research could help.

What makes thorium-229 special?

In one exceptionally rare case, the nucleus of the element thorium-229 has a property based on its two states: a ground state and a slightly higher-energy excited state. These states represent two different configurations of the nucleus, and scientists are able to use lasers to excite the nucleus from one state to the other.

A diagram showing an ultraviolet wave entering an atomic nucleus, which vibrates and emits energy, which feeds into a clock. — Nuclear clocks could work by using a laser to excite the atomic nucleus in an atom so that it emits energy in the form of light – or transfers energy to another electron, as in the case of thorium-229.
N. Hanacek/NIST

The first step was to determine exactly how much energy is needed to push the thorium-229 nucleus into its excited state. That took nearly 50 years – a feat that we and other groups accomplished in 2024. That transition occurs at an extraordinarily high frequency, about 2 quadrillion – 2 * 10¹⁵ – cycles per second.

Next, in order to ensure your laser is at the right frequency to create a clock, you have to verify that the nucleus was indeed excited. Until now, physicists thought the best way to do that was to look for the very faint flashes of light that excited nuclei usually emit.

However, there are two problems with that approach.

First, in most materials, the thorium nuclei release their energy not as light, but through a process called internal conversion, where the energy is transferred to an electron in the material instead.

Second, even when light is emitted, it is extremely hard to detect. It lies in the vacuum ultraviolet, a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that air absorbs and is difficult to observe.

A laser beam shot at an opaque material — In an opaque material, a light can only travel a few nanometers in the material before it is completely absorbed. However, scientists can detect electrons excited by the light and emitted from the material, to observe a process called the nuclear transition, which could one day help make a nuclear clock ‘tick.’
Albert Bao and Grant Mitts

A different way to ‘listen’ to the nucleus

In our work, we flipped the problem around. Instead of trying to collect the light from the nucleus, we looked directly for the internal conversion electrons it produces.

We created a very thin layer – just a few dozen atoms across – of thorium dioxide on a small metal disc. A laser tuned to the right energy excited the thorium nuclei in the sample. When some of these nuclei relaxed, they transferred their energy to nearby electrons, which then could leave the surface. We use carefully arranged electric and magnetic fields to guide those electrons into a detector.

By scanning the laser across different frequencies and recording how many electrons we detected, we could measure how closely the laser energy matched the energy needed to excite the nucleus. When the two matched exactly, the signal appeared clearly in the data, revealing the precise laser frequency at which thorium-229 nuclei absorb most strongly.

We also measured how long the excited nuclear state survived in this material before relaxing, giving us a direct window into how the surrounding material influences the nucleus.

Scientists are studying a form of the element thorium to determine if it could one day be used in a nuclear clock.

The measurement becomes much more powerful when paired with theory.
Calculations can estimate how the type of material used shifts the energy needed to excite thorium and how efficiently it converts energy from the nucleus into emitted electrons. These calculations help researchers tell apart the nucleus’s intrinsic behavior from outside effects caused by the solid around it. That understanding is crucial for designing practical nuclear clocks.

Why this approach matters

Detecting electrons instead of light has two major advantages.

First, it opens the door to studying thorium-229 in a much wider range of solid materials, including some that researchers had previously ruled out. Earlier approaches worked best only in materials where electrons were hard to knock off, which limited the options. Our method relaxes that constraint, allowing scientists to explore materials that were not practical before. That broader category of materials could make it easier to design and build future nuclear clocks.

Second, this method could enable a new type of nuclear clock that is simpler and potentially easier to miniaturize. Instead of needing sensitive light detectors, a clock based on this approach could read out time by measuring a tiny electrical current produced by the emitted electrons.

What could nuclear clocks be used for?

One day, researchers may use nuclear clocks to test whether the fundamental constants of nature truly remain constant over long periods of time, or to search for signs of new physics, such as dark matter, in the universe. More stable clocks could also improve technologies that depend on synchronized timing, such as advanced navigation systems.

Our work is an early step in that direction. It does not provide a finished clock, but it removes a practical barrier and provides a new experimental tool for studying how the thorium nucleus behaves inside solids.

Eric R. Hudson receives funding from ARO, DARPA, NIST, NSF, and RCSA.

Andrei Derevianko receives funding from NASA and National Science Foundation.

– ref. Using atomic nuclei could allow scientists to read time more precisely than ever – what this research could mean for future clocks – https://theconversation.com/using-atomic-nuclei-could-allow-scientists-to-read-time-more-precisely-than-ever-what-this-research-could-mean-for-future-clocks-272017

April 14, 2026

Industries most exposed to AI are not only seeing productivity gains but jobs and wage growth too

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christos Makridis, Associate Research Professor of Information Systems, Arizona State University; Institute for Humane Studies

Financial analysis is an industry that is seeing job growth even as AI is increasingly used. Orientfootage/iStock via Getty Images

Forecasts of the impact of artificial intelligence range from the apocalyptic to the utopian. An October 2025 report from Senate Democrats, for example, predicted AI will destroy millions of U.S. jobs. A couple of years earlier, consultant company McKinsey forecast AI will add trillions to the global economy, while emphasizing job losses can be mitigated by training workers to do new things.

The problem is that many of these claims are based on projections, overly simplified surveys or thought experiments rather than observed changes in the economy. That makes it hard for the public, and often policymakers, to know what to trust.

As a labor economist who studies how technology and organizational change affect productivity and well-being, I believe a better place to start is with actual data on output, employment and wages – which are all looking relatively more hopeful.

AI and jobs

In one of my new research papers with economist Andrew Johnston, we studied how exposure to generative AI affected industries across America between 2017 and 2024, using administrative data that covers nearly all employers. Our analysis covered a crucial period when generative AI use exploded, allowing us to analyze the effect within businesses and industries.

We measured AI exposure using occupation-level task data matched to each industry and state’s occupational workforce mix prior to the pandemic. A state and industry with more workers in roles requiring language processing, coding or data tasks scored higher on exposure, for example, compared with one with more plumbers and electricians.

We then took that exposure ranking by occupation and looked at changes in the standard deviation in occupational exposure, comparing that with labor market and GDP across states and industries from 2017 to 2024.

Think of a standard deviation as roughly the gap between a paramedic – whose work centers on physical assessment, emergency response and hands-on care that AI cannot easily replicate – and a public relations manager, whose work involves drafting communications, analyzing sentiment and synthesizing information that AI tools handle well. That gap in AI exposure is roughly what we’re measuring when we ask: Does being on the higher-exposure side of that divide change your industry’s trajectory?

This data allowed us to answer two questions: When AI tools became widely available following the public release of ChatGPT in late 2022, did states and industries that were more exposed to generative AI become more productive, and what happened to workers?

Our answers are more encouraging, and more nuanced, than much of the public debate suggests.

We found that industries in states that were more exposed to AI experienced faster productivity growth beginning in 2021 – before ChatGPT reached the public – driven by enterprise tools already embedded in professional workflows, including GitHub Copilot for software development, Jasper for marketing and content writing, and Microsoft’s GPT-3-powered business applications. In 2024, for example, industries whose AI exposure was one standard deviation higher saw gains of 10% in productivity, 3.9% in jobs and 4.8% in wages than comparable industries in the same state.

Those patterns suggest that, at least so far, AI has acted as a productivity-enhancing tool that boosts employment and wages rather than a simple substitute for labor.

chatgpt's app is shown on a phone with other apps. — Use of generative AI exploded in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT.
AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato

Augmentation versus displacement

A crucial distinction in the data is between tasks where AI works with people and tasks where AI can act more independently. In sectors where AI mainly complements workers – think marketing, writing or financial analysis – our data show that employment rose by about 3.6% per standard deviation increase in exposure.

In sectors where AI can execute tasks more autonomously – including basic data processing, generating boilerplate code, or handling standardized customer interactions – we found no significant employment change, though workers in those roles saw slower wage growth.

What these findings suggest is that when AI lowers the cost of completing a task and raises worker productivity, companies expand output enough to increase their demand for labor overall — the same logic that explains why power tools didn’t eliminate construction workers.

The economic question is not whether any given task disappears. It is whether businesses and workers can reorganize fast enough to create new productive combinations. And so far, in most sectors, our evidence suggests they can.

But state policies also matter: These benefits were concentrated in the states with more efficient labor markets, meaning that the impact of generative AI on workers and the economy also depends on the types of policies and institutions of the local economy.

Importantly, these findings hold beyond occupational exposure. In additional work with co-authors at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we found a similar effect on GDP and employment when looking at actual AI utilization — that is how often workers use AI. Drawing on the Gallup Workforce Panel, we measured workers actively using AI daily or multiple times a week. We found that each percentage-point increase in the share of frequent AI users in a state and industry is associated with roughly 0.1% to 0.2% higher real output and 0.2% to 0.4% higher employment.

To put that in context: The share of frequent AI users across all occupations rose from about 12% in mid-2024 to 26% by late 2025, a shift our estimates suggest corresponds to roughly 1.4% to 2.8% higher real output – or about 1 to 2 percentage points of annualized growth over that period.

New technologies rarely leave work untouched. But they also rarely eliminate the need for human contribution altogether. Instead, they change the composition of work, as our research shows. Some tasks shrink. Others expand. New ones emerge that were previously too costly or too hard to perform at scale. Put simply, some occupations might go away, but most of them just change.

If anything, the trends documented here are likely to strengthen rather than fade. Not only are generative AI tools rapidly improving, but also the experimentation and research and development that many workers and companies are engaging in are likely to pay large dividends. These investments – often referred to as intangible capital – tend to get unlocked a few years after a technology comes onto the scene, once complementary investments have been made.

The role of companies and managers

Whether AI leads to anxiety or adaptation for workers depends in part on what happens inside organizations. Using additional data collected over many years in the Gallup Workforce Panel covering more than 30,000 U.S. employees from 2023 to 2026, I found in a 2026 paper that workplace adoption of generative AI rose quickly over the period, with the share of workers using AI often increasing from 9% to 26%.

But the more important finding is that adoption was far more common where workers believed their organization had communicated a clear AI strategy and where employees said they trust leadership. This suggests that growing adoption and effective use of AI depends not only on the availability of the technology but on whether managers make its use clear, credible and safe.

Where that clarity exists, frequent AI use is associated with higher engagement and job satisfaction, and it even reverses the burnout penalties that appear elsewhere.

In other words, the broader economic effects of AI depend not only on how sophisticated the tools are but on whether companies and managers create environments where workers can experiment, reorganize tasks and integrate new tools into productive routines. That is, if employees do not feel the psychological safety to experiment, they are less likely to use AI, and they are especially less likely to use it for higher-value work.

That is precisely the kind of adaptation that I believe makes labor markets more resilient than the most alarmist forecasts suggest.

Christos Makridis is a senior researcher at Gallup.

– ref. Industries most exposed to AI are not only seeing productivity gains but jobs and wage growth too – https://theconversation.com/industries-most-exposed-to-ai-are-not-only-seeing-productivity-gains-but-jobs-and-wage-growth-too-224487

April 14, 2026

Why anatomy’s naughtiest mnemonics work so well

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.

A puzzled doctor holds a spine and hip bones. — The hip bones connected to the … something bone.
Kues/Shutterstock.com

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

April 14, 2026

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy – a boundary pushing work of which the modernist would be proud

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

April 14, 2026

Will voters turn against Donald Trump in the US midterms? What we know so far

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.

A queue of cars on a road in Florida. — Three weeks into the Iran war, petrol prices had surged to an average of US$4 a gallon.
Carmen K. Sisson / Shutterstock

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

April 14, 2026

Could dark matter be made of black holes from a different universe?

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

A simulation of the ‘cosmic web’, the vast network of threads and filaments that extends throughout the Universe. Dark matter density is represented by the blue-purple colours on the left. Gas density is represented by the orange-red colours on the right. Esa

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.

A conventional view of how the universe came to be. Here, the Big Bang is immediately followed by a period of rapid expansion known as inflation.
Bicep2 Collaboration

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.

Black hole — Illustration of a large black hole. Could relic black holes explain the mystery of dark matter?
NASA/Caltech-IPAC/Robert Hurt

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.

Could the ‘little red dots’ seen by JWST represent relic black holes?
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Dale Kocevski (Colby College)

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

April 14, 2026

Man convicted of causing his wife’s suicide – why this is a landmark moment for abuse victims

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.

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.

couple arguing behind frosted glass — Abuse and coercion can change the options a victim thinks are available.
hxdbzxy/Shutterstock

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

April 14, 2026

More joy, less juggle? Why workplaces should get on board with the value of care

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.

woman at work in a dark office looking at the clock on the wall. — Flexible working arrangements can help parents to do a good job at work and at home.
Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

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

April 14, 2026

Scientists make Parkinson’s drug from plastic in world first

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.

A person holding a mug, their other hand supporting their wrist. — Over 10 million people have Parkinson’s.
chainarong06/Shutterstock.com

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