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To reach net zero, the world may need as many 200,000 offshore wind turbines generating 2,000 gigawatts (GW) of energy.
To put this in context, by the end of 2022, 63 GW of offshore wind capacity had been installed worldwide. Within the next 28 years, the offshore wind energy sector needs to expand so that it is capable of producing 32 times its current energy capacity.
But where do we put all these extra offshore wind farms? Their locations will need to be chosen in order to maximise their energy output and their social benefits, while ensuring they have the minimum impact possible on the environment. Balancing all these factors is not a straightforward task.
To work out where to place new turbines, a good starting point is to define how much of the ocean we need to use in order to meet the 2050 net zero targets. This calculation depends on the dimensions of the turbines, how wind power technology is likely to evolve between now and 2050, and the exact configuration of the turbines within a wind farm.
Together, these factors control the future “power density” of offshore wind farms –- how much offshore wind capacity can be installed per unit area of space in the ocean. The figure required for achieving net zero is 4 megawatts (MW) per sq km. This means the area of ocean we’ll need for offshore wind is around 500,000 sq km, which is roughly the size of France.
Once the total space is known, the next task is to gather data on the factors that constrain infrastructure development in the ocean. There are numerous constraints, from ensuring there is adequate windspeed for turbines to turn, to avoiding shipping lanes and marine protected areas, to whether seabed conditions are difficult to build in.
Some types of constraint create “no-go zones”, because an offshore wind farm would cause clear and unacceptable disruption to an existing activity, such as a site used for military exercises, for oil drilling or a shipping lane.
For other constraints, it’s a case of working out whether the net impact of a wind farm is harmful to the environment or the activities already there. It’s important to identify how crowded prospective sites are, as this provides a baseline, or starting point, for assessing a site’s suitability.
Our recent research shows how such considerations can be used to identify suitable future sites for offshore wind farms, using UK waters as a case study.
The UK is a leading region for offshore wind, so the country offers insights into the challenges faced globally in placing new wind farms. The UK is also a leader in legislating for net zero, including plans for transforming energy infrastructure.
Our study used 34 different layers of constraints, from which the available space for future sites is defined by excluding the no-go and crowded zones. We identified the available ocean space for future offshore wind turbines as covering an area of about 240 sq km, which is equivalent to the area of the UK’s landmass.
The data further reveals that, to achieve the basic net zero target for domestic electrification in the UK, 7% of that available area will need to be used for offshore wind farms. Domestic electrification refers to the conversion of homes to electric heating from (predominantly) gas.
For more ambitious decarbonisation targets for offshore wind, accounting for increased domestic electricity demand among other things, the required space rises to 44%.
If future offshore wind farms are to be shared out equally across the space available for them, up to 70% of future sites will overlap with one to three constraints. Moreover, about 90% of future sites will have to be in deep water (roughly 60m in depth).
New technology, such as floating platforms, will be crucial to enable wind turbines to be installed in these places.
Our study suggests that the huge expansion of offshore wind farms required to meet net zero targets may be achievable. Furthermore, it can be done without increasing the average level of overlap with existing activities in UK waters.
However, it’s still possible that an expansion of offshore wind could harm the environment or limit existing ocean activities. For example, in the case of marine protected zones, wind farms could stop fish and animals from spreading into adjacent parts of the ocean. Potentially, this would undermine some of the objectives behind creating the protected zone in the first place.
Increasing interaction between wind farms, natural ecosystems, heritage sites such as shipwrecks, and human activities is inevitable. Without careful planning and study, these interactions could harm the environment and disrupt wider human activities. They must therefore be anticipated and addressed proactively.
The move to turbines in deeper water and further away from shore, however, poses some real challenges. It is these challenges that will need to be overcome by improved technology.
Hugo Putuhena is affiliated with the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) hub and the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies - Intelligent & Resilient Ocean Engineering.
Fraser Sturt is a deputy director for the University of Southampton's Marine & Maritime Institute. He receives funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering Engineering X programme, looking at Safer End of Engineered life for offshore infrastructure and ships, and the Arts & Humanities Research Council as part of the Towards a National Collection Unpath'd waters project.
Susan Gourvenec receives funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering supporting her Chair in Emerging Technologies for Intelligent & Resilient Ocean Engineering.
Three years have passed since the UK government implemented emergency legislation in response to the COVID pandemic. The Coronavirus Act 2020 made amendments to laws affecting many aspects of society, including the duties and powers incumbent on England’s local authorities to provide adult social care under the Care Act 2014.
The Coronavirus Act 2020 set out legislative changes to statutory requirements, known as Care Act “easements”, which provided local authorities with a legal avenue to operate with reduced workforce capacity. The easements allowed care and support provision to be changed or, in extreme circumstances, withdrawn to meet more urgent needs elsewhere in the system.
While it was important to respond to the unique pressures the pandemic was placing on adult social care, these swiftly introduced changes prompted concern. Easements and other changes to support provided by local authorities were meant to be temporary and a last resort. But campaigners feared they could “set a dangerous precedent”, permanently affecting standards and expectations of care.
Three years on, we can see that some of these changes, combined with the subsequent cost of living crisis, have indeed had far-reaching consequences, both for those receiving social care support and the care workforce.
Care Act easements – and other similar, less formal adjustments to processes – meant in some cases longer waits for assessments, or for decisions on and reviews of packages of care. Certain processes, such as hospital discharge, moved faster. But this prompted concerns about hasty decision-making and the effects of discharging COVID-positive patients into residential care homes.
A growing body of research highlights many people’s difficulties accessing information and support. Phone lines were often closed as staff began working from home. Inequalities around digital access became apparent as appointments moved online. Many service users, especially older people and those with learning disabilities, struggled to request or access help once social support services and day centres were closed.
Some care users – and also carers – reported feeling increased anxiety and reduced wellbeing, heightened by the greater responsibility that was placed on unpaid carers and a simultaneous loss of respite opportunities.
Meanwhile, “hidden harms” such as neglect and domestic abuse were harder to spot and address while social workers were required to work remotely.
Further, public health rules around social distancing meant many people were faced with restrictions on face-to-face visits from health and care professionals, as well as friends and family who might ordinarily offer support. All of this had a significant effect on the wellbeing of many citizens with social care needs.
Read more: Adult social care was hit hard during the pandemic – it will need help to recover
Despite workers doing what they could under intense pressure, the government’s response to the crisis in the sector – in terms of guidance, and practical and financial support – was deemed insufficient and too late by senior social care professionals.
Even as the world reopened following vaccination campaigns, things didn’t return to “normal” for people requiring social care in England. If anything, it’s becoming more difficult to meet their needs.
High numbers of care workers surveyed during the first year of the pandemic reported mental and physical burnout. Contributing factors included working extra hours, reduced staffing ratios, a lack of PPE, poor support, and ever-changing safety guidance. All of this was compounded by the risk of infection.
Social workers and others employed by local authorities reported similar levels of stress, with three-quarters of social workers in one survey stating that they were “mentally and emotionally exhausted” after working through the height of the pandemic.
Operational changes in working practices such as remote working, and increased delays and waiting lists, sometimes prompted a sense of moral injury when workers were unable to deliver services in accordance with their professional values and standards.
The social care workforce was already under stress before COVID, with low pay, precarious contracts, and chronic under-resourcing. In 2020, frontline staff were “rewarded” with applause and badges rather than pay rises and improved working conditions.
As the public memory of the worst days of the pandemic recedes, many in the social care sector are seeking work elsewhere. This is understandable but increases the burden for those who remain, which consequently risks standards for service users.
There are currently around 165,000 vacancies to fill in the care sector in England, with the majority of councils struggling to recruit and retain social workers. Yet a 2021 government pledge of £500 million to boost recruitment and retention in the social care workforce has been reduced by half.
Life changed dramatically for everyone at the height of the pandemic, but some felt the effects disproportionately. People who were financially disadvantaged, older or had a disability, for example, were more vulnerable to higher rates of infection, worse outcomes from illness, and greater social isolation and poverty.
Although they were formally withdrawn again in 2021, certain legislative and operational changes introduced during the initial peaks of COVID, on top of an already stretched system, have arguably left a damaging legacy on the availability and quality of care and support for disabled and older adults.
Read more: After COVID: why we need a change in care home culture
Professional health and social care organisations, charities, and many frontline workers view the situation today as more perilous than ever.
While COVID arguably shone a light on the critical value of the care sector, and the tribulations of those living and working under its auspices, there has been little substantial improvement to conditions. Three years on from the start of the pandemic, the scars left on the sector and the communities it serves are still raw.
Laura Noszlopy is a research fellow in the School of Social Policy at University of Birmingham. Until June 2022, she was research fellow on a project examining the impact of Care Act easements, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant ES/V015486/1. This work was supported by that grant.
Jean McHale was principal investigator on the Economic and Social Research Council COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant ES/V015486/1, November 2020- July 2022. This work was supported by that grant. She is also a Trustee of Central England Law Centre.
Evidence for current volcanic activity on the planet Venus has recently made the news. But Venus is far from the only world beyond Earth to exhibit signs of volcanic activity.
In fact, having volcanic activity (volcanism) on planets is quite common. Here are four worlds which have boasted active volcanism, from Mars to the far flung reaches of the outer Solar System.
Active volcanoes on Mars have not been directly observed, however, signs of volcanism are abundant on the Martian surface. Chief among them is the aptly named Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in the Solar System.
Olympus Mons stands at approximately 26km above the surrounding terrain, is roughly twice as high as Mount Everest, and is topped by a volcanic caldera some 70km across. The base of Olympus Mons is the size of Poland. The volcano is flanked by many solidified lava flows, the most recent of which are only a couple of million years old, making them geologically recent.
Like many of Earth’s volcanoes, Olympus Mons is a basalt “shield volcano”, so termed because it has gentle slopes and a profile which resembles a shield laying on its side. A similar volcano on Earth is Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Elsewhere on Mars, a recent study has argued that another volcanic region, Elysium Planitia, is active today and powered by a sub-surface mantle plume similar to those which power volcanic hotspots on Earth.
The study used seismic data collected by Nasa’s Insight lander spacecraft, which has detected numerous “Mars quakes” emanating from this region.
The largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt is Ceres. It is a small world of just under 1,000km in diameter which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter once every 4.6 years. It was visited for the first time by a robotic spacecraft in 2015 – Nasa’s Dawn mission. One of the most interesting discoveries of this mission was the volcano Ahuna Mons.
Most of Ceres’ surface is covered by impact craters, some of which show salt deposits inside them. However, Ahuna Mons stood out as an approximately 4km high mountain towering over the surrounding terrain. It is the only feature of its type on Ceres, and its flanks are covered with deposits of carbonate salts.
The mechanism for the formation of this mountain is believed to be cryovolcanism, where liquid salty water rather than lava is ejected. On Ceres, these salt-water eruptions are produced due to the pressure from the asteroid’s icy surface. As the erupted water evaporated away under the vacuum of space, it left behind salt deposits. Ahuna Mons is the nearest known cryovolcano to the Sun.
Io is the innermost large moon of Jupiter and orbits the host planet once every 43 hours. It was discovered by Galileo in 1610 and is about the same size as Earth’s Moon. But unlike our quiet celestial neighbour, Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. Io has been surveyed several times by robotic spacecraft and by telescopic observations from Earth.
Its surface is a distinctive yellow-red colour owing to vast deposits of sulphur, much of which has been erupted from the more than 400 active volcanoes on its surface. The source for much of the energy for all these volcanoes comes from tidal forces due to the proximity of the second nearest large Jovian moon, Europa, and the largest Jovian moon, Ganymede.
Io completes two orbits of Jupiter for every one orbit by the moon Europa, and four orbits of Jupiter for every one orbit of Ganymede. Hence, Io frequently lines up with one of these other moons and is stretched by the powerful gravity of Jupiter in one direction and the aligned gravitational fields of the outer moons in the other.
This continuous flexing releases large amounts of heat, which helps to keep the interior of Io molten and drive volcanism on its surface. Some of the most spectacular volcanoes of Io erupt plumes of material hundreds of miles above Io’s surface, as seen in the animation below.
Io is quite the tortured world, with a surface pockmarked by violent volcanoes and showered with highly ionising radiation radiation from Jupiter’s radiation belts – even generating aurora in the moon’s thin atmosphere.
Pluto lies in the Kuiper Belt, an extended region of icy dwarf planets in the distant outer Solar System, of which Pluto is the largest known member. It orbits the Sun once every 247 years and the heat from the Sun at this distance is so feeble that Pluto’s average surface temperature is a frosty -230°C.
However, despite these frigid conditions, Pluto is an active world with many features of interest, including a thin atmosphere and glaciers made from frozen nitrogen.
The first and, so far, only robotic visitor from Earth was Nasa’s New Horizons mission which famously flew past the ice dwarf, and its moon Charon, in 2015. One remarkable feature discovered was Wright Mons.
This large mountain is about 150km across and over 4km high, with a distinctive large depression at the summit. The absence of recent meteorite impact craters on this feature strongly suggest that it is young, geologically speaking.
Wright Mons also resembles a shield volcano. It is believed to be a cryovolcano similar to those found on Saturn’s moon Titan and Ceres, but it is the largest such feature known in the Solar System. The true nature of this intriguing mountain is still not fully agreed upon.
Gareth Dorrian 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.
Three years ago, on March 11 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus first formally described COVID-19 as a pandemic.
The impact of the pandemic on all aspects of society has been enormous, but we’ve come a long way since March 2020. The toll of this novel coronavirus has been blunted thanks to responses across science, healthcare and public health.
At this point, it’s not unreasonable to wonder when the pandemic will be over. But the WHO continues to regard COVID as a pandemic. Let’s take a look back at how we got here and explore where we might be heading.
Read more: How will the COVID pandemic end?
The term “pandemic” can have slightly different definitions depending on where you look. However, perhaps the most common use of the term applies to an emerging threat that is spreading across multiple countries: “an epidemic occurring worldwide”.
Essentially, a pandemic is one level above a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). The WHO declared COVID a PHEIC (pronounced “fake”) on January 30, 2020.
A PHEIC, as defined in the International Health Regulations, is “an extraordinary event” where there’s a risk of international disease spread, and which might require a coordinated international response. Previous examples include the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the 2016 emergence of the Zika virus, and the 2022 mpox (monkeypox) outbreak.
Interestingly though, in contrast to a PHEIC, the WHO doesn’t have the power to officially declare the start or end of a pandemic. This is because the term is not a category in the International Health Regulations, an important legal instrument. However, the WHO’s labelling of COVID as a pandemic carries a lot of weight and it has become widely regarded as such.
Emergency committees may decide what constitutes a pandemic versus a PHEIC based on factors including the severity of the disease, its mode of transmission, and its impact on nations.
On January 30 2023, exactly three years after the PHEIC declaration, the WHO released a new statement indicating that COVID should still be regarded as a PHEIC, but noting that “the COVID-19 pandemic is probably at a transition point”. This recognises the fact that high levels of immunity to COVID are now limiting its impact.
The transition point refers to the de-escalation of COVID as a PHEIC, which some have speculated may happen in April. Indeed, Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in December 2022 that the WHO was hopeful that “we will be able to say that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency” at in some point in 2023.
This shift would lessen available funding and international co-ordination. This must be balanced alongside appropriate action that considers the continuing burden of COVID, recognising that each country will be at a different stage of their pandemic management.
In that statement, there’s continued reference to an ongoing “pandemic”. This is not unreasonable, as COVID really continues to meet any commonly used definition. There is, and will be for the foreseeable future, sustained transmission across multiple countries alongside a significant burden of hospitalisations and deaths. Therefore, we may end up in the situation where there is technically an ongoing pandemic despite a declared end to the PHEIC. Such are the difficulties in defining the different stages of a global crisis.
There are still around 150,000 confirmed cases globally each day, with many more not being recorded as real-time data management is relaxed across most countries.
Nations such as China have reported numerous outbreaks across late 2022 and early 2023, with significant impact on their health services. Long COVID will continue to affect millions of people.
The extensive misinformation from influential anti-vaccination activists continues to be a problem, with the WHO citing the need to “address the infodemic”.
So despite the incredible success of the COVID vaccines, and other public health efforts to bring outbreaks largely under control, the pandemic isn’t yet past tense. We are, however, moving out of the emergency response phase.
There was a declared and definitive end to the 2009–2010 swine flu pandemic. This was a little easier due to the seasonal influenza patterns, something we don’t see with COVID.
Although real-time surveillance would have been limited, there were also relatively clear ends to the influenza pandemics of 1918–1919 and 1957–1958.
The precise ends to pandemics further back in history such as the Black Death in the 14th century and the large-scale outbreak of smallpox in the 16th century are unclear, but ultimately defined from retrospective reporting in the history books, rather than scientific committees.
Read more: COVID treatments and prevention are still improving – so the longer you can avoid it the better
It’s somewhat easier to declare a new PHEIC or define the start of pandemic, compared with the end. If the outbreak simply does not end, then declaring a time point at which “it’s over” is understandably tricky.
As the WHO indicate in their recent statement, there needs to be a continued focus on COVID beyond any defined end of the public health emergency. This focus must remain even as countries consider how to mainstream their disease control into more routine public health and health service infrastructure.
The COVID pandemic may never be over. However, the public health threat of this virus should continue to decline. The need to learn lessons from this pandemic ahead of the inevitable next time is essential. History has shown us that infectious diseases have the capacity to evolve and emerge unpredictably. The next pandemic may be just around the corner – and we don’t know which corner.
Michael Head has previously received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development.
“ChatGPT is a natural language generation platform based on the OpenAI GPT-3 language model.”
Why did you believe the above statement? A simple answer is that you trust the author of this article (or perhaps the editor). We cannot verify everything we are told, so we regularly trust the testimony of friends, strangers, “experts” and institutions.
Trusting someone may not always be the primary reason for believing what they say is true. (I might already know what you’ve told me, for example.) But the fact that we trust the speaker gives us extra motivation for believing what they say.
AI chatbots therefore raise interesting issues about trust and testimony. We have to consider whether we trust what natural language generators like ChatGPT tell us. Another matter is whether these AI chatbots are even capable of being trustworthy.
Suppose you tell me it is raining outside. According to one way philosophers view testimony, I am justified in believing you only if I have reasons for thinking your testimony is reliable – for example, you were just outside – and no overriding reasons for thinking it isn’t. This is known as the reductionist theory of testimony.
This view makes justified beliefs – assumptions that we feel entitled to hold – difficult to acquire.
But according to another view of testimony, I would be justified in believing it’s raining outside as long as I have no reason to think this statement is false. This makes justified beliefs through testimony much easier to acquire. This is called the non-reductionist theory of testimony.
Note that neither of these theories involves trust in the speaker. My relationship to them is one of reliance, not trust.
When I rely on someone or something, I make a prediction that it will do what I expect it to. For example, I rely on my alarm clock to sound at the time I set it, and I rely on other drivers to obey the rules of the road.
Trust, however, is more than mere reliance. To illustrate this, let’s examine our reactions to misplaced trust compared with misplaced reliance.
If I trusted Roxy to water my prizewinning tulips while I was on vacation and she carelessly let them die, I might rightly feel betrayed. Whereas if I relied on my automatic sprinkler to water the tulips and it failed to come on, I might be disappointed but would be wrong to feel betrayed.
In other words, trust makes us vulnerable to betrayal, so being trustworthy is morally significant in a way that being reliable is not.
The difference between trust and reliance highlights some important points about testimony. When a person tells someone it is raining, they are not just sharing information; they are taking responsibility for the veracity of what they say.
In philosophy, this is called the assurance theory of testimony. A speaker offers the listener a kind of guarantee that what they are saying is true, and in doing so gives the listener a reason to believe them. We trust the speaker, rather than rely on them, to tell the truth.
If I found out you were guessing about the rain but luckily got it right, I would still feel my trust had been let down because your “guarantee” was empty. The assurance aspect also helps capture why lies seem to us morally worse than false statements. While in both cases you invite me to trust and then let down my trust, lies attempt to use my trust against me to facilitate the betrayal.
If the assurance view is right, then ChatGPT needs to be capable of taking responsibility for what it says in order to be a trustworthy speaker, rather than merely reliable. While it seems we can sensibly attribute agency to AI to perform tasks as required, whether an AI could be a morally responsible agent is another question entirely.
Some philosophers argue that moral agency is not restricted to human beings. Others argue that AI cannot be held morally responsible because, to quote a few examples, they are incapable of mental states, lack autonomy, or lack the capacity for moral reasoning.
Nevertheless, ChatGPT is not a moral agent; it cannot take responsibility for what it says. When it tells us something, it offers no assurances as to its truth. This is why it can give false statements, but not lie. On its website, OpenAI – which built ChatGPT – says that because the AI is trained on data from the internet, it “may be inaccurate, untruthful, and otherwise misleading at times”.
At best, it is a “truth-ometer” or fact-checker – and by many accounts, not a particularly accurate one. While we might sometimes be justified in relying on what it says, we shouldn’t trust it.
In case you are wondering, the opening quote of this article was an excerpt of ChatGPT’s response when I asked it: “What is ChatGPT?” So you should not have trusted that the statement was true. However, I can assure you that it is.
Mackenzie Graham receives funding from the Wellcome Trust.
It may come as a surprise to fellow land-dwellers, but the ocean actually accounts for most of the habitable space on our planet. Yet a big chunk of it has been left largely unmanaged. It’s a vast global common resource, and the focus of a new treaty called the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement.
For 15 years, UN member states have been negotiating rules that will apply to the ocean lying more than 200 nautical miles from coastlines, including the seabed and the air space above, referred to as the “high seas”.
Covering nearly half the Earth’s surface, the high seas are shared by all nations under international law, with equal rights to navigate, fish and conduct scientific research. Until now, only a small number of states have taken advantage of these opportunities.
This new agreement is supposed to help more countries get involved by creating rules for more fairly sharing the rewards from new fields of scientific discovery. This includes assisting developing countries with research funding and the transfer of technology.
Countries that join the treaty must also ensure that they properly assess and mitigate any environmental impacts from vessels or aircraft in the high seas under their jurisdiction. This will be especially relevant for novel activities like removing plastic.
Once at least 60 states have ratified the agreement (this may take three years or more), it will be possible to establish marine protected areas (MPAs) in high sea locations of special value.
This could protect unique ecosystems like the Sargasso Sea: a refuge of floating seaweed bounded by ocean currents in the north Atlantic which offers breeding habitat for countless rare species. By restricting what can happen at these sites, MPAs can help marine life persevere against climate change, acidification, pollution and fishing.
There are obstacles to all nations participating in the shared enjoyment and protection of the high seas, even with this new treaty. Nations joining the new agreement will need to work with existing global organisations such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which regulates shipping, as well as regional fisheries management organisations.
The new treaty encourages consultation and cooperation with existing bodies, but states will need to balance their commitments with those made under other agreements. Already, some departments within governments work against each other when implementing broad, international treaties. For example, one division may chafe at greenhouse gas pollution regulations imposed at the IMO while a sister agency advocates for more stringent climate change measures elsewhere.
A key element of the new treaty addresses the disproportionate ability of developed countries to benefit from the scientific knowledge and commercial products derived from genetic samples taken from the high seas. More than 40 years ago, when the law of the sea convention was being negotiated, the same issue arose over seabed minerals in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
Industrialised nations had the technology to explore and intended to eventually mine these minerals, while developing countries did not. At that time, nations agreed that these resources were part of the “common heritage of humankind” and created the International Seabed Authority to manage a shared regime for exploiting them.
The extreme conditions for life in the open ocean have nurtured a rich diversity of survival strategies, from the bacteria that thrive in the extremely hot hydrothermal vents of the deep sea to icefish that breed in the intense cold of the Southern Ocean off Antarctica. These life forms carry potentially valuable information in their genes, known as marine genetic resources.
This new agreement provides developing states, whether coastal or landlocked, with rights to the benefits of marine genetic resources. It does not establish an administrative body comparable to that created for seabed mining, however. Instead, non-monetary benefits, such as access to samples and digital sequence information, will be shared and researchers from all countries will be able to study them for free.
Economic inequality between countries will still determine who can access these samples to a large extent, and sharing DNA sequencing data will be further complicated by the convention on biological diversity, another global treaty. The BBNJ agreement will establish a financial mechanism for sharing the monetary benefits of marine genetic resources, though experts involved in the negotiations are still parsing what it will eventually look like.
The best hope for robust marine protected areas and equitable use of marine genetic resources lies in rapid implementation of the BBNJ agreement. But making it effective will depend on how its provisions are interpreted in each country and what rules of procedure are established. In many ways, the hard work is beginning.
Although areas beyond national jurisdiction are remote for most people they generate the air you breathe, the food you eat and moderate the climate. Life exists throughout the ocean, from the surface to the seabed. Ensuring it benefits everyone living today, as well as future generations, will depend on this next phase of implementing the historic treaty.
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Cymie Payne is affiliated with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Robert Blasiak is funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation and Walton Family Foundation and has contributed in an unpaid capacity to the work of the United Nations Global Compact.
The backlash to Puffin Books’ decision to update Roald Dahl’s children’s books has been swift and largely derisive. The publisher has been accused of “absurd censorship”, “corporate safetyism” and “cultural vandalism.”
At its core, however, updating Roald Dahl’s children’s books is really about the rights and control copyright grants to authors and copyright holders. Those rights are exercised to update children’s books more frequently than many of these critics may realise.
Over the past decades, authors, copyright owners and publishers have edited and updated children’s books. They have removed racial stereotypes, reflected changing gender and cultural norms and in doing so, maintained their books’ relevance and appeal to the modern reader.
Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920), Dr. Seuss’s And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (1937), Helen Bannerman’s The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899), Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and classic children’s books series such as Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew have all changed to keep up with increasing sensitivities to racial, gender and other social stereotypes.
In 1973, Roald Dahl edited Charlie and the Chocolate Factory himself after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) criticised the Oompa Loompas, who were originally portrayed as African “pygmies”.
Classic children’s books occupy a special cultural place and evoke sentiments of tradition and nostalgia. They are venerated as works of art, making their preservation feel vital to a shared heritage.
As such, any suggestion of changing them can feel like an attack on culture itself. Of course, whose heritage and whose culture these “classic” books represent is up for debate, especially when original versions included portrayals of certain groups in hurtful or stereotypical ways.
Read more: From pygmies to puppets: what to do with Roald Dahl's enslaved Oompa-Loompas in modern adaptations?
Some argue that books for children should be held to a higher standard of sensitivity, given that children learn about their society, identity and group membership from books. Through their books, authors and copyright holders wield the power to shape the attitudes and minds of children, teaching them notions of good, bad, ugly, pretty, who is accepted and who is excluded.
Copyright law grants its holder the exclusive right to edit a copyrighted children’s book and the right to limit publication of a work. This means that during a book’s copyright term, the copyright holder has the right to make edits that maintain the book’s popularity and commercial viability.
This is true even when an author no longer owns the copyright to their work. In those situations, the copyright holder generally has the right to make edits to the work even without the author’s consent, as Goosebumps author R.L. Stine recently discovered.
These rights aren’t absolute and – most importantly – aren’t forever. Once the copyright term expires, anyone can reproduce, edit and sell new copies of an original book in any medium or format.
Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920), for example, entered the US public domain in the 1990s. Today, both the updated and the original versions (including its racial caricatures and story line about a black prince dreaming of becoming white) are available to purchase.
Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (1937), will enter the US public domain in 2033. At that time, regardless of Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ efforts to retire that book, anyone will be able to reproduce and sell new copies, complete with its original bright yellow faced “Chinaman who eats with sticks”.
Roald Dahl’s original Charlie and The Chocolate Factory will enter the US public domain in 2060. Children will once more have the opportunity to read about the African “pygmies” that Willy Wonka “discovered” and shipped to work in his factory, “fat” children like Augustus Goop and “ugly” girls who chew gum.
In the meantime, copyright holders can update and revitalise their books to broaden their readerships, protect authors’ legacies and maintain the works’ relevance. In exchange, teachers and guardians can access various versions of classic books and decide for themselves which versions their children should read.
Cathay Smith 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.
An increasing number of young people in the UK are being referred to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). Alongside this is the rising number of children prescribed medicines that treat mental illness.
The evidence for the effectiveness and safety of these drugs comes almost entirely from studies in adults. Studies in children are rare.
While some of these drugs are effective in some children, the extent of improvement is often small. And there is limited information about the long-term safety in this age group.
In a recent study, we report that the proportion of children prescribed antipsychotic drugs doubled between 2000 and 2019. We analysed data from 7,216,791 people aged three to 18 years old.
In the UK, antipsychotics, also known as “major tranquillisers”, are approved for use in under-18s with psychosis or with severely aggressive behaviour. A growing body of evidence also suggests that two of these major tranquillisers, aripiprazole and risperidone, may be effective for improving irritability and “emotional dysregulation” in autistic children.
Percentage of children prescribed antipsychotic drugs in the UK by year:
Although antipsychotics are most commonly being prescribed for children with autism and psychosis, they are also being prescribed for an increasingly wide range of other reasons, such as anxiety disorder, depression and ADHD.
In absolute terms, the overall percentage of children prescribed antipsychotics was small – 0.06% of children in 2000 and 0.11% in 2019. Clearly, some children benefit from taking these drugs.
Yet increasing use of these drugs in young people whose bodies and brains are still growing and developing raises questions about safety. Evidence for this has yet to be established.
Antipsychotics have significant side-effects, including sexual dysfunction, rapid weight gain and a greater risk of type 2 diabetes, known as metabolic syndrome.
Antipsychotics are grouped according to whether they belong to the first or the second generation of drugs developed for psychosis treatment. The first generation was developed in the 1950s, but the drugs were associated with a risk of infertility, stiffness, Parkinson’s-like tremors and other involuntary movements.
Second-generation antipsychotics, first emerged in the 1980s and were initially thought not to have these effects. However, many do, such as the widely prescribed drug risperidone. In addition, they have been found to have other negative effects on metabolism, including rapid weight gain and obesity, diabetic-like changes to blood glucose, and pre-diabetes.
At the beginning of the period we studied (2000), we saw almost as many first-generation as second-generation prescriptions to children. After 2009, more than 90% of all prescriptions to children were second-generation antipsychotics.
But we also noted that the older, first-generation antipsychotics were more likely to be prescribed to children in poorer areas. The reason for this potential prescribing inequality is not clear, but it needs to be investigated.
The increasing number of children taking antipsychotics could, of course, be the result of more children needing these treatments and the potential benefits they deliver. But the fact that many more children are being referred to CAMHS does not necessarily mean that many more children need treatment with major tranquillisers.
Another possibility is that it reflects a reduction in the stigma surrounding mental illness or better awareness of mental health problems at an earlier stage of distress, and changing attitudes of parents, teachers and GPs about what CAMHS provides.
The number of young people experiencing anxiety and depression has increased, particularly in girls and young women, but there is limited evidence that the types of conditions requiring antipsychotic treatment are increasing.
A recent study reports that the number of children with a diagnosis of autism increased exponentially over 20 years from 1998, probably reflecting a growing awareness of the disorder. Yet most of these cases are children with milder autism – children who are unlikely to require antipsychotic drugs.
Increasing access to CAMHS can have a perverse influence on the quality of care, such that more young people receive readily available prescriptions rather than more resource-intensive psychological, social or family support. In such a landscape, health inequalities highlighted during the pandemic may increase, and in so doing, further disadvantage children and families least able to gain the help they need.
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.
Many people choose to live with a cat for companionship. As a social species, companionship is something we often crave. But this cannot necessarily be said of our feline friends. Domestic cats evolved from a largely solitary species, defending their territory from other cats.
Although modern-day cats can live together in friendly groups (when there are enough resources to go around), bonds generally only develop between cats who are related or grow up together. It is natural for cats to feel threatened by unfamiliar cats. Owners should consider whether adding another cat to their home is really in their cat’s best interest, especially if they are generally more of a timid cat.
If you’re set on adding another cat to your home, plan the introduction carefully.
Prepare for your new cat before you bring them home. Set aside a room for them, making sure they have at least two comfortable sleeping areas, a water bowl, a feeding area, scratching post and toys. Provide at least one litter tray (preferably two), well away from the food, water and sleeping places.
When the day comes to bring your new cat home, take them straight to “their” room. Allow them to come out of their carrier in their own time. They will be frightened if you try to pull them out. No matter how excited you are to interact with your new companion, you might need to leave the room, allowing them to explore by themselves.
Your new cat needs to stay in their room for several days. This will help them settle down and allows you to introduce them to your existing cat via scent.
Scent, especially facial pheromones, helps cats identify other cats that they are bonded with and is important for maintaining bonds between cats. Swap cloths that each cat has slept on, and toys. Place these somewhere the cats will come across them in their own rooms, but away from beds, bowls and litter trays.
Neither cat should show signs of avoidance or aggression towards the cloths before you progress. Then you can directly swap scent between the cats. Stroke one cat, especially around the cheeks and area in front of the ears, and then go directly to the other cat and stroke them. Repeat in the other direction.
This will transfer the cats’ scent profiles and facial pheromones, as if they were rubbing on each other directly. Look for relaxed rubbing or nudging in return.
Once both cats are relaxed about being stroked with your other cat’s scent on your hands, they can finally see each other and your new cat can explore the rest of your home. You can buy a plug-in diffuser that releases copies of a feline facial pheromone, which may help with the initial introductions as it has been found to reduce cat-to-cat aggression within households.
There should be lots of escape routes for the cats to move away from each other. Make sure there is a cat tower or furniture, like a bookshelf, to jump onto and that the cats can easily leave the room if they want to. Cats like to hide away if threatened and to get up high.
Initially, shut the cat you adopted first away in a separate room and allow your new cat out of theirs to explore. Once they are familiar with the layout of the house and where escape routes and safe places are, you can let your other cat out. Supervise the cats and be ready to intervene if tensions start to mount.
Watch for any avoidant or agonistic behaviour, such as running away and hiding, ears going back or hissing. Never punish your cat for aggressive behaviour and avoid using food to lure the cats closer together. Cats are solitary hunters and would not naturally eat in close proximity to other cats, even ones they are bonded with.
Because cats can find it challenging to form new relationships with other cats, especially as adults, your cats may never become best friends. To reduce conflict, make sure both cats can access food, water and litter trays without having to pass each other.
As a general rule, you will need to have one more of each resource than the total number of cats in the household. For example, three litter trays for a two-cat household. If your cats go outside, it may also be helpful to provide more than one entrance and exit point, as the cat flap is another common area for conflict between cats.
Similar advice applies if you want to add another companion species to your home, such as a puppy. Introductions may be more successful if the puppy is carefully and gradually introduced before they’re 12 weeks old.
Don’t allow your puppy to chase your cat. Reward the puppy for calm behaviour. Your cat should never feel cornered and always have the choice to move away from any interaction, whether that’s with a human or non-human animal.
Jenna Kiddie 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.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, more than 8 million Ukrainians have been displaced across Europe. The vast majority – 86% – are women and children.
The most popular destination countries in the UN refugee response plan are Poland with more than 1.5 million refugees and the Czech Republic with 489,865. The latest UN data indicates that there are also more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany, 169,837 in Italy, 166,832 in Spain and 161,400 in the United Kingdom.
The majority of Ukrainians entering the UK since February 2022 have done so via the two special visa routes. These are the Ukraine family scheme (allowing Ukrainians to join family members already present in the UK) and the Ukraine sponsorship scheme, commonly known as “homes for Ukraine”. Homes for Ukraine allows Ukrainian nationals to come to the UK if they have a sponsor able to provide them with accommodation for at least six months.
As of February 14, the UK government had issued 65,900 Ukraine family scheme visas and 152,600 visas via homes for Ukraine. Visa holders under both schemes have the right to work and study in the UK for up to three years and access to benefits. Homes for Ukraine also offers monthly payments to hosts and refugees.
According to the most recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) surveys with hosts and refugees, the majority of sponsors (74%) are still hosting Ukrainians and most (98%) are hosting the same people in November 2022 as in July 2022.
An increasing number of Ukrainian respondents – from 6% in June 2022 to 19% now – are able to rent their own accommodation. The number of Ukrainian adults reporting that they have found work has also risen significantly – from 19% in June 2022 to 56% now.
Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our weekly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.
But there remain significant challenges for Ukrainians seeking to rebuild their lives in the UK. The ONS survey data shows that 45% of visa holders experience barriers accessing private rented accommodation and 50% report experiencing difficulties taking up work in the UK.
From the point of view of UK hosts, 66% are worried about what will happen to their Ukrainian guests once the sponsorship relationship ends. This is a real concern, given that nearly 3,000 Ukrainian households presented themselves as homeless to local councils at the end of last year.
As part of our ongoing research, we have been interviewing Ukrainians in the UK about their experiences of migration, historical memory and political identity. The 14 people we have interviewed to date were from diverse backgrounds and with different experiences of migration.
These in-depth interviews, conducted between September 2022 and February 2023, offer insights into the experience of Ukrainian refugees in the UK beyond the statistics. They tell a story of persistent stereotypes about eastern Europe. Existing research shows that eastern Europe is often presented in the UK as playing “catch up” with the west and this influences the life chances of migrants.
Several of the Ukrainians we spoke to were surprised by how little people in the UK know about Ukrainian history and culture. They reported that British hosts expected the people staying with them to be uneducated, poor and without knowledge of simple things – supermarket “use-by dates”, for example.
These seemingly simple areas of disconnect have caused friction in the relationships between some hosts and their guests. Daryna*, a Ukrainian financier from Kharkov, said:
I was surprised by the attitude of my hosts when I arrived … [they] treated me like a girl who didn’t even finish school … we are perceived as uneducated people … we are not considered as a country that is developed in IT technologies.
Some commented that their hosts seemed not to fully understand the distinction between Ukraine and Russia. Anastasia*, a cook from the Zaporizhzhia region, told us she had been provided with a Russian interpreter when visiting a hospital, who turned out to be a supporter of Putin:
I was very badly affected … she started asking me about us, about our situation, about our war and said that the Americans are to blame that we have a war. She said that the Americans are to blame – not Russia.
According to the ONS survey data, of those refugees who have found jobs in the UK, 65% were not working in the same sector as they had in Ukraine. Notably many had moved from education and finance into the hospitality, food production, agricultural and farming sectors.
A total of 56% of Ukrainian respondents said their insufficient English language skills had been barriers to finding employment in the UK, while 33% said employers had failed to recognise their Ukrainian qualifications.
Previous research shows that the need to take work for which you are overqualified affects migrants from eastern Europe more than those from western Europe. This is reflected in the experience of several of our interviewees. Daryna* describes the failure to recognise Ukrainians as professionals:
Almost 80% of Ukrainians who came to England are educated, they have diplomas and several diplomas, but currently they only offer cleaning … we’re cheap labour for the English at the moment.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has announced a new support package of more than £650 million for those fleeing the war in Ukraine. The package includes an extension of payments to those hosting Ukrainians through the homes for Ukraine scheme, and funding to help Ukrainian refugees move into their own homes.
This additional support has been enthusiastically welcomed by the Ukrainians we spoke to. As Kateryna*, a manager from the Kherson district, describes it:
My sponsors supported me materially and morally, and that’s how you feel supported in general, on the street, or acquaintances come and show you support.
The detail of their experiences indicates that this financial and moral support should be accompanied by a broader effort to address stereotypes about migrants from eastern Europe.
*All names are pseudonyms.
Sara Jones receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council as Principal Investigator for the project Post-Socialist Britain? Memory, Migration and Political Identity amongst German, Polish and Ukrainian Immigrants in the UK.
Natalia Kogut receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council as Research Fellow for the project Post-Socialist Britain. Memory, Migration and Political Identity amongst German, Polish and Ukrainian Immigrants in the UK.
Just over a year after fleeing the Taliban and seeking asylum in the UK, more than 150 Afghan refugees, including children, are facing more upheaval. In a matter of weeks, the Home Office has given dozens of refugee and asylum seeker families short notice that they will be moved from their accommodation in London to hotels in Yorkshire and Bedfordshire, hundreds of miles away.
Many new arrivals find themselves moved to different areas, often where accommodation is cheaper. This involves taking (often vulnerable) people far away from the neighbourhood where they have begun settling in, and where they have started in local schools and jobs. Our research in the London boroughs of Newham and Barking & Dagenham illustrates how important these point-of-arrival communities are to refugees – and what is at stake when people are made to leave.
Our work involves speaking to newcomers, learning about their experiences since arrival, spending time in local places that feature in their lives, and working alongside people that provide services and support.
The resources, opportunities and support structures people use to get orientated in a new community make up what we call “arrival infrastructure”. This involves interactions with people, from paid service providers to friends, colleagues and strangers on the street. It happens in parks, markets, barbershops, libraries, community centres, schools and shared accommodation.
New migrants invest a lot of labour and energy in becoming accustomed to new surroundings, getting to know a new neighbourhood, working out how to access local services, schools and GPs, and building relationships in the community. Even more emotional and physical effort is needed to secure a job. For many, this depends on establishing relationships with the right people first.
Schools, community centres, and places of worship; friends, co-tenants and colleagues; even the local off-licence – all of these are key parts of arrival infrastructure. They can’t be packed up and moved to a different locality.
The decline in affordable housing and council accommodation in the UK has created dilemmas for local councils and the Home Office when it comes to housing vulnerable residents. Yet authorities need to weigh the financial gains of moving families against the losses to vulnerable people who are forced to abandon the lives they have built and go somewhere else.
A Home Office spokesperson told The Conversation: “While hotels do not provide a long-term solution, they do offer safe, secure and clean accommodation. We will continue to bring down the number of people in bridging hotels, moving people into more sustainable accommodation as quickly as possible.
"Occasionally families may be moved from a hotel scheduled for closure to another hotel. In these instances, families are given appropriate notice of a move and are supported by their local authority every step of the way.”
We know from our research that access to support varies from place to place. One ex-asylum seeker we spoke to easily accessed a GP in her Dagenham neighbourhood. But she struggled to get healthcare in other areas, where local surgeries insisted on proof of address that she was unable to provide while in Home Office accommodation. Although NHS policy does not require documentary proof of address, some surgeries insist on it. Healthwatch has found this to be a common barrier preventing people from registering with a GP.
We also know that schools and workplaces can be crucial in settling in – and not purely because they offer an education or a salary. Among new arrivals in Barking, work often provides opportunities for friendships, knowledge-sharing and improving English language skills.
Our research shows how important schools are in helping newly arrived families settle in. Some schools become real “arrival hubs” in their local area where staff fulfil a variety of roles going way beyond education. They help newly arrived families navigate complex bureaucratic processes and make social connections in the neighbourhood. Perhaps most importantly, they provide emotional support in times that can be uncertain and distressing.
As Soofia Amin, assistant head teacher at Kensington Primary School in East Ham, told us:
We strive to be there as a constant support with our doors always open, this is what helps our newly arrived families. We are the safe space when they first arrive.
One woman we spoke to, Daniela (not her real name), is a mother and volunteer at a primary school in the London borough of Newham. After several years in the borough, Daniela now feels confident about how to find help and participate in local life.
Now I can say that with any problem I have, I know where to go. Maybe it’s because I have been here for longer and I grow a little bit to understand where to go in the neighbourhood. And really, we have a lot of support here. Anything you need – you can go to school; you can do anything.
Daniela and Soofia remind us of the value of a neighbourhood in helping new arrivals solve problems, access services and get involved in local life. In this sense, the costs for refugees being moved away from their jobs and schools goes deeper than the obvious impacts to their education and income. Their wellbeing, social inclusion, participation and sense of belonging are all at risk.
Malte Gembus works for Coventry University on a research grant provided by the ESRC.
Tamlyn Monson works for Coventry University. Her position is funded by a grant provided by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101004704.
As the first United Nations aid convoy made it across the Turkish border into Syria, the regional death toll from the earthquakes four days earlier climbed steadily past 19,000. And it looks set to rise higher still. Quite a lot of these will be new deaths, caused by aftershocks and the collapse of buildings and infrastructure already damaged by the February 6 quakes.
An important part of preparing for earthquakes is to plan for a rapid and effective response to widespread destruction. This includes putting systems in place that protect rescue and relief workers from aftershocks, which can take place days or even weeks later and be almost as large as the main shock.
Aftershocks pose a danger to responders because they can cause already damaged buildings and structures to collapse, putting rescue crews at risk of injury or death. They can also trigger additional hazards, such as landslides, gas leaks, fires and rockfalls that can further threaten their safety. They can also complicate response and recovery efforts, making it more difficult for responders to reach and assist those in need.
The risk of aftershocks is always present during an earthquake response and this can cause rescue workers significant stress and fear, undermining their wellbeing and effectiveness.
It is only possible with hindsight to say for certain which seismic event in an earthquake sequence was the main shock and which ones were foreshocks and aftershocks. An aftershock is an earthquake, just like the main shock.
Retrospectively, aftershocks are the smaller earthquakes that follow the larger main shock. They can continue for days, weeks or even months after the main quake. The frequency of aftershocks decreases with time, but it is not uncommon for the largest aftershocks to occur several days or even weeks after the main shock.
On April 25 2015, Nepal faced an earthquake of 7.8 on the moment magnitude (MW) scale. In the 13 months following this event, the country faced 459 aftershocks with magnitudes equal or greater than 4MW.
The largest aftershock (7.3MW) occurred three weeks after the main shock, on May 12. The aftershocks caused further damage to buildings, infrastructure and monuments that had already been damaged or destroyed by the main quake, adding to the death toll and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.
The aftershocks also hindered relief and reconstruction efforts, making it more difficult for responders to access affected areas. In addition to causing physical damage, the aftershocks also had a significant psychological impact on the population.
People were reluctant to return to their homes and many took refuge in temporary shelters. This disrupted the normal functioning of communities and added to the difficulties faced by relief workers in providing aid and assistance to those in need.
As a result of both the main shock and the aftershocks, 8,632 people died and 22,300 were injured. At least 498,852 private houses and 2,656 government buildings were destroyed.
But this outcome is not the result of the magnitude and the frequency of the earthquakes alone. Nepal had many buildings that were older, poorly constructed and not designed to withstand earthquakes. Many were built with unreinforced masonry or had multiple additional storeys that had been added in an ad hoc manner, making them them vulnerable to earthquakes and putting inhabitants and responders at risk.
Buildings that had already been damaged during the main shock were vulnerable to aftershocks, especially if they were located near the aftershock’s epicentre and soil conditions were poor. For example, loose sand or soil that contains a lot of water can amplify ground motion and increase the damage to buildings. Buildings that are located on slopes are also more vulnerable, especially if the slopes are unstable.
Systems that enable a rapid response to earthquakes include early warnings for aftershocks as well. Such systems help authorities coordinate rescue and relief efforts. They provide ground shaking alerts (for example, via smartphone), giving responders in the field tens of seconds to take protective measures before an aftershock is felt.
These systems rely on earthquake early warning (EEW). This involves using a network of seismographs to detect seismic waves. They work by detecting the faster, less damaging, primary waves (P-waves) of an earthquake. They they use algorithms to quickly estimate the magnitude, location and expected arrival time of the slower, more damaging, secondary waves (S-waves) at different locations.
Unfortunately in some regions, geological conditions are not suitable for EEW, because they limit warnings to two to three seconds before impact, which are of limited value. EEW also does not provide enough warning time if the area that needs to be alerted is located on top of the epicentre.
Some rapid response systems combine this information with data about the built environment to quickly model the expected impact on houses and other structures, showing which areas are likely to be worst affected after an aftershock. An example is the TURNkey system, an EU-funded project aimed at developing a decision support system for earthquake management.
They can also sends responders an “are you safe?” push message through their smartphone. This allows response leaders to quickly assess the wellbeing of their team after an aftershock. It also allows for more effective prioritisation and coordination across the response.
The knowledge that aftershocks won’t come completely unexpected gives responders some peace of mind, reducing their stress and making a difference to the speed and effectiveness of a response.
Femke Mulder worked on the TURNkey project. She received funding from EU Horizon 2020 for this project.
Monkeys, apes and lemurs are cute, familiar and lovable. But an estimated 60% of all primate species are listed as vulnerable, threatened or endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a network of environmental organisations.
You’ve probably heard about the main problems, like deforestation and the loss of habitat. But primates are a diverse group of animals with a wide geographical range, so there are many more subtle ways our actions as humans put these wonderful animals at risk.
Everywhere we go, our best friends are likely to go with us. Our review shows that dogs are present in many primate habitats. These predators sometimes kill and injure primates, but they also may simply chase and harass them, disrupting their socialising or foraging.
Being on the lookout for harassing dogs is stressful and causes primates to use more energy. Reducing these potentially lethal encounters depends on conservationists communicating with dog owners, who often don’t recognise the danger their dogs pose to such wildlife.
When diseases jump between animal species, they can cause serious harm to a species that does not have the necessary resistance. Dog diseases such as canine heartworm and parvovirus can be passed from dogs to primates, and could potentially be fatal. There’s also the possibility that pathogens – viruses, bacteria or parasites – could evolve to spread more easily or become more deadly.
If you live outside a country where primates live, you may never see a live primate outside of a zoo. Nevertheless, your media choices can still affect their conservation.
Researchers have discovered that our choices of what we watch on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok can end up fuelling the use of primates as pets or in entertainment. Primates are cute, and we love to watch videos of them. However, many of these pictures and videos show them in artificial contexts, such as primates wearing clothes or interacting with office equipment.
When people view such content, they often say they want a primate as a pet and are less likely to believe that these animals are endangered.
We can help to protect primates by not viewing or sharing videos that show animals in unnatural situations. The responsibility for interacting with primates respectfully is even higher for those who live near primates or those who embark on wildlife tourism.
People’s activities can affect where primates live, what food they eat, and how they live their lives. Many tourist destinations in these types of locations cater to people’s desire to interact and take pictures with primates by keeping them as pets or encouraging feeding or similar interactions.
Our research found that these practices harm the animals, increase the poaching or the trade of primates, and can lead to dangerous situations for both the primates and people. Photographs that show monkeys posing with humans alarm primatologists because we understand the risks of being bitten or of passing on diseases. But the wider public may be unaware of these dangers.
The potential for disease transmission between humans and primates is high, partly because of our closely related biology. When diseases move from animals to humans they are known as “zoonoses”. And when they are transferred from animals to human beings, they are known as “anthroponoses”.
The African apes – chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas – seem to be particularly vulnerable to human respiratory infections. Protecting these endangered animals from infectious disease is an important conservation goal.
The risk of disease transmission between humans and nonhuman primates is worsened by close contact. Some primate species have always lived near people. But as human need for space grows and primate habitats become more fragmented, these encounters become more common.
Primate tourism also brings humans closer to wildlife, with people sometimes even holding the animals or sharing food with them. The pet trade goes further and brings wild primates into our homes, where animals can contract illness from their owners and vice versa.
Preventing the primate pet trade and encouraging safe and respectful interactions with wildlife are vital for both human and nonhuman primate health.
These are only a few examples of the ways humans impact wild primates. And animal biologists are increasingly interested in such human-generated issues for wildlife conservation.
Tracie McKinney is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group's Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI).
Michelle Rodrigues is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group's Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI).
Sian Waters is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group's Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI)
The decision to place double rapist Isla Bryson in the segregation unit at Scotland’s Cornton Vale women’s prison, ahead of sentencing, has sparked a political crisis that looks unlikely to abate soon.
Following a backlash, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon quickly announced that Bryson would not stay at Cornton Vale. That same day, Bryson was moved to a male wing at His Majesty’s Prison Edinburgh. The Scottish parliament’s justice committee has confirmed that it will scrutinise these events.
The Scottish Prison Service issued its current gender identity and gender reassignment policy in March 2014. This allows prisoners to be accommodated based on self-declared gender identity, subject to a case-by-case assessment.
Work on the policy began in 2007 in close collaboration with Scottish government-funded group Scottish Trans Alliance, whose logo has equal weighting to that of the SPS on the policy document.
Responsibility for decision-making lay with the Scottish Prison Service, whose job was to balance the needs of different groups. That it failed to do so in this case is obvious.
As the service’s own equality impact assessment of the policy, dated 2014, shows, officials did not consult with groups representing women’s interests, nor consider relevant documentary evidence on women. It concluded that women would not be affected by the new policy.
The assessment identified three protected characteristics that could be affected by the policy: age, “gender identity” and sexual orientation. The box for “gender” was however, left blank. It should also be noted that the correct protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010 are gender reassignment (not gender identity) and sex (not gender).
The later stages of development on the 2014 gender identity and gender reassignment policy coincided with the publication of the Commission on Women Offenders report (The Angiolini report) in 2012. The report captured the complex needs and troubled histories of female offenders, documenting high rates of mental health problems.
It noted specifically that around 80% of those housed at Cornton Vale experience mental health problems. It showed that women prisoners have “higher lifetime incidences of trauma, including severe and repeated physical and sexual victimisation than either male prisoners or women in the general population”.
Over the next decade the Angiolini report shaped Scottish prisons policy. In an address made in May 2015 the first minister acknowledged “recent developments and improvements in the care of women in custody”, citing a staff programme that recognised “many of the women will have experienced trauma and mental ill-health”.
In 2019, the Scottish Prison Service published its new model of custody for women, detailing how a trauma-informed approach would underpin operational practice. It said, “Women who have suffered some type of physical or emotional trauma are often hyper-aware of possible danger,” and “survivors of trauma may find it difficult to trust others.”
The Scottish Prison Service’s strategy for women in custody 2021-25 described the Angiolini report as a “significant catalyst for change”, stating all aspects of care should “take account of their likely experience of trauma and adversities”.
At the same time, officials continued to accommodate transgender prisoners in the female estate. While the Scottish Prison Service has only recently begun to publish statistics on the placement of transgender prisoners, media reports show that offenders placed in the female estate include those convicted of: murder (multiple examples); murder and torture; murder and assaulting a female prison officer; multiple violent offences; voyeurism and sexual assault; and threatening and abusive behaviour.
None of these cases appeared to trouble Scottish ministers. It would take a full-blown political crisis for them to pay attention.
That the Bryson case gained traction is a matter of timing. The story unfolded against the backdrop of the recently passed Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Act, which, controversially, put the principle of self-identification on a statutory basis.
The UK government subsequently issued an order preventing the act from proceeding to royal assent, stating that the act would adversely affect UK-wide equalities legislation. In this context, the Bryson case, which arose directly from a policy based on self-identification, became part of a larger political and constitutional story.
In a bid to stem the tide of criticism being levelled at its handling of the Bryson case, the Scottish government has announced interim rules on housing transgender prisoners. Meanwhile, a longstanding policy review of the management of trans prisoners is nearing completion.
The interim measures are limited, however. They only state that those transgender offenders with convictions of violence against women (including sexual offences) will not be placed in the female estate.
Notwithstanding that most violent or sexual offending goes unreported and few cases are prosecuted in court, the measures appear trauma-blind. Minimal reassurance is provided in respect of women’s psychological safety, dignity and privacy, or to those re-traumatised by male bodies or voices.
The Bryson case reveals a long-standing tension in Scottish prisons policy between gender self-identification principles and trauma-informed care.
For the best part of a decade this contradiction has played out in plain sight, with minimal scrutiny, to the detriment of female offenders. That it has taken the case of a double rapist to bring it to the fore raises serious questions about political priorities as well as the susceptibility of public authorities to lobbying.
Kath Murray 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.
Thousands of women have voluntarily joined Ukraine’s armed forces since 2014, when Russia’s occupation of Crimea and territories in eastern Ukraine began. Over the past nine years, the number of women serving in the Ukrainian military has more than doubled, with another wave of women joining after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Women have served in Ukraine’s armed forces since the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, but were mainly in supporting roles until the beginning of the war in 2014. They started serving in combat roles in 2016 and all military roles were opened to women in 2022. However, many women in non-combat roles, such as medics, are exposed to the same dangers and hardships as their male and female colleagues who fire the weapons.
According to Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence, Hanna Maliar, by the summer of 2022 more than 50,000 women were employed by the armed forces in some capacity, with approximately 38,000 serving in uniform. Women are now with units on the front lines.
Women in the armed forces are being taken as prisoners-of-war by the Russians. Ukrainian medic Yulia Paevska was imprisoned for three months . “The treatment was very hard, very rough … The women and I were all exhausted,” she told Associated Press.
Ukraine is a country with strong patriarchal traditions, especially in the defence sector. But Ukraine’s women soldiers are increasingly being accepted by Ukrainian society and the country’s political leadership during this war.
One indication of the recognition of women’s presence in the military and society’s rating of their contributions was when National Defenders’ Day was renamed in 2021 as the Day of Men and Women Defenders of Ukraine.
And there are other indications. Images of servicewomen are now regularly used by the ministry of defence in its social media posts. Ukraine’s women soldiers are also often in the news, talking about their military experiences. There are also approximately 8,000 women officers as of October 2022, and one of Ukraine’s deputy defence ministers is a woman.
But the presence of women in the Ukrainian armed forces has not been without controversy. Some analysts warn against assuming that the photographs and videos in the news and on social media showing women on the front lines means that they enjoy equality with the men they serve beside.
Ukraine’s women soldiers still have to overcome scepticism from commanders and fellow soldiers about their commitment and abilities, obstacles to promotion and career development, as well as difficulties with practical – and vitally important – matters such as getting uniforms, body armour and boots that fit.
Women are also more exposed to sexual violence. Many Ukrainian female combatants mention in interviews with journalists that they must avoid captivity by any means and that they are ready to die rather than being captured by the Russians.
A major research project, Invisible Battalion, began in 2015 and has shed light on the conditions of military service for Ukrainian women. Led by a group of Ukrainian sociologists (including Anna Kvit, one of the authors of this article), it identified legal barriers to women’s employment in the defence and security sector, as well as obstacles to their access to military education and training. These regulations had prevented women in the military from occupying a range of technical and leadership positions.
Not only have many of these formal obstacles now been removed, but gender advisers and audits have been introduced to encourage a military culture that is more welcoming for women. In families where both parents are serving in the armed forces, parental leave is no longer the exclusive preserve of mothers.
Social attitudes towards women soldiers have also improved a great deal over the past few years. For example, the percentage of Ukrainians who agreed that women in the military should be granted equal opportunities with men increased dramatically from 53% in 2018 to 80% in 2022.
Looking ahead to post-war Ukrainian society, it is hard to predict whether these more positive public attitudes towards women soldiers will translate into greater acceptance of women in the relatively new role of war veteran. A follow-up study conducted for the Invisible Battalion project in 2017 revealed that women veterans struggled to have their status recognised by both government officials and civilians. This meant difficulties in accessing public services for veterans and in making the transition back to civilian life.
In the aftermath of war there is often social pressure on women to resume more traditional gender roles, namely to focus on motherhood and family. This is precisely what happened to Soviet women who fought in the second world war: they were the first to be demobilised and were even instructed not to talk about what they did in the war in case they might embarrass their husbands.
However, just as public attitudes towards women in in the military are changing quickly in Ukraine, so too are the country’s laws and government policies.
Ukraine’s commitment towards addressing women’s needs and rights is reflected in the government’s strategic documents for the next decade. For example, in 2022 Ukraine adopted the national strategy on equality of women and men, covering the period up to 2030.
In 2020 it introduced Ukraine’s second national action plan including measures to improve conditions for women’s military service and support women veterans. The plan makes a commitment to provide “servicewomen with uniforms, equipment, and body armour that would fit their anthropometric measures”, and to provide women veterans and their family members with free legal advice.
The common experience of war brings an understanding of the scale and nature of the contributions that Ukraine’s women are making to protect and defend their country. This shared understanding, reinforced by everyday encounters with women veterans who are friends, neighbours and family, might mean these women’s experiences will be valued in the years to come.
Anna Kvit receives funding from Cara
Jennifer Mathers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
China stuck rigidly to a zero-COVID policy until December 2022. This included travel restrictions, mass testing and mandatory quarantines. The rapid lifting of this strategy led to a surge of COVID infections across the country.
There have been concerns that the Chinese lunar new year travel in January may cause this wave of COVID to spread much further and faster, with significant numbers of hospital admissions and deaths.
Lunar new year involves hundreds of millions of people travelling across the country, and is considered to be the world’s largest annual migration event.
So how have things been tracking in China, and how will lunar new year trips affect COVID transmission? Our modelling may provide some clues.
This year lunar new year fell on January 22, though population movements for the celebrations began on January 7 and will run until February 15. Domestic travel was expected to peak around January 19.
According to estimates from the Chinese Ministry of Transport, the total number of lunar new year travellers is expected to have increased by 99.5% over the same period in 2022 and returned to 70.3% of what it was in 2019.
Through WorldPop, a research group based at the University of Southampton which maps global population distribution for health and development, we have continued to analyse population movements and their relationship to COVID transmission throughout the pandemic. Our earlier research indicated that lunar new year movements contributed significantly to the initial spread of the virus in January 2020.
This new wave has largely been driven by the omicron sub-lineages BA.5.2 and BF.7. We used an epidemiological model to simulate the transmission of these omicron variants across 339 areas in mainland China from November 1, 2022 to February 28, 2023.
Read more: COVID is running rampant in China – but herd immunity remains elusive
This work has not yet been peer reviewed but our model estimated changes in the number of susceptible, exposed, infectious and recovered or isolated people within each area and their daily movements between areas. We incorporated numerous different sources of data, including intracity and intercity mobility data, vaccine uptake data by province, and COVID-related search index data on the Chinese internet search platform Baidu.
An important element of our model is the R value, which indicates how many people on average one infected person will infect in a susceptible population. We estimated R using reported case information and other data.
We compared the results of our model with online survey data on COVID infections, and we tested different R values and epidemiological parameters to better assess the uncertainties around our estimates.
Baidu searches with the term “fever” showed that most Chinese areas reached a peak in searches around December 20.
Baidu searches for ‘fever’
Based on this and other data, and an R value of 10, further adjusted by intracity mobility data, our model estimated that COVID infections nationwide peaked around December 26 to 28. At that time, roughly 4.2% of the Chinese population were probably infected, as shown in the figure below.
Estimated COVID infections in China
We also estimated that infections in 76% of areas peaked in December and 21% between January 1 and 10. The remaining 3% would reach the peak after January 10.
By December 31, we believe 73%–79% of all people in China would have been infected in this wave.
Estimated infection peaks by area
Our estimates under an R value of 10 are consistent with the recent reports released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC reported that the positive rate of COVID tests peaked between December 22 and 27 across the country. China passed the peaks of fever-related outpatient visits for both rural and urban areas (peaked on December 23), emergency department visits (January 2) and admission of severe cases (January 5).
Our results are also consistent with the findings of recent online surveys on COVID infections conducted in different provinces. For example, the Sichuan CDC in the western province of China reported that the overall infection rate of its residents had exceeded 80% by January 1, with a peak between December 12 and December 23. And Henan province in central China reported that its infection rate was 89% by January 6, after peaking on December 19.
Since most cities are estimated to have passed the peak of infections before January 10, and the majority of the population has already been infected, we expect the lunar new year travel will have a limited impact on the trajectory of COVID transmission in this wave across the country.
Of course, there may be subsequent waves of infections, for example in summer, due to waning immunity and the possible emergence of new variants.
Read more: COVID: what we know about new omicron variant BF.7
We intend to refine our analysis with the latest data and publish a full report setting out our research in the coming weeks. But it’s important to note that at this stage, this work has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Whatever the precise estimates this and other models generate, it’s clear there are significant risks of severe disease and death among vulnerable groups such as the elderly. There’s also high pressure on health services, and relatively inadequate healthcare resources in rural areas. Measures like increased vaccine uptake in older people will be vital to ensuring the impact of COVID in China is reduced in future waves.
Shengjie Lai receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the EU H2020, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. We collaborated with the School of Population Medicine and Public Health at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in this study. The authors thank Dr Michael Head for providing insightful comments to improve this study and report.
Andrew J Tatem receives funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the EU Horizon 2020 program and the National Institutes of Health.
Tár follows a fictional all-powerful female orchestra conductor and her fall from the height of her career. Lydia Tár is portrayed as one of the top conductors in the world and the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.
The film aims to ask if gender matters when it comes to power. How does our judgment change when an abuser is female? What is the place of identity politics in art? Can art be separated from the artist?
To draw the audience into these questions, director Todd Field works hard to convince the audience that Tár and the classical music industry portrayed in the film is real. He does this by blurring the lines between the film and real-life people in the industry while also relying on most audience members’ lack of understanding of the day-to-day work of an orchestra.
The film slides between reality, mythology and fantasy in depicting an orchestra and a conductor’s powers.
The film opens with Tár being interviewed by Adam Gopnik, a New Yorker writer, who plays himself. In this interview, a substantial number of her biographical details share striking parallels with those of the world’s actual leading female conductor, Marin Alsop. This muddle of fact and fiction left audience members believing that Tár was a real person.
Marin Alsop was understandably unhappy with the similarities. She also pointed out that Tár plays into a sort of “maestro mythology” where “real” conductors are untouchable geniuses with unparalleled musical skills.
A study conducted by neurology academic Seymour Levine and his son Robert Levine, a violist in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, observed that underlying the behaviour of conductors and musicians in orchestras is:
the myth of the conductor as omniscient father (“maestro,” “maître”) and the musicians as children (“players”) who know nothing and require uninterrupted teaching and supervision.
They concluded that the “disparity between myth and reality in professional orchestras is extreme and serves as the most powerful source of musician stress and counterproductive institutional dynamics”.
This myth plays out in Tár where musicians respond with affable compliance to all her musical decisions, even those they’re unhappy or uncomfortable with. We’re led to believe that Lydia Tár is fully responsible for the final artistic product. The musicians are simply following her every gesture as a united body.
In reality, while what audiences see appears to be a carefully choreographed performance of shared intentions and performance goals, beneath the surface lies a web of competing influences and interactions in which the conductor may only play a small part.
Analysing more than 1,500 comments from orchestral musicians describing who and what they were responding to in real-life rehearsals and performances, I have studied the process of artistic “authorship” in orchestras.
What I found is that opinions about how things should go differ dramatically throughout orchestras and that there is only one overarching shared goal in performance: to play together and to achieve ensemble cohesion.
To be clear, what constitutes ensemble cohesion at the highest level is complex and nuanced. To play together precisely in time, musicians must have a developed sense of every aspect of the sound, colour, volume and phrasing of their part. They must play with not after their colleagues.
To do this, they must make split-second decisions about what’s best for every note, drawing on their extensive musical experience while navigating the decisions of the musicians around them. They’re also often battling acoustic situations as they can only hear part of what the orchestra is doing from their seat. The conductor’s usefulness in this is extremely variable and partial.
One professional brass player explained to me that there was a visual knack that players have by watching each other. For example, the euphonium part in Holst’s Mars from The Planets the strings will play down bows. The brass player noted that some conductors will try to push the piece on there. If they were to follow the conductor there, they would be early. It was more helpful seeing a bank of strings all doing down bows, which let them know exactly where to place a note.
While in rehearsal a conductor can stop play and ask for a change, in a performance they can’t. This changes the power dynamics in ways some conductors might be uncomfortable admitting.
Research has shown that musicians in self-governing orchestras, such as the Berlin Philharmonic, have generally higher job satisfaction than colleagues in other orchestras and “that players in these orchestras are the real masters of their ensembles”.
However, the international classical music industry is steeped with systemic power imbalances and abuses.
It’s not just high-profile #MeToo cases in the upper echelons of the profession, like those of real conductors James Levine and Charles DuToit (both named in the film), on which Tár’s sadistic power trips are modelled. The body of evidence of abuse within musical institutions, from schools to professional orchestras in the UK, continues to grow.
A recent survey by the Independent Society for Musicians reported that 77% of respondents (rising to 88% of self-employed) did not report offences. The main reasons given were: “it’s just the culture” in the music sector (55%), followed by “no one to report to” (48%) and “fear of losing work” (45%).
While 72% of incidents were committed by people with seniority or influence over their career, 45% were committed by colleagues or co-workers and 27% by a third party (such as an audience member, client or customer). The report noted that 58% of the discriminatory experiences reported by respondents would be classed as sexual harassment.
By so masterfully interweaving reality and fantasy Field both affirms the harmful “maestro myth” and detracts from the actual, complex and deeply embedded webs of power abuse within the music industry today.
Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey 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.
Few of us would question the need to break the silence around mental illness. Countless campaigns have drilled into us that such silence is harmful and that we should try to break it wherever we find it.
Britain Get Talking is one such campaign. It launched with a splash on Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago when hosts Ant and Dec paused the show for a minute to allow viewers to talk to each other about their mental health. When the minute ended, Ant declared: “See, wasn’t hard, was it?”
Doubtlessly, campaigns like this have helped many people open up about their mental health problems, particularly those who have stayed silent because of prejudice and stigma.
However, they can also feed misconceptions about silence in mental illness. They imply that silence in and around mental illness is always bad, rooted in fear and stigma, and any effort to break it is good.
In fact, silence in mental illness comes in many forms.
Some kinds of silence form part of mood disorders like depression. People who have written about their experiences of depression often describe losing their ability to form thoughts and feeling unable to speak.
For example, the author Andrew Solomon recalls that he “could not manage to say much”. Elaborating, he writes, “Words, with which I have always been intimate, seemed suddenly very elaborate, difficult metaphors the use of which entailed much more energy than I could possibly muster.”
This aspect of depression is well-known in mental healthcare. Thinking and speaking less are actually considered two different symptoms of depression. Some research even suggests silence is such a reliable symptom that it might be possible to develop automated tools that diagnose depression based on a person’s patterns of speech.
If you’re experiencing this sort of “depressed silence”, being confronted with campaigns and people urging you to speak might not help, regardless of their good intentions. After all, the problem isn’t that others aren’t open to what you have to say or that they might react poorly to it. It is that you have nothing to say.
Other kinds of silence might be empowering. Some with mental illness are defiantly silent because the people around them ask unwelcome questions or give them unhelpful input. They might wisely choose to save difficult conversations for their therapist.
Such a choice isn’t necessarily rooted in stigma. That someone is well-meaning and knows some facts about mental health doesn’t mean they are the right person to talk to about mental illness.
Silence in mental illness can also feel good. While some people struggle to think and speak, others struggle with thinking and speaking too much.
That might, for example, be the case for someone with bipolar disorder, who experiences episodes of depression as well as mania, which often involves racing thoughts and a compulsion to speak. For such people, moments of peaceful silence can be a hard-won achievement, and sometimes they pay a tragically high price for it.
We rarely hear about these other sides of silence in mental illness. But therapists have recognised the role of silence in supporting mental health, at least since Donald Winnicott published his seminal paper The Capacity to be Alone. And silence in some form is a key element in meditation, which studies have shown can prevent the recurrence of depression.
The silences I have described should perhaps be broken under the right circumstances. Since depressed silence seems to form part of the depressive illness, it may be something the patient has to break with the help of a mental healthcare professional as part of their recovery. Along similar lines, someone might benefit from breaking their peaceful silence in therapy, even if the silence feels good.
For whatever reason, many people won’t find those circumstances with their family, friends, or colleagues, despite the encouragement of a celebrity on TV. The fact is that it is very hard to talk about mental health problems, even with people who love and support us. Sometimes that is because of stigma, but sometimes it isn’t.
We should, of course, continue to strive to make it easier for people to open up about their mental health problems in the right setting. But we have to get rid of the rhetoric that pressures people to break the silence without regard for why they are silent or if speaking would benefit them.
Dan Degerman receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2020-583).
The European Union had 14.6 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy installed in 2021, and this is projected to increase by at least 25 times in the next ten years. While an expanding renewable energy sector is necessary to replace fossil fuels and slow climate change, it must not come at a cost to Earth’s embattled wildlife.
To date, most offshore wind turbines have been built using fixed foundations, typically steel piles that are driven into the seabed with large hydraulic hammers – often very large ones. The noise that pile-driving generates can be heard tens of kilometres from the source as short and sharp concussions like gunfire.
Sound travels much more efficiently in water than in air. Marine mammals like whales and porpoises use it to communicate over long distances, sense the environment and locate prey. This dependence on sound makes marine mammals particularly vulnerable to the effects of man-made noise, including the noisy construction of offshore wind farms. Pile-driving can deafen, injure or even kill marine mammals at close range.
The harbour porpoise is the smallest and most common species of cetacean in the North Sea, where EU countries hope to generate 150 GW of offshore wind energy by 2050. Like bats, these relatives of whales and dolphins emit clicks to echolocate almost continuously. This helps them find and identify objects, including food. Acoustic deterrents, small devices which emit pulses of sound, are used to scare marine mammals away from where wind farms are being built to protect them from the noise generated by pile-driving. Until recently though, no one was sure how well these deterrents worked.
My colleagues at the University of Aberdeen’s Lighthouse Field Station and the University of St. Andrews’ Sea Mammal Research Unit developed a portable acoustic recorder which can detect the movements of harbour porpoises. Using an array of these recorders during pile-driving at an offshore wind farm in north-east Scotland, we showed that acoustic deterrents work – porpoises swim directly away from the pulses of sound, ameliorating the most severe impacts of construction at sea.
A range of measures have been deployed to minimise the harm from offshore wind farm construction. Acoustic deterrent devices, which are switched on before pile-driving begins, are supposed to empty the sea of marine mammals tens to hundreds of metres around the construction site, where the noise is expected to be most damaging. These electronic devices were originally developed for use in the aquaculture industry to deter seals from fish farms.
Despite experimental trials, there is limited evidence to show how well acoustic deterrents work during construction. This is, at least in part, due to the difficulties of working in the marine environment, but also because of the challenges involved in studying animals that are highly mobile, relatively rare and live most of their lives underwater and out of sight. These factors make it very hard to observe how marine mammals react to particular noises or disturbances. Fortunately, we were able to turn the dependence of harbour porpoises on sound to our advantage.
Recent advances in passive acoustic monitoring meant that we could use a sound recorder connected to a small cluster of underwater microphones, called hydrophones, to study porpoise movements. By measuring tiny differences in the time of arrival of porpoise echolocation clicks at the four hydrophones, we identified the direction from which they were echolocating. The harbour porpoise’s echolocation beam is narrow and forward-facing, and so from these findings, we were able to determine the direction in which they were swimming.
We found that when acoustic deterrents were in use, the clicks of harbour porpoises we detected indicated they were swimming directly away from the construction site. This proves that acoustic deterrent devices can make offshore wind farm construction safer.
We did detect responses among harbour porpoises up to 7 km from the construction site, suggesting that these deterrent devices may be almost too good at their job. Such a long-distance effect could displace animals from important feeding sites and highlights the importance of a balance between preventing injuries and minimising disturbance.
Our portable acoustic recorder can now improve protection for marine mammals by more accurately determining how they respond to disturbance across a wide range of habitats. It will also allow researchers to gauge the effectiveness of measures used to minimise disturbance during wind farm construction or other activities, including animal deterrents and systems for reducing the noise produced by piling at construction sites.
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Isla Graham received funding from Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd. The funding body had no input in data collection, data analysis or interpretation. The aims, scope and experimental design of the study were developed by the authors to meet Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd planning consent conditions. These were agreed by the regulator Marine Scotland Licensing and Operations Team following consultation with statutory advisors represented on the Moray Firth Regional Advisory Group (MFRAG), a stakeholder group that was established by the Scottish government to oversee the monitoring programme.
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