Category: Academic Analysis

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brian P. McCullough, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Michigan

When the FIFA World Cup hits North America in June 2026, 48 teams and millions of soccer fans will be traveling to and from venues spread across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

It’s a dramatic expansion – 16 more teams will be playing than in recent years, with a jump from 64 to 104 matches. The tournament is projected to bring in over US$10 billion in revenue. But the expansion will also mean a lot more travel and other activities that contribute to climate change.

The environmental impacts of giant sporting events like the World Cup create a complex paradox for an industry grappling with its future in a warming world.

A sustainability conundrum

Sports are undeniably experiencing the effects of climate change. Rising global temperatures are putting athletes’ health at risk during summer heat waves and shortening winter sports seasons. Many of the 2026 World Cup venues often see heat waves in June and early July, when the tournament is scheduled.

There is a divide over how sports should respond.

Some athletes are speaking out for more sustainable choices and have called on lawmakers to take steps to limit climate-warming emissions. At the same time, the sport industry is growing and facing a constant push to increase revenue. The NCAA is also considering expanding its March Madness basketball tournaments from 68 teams currently to as many as 76.

Estimates for the 2026 World Cup show what large tournament expansions can mean for the climate. A report from Scientists for Global Responsibility estimates that the expanded World Cup could generate over 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, nearly double the average of the past four World Cups.

This massive increase – and the increase that would come if the NCAA basketball tournaments also expand – would primarily be driven by air travel as fans and players fly among event cities that are thousands of miles apart.

A lot of money is at stake, but so is the climate

Sports are big business, and adding more matches to events like the World Cup and NCAA tournaments will likely lead to larger media rights contracts and greater gate receipts from more fans attending the events, boosting revenues. These are powerful financial incentives.

In the NCAA’s case, there is another reason to consider a larger tournament: The House v. NCAA settlement opened the door for college athletic departments to share revenue with athletes, which will significantly increase costs for many college programs. More teams would mean more television revenue and, crucially, more revenue to be distributed to member NCAA institutions and their athletic conferences.

When climate promises become greenwashing

The inherent conflict between maximizing profit through growth and minimizing environmental footprint presents a dilemma for sports.

Several sport organizations have promised to reduce their impact on the climate, including signing up for initiatives like the United Nations Sports for Climate Action Framework.

However, as sports tournaments and exhibition games expand, it can become increasingly hard for sports organizations to meet their climate commitments. In some cases, groups making sustainability commitments have been accused of greenwashing, suggesting the goals are more about public relations than making genuine, measurable changes.

For example, FIFA’s early claims that it would hold a “fully carbon-neutral” World Cup in Qatar in 2022 were challenged by a group of European countries that accused soccer’s world governing body of underestimating emissions. The Swiss Fairness Commission, which monitors fairness in advertising, considered the complaints and determined that FIFA’s claims could not be substantiated.

Aviation is often the biggest driver of emissions. A study that colleagues and I conducted on the NCAA men’s basketball tournament found about 80% of its emissions were connected to travel. And that was after the NCAA began using the pod system, which is designed to keep teams closer to home for the first and second rounds.

Finding practical solutions

Some academics, observing the rising emissions trend, have called for radical solutions like the end of commercialized sports or drastically limiting who can attend sporting events, with a focus on fans from the region.

These solutions are frankly not practical, in my view, nor do they align with other positive developments. The growing popularity of women’s sports shows the challenge in limiting sports events – more games expands participation but adds to the industry’s overall footprint.

Further compounding the challenges of reducing environmental impact is the amount of fan travel, which is outside the direct control of the sports organization or event organizers.

Many fans will follow their teams long distances, especially for mega-events like the World Cup or the NCAA tournament. During the men’s World Cup in Russia in 2018, more than 840,000 fans traveled from other countries. The top countries by number of fans, after Russia, were China, the U.S., Mexico and Argentina.

There is an argument that distributed sporting events like March Madness or the World Cup can be better in some ways for local environments because they don’t overwhelm a single city. However, merely spreading the impact does not necessarily reduce it, particularly when considering the effects on climate change.

How fans can cut their environmental footprint

Sport organizations and event planners can take steps to be more sustainable and also encourage more sustainable choices among fans. Fans can reduce their environmental impact in a variety of ways. For example:

• Avoid taking airplanes for shorter distances, such as between FIFA venues in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, and carpool or take Amtrak instead. Planes can be more efficient for long distances, but air travel is still a major contributing factor to emissions.

• While in a host city, use mass transit or rent electric vehicles or bicycles for local travel.

• Consider sustainable accommodations, such as short-term rentals that might have a smaller environmental footprint than a hotel. Or stay at a certified green hotel that makes an effort to be more efficient in its use of water and energy.

• Engage in sustainable pregame and postgame activities, such as choosing local, sustainable food options, and minimize waste.

• You can also pay to offset carbon emissions for attending different sporting events, much like concertgoers do when they attend musical festivals. While critics question offsets’ true environmental benefit, they do represent people’s growing awareness of their environmental footprint.

Through all these options, it’s clear that sports face a significant challenge in addressing their environmental impacts and encouraging fans to be more sustainable, while simultaneously trying to meet ambitious business and environmental targets.

In my view, a sustainable path forward will require strategic, yet genuine, commitment by the sports industry and its fans, and a willingness to prioritize long-term planetary health alongside economic gains – balancing the sport and sustainability.

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

– ref. When big sports events expand, like FIFA’s 2026 World Cup matches across North America, their climate footprint expands too – https://theconversation.com/when-big-sports-events-expand-like-fifas-2026-world-cup-matches-across-north-america-their-climate-footprint-expands-too-259437

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Aishwarya Veerabahu, Ph.D. Candidate in Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Golden oyster mushrooms, with their sunny yellow caps and nutty flavor, have become wildly popular for being healthy, delicious and easy to grow at home from mushroom kits.

But this food craze has also unleashed an invasive species into the wild, and new research shows it’s pushing out native fungi.

In a study we believe is the first of its kind, fellow mycologists and I demonstrate that an invasive fungus can cause environmental harm, just as invasive plants and animals can when they take over ecosystems.

Native mushrooms and other fungi are important for the health of many ecosystems. They break down dead wood and other plant material, helping it decay. They cycle nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen from the dead tissues of plants and animals, turning it into usable forms that enter the soil, atmosphere or their own bodies. Fungi also play a role in managing climate change by sequestering carbon in soil and mediating carbon emissions from soil and wood.

Their symbiotic relationships with other organisms also help other organisms thrive. Mycorrhizal fungi on roots, for example, help plants absorb water and nutrients. And wood decay fungi help create wooded habitats for birds, mammals and plant seedlings.

However, we found that invasive golden oyster mushrooms, a wood decay fungus, can threaten forests’ fungal biodiversity and harm the health of ecosystems that are already vulnerable to climate change and habitat destruction.

The dark side of the mushroom trade

Golden oyster mushrooms, native to Asia, were brought to North America around the early 2000s. They’re part of an international mushroom culinary craze that has been feeding into one of the world’s leading drivers of biodiversity loss: invasive species.

As fungi are moved around the world in global trade, either intentionally as products, such as kits people buy for growing mushrooms at home, or unintentionally as microbial stowaways along with soil, plants, timber and even shipping pallets, they can establish themselves in new environments.

Many mushroom species have been cultivated in North America for decades without becoming invasive species threats. However, golden oyster mushrooms have been different.

No one knows exactly how golden oyster mushrooms escaped into the wild, whether from a grow kit, a commercial mushroom farm or outdoor logs inoculated with golden oysters – a home-cultivation technique where mushroom mycelium is placed into logs to colonize the wood and produce mushrooms.

As grow kits increased in popularity, many people began buying golden oyster kits and watching them blossom into beautiful yellow mushrooms in their backyards. Their spores or composted kits could have spread into nearby forests.

Evidence from a pioneering study by Andrea Reisdorf (née Bruce) suggests golden oyster mushrooms were introduced into the wild in multiple U.S. states around the early 2010s.

Species the golden oysters pushed out

In our study, designed by Michelle Jusino and Mark Banik, research scientists with the U.S. Forest Service, our team went into forests around Madison, Wisconsin, and drilled into dead trees to collect wood shavings containing the natural fungal community within each tree. Some of the trees had golden oyster mushrooms on them, and some did not.

We then extracted DNA to identify and compare which fungi, and how many fungi, were in trees that had been invaded by golden oyster mushrooms compared with those that had not been.

We were startled to find that trees with golden oyster mushrooms housed only half as many fungal species as trees without golden oyster mushrooms, sometimes even less. We also found that the composition of fungi in trees with golden oyster mushrooms was different from trees without golden oyster mushrooms.

For example, the gentle green “mossy maze polypore” and the “elm oyster” mushroom were pushed out of trees invaded by golden oyster mushrooms.

Another ousted fungus, Nemania serpens, is known for producing diverse arrays of chemicals that differ even between individuals of the same species. Fungi are sources of revolutionary medicines, including antibiotics like penicillin, cholesterol medication and organ transplant stabilizers. The value of undiscovered, potentially useful chemicals can be lost when invasive species push others out.

The invasive species problem includes fungi

Given what my colleagues and I discovered, we believe it is time to include invasive fungi in the global conversation about invasive species and examine their role as a cause of biodiversity loss.

That conversation includes the idea of fungal “endemism” – that each place has a native fungal community that can be thrown out of balance. Native fungal communities tend to be diverse, having evolved together over thousands of years to coexist. Our research shows how invasive species can change the makeup of fungal communities by outcompeting native species, thus changing the fungal processes that have shaped native ecosystems.

There are many other invasive fungi. For example, the deadly poisonous “death cap” Amanita phalloides and the “orange ping-pong bat” Favolaschia calocera are invasive in North America. The classic red and white “fly agaric” Amanita muscaria is native to North America but invasive elsewhere.

The golden oyster mushrooms’ invasion of North America should serve as a bright yellow warning that nonnative fungi are capable of rapid invasion and should be cultivated with caution, if at all.

Golden oyster mushrooms are now recognized as invasive in Switzerland and can be found in forests in Italy, Hungary, Serbia and Germany. I have been hearing about people attempting to cultivate them around the world, including in Turkey, India, Ecuador, Kenya, Italy and Portugal. It’s possible that golden oyster mushrooms may not be able to establish invasive populations in some regions. Continued research will help us understand the full scope of impacts invasive fungi can have.

What you can do to help

Mushroom growers, businesses and foragers around the world may be asking themselves, “What can we do about it?”

For the time being, I recommend that people consider refraining from using golden oyster mushroom grow kits to prevent any new introductions. For people who make a living selling these mushrooms, consider adding a note that this species is invasive and should be cultivated indoors and not composted.

If you enjoy growing mushrooms at home, try cultivating safe, native species that you have collected in your region.

There is no single right answer. In some places, golden oyster mushrooms are being cultivated as a food source for impoverished communities, for income, or to process agricultural waste and produce food at the same time. Positives like these will have to be considered alongside the mushrooms’ negative impacts when developing management plans or legislation.

In the future, some ideas for solutions could involve sporeless strains of golden oysters for home kits that can’t spread, or a targeted mycovirus that could control the population. Increased awareness about responsible cultivation practices is important, because when invasive species move in and disrupt the native biodiversity, we all stand to lose the beautiful, colorful, weird fungi we see on walks in the forest.

Aishwarya Veerabahu receives funding from UW-Madison Dept. of Botany, the UW Arboretum, the Society of Ecological Restoration, and the Garden Club of America. Aishwarya Veerabahu was an employee of the USDA Forest Service.

– ref. The golden oyster mushroom craze unleashed an invasive species – and a worrying new study shows it’s harming native fungi – https://theconversation.com/the-golden-oyster-mushroom-craze-unleashed-an-invasive-species-and-a-worrying-new-study-shows-its-harming-native-fungi-259006

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Khalid Siddig, Senior Research Fellow and Program Leader for the Sudan Strategy Support Program, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a devastating war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. What began as a struggle for power has turned into a national catastrophe. More than 14 million people have been displaced. Health and education systems have collapsed and food insecurity threatens over half the population of about 50 million.

The war has disrupted key sectors, triggering severe economic contractions, and worsening poverty and unemployment levels.

Sudan’s finance minister reported in November 2023 that the war had resulted in economic losses exceeding US$26 billion – or more than half the value of the country’s economy a year earlier. The industrial sector, which includes manufacturing and oil refining, has lost over 50% of its value. Employment has fallen by 4.6 million jobs over the period of the conflict. More than 7 million more people have been pushed into poverty. The agrifood system alone has shrunk by 33.6%. These estimates exclude informal economy losses.

My research applies economy-wide models to understand how conflict affects national development. In a recent study, my colleagues and I used this approach to answer the question: what will happen to Sudan’s economy and poverty levels if the war continues through 2025?

To assess the economic impact of the conflict, we used a Social Accounting Matrix multiplier model. This is a tool that captures how shocks affect different sectors and other agents of the economy, such as firms, government and households.

Based on our modelling, the answer is devastating: the conflict could shrink the size of Sudan’s economy by over 40% from 2022 levels, plunging millions more into poverty.

We modelled two scenarios to capture the potential trajectories of Sudan’s economy.

The extreme scenario assumes a sharp initial collapse, with a 29.5% contraction in the size of the economy in 2023 and 12.2% in 2024, followed by a 7% decline in 2025, reflecting some stabilisation over time.

The moderate scenario, based on World Bank projections, applies a 20.1% contraction in 2023 and a 15.1% drop in 2024, also followed by a 7% reduction in 2025, indicating a slower but more prolonged deterioration.

We estimated the annual figures and report only the aggregate impacts through 2025 for clarity.

We found that if the conflict endures, the value of Sudan’s economy will contract by up to 42% from US$56.3 billion in 2022 (pre-conflict) to US$32.4 billion by the end of 2025. The backbone of livelihoods – agriculture – will be crippled. And the social fabric of the country will continue to fray.

How we did it

Our Social Accounting Matrix multiplier model used data from various national and international sources to show the impact of conflict on the value of the economy, its sectors and household welfare.

We connected this to government and World Bank data to reflect Sudan’s current conditions.

This allowed us to simulate how conflict-driven disruptions affect the value of the economy, its sectors and household welfare.

What we found

Under the extreme scenario, we found:

• Gross domestic product collapse: Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the total value of all goods and services produced in a country within a year. It’s a key indicator of economic health. We found that the value of Sudan’s economy could contract by up to 42%. This means the country would be producing less than 60% of what it did before the conflict. This would affect incomes, jobs, government revenues and public services. The industrial sector – heavily concentrated in Khartoum – would be hardest hit, with output shrinking by over 50%. The value of services like education, health, transport and trade would fall by 40%, and agriculture by more than 35%.

• Job losses: nearly 4.6 million jobs – about half of all employment – could disappear. Urban areas and non-farm sectors would be worst affected, with over 700,000 farming jobs at risk.

• Incomes plummet: household incomes would decline across all groups – rich and poor, rural and urban – by up to 42%. Rural and less-educated households suffer the most.

• Poverty spikes: up to 7.5 million more people could fall into poverty, adding to the 61.1% poverty level in 2022. In rural areas, the poverty rate could jump by 32.5 percentage points from the already high rural poverty rate pre-conflict (67.6% of the rural population). Women, especially in rural communities, are hit particularly hard. Urban poverty, which was at 48.8% pre-conflict, increases by 11.6 percentage points.

• The agrifood system – which includes farming, food processing, trade and food services – would lose a third of its value under the extreme scenario.

Why these findings matter

Sudan was already in a fragile state before the war. It was reeling from decades of underinvestment, international sanctions and institutional breakdown.

The war has reversed hard-won gains in poverty reduction. It is also dismantling key productive sectors – from agriculture to manufacturing – which will be essential for recovery once the conflict ends. Every month of continued fighting adds to the damage and raises the cost of rebuilding.

Our projections already show major economic collapse, yet they don’t include the full extent of the damage. This includes losses in the informal economy or the strain on household coping strategies. The real situation could be even worse than what the data suggests.

What needs to be done

First and foremost, peace is essential. Without an end to the fighting, recovery will be impossible.

Second, even as conflict continues, urgent action is needed to stabilise livelihoods. This means:

• supporting agriculture in areas that remain relatively safe. Food production must be sustained to prevent famine.

• restoring critical services where possible – particularly transport, trade and retail – to keep local economies functioning

• protecting the most vulnerable, such as women in rural areas and the elderly, through expanded social protection and targeted cash assistance.

Third, prepare for recovery. The international community – donors, development banks and NGOs – must begin laying the groundwork for post-conflict reconstruction now. This includes investment in public infrastructure, rebuilding institutions and re-integrating displaced populations.

The bottom line

Sudan’s war is more than a political crisis. It is an economic catastrophe unfolding in real time. One that is deepening poverty, destroying livelihoods and erasing years of progress.

Our research provides hard numbers to describe what Sudanese families are already experiencing every day.

The country’s economy is bleeding. Without a shift in the trajectory of the conflict, recovery could take decades – if it happens at all.

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

– ref. Sudan’s war is an economic disaster: here’s how bad it could get – https://theconversation.com/sudans-war-is-an-economic-disaster-heres-how-bad-it-could-get-260609

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joshua Winowiecki, Assistant Professor of Nursing, Michigan State University

Reviewer 1: “This manuscript is a timely and important contribution to the field, with clear methodology and compelling results. I recommend publication with only minor revisions.”

Reviewer 2: “This manuscript is deeply flawed. The authors’ conclusions are not supported by data, and key literature is ignored. Major revisions are required before it can be considered.”

These lines could be pulled from almost any editorial decision letter in the world of academic publishing, sent from a journal to a researcher. One review praises the work, while another sees nothing but problems. For scholars, this kind of contradiction is common. Reviewer 2, in particular, has become something of a meme: an anonymous figure often blamed for delays, rejections or cryptic critiques that seem to miss the point.

But those disagreements are part of the peer-review process.

As a clinical nurse specialist, educator and scholar who reviews studies in nursing and health care and teaches others to do so critically as well, I’ve seen how peer review shapes not just what gets published, but what ultimately influences practice.

Peer review is the checkpoint where scientific claims are validated before they are shared with the world. Researchers and scholars submit their findings to academic journals, which invite other scholars with similar expertise – those are the peers – to assess the work. Reviewers look at the way the scholar designed the project, the methods they used and whether their conclusions stand up.

The point of peer review

This process isn’t new. Versions of peer review have been around for centuries. But the modern form – anonymous, structured and managed by journal editors – took hold after World War II. Today, it is central to how scientific publishing works, and nowhere more so than health, nursing and medicine. Research that survives review is more likely to be trusted and acted upon by health care practitioners and their patients.

Millions of research papers move through this process annually, and the number grows every year. The sheer volume means that peer review isn’t just quality control, it’s become a bottleneck, a filter of sorts, and a kind of collective judgment about what counts as credible.

In clinical fields, peer review also has a protective role. Before a study about a new medication, procedure or care model gains traction, it is typically evaluated by others in the field. The point isn’t to punish the authors – it’s to slow things down just enough to critically evaluate the work, catch mistakes, question assumptions and raise red flags. The reviewer’s work doesn’t always get credit, but it often changes what ends up in print.

So, even if you’ve never submitted a paper or read a scientific journal, peer-reviewed science still shows up in your life. It helps shape what treatments are available, what protocols and guidelines your nurse practitioner or physician uses, and what public health advice gets passed along on the news.

This doesn’t mean peer review always works. Plenty of papers get published despite serious limitations. And some of these flawed studies do real harm. But even scholars who complain about the system often still believe in it. In one international survey of medical researchers, a clear majority said they trusted peer-reviewed science, despite frustrations with how slow or inconsistent the process can be.

What actually happens when a paper is reviewed?

Before a manuscript lands in the hands of reviewers, it begins with the researchers themselves. Scientists investigate a question, gather and analyze their data and write up their findings, often with a particular journal in mind that publishes new work in their discipline. Once they submit their paper to the journal, the editorial process begins.

At this point, journal editors send it out to two or three reviewers who have relevant expertise. Reviewers read for clarity, accuracy, originality and usefulness. They offer comments about what’s missing, what needs to be explained more carefully, and whether the findings seem valid. Sometimes the feedback is collegial and helpful. Sometimes it’s not.

Here is where Reviewer 2 enters the lore of academic life. This is the critic who seems especially hard to please, who misreads the argument, or demands rewrites that would reshape the entire project. But even these kinds of reviews serve a purpose. They show how work might be received more broadly. And many times they flag weaknesses the author hadn’t seen.

Review is slow. Most reviewers aren’t paid, with nearly 75% reporting they receive no compensation or formal recognition for their efforts. They do this work on top of their regular clinical, teaching or research responsibilities. And not every editor has the time or capacity to sort through conflicting feedback or to moderate tone. The result is a process that can feel uneven, opaque, and, at times, unfair.

It doesn’t always catch what it is supposed to. Peer review is better at catching sloppy thinking than it is at detecting fraud. If data is fabricated or manipulated, a reviewer may not have the tools, or the time, to figure that out. In recent years, a growing number of published papers have been retracted after concerns about plagiarism or faked results. That trend has shaken confidence in the system and raised questions about what more journals should be doing before publication.

Imperfect but indispensable

Even though the current peer-review system has its shortcomings, most researchers would argue that science is better off than it would be without the level of scrutiny peer review provides. The challenge now is how to make peer review better.

Some journals are experimenting with publishing reviewer comments alongside articles. Other are trying systems where feedback continues after publication. There are also proposals to use artificial intelligence to help flag inconsistencies or potential errors before human reviewers even begin.

These efforts are promising but still in the early stages of development and adoption. For most fields, peer review remains a basic requirement for legitimacy, while some, such as law and high-energy physics, have alternate methods of communicating their findings. Peer review assures a reader that a journal article’s claim has been tested, scrutinized and revised.

Peer review doesn’t guarantee truth. But it does invite challenge, foster transparency, offer reflection and force revision. That’s often where the real work of science begins.

Even if Reviewer 2 still has notes.

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

– ref. What is peer review? The role anonymous experts play in scrutinizing research before it gets published – https://theconversation.com/what-is-peer-review-the-role-anonymous-experts-play-in-scrutinizing-research-before-it-gets-published-258255

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mohamed Khalil Elhachimi, PhD Student in Mechanical Engineering, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Pick up a button mushroom from the supermarket and it squishes easily between your fingers. Snap a woody bracket mushroom off a tree trunk and you’ll struggle to break it. Both extremes grow from the same microscopic building blocks: hyphae – hair-thin tubes made mostly of the natural polymer chitin, a tough compound also found in crab shells.

As those tubes branch and weave, they form a lightweight but surprisingly strong network called mycelium. Engineers are beginning to investigate this network for use in eco-friendly materials.

Yet even within a single mushroom family, the strength of a mycelium network can vary widely. Scientists have long suspected that how the hyphae are arranged – not just what they’re made of – holds the key to understanding, and ultimately controlling, their strength. But until recently, measurements that directly link microscopic arrangement to macroscopic strength have been scarce.

I’m a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student at Binghamton University who studies bio-inspired structures. In our latest research, my colleagues and I asked a simple question: Can we tune the strength of a mushroomlike material just by changing the angle of its filaments, without adding any tougher ingredients? The answer, it turns out, is yes.

2 edible species, many tiny tests

In our study, my team compared two familiar fungi. The first was the white button mushroom, whose tissue uses only thin filaments called generative filaments. The second was the maitake, also called hen-of-the-woods, whose tissue mixes in a second, thicker type of hyphae called skeletal filaments. These skeletal filaments are arranged roughly in parallel, like bundles of cables.

After gently drying the caps and stems to remove any water, which can soften the material and skew the results, we zoomed in with scanning electron microscopes and tested the samples at two very different scales.

First, we tested macro-scale compression. A motor-driven piston slowly squashed each mushroom while sensors recorded how hard the sample pushed back – the same way you might squeeze a marshmallow, only with laboratory precision.

Then we pressed a diamond tip thinner than a human hair into individual filaments to measure their stiffness.

The white mushroom filaments behaved like rubber bands, averaging about 18 megapascals in stiffness – similar to natural rubber. The thicker skeletal filaments in maitake measured around 560 megapascals, more than 30 times stiffer and approaching the stiffness of high-density polyethylene – the rigid plastic used in cutting boards and some water pipes.

But chemistry is only half the story. When we squeezed entire chunks, the direction we squeezed in mattered even more for the maitake. Pressing in line with its parallel skeletal filaments made the block 30 times stiffer than pressing across the grain. By contrast, the tangled filaments in white mushrooms felt equally soft from every angle.

A digital mushroom and twisting the threads

To separate geometry from chemistry, we converted snapshots from the microscope into a computer model using a 3D Voronoi network – a pattern that mimics the walls between bubbles in a foam. Think of ping-pong balls crammed in a box: Each ball is a cell, and the walls between cells become our simulated filaments.

We assigned those filaments by the stiffness values measured in the lab, then virtually rotated the whole network to angles of 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees and completely random.

Horizontal (0 degrees) filaments flexed like a spring mattress. Vertical (90 degrees) filaments supported weight almost as firmly as dense wood. Simply tilting the network to 60 degrees nearly doubled its stiffness compared with 0 degrees – all without changing a single chemical ingredient.

Basically, we found that orientation alone could turn a mushy sponge into something that stands up to serious pressure. That suggests manufacturers could make strong, lightweight, biodegradable parts – such as shoe insoles, protective packaging and even interior panels for cars – simply by guiding how a fungus grows rather than by mixing in harder additives.

Greener materials – and beyond

Startups already grow “leather” made from mycelium – the threadlike fungal network – for handbags, and mycelium foam as a Styrofoam replacement.

Guiding fungi to lay their filaments in strategic directions could push performance much higher, opening doors in sectors where strength-to-weight ratio is king: think sporting goods cores, building-insulation panels or lightweight fillers inside aircraft panels.

The same digital tool kit also works for metal or polymer lattices printed layer by layer. Swap the filament properties in the model, let the algorithm pick the best angles, and then feed that layout into a 3D printer.

One day, engineers might dial up an app that says something like, “I need a panel that’s stiff north-south but flexible east-west,” and the program could spit out a filament map inspired by the humble maitake.

Our next step is to feed thousands of these virtual networks into a machine learning model so it can predict – or even invent – filament layouts that hit a targeted stiffness in any direction.

Meanwhile, biologists are exploring low-energy ways to coax real fungi to grow in neat rows, from steering nutrients toward one side of a petri dish to applying gentle electric fields that encourage filaments to align.

This study taught us that you don’t always need exotic chemistry to make a better material. Sometimes it’s all about how you line up the same old threads – just ask a mushroom.

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

– ref. Examining mushrooms under microscopes can help engineers design stronger materials – https://theconversation.com/examining-mushrooms-under-microscopes-can-help-engineers-design-stronger-materials-260477

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Thomas Merritt, Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Laurentian University

The beautiful, fascinating and often perplexing world around us grows from intricate and convoluted interactions of millions of pieces. As scientists, we work to understand and describe the parts and interactions of these systems.

Scientific understanding is only as good as the questions we ask. Observing the world from a variety of viewpoints and asking questions from a diversity of perspectives helps us recognize and understand biological complexity. Science, and our own experience, tells us that diverse collaborations lead to better questions and more innovative solutions — but diversity in research is under threat.

A major advancement in modern biology, specifically in the world of modern genetics that our research team works in, has been the realization that genes are far more complicated than we thought 20 years ago. When the human genome was first sequenced in 2001, scientists realized that each person’s DNA contained around 20,000 genes. Earlier estimates had been between 80,000 and 100,000.

This drastic downsize may seem like a step back in complexity, but the reduced number means genes must be more complex in order to fulfil multiple roles and functions. There are fewer genes, but each gene has a complicated set of multiple functions modulated through intricate, interconnected and interactive gene-regulation mechanisms.

Model species, surprising discoveries

Our research group studies gene regulation using the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model species — a non-human species studied extensively to reveal more about other organisms. Flies, like humans, have two copies of each chromosome, each copy with a full set of genes. Typically, regulation of each copy has been assumed to be independent.

Unexpectedly, our research has found that in fruit flies, the copies on separate chromosomes physically interact to modulate each other’s regulation. This means that the chromosomes aren’t independent: they co-regulate in a way that depends on genome structure, or what we call chromosome architecture.

This form of inter-chromosomal gene regulation, called transvection, was originally described in the 1950s, but is largely unknown. Its potential role to drive biological complexity is underappreciated because its effects are often (but not always) subtle and generally overshadowed by “typical” mechanisms of gene regulation along a single chromosome, cis-regulation.

Read more:
How to kill fruit flies, according to a scientist

Complex genetic interactions

Our transvection research focuses on subtle differences between individuals and environments. Too often, biology assumes that phenomena are simple, uniform and discreet.

A classic example, taught in high school biology classes, demonstrates this thinking. Austrian biologist Gregor Mendel studied genetics in pea plants to propose dominant and recessive hereditary traits. His data was a little too clean, too good to be true: Mendel’s peas were either wrinkled or round, yellow or green.

Genetics is works in more complex ways: think of eye colour. Our eyes are not a dichotomous brown or blue. Colour varies in a spectrum of shades of blues, greens, grays, hazels and browns.

Similarly, we have shown that transvection, itself an unexpected twist, varies subtly and substantially, in unexpected ways. Recognizing that inter-chomosomal regulation was even possible, let alone could itself be modulated and variable, meant looking at our results from a non-typical view point, a different perspective.

Our research into stress biology has drawn similar conclusions; diverse responses are the norm and appreciating this variability is absolutely fundamental to understanding the system.

Differences between male and female biologies

In our research into metabolism, we have repeatedly found significant and substantial differences between male and females. For example, in recent unpublished data, we find that differences between male and female fruit fly responses to metal toxicity were as large as we would have expected to occur between different species.

Past conventional wisdom in the field assumed that the biology in the two sexes was interchangeable, with females essentially being just hypervariable males, although recent research in our lab and others is broadly pushing back against this misconception.

Read more:
Sex matters: Male bias in the lab is bad science

The male and female responses are similar but distinct, and this is an important point. To understand biology, our research indicates, we need to identify, appreciate and study these subtle differences in order to produce more thorough scientific investigations.

Unexpected complexity

Our research regularly reveals unexpected biological complexity and, not coincidentally, the studies listed above were all collaborations. The technical complexity of research often requires involving experts in multiple disciplines.

A typical project can involve half a dozen or more experiments and methods, ranging from biochemistry to genetics to life history, and techniques from enzyme kinetic assays to mass spectrometry and DNA sequencing.

We are part of a genetics research group at Laurentian University whose diversity has greatly strengthened the quality and originality of contributions we have made to the field. In our experience, diverse collaborations combining different perspectives and viewpoints lead to innovative conclusions.

The literature bears this out: a series of large-scale studies involving millions of researchers and publications repeatedly show that diverse groups of scientists ask more interesting, perceptive and innovative questions and pose more interesting solutions.

Diversity and innovation

But this diversity-innovation connection is under attack in the current social and political climate. This has been most visible under the current political regime in the United States, but is also present here in Canada.

If successful, these attacks will narrow the perspective of scientific research and cripple scientific advances. Current diversity is the result of decades of programs fighting generations of systematic discrimination. Many researchers have been making research a more diverse and inclusive place.

Read more:
Want to reach out to an Indigenous scholar? Awesome! But first, here are 10 things to consider

Sustainability is essential to the long-term health of scientific research. The research, and our own experiences, clearly shows that diverse groups of researchers conduct more creative, innovative and impactful science. Visibility in scientific research is important to ensure its sustainability. More young students will pursue careers in research if they can see themselves in that role.

Our hope is that a broader appreciation of the importance of diversity in research, will lead to greater community and political, support for research programs that recognize the fundamental importance of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The biological world is a beautifully diverse and complex place. To truly understand that world, the research laboratory must to be, too.

Thomas Merritt receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

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

– ref. Biology is complex and diverse, so scientific research approaches need to be too – https://theconversation.com/biology-is-complex-and-diverse-so-scientific-research-approaches-need-to-be-too-260696

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Melise Panetta, Lecturer of Marketing in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University

If it feels like rising prices are affecting your dating life or friendships, you’re not imagining it. Around the world, economic pressures are taking a significant toll on personal relationships.

From strained romantic partnerships to postponed life milestones, financial uncertainty is changing the way people connect and relate to with one another.

Young adults in their 20s and 30s, in particular, are facing an altered social landscape where even the most fundamental aspects of relationships are being influenced by financial realities.

Dating today can feel like a mix of endless swipes, red flags and shifting expectations. From decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy, relationships in your 20s and 30s come with unique challenges. Love IRL is the latest series from Quarter Life that explores it all.

These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love to help you build meaningful connections, no matter your relationship status.

Financial stress and relationship strain

Money has long been one of the biggest sources of conflict in relationships, but today’s economic landscape has made financial stress an even greater burden.

In Canada, a staggering 77 per cent of couples report financial strain, and 62 per cent say they argue over money. The rising cost of rent, food and everyday expenses has forced many couples to make difficult financial decisions, sometimes at the expense of their relationship.

These concerns are not unique to Canadian couples. A study in the United Kingdom found that 38 per cent of people in a relationship admit to having a secret account or “money stashed away” that their partner doesn’t know about. And in the United States, couples surveyed reported having 58 money-related arguments per year.

Even more concerning, financial instability is affecting how long relationships last. A recent RBC poll found 55 per cent of Canadians feel they need to be in a relationship to afford their lifestyle.

The economic barriers to independence are particularly pronounced for those contemplating separation or divorce. Traditionally, a breakup meant one partner moving out, but now more divorced and separated couples are finding themselves cohabitating simply because they can’t afford to live alone.

Understanding how to maintain a healthy relationship when facing financial troubles is essential for couples to navigate these difficult times.

Postponing major life decisions

The cost-of-living crisis is also delaying key life milestones for young adults worldwide. A Statistics Canada survey found that 38 per cent of young adults have postponed moving out due to economic uncertainty, an increase from 32 per cent in 2018.

This issue is not only delaying the journey to independent adulthood, it is also reversing it. For example, in the United Kingdom, one in five young adults who moved out have had to move back into their family home due to the cost of living crisis.

Housing affordability plays a major role in these delays. With housing prices soaring in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere, home ownership feels out of reach for many. For instance, 55 per cent of young Canadians report the housing crisis is fuelling their decision to delay starting a family.

These delays have cascading effects on individuals and on broader societal trends, including lower fertility rates and shifts toward smaller families.

Dating in a cost-conscious era

One side effect of the rising cost of living is that couples are moving in together sooner than they might have otherwise in order to split living expenses. Others are adopting a more pragmatic approach to dating and bringing up topics like financial stability, job security and housing much earlier in their relationships.

A dating trend known as “future-proofing” is also spreading. According to Bumble’s annual trend report, 95 per cent of singles say their worries about the future are impacting who they date and how they approach relationships. Top concerns include finances, job security, housing and climate change.

Read more:
The price of love: Why millennials and Gen Zs are running up major dating debt

At the same time, financial strain is leading to simpler and cheaper date nights. More than half of Canadians say the rising cost of living is affecting dating. Many people are opting for budget-friendly activities like coffee dates, picnics or home-cooked meals instead of expensive dinners or weekend getaways.

In the U.K., inflation and other day-to-day expenses have also made 33 per cent of the nation’s young singles less likely to go on dates. Around one-quarter of them say it has made them less likely to seek out a romantic partner altogether.

These costs are forcing single Americans to adjust their dating plans. With 44 per cent of single Americans reporting adjusting a date for financial reasons, and 27 per cent outright cancelling plans due to financial pressures, it is clear that the cost of living is fundamentally changing how Americans date.

Also, with 38 per cent of dating Canadians saying the costs associated with dating have negatively impacted their ability to reach their financial goals, some are even skipping dating altogether.

The cost of friendship

Friendships, too, are feeling the pinch. Gone are the days of casually grabbing dinner or catching a concert on the weekend. Nearly 40 per cent of Canadians, 42 per cent of Britons and 37 per cent of Americans have cut back on social outings due to financial constraints.

While this may seem like a small sacrifice, the decline in social interactions carries serious consequences. Regular social engagement is critical for mental health, resilience and career development. The more social activities are reduced, the greater the risk of loneliness and isolation — two factors that can significantly impact emotional well-being.

For many, socializing now means opting for budget-friendly alternatives. However, even with creative adjustments, financial pressures are making it harder to maintain strong social ties.

The changing landscape of connection

If you’re in your 20s or 30s, you’ve probably felt the way the economic realities of today are reshaping what relationships look like. Rising costs are influencing everything, from who you live with, how you date and when — or if — you take major life steps.

Maybe you’ve moved in with a partner sooner than planned to split rent, swapped nights out for budget-friendly hangs or put off milestones like starting a family. You’re not alone. Financial pressures are redefining how we connect with each other.

Finding ways to maintain strong relationships under economic stress is essential. Research shows providing emotional support to your partner, employing positive problem-solving skills and engaging in open communication are key maintaining high-quality relationships.

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

– ref. How rising living costs are changing the way we date, live and love – https://theconversation.com/how-rising-living-costs-are-changing-the-way-we-date-live-and-love-252709

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Marycarmen Lara Villanueva, PhD Candidate, Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

The United States government recently announced the opening of a massive immigrant detention facility built deep within the Florida Everglades that’s been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a media briefing that “there is only one road leading in … and the only way out is a one-way flight.”

For some taking in her remarks, the moment felt dystopian. According to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the facility is surrounded by swamps and alligators and is equipped with more than 200 security cameras, 8,500 metres of barbed wire and a security force of 400 personnel.

Accounts from some of the first detainees at the facility have shed light on the inhumane conditions. They’ve described limited access to water and fresh air, saying they received only one meal a day and that the lights are on 24/7.

Apparently designed to be an immigration deterrence and a display of cruelty, Alligator Alcatraz is much more than infrastructure. It is visual policy aimed to stage terror as a message while making Trump’s authoritarian and fascist politics a material reality.

Contributing to this fascist visual apparatus, AI-generated images of alligators wearing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hats have circulated widely on social media. Some have questioned whether these images were satire or state propaganda.

Surveillance, migration, debilitation

In a moment of growing right-wing rhetoric and support for anti-immigrant violence, understanding how visual regimes operate, and what they attempt to normalize, is important.

Read more:
Nearly 54% of extreme conservatives say the federal government should use violence to stop illegal immigration

Surveillance and deterrence technologies used along the U.S.–Mexico border for decades were intentionally designed to restrict the movement of undocumented migrants. According to Human Rights Watch, this has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths.

Since 1994, U.S. Border Patrol has been accused of directing migrants away from urban crossings along the southern border, intentionally funnelling them into harsh and inhospitable terrain like the Sonora Desert.

The desert serves as a deterrent to prevent immigrants from reaching their destiny. American theorist Jasbir Puar’s concept of debility is useful in making sense of the strategic process whereby the state works not to kill, but to weaken, as a form of slow violence that wears people down over time. The desired outcome is deterrence.

On the southern U.S. border, severe dehydration and kidney failure can be outcomes of this debilitating process, potentially resulting in disability or death.

Infrastructures of violence

Sarah Lopez, a built environment historian and migration scholar in the U.S., describes the architecture of migrant immobilization as existing on a continuum with prison design. She’s highlighted the increasingly punitive conditions of immigration detention facilities, such as small dark cells or the absence of natural light.

French architect and writer Léopold Lambert explains that architecture isn’t just about buildings, but about how space is used to organize and control people. He coined and developed the term weaponized architecture to describe how spaces are designed to serve the political goals of those in power.

Colonialism, capitalism and modernity are closely connected, and architecture has played a key role in making them possible. Alligator Alcatraz sits at the intersection of all three, intentionally created to invoke danger and isolation. In other words, it’s cruel by design.

As Leavitt put it, the facility is “isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain.” The Trump administration has essentially transformed land into infrastructure and migrants into disposable threats.

Terrorizing the marginalized

State-sanctioned “unforgiving terrains” are not new, and the use of alligators to terrorize people of colour isn’t new either.

The grotesque history of Black children being used as “alligator bait” in Jim Crow-era imagery is well-documented.

So when Trump publicly fantasized about alligators eating immigrants trying to escape the new detention centre, it came as no surprise to those familiar with the long racist visual history linking alligators to representations of Black people.

This logic is redeployed in the form of a racial terror that is made visible, marketable and even humorous in mainstream political discourse.

Visuality and migration

“Visuality” is a key term in the field of visual and cultural studies, originally coined by Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle and reintroduced in the early 2000s by American cultural theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff. It can be understood as the socially, historically and culturally constructed ways of seeing and understanding the visual world.

Visual systems have historically been used to justify western imperial and colonial rule by controlling how people see and understand the world.

While Alligator Alcatraz is a brand-new detention facility, it draws from a longer visual and spatial history of domination.

The AI-generated images of alligators wearing ICE hats can be seen as part of a broader visual system that makes racialized violence seem normal, justified and even funny. In this absurd transformation, the alligator is reimagined as a legitimate symbol of border enforcement.

Migrant death by water

The spectacle of Alligator Alcatraz, with its swampy inhospitable landscape, cannot be divorced from the long visual history of migrant death by water that’s relied on the circulation of images to provoke outrage — and sometimes state action.

Examples include the iconic image of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian child whose lifeless body washed ashore in Turkey in 2015, and the devastating photo of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his two-year-old daughter who both drowned crossing the Rio Grande in 2019.

These images sparked global concern, but they also reinforced the idea that migrant lives only matter when they end in death — as if borders only become visible when they cause deaths.

Alligator Alcatraz was built in eight days. The fact that a detention camp — or what some have called a concentration camp — can be assembled almost overnight, while basic human needs like clean drinking water or emergency warning systems go unmet for years, speaks volumes about where political will and government priorities lie.

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

– ref. ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ showcases Donald Trump’s penchant for visual cruelty – https://theconversation.com/alligator-alcatraz-showcases-donald-trumps-penchant-for-visual-cruelty-260566

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Christopher P. Scheitle, Associate Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University

Younger Americans are more likely to express belief in witchcraft and luck, as our new research shows.

As sociologists who research the social dynamics of religion in the United States, we conducted a nationally representative survey in 2021. Our survey posed dozens of questions to 2,000 Americans over the age of 18 on a wide range of beliefs in supernatural phenomena – everything from belief in the devil to belief in the magical power of crystals.

Our statistical analyses found that supernatural beliefs in the United States tend to group into four types.

The first represents what many consider “traditional religious beliefs.” These include beliefs in God, the existence of angels and demons, and belief in the soul and its journey beyond this lifetime.

A second represents belief in “spiritual and mental forces,” some of which are associated with either paranormal or new age beliefs. These include communicating with the dead, predicting the future, or believing that one’s soul can travel through space or time.

A third group represents belief in “witches and witchcraft.” This was measured on our survey with questions about the existence of “black magic” and whether it was “possible to cast spells on people.”

The fourth and final group represents beliefs in supernatural forces that shape “luck” – for instance, that “black cats bring bad luck.”

Our analysis finds that higher education and higher income are associated with lower levels of all four types of supernatural belief. Those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, for instance, score below average on all four types of belief, while those with less education score higher than average on all four.

Looking at race and ethnicity, we found that Latino or Hispanic individuals were more likely than white individuals to express belief in the “witches and witchcraft” form of supernatural belief. About 50% of Latino or Hispanic individuals in our survey, for example, strongly agreed that “witches exist.” This compares with about 37% of white individuals.

Comparing gender differences, we find that women are more likely than men to believe in the “spiritual and mental forces” forms of supernatural belief. For instance, about 31% of women in our survey agreed that “it is possible to communicate with the dead” compared with about 22% of men.

Why it matters

Our research addresses two key questions: first, whether people who hold one type of supernatural belief are also more likely to hold other types of supernatural beliefs; and second, how do different types of supernatural belief vary across key demographic groups, such as across educational levels, racial and ethnic groups, and gender?

Answering these questions can be surprisingly difficult. Most scientific surveys of the U.S. public include, at best, only one or two questions about religious beliefs; rarely do they include questions about other types of supernatural beliefs, such as belief in paranormal or superstitious forces. This could lead to an incomplete understanding of how supernatural beliefs and practices are changing in the United States.

An increasing number of Americans are leaving organized religion. However, it is not clear that supernatural beliefs have or will follow the same trajectory – especially beliefs that are not explicitly connected to those religious identities. For example, someone can identify as nonreligious but believe that the crystal they wear will provide them with supernatural benefits.

Moreover, recognizing that supernatural beliefs can include more than traditionally religious supernatural beliefs may be vital for better understanding other social issues. Research has found, for example, that belief in paranormal phenomena is associated with lower trust in science and medicine.

What’s next

Our survey provides some insight into the nature and patterns of supernatural belief in the U.S. at one point in time, but it does not tell us how such beliefs are changing over time.

We would like to see future surveys – both ours or from other social scientists – that ask more diverse questions about belief in supernatural beings and forces that will allow for an assessment of such changes.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Christopher P. Scheitle receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. The research discussed in this article was supported by a grant from the Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation grant initiative spearheaded by the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University and the University of California-San Diego and provided by the Templeton Religion Trust via The Issachar Fund.

Bernard DiGregorio receives funding from the National Science Foundation. The research discussed in this article was funded by a grant from the Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation grant initiative spearheaded by the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University and the University of California-San Diego and provided by the Templeton Religion Trust via The Issachar Fund.

Katie E. Corcoran receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. The research discussed in this article was supported by a grant from the Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation grant initiative spearheaded by the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University and the University of California-San Diego and provided by the Templeton Religion Trust via The Issachar Fund.

– ref. Angels, witches, crystals and black cats: How supernatural beliefs vary across different groups in the US – https://theconversation.com/angels-witches-crystals-and-black-cats-how-supernatural-beliefs-vary-across-different-groups-in-the-us-258377

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jacob Stid, Ph.D. student in Hydrogeology, Michigan State University

Imagine that you own a small, 20-acre farm in California’s Central Valley. You and your family have cultivated this land for decades, but drought, increasing costs and decreasing water availability are making each year more difficult.

Now imagine that a solar-electricity developer approaches you and presents three options:

• You can lease the developer 10 acres of otherwise productive cropland, on which the developer will build an array of solar panels and sell electricity to the local power company.
• You can select 1 or 2 acres of your land on which to build and operate your own solar array, using some electricity for your farm and selling the rest to the utility.
• Or you can keep going as you have been, hoping your farm can somehow survive.

Thousands of farmers across the country, including in the Central Valley, are choosing one of the first two options. A 2022 survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that roughly 117,000 U.S. farm operations have some type of solar device. Our own work has identified over 6,500 solar arrays currently located on U.S. farmland.

Our study of nearly 1,000 solar arrays built on 10,000 acres of the Central Valley over the past two decades found that solar power and farming are complementing each other in farmers’ business operations. As a result, farmers are making and saving more money while using less water – helping them keep their land and livelihood.

A hotter, drier and more built-up future

Perhaps nowhere in the U.S. is farmland more valuable or more productive than California’s Central Valley. The region grows a vast array of crops, including nearly all of the nation’s production of almonds, olives and sweet rice. Using less than 1% of all farmland in the country, the Central Valley supplies a quarter of the nation’s food, including 40% of its fruits, nuts and other fresh foods.

The food, fuel and fiber that these farms produce are a bedrock of the nation’s economy, food system and way of life.

But decades of intense cultivation, urban development and climate change are squeezing farmers. Water is limited, and getting more so: A state law passed in 2014 requires farmers to further reduce their water usage by the mid-2040s.

The trade-offs of installing solar on agricultural land

When the solar arrays we studied were installed, California state solar energy policy and incentives gave farm landowners new ways to diversify their income by either leasing their land for solar arrays or building their own.

There was an obvious trade-off: Turning land used for crops to land used for solar usually means losing agricultural production. We estimated that over the 25-year life of the solar arrays, this land would have produced enough food to feed 86,000 people a year, assuming they eat 2,000 calories a day.

There was an obvious benefit, too, of clean energy: These arrays produced enough renewable electricity to power 470,000 U.S. households every year.

But the result we were hoping to identify and measure was the economic effect of shifting that land from agricultural farming to solar farming. We found that farmers who installed solar were dramatically better off than those who did not.

They were better off in two ways, the first being financially. All the farmers, whether they owned their own arrays or leased their land to others, saved money on seeds, fertilizer and other costs associated with growing and harvesting crops. They also earned money from leasing the land, offsetting farm energy bills, and selling their excess electricity.

Farmers who owned their own arrays had to pay for the panels, equipment and installation, and maintenance. But even after covering those costs, their savings and earnings added up to US$50,000 per acre of profits every year, 25 times the amount they would have earned by planting that acre.

Farmers who leased their land made much less money but still avoided costs for irrigation water and operations on that part of their farm, gaining $1,100 per acre per year – with no up-front costs.

The farmers also conserved water, which in turn supported compliance with the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act water use reduction requirements. Most of the solar arrays were installed on land that had previously been irrigated. We calculated that turning off irrigation on this land saved enough water every year to supply about 27 million people with drinking water or irrigate 7,500 acres of orchards. Following solar array installation, some farmers also fallowed surrounding land, perhaps enabled by the new stable income stream, which further reduced water use.

Changes to food and energy production

Farmers in the Central Valley and elsewhere are now cultivating both food and energy. This shift can offer long-term security for farmland owners, particularly for those who install and run their own arrays.

Recent estimates suggest that converting between 1.1% and 2.4% of the country’s farmland to solar arrays would, along with other clean energy sources, generate enough electricity to eliminate the nation’s need for fossil fuel power plants.

Though many crops are part of a global market that can adjust to changes in supply, losing this farmland could affect the availability of some crops. Fortunately, farmers and landowners are finding new ways to protect farmland and food security while supporting clean energy.

One such approach is agrivoltaics, where farmers install solar designed for grazing livestock or growing crops beneath the panels. Solar can also be sited on less productive farmland or on farmland that is used for biofuels rather than food production.

Even in these areas, arrays can be designed and managed to benefit local agriculture and natural ecosystems. With thoughtful design, siting and management, solar can give back to the land and the ecosystems it touches.

Farms are much more than the land they occupy and the goods they produce. Farms are run by people with families, whose well-being depends on essential and variable resources such as water, fertilizer, fuel, electricity and crop sales. Farmers often borrow money during the planting season in hopes of making enough at harvest time to pay off the debt and keep a little profit.

Installing solar on their land can give farmers a diversified income, help them save water, and reduce the risk of bad years. That can make solar an asset to farming, not a threat to the food supply.

Jacob Stid works for Michigan State University. Funding for this work came from the US Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture program and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Michigan State University. He also receives funding from the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research.

Annick Anctil receives funding from NSF and USDA.

Anthony Kendall receives funding from the USDA, NASA, the NSF, and the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research. He is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, and serves on the nonprofit board of the FLOW Water Advocates.

– ref. California farmers identify a hot new cash crop: Solar power – https://theconversation.com/california-farmers-identify-a-hot-new-cash-crop-solar-power-259653

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Elise Silva, Director of Policy Research at the Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, University of Pittsburgh

The advent of generative AI has elicited waves of frustration and worry across academia for all the reasons one might expect: Early studies are showing that artificial intelligence tools can dilute critical thinking and undermine problem-solving skills. And there are many reports that students are using chatbots to cheat on assignments.

But how do students feel about AI? And how is it affecting their relationships with peers, instructors and their coursework?

I am part of a group of University of Pittsburgh researchers with a shared interest in AI and undergraduate education. While there is a growing body of research exploring how generative AI is affecting higher education, there is one group that we worry is underrepresented in this literature, yet perhaps uniquely qualified to talk about the issue: our students.

Our team ran a series of focus groups with 95 students across our campuses in the spring of 2025 and found that whether students and faculty are actively using AI or not, it is having significant interpersonal, emotional effects on learning and trust in the classroom. While AI products such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude are, of course, affecting how students learn, their emergence is also changing their relationships with their professors and with one another.

‘It’s not going to judge you’

Most of our focus group participants had used AI in the academic setting – when faced with a time crunch, when they perceive something to be “busy work,” or when they are “stuck” and worry that they can’t complete a task on their own. We found that most students don’t start a project using AI, but many are willing to turn to it at some point.

Many students described positive experiences using AI to help them study or answer questions, or give them feedback on papers. Some even described using AI instead of a professor, tutor or teaching assistant. Others found a chatbot less intimidating than attending office hours where professors might be “demeaning.” In the words of one interviewee: “With ChatGPT you can ask as many questions as you want and it’s not going to judge you.”

But by using it, you may be judged. While some were excited about using AI, many students voiced mild feelings of guilt or shame about their AI use due to environmental or ethical concerns, or just coming across as lazy. Some even expressed a feeling of helplessness, or a sense of inevitability regarding AI in their futures.

Anxiety, distrust and avoidance

While many students expressed a sense that faculty members are, as one participant put it, “very anti-ChatGPT,” they also lamented the fact that the rules around acceptable AI use were not sufficiently clear. As one urban planning major put it: “I feel uncertain of what the expectations are,” with her peer chiming in, “We’re not on the same page with students and teachers or even individually. No one really is.”

Students also described feelings of distrust and frustration toward peers they saw as overly reliant on AI. Some talked about asking classmates for help, only to find that they “just used ChatGPT” and hadn’t learned the material. Others pointed to group projects, where AI use was described as “a giant red flag” that made them “think less” of their peers.

These experiences feel unfair and uncomfortable for students. They can report their classmates for academic integrity violations – and enter yet another zone in which distrust mounts – or they can try to work with them, sometimes with resentment. “It ends up being more work for me,” a political science major said, “because it’s not only me doing my work by myself, it’s me double checking yours.”

Distrust was a marker that we observed of both student-to-teacher relationships and student-to-student relationships. Learners shared fears of being left behind if other students in their classes used chatbots to get better grades. This resulted in emotional distance and wariness among students. Indeed, our findings reflect other reports that indicate the mere possibility that a student might have used a generative AI tool is now undercutting trust across the classroom. Students are as anxious about baseless accusations of AI use as they are about being caught using it.

Students described feeling anxious, confused and distrustful, and sometimes even avoiding peers or learning interactions. As educators, this worries us. We know that academic engagement – a key marker of student success – comes not only from studying the course material, but also from positive engagement with classmates and instructors alike.

AI is affecting relationships

Indeed, research has shown that faculty-student relationships are an important indicator of student success. Peer-to-peer relationships are essential too. If students are sidestepping important mentoring relationships with professors or meaningful learning experiences with peers due to discomfort over ambiguous or shifting norms around the use of AI technology, institutions of higher education could imagine alternative pathways for connection. Residential campuses could double down on in-person courses and connections; faculty could be incentivized to encourage students to visit during office hours. Faculty-led research, mentoring and campus events where faculty and students mix in an informal fashion could also make a difference.

We hope our research can also flip the script and disrupt tropes about students who use AI as “cheaters.” Instead, it tells a more complex story of students being thrust into a reality they didn’t ask for, with few clear guidelines and little control.

As generative AI continues to pervade everyday life, and institutions of higher education continue to search for solutions, our focus groups reflect the importance of listening to students and considering novel ways to help students feel more comfortable connecting with peers and faculty. Understanding these evolving interpersonal dynamics matters because how we relate to technology is increasingly affecting how we relate to one another. Given our experiences in dialogue with them, it is clear that students are more than ready to talk about this issue and its impact on their futures.

Acknowledgment: Thank you to the full team from the University of Pittsburgh Oakland, Greensburg, Bradford and Johnstown campuses, including Annette Vee, Patrick Manning, Jessica FitzPatrick, Jessica Ghilani, Catherine Kula, Patty Wharton-Michael, Jialei Jiang, Sean DiLeonardi, Birney Young, Mark DiMauro, Jeff Aziz, and Gayle Rogers.

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

– ref. University students feel ‘anxious, confused and distrustful’ about AI in the classroom and among their peers – https://theconversation.com/university-students-feel-anxious-confused-and-distrustful-about-ai-in-the-classroom-and-among-their-peers-258665

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – France – By Diana Pérez-Arechaederra, Associate Professor of Organizational Psychology, ESCP Business School

In the 2000s, when I worked as a psychologist in long-term elderly care and primary healthcare services, many of the patients I saw were living with chronic or complex conditions. These situations required that patients trust care providers, consistently adhere to treatments and, often, receive care over an extended period of time.

But what stood out to me were the differences in how those protocols were applied. Some practitioners took time to explain something clearly, asked questions that showed genuine care, or invited patients into a conversation about their treatment. I also noticed how differently patients responded when none of that happened.

The quality of communication – the level of respect, attention and clarity – often made the difference between patients’ cooperation and resistance, between their motivation and withdrawal.

These observations led me to systematically investigate the psychological processes involved in how patients perceive fairness in healthcare.

What I found, in collaboration with colleagues, is that this “soft” dimension of care – how people perceive their treatment, how information is shared with them, and how much time and space they are given to take part in the process – has very real effects on behaviour. Patients’ perception of respect – what we call interactional fairness – often hinges on whether they are given the chance to ask questions, make sense of information, weigh different options and even participate in making decisions. For patients to follow a practitioner’s recommendations, they need to feel informed, heard, respected and involved – not just treated.

What fairness looks like in practice

In our study, we examined two forms of what psychologists call organizational justice in healthcare settings:

• Interactional justice – the sense of being treated with dignity, attentiveness and respect

• Informational justice – the perception that shared information is clear, complete, timely and relevant

We surveyed over 850 patients in Spain and the United States who had visited a healthcare provider in the previous six months. We asked them how they experienced their interactions with health professionals, how much they trusted those professionals, how satisfied they were with the service, whether they followed medical advice, and whether they intended to return to the same provider.

What we saw was a clear pattern. Patients who perceived fairness – being treated with respect and given clear and appropriate information – were more likely to trust their healthcare provider. That trust, in turn, shaped whether they felt able to engage with treatment and sustain their relationship with (or, in the language of our study, their “loyalty” to) the healthcare service or physician. What we call informational fairness had a particularly strong direct link to adherence to treatments or clinical advice, showing its importance for understanding patient behaviour.

In healthcare, patients are navigating uncertainty, vulnerability, and long-term relationships with systems and providers. Their ability to understand, participate in and trust that process is integral to care.

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Insights across borders

Despite the structural and institutional differences between Spain, with its predominantly public healthcare system, and the United States, where healthcare is largely organised through the private sector, our goal was to identify common patterns in how patients interpret and engage with services. Specifically, we sought to understand whether similar cognitive and emotional processes create the patient experience, regardless of the broader healthcare system in place.

Using path analysis models, we assessed the relationships between patients’ perceptions of fairness and their resulting levels of trust and satisfaction, and then, the relationship between those perceptions and patients’ adherence and loyalty to the service. While patients in the United States exhibited slightly stronger associations between perceived fairness and both trust and satisfaction, the overall nature of the relationships was highly consistent across both countries.

These findings suggest that despite differences in how care is delivered and financed, patients in both countries respond to their healthcare interactions in fundamentally similar ways. This matters for healthcare providers and policymakers across diverse settings who are aiming to enhance patient-centred care.

Recognizing patients as agents

At the heart of this is an ethical question: Are patients treated as agents in their own care, or simply as objects of intervention?

Medicine is not a closed, flawless system. It is a developing field of research being translated into practice, and its shortcomings are shaped by social and structural biases, and by the fact that patients may not be given all of the options they should receive. In areas such as women’s health, chronic pain, mental health and rare diseases, patients often offer insights that clinical protocols miss. When their lived experience is ignored or dismissed, we lose opportunities for better diagnoses, more responsive and efficient care, and more sustainable treatment plans.

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When I was working in elderly care, I remember the testimony of a resident who was very upset because his parenteral treatment (an injection) had been changed to an enteral one (a drink). Nobody informed him about the change. When I asked him why he was so unhappy, he said: “I much preferred the injections because the clinician who came to administer them was very nice to me. We were friends. Now, I’ll never see her again.”

I’m not sure whether continuing with the parenteral administration was even possible, but what was certain is that nobody asked him what he preferred. And that had an impact on him.

Listening to patients is not merely being polite: it is recognizing that they have information that professionals lack. And that the ethical foundation of health care depends not only on what medical professionals do to patients, but on how they work with them.

What can be done

Creating fairer care involves the following concrete practices, which come from our findings:

• Designing information systems that support timely, accessible and patient-centred communication

• Designing procedures and allocating enough time for professionals to conduct themselves in accordance with interactional and informational fairness principles

• Training for professionals in relational and communication skills that foster patients’ perceptions of respect and dignity

• Educating patients about what care can reasonably provide to help set appropriate expectations

• Reframing patient participation so that patients are not just surveyed after the fact, but listened to and given agency throughout the care process

À lire aussi :
Power to the patient: Person-centred care and how you can take your health into your own hands

None of this is separate from clinical quality. On the contrary, it is what allows clinical care to work best and for all. When patients feel that they matter – that they are respected and informed – they are more likely to collaborate, follow through and return for more care if they need it. That would benefit patients, their practitioners, healthcare systems and society.

The scientific article referred to in this piece was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), whose projects, RD24/0005/0018, were co-funded by the European Union and the Facility for Recovery and Resilience (MRR). The Network for Research on Chronicity, Primary Care and Health Promotion (RICAPPS) was involved in the development of RD24/0005/0018. Projects PI22/01677 and PI20/00321 were co-financed by the European Union. The government of Castilla y León also collaborated in the funding of this study through research projects BioSan 2009 and BioSan 2011. These funders played no role in the study design, data analysis, results reporting or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

– ref. Patients who feel heard are more likely to stick with medical treatment – https://theconversation.com/patients-who-feel-heard-are-more-likely-to-stick-with-medical-treatment-260750