When advocates and defenders of a nuclear-free Pacific condemned the AUKUS military pact two years ago and warned New Zealand that the agreement would make the world “more dangerous”, a key speaker was Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua.
He was among leading participants at a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement teachers’ wānanga, which launched a petition against the pact with one of the “elders” among the activists, Hilda Halkyard-Harawira (Te Moana Nui a Kiwa), symbolically adding the first signature.
Speaking about the petition declaration in a ceremony on the steps of the Auckland Museum marking the 10 July 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua explained that the AUKUS agreement was a military pact between Australia-UK-US that was centred on Canberra’s acquisition of nuclear propelled submarines.
Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua and the NFIP petition has been featured in a new video report by Nik Naidu as part of a “Legends of NFIP” series by Talanoa TV of the Whanau Community Centre and Hub.
A Tongan cybersecurity expert says the country’s health data hack is a “wake-up call” for the whole region.
Siosaia Vaipuna, a former director of Tonga’s cybersecurity agency, spoke to RNZ Pacific in the wake of the June 15 cyberattack on the country’s Health Ministry.
Vaipuna said Tonga and other Pacific nations were vulnerable to data breaches due to the lack of awareness and cybersecurity systems in the region.
“There’s increasing digital connectivity in the region, and we’re sort of . . . the newcomers to the internet,” he said.
“I think the connectivity is moving faster than the online safety awareness activity [and] that makes not just Tonga, but the Pacific more vulnerable and targeted.”
Since the data breach, the Tongan government has said “a small amount” of information from the attack was published online. This included confidential information, it said in a statement.
Reporting on the attack has also attributed the breach to the group Inc Ransomware.
Vaipuna said the group was well-known and had previously focused on targeting organisations in Europe and the US.
New Zealand attack However, earlier this month, it targeted the Waiwhetū health organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. That attack reportedly included the theft of patient consent forms and education and training data.
“This type of criminal group usually employs a double-extortion tactic,” Vaipuna said.
It could encrypt data and then demand money to decrypt, he said.
“The other ransom is where they are demanding payment so that they don’t release the information that they hold to the public or sell it on to other cybercriminals.”
In the current Tonga cyberattack, media reports say that Inc Ransomware wanted a ransom of US$1 million for the information it accessed. The Tongan government has said it has not paid anything.
Vaipuna said more needed to be done to raise awareness in the region around cybersecurity and online safety systems, particularly among government departments.
“I think this is a wake-up call. The cyberattacks are not just happening in movies or on the news or somewhere else, they are actually happening right on our doorstep and impacting on our people.
Extra vigilance warning “And the right attention and resources should rightfully be allocated to the organisations and to teams that are tasked with dealing with cybersecurity matters.”
The Tongan government has also warned people to be extra vigilant when online.
It said more information accessed in the cyberattack may be published online, and that may include patient information and medical records.
“Our biggest concern is for vulnerable groups of people who are most acutely impacted by information breaches of this kind,” the government said.
It said that it would contact these people directly.
The country’s ongoing response was also being aided by experts from Australia’s special cyberattack team.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In the new weekly political podcast, The Bradbury Group, last night presenter Martyn Bradbury talked with visiting Palestinian journalist Dr Yousef Aljamal.
They assess the current situation in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and what New Zealand should be doing.
As Bradbury, publisher of The Daily Blog, notes, “Fourth Estate public broadcasting is dying — The Bradbury Group will fight back.”
Gaza crisis and Iran tensions. Video: The Bradbury Group/Radio Waatea
Also in last night’s programme was featured a View From A Far Podcast Special Middle East Report with former intelligence analyst Dr Paul Buchanan and international affairs commentator Selwyn Manning on what will happen next in Iran.
Martyn Bradbury talks to Dr Paul Buchanan (left) and Selwyn Manning on the Iran crisis and the future. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Political Panel: Māori Party president John Tamihere, NZ Herald columnist Simon Wilson NZCTU economist Craig Renney
Topics: – The Legacy of Tarsh Kemp – New coward punch and first responder assault laws — virtue signalling or meaningful policy? – Cost of living crisis and the failing economy
A painless, non-invasive brain stimulation technique can significantly improve how young adults learn maths, my colleagues and I found in a recent study. In a paper in PLOS Biology, we describe how this might be most helpful for those who are likely to struggle with mathematical learning because of how their brain areas involved in this skill communicate with each other.
Maths is essential for many jobs, especially in science, technology, engineering and finance. However, a 2016 OECD report suggested that a large proportion of adults in developed countries (24% to 29%) have maths skills no better than a typical seven-year-old. This lack of numeracy can contribute to lower income, poor health, reduced political participation and even diminished trust in others.
Education often widens rather than closes the gap between high and low
achievers, a phenomenon known as the Matthew effect. Those who start with an advantage, such as being able to read more words when starting school, tend to pull further ahead. Stronger educational achievement has been also associated with socioeconomic status, higher motivation and greater engagement with material learned during a class.
Biological factors, such as genes, brain connectivity, and chemical signalling, have been shown in some studies to play a stronger role in learning outcomes than environmental ones. This has been well-documented in different areas, including maths, where differences in biology may explain educational achievements.
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To explore this question, we recruited 72 young adults (18–30 years old) and taught them new maths calculation techniques over five days. Some received a placebo treatment. Others received transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), which delivers gentle electrical currents to the brain. It is painless and often imperceptible, unless you focus hard to try and sense it.
It is possible tRNS may cause long term side effects, but in previous studies my team assessed participants for cognitive side effects and found no evidence for it.
Participants who received tRNS were randomly assigned to receive it in one of two different brain areas. Some received it over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region critical for memory, attention, or when we acquire a new cognitive skill. Others had tRNS over the posterior parietal cortex, which processes maths information, mainly when the learning has been accomplished.
Before and after the training, we also scanned their brains and measured levels of key neurochemicals such as gamma-aminobutyric acid (gaba), which we showed previously, in a 2021 study, to play a role in brain plasticity and learning, including maths.
Some participants started with weaker connections between the prefrontal and parietal brain regions, a biological profile that is associated with poorer learning. The study results showed these participants made significant gains in learning when they received tRNS over the prefrontal cortex.
Stimulation helped them catch up with peers who had stronger natural connectivity. This finding shows the critical role of the prefrontal cortex in learning and could help reduce educational inequalities that are grounded in neurobiology.
How does this work? One explanation lies in a principle called stochastic resonance. This is when a weak signal becomes clearer when a small amount of random noise is added.
In the brain, tRNS may enhance learning by gently boosting the activity of underperforming neurons, helping them get closer to the point at which they become active and send signals. This is a point known as the “firing threshold”, especially in people whose brain activity is suboptimal for a task like maths learning.
It is important to note what this technique does not do. It does not make the best
learners even better. That is what makes this approach promising for bridging gaps,
not widening them. This form of brain stimulation helps level the playing field.
Our study focused on healthy, high-performing university students. But in similar studies on children with maths learning disabilities (2017) and with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (2023) my colleagues and I found tRNS seemed to improve their learning and performance in cognitive training.
I argue our findings could open a new direction in education. The biology of the learner matters, and with advances in knowledge and technology, we can develop tools that act on the brain directly, not just work around it. This could give more people the chance to get the best benefit from education.
In time, perhaps personalised, brain-based interventions like tRNS could support learners who are being left behind not because of poor teaching or personal circumstances, but because of natural differences in how their brains work.
Of course, very often education systems aren’t operating to their full potential because of inadequate resources, social disadvantage or systemic barriers. And so any brain-based tools must go hand-in-hand with efforts to tackle these obstacles.
Roi Cohen Kadosh serves on the scientific advisory boards of Neuroelectrics Inc., and Innosphere Ltd. He is the founder and shareholder of Cognite Neurotechnology Ltd. He received funding from the Wellcome Trust, UKRI, the British Academy, IARPA, DASA, Joy Ventures, the James S McDonnell Foundation, and the European Union. He is affiliated with the University of Surrey.
Waking up from a nightmare can leave your heart pounding, but the effects may reach far beyond a restless night. Adults who suffer bad dreams every week were almost three times more likely to die before age 75 than people who rarely have them.
This alarming conclusion – which is yet to be peer reviewed – comes from researchers who combined data from four large long-term studies in the US, following more than 4,000 people between the ages of 26 and 74. At the beginning, participants reported how often nightmares disrupted their sleep. Over the next 18 years, the researchers kept track of how many participants died prematurely – 227 in total.
Even after considering common risk factors like age, sex, mental health, smoking and weight, people who had nightmares every week were still found to be nearly three times more likely to die prematurely – about the same risk as heavy smoking.
The team also examined “epigenetic clocks” – chemical marks on DNA that act as biological mileage counters. People haunted by frequent nightmares were biologically older than their birth certificates suggested, across all three clocks used (DunedinPACE, GrimAge and PhenoAge).
The science behind the silent scream
Faster ageing accounted for about 39% of the link between nightmares and early death, implying that whatever is driving the bad dreams is simultaneously driving the body’s cells towards the finish line.
How might a scream you never utter leave a mark on your genome? Nightmares happen during so-called rapid-eye-movement sleep when the brain is highly active but muscles are paralysed. The sudden surge of adrenaline, cortisol and other fight-or-flight chemicals can be as strong as anything experienced while awake. If that alarm bell rings night after night, the stress response may stay partially switched on throughout the day.
Continuous stress takes its toll on the body. It triggers inflammation, raises blood pressure and speeds up the ageing process by wearing down the protective tips of our chromosomes.
On top of that, being jolted awake by nightmares disrupts deep sleep, the crucial time when the body repairs itself and clears out waste at the cellular level. Together, these two effects – constant stress and poor sleep – may be the main reasons the body seems to age faster.
The idea that disturbing dreams foreshadow poor health is not entirely new. Earlier studies have shown that adults tormented by weekly nightmares are more likely to develop dementia and Parkinson’s disease, years before any daytime symptoms appear.
Growing evidence suggests that the brain areas involved in dreaming are also those affected by brain diseases, so frequent nightmares might be an early warning sign of neurological problems.
Nightmares are also surprisingly common. Roughly 5% of adults report at least one each week and another 12.5% experience them monthly.
Because they are both frequent and treatable, the new findings elevate bad dreams from a spooky nuisance to a potential public health target. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, imagery-rehearsal therapy – where sufferers rewrite the ending of a recurrent nightmare while awake – and simple steps such as keeping bedrooms cool, dark and screen free have all been shown to curb nightmare frequency.
Before jumping to conclusions, there are a few important things to keep in mind. The study used people’s own reports of their dreams, which can make it hard to tell the difference between a typical bad dream and a true nightmare. Also, most of the people in the study were white Americans, so the findings might not apply to everyone.
And biological age was measured only once, so we cannot yet say whether treating nightmares slows the clock. Crucially, the work was presented as a conference abstract and has not yet navigated the gauntlet of peer review.
Despite these limitations, the study has important strengths that make it worth taking seriously. The researchers used multiple groups of participants, followed them for many years and relied on official death records rather than self-reported data. This means we can’t simply dismiss the findings as a statistical fluke.
If other research teams can replicate these results, doctors might start asking patients about their nightmares during routine check-ups – alongside taking blood pressure and checking cholesterol levels.
Therapies that tame frightening dreams are inexpensive, non-invasive and already available. Scaling them could offer a rare chance to add years to life while improving the quality of the hours we spend asleep.
Timothy Hearn 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Labib Azzouz, Research Associate in Transport and Energy Innovation, University of Oxford
Electric vehicle chargers at a motorway service station in Grantham, England.Angus Reid/Shutterstock
The automotive and EV industry has repeatedly insisted that the UK needs more electric vehicle (EV) chargers to help motorists make the switch from conventional fossil-fuel burning cars.
The Labour government has announced £400 million to install EV chargers, mainly on streets in poorer residential neighbourhoods, in place of the Conservative’s £950 million rapid charging fund that was directed at installing chargers in motorway service stations.
Does it matter where these chargers are – and who pays to build them?
The short answer is yes, it does matter. Our research conducted at motorway and local EV charging stations across England – including those located in residential areas, high streets and community centres – indicates that these two types of infrastructure serve distinct groups of users and fulfil different purposes.
Suggesting that one can substitute for the other risks sending mixed signals to both the industry and the driving public.
We found that motorway charging stations tend to cater to wealthier men, who are more likely to own premium EVs with long-range batteries and better performance. Many of these drivers have access to home chargers, so their use of public chargers is only for occasional, long-distance travel for business, leisure, or holidays – trips that require chargers along motorways.
Convenience and charging speed are often more important than the price of public charging, particularly when the travel costs of these drivers are covered by their employers.
Local public charging stations, on the other hand, serve more diverse groups. These include drivers from lower-income households who are more likely to own older and smaller EVs with shorter ranges. Access to home charging is often limited, especially for people living in flats or urban areas without driveways, garages or off-street parking.
Local chargers are also vital for taxi and delivery drivers who depend on their vehicles for work and make frequent short trips throughout the day. There are many professional drivers without access to workplace charging stations who need alternative local provision – something the Conservative government recognised in its 2022 EV charging strategy.
Ultimately, the transition to EVs should take a balanced approach that carefully considers social equity, economic viability and environmental impact.
Different locations serve different drivers
Motorway charging stations are commercially attractive to private investors, such as energy companies, specialist charging providers and car manufacturers, despite their higher upfront costs and complex requirements.
This is because service stations offer greater short-term revenue due to their ability to set premium prices. This is a result of there being limited alternatives and high demand for rapid charging, especially among long-distance travellers, and the willingness of EV drivers to pay for speed and convenience – unlike in more price-sensitive neighbourhood settings.
Unsurprisingly, the government found that the rapid deployment of motorway chargers in recent years has been largely driven by the private sector. Our research highlighted that these revenues could be enhanced by a broader range of retail, dining and relaxation amenities, turning the time waiting for a car to charge into a more productive and pleasurable experience.
Residential charging stations may not offer high profits per charge, but they typically require lower capital investment and benefit from consistent and predictable use. They are also suited to measures for reducing strain on the grid and balancing energy supply and demand.
These measures include tariffs that make it cheaper to charge EVs during off-peak hours, or technology that allows cars to feed electricity stored in batteries back into the grid. These features make them appropriate for public funding, where return on investment is measured not just in profit but in value for the public.
Considering that local EV charging serves those who do not have access to home charging and who drive for a living, the case for public funding is even stronger. These sorts of chargers make switching to an EV easier for different groups.
For example, safe and carefully placed public chargers could help more women switch to EVs – although our research suggests that, while “careful placement” might refer to residential areas, it doesn’t necessarily mean on streets. Well-lit car parks and community destinations are sometimes considered safer options.
Charging points outside a community centre in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. AlanMorris/Shutterstock
By helping EV drivers make frequent short trips, local chargers can also significantly reduce urban air pollution, emissions and noise, contributing to more liveable, healthier cities.
That said, motorway charging stations and those near key transport corridors still play a crucial role in a comprehensive national network, and public funding may be required in more peripheral and rural areas of the UK where installations lag and commercial interest is limited.
While long-distance trips are less frequent than short ones, they account for a disproportionately large share of energy use and emissions. Switching such trips to electric will be essential to reaching net zero goals.
It seems reasonable to prioritise public investment in local EV charging infrastructure to support a fairer EV transition, but this should not be limited to on-street chargers. Investment is needed in residential and non-residential areas, public car parks, community centres and workplaces.
Different types of EV charging are not interchangeable – all are needed to support the switch.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Labib Azzouz has received funding from the UK Research and Innovation via the UK Energy Research Centre and Innovate UK as part of the Energy Superhub Oxford (ESO) project.
Hannah Budnitz receives government funding from UK Research and Innovation grants via the Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She has also previously received funding from Innovate UK and the Department for Transport.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jane Steventon, Course Leader, BA (Hons) Screenwriting; Deputy Course Leader & Senior Lecturer, BA (Hons) Film Production, University of Portsmouth
Take a soupçon of identity crisis, a pinch of perfectionism, a scoop of burnout and mix thoroughly with a large measure of fraternal grief and sear over a hot grill and voilà! You have The Bear, a perfectly blended drama about a chef on the edge, driven by relentless ambition and exacting standards as he turns his family’s humble sandwich shop into a fine-dining restaurant.
This intoxicating family drama was eaten up by critics and audiences alike in 2022, its first season garnering a rare perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the subsequent two reaching scores of 99% and 89% respectively. It’s certainly a hard act to follow for season four.
The first ten minutes of The Bear’s pilot episode thrillingly defined what was to come in high-octane style and scene-setting detail. The first season delivered a clever mix of authentic dialogue and setting, relatable family dysfunction and dynamic production style.
Showstopping scenes of stressful kitchen heat were served up alongside a delectable range of new and established talent in the form of Jeremy Allen White (Carmy), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Richie), Ayo Edebiri (Sydney) and Oliver Platt (Cicero/Uncle Jimmy).
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In charge is showrunner Christopher Storer, who came up with the concept after being inspired by his friend’s father Chris Zucchero, the owner of Chicago sandwich joint Mr Beef.
With his professional chef sister also serving as a consultant, Storer succeeded in creating a deliciously authentic and intensely real drama. Buoyed along the way by 21 Emmys and five Golden Globes, Storer also watched his cast ascend, the tortured-soul performance of White garnering particular praise.
Testing the parameters of a long-running show, Storer focused in on the entire cast of characters and their backstories, a successful tactic used by shows such as Orange is the New Black to keep the drama – largely confined to a kitchen set – fresh.
Pulling in Hollywood die-hards Oliver Platt and Jamie Lee Curtis for familial tough-love roles further enriched the mix, often using a non-chronological timeframe to go back to moments of family turbulence and tension. This made for three-dimensional characters and enabled evolution around difficult themes such as the aftermath of suicide and generational trauma.
The Bear has come a long way in three seasons, starting with a spit and sawdust establishment serving up the lunchtime beef sandwiches for its working customers.
Carmy’s experience and longing for the high-end restaurant of his dreams hurtled forward in season two, as he sent his core crew off in different directions to hone their skills and help form his vision. A restaurant trying to win success but plagued with challenges, there were exhausting familial tensions embedded in every episode of season three.
Several themes play out in The Bear: love, family, loyalty, community and purpose. The relationship between Carmy and cousin Richie (not a real cousin, but a term of endearment) is key to linking past and future. Richie provides some of the highlights of comedy and pathos as he spits truth bombs, most frequently at talented sous-chef Syd.
It is Syd who follows Carmy’s aspirations for gastronomic perfection but can’t abide the lack of order or the intense highs and lows that inevitably go hand in hand with his talent. And this is one central question to consider for the latest series: just how long will the audience remain loyal to Carmy and his endless quest for artistry in a high-failure rate industry?
It’s all in the sauce
Storer begins season four with a ghost. Carmy and his dead brother Mikey (Jon Berthal) banter in a seven-minute scene, with Carmy ultimately confiding the dream of a restaurant as Mikey watches him make tomato sauce (“too much garlic”). The tomatoes resonate: Mikey left behind money hidden in tomato cans that ended up saving Carmy’s sanity and his dream of a proper restaurant.
Just as oranges represent death to Frances Ford Coppola, Storer uses tomatoes to underscore themes; here they symbolise familial loyalty and history, a solid base to a meal, a core ingredient. Mikey was one of the core ingredients in Carmy’s life, and now he’s gone.
Carmy awakens to a rerun of Groundhog Day on late-night TV and fittingly, we too are back – same dish, now more seasoned and enriched with its core ingredients and ready to serve up a big bowlful of family, love, ambition, strife and grief.
The episode furthers the theme of loyalty as the restaurant receives The Tribune’s review – the cliffhanger of the season three finale. Naturally, Storer doesn’t let up – the food critic highlights “dissonance” and Carmy is back in emotional chaos, with Syd urging him to lighten up and lose the misery.
In truth, this series could do with adding some more humour in the mix; the teasing and frivolous banter of season one has got somewhat lost in the seasons that followed.
Storer ramps up the tension, setting several ticking clocks in place: chiefly Uncle Jimmy’s notice period for the business to turn a profit is literally installed on a digital clock in the kitchen. Then Syd’s headhunter calls, offering her desired autonomy and an exit strategy from the chaos.
And Carmy raises the stakes with an intention to gain a Michelin star. Thus a heroic journey is set in place for the whole cast, with future battles both internal and external laid out.
There’s too much going on at this feast and the feeling of being stuffed full of story is tangible by the end of the first episode. Still, with a season lining up more emotional turbulence steered by White, more celebrity cameos (Brie Larson and Rob Reiner are lined up) and the excellent cinematography and performances that we have come to expect, Storer stirs his secret sauce.
The Bear still offers an entertaining and enticing proposition, bingeable and mostly satisfying.
Jane Steventon 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samantha Abbott, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Sport Science, Nottingham Trent University
England’s Beth Mead cheering on podium after win v Germany in the Women European Championship Final 2022photographyjp/Shutterstock
Think back to the last time you had a cold or the flu. Now imagine stepping onto the pitch for a European Cup final, while battling through those symptoms. For elite athletes, illness can strike at the worst possible time – and it could hit women harder.
Research suggests that female athletes are more susceptible to cold and flu-like illnesses than their male counterparts. For England women’s national football team, the Lionesses, this risk only increases before a major tournament like the Euros.
Close contact, shared kit, disrupted sleep and travel all add up to a perfect storm for infection. But targeted nutritional strategies, alongside good sleep and hand hygiene, can offer a crucial line of defence.
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1. Fuel first: energy matters for immunity
Before anything else, players need to eat enough. Energy supports both performance and immune function. In fact, female athletes who didn’t meet their energy needs in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics were four times more likely to report cold or flu symptoms.
This is especially relevant in women’s football, where low energy and carbohydrate intake has been documented among professional players and recreational players too. Regular meals and snacks that include carbohydrate-rich foods like oats, bread and pasta, especially around training, are essential to meet energy demands and support immune health.
2. Eat the rainbow
Athletes are often encouraged to go beyond the public’s five-a-day fruit and veg target, aiming instead for eight to ten portions daily. Why? Because colourful plant foods are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds: all vital for immunity.
Each colour offers unique benefits. For instance, red fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes, contain lycopene, a powerful antioxidant. Orange produce like carrots get their colour from beta-carotene, which is converted by the body into vitamin A – a key vitamin for immune health.
Vitamin C has long been linked with reducing the risk and severity of cold and flu symptoms. One Cochrane review found that regular vitamin C intake halved the risk of illness in physically active people.
However, more isn’t always better. Long-term use of high-dose vitamin C supplements could blunt training adaptations – the structural and functional changes the body undergoes in response to repeated exercise – because of its anti-inflammatory effects. That’s why vitamin C is most effective when used strategically, such as during high-risk periods like travel or intense competition. Good food sources include oranges, kiwis, blackcurrants, red and yellow peppers, broccoli and even potatoes.
Probiotics, found in fermented foods like kefir and kimchi or in supplement form, have been shown to reduce the duration and severity of respiratory illnesses in athletes. Prebiotics have similarly shown promise. In one study, a 24-week prebiotic intervention in elite rugby players reduced the duration of cold and flu symptoms by over two days.
In the build-up to the Euros, including probiotic-rich foods in their diet or taking a daily prebiotic and probiotic supplement may help players stay healthy and return to training faster if they do get ill.
5. Zinc lozenges: first aid for a sore throat
If cold-like symptoms do appear, zinc lozenges can offer fast-acting relief. Zinc has antiviral, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. When zinc is delivered as a lozenge, it acts directly in the throat, where many infections begin. Taken within 24 hours of symptoms starting, zinc lozenges could shorten illness duration by a third.
But caution is key. Long-term use of high-dose zinc supplements can actually suppress immune function. Zinc lozenges should only be used short-term at symptom onset, not as a daily supplement.
Staying match-ready during major tournaments means more than just tactical drills and fitness. Nutrition is a powerful ally in illness prevention, especially for women’s teams like the Lionesses. From fuelling adequately to supporting gut health and knowing when to supplement, these nutritional strategies can make the difference between sitting on the bench and bringing a trophy home.
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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julian Hargreaves, Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Criminology, City St George’s, University of London
The UK government wants a new definition of Islamophobia and has created a working group of politicians, academics and independent experts to provide one. It aims to settle long-running political debates over the term.
The concept of Islamophobia describes anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic prejudices and their impact on Muslim communities. The term became familiar in the UK following publication of the Runnymede Trust report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, in 1997.
The concept is now used to discuss negative public opinion towards Muslims and Islam, biased media reporting, verbal and physical assaults and online attacks. It is also used when discussing social and economic inequalities, discrimination within various institutional settings and unfair treatment from the police and security services.
Previous definitions have been controversial, failing to unite politicians, academics and British Muslims, and leading to charged debates over free speech.
Some academics have argued that the word “Islamophobia” – which suggests a phobia or fear of Islam – is an inaccurate label for a prejudice which often targets skin colour, ethnicity and culture.
Many Muslim-led organisations accept that the term is imperfect and interchangeable with others such as “anti-Muslim hatred”. However, they maintain the term “Islamophobia” is needed to focus attention on a growing problem.
Definitions and controversy
The 1997 Runnymede Trust report defined Islamophobia as an “unfounded hostility towards Islam”, “the practical consequences of such hostility in unfair discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities” and “the exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political and social affairs”.
The Runnymede Trust revised its definition in a follow-up report published in 2017. The report defines Islamophobia in two ways.
The first is “anti-Muslim racism”. A longer, second version amends the United Nation’s 1965 definition of “racial discrimination”. These revised definitions are important because they re-framed Islamophobia as a product of racist thinking rather than religious prejudices.
Other attempts to define Islamophobia include British academic Chris Allen’s 200-word definition. Allen defined it as an ideology like racism that spreads negative views of Muslims and Islam, influencing social attitudes and leading to discrimination and violence. US political scientist Erik Bleich defined it more succinctly as “indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at Islam or Muslims”.
In 2018, the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims published another definition linking Islamophobia to racism. According to the APPG, “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” The APPG called for its definition to be legally binding.
The APPG definition was adopted by various organisations including local authorities, UK universities and the Labour party while in opposition. But it was rejected by the then Conservative government and later by the current Labour government, which argued it was seeking “a more integrated and cohesive approach”.
This lack of consensus over previous definitions led Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, to announce the working group in March 2025. The group’s aim is to provide a new definition of “anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia” which is “reflective of a wide range of perspectives and priorities for British Muslims”.
Former Conservative MP and attorney general Dominic Grieve was appointed to chair the group, evidence of Labour’s ambition to build consensus.
A march in London against Islamophobia, racism and anti-migrant views. Shutterstock
Some are concerned that use of the term “Islamophobia”, and particularly the APPG definition, stifles legitimate criticism of Islam. Free speech campaigners have argued that it is “blasphemy via the back door”.
The centre-right thinktank Policy Exchange published a report claiming that the term is used in bad faith to divert attention away from serious social problems within some Muslim communities – specifically, discussion of the grooming gangs scandal.
These debates bear resemblance to those surrounding the term “antisemitism” and the adoption of a definition proposed by the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance. The term is widely accepted, although critics have argued this specific definition stifles legitimate criticism of the Israeli state.
A new approach
A new definition of “Islamophobia” must balance the protection of Muslim communities and freedoms of religion, expression and assembly for all Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK. It must be clear enough for everyday use, specific enough for academic and policy research, and capable of generating support across the UK’s diverse Muslim population.
A proposed definition by an emerging thought leader on British Islam addresses these challenges. Mamnun Khan is a writer whose work explores the social integration of Muslims in contemporary British society. Khan is associated with Equi, a thinktank which describes its work as “drawing on Muslim insight”. Other members of Equi are members of the government’s working group.
Khan sets out three tests that a definition must pass, based on Islamic law, moral teachings within Islam and other more universal values. First, a definition must serve the public interest. Second, it must be just and balanced and preserve freedom of expression. Third, it must uphold the dignity of Muslim communities.
For Khan, “Islamophobia, also known as anti-Muslim hatred, is an irrational fear, hostility, or prejudice toward Muslims that leads to discrimination, unequal treatment, exclusion, social and political marginalisation, or violence.”
Khan’s definition has many good qualities. It brings together stronger elements of previous definitions – for, example, the separation of negative attitudes and outcomes – without being weakened by jargon or strong political ideology. On the other hand, some social scientists may question whether defining something as “irrational” is a matter of preference rather than academic research.
The working group also needs to decide whether Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred are closely related or exactly the same. Failure to do so will cause confusion and inconsistency among those wishing to apply the term precisely. Regardless, Khan’s example is a strong step in the right direction. A better definition of Islamophobia is needed, and now within reach.
Julian Hargreaves is an Affiliated Researcher at the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge.
In November 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter peered through a small hole into the sealed tomb of King Tutankhamun. When asked if he could see anything, he replied: “Yes, wonderful things.” Within months, however, Carter’s financial backer Lord Carnarvon was dead from a mysterious illness. Over the following years, several other members of the excavation team would meet similar fates, fuelling legends of the “pharaoh’s curse” that have captivated the public imagination for just over a century.
For decades, these mysterious deaths were attributed to supernatural forces. But modern science has revealed a more likely culprit: a toxic fungus known as Aspergillus flavus. Now, in an unexpected twist, this same deadly organism is being transformed into a powerful new weapon in the fight against cancer.
Aspergillus flavus is a common mould found in soil, decaying vegetation and stored grains. It is infamous for its ability to survive in harsh environments, including the sealed chambers of ancient tombs, where it can lie dormant for thousands of years.
When disturbed, the fungus releases spores that can cause severe respiratory infections, particularly in people with weakened immune systems. This may explain the so-called “curse” of King Tutankhamun and similar incidents, such as the deaths of several scientists who entered the tomb of Casimir IV in Poland in the 1970s. In both cases, investigations later found that A flavus was present, and its toxins were probably responsible for the illnesses and deaths.
Despite its deadly reputation, Aspergillus flavus is now at the centre of a remarkable scientific finding. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that this fungus produces a unique class of molecules with the potential to fight cancer.
These molecules belong to a group called ribosomally synthesised and post-translationally modified peptides, or RiPPs. RiPPs are made by the ribosome – the cell’s protein factory – and are later chemically altered to enhance their function.
While thousands of RiPPs have been identified in bacteria, only a handful have been found in fungi – until now.
The process of finding these fungal RiPPs was far from simple. The research team screened a dozen different strains or types of aspergillus, searching for chemical clues that might indicate the presence of these promising molecules. Aspergillus flavus quickly stood out as a prime candidate.
The researchers compared the chemicals from different fungal strains to known RiPP compounds and found promising matches. To confirm their discovery, they switched off the relevant genes and, sure enough, the target chemicals vanished, proving they had found the source.
Purifying these chemicals proved to be a significant challenge. However, this complexity is also what gives fungal RiPPs their remarkable biological activity.
The team eventually succeeded in isolating four different RiPPs from Aspergillus flavus. These molecules shared a unique structure of interlocking rings, a feature that had never been described before. The researchers named these new compounds “asperigimycins”, after the fungus in which they were found.
The next step was to test these asperigimycins against human cancer cells. In some cases, they stopped the growth of cancer cells, suggesting that asperigimycins could one day become a new treatment for certain types of cancer.
The team also worked out how these chemicals get inside cancer cells. This discovery is significant because many chemicals, like asperigimycins, have medicinal properties but struggle to enter cells in large enough quantities to be useful. Knowing that particular fats (lipids) can enhance this process gives scientists a new tool for drug development.
Further experiments revealed that asperigimycins probably disrupt the process of cell division in cancer cells. Cancer cells divide uncontrollably, and these compounds appear to block the formation of microtubules, the scaffolding inside cells that are essential for cell division.
Tremendous untapped potential
This disruption is specific to certain types of cells, so this may in turn reduce the risk of side-effects. But the discovery of asperigimycins is just the beginning. The researchers also identified similar clusters of genes in other fungi, suggesting that many more fungal RiPPs remain to be discovered.
Almost all the fungal RiPPs found so far have strong biological activity, making this an area with tremendous untapped potential. The next step is to test asperigimycins in other systems and models, with the hope of eventually moving to human clinical trials. If successful, these molecules could join the ranks of other fungal-derived medicines, such as penicillin, which revolutionised modern medicine.
The story of Aspergillus flavus is a powerful example of how nature can be both a source of danger and a wellspring of healing. For centuries, this fungus was feared as a silent killer lurking in ancient tombs, responsible for mysterious deaths and the legend of the pharaoh’s curse. Today, scientists are turning that fear into hope, harnessing the same deadly spores to create life-saving medicines.
This transformation, from curse to cure, highlights the importance of continued exploration and innovation in the natural world. Nature has in fact provided us with an incredible pharmacy, filled with compounds that can heal as well as harm. It is up to scientists and engineers to uncover these secrets, using the latest technologies to identify, modify and test new molecules for their potential to treat disease.
The discovery of asperigimycins is a reminder that even the most unlikely sources – such as a toxic tomb fungus – can hold the key to revolutionary new treatments. As researchers continue to explore the hidden world of fungi, who knows what other medical breakthroughs may lie just beneath the surface?
Justin Stebbing 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.
At some point between conception and early childhood, pain makes its debut. But when exactly that happens remains one of medicine’s most challenging questions.
Some have claimed that foetuses as young as twelve weeks can already be seen wincing in agony, while others have flat-out denied that even infants show any true signs of pain until long after birth.
New research from University College London offers fresh insights into this puzzle. By mapping the development of pain-processing networks in the brain – what researchers call the “pain connectome” – scientists have begun to trace exactly when and how our capacity for pain emerges. What they discovered challenges simple answers about when pain “begins”.
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The researchers used advanced brain imaging to compare the neural networks of foetuses and infants with those of adults, tracking how different components of pain processing mature over time. Until about 32 weeks after conception, all pain-related brain networks remain significantly underdeveloped compared with adult brains. But then development accelerates dramatically.
The sensory aspects of pain – the basic detection of harmful stimuli – mature first, becoming functional around 34 to 36 weeks of pregnancy. The emotional components that make pain distressing follow shortly after, developing between 36 and 38 weeks. However, the cognitive centres responsible for consciously interpreting and evaluating pain lag far behind, and remain largely immature by the time of birth, about 40 weeks after conception.
This staged development suggests that while late-term foetuses and newborns can detect and respond to harmful stimuli, they probably experience pain very differently from older children and adults. Most significantly, newborns probably can’t consciously evaluate their pain – they can’t form the thought: “This hurts and it’s bad!”
These findings represent the latest chapter in a long-running scientific debate that has swung dramatically over the centuries, often with profound consequences for medical practice.
For most physiologists in the 18th and 19th centuries, the perceived delicacy of the infant’s body meant that it must be exquisitely sensitive to pain, so much so that some have had their doubts if infants ever felt anything else. Birth, in particular, was imagined to be an extremely painful event for a newborn.
However, advances in embryology during the 1870s reversed this thinking. As scientists discovered that infant brains and nervous systems were far less developed than adult versions, many began questioning whether babies could truly feel pain at all. If the neural machinery wasn’t fully formed, how could genuine pain experiences exist?
This scepticism had troubling practical consequences. For nearly a century, many doctors performed surgery on infants without anaesthesia, convinced that their patients were essentially immune to suffering. The practice continued well into the 1980s in some medical centres.
Towards the end of the 20th century, public outrage about the medical treatment of infants and new scientific results turned the tables yet again. It was found that newborns exhibited many of the signs (neurological, physiological and behavioural) of pain after all, and that, if anything, pain in infants had probably been underestimated.
The ambiguous brain
The reason why there has been endless disagreement about infant pain is that we cannot access their experiences directly.
Sure, we can observe their behaviour and study their brains, but these are not the same thing. Pain is an experience, something that’s felt in the privacy of a person’s own mind, and that’s inaccessible to anyone but the person whose pain it is.
Of course, pain experiences are typically accompanied by telltale signs: be it the retraction of a body part from a sharp object or the increased activity of certain brain regions. Those we can measure. But the trouble is that no one behaviour or brain event is ever unambiguous.
The fact that an infant pulls back their hand from a pin prick may mean that it experiences the pricking as painful, but it may also just be an unconscious reflex. Similarly, the fact that the brain is simultaneously showing pain-related activity may be a sign of pain, but it may also be that the processing unfolds entirely unconsciously. We simply don’t know.
Perhaps the infant knows. But even if they do, they can’t tell us about their experiences yet, and until they can, scientists are left guessing. Fortunately, their guesses are becoming increasingly well informed, but for now, that is all they can be – guesses.
What would it take to get certainty? Well, it would require an explanation that connects our brains and behaviour to our conscious experiences. But so far, no scientifically respectable explanation of this kind has been forthcoming.
Laurenz Casser receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rosa Busquets, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy and Chemistry, Kingston University
Thirst: In Search of Freshwater, an exhibition at Wellcome Collection.Benjamin Gilbert., CC BY-NC-ND
A new exhibition in London (open until February 2026) called Thirst: In search of freshwater highlights how civilisations have treasured – and been intrinsically linked to – safe, clean water.
Synthetic toxic chemicals are introduced into the environment from the products we make, use and dispose of. This wasn’t a problem centuries ago, where we had a totally different manufacturing industry and technologies.
Some, such as PFAS from stain-resistant textiles or nonstick materials such as cookware, can be particularly difficult to remove from wastewater. PFAS don’t degrade easily, they resist conventional heat treatments and can easily pass through wastewater treatments, so they contaminate rivers or lakes that are sources of our drinking water.
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Testing for pollutants is even more critical in developing nations that lack sanitation and face drought or flooding.
Having to protect and conserve drinking water and its sources is as relevant today as it always has been.
For this exhibition, curator at the Wellcome Collection in London, Janice Li, has selected 125 historical objects, photographs and feats of engineering that link to drought, rain, glaciers, rivers and lakes. These three artefacts from Thirst illustrate how our relationship with water contamination has evolved:
1. Ancient water filters
Made from natural materials such as clay, water jug filters have been used for hundreds of years in every continent by ancient civilisations. They show that purifying water for drinking was commonplace. The sand and soil particles that naturally get suspended in water and removed by these filters would have carried microbes.
Water jug filters with Arabic inscription, found in Egypt, dating back to 900-1,200. Victoria and Albert Museum London/Wellcome Collection, CC BY-NC-ND
But in ancient times, pharmaceuticals and other drugs, pesticides, forever chemicals and microplastics would not have been a problem. Those filters could work relatively well despite being made of simple materials with wide pores.
Today, those ancient filters would no longer be effective. Modern water filters are made using more advanced materials which typically have small pores (called micropores and mesopores). For example, filters often include activated carbon (a highly porous type of carbon that can be manufactured to capture contaminants) or membranes that filter water. Only then is it safe for people to drink.
Lead water pipes (known as fistulae) were useful parts of a relatively advanced plumbing system that distributed drinking water throughout Roman cities. They are still common in water systems in our cities today. In the US, there are about 9.2 million lead service lines in use. Exposure to lead causes severe humanhealth problems. Lead exposure, not necessarily from drinking water only, was attributed to more than 1.5 million deaths in 2021.
A Roman lead water pipe that dates back to 1-300CE. Courtesy of Wellcome Collection/Science Museum Group., CC BY-NC-ND
It’s now understood that lead is neurotoxic and it can diffuse or spread from the pipes to drinking water. Lead from paints and batteries, including car batteries, can also contaminate drinking water.
To protect us from lead leaching or flaking off from pipes, some government agencies are calling for the replacement of lead pipes with copper or plastic pipes. Water companies routinely add phosphates (mined powder that contains phosphorus) to drinking water to help capture potential lead contamination and make it safe to drink.
3. The horror of unhealthy water
One caricature titled The Monster Soup by artist William Heath (1828) is part of the Wellcome Trust’s permanent collection. The graphics read “microcosms dedicated to the London Water companies” and “Monster soup, commonly called Thames Water being a correct representation of the precious stuff doled out to us”. The cartoon shows a lady so terrified at the sight of microbes in river water from the Thames that she drops her cup of tea.
Monster Soup by William Heath. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection., CC BY-NC-ND
By 2030, 2 billion people will still not have safely managed drinking water and 1.2 billion will lack basic hygiene services. Drinking water will still be contaminated by bacteria such as E. coli and other dangerous pathogens that cause waterborne diseases. So advancing technologies to filter out contamination will be just as crucial in the future as it has been in the past.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Rosa Busquets receives funding from UKRI/ EU Horizons MSCA Staff exchanges Clean Water project 101131182, DASA, project ACC6093561. She is affiliated with Kingston University, UCL, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, UNEP EEAP.
There is a strange and worrying parallel between the breakneck speed at which Donald Trump has operated in the first few months of his presidency and the ever-accelerating pace at which information moves on social media platforms. Where in his first term he used Twitter, now, the 47th US president is using his own platform, TruthSocial, to announce changes of direction that are sometimes so fundamental that they change decades of US policy.
Social media has become a key tool of governing for Trump’s administration. He uses it both to make announcements and to drum up support for those announcements. His social media posts can move the markets and make or break careers. They can even, it seems, stop wars.
So when he used TruthSocial to announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on June 23, giving the two countries a deadline to stop firing missiles, it appears that neither of the antagonists were fully aware of the situation, given they carried on attacking each other. So an all-caps message followed: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” he posted. “BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” – adding, just in case anyone had any doubt he was serious: “DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”
Trump’s use of his TruthSocial platform began as he sought to re-establish himself from the political wilderness after the insurrection of January 6 2021. It has now become a tool of his extreme power and his willingness to use (and abuse) it – globally as well as domestically.
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FDR’s “fireside chats”, broadcast on the radio throughout the US in the 1930s, reached an estimated 80% of the population, showing he understood the key media principle of reach. Roosevelt would address his listeners as “my friends” and Americans came to understand them as seemingly intimate conversations with their president.
FDR dominated the airwaves at a time when many Americans hardly understood the important role that the federal government played in their own lives – and millions of households were only just getting mains electricity (thanks to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936). But radios were becoming a common mass medium and FDR perfectly understood how to use it. If you listen to the fireside chats, FDR may sound patrician – and at times formal – but his tone is also friendly, thoughtful and reassuring.
In Germany at around the same time, Adolf Hitler’s massive stadium speeches were very effective for people who were in the stadium and being lifted by the intensity of the crowd and all the carefully thought out visual cues. But when broadcast on radio, Hitler had nothing like Roosevelt’s ability to connect with people on a personal level.
Roosevelt was hardly the first leader – or even the first US president – to speak on the radio. But he was the first to master the medium. He figured out how to use its potential to deliver a key implicit message: that his government should and did take on a central role in people’s lives.
Equally, John F. Kennedy can be said to have “discovered” political television. Not just as a medium for political campaigns, debates and speeches – but also for putting across to a mass audience his role as the embodiment of American decency, beauty and masculinity: JFK’s White House as Camelot.
JFK was considered a master of the fast-growing medium of television.
Both Roosevelt and Kennedy were in several ways physically disabled and lived with chronic illness, yet through the “new medium” of their time were able to project an image of quintessentially American strength and trustworthiness. In part this was their own doing – but it’s also a testament to the power of the media they used for their time.
Mastering the medium
These possibilities of a medium used to its best advantage – for example, to be heard around the US, but still to project a sense of intimacy – have become known as the “affordances” of a medium. The medium afforded Roosevelt space to be authentic without showing his disability. Kennedy appeared young, fit and handsome – even when dependent on painkillers.
When a new medium is introduced, people start to play around with its affordances – and this applies to politicians too. Political leaders who develop a special aptitude for using the new medium to emphasise their unique style can become particularly successful, as has Donald Trump with his use of social media.
The US president rose to power helped by his adept use of many of Twitter’s attributes – the imposed brevity of his messages, the ease of retweeting, the tendency for other users to “pile on” (and the user anonymity, which tends to encourage pile-ons) to polarise American public debate.
Trump was forced off Twitter after the Capitol Hill insurrection of January 6 2021. So he came back with his own platform, TruthSocial, where he can also make the rules. And now he uses the platform to make foreign policy, trumpeting his positions (which can change with bewildering speed) on TruthSocial well before they can be announced by the White House press team, which often has to scramble to catch up.
When Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan penned his famous phrase: “The medium is the message” in his groundbreaking 1964 study, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, he meant to say that media form and content are not as distinct from one another as one might think and that the form of a medium of communication can shape society as much as its content. In Donald Trump’s use of social media, we are seeing this idea at work.
Sara Polak 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.
Shopping for clothes online is a risky business. How do you know if that top will be a good fit, or those shoes will definitely be the right colour? One popular solution to this predicament is to order lots of tops and lots of shoes, try them on at home, and send back all the ones you don’t want – often at no cost.
But that tactic can be expensive for the fashion retailer, which needs to pay for all those deliveries and returns. And now Asos, which sends millions of shipments every month, has started banning some customers for over-returning items – prompting something of a backlash.
The response by the retail giant, which says it wants to maintain a “commitment to offering free returns to all customers across all core markets”, also raises questions about the sustainability of the online fashion business model which Asos helped to create.
Many online retailers rely on the emotional highs of shopping. The excitement of placing an order, the anticipation of delivery, and the dopamine hit of unpacking a purchase is central to its popular customer experience.
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Online shopping generally has thrived on impulsive buying, with the option of returning items treated as a normal part of the process. Of course, even in the days before online shopping there would be customers who routinely returned items.
But by digitising and simplifying the process, the likes of Asos have helped this to happen on a massive scale. Shoppers have become completely used to ordering multiple sizes or styles with the express intention of returning most of the items they receive. Their homes effectively become fitting rooms.
And those customers could reasonably argue that online retailers often use digital strategies which encourage multi-item purchases.
Some sites remind shoppers of recently viewed products and provide suggestions of similar items, for example. There may be are prompts and nudges towards clothes which are frequently bought together.
Items are then sometimes temporarily reserved in a shopper’s basket for 60 minutes, creating a sense of urgency. Targeted emails and limited time offers drive bulging shopping baskets, encouraging more risk purchases and returns.
Yet returned items carry a significant cost. They may be unfit for resale and ultimately disposed of, which beyond the financial burden, has an environmental price.
In addition to creating landfill, each delivery and return has a carbon footprint. And although many younger consumers express support for sustainable practices, their buying behaviour continues to prioritise price and convenience.
But free returns have become part of the online fashion industry landscape. Research suggests that customers are simply more likely to buy something if returns are free.
And today’s tricky financial climate, marked by inflation and rising living costs will surely have made consumers even more cautious. Many will be reluctant to buy items that incur delivery and return costs.
Shopping around
Frustrations can then arise from unclear return policies, often buried in lengthy terms and conditions documents. Some of those banned by Asos say they were confused about the rules.
Automated customer service systems offering generic responses may then leave shoppers with no clear way to challenge these decisions.
Perhaps the wider issue here is that online shopping cannot fully replicate the benefits of shopping in store. In physical shops, customers can try on items before deciding.
But online, this can’t happen, so returns become fundamental to the decision-making process. For cost-conscious shoppers, avoiding unnecessary spending is essential. But if returns policies become harder to access, they may turn to other retailers which offer more certainty.
For example, retailers such as Zara and H&M, with a business model which mixes online convenience with a high street (or shopping mall) presence, offer the option to order online and then return in person.
This hybrid (or “omni-channel”) model appears to be driving consumers to physical shops for a blended experience which provides convenience and helps reduce return costs.
For Asos, doing something similar would require major investment (in bricks and mortar) and increased operational costs – so is perhaps an unlikely solution for the company.
But to balance sustainability, cost and customer satisfaction, Asos could explore other options. These might include clearer, more visible communication regarding “fair use” policies and their consequences. It could aim for more human interactions and better dialogue with customers it plans to ban.
Offering physical retail locations or return collection points to simplify the process and reduce the environmental impact and costs will provide customer flexibility. Overall, these areas will help create a better customer service experience.
Ultimately, Asos and other similar online clothing retailers must evolve. With changing consumer expectations, a challenging economic climate and rising operational costs, the model that defined these retailers’ early success cannot remain unchanged.
If they make adjustments, they may emerge stronger. If they do not, they risk sparking a customer exodus that would be hard to reverse.
Nic Sanders 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.
Can a monkey, a pigeon or a fish reason like a person? It’s a question scientists have been testing in increasingly creative ways – and what we’ve found so far paints a more complicated picture than you’d think.
Imagine you’re filling out a March Madness bracket. You hear that Team A beat Team B, and Team B beat Team C – so you assume Team A is probably better than Team C. That’s a kind of logical reasoning known as transitive inference. It’s so automatic that you barely notice you’re doing it.
It turns out humans are not the only ones who can make these kinds of mental leaps. In labs around the world, researchers have tested many animals, from primates to birds to insects, on tasks designed to probe transitive inference, and most pass with flying colors.
As a scientist focused on animal learning and behavior, I work with pigeons to understand how they make sense of relationships, patterns and rules. In other words, I study the minds of animals that will never fill out a March Madness bracket – but might still be able to guess the winner.
Logic test without words
The basic idea is simple: If an animal learns that A is better than B, and B is better than C, can it figure out that A is better than C – even though it’s never seen A and C together?
In the lab, researchers test this by giving animals randomly paired images, one pair at a time, and rewarding them with food for picking the correct one. For example, animals learn that a photo of hands (A) is correct when paired with a classroom (B), a classroom (B) is correct when paired with bushes (C), bushes (C) are correct when paired with a highway (D), and a highway (D) is correct when paired with a sunset (E). We don’t know whether they “understand” what’s in the picture, and it is not particularly important for the experiment that they do.
In a transitive inference task, subjects learn a series of rewarded pairs – such as A+ vs. B–, B+ vs. C– – and are later tested on novel pairings, like B vs. D, to see whether they infer an overall ranking. Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND
One possible explanation is that the animals that learn all the tasks create a mental ranking of these images: A > B > C > D > E. We test this idea by giving them new pairs they’ve never seen before, such as classroom (B) vs. highway (D). If they consistently pick the higher-ranked item, they’ve inferred the underlying order.
What’s fascinating is how many species succeed at this task. Monkeys, rats, pigeons – even fish and wasps – have all demonstrated transitive inference in one form or another.
The twist: Not all tasks are easy
But not all types of reasoning come so easily. There’s another kind of rule called transitivity that is different from transitive inference, despite the similar name. Instead of asking which picture is better, transitivity is about equivalence.
In this task, animals are shown a set of three pictures and asked which one goes with the center image. For example, if white triangle (A1) is shown, choosing red square (B1) earns a reward, while choosing blue square (B2) does not. Later, when red square (B1) is shown, choosing white cross (C1) earns a reward while choosing white circle (C2) does not. Now comes the test: white triangle (A1) is shown with white cross (C1) and white circle (C2) as choices. If they pick white cross (C1), then they’ve demonstrated transitivity.
In a transitivity task, subjects learn matching rules across overlapping sets – such as A1 matches B1, B1 matches C1 – and are tested on new combinations, such as A1 with C1 or C2, to assess whether they infer the relationship between A1 and C1. Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND
The change may seem small, but species that succeed in those first transitive inference tasks often stumble in this task. In fact, they tend to treat the white triangle and the white cross as completely separate things, despite their common relationship with the red square. In my recently published review of research using the two tasks, I concluded that more evidence is needed to determine whether these tests tap into the same cognitive ability.
Small differences, big consequences
Why does the difference between transitive inference and transitivity matter? At first glance, they may seem like two versions of the same ability – logical reasoning. But when animals succeed at one and struggle with the other, it raises an important question: Are these tasks measuring the same kind of thinking?
The apparent difference between the two tasks isn’t just a quirk of animal behavior. Psychology researchers apply these tasks to humans in order to draw conclusions about how people reason.
For example, say you’re trying to pick a new almond milk. You know that Brand A is creamier than Brand B, and your friend told you that Brand C is even waterier than Brand B. Based on that, because you like a thicker milk, you might assume Brand A is better than Brand C, an example of transitive inference.
But now imagine the store labels both Brand A and Brand C as “barista blends.” Even without tasting them, you might treat them as functionally equivalent, because they belong to the same category. That’s more like transitivity, where items are grouped based on shared relationships. In this case, “barista blend” signals the brands share similar quality.
Researchers often treat these types of reasoning as measuring the same ability. But if they rely on different mental processes, they might not be interchangeable. In other words, the way scientists ask their questions may shape the answer – and that has big implications for how they interpret success in animals and in people.
This difference could affect how researchers interpret decision-making not only in the lab, but also in everyday choices and in clinical settings. Tasks like these are sometimes used in research on autism, brain injury or age-related cognitive decline.
If two tasks look similar on the surface, then choosing the wrong one might lead to inaccurate conclusions about someone’s cognitive abilities. That’s why ongoing work in my lab is exploring whether the same distinction between these logical processes holds true for people.
Just like a March Madness bracket doesn’t always predict the winner, a reasoning task doesn’t always show how someone got to the right answer. That’s the puzzle researchers are still working on – figuring out whether different tasks really tap into the same kind of thinking or just look like they do. It’s what keeps scientists like me in the lab, asking questions, running experiments and trying to understand what it really means to reason – no matter who’s doing the thinking.
Olga Lazareva 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.
With burgers sizzling and classic rock thumping, many Americans revel in summer cookouts – at least until that wayward cousin asks for a “pop” in soda country, or even worse, a “coke” when they actually want a Sprite.
Few American linguistic debates have bubbled quite as long and effervescently as the one over whether a generic soft drink should be called a soda, pop or coke.
The word you use generally boils down to where you’re from: Midwesterners enjoy a good pop, while soda is tops in the North and far West. Southerners, long the cultural mavericks, don’t bat an eyelash asking for coke – lowercase – before homing in on exactly the type they want: Perhaps a root beer or a Coke, uppercase.
As a linguist who studies American dialects, I’m less interested in this regional divide and far more fascinated by the unexpected history behind how a fizzy “health” drink from the early 1800s spawned the modern soft drink’s many names and iterations.
The process of carbonating water was first discovered in the late 1700s. By the early 1800s, this carbonated water had become popular as a health drink and was often referred to as “soda water.” The word “soda” likely came from “sodium,” since these drinks often contained salts, which were then believed to have healing properties.
Given its alleged curative effects for health issues such as indigestion, pharmacists sold soda water at soda fountains, innovative devices that created carbonated water to be sold by the glass. A chemistry professor, Benjamin Stillman, set up the first such device in a drugstore in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1806. Its eventual success inspired a boom of soda fountains in drugstores and health spas.
These flavored, sweetened versions gave rise to the linking of the word “soda” with a sweetened carbonated beverage, as opposed to simple, carbonated water.
Seltzer – today’s popular term for such sparkling water – was around, too. But it was used only for the naturally carbonated mineral water from the German town Nieder-Selters. Unlike Perrier, sourced similarly from a specific spring in France, seltzer made the leap to becoming a generic term for fizzy water.
So how did “soda” come to be called so many different things in different places?
It all stems from a mix of economic enterprise and linguistic ingenuity.
The popularity of “soda” in the Northeast likely reflects the soda fountain’s longer history in the region. Since a lot of Americans living in the Northeast migrated to California in the mid-to-late 1800s, the name likely traveled west with them.
As for the Midwestern preference for “pop” – well, the earliest American use of the term to refer to a sparkling beverage appeared in the 1840s in the name of a flavored version called “ginger pop.” Such ginger-flavored pop, though, was around in Britain by 1816, since a Newcastle songbook is where you can first see it used in text. The “pop” seems to be onomatopoeic for the noise made when the cork was released from the bottle before drinking.
A jingle for Faygo touts the company’s ‘red pop.’
Linguists don’t fully know why “pop” became so popular in the Midwest. But one theory links it to a Michigan bottling company, Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works – today known as Faygo Beverages – that used “pop” in the name of the sodas they marketed and sold. Another theory suggests that because bottles were more common in the region, soda drinkers were more likely to hear the “pop” sound than in the Northeast, where soda fountains reigned.
As for using coke generically, the first Coca-Cola was served in 1886 by Dr. John Pemberton, a pharmacist at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta and the founder of the company. In the 1900s, the Coca-Cola company tried to stamp out the use of “Coke” for “Coca-Cola.” But that ship had already sailed. Since Coca-Cola originated and was overwhelmingly popular in the South, its generic use grew out of the fact that people almost always asked for “Coke.”
Due to the growing popularity of soda water concoctions, eventually “soft drink” came to mean only such sweetened carbonated beverages, a linguistic testament to America’s enduring love affair with sugar and bubbles.
With the average American guzzling almost 40 gallons per year, you can call it whatever you what. Just don’t call it healthy.
Valerie M. Fridland 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton
The parents who brought the case had requested that their children be excused when books with LGBTQ+ characters were used in class.SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images
The Supreme Court tends to save its blockbuster orders for the last day of the term – and 2025 was no exception.
Among the important decisions handed down June 27, 2025, was Mahmoud v. Taylor – a case of particular interest to me, because I teach education law. Mahmoud, I believe, may become one of the court’s most consequential rulings on parental rights.
An interfaith coalition of Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Catholic parents in Montgomery County, Maryland – including Tamer Mahmoud, for whom the case is named – questioned the school board’s refusal to allow them to opt their young children out of lessons using picture books with LGBTQ+ characters. Ruling in favor of the parents, the court found that the board violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion by requiring their children to sit through lessons with materials inconsistent with their faiths.
Case history
The parents in Mahmoud challenged the use of certain storybooks that the board had approved for use in preschool and elementary school. “Pride Puppy!” for example – a book the schools later removed – portrays a family whose pet gets lost at a LGBTQ+ Pride parade, with each page devoted to a letter of the alphabet. The book’s “search and find” list of words directs readers to look for terms in the pictures, including “(drag) queen” and “king,” “leather” and “lip ring.” Other materials included stories about same-sex marriage, a transgender child, and nonbinary bathroom signs.
Initially, school administrators agreed to allow opt-outs for students whose parents objected to the materials. A day later, however, educators changed their minds. School officials cited concerns about absenteeism, the feasibility of accommodating opt-out requests, and a desire to avoid stigmatizing LGBTQ+ students or families.
In August 2023, a federal trial court rejected the parents’ claim that officials had violated their fundamental due process right to direct the care, custody and education of their children. The following year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed in favor of the board, finding that officials did not violate the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religious beliefs, as protected by the First Amendment.
On appeal, a 6-3 Supreme Court reversed in favor of the parents. Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the court’s opinion, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, plus Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Supreme Court
In brief, the court held that by denying the parental requests to opt their children out of instruction inconsistent with their beliefs, school officials violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.
Alito largely grounded the court’s rationale in a dispute from 1925, Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary, and even more heavily on 1972’s Wisconsin v. Yoder. Both cases recognize the primacy of parental rights to direct the education of their children. According to Pierce’s famous dictum, “the child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
In Yoder, Amish parents – an Anabaptist Christian community that avoids using many modern technologies – objected to sending their children to school after eighth grade because this would have violated their religious beliefs. The justices unanimously agreed with the parents that their children received all of the education they needed in their communities. The justices added that requiring the children to attend high school would have violated the parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing.
Accordingly, the court acknowledged that the parental right “to guide the religious future and education of their children” was “established beyond debate.”
Similarly, in Mahmoud the court declared that “the Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion.”
Thomas agreed fully with the court, yet wrote a separate concurrence, which emphasized “an important implication of this decision for schools across the country.” Citing Yoder, Thomas contended that rather than support inclusion, the board’s policy “imposes conformity with a view that undermines parents’ religious beliefs, and thus interferes with the parents’ right to ‘direct the religious upbringing of their children.’”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, feared “the result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools. Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools.”
Supporters of LGBTQ+ rights demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor on April 22, 2025. Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images
She maintained that “simply being exposed to beliefs contrary to your own” does not violate a person’s free exercise rights. Insulating children from different ideas, she wrote, denies them of an experience that is crucial for democracy: “practice living in our multicultural society.”
Implications
After the decision was handed down, Montgomery County’s Board of Education issued a statement promising to “analyze the Supreme Court decision and develop next steps in alignment with today’s decision, and as importantly, our values.”
Mahmoud raises challenging questions about the scope or reach of how far parents can question curricular content.
On the one hand, parents should not be able to micromanage curricular content via the “heckler’s veto,” because this can lead to larger issues. Moreover, while Mahmoud concerns religious rights, what happens if parents question teachings based on another type of sincerely held belief – discussing war if they are pacifist, for example, or capitalism if they are socialists? While Mahmoud dealt with free-exercise rights, it may open the door to other types of First Amendment challenges from parents wishing to exempt their children from lessons.
On the other hand, Mahmoud highlights the need to take legitimate parental concerns into consideration. While educators typically control instruction, how can they be respectful of parents’ rights as primary caregivers of their children when conflicts arise?
Mahmoud may go a long way in defining parents’ free-exercise rights in public schools. Still, such disputes are likely far from over in America’s increasingly diverse religious culture.
Charles J. Russo 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mike Shriberg, Professor of Practice & Engagement, School for Environment & Sustainability, University of Michigan
Invasive Asian carp are spreading up the Mississippi River system and already clog the Illinois River.AP Photo/John Flesher
In his second term, President Donald Trump has not taken many actions that draw near-universal praise from across the political spectrum. But there is at least one of these political anomalies, and it illustrates the broad appeal of environmental protection and conservation projects – particularly when it concerns an ecosystem of vital importance to millions of Americans.
In May 2025, Trump issued a presidential memorandum supporting the construction of a physical barrier that is key to keeping invasive carp out of the Great Lakes. These fish have made their way up the Mississippi River system and could have dire ecological consequences if they enter the Great Lakes.
It was not a given that Trump would back this project, which had long been supported by environmental and conservation organizations. But two very different strategies from two Democratic governors – both potential presidential candidates in 2028 – reflected the importance of the Great Lakes to America.
Perhaps nothing alarms Great Lakes ecologists more than the potential for invasive carp from Asia to establish a breeding population in the Great Lakes. These fish were intentionally introduced in the U.S. Southeast by private fish farm and wastewater treatment operators as a means to control algae in aquaculture and sewage treatment ponds. Sometime in the 1990s, the fish escaped from those ponds and moved rapidly up the Mississippi River system, including into the Illinois River, which connects to the Great Lakes.
Invasive carp are generally not eaten in the U.S. and are not desirable for sportfishing. In fact, silver carp have a propensity to jump up to 10 feet out of the water when startled by a boat motor. That can make parts of the Illinois River, which is packed with the invasive fish, almost impossible to fish or even maneuver a boat.
Look out! Silver carp fly out of the water, obstructing boats and hitting people trying to enjoy a river in Indiana.
The Brandon Road Lock and Dam solution
Originally, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River were not connected to each other. But in 1900, the city of Chicago connected them to avoid sending its sewage into Lake Michigan, from which the city draws its drinking water.
The most complete way to block the carp from invading the Great Lakes would be to undo that connection – but that would recreate sewage and flooding issues for Chicago, or require other expensive infrastructure upgrades. The more practical, short-term alternative is to modify the historic Brandon Road Lock and Dam in Joliet, Illinois, by adding several obstacles that together would block the carp from swimming farther upriver toward the Great Lakes.
The barrier, estimated to cost US$1.15 billion, was authorized by Congress in 2020 and 2022 after many years of intense planning and negotiations. For the first phase of construction, the project received $226 million in federal money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to complement $114 million in state funding – $64 million from Michigan and $50 million from Illinois.
On the first day of Trump’s second term, however, he paused a wide swath of federal funding, including funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And that’s when two different political strategies emerged.
A brief documentary explains the construction of a connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basin.
Trump’s support for the project was a rare moment of political unity and an extremely unusual example of leading Democrats being on the same page as Trump. I attribute this surprising outcome to two key factors.
First, the Great Lakes region holds disproportionate power in presidential elections. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have backed the eventual winner in every presidential race for the past 20 years. This swing state power has been used by advocates and state political leaders to drive funding for Great Lakes protection for many years.
Second, Great Lakes are the uniting force in the region. According to polling from the International Joint Commission, the binational body charged with overseeing waterways that cross the U.S.-Canada border, there is “nearly unanimous support (96%) for the importance of government investment in Great Lakes protections” from residents of the region.
And perhaps the governors have identified a new area for unity in a divided United States: Conservation and environmental issues have broad public support, particularly when they involve iconic natural resources, shared values and popular outdoor pursuits such as fishing and boating. Even when political strategies diverge, the results can bring bipartisan satisfaction.
Mike Shriberg was previously the Great Lakes Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation, which entailed being a co-chair (and, for part of the time, Director) of the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition.
The 1925 Scopes trial, in which a Dayton, Tennessee, teacher was charged with violating state law by teaching biological evolution, was one of the earliest and most iconic conflicts in America’s ongoing culture war.
Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” published in 1859, and subsequent scientific research made the case that humans and other animals evolved from earlier species over millions of years. Many late-19th-century American Protestants had little problem accommodating Darwin’s ideas – which became mainstream biology – with their religious commitments.
But that was not the case with all Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, who held that the Bible is inerrant – without error – and factually accurate in all that it has to say, including when it speaks on history and science.
One hundred years after the trial, and as we have documented in our scholarly work, the culture war over evolution and creationism remains strong – and yet, when it comes to creationism, much has also changed.
Holding to biblical inerrancy, these “fundamentalists” believed in the creation account detailed in chapter 1 of Genesis, in which God brought all life into being in six days. But most of these fundamentalists also accepted mainstream geology, which held that the Earth was millions of years old. Squaring a literal understanding of Genesis with an old Earth, they embraced either the “day-age theory” – that each Genesis day was actually a long period of time – or the “gap theory,” in which there was a huge gap of time before the six 24-hour days of creation.
This nascent fundamentalist movement initiated a campaign to pressure state legislatures to prohibit public schools from teaching evolution. One of these states was Tennessee, which in 1925 passed the Butler Act. This law made it illegal for public schoolteachers “to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
The American Civil Liberties Union persuaded John Thomas Scopes, a young science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, to challenge the law in court. The WCFA sprang into action, successfully persuading William Jennings Bryan – populist politician and outspoken fundamentalist – to assist the prosecution. In response, the ACLU hired famous attorney Clarence Darrow to serve on the defense team.
Inside the courtroom, the trial became a verbal duel between Bryan and Darrow regarding science and religion. But as the judge narrowed the proceedings to whether or not Scopes violated the law – a point that the defense readily admitted – it seemed clear that Scopes would be found guilty. Many of the reporters thus went home.
But the trial’s most memorable episode was yet to come. On July 20, Darrow successfully provoked Bryan to take the witness stand as a Bible expert. Due to the huge crowd and suffocating heat, the judge moved the trial outdoors.
The 3,000 or so spectators witnessed Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan, which was primarily intended to make Bryan and fundamentalism appear foolish and ignorant. Most significant, Darrow’s questions revealed that, despite Bryan’s’ assertion that he read the Bible literally, Bryan actually understood the six days of Genesis not as 24-hour days, but as six long and indeterminate periods of time.
American lawyer and politician William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn. Hulton Archive/Getty Image
The very next day, the jury found Scopes guilty and fined him US$100. Riley and the fundamentalists cheered the verdict as a triumph for the Bible and morality.
The fundamentalists and ‘The Genesis Flood’
But very soon that sense of triumph faded, partly because of news stories that portrayed fundamentalists as ignorant rural bigots. In one such example, a prominent journalist, H. L. Mencken, wrote in a Baltimore Sun column that the Scopes trial “serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land.”
The media ridicule encouraged many scholars and journalists to conclude that creationism and fundamentalism would soon disappear from American culture. But that prediction did not come to pass.
Instead, fundamentalists, including WCFA leader Riley, seemed all the more determined to redouble their efforts at the grassroots level.
But as Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan made obvious, it was not easy to square a literal reading of the Bible – including the six-day creation outlined in Genesis – with a scientific belief in an old Earth. What fundamentalists needed was a science that supported the idea of a young Earth.
“The Genesis Flood” and its version of flood geology remains ubiquitous among fundamentalists and other conservative Protestants.
Young Earth creationism
Today, opinion polls reveal that roughly one-quarter of all Americans are adherents of this newer strand of creationism, which rejects both mainstream geology as well as mainstream biology.
AiG’s tourist sites – the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky – have attracted millions of visitors since their opening in 2007 and 2016. Additional AiG sites are planned for Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Presented as a replica of Noah’s Ark, the Ark Encounter is a gigantic structure – 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, 51 feet high. It includes representations of animal cages as well as plush living quarters for the eight human beings who, according to Genesis chapters 6-8, survived the global flood. Hundreds of placards in the Ark make the case for a young Earth and a global flood that created the geological strata and formations we see today.
Besides AiG tourist sites, there is also an ever-expanding network of fundamentalist schools and homeschools that present young Earth creationism as true science. These schools use textbooks from publishers such as Abeka Books, Accelerated Christian Education and Bob Jones University Press.
The Scopes trial involved what could and could not be taught in public schools regarding creation and evolution. Today, this discussion also involves private schools, given that there are now at least 15 states that have universal private school choice programs, in which families can use taxpayer-funded education money to pay for private schooling and homeschooling.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
“Bill Moyers? He’s spectacular!” George Clooney said – and no wonder.
I mentioned this legendary television journalist to the actor and filmmaker after Clooney emerged from the Broadway theater where he just had been portraying another news icon: Edward R. Murrow. Or as the Museum of Broadcast Communications put it in a tribute to Moyers, he was “one of the few broadcast journalists who might be said to approach the stature of Edward R. Murrow. If Murrow founded broadcast journalism, Moyers significantly extended its traditions.”
Moyers, who died at 91 on June 26, 2025, was among the most acclaimed broadcast journalists of the 20th century. He’s known for TV news shows that exposed the role of big money in politics and episodes that drew attention to unsung defenders of democracy, such as community organizer Ernesto Cortés Jr..
Despite his prominence, Moyers was the same down-to-earth guy in person as he seemed to be on the screen. In 1986, he was commanding a television audience of millions, and I was a historian at home with a preschooler, teaching the occasional college course in a dismal job market. Seeing that Moyers would be speaking at the conference on President Lyndon B. Johnson where I would be giving a paper, I wrote to him.
To my utter amazement, he replied and then showed up to hear my paper, on Johnson’s experiences as a young principal of the “Mexican” school in Cotulla, Texas, where he championed his students but also forged links to segregationists. Cotulla was “seminal” to LBJ’s development, Moyers said. In 1993, he recommended me for a grant that helped me finish a book: “LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power.
A few years later, he asked me to head up a project researching the documents related to his time in Johnson’s administration. His memoir of the Johnson years never materialized. Instead, I edited the bestselling ”Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times.“
Part of what always impressed me about Moyers was his belief that what matters is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality.
‘Amazing Grace’
Moyers didn’t just dwell on politics and policy as a journalist. He also delved into the meaning of creativity and the life of the mind. Many of his most moving interviews spotlighted scientists, novelists and other exceptional people.
He was also arguably among the best reporters on the religion beat. Even if it wasn’t always the main focus of his work or what comes to mind for those familiar with his legacy, still, he was a lifelong spiritual seeker.
He once told me that his favorite of the many programs that he produced was the PBS documentary ”Amazing Grace.“ It featured inspiring renditions of this popular Christian hymn as performed by country legend Johnny Cash, folk icon Judy Collins, opera diva Jessye Norman and other musical geniuses. As they share with Moyers their personal connections to this song of redemption, he draws viewers into the stirring saga of its creator, John Newton: a slave trader who became an abolitionist through “amazing grace.”
Bill Moyers interviews Judy Collins about singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ following the production of his PBS special about the hymn.
Life’s ultimate questions
This appreciation of the ineffable clearly informed Moyers’ blockbuster TV series exploring life’s ultimate questions, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.”
To my surprise, Moyers knew about this Trappist monk, telling me, “I always wished that I could have interviewed Merton,” who died in 1968.
It turned out that Moyers had been introduced to Merton by Sargent Shriver, founding director of the Peace Corps, where Moyers was a founding organizer and the deputy director.
Mentored by LBJ
Moyers characterized his Peace Corps years as the most rewarding of his life. When Johnson, his mentor, became president, he asked Moyers to join the White House staff. Moyers turned down the offer, so Johnson made it a presidential command.
The wunderkind – Moyers was 29 years old in 1963, when Johnson was sworn in after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination – coordinated the White House task forces that created the largest number of legislative proposals in American history. Among the programs and landmark reforms established and passed during the Johnson administration were Medicare andMedicaid, a landmark immigration law, the Freedom of Information Act, the Public Broadcasting Act and two historic civil rights laws.
Johnson’s war on poverty, in addition, introduced several path-breaking programs, such as Head Start.
Moyers served as one of Johnson’s speechwriters and was a top official in Johnson’s 1964 presidential campaign. The following year, the Johnson administration began escalating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and Johnson named a new press secretary: Bill Moyers. Again, the young man tried to decline, but the president prevailed.
As Moyers had feared, he could not serve two masters – journalists and his boss – especially as the administration’s Vietnam War policies became increasingly unpopular.
Moyers left the Johnson administration in 1967, turning to journalism. He became the publisher of Newsday, a Long Island, New York, newspaper, before becoming a producer and commentator at CBS News. His commentaries reached tens of millions of viewers, but the network refused to provide a regular time slot for his documentaries. He had previously worked at PBS. In 1987, he decamped there for good.
Moyers’ programs won many journalism awards, including over 30 Emmys, along with the Lifetime Emmy for news and documentary productions.
He helped millions of Americans appreciate the world around them. As he reflected in 2023, in one of the last interviews he gave, to PBS journalist Judy Woodruff at the Library of Congress: “Everything is linked, and if you can find that nerve that connects us to other things and other places and other ideas – and television should be doing it all the time – we’d be a better democracy.”
Judy Woodruff interviews Bill Moyers about his life’s work in government and the media, including his contributions to the launch of PBS, at the Library of Congress.
“It takes time, commitment” to dig below the surface and discover the deeper meaning of people’s lives, Moyers noted. He sought to understand, for example, why so many folks in his own hometown of Marshall, Texas, have become much more suspicious – resentful, even – of outsiders than when he gave these folks voice in his poignant, prize-winning 1984 program Marshall, Texas; Marshall, Texas.
In this era of growing threats to democracy, what can a young person do who aspires to follow in Bill Moyers’ footsteps – whether in journalism or public life?
Woodruff asked Moyers that question, to which he responded: “You can’t quit. You can’t get out of the boat! Find a place that gives you a sense of being, gives you a sense of mission, gives you a sense of participation.”
Today, with the future of journalism – and of democracy itself – at stake, I think it would help everyone to take to heart the insights of this late, great American journalist.
Julie Leininger Pycior edited the book “Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times.” She also was hired by Moyers to direct the 18-month “LBJ Years” research project.
In addtion, she served as an unpaid, informal historical adviser for some of his public television programs.
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old woman from Georgia who had been declared brain-dead in February 2025, spent 16 weeks on life support while doctors worked to keep her body functioning well enough to support her developing fetus. On June 13, 2025, her premature baby, named Chance, was born via cesarean section at 25 weeks.
Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she suffered multiple blood clots in her brain. Her story gained public attention when her mother criticized doctors’ decision to keep her on a ventilator without the family’s consent. Smith’s mother has said that doctors told the family the decision was made to align with Georgia’s LIFE Act, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and bolsters the legal standing of fetal personhood. A statement released by the hospital also cites Georgia’s abortion law.
“I’m not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,” Smith’s mother told a local television station. “But I’m saying we should have had a choice.”
The LIFE Act is one of several state laws that have passed across the U.S. since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision invalidated constitutional protections for abortion. Although Georgia’s attorney general denied that the LIFE Act applied to Smith, there’s little doubt that it invites ethical and legal uncertainty when a woman dies while pregnant.
Smith’s case has swiftly become the focus of a reproductive rights political firestorm characterized by two opposing viewpoints. For some, it reflects demeaning governmental overreach that quashes women’s bodily autonomy. For others it illustrates the righteous sacrifice of motherhood.
In my work as a gender and technology studies scholar, I have cataloged and studied postmortem pregnancies like Smith’s since 2016. In my view, Smith’s story doesn’t fit straightforwardly into abortion politics. Instead, it points to the need for a more nuanced ethical approach that does not frame a mother and child as adversaries in a medical, legal or political context.
Birth after death
For centuries, Catholic dogma and Western legal precedent have mandated immediate cesarean section when a pregnant woman died after quickening, the point when fetal movement becomes discernible. But technological advances now make it possible sometimes for a fetus to continue gestating in place when the mother is brain-dead, or “dead by neurological criteria”– a widely accepted definition of death that first emerged in the 1950s.
The first brain death during pregnancy in which the fetus was delivered after time on life support, more accurately called organ support, occurred in 1981. The process is extraordinarily intensive and invasive, because the loss of brain function impedes many physiological processes. Health teams, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, must stabilize the bodies of “functionally decapitated” pregnant women to buy more time for fetal development. This requires vital organ support, ventilation, nutritional supplements, antibiotics and constant monitoring. Outcomes are highly uncertain.
Adriana Smith’s baby was delivered by cesarian section on June 13, 2025.
Smith’s 112-day stint on organ support ranks third in length for a postmortem pregnancy, with the longest being 123 days. Hers is also the earliest ever gestational age from which the procedure has been attempted. Because time on organ support can vary widely, and because there is no established minimum fetal age considered too early to intervene, a fetus could theoretically be deemed viable at any point in pregnancy.
Postmortem pregnancy as gender-based violence
Over the past 50 years, critics of postmortem pregnancy have argued that it constitutes gender-based violence and violates bodily integrity in ways that organ donation does not. Some have compared it with Nazi pronatalist policies. Others have attributed the practice to systemic sexism and racism in medicine. Postmortem pregnancy can also compound intimate partner violence by giving brain-dead women’s murderers decision-making authority when they are the fetus’s next of kin.
From the perspective of reproductive rights advocates, postmortem pregnancy is the bottom of a slippery slope down which anti-abortion sentiment has led America. It obliterates women’s autonomy, pitting living and dead women against doctors, legislators and sometimes their own families, and weaponizing their own fetuses against them.
A medical perspective on rights
Viewed through a medical lens, however, postmortem pregnancy is not violent or violating, but an act of repair. Although care teams have responsibilities to both mother and fetus, a pregnant woman’s brain death means she cannot be physically harmed and her rights cannot be violated to the same degree as a fetus with the potential for life.
This response does not necessarily stem from conscious sexism or anti-abortion sentiment, but from reverence for vulnerable patients. If physicians declare a pregnant woman brain-dead, patienthood often automatically transfers to the fetus needing rescue. No matter its age and despite its survival being dependent on machines, just like its mother, the fetus is entirely animate. Who or what counts as a legal person with privileges and protections might be a political or philosophical determination, but life is a matter of biological fact and within the doctors’ purview.
Even the Supreme Court recognized this entangled duality in their 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade, which established both constitutional protections for abortion and a governmental obligation to protect fetal life. Whether a fetus is considered a legal person or not, they wrote, pregnant women and fetuses “cannot be isolated in their privacy” – meaning that reproductive rights issues must strike a balance, however tenuous, between maternal and fetal interests. To declare postmortem pregnancy unequivocally violent or a loss of the “right to choose” fails to recognize the complexity of choice in a highly politicized medical landscape.
Second, maternal-fetal competition muddles the right course of action. In the U.S., competent patients are not compelled to engage in medical care they would rather avoid, even if it kills them, or to stay on life support to preserve organs for donation. But when a fetus is treated as an independent patient, exceptions could be made to those medical standards if the fetus’s interests override the mother’s.
For example, pregnancy disrupts standard determination of death. To protect the fetus, care teams increasingly skip a necessary diagnostic for brain death called apnea testing, which involves momentarily removing the ventilator to test the respiratory centers of the brain stem. In these cases, maternal brain death cannot be confirmed until after delivery. Multiple instances of vaginal deliveries after brain death also remain unexplained, given that the brain coordinates mechanisms of vaginal labor. All in all, it’s not always clear women in these cases are entirely dead.
Ultimately, women like Adriana Smith and their fetuses are inseparable and persist in a technologically defined state of in-betweenness. I’d argue that postmortem pregnancies, therefore, need new bioethical standards that center women’s beliefs about their bodies and a dignified death. This might involve recognizing pregnancy’s unique ambiguities in advance directives, questioning default treatment pathways that may require harm be done to one in order to save another, or considering multiple definitions of clinical and legal death.
In my view, it is possible to adapt our ethical standards in a way that honors all beings in these exceptional circumstances, without privileging either “choice” or “life,” mother or fetus.
This research was supported by a grant from The Institute for Citizens and Scholars.
Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a series of raids throughout Los Angeles and Southern California in early June 2025, sparking protests in downtown Los Angeles and other cities, including New York, Chicago and Austin, Texas.
Some demonstrators expressed growing frustration with ICE by showcasing the Mexican flag, which has become the defining symbol of the protests in Los Angeles.
The use of the flag has also become the subject of intense debate in the media.
Research published in 2010 found that even though the public was more likely to be bothered by protesters waving the Mexican flag than the U.S. flag, that difference was largely absent once you divided the public into subgroups, including white people, Latinos and immigrants.
To reexamine public attitudes toward protesters waving the Mexican flag, we conducted an online survey experiment among 10,145 U.S. adults in 2016.
We found that even though much of the public continued to be less bothered by the American flag than the Mexican flag, there were also important and perhaps surprising differences in protest attitudes between white Americans and other racial and ethnic groups.
A demonstrator holds a Mexican flag in front of law enforcement during a protest on June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Wally Skalij
More or less bothered
In the study, we randomly divided respondents into two groups: a treatment group and a control group. Respondents in the treatment group were shown an image of protesters waving a Mexican flag. Respondents in the control group were shown an image of protesters waving the U.S. flag. After viewing the image, respondents were then asked about the extent to which they supported or were bothered by the protests.
Overall, 41% of the respondents said they were bothered by protesters waving the Mexican flag, and 28% said protesters waving the U.S. flag bothered them.
Our results show important differences in opinion between racial and ethnic groups.
White respondents were more likely than any other racial and ethnic group to say they were bothered by protesters waving Mexican flags. Sixty-nine percent of white respondents said they were bothered, 31 percentage points more than the average of nonwhite respondents.
However, 51% of white respondents were also bothered by the image of protesters waving U.S. flags. By contrast, just 20% of Latinos, 33% of Black Americans and 34% of Asian Americans said they were bothered by protesters waving U.S. flags.
Put differently, large majorities of nonwhite respondents were supportive of showing U.S. flags at protests despite their more positive views toward Mexican flags.
What explains racial differences?
When taking a deeper look at what causes Americans to feel bothered about protesters waving Mexican flags, some clear patterns emerge.
On average, older Americans were more likely to be bothered relative to younger Americans. This was particularly true for Americans over 40 years of age compared with millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z respondents, born between 1997 and 2012.
However, there are some nuances when examining age groups and whether they had attended a protest, march or rally in the previous year.
Our findings suggest that older Americans who had not engaged in protests were most likely to be bothered when they saw images of protesters waving Mexican flags. Millennials and Gen Z respondents who participated in a protest were least likely to be bothered.
Given that this issue intersects nationality, race, ethnicity, gender and citizenship status, it’s logical that these factors explained why Americans supported or opposed the use of Mexican flags at immigration protests.
A woman carrying a flag with details of the United States and Mexican flags walks past members of the United States Marine Corps on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images
For example, racial minorities who have a stronger sense of ethnic or racial identity were more likely to be supportive of protesters waving Mexican and U.S. flags. In other words, group identity is a strong predictor of support for protests in general, regardless of what flag is being flown.
However, minorities who lack a sense of ethnic pride and identity were most likely to be upset when they saw others expressing their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.
The reality is that recent immigration protests across the country are the first time many of the Latino youth who are citizens have participated in these types of protests. Anyone under age 22 would not have memory of, or been alive during, the last large pro-immigrant protests in 2006.
The Mexican flag represents more than nationalistic pride. It represents their parents’ heritage, hard work and their binational experience as Americans engaged in politics.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kassem Fawaz, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Many apps and social media platforms collect detailed information about you as you use them, and sometimes even when you’re not using them.Malte Mueller/fStop via Getty images
You wake up in the morning and, first thing, you open your weather app. You close that pesky ad that opens first and check the forecast. You like your weather app, which shows hourly weather forecasts for your location. And the app is free!
But do you know why it’s free? Look at the app’s privacy settings. You help keep it free by allowing it to collect your information, including:
What devices you use and their IP and Media Access Control addresses.
Information you provide when signing up, such as your name, email address and home address.
App settings, such as whether you choose Celsius or Fahrenheit.
Your interactions with the app, including what content you view and what ads you click.
Inferences based on your interactions with the app.
Your location at a given time, including, depending on your settings, continuous tracking.
What websites or apps that you interact with after you use the weather app.
Information you give to ad vendors.
Information gleaned by analytics vendors that analyze and optimize the app.
This type of data collection is standard fare. The app company can use this to customize ads and content. The more customized and personalized an ad is, the more money it generates for the app owner. The owner might also sell your data to other companies.
Many apps, including the weather channel app, send you targeted advertising and sell your personal data by default. Jack West, CC BY-ND
You might also check a social media account like Instagram. The subtle price that you pay is, again, your data. Many “free” mobile apps gather information about you as you interact with them.
As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, we follow the ways software collects information about people. Your data allows companies to learn about your habits and exploit them.
It’s no secret that social media and mobile applications collect information about you. Meta’s business model depends on it. The company, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is worth US$1.48 trillion. Just under 98% of its profits come from advertising, which leverages user data from more than 7 billion monthly users.
Before mobile phones gained apps and social media became ubiquitous, companies conducted large-scale demographic surveys to assess how well a product performed and to get information about the best places to sell it. They used the information to create coarsely targeted ads that they placed on billboards, print ads and TV spots.
Mobile apps and social media platforms now let companies gather much more fine-grained information about people at a lower cost. Through apps and social media, people willingly trade personal information for convenience. In 2007 – a year after the introduction of targeted ads – Facebook made over $153 million, triple the previous year’s revenue. In the past 17 years, that number has increased by more than 1,000 times.
Five ways to leave your data
App and social media companies collect your data in many ways. Meta is a representative case. The company’s privacy policy highlights five ways it gathers your data:
First, it collects the profile information you fill in. Second, it collects the actions you take on its social media platforms. Third, it collects the people you follow and friend. Fourth, it keeps track of each phone, tablet and computer you use to access its platforms. And fifth, it collects information about how you interact with apps that corporate partners connect to its platforms. Many apps and social media platforms follow similar privacy practices.
Your data and activity
When you create an account on an app or social media platform, you provide the company that owns it with information like your age, birth date, identified sex, location and workplace. In the early years of Facebook, selling profile information to advertisers was that company’s main source of revenue. This information is valuable because it allows advertisers to target specific demographics like age, identified gender and location.
And once you start using an app or social media platform, the company behind it can collect data about how you use the app or social media. Social media keeps you engaged as you interact with other people’s posts by liking, commenting or sharing them. Meanwhile, the social media company gains information about what content you view and how you communicate with other people.
Advertisers can find out how much time you spent reading a Facebook post or that you spent a few more seconds on a particular TikTok video. This activity information tells advertisers about your interests. Modern algorithms can quickly pick up subtleties and automatically change the content to engage you in a sponsored post, a targeted advertisement or general content.
Your devices and applications
Companies can also note what devices, including mobile phones, tablets and computers, you use to access their apps and social media platforms. This shows advertisers your brand loyalty, how old your devices are and how much they’re worth.
Because mobile devices travel with you, they have access to information about where you’re going, what you’re doing and who you’re near. In a lawsuit against Kochava Inc., the Federal Trade Commission called out the company for selling customer geolocation data in August 2022, shortly after Roe v Wade was overruled. The company’s customers, including people who had abortions after the ruling was overturned, often didn’t know that data tracking their movements was being collected, according to the commission. The FTC alleged that the data could be used to identify households.
Information that apps can gain from your mobile devices includes anything you have given an app permission to have, such as your location, who you have in your contact list or photos in your gallery.
If you give an app permission to see where you are while the app is running, for instance, the platform can access your location anytime the app is running. Providing access to contacts may provide an app with the phone numbers, names and emails of all the people that you know.
Cross-application data collection
Companies can also gain information about what you do across different apps by acquiring information collected by other apps and platforms.
The settings on an Android phone show that Meta uses information it collects about you to target ads it shows you in its apps – and also in other apps and on other platforms – by default. Jack West, CC BY-ND
This is common with social media companies. This allows companies to, for example, show you ads based on what you like or recently looked at on other apps. If you’ve searched for something on Amazon and then noticed an ad for it on Instagram, it’s probably because Amazon shared that information with Instagram.
Companies, including Google, Meta, X, TikTok and Snapchat, can build detailed user profiles based on collected information from all the apps and social media platforms you use. They use the profiles to show you ads and posts that match your interests to keep you engaged. They also sell the profile information to advertisers.
Meanwhile, researchers have found that Meta and Yandex, a Russian search engine, have overcome controls in mobile operating system software that ordinarily keep people’s web-browsing data anonymous. Each company puts code on its webpages that used local IPs to pass a person’s browsing history, which is supposed to remain private, to mobile apps installed on that person’s phone, de-anonymizing the data. Yandex has been conducting this tracking since 2017, while Meta began in September 2024, according to the researchers.
What you can do about it
If you use apps that collect your data in some way, including those that give you directions, track your workouts or help you contact someone, or if you use social media platforms, your privacy is at risk.
Aside from entirely abandoning modern technology, there are several steps you can take to limit access – at least in part – to your private information.
Read the privacy policy of each app or social media platform you use. Although privacy policy documents can be long, tedious and sometimes hard to read, they explain how social media platforms collect, process, store and share your data.
Check a policy by making sure it can answer three questions: what data does the app collect, how does it collect the data, and what is the data used for. If you can’t answer all three questions by reading the policy, or if any of the answers don’t sit well with you, consider skipping the app until there’s a change in its data practices.
Remove unnecessary permissions from mobile apps to limit the amount of information that applications can gather from you.
Be aware of the privacy settings that might be offered by the apps or social media platforms you use, including any setting that allows your personal data to affect your experience or shares information about you with other users or applications.
These privacy settings can give you some control. We recommend that you disable “off-app activity” and “personalization” settings. “Off-app activity” allows an app to record which other apps are installed on your phone and what you do on them. Personalization settings allow an app to use your data to tailor what it shows you, including advertisements.
Review and update these settings regularly because permissions sometimes change when apps or your phone update. App updates may also add new features that can collect your data. Phone updates may also give apps new ways to collect your data or add new ways to preserve your privacy.
Use private browser windows or reputable virtual private networks software, commonly referred to as VPNs, when using apps that connect to the internet and social media platforms. Private browsers don’t store any account information, which limits the information that can be collected. VPNs change the IP address of your machine so that apps and platforms can’t discover your location.
Finally, ask yourself whether you really need every app that’s on your phone. And when using social media, consider how much information you want to reveal about yourself in liking and commenting on posts, sharing updates about your life, revealing locations you visited and following celebrities you like.
This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it.
Kassem Fawaz receives funding from the National Science Foundation. In the past, his research group has received unrestricted gifts from Meta and Google.
Jack West 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anna Erickson, Professor of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
An image from Iranian television shows centrifuges lining a hall at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2021.IRIB via APPEAR
When U.S. forces attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 21, 2025, the main target was metal tubes in laboratories deep underground. The tubes are centrifuges that produce highly enriched uranium needed to build nuclear weapons.
Inside of a centrifuge, a rotor spins in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 revolutions per minute, 10 times faster than a Corvette engine’s crankshaft. High speeds are needed to separate lighter uranium-235 from heavier uranium-238 for further collection and processing. Producing this level of force means the rotor itself must be well balanced and strong and rely on high-speed magnetic bearings to reduce friction.
Over the years, Iran has produced thousands of centrifuges. They work together to enrich uranium to dangerous levels – close to weapons-grade uranium. Most of them are deployed in three enrichment sites: Natanz, the country’s main enrichment facility, Fordow and Isfahan. Inside of these facilities, the centrifuges are arranged into cascades – series of machines connected to each other. This way, each machine yields slightly more enriched uranium, feeding the gas produced into its neighbor to maximize production efficiency.
As a nuclear engineer who works on nuclear nonproliferation, I track centrifuge technology, including the Iranian enrichment facilities targeted by the U.S. and Israel. A typical cascade deployed in Iran is composed of 164 centrifuges, working in series to produce enriched uranium. The Natanz facility was designed to hold over 50,000 centrifuges.
Iran’s early intentions to field centrifuges on a very large scale were clear. At the peak of the program in the early 2010s it deployed over 19,000 units. Iran later scaled down the number of its centrifuges in part due to international agreements such as the since scrapped Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in 2015.
Legacy of enrichment
Iran has a long history of enriching uranium.
In the late 1990s, it acquired a Pakistani centrifuge design known as P-1. The blueprints and some components were supplied via the A.Q. Khan black market network – the mastermind of the Pakistani program and a serious source of nuclear proliferation globally. Today, the P-1 design is known as IR-1. IR-1 centrifuges use aluminum and a high-strength alloy, known as maraging steel.
About one-third of the centrifuges that were deployed at the sites of the recent strike on June 21 are IR-1. Each one produces on the order of 0.8 separative work units, which is the unit for measuring the amount of energy and effort needed to separate uranium-235 molecules from the rest of the uranium gas. To put this in perspective, one centrifuge would yield about 0.2 ounces (6 grams) of 60%-enriched uranium-235 per year.
A typical uranium-based weapon requires 55 pounds (25 kilograms) of 90%-enriched uranium. To get to weapons-grade level, a single centrifuge would produce only 0.14 ounces (4 grams) per year. It requires more work to go higher in enrichment. While capable of doing the job, the IR-1 is quite inefficient.
The author explains the uranium enrichment process to CBS News.
More and better centrifuges
Small yields mean that over 6,000 centrifuges would need to work together for a year to get enough material for one weapon such as a nuclear warhead. Or the efficiency of the centrifuges would have to be improved. Iran did both.
Before the strike by U.S. forces, Iran was operating close to 7,000 IR-1 centrifuges. In addition, Iran designed, built and operated more efficient centrifuges such as the IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 designs. Comparing the IR-1 with the latest designs is like comparing a golf cart with the latest electric vehicles in terms of range and payload.
Iran’s latest centrifuge designs contain carbon fiber composites with exceptional strength and durability and low weight. This is a recipe for producing light and compact centrifuges that are easier to conceal from inspections. According to the international nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, before the strike Iran was operating 6,500 IR-2m centrifuges, close to 4,000 IR-4 centrifuges and over 3,000 IR-6 centrifuges.
With each new generation, the separative work unit efficiency increased significantly. IR-6 centrifuges, with their carbon fiber rotors, can achieve up to 10 separative work units per year. That’s about 2.8 ounces (80 grams) of 60%-enriched uranium-235 per year. The International Atomic Energy Agency verified that the IR-6 cascades have been actively used to ramp up production of 60%-enriched uranium.
The most recent and advanced centrifuges developed by Iran, known as IR-9, can achieve 50 separative work units per year. This cuts down the time needed to produce highly enriched uranium for weapon purposes from months to weeks. The other aspect of IR-9 advanced centrifuges is their compactness. They are easier to conceal from inspections or move underground, and they require less energy to operate.
Advanced centrifuges such as the IR-9 drive up the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation significantly. Fortunately, the International Atomic Energy Agency reports that only one exists in testing laboratories, and there is no evidence Iran has deployed them widely. However, it’s possible more are concealed.
Bombs or talks?
Uranium enrichment of 60% is far beyond the needs of any civilian use. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran stockpiled about 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium before the attack, and it might have escaped intact. That’s enough to make 10 weapons. The newer centrifuges – IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 – would need a bit over eight months to produce that much.
It’s not clear what the U.S. attack has accomplished, but destroying the facilities targeted in the attack and hindering Iran’s ability to continue enriching uranium might be a way to slow Iran’s move toward producing nuclear weapons. However, based on my work and research on preventing nuclear proliferation, I believe a more reliable means of preventing Iran from achieving its nuclear aims would be for diplomacy and cooperation to prevail.
Anna Erickson receives funding from Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) related to nuclear nonproliferation technologies. She has previously served on the Board of Directors of the American Nuclear Society.
The Micronesian Islands Forum cranks up with officials meetings this week in Majuro, with the official opening for top leadership from the islands tomorrow morning.
Marshall Islands leaders are being joined at this summit by their counterparts from Kiribati, Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau.
“At this year’s Leaders Forum, I hope we can make meaningful progress on resolving airline connectivity issues — particularly in Micronesia — so our region remains connected and one step ahead,” President Hilda Heine said on the eve of this subregional summit.
The Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia have been negotiating with Nauru Airlines over the past two years to extend the current island hopper service with a link to Honolulu.
“Equally important,” said President Heine, “the Forum offers a vital platform to strengthen regional solidarity and build common ground on key issues such as climate, ocean health, security, trade, and other pressing challenges.
“Ultimately, our shared purpose must be to work together in support of the communities we represent.”
Monday and Tuesday featured official-level meetings at the International Conference Center in Majuro. Tomorrow will be the official opening of the Forum and will feature statements from each of the islands represented.
Handing over chair Outgoing Micronesian Island Forum chair Guam Governor Lourdes Leon Guerrero is expected to hand over the chair post to President Heine tomorrow morning.
Other top island leaders expected to attend the summit: FSM President Wesley Simina, Kiribati President Taneti Maamau, Nauru Deputy Speaker Isabela Dageago, Palau Minister Steven Victor, Chuuk Governor Alexander Narruhn, Pohnpei Governor Stevenson Joseph, Kosrae Governor Tulensa Palik, Yap Acting Governor Francis Itimai, and CNMI Lieutenant-Governor David Apatang.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Baron Waqa is also expected to participate.
Pretty much every subject of interest to the Pacific Islands will be on the table for discussions, including presentations on education, health and transportation. The latter will include a presentation by the Marshall Islands Aviation Task Force that has been meeting extensively with Nauru Airlines.
In addition, Pacific Ocean Commissioner Dr Filimon Manoni will deliver a presentation, gender equality will be on the table, as will updates on the SPC and Secretariat of the Pacific Region Environment Programme North Pacific offices, and the United Nations multi-country office.
The Micronesia Challenge environmental programme will get focus during a luncheon for the leaders hosted by the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority on Thursday at its new headquarters annex.
Bank presentations Pacific Island Development Bank and the Bank of Guam will make presentations, as will the recently established Pacific Center for Island Security.
A special night market at the Marshall Islands Resort parking lot will be featured Wednesday evening.
Friday will feature a leaders retreat on Bokanbotin, a small resort island on Majuro Atoll’s north shore. While the leaders gather, other Forum participants will join a picnic or fishing tournament.
Friday evening is to feature the closing event to include the launching of the Marshall Islands’ Green Growth Initiative and the signing of the Micronesian Island Forum communique.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR) has called on Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka as the new chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to “uphold justice, stability and security” for Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua.
In a statement today after last week’s MSG leaders’ summit in Suva, the coalition also warned over Indonesia’s “chequebook diplomacy” as an obstacle for the self-determination aspirations of Melanesian peoples not yet independent.
Indonesia is a controversial associate member of the MSG in what is widely seen in the region as a “complication” for the regional Melanesian body.
The statement said that with Rabuka’s “extensive experience as a seasoned statesman in the Pacific, we hope that this second chapter will chart a different course, one rooted in genuine commitment to uphold justice, stability and security for all our Melanesian brothers and sisters in Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua”.
The coalition said the summit’s theme, “A peaceful and prosperous Melanesia”, served as a reminder that even after several decades of regional bilaterals, “our Melanesian leaders have made little to no progress in fulfilling its purpose in the region — to support the independence and sovereignty of all Melanesians”.
“Fiji, as incoming chair, inherits the unfinished work of the MSG. As rightly stated by the late great Father Walter Lini, ‘We will not be free until all of Melanesia is free”, the statement said.
“The challenges for Fiji’s chair to meet the goals of the MSG are complex and made more complicated by the inclusion of Indonesia as an associate member in 2015.
‘Indonesia active repression’ “Indonesia plays an active role in the ongoing repression of West Papuans in their desire for independence. Their associate member status provides a particular obstacle for Fiji as chair in furthering the self-determination goals of the MSG.”
Complicating matters further was the asymmetry in the relationship between Indonesia and the rest of the MSG members, the statement said.
“As a donor government and emerging economic power, Indonesia’s ‘chequebook and cultural diplomacy’ continues to wield significant influence across the region.
“Its status as an associate member of the MSG raises serious concerns about whether it is appropriate, as this pathway risks further marginalising the voices of our West Papuan sisters and brothers.”
This defeated the “whole purpose of the MSG: ‘Excelling together towards a progressive and prosperous Melanesia’.”
The coalition acknowledged Rabuka’s longstanding commitment to the people of Kanaky New Caledonia. A relationship and shared journey that had been forged since 1989.
‘Stark reminder’ The pro-independence riots of May 2024 served as a “stark reminder that much work remains to be done to realise the full aspirations of the Kanak people”.
As the Pacific awaited a “hopeful and favourable outcome” from the Troika Plus mission to Kanaky New Caledonia, the coalition said that it trusted Rabuka to “carry forward the voices, struggles, dreams and enduring aspirations of the people of Kanaky New Caledonia”.
The statement called on Rabuka as the new chair of MSG to:
Ensure the core founding values, and mission of the MSG are upheld;
Re-evaluate Indonesia’s appropriateness as an associate member of the MSG; and
Elevate discussions on West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia at the MSG level and through discussions at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders.
The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights (NGOCHR) represents the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Program, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji. Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.
The long-eared kultarr (_A. auritus_) is the middle child in terms of body size, but it has by far the biggest ears.Ken Johnson
Australia is home to more than 60 species of carnivorous marsupials in the family Dasyuridae. Almost a quarter of those have only been scientifically recognised in the past 25 years.
Other than the iconic Tasmanian devil, chances are most of these small, fascinating species have slipped under your radar. One of the rarest and most elusive is the kultarr (Antechinomys laniger), a feisty insect-eater found in very low numbers across much of the outback.
To the untrained eye, the kultarr looks very much like a hopping mouse, with long legs, a long tail and a tendency to rest on its hind legs. However, it runs much like a greyhound – but its tiny size and high speed makes it look like it’s hopping.
Kultarr or kultarrs?
Until now, the kultarr was thought to be a single widespread species, ranging from central New South Wales to the Carnarvon Basin on Australia’s west coast. However, a genetic study in 2023 suggested there could be more than one species.
With backing from the Australian Biological Resources Study, our team of researchers from the University of Western Australia, Western Australian Museum and Queensland University of Technology set out to investigate.
We travelled to museums in Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth to look at every kultarr that had been collected by scientists over the past century. By combining detailed genetic data with body and skull measurements, we discovered the kultarr isn’t one widespread species, but three distinct species.
Three species of kultarrs
The eastern kultarr (A. laniger) is the smallest of the three, with an average body length of about 7.5cm. It’s darker in colour than its relatives, and while its ears are still big, they are nowhere near as big as those of the other two species.
The eastern kultarr is now found on hard clay soils around Cobar in central NSW and north to around Charleville in southern Queensland.
The eastern kultarr (A. laniger) is the smallest of the three species. Pat Woolley
The gibber kultarr (A. spenceri) is the largest and stockiest, with an average body length of around 9cm. They are noticeably chunkier than the other two more dainty species, with big heads, thick legs and much longer hindfeet.
As its name suggests, the gibber kultarr is restricted to the extensive stony deserts or “gibber plains” in southwest Queensland and northeast South Australia.
The gibber kultarr (A. spenceri) is largest and stockiest. Ken Johnson
The long-eared kultarr (A. auritus) is the middle child in terms of body size, but its ears set it apart. They’re nearly as long as its head.
It’s found in patchy populations in the central and western sandy deserts, living on isolated stony plains.
The long-eared kultarr (A. auritus) is the middle child in terms of body size, but it has by far the biggest ears. Ken Johnson
Are they threatened?
All three species of kultarr are hard to find, making it difficult to confidently estimate population sizes and evaluate extinction risk. The long-eared and gibber kultarrs don’t appear to be in immediate danger, but land clearing and invasive predators such as cats and foxes have likely affected their numbers.
The three species of kultarr seem to now inhabit smaller areas than in the past. Cameron Dodd
The eastern kultarr, however, is more of a concern. By looking at museum specimens going back all the way to the 1890s, we found it was once much more widespread.
Historic records suggest the eastern kultarr used to occur across the entirety of arid NSW and even spread north through central Queensland and into the Northern Territory. We now think this species may be extinct in the NT and parts of northwest Queensland.
What’s next?
To protect kultarrs into the future, we need targeted surveys to confirm where each species still survives, especially the eastern kultarr, whose current range may be just a shadow of its former extent. With better knowledge, we can prioritise conservation actions where they’re most needed, and ensure these remarkable, long-legged hunters don’t disappear before we truly get to know them.
Australia still has many small mammal species that haven’t been formally described. Unless we identify and name them, they remain invisible in conservation policy.
Taxonomic research like this is essential – we can’t protect what we don’t yet know exists. And without action, some species may disappear before they’re ever officially recognised.
The authors wish to acknowledge the important contributions of Adjunct Professor Mike Westerman at La Trobe University to the research discussed in this article.
Cameron Dodd receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study and Society of Australian Systematic Biologists.
Andrew M. Baker receives funding from the Federal Government, State Governments, Australian Biological Resources Study and various Industry sources.
Kenny Travouillon receives funding from Australian Biological Resources Study.
Linette Umbrello receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) National Taxonomy Research Grant Program (NTRGP)
Renee Catullo 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.
“✏️Describe the vibe” goes the demand to commenters underneath the YouTube video for Lorde’s latest single, “Hammer”. Fans form a flow; a “vibe check” in Zillenial parlance:
The pure rawness … (@lynmariegm)
A more raw true-to-self form … (@m3lodr4matic)
This is pure art … (@anishm-g1r)
Lorde’s 2013 debut album was titled Pure Heroine. But, she tells us – and fans and critics agree – Virgin is the first album which “does not lie”. Pure pop. Not lying is not necessarily synonymous with truth, however. Rather, not lying in the present cultural moment is more akin to the careful articulation of a whole vibe.
For women in particular, truth, authenticity – dare I say realness – mean modulating their feelings, but also a particular calibration and presentation of their bodies in media.
Such a balancing act is captured in that YouTube imperative which moves between the pencil (“✏️”) – the demand to describe – and the “vibe”, the very thing we often find too hard to write down or put into words.
Pop music is often at the nexus of these two seemingly opposite moves. Think about going to a gig and afterwards being asked “how was it?”, and all you can say is “you had to be there”.
Of course it is not so simple. We are always putting our feeling into words – describing all manner of bodily responses. Lorde herself sings in “Broken Glass” about how her eating disordered body was marked by language: the “arithmetic” of calorie counting. Elsewhere, she lists other social signifiers in which she is enmeshed: daughter (“Favourite Daughter”), siren, saint (“Shapeshifter”).
Words and the body
Nonetheless, the repeated theme in press interviews is that Virgin moves beyond language, towards a pure woman’s body, free of the mark of sexuality. At the same time, the album is also “ravenously horny” according to one review. She is both as pure as a newborn (a “Virgin”), but marked by her sexuality.
The song “Current Affairs” most clearly demonstrates proximity between the sexed body and its description in lyrics. Lorde collapses into her lover’s body (“He spit in my mouth”). But when he breaks her heart, she cannot put into language the hurt. Rather she blames her anguish on the news: “current affairs”.
Pop music and pop culture thrives off the market exchange and saleability of sex, particularly young women’s sex. When I first wrote about Lorde 11 years ago, I pitted her against Miley Cyrus, noting the outrage at Miley’s “growing up” (from Hannah Montana to adulthood), which mapped onto her perceived new working class, tasteless identity.
Against the crass vulgarity of Miley, I argued then, we had the middle-class intellectualism of Lorde. The argument stands. Virgin certainly adds a heightened sexiness to Lorde, but it is far from crude. She is branded, not just by the market (the cost of tour tickets and merchandise), but also by her identity as a tasteful and hip woman.
More fleshy (“wide hips/soft lips” she sings in “GRWM”) than the teen “Royal” of 2012, but still on Universal Music Group’s repertoire and still circulated as an “alt” option for pop fans.
We can also think of Lorde’s collaboration with her current working class alter, and last year’s popstar commodity, Charli XCX. In Lorde’s verse in “Girl, so confusing” she notes Charli is, essentially, a “Chav” – “still a young girl from Essex”. But in the same verse, Lorde shows her awareness of both women’s function on the market:
People say we’re alike
They say we’ve got the same hair
It’s you and me on the coin
The industry loves to spend
This knowing wink to how women move within the pop-culture marketplace produces a different kind of purity, one based on an intimacy between the popstar and her listeners. We all know Lorde’s difference from Charli is about image: the “poet” versus the party girl.
Intimacy as purity is part of what cultural theorist Anna Kornbluh recently dubbed the pressure of “immediacy”, characterised by an apparently ceaseless flow and demand to constantly share images and video of our bodies, afforded by the scroll of social media.
While the depiction of our bodies and selves on screens is fundamental to this moment, according to Kornbluh, we contradictorily lose sight of this screening. Feeling as though we are #NoFilter – present and real. Key to this is the exhibition of our feelings and emotions.
For all women, but particularly those in the public eye, the sharing of these feelings materialise into “coin”. Vulnerability, pleasure, all-the-feels-all-the-time – especially for women – make “bank”.
Intimacy and knowingness
Vulnerability has been a catch-cry in media characterisations of Virgin. Critics and fans equate Lorde’s lyrical confessions and press tour patter with a market-valuable “purity”, equated with immediate access (to quote the YouTube fan above) to a “true-to-self” Lorde.
One of her more amusing (but fitting) press engagements was on Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis podcast. On the couch, we hear Lorde, wearing a Yohji Yamamoto blazer, musing about vulnerability, gender and her mother – with the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud.
Fashion Neurosis: Lorde on the psychiatrist’s couch.
While the Charli XCX track shows Lorde’s intimacy through her knowingness about her role as “coin” for the music industry, the music videos from Virgin offer a more embodied intimacy. The clip for the album’s first single, “What Was That?”, features an extreme closeup inside her mouth. The album cover itself is an X-ray showing her hips and her IUD.
Kornbluh suggests this emphasis on often literal bodily interiors – people’s “insides” – produces an ersatz sense of closeness and sociality, as our relationships become more and more beholden to the alienating circuits of “social” media.
Virgin does not lie. It traces a truth of our times – a paradoxical truth – that we are at our most intimate, our most pure, when we are unmediated, all the while bearing out the imperative to “✏️Describe the vibe” – to mediate and expose ourselves onscreen.
My own vibe check? I love the album. It is pop at its purest – performative, playful and certainly worth paying attention to.
Rosemary Overell 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.
How do you measure climate change? One way is by recording temperatures in different places over a long period of time. While this works well, natural variation can make it harder to see longer-term trends.
But another approach can give us a very clear sense of what’s going on: track how much heat enters Earth’s atmosphere and how much heat leaves. This is Earth’s energy budget, and it’s now well and truly out of balance.
Our recent research found this imbalance has more than doubled over the last 20 years. Other researchers have come to the same conclusions. This imbalance is now substantially more than climate models have suggested.
In the mid-2000s, the energy imbalance was about 0.6 watts per square metre (W/m2) on average. In recent years, the average was about 1.3 W/m2. This means the rate at which energy is accumulating near the planet’s surface has doubled.
These findings suggest climate change might well accelerate in the coming years. Worse still, this worrying imbalance is emerging even as funding uncertainty in the United States threatens our ability to track the flows of heat.
Energy in, energy out
Earth’s energy budget functions a bit like your bank account, where money comes in and money goes out. If you reduce your spending, you’ll build up cash in your account. Here, energy is the currency.
Life on Earth depends on a balance between heat coming in from the Sun and heat leaving. This balance is tipping to one side.
Solar energy hits Earth and warms it. The atmosphere’s heat-trapping greenhouse gases keep some of this energy.
But the burning of coal, oil and gas has now added more than two trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These trap more and more heat, preventing it from leaving.
Some of this extra heat is warming the land or melting sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. But this is a tiny fraction. Fully 90% has gone into the oceans due to their huge heat capacity.
Earth naturally sheds heat in several ways. One way is by reflecting incoming heat off of clouds, snow and ice and back out to space. Infrared radiation is also emitted back to space.
From the beginning of human civilisation up until just a century ago, the average surface temperature was about 14°C. The accumulating energy imbalance has now pushed average temperatures 1.3-1.5°C higher.
Ice and reflective clouds reflect heat back to space. As the Earth heats up, most trapped heat goes into the oceans but some melts ice and heats the land and air. Pictured: Icebergs from the Jacobshavn glacier in Greenland, the largest outside Antarctica. Ashley Cooper/Getty
Tracking faster than the models
Scientists keep track of the energy budget in two ways.
First, we can directly measure the heat coming from the Sun and going back out to space, using the sensitive radiometers on monitoring satellites. This dataset and its predecessors date back to the late 1980s.
Second, we can accurately track the build-up of heat in the oceans and atmosphere by taking temperature readings. Thousands of robotic floats have monitored temperatures in the world’s oceans since the 1990s.
Both methods show the energy imbalance has grown rapidly.
The doubling of the energy imbalance has come as a shock, because the sophisticated climate models we use largely didn’t predict such a large and rapid change.
Typically, the models forecast less than half of the change we’re seeing in the real world.
Why has it changed so fast?
We don’t yet have a full explanation. But new research suggests changes in clouds is a big factor.
Clouds have a cooling effect overall. But the area covered by highly reflective white clouds has shrunk, while the area of jumbled, less reflective clouds has grown.
It isn’t clear why the clouds are changing. One possible factor could be the consequences of successful efforts to reduce sulfur in shipping fuel from 2020, as burning the dirtier fuel may have had a brightening effect on clouds. However, the accelerating energy budget imbalance began before this change.
Natural fluctuations in the climate system such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation might also be playing a role. Finally – and most worryingly – the cloud changes might be part of a trend caused by global warming itself, that is, a positive feedback on climate change.
Dense blankets of white clouds reflect the most heat. But the area covered by these clouds is shrinking. Adhivaswut/Shutterstock
What does this mean?
These findings suggest recent extremely hot years are not one-offs but may reflect a strengthening of warming over the coming decade or longer.
This will mean a higher chance of more intense climate impacts from searing heatwaves, droughts and extreme rains on land, and more intense and long lasting marine heatwaves.
This imbalance may lead to worse longer-term consequences. New research shows the only climate models coming close to simulating real world measurements are those with a higher “climate sensitivity”. That means these models predict more severe warming beyond the next few decades in scenarios where emissions are not rapidly reduced.
We don’t know yet whether other factors are at play, however. It’s still too early to definitively say we are on a high-sensitivity trajectory.
Our eyes in the sky
We’ve known the solution for a long time: stop the routine burning of fossil fuels and phase out human activities causing emissions such as deforestation.
Keeping accurate records over long periods of time is essential if we are to spot unexpected changes.
Satellites, in particular, are our advance warning system, telling us about heat storage changes roughly a decade before other methods.
But funding cuts and drastic priority shifts in the United States may threaten essential satellite climate monitoring.
Steven Sherwood receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Mindaroo Foundation.
Benoit Meyssignac receives funding from the European Commission, the European Space Agency and the French National Space Agency.
Thorsten Mauritsen receives funding from the European Research Council, the European Space Agency, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish National Space Agency and the Bolin Centre for Climate Research.
When you went to school, did you call your teacher Mrs, Ms or Mr, followed by their surname? Perhaps you even called them Sir or Miss.
The tradition of addressing teachers in a formal manner goes back centuries. For many of us, calling a teacher by their first name would have been unthinkable.
But that’s not automatically the case anymore. Some teachers in mainstream schools now ask students to call them by their first name.
Why is this? And what impact can teachers’ names have in the classroom?
There’s no rule
There’s no official rule in Australia on what students should call teachers.
Naming is usually decided by schools or individual teachers. This is no official training on this topic before teachers start in classrooms.
Some primary school teachers now use first names or a less formal name such as “Mr D”. Teachers say this helps break down barriers, especially for young students or those who are learning English as an additional language.
High schools are more likely to stick with tradition, partly to maintain structure and boundaries, especially with teenagers. Using formal titles can also support early-career teachers or those from minority
backgrounds assert their authority in a classroom.
But even so, some high school teachers are using their first names to foster a sense of trust and encourage students to see them as a partner in learning, rather than simply an authority figure.
What does the research say?
Research – which is mainly from the United States – suggests names have an impact on how students perceive their teachers and feel about school.
In one study of US high school students, teenagers described teachers they addressed with formal titles as more distant and harder to connect with. Teachers who invited students to use their first name were seen as more supportive, approachable and trustworthy.
A secondary school principal in the state of Maryland reported students felt more included and respected when they could use teachers’ first names. It made classrooms feel less hierarchical and more collaborative.
A 2020 US study on teaching students doing practical placements found those who used their first name observed greater student engagement than those who did not. This came as a surprise to the student teachers who expected students would not respect them if they used their first names.
These findings don’t necessarily mean titles are bad. Rather, they show first names can support stronger teacher-student relationships.
It’s important to note society in general has become less formal in recent decades in terms of how we address and refer to each other.
So, what should students call their teachers?
What works in one school, or even one classroom, may not work in another.
For example, for Indigenous students or students from non-English speaking households, name practices that show cultural respect and mutual choice can be vital. They help create a sense of safety and inclusion.
But for other teachers, being called by their title may be a key part of their professional persona.
That’s why it’s important for naming decisions to be thoughtful and based on the needs of the teacher, students and broader school community.
The key is to treat naming as part of the broader relationship, not just a habit or automatic tradition. Whether students say “Mrs Lee” or “Jess” matters less than whether they feel safe, respected and included. It’s about the tone and relationship behind the name, not simply what someone is called.
Nicole Brownlie 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.
