Category: Test

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Yashas Hariprasad, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, California State University, East Bay

We have developed a new way to secure video transmissions so even quantum computers in the future won’t be able to break into private video livestreams or recordings. We are computer scientists who study computer security. Our research introduces quantum-safe video encryption, which combines two complementary techniques: quantum encryption and secure internet transmission.

With our encryption system, a hacker wouldn’t be able to access or understand the video data because it’s scrambled using a quantum key that changes unpredictably. Cryptographic keys scramble data so that only someone with the correct key can unscramble it. If the hacker even tries to peek, the system detects it and raises an alarm. The video also travels in the digital equivalent of a locked box over the internet, so nobody can swap or tamper with it in transit.

Quantum encryption scrambles video data using truly random cryptographic keys based on quantum physics. Unlike traditional encryption that relies on mathematical complexity, quantum encryption uses the fundamental unpredictability of quantum states to generate unbreakable keys.

Quantum refers to the scale of atoms and molecules, which behave in counterintuitive ways. Quantum computers take advantage of these strange behaviors to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for ordinary computers.

We combine this quantum encryption scheme with secure transmission over the internet using transport layer security. This is the encryption scheme used to keep connections between web browsers and web pages private.

Our approach works by converting each video frame into a quantum image representation, essentially a mathematical framework that captures visual information in quantum states. We then scramble the data by combining it with quantum-generated random keys, making the encrypted video statistically indistinguishable from pure noise.

And because quantum encryption is resistant to future technology such as quantum computers, that video is safe for years to come.

Why it matters

Today’s encryption works well, until tomorrow’s quantum computers arrive. These super-powerful machines will be able to crack most current encryption methods in seconds. That means today’s private videos, stored on cloud platforms or transmitted over the internet, could be decrypted years from now.

More dangerously, these stolen videos can be manipulated into deepfakes: AI-generated videos that can make anyone appear to say or do anything. A forged video can ruin reputations, sway decisions and even incite violence. A secure encryption system not only protects privacy, it helps protect truth.

What other research is being done

Researchers around the world are exploring quantum key distribution to securely share encryption keys. Others use chaos theory, deep learning or hybrid algorithms to secure video and image content.

But most existing work focuses on images, or only on key exchange, without fully securing live or stored video data.

What’s next

We’re working toward scaling this system to encrypt full video files and real-time video streams, such as those used in video conferencing and surveillance systems.

Next steps include reducing the performance overhead for smoother playback and testing the system in real-world environments. We’re also exploring how it can work alongside deepfake detection tools, so we not only stop hackers from accessing videos but also prove the videos haven’t been altered.

While our framework shows strong early results, practical use will depend on phased adoption as quantum systems become more accessible over the years.

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

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.

– ref. Quantum scheme protects videos from prying eyes and tampering – https://theconversation.com/quantum-scheme-protects-videos-from-prying-eyes-and-tampering-261049

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By William Cornwell, Associate Professor of Cardiology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

On July 24, 2025, the American pro wrestling celebrity Hulk Hogan, whose real name was Terry Bollea, died at the age of 71. Hogan had chronic lymphocytic leukemia and a history of atrial fibrillation, or A-fib, a condition in which the upper chambers of the heart, or atria, beat irregularly and often rapidly. His cause of death has been confirmed as acute myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack.

Hogan became a household name in the 1980s and has long been known for maintaining fitness and a highly active lifestyle, despite having had 25 surgeries in 10 years, including a neck surgery in May.

Hogan’s death has brought renewed attention to the importance of maintaining heart health through exercise. Many people think that bodybuilders are the “picture” of health. However, the truth is that too much muscle can increase strain on the heart and may actually be harmful. It may seem ironic, then, that people who exercise to extreme levels and appear healthy on the outside can, in fact, be quite unhealthy on the inside.

As the director of sports cardiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, I see patients of all age groups and at varying levels of fitness who are interested in promoting health by incorporating exercise into their lifestyle, or by optimizing their current exercise program.

Exercise is the foundation for good health

When people think of vital signs, they usually think about things such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, breathing rate and blood oxygen levels. However, the American Heart Association also includes “fitness” as an additional vital sign that should be considered when determining a patient’s overall health and risk of heart disease, cancer and death.

While fitness may be determined in various ways, the best way is by checking what is known as peak oxygen uptake, or VO2 max, through a specialized evaluation called a cardiopulmonary exercise test. These can be performed at many doctors’ offices and clinics, and they provide a wealth of information related to overall health, as well as heart, lung and skeletal muscle function.

Exercise is one of the most effective interventions to prolong life and reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases throughout life – in effect, prolonging lifespan and improving health span, meaning the number of years that people spend in good health.

In fact, a large study done by the Cleveland Clinic found that a low level of fitness poses a greater risk of death over time than other traditional risk factors that people commonly think of, such as smoking, diabetes, coronary artery disease and severe kidney disease.

When it comes to brain health, the American Stroke Association emphasizes the importance of routine exercise and avoiding sedentary behavior in their 2024 guidelines on primary prevention of stroke. The risk of stroke increases with the amount of sedentary time spent throughout the day and also with the amount of time spent watching television, particularly four hours or more per day.

Regarding cognitive decline, the Alzheimer’s Society states that regular exercise reduces the risk of dementia by almost 20%. Furthermore, the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is twice as high among individuals who exercise the least, when compared to individuals who exercise the most.

There is also strong evidence that regular exercise reduces the risk of certain types of cancer, especially, colon, breast and endometrial cancer. This reduction in cancer risk is achieved through several mechanisms.

For one, obesity is a risk factor for up to 13 forms of cancer, and excess body weight is responsible for about 7% of all cancer deaths. Regular exercise helps to maintain a healthy weight.

Second, exercise helps to keep certain hormones – such as insulin and sex hormones – within a normal range. When these hormone levels get too high, they may increase cancer cell growth. Exercise also helps to boost the immune system by improving the body’s ability to fight off pathogens and cancer cells. This in turn helps prevent cancer cell growth and also reduces chronic inflammation, which left unchecked damages tissue and increases cancer risk.

Finally, exercise improves the quality of life for all people, regardless of their health or their age. In 2023, Hulk Hogan famously quipped, “I’m 69 years old, but I feel like I’m 39.”

The optimal dose of exercise

Major health organizations, such as the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and Department of Health and Human Services, all share similar recommendations when it comes to the amount of exercise people should aim for.

These organizations all recommend doing at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise, or at least 75 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity exercise. Moderate exercises include activities such as walking briskly (2.5 to 4 miles per hour), playing doubles tennis or raking the yard. Vigorous exercise includes activities such as jogging, running or shoveling snow.

A good rule of thumb for figuring out how hard a specific exercise is is to apply the “talk test”: During moderate-intensity exercise, you can talk, but not sing, during the activity. During vigorous intensity exercise, you can say only a few words before having to stop and take a breath.

There is a lot of solid data to support these recommendations. For example, in a very large analysis of about 48,000 people followed for 30 years, the risk of death from any cause was about 20% lower among those who followed the physical activity guidelines for Americans.

Life can be busy, and some people may find it challenging to squeeze in at least 150 minutes of exercise throughout the course of the week. However, “weekend warriors” – people who cram all their exercise into one to two days over the weekend – still receive the benefits of exercise. So, a busy lifestyle during the week should not prevent people from doing their best to meet the guidelines.

What about the number of steps per day? In a new analysis in The Lancet, when compared with walking only 2,000 steps per day, people who walked 7,000 steps per day had a 47% lower risk of death from any cause, a 25% lower risk of developing heart disease, about a 50% lower risk of death from heart disease, a 38% lower risk of developing dementia, a 37% lower risk of dying from cancer, a 22% lower risk of depression and a 28% lower risk of falls.

Historically, people have aimed for 10,000 steps per day, but this new data indicates that there are tremendous benefits gained simply from walking 7,000 steps daily.

It’s never too late to start

One question that many patients ask me – and other doctors – is: “Is it ever too late to start exercising?” There is great data to suggest that people can reap the benefits even if they don’t begin an exercise program into their 50s.

Being sedentary while aging will cause the heart and blood vessels to stiffen. When that happens, blood pressure can go up and people may be at risk of other things such as heart attacks, strokes or heart failure.

However, in a study of previously sedentary adults with an average age of 53, two years of regular exercise reversed the age-related stiffening of the heart that otherwise occurs in the absence of routine exercise.

And it is important to remember that you do not have to look like a body builder or fitness guru in order to reap the benefits of exercise.

Almost three-quarters of the total benefit to heart, brain and metabolic health that can be gained from exercise will be achieved just by following the guidelines.

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

– ref. As wrestling fans reel from the sudden death of Hulk Hogan, a cardiologist explains how to live long and healthy − and avoid chronic disease – https://theconversation.com/as-wrestling-fans-reel-from-the-sudden-death-of-hulk-hogan-a-cardiologist-explains-how-to-live-long-and-healthy-and-avoid-chronic-disease-262103

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jialing Lin, Research fellow in Health Systems, International Centre for Future Health Systems, UNSW Sydney

Vaccination against shingles increased among adults age 50 and older in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, but not equally across all population groups. That’s the key finding from a new study my colleagues and I published in the journal Vaccine.

Shingles is caused by the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. It leads to a painful rash and potentially serious complications – especially in older adults – such as persistent nerve pain, vision loss and neurological problems. While antiviral treatments can ease symptoms, vaccination is the most effective way to prevent shingles.

We analyzed nationally representative survey data from almost 80,000 adults age 50 and over between 2018 and 2022, collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to monitor the health of the U.S. population. The survey tracked vaccination rates in people of different ethnic backgrounds as well as other factors such as sex, household income and the presence of chronic conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The uptake of shingles vaccines rose notably during the pandemic – from 25.1% of people for whom it is recommended in 2018-2019, to 30.1% during 2020-2022. We observed this overall increase across nearly all groups in our study.

We saw the greatest relative increases among groups that historically have had lower rates of shingles vaccination. These included adults ages 50-64, men, people from racial and ethnic minority groups such as non-Hispanic Black adults, those with lower household incomes, current smokers and people without chronic conditions like cancer or arthritis.

Why it matters

In the U.S., the CDC recommends shingles vaccination for all adults age 50 and older. However, uptake has been low, partly due to limited awareness, cost concerns and missed opportunities during routine health care visits.

The COVID-19 pandemic, while disruptive, may have inadvertently created new opportunities to improve adult vaccination uptake, particularly among groups with historically low uptake of the shingles vaccine. Factors contributing to this shift likely included heightened public awareness of the importance of vaccination, more frequent health care encounters, especially during COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, and the expanded availability of adult vaccines in pharmacies and primary care settings.

Replacing the older, less effective live attenuated zoster vaccine, called Zostavax, with the newer, non-live zoster vaccine, Shingrix, in 2020 also played a role. Public health campaigns that promoted co-administration of vaccines and launched targeted outreach to underserved populations further contributed to these gains.

However, major inequities persist. While shingles vaccination rates improved across the board, groups that had lower uptake before the pandemic continued to lag behind wealthier, non-Hispanic white populations with greater health care access. Overall, the vaccination rate for shingles is still low – below other vaccines such as the flu vaccine.

This gap reflects long-standing disparities in getting needed health care, which became even more prominent during the pandemic. It also highlights the need for fairer policies and customized outreach efforts to underserved communities that build trust and raise awareness about the health benefits of the shingles vaccine.

What still isn’t known

Although the upward trend we observed is encouraging, several questions remain. For example, we could not tell from the survey data we worked with whether participants received both doses of the Shingrix vaccine. Both are needed for full protection against shingles.

Nor could we tell whether participants received the shingles vaccine alongside their COVID-19 vaccination. Receiving multiple vaccines at a single health care visit makes vaccination more convenient and may boost vaccine uptake by reducing the number of needed visits. Also unknown is how immunocompromised people fared during this period. Current guidelines recommend that immunocompromised adults regardless of age also receive the shingles vaccine, but the data only included adults age 50 and over.

Addressing these questions in future studies would help public health experts develop strategies to encourage more eligible people to receive the shingles vaccine.

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

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

– ref. Shingles vaccination rates rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, but major gaps remain for underserved groups – https://theconversation.com/shingles-vaccination-rates-rose-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-but-major-gaps-remain-for-underserved-groups-262020

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Assistant Professor, Harvard University

Driven by a desire to explore Nigeria’s literary and cultural history beyond the metropolis of Lagos, I took a road trip to Ibadan, once the most important university town in the country. Ibadan, in Oyo State, was the first city in Nigeria to have a university set up in 1948.

Ibadan is where the Mbari Club once gathered, an experimental space where Nigerian writers, artists and thinkers – among them Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Mabel Segun and South Africa’s Es’kia Mphahlele – met, debated and dreamed in the 1960s and 70s.

It’s the city where celebrated Nigerian artist and architect Demas Nwoko imagined and built his utopias. Where the Oxford University Press and Heinemann Educational Books established their west African headquarters.

Read more:
Chimamanda’s Lagos homecoming wasn’t just a book launch, it was a cultural moment

Books have always been a form of cultural currency in Ibadan. The presence of major publishers meant that bookshops were not just retail outlets, but intellectual salons, sites of encounter and exchange.

So while in Ibadan I visited cultural spaces and independent bookshops but it was the charms of the University campus that mostly captured my imagination. And my favourite place was the University of Ibadan Bookshop. At this campus bookshop I lingered the most, in awe and wonder. Its eclectic range of books, journals, public lecture pamphlets, novels, poetry collections and monographs excited me.

Today, when the global publishing economy has increasingly digitised and centralised, the bookshop feels almost radical just by existing. It’s a reminder that intellectual life in Africa is not peripheral or derived from the west. It is present, prolific and profoundly local. To walk through the shelves of this bookshop was to encounter a history of African thought written and produced on its own terms.

As a scholar of African literature and archives, my research traces the hidden lives of spaces that have shaped publishing and archives. University bookshops have been overlooked but are essential nodes in the continent’s intellectual history.

A snapshot of Nigeria

This campus bookshop gives a snapshot of Nigeria as a print country. Here we witness the nation through its printed matter. A nation of prolific publishing. I found the literary output in the Ibadan campus bookshop not only vast but exuberant and unrelenting. It reflects the texture of the Nigerian personality: loud, boisterous, layered and insistent. Stacks upon stacks of books.

In these stacks, it dawned on me that beneath the surface lies a vibrant, ongoing literary discourse that is unmistakably Nigerian, and sadly not resonant far beyond its borders. These are books you don’t see on reference lists of “popular” and “influential” scholarship that privileges work produced and imported to Africa from the Euro-American academy.

I was especially intrigued with how the Nigerian academic and writer does not tire in producing academic and cultural journals. There are journals for every subject under the sun.

While the critical framework of African literature is too often shaped by the global north (see critiques by Ato Quayson, Biodun Jeyifo, Simon Gikandi and Grace Musila) in Ibadan, I saw a distinctly local and deeply African critical discourse rooted in place, language and lived experience. To walk into the University of Ibadan Bookshop is to step into legacy. Its shelves bear the weight of decades of African thought, theory and storytelling.

Despite being housed in an ageing building, it has stayed defiant. Even though floods destroyed books and computers worth a small fortune in 2019, the bookshop is still standing proudly. And there was pride too among the staff who were eager to help or answer any questions about the books.

More than bookshops

The University of Ibadan bookshop reminded me of the bookshop from my undergraduate days in Zimbabwe. Even though our campus bookshop was much smaller, I used to find pleasure going there in between lectures. It often felt like walking into a vault of African knowledge and memory.

Our bookshop at Midlands State University stocked old, canonical books alongside current literature. On occasion, rare, out-of-print secondhand books would appear on the shelves. The bargain sales also meant I spent most of my money there.

But to call these spaces on African university campuses “bookshops” hardly does them justice. They are hybrid cultural ecosystems that function as part bookshop, part print shop, stationer, library and sometimes even archive. They have long served as vital nodes in the circulation of African knowledge and thought.

Yet this ecosystem is rapidly eroding, undermined by the rise of internet culture, artificial intelligence, piracy and harsh economic conditions. The result is a slow but devastating disappearance of African intellectual memory. As scholars remind us, digital platforms are not neutral. They are structured by algorithms that often marginalise black and African knowledge. So, the loss of these analogue spaces is more than nostalgic, it is epistemic erasure.

In this digital age, there is something vital about the physical presence of bookshops on African campuses. Thanks to them, as a student, for me literature was the serendipity of discovery, the tactile feel of books, the beautiful persistence of a local knowledge system that was relatable and produced by people like me.

Read more:
Nigerian architect Demas Nwoko on his award-winning work: ‘Whatever you build, it should suit your culture’

On the way out of the city, we stopped at Bower’s Tower. From there you can see Ibadan’s sprawling layout, the ancient hills from which the settlement was built, and its red roofs.

The view reflected the complexity and density of ideas the city has nurtured. And despite shifts in Nigeria’s publishing geography from here to Lagos and Abuja, Ibadan still matters. It’s a city that remembers, that archives, that holds on to knowledge.

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

– ref. A university bookshop in Ibadan tells the story of Nigeria’s rich publishing culture – https://theconversation.com/a-university-bookshop-in-ibadan-tells-the-story-of-nigerias-rich-publishing-culture-262050

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Michael E Odijie, Associate Professor, University of Oxford

When historians and the public think about the end of domestic slavery in west Africa, they often imagine colonial governors issuing decrees and missionaries working to end local traffic in enslaved people.

Two of my recent publications tell another part of the story. I am a historian of west Africa, and over the past five years, I have been researching anti-slavery ideas and networks in the region as part of a wider research project.

My research reveals that colonial administrations continued to allow domestic slavery in practice and that African activists fought this.

In one study I focused on Francis P. Fearon, a trader based in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. He exposed pro-slavery within the colonial government through numerous letters written in the 1890s (when the colony was known as the Gold Coast).

In another study I examined the Lagos Auxiliary, a coalition of lawyers, journalists and clergy in Nigeria. Their campaigning secured the repeal of Nigeria’s notorious Native House Rule Ordinance in 1914. That ordinance had been enacted by the colonial government to maintain local slavery in the Niger Delta region.

Considered together, the two studies demonstrate how local campaigners used letters, print culture, imperial pressure points and personal networks to oppose practices that had kept thousands of Africans in bondage.

The methods Fearon and the Lagos Auxiliary pioneered still matter because they show how marginalised communities can compel power‑holders to close the gap between laws and lived reality. They remind us that well‑documented local testimony, amplified trans-nationally, can still overturn official narratives, compel policy change, and keep institutions honest.

Colonial ‘abolition’ that wasn’t

West Africa was a major source of enslaved people during the transatlantic slave trade. The transatlantic trade was suppressed in the early 19th century, but this did not bring an end to domestic slavery.

One of the principal rationales for colonisation in west Africa was the eradication of domestic slavery.

Accordingly, when the Gold Coast was formally annexed as a British colony in 1874, the imperial government declared slave dealing illegal. And slave-dealing was criminalised across southern Nigeria in 1901. On paper these measures promised freedom, but in practice loopholes empowered slave-holders, chiefs and colonial officials who continued to demand coerced labour.

On the Gold Coast, the 1874 abolition law was never enforced. The British governor informed slave-owners that they might retain enslaved persons provided those individuals did not complain. By 1890, child slavery had become widespread in towns such as Accra. According to the local campaigners, it was even sanctioned by the colonial governor. This led to some Africans uniting to establish a network to oppose it.

The Niger Delta region of Nigeria had a similar experience. The colonial administration enacted the Native House Rule Ordinance to counteract the effects of the Slave-Dealing Proclamation of 1901 which criminalised slave dealing with a penalty of seven years’ imprisonment for offenders. The Native House Rule Ordinance required every African to belong to a “House” under a designated head. It went on to criminalise any person who attempted to leave their “House”. In the Niger Delta kingdoms such as Bonny, Kalabari and Okrika, the word “House” never referred to a single dwelling. Rather, it denoted a self-perpetuating, named corporation of relatives, dependants and slaves under a chief, which owned property and spoke with one voice. By the 1900s, “Houses” had become the primary units through which slave ownership was organised.

Therefore, the Native House Rule Ordinance compelled enslaved people in Houses to remain with their masters. The masters were empowered to use colonial authority to discipline them. District commissioners executed arrest warrants against runaways. In exchange, the House heads and local chiefs supplied the colonial administration with unpaid labour for public works.

African campaigners in Accra and Lagos organised to challenge what they perceived as the British colonial state’s support for slavery.

Fearon: an undercover abolitionist in Accra

Francis Fearon was an educated African, active in the Accra scene during the second half of the 19th century. He was highly literate and part of elite circles. He was closely associated with the journalist Edmund Bannerman. He regularly wrote to local newspapers, often expressing concerns about racism against Black people and moral decay.

On 24 June 1890, Fearon sent a 63-page letter, with ten appendices, to the Aborigines’ Protection Society in London. That dossier would form the basis of several further communications. He alleged that child trafficking continued.

As evidence, he transcribed the confidential court register of Accra and claimed that Governor W. B. Griffith had instructed convicted slave-owners to recover their “property”.

Fearon’s tactics were audacious. He remained anonymous, relied on court clerks for documents, and supplied the Aborigines’ Protection Society with evidence. He pleaded with the society to investigate the colonial administration in the Gold Coast.

Although the society publicised the scandal, subsequent narratives quietly effaced the African source.

Lagos elites organise – and name the problem

Like Fearon, Nigerian campaigners also wrote to the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society. They denounced the colonial government in Nigeria for promoting slavery, but they did not remain anonymous.

By this time, the Native House Rule Ordinance had prompted some enslaved people to flee the districts in which it was enforced. They sought refuge in Lagos. Through these arrivals, Lagosian elites learned of the ordinance. They unleashed a vigorous campaign against the colonial state.

The principal figures in this movement included Christopher Sapara Williams, a barrister, and James Bright Davies, editor of The Nigerian Times. Others included politician Herbert Macaulay, Herbert Pearse, a prominent merchant, Bishop James Johnson and the Reverend Mojola Agbebi. Unlike Fearon’s lone-wolf strategy, they mounted a coordinated assault on the colonial administration. They drafted petitions, briefed sympathetic European organisations, and inundated local newspapers with commentary.

Their arguments blended humanitarian indignation with constitutional acumen. They insisted that the ordinance contravened both British liberal ideals and African custom.

After years of pressure the law was amended and then quietly repealed in 1914.

Why these stories matter now

Contemporary scholarship on abolition is gradually shifting from asking “what Britain did for Africa” to examining the role Africans played in ending slavery.

Many African abolitionists who fought and lost their lives in the struggle against slavery have long gone unacknowledged. This is beginning to change.

The two articles discussed here highlight the creativity of Africans who, decades before radio or civil-rights NGOs, used transatlantic information circuits. They exposed colonial governments that continued to rely on forced-labour economies long after slavery was supposed to have ended.

They remind us that grassroots documentation can overturn official narratives. Evidence-based advocacy, coalition-building, and the strategic use of global media remain potent instruments.

Research for these articles was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 885418).

– ref. The African activists who challenged colonial-era slavery in Lagos and the Gold Coast – https://theconversation.com/the-african-activists-who-challenged-colonial-era-slavery-in-lagos-and-the-gold-coast-261089

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Habib Noorbhai, Professor (Health & Sports Science), University of Johannesburg

If you were to walk through the corridors of some of the world’s leading cricket schools, you might hear the crack of leather on willow long before the bell for the end of the day rings.

Across the cricketing world, elite schools have served as key feeder systems to national teams for decades. They provide young players with superior training facilities, high-level coaching and competitive playing opportunities.

This tradition has served as cricket’s most dependable talent pipeline. But is it a strength or a symptom of exclusion?

My recent study examined the school backgrounds of 1,080 elite men’s cricketers across eight countries over a 30-year period. It uncovered telling patterns.

Read more:
Cricket: children are the key to the future of the game, not broadcast rights

Top elite cricket countries such as South Africa, England and Australia continue to draw heavily from private education systems. In these nations, cricket success seems almost tied to one’s school uniform.

I argue that if cricket boards want to promote equity and competitiveness, they will need to broaden the talent search by investing in grassroots cricket infrastructure in under-resourced areas.

For cricket to be a sport that anyone with talent can succeed in, there will need to be more school leagues and entry-level tournaments as well as targeted investment in community-based hubs and non-elite school zones.

Findings

South Africa is a case in point. My previous study in 2020 outlined that more than half of its national players at One-Day International (ODI) World Cups came from boys-only schools (mostly private).

These schools are often well-resourced, with turf wickets, expert coaches and an embedded culture of competition. Unsurprisingly, the same schools tend to produce a high number of national team batters, as they offer longer game formats and better playing surfaces. Cricket’s colonial origins have influenced the structure and culture of school cricket being tied to a form of privilege.

Read more:
Elite boys’ schools still shape South Africa’s national cricket team

In Australia and England, the story is not very different. Despite their efforts to diversify player sourcing, private schools still dominate. Even in cricketing nations that celebrate working-class grit, such as Australia, private school players continue to shape elite squads.

The statistics say as much; for example: about 44% of Australian Ashes test series players since 2010 attended private schools, and for England, the figure is 45%. That’s not grassroots, it could be regarded as gated turf…

Yet not all countries follow this route. The West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka reflect very different models. Club cricket, informal play and community academies provide their players with opportunities to rise. These countries have lower reliance on private schools. Some of their finest players emerged from modest public schooling or neighbourhood cricketing networks.

India provides an interesting hybrid. Although elite schools such as St. Xavier’s and Modern School contribute players, most national stars emerge from public institutions or small-town academies. The explosion of the Indian Premier League since 2008 has also democratised access, pulling in talent from previously overlooked and underdeveloped cities.

In these regions, scouting is based on potential, not privilege.

So why does this matter?

At first glance, elite schools producing elite cricketers might appear logical. These institutions have the resources to nurture talent. But scratch beneath the surface and troubling questions appear.

Are national teams truly reflecting their countries? Or are they simply echo chambers of social advantage?

Read more:
Cricket inequalities in England and Wales are untenable – our report shows how to rejuvenate the game

In South Africa, almost every Black African cricketer to represent the country has come through a private school (often on scholarship). That suggests that talent without access remains potentially invisible. It also places unfair pressure on the few who make it through, as if they carry the hopes of entire communities.

I found that in England, some county systems have started integrating players from state schools, but progress is slow. In New Zealand, where cricket is less centralised around private institutions, regional hubs and public schools have had more success in spreading opportunities. However, even there, Māori and Pasifika players remain underrepresented in elite squads.

Four steps that can be taken

1. One solution lies in recognising that schools don’t have a monopoly on talent. Cricket boards must increase investment in grassroots infrastructure, particularly in under-resourced areas. Setting up community hubs, supporting school-club partnerships and more regional competitions could discover hidden talent.

2. Another step is to improve the visibility and reach of scouting networks. Too often, selection favours players from known institutions. By diversifying trial formats and leveraging technology (such as video submissions or performance-tracking apps), selectors can widen their net. It’s already happening in India, where IPL scouts visit the most unlikely of places.

3. Coaching is another stumbling block. In many countries, high-level coaches are clustered in elite schools. National boards should consider optimising salaries as well as rotating certified coaches into public schools and regional academies. They should also ensure coaches are developed to be equipped to work with diverse learners and conditions.

4. Technology offers other exciting possibilities too. Virtual simulations, motion tracking and AI-assisted video reviews are now common in high-performance centres. Making simplified versions available to lower-income schools could level the playing field. Imagine a township bowler in South Africa learning to analyse their technique using only a smartphone and a free app?

Fairness in sport

The conversation about schools and cricket is not just about numbers or stats. It is about fairness. Sport should be the great leveller, not another mechanism of exclusion. If cricket is to thrive, it needs to look beyond scoreboards and trophies. It must ask who gets to play and who never gets seen?

Read more:
Why is cricket so popular on the Indian sub-continent?

A batter from a village school in India, a wicket-keeper from a government school in Sri Lanka or a fast bowler in a South African township; each deserves the chance to be part of the national story. Cricket boards, policymakers and educators must work together to make that possible.

The game will only grow when it welcomes players from all walks of life. That requires more than scholarships. It requires a reset of how we think about talent. Because the next cricket superstar may not wear a crest on their blazer. They may wear resilience on their sleeve.

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

– ref. Cricket’s great global divide: elite schools still shape the sport – https://theconversation.com/crickets-great-global-divide-elite-schools-still-shape-the-sport-261709

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By James (Jim) S. Cotton, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McMaster University

Buildings are the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. In many cities, including Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, buildings are the single highest source of emissions.

The recently launched Infrastructure for Good barometer, released by consulting firm Deloitte, suggests that Canada’s infrastructure investments already top the global list in terms of positive societal, economic and environmental benefits.

In fact, over the past 150 years, Canada has built railways, roads, clean water systems, electrical grids, pipelines and communication networks to connect and serve people across the country.

Now, there’s an opportunity to build on Canada’s impressive tradition by creating a new form of infrastructure: capturing, storing and sharing the massive amounts of heat lost from industry, electricity generation and communities, even in summer.

Natural gas precedent

Indoor heating often comes from burning fossil fuels — three-quarters of Ontario homes, for example, are heated by natural gas. Until about 1966, homes across Canada were primarily heated by wood stoves, coal boilers, oil furnaces or heaters using electricity from coal-fired power plants.

After the oil crisis of the 1970s, many of those fuels were replaced by natural gas, delivered directly to individual homes. The cost of the natural gas infrastructure, including a national network of pipelines, was amortized over more than 50 years to make the cost more practical.

This reliable, low-cost energy source quickly proved to be popular. The change cut heating emissions across Ontario by roughly half throughout the 1970s and 1980s, long before climate change was the concern it is today.

Now, as the need to decarbonize becomes more pressing, recent studies not only emphasize the often-overstated emissions reductions benefits from using natural gas; they also indicate that burning this fuel source is still far from net-zero.

However, there’s no reason why Canadian governments can’t invest in new infrastructure-based alternative heating solutions. This time, they could replace natural gas with an alternative, net-zero source: the wasted heat already emitted by other energy uses.

Heat capture and storage

Depending on the source temperature, technology used and system design, heat can be captured throughout the year, stored and distributed as needed. A type of infrastructure called thermal networks could capture leftover heat from factories and nuclear and gas-fired power plants.

In essence, thermal networks take excess thermal energy from industrial processes (though thermal energy can theoretically be captured from a variety of different sources), and use it as a centralized heating source for a series of insulated underground pipelines connected to multiple other buildings. These pipelines, in turn, are used to heat or cool these connected buildings.

A substantial potential to capture heat similarly exists in every neighbourhood. Heat is produced by data centres, grocery stores, laundromats, restaurants, sewage systems and even hockey arenas.

In Ontario, the amount of energy we dump in the form of heat is greater than all the natural gas we use to heat our homes.

A restaurant, for example, can produce enough heat for seven family homes. To take advantage of the wasted heat, Canada needs to build thermal networks, corridors and storage to capture and distribute heat directly to consumers.

The effort demands substantial leadership from all levels of government. Creating these systems would be expensive, but the technology does exist, and the one-time cost would pay for itself many times over.

Such systems are already working in other cold countries. Thermal networks heat half the homes in Sweden and two-thirds of homes in Denmark.

The oil crisis of the 1970s motivated both countries to find new domestic heating sources. They financed their new infrastructure over 50 years and reduced their investment risks through low-interest bonds (loaned by public banks) and generous subsidies.

These were offered to utility companies looking to expand district energy operations, and to consumers by incentivizing connections to such systems. Additionally, in Denmark, controlled consumer prices served a similar function.

At least seven American states have established thermal energy networks, with New York being the first. The state’s Utility Thermal Energy Network and Jobs Act allows public utilities to own, operate and manage thermal networks.

They can supply thermal energy, but so can private producers such as data centres, all with public oversight. Such a strategy avoids monopolies and allows gas and electric utilities to deliver services through central networks.

An opportunity for Canada

Canada has a real opportunity to learn from the experiences of Sweden, Denmark and New York. In doing so, Canada can create a beneficial and truly national heating system in the process. Beginning with federal government leadership, thermal networks could be built across Canada, tailored to the unique and individual needs, strengths and opportunities of municipalities and provinces.

Such a shift would reduce emissions and generate greater energy sovereignty for Canada. It could drive a just energy strategy that could provide employment opportunities for those displaced by the transition away from fossil fuels, while simultaneously increasing Canada’s economic independence in the process.

Thermal networks could be built using pipelines made from Canadian steel. Oil-well drillers from Alberta could dig borehole heat-storage systems. A new market for heat-recovery pumps would create good advanced-manufacturing jobs in Canada.

Read more:
How heat storage technologies could keep Canada’s roads and bridges ice-free all winter long

Funding for the infrastructure could come through public-private partnerships, with major investments from public banks and pension funds, earning a solid and secure rate of return. A regulated approach and process could permit this infrastructure cost to be amortized over decades, similar to the way past governments have financed gas, electrical and water networks.

As researchers studying the engineering and policy potential of such an opportunity, we view such actions as essential if net-zero is to be achieved in the Canadian building sector. They are also a win-win solution for incumbent industry, various levels of government and citizens across Canada alike.

Yet efforts to install robust thermal networks remain stalled by institutional inertia, the strong influence of the oil industry, limited citizen awareness of the technology’s potential and a tendency for government to view the electrification of heating as the primary solution to building decarbonization.

In this time of environmental crisis and international uncertainty, pushing past these barriers, drawing on Canada’s lengthy history of constructing infrastructure and creating this new form thermal energy infrastructure would be a safe, beneficial and conscientious way to move Canada into a more climate-friendly future.

James (Jim) S. Cotton receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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

– ref. Canada could use thermal infrastructure to turn wasted heat emissions into energy – https://theconversation.com/canada-could-use-thermal-infrastructure-to-turn-wasted-heat-emissions-into-energy-254972

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Paul M. Collins Jr., Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, UMass Amherst

President Donald Trump’s nomination of his former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, was mired in controversy.

On June 24, 2025, Erez Reuveni, a former Department of Justice attorney who worked with Bove, released an extensive, 27-page whistleblower report. Reuveni claimed that Bove, as the Trump administration’s acting deputy attorney general, said “that it might become necessary to tell a court ‘fuck you’” and ignore court orders related to the administration’s immigration policies. Bove’s acting role ended on March 6 when he resumed his current position of principal associate deputy attorney general.

When asked about this statement at his June 25 Senate confirmation hearing, Bove said, “I don’t recall.”

And on July 15, 80 former federal and state judges signed a letter opposing Bove’s nomination. The letter argued that “Mr. Bove’s egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.”

A day later, more than 900 former Department of Justice attorneys submitted their own letter opposing Bove’s confirmation. The attorneys argued that “Few actions could undermine the rule of law more than a senior executive branch official flouting another branch’s authority. But that is exactly what Mr. Bove allegedly did through his involvement in DOJ’s defiance of court orders.”

On July 17, Democrats walked out of the Senate Judiciary Committee vote, in protest of the refusal by Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, to allow further investigation and debate on the nomination. Republicans on the committee then unanimously voted to move the nomination forward for a full Senate vote.

Late in the evening of July 29, and after two more whistleblower complaints about Bove’s conduct had emerged, the U.S. Senate confirmed Bove’s nomination in a 50-49 vote.

As a scholar of the courts, I know that most federal court appointments are not as controversial as Bove’s nomination. But highly contentious nominations do arise from time to time.

Here’s how three controversial nominations turned out – and how Bove’s nomination was different in a crucial way.

Robert Bork

Bork is the only federal court nominee whose name became a verb.

“Borking” is “to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification,” according to Merriam-Webster.

This refers to Republican President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 appointment of Bork to the Supreme Court.

Reagan called Bork “one of the finest judges in America’s history.” Democrats viewed Bork, a federal appeals court judge, as an ideologically extreme conservative, with their opposition based largely on his extensive scholarly work and opinions on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In opposing the Bork nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts took the Senate floor and gave a fiery speech: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”

Ultimately, Bork’s nomination failed by a 58-42 vote in the Senate, with 52 Democrats and six Republicans rejecting the nomination.

Ronnie White

In 1997, Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated White to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. White was the first Black judge on the Missouri Supreme Court.

Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, from White’s home state of Missouri, led the fight against the nomination. Ashcroft alleged that White’s confirmation would “push the law in a pro-criminal direction.” Ashcroft based this claim on White’s comparatively liberal record in death penalty cases as a judge on the Missouri Supreme Court.

However, there was limited evidence to support this assertion. This led some to believe that Ashcroft’s attack on the nomination was motivated by stereotypes that African Americans, like White, are soft on crime.

Even Clinton implied that race may be a factor in the attacks on White: “By voting down the first African-American judge to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court, the Republicans have deprived both the judiciary and the people of Missouri of an excellent, fair, and impartial Federal judge.”

White’s nomination was defeated in the Senate by a 54-45 party-line vote. In 2014, White was renominated to the same judgeship by President Barack Obama and confirmed by largely party-line 53-44 vote, garnering the support of a single Republican, Susan Collins of Maine.

Miguel Estrada

Republican President George W. Bush nominated Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2001.

Estrada, who had earned a unanimous “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, faced deep opposition from Senate Democrats, who believed he was a conservative ideologue. They also worried that, if confirmed, he would later be appointed to the Supreme Court.

However, unlike Bork – who had an extensive paper trail as an academic and judge – Estrada’s written record was very thin.

Democrats sought to use his confirmation hearing to probe his beliefs. But they didn’t get very far, as Estrada dodged many of the senators’ questions, including ones about Supreme Court cases he disagreed with and judges he admired.

Democrats were particularly troubled by allegations that Estrada, when he was screening candidates for Justice Anthony Kennedy, disqualified applicants for Supreme Court clerkships based on their ideology.

According to one attorney: “Miguel told me his job was to prevent liberal clerks from being hired. He told me he was screening out liberals because a liberal clerk had influenced Justice Kennedy to side with the majority and write a pro-gay-rights decision in a case known as Romer v. Evans, which struck down a Colorado statute that discriminated against gays and lesbians.”

When asked about this at his confirmation hearing, Estrada initially denied it but later backpedaled. Estrada said, “There is a set of circumstances in which I would consider ideology if I think that the person has some extreme view that he would not be willing to set aside in service to Justice Kennedy.”

Unlike the Bork nomination, Democrats didn’t have the numbers to vote Estrada’s nomination down. Instead, they successfully filibustered the nomination, knowing that Republicans couldn’t muster the required 60 votes to end the filibuster. This marked the first time in Senate history that a court of appeals nomination was filibustered. Estrada would never serve as a judge.

Bove stands out

As the examples of Bork, Estrada and White make clear, contentious nominations to the federal courts often involve ideological concerns.

This is also true for Bove, who was opposed in part because of the perception that he is a conservative ideologue.

But the main concerns about Bove were related to a belief that he is a Trump loyalist who shows little respect for the rule of law or the judicial branch.

This makes Bove stand out among contentious federal court nominations.

This story, originally published on July 21, 2025, has been updated to reflect the Senate’s confirmation of Bove.

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

– ref. Emil Bove confirmed – his appeals court nomination echoed earlier controversies, but with a key difference – https://theconversation.com/emil-bove-confirmed-his-appeals-court-nomination-echoed-earlier-controversies-but-with-a-key-difference-261347

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Soroush Sabbaghan, Associate Professor, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

Scroll through social media and you’ll find numerous videos such as “How to Use AI to write your essay in 5 minutes” or “How to skip the readings with ChatGPT.”

The discourse surrounding AI in education is deafening and it’s almost entirely consumed by the question: How? How do we write the perfect prompt? How should educators integrate ChatGPT into academic work or detect its use?

This obsession with methods and mechanics is a dangerous distraction. By racing to master the “how,” we have skipped the two far more critical, foundational questions: why should we use these tools in the first place, and when is it appropriate to do so?

Answering the “how” is a technical challenge. Answering the “why” and “when” is a philosophical one. Until educators and educational leaders ground their approaches in a coherent philosophical and theoretical foundation for learning, integrating AI will be aimless, driven by novelty and efficiency rather than human development.

Two frameworks provide the essential lens we need to move beyond the hype and engage with AI responsibly: “virtue epistemology,” which argues that knowledge is not merely a collection of correct facts or a well-assembled product, but the outcome of practising intellectual virtues; and a care-based approach that prioritizes relationships.

Virtue over volume

The current “how-to” culture implicitly defines the goal of learning as the production of a polished output (like a a comprehensive report or a functional piece of code). From this perspective, AI is a miracle of efficiency. But is the output the point of learning?

Virtue epistemology, as championed by philosophers like Linda Zagzebski, suggests the real goal of an assignment is not just writing the essay itself — but the cultivation of curiosity, intellectual perseverance, humility and critical thinking that the process is meant to instil.

This reframes the “why” of using AI. From this perspective, the only justification for integrating AI into a learning process should be to support and sustain intellectual labour.

If a student uses AI to brainstorm counterarguments for a debate, they are practising intellectual flexibility as part of that labour. If another student uses AI to map connections between theoretical frameworks for a research paper, they are deepening conceptual understanding through guided synthesis.

When AI undermines ‘why’

However, when the “how” of AI is used to bypass the very struggle that builds virtue (by exercising intellectual labour, including analysis, deliberation and judgment), it directly undermines the “why” of the assignment. A graduate student who generates a descriptive list of pertinent research about a topic without engaging with the sources skips the valuable process of synthesis and critical engagement.

This stands in direct contrast to philosopher and educator John Dewey’s view of learning as an active, experiential process.

For Dewey, learning happens through doing, questioning and grappling with complexity, not by acquiring information passively. Assignments that reward perfection and correctness over process and growth further incentivize the use of AI as a shortcut, reducing learning to prompting and receiving rather than engaging in the intellectual labour of constructing meaning.

Care over compliance

If the “why” is about supporting human intellectual labour and fostering intellectual virtue, the “when” is about the specific, contextual and human needs of the learner.

This is where an “ethics of care” becomes indispensable. As philosopher Nel Noddings proposed, a care-based approach prioritizes relationships and the needs of the individual over rigid, universal rules. It moves away from a one-size-fits-all policy and toward discretionary judgment.

The question: “When is it appropriate to use AI?” cannot be answered with a simple rubric. For a student with a learning disability or severe anxiety, using AI to help structure their initial thoughts might be a compassionate and enabling act, allowing them to engage with the intellectual labour of the task without being paralyzed by the mechanics of writing. In this context, the “when” is when the tool removes a barrier to deeper learning.

Conversely, for a student who needs to develop foundational writing skills, relying on that same tool for the same task would be irresponsible. Deciding the “when” requires educators to know their learner, understand the learning goal and act with compassion and wisdom. It is a relational act, not a technical one.

Educators must ensure that AI supports rather than displaces the development of core capabilities.

AI as mediator

This is also where we must confront historian and philosopher Michel Foucault’s challenge to the idea of the lone, autonomous author. Foucault argued that the concept of the author functions to make discourse controllable and to have a name that can be held accountable. Our obsession with policing students’ authorship — a “how” problem focused on originality and plagiarism — is rooted in this system of control.

It rests on the convenient fiction of the unmediated creator, ignoring that all creation is an act of synthesis, mediated by language, culture and the texts that came before. AI is simply a new, more powerful mediator that makes this truth impossible to ignore.

This perspective reframes an educator’s task away from policing a fragile notion of originality. The more crucial questions become when and why to use a mediator like AI. Does the tool enable deeper intellectual labour, or does it supplant the struggle that builds virtue? The focus shifts from controlling the student to intentionally shaping the learning experience.

Reorienting AI through values and virtue

The rush to adopt AI tools without a philosophical framework is already leading us toward a more surveilled, less trusting and pedagogically shallow future.

Some educational systems are investing money in AI detection software when what’s needed is investing in redesigning assessment.

Policy is emerging that requires students to declare their use of AI. But it’s essential to understand that disclosure isn’t the same as meaningful conversations about intellectual virtue.

Answering the questions of why and when to use AI requires us to be architects of learning. It demands that we engage with thinking about learning and what it means to produce knowledge through the works of people like Dewey, Noddings, Zagzebski and others as urgently as we do with the latest tech blogs.

For educators, the responsible integration of AI into our learning environments depends on our commitments to cultivating a culture that values intellectual labour and understands it as inseparable from the knowledge and culture it helps generate.

It is time to stop defaulting to “how” and instead lead the conversation about the values that define when and why AI fits within meaningful and effective learning.

Soroush Sabbaghan receives funding from SSHRC.

– ref. AI can be responsibly integrated into classrooms by answering the ‘why’ and ‘when’ – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-be-responsibly-integrated-into-classrooms-by-answering-the-why-and-when-261496

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jay R. Malcolm, Professor Emeritus, Forestry, University of Toronto

Forest degradation is increasingly recognized as a major global threat. Such degradation refers to the gradual erosion of a forest’s ability to store carbon, support biodiversity and sustain livelihoods, including those of Indigenous Peoples.

International frameworks such as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change now address degradation alongside deforestation.

While tropical forests have long been the focus, attention is also turning to temperate and boreal forests, where forest management is widespread and the potential for degradation is growing.

Some scientists have argued that if forest management is designed to be “ecologically sustainable,” then there should be little concern about degradation. But is this principle being upheld in practice? Our recent study in Ontario suggests otherwise.

Emulating natural forest disturbances

A widely used strategy to support ecological sustainability is to emulate natural disturbances; that is, to design human-caused disturbances so they fall within the range of variation observed in nature.

The ecological theory behind this approach is that species are adapted to cope with, or even benefit from, natural disturbances. In Canada’s managed boreal forests, for example, harvesting is explicitly designed to mimic natural fires, both in individual cutblocks and across the broader landscape.

In fact, this principle is enshrined in Ontario’s 1994 Crown Forest Sustainability Act that states:

“The long-term health and vigour of Crown forests should be provided for by using forest practice…that emulates natural disturbances and landscape patterns…”

The ecological sustainability of forest management is not a given: it is a hypothesis, and like any hypothesis, it must be tested. Are we actually managing forests in ecologically sustainable ways, or are we witnessing gradual forest degradation?

Our study examined the state of a 7.9 million hectare area of boreal forest in northeastern Ontario from 2012 to 2021 to test whether the provincial management regime was emulating natural disturbances, as required by law, or was instead prioritizing timber harvesting.

We used three indicators:

1) The rate at which forest was disturbed (including harvesting and fire).

2) The amount of relatively old forest (greater than 100 years old).

3) Modelled habitat for two species that have been used as indicators of sustainability: America marten and boreal caribou.

Our research did not find evidence that current practices in northeastern Ontario are emulating natural disturbances across the boreal landscape. Rather, the observed disturbance patterns appear to reflect strategies primarily focused on timber harvesting priorities.

What we found

A particular risk for boreal forests is a focus on timber production and economic returns over ecological goals. Such an approach is fundamentally at odds with the idea of emulating nature.

In particular, forests older than 100 years old have high ecological value in natural systems. They keep large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and provide habitat for myriad species. But if one is prioritizing timber, they are viewed as wasteful because they do not produce timber as rapidly as younger forests and are often targeted for removal. In that perspective, they are labelled “decadent.”

We found that the amount of forest disturbed per year was often higher than expected under natural fire regimes and, in some coniferous forest types, even exceeded the rates expected under a strategy that prioritized timber harvesting.

Relatively old forests were also much rarer than in natural landscapes: only 22 per cent of the forest in the study area was more than 100 years old compared to an average of 54 per cent in natural landscapes.

This amount was lower than even the most conservative threshold of natural variability.

Habitats for marten and caribou were similarly degraded and fragmented. Marten habitat covered just 36 per cent of the study landscape, compared to 76 per cent in a reconstructed natural landscape. For boreal caribou, habitat was even more compromised, covering only four per cent of the study area compared to 53 per cent in the natural landscape.

Strikingly, for caribou, levels of habitat disturbance — including disturbances from harvesting, fire and roads — exceeded 70 per cent of the landscape, jeopardizing the sustainability of the two caribou populations.

Surprisingly, the clearest evidence of forest management prioritizing timber occurred within zones meant explicitly to sustain caribou. Our modelling showed that such areas will contain even less caribou habitat in the future than they do today.

A path to an ecologically sustainable future

The Ontario government is currently revisiting its boreal management strategy — a welcome and timely development. But rather than relying solely on a virtual reality model (Boreal Forest Landscape Disturbance Simulator) to define natural landscapes as is currently the case, it is evident that policy must be grounded in empirical data from real, unmanaged forests.

Scientific research over the past several decades has identified forest management approaches that can deliver timber while also sustaining ecological services within natural bounds.

These strategies, however, rely on tools the province has yet to embrace, including longer harvest rotations, increased use of partial harvesting instead of over-relying on clearcutting, expanded areas set aside from logging, and explicit targets for amounts of forest up to 200 years of age or older.

Our findings indicate that forest degradation is already underway in the boreal forests of Ontario. Substantial changes to forest management are required to reverse this trend and safeguard the ecosystem services on which people and wildlife depend.

Jay R. Malcolm has received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Wahkohtowin Development GP Inc. (WDGP). The research also benefited from research on American marten habitat funded by Mitacs
and WDGP. WDGP played a role in defining the study area, but otherwise funders were not involved in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.

Justina C. Ray is President and Senior Scientist of Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

– ref. Ontario’s forest management is falling short on key sustainability test – https://theconversation.com/ontarios-forest-management-is-falling-short-on-key-sustainability-test-261054

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Matt Brooks, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Florida State University

Immigration has dominated recent public discourse about Florida, whether it be the opening of Alligator Alcatraz, a migrant detention facility in the middle of the Everglades, or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declaring an “immigration emergency” for the state that has lasted more than two years.

As demographers – that is, people who count people – we’ve noticed that this conversation has proceeded largely without the benefit of a clear description of Florida’s immigrant population.

Here’s a snapshot.

How many immigrants are in Florida?

We used data from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics and the American Community Survey, conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau. Homeland Security provides estimates of the state’s undocumented population and annual counts of authorized arrivals. Census data allow us to describe the social and economic characteristics of Florida’s immigrant population.

In 2023, the most recent year for which the Department of Homeland Security provides publicly available data, an estimated 590,000 immigrants without legal status were living in Florida. This is the third-largest population of immigrants without legal status in the U.S., behind California and Texas. But in contrast to those two states, the number of immigrants entering Florida illegally has been shrinking since 2018.

On the other hand, DHS data points to recent growth in Florida’s population of immigrants with legal status. This represents a rebound from declines between 2016 and 2020.

In 2023, Florida welcomed 72,850 residents from outside the country. This is just 0.3% of Florida’s population that year. About 95% of these new Florida residents were admitted as lawful permanent residents, or green card holders. The remainder entered as refugees (3%) and people granted asylum (2%).

For comparison, U.S. Census Bureau estimates suggest roughly 640,000 people moved to Florida in 2023 from other states.

Who makes up Florida’s immigrant population?

The American Community Survey data tells us even more about Florida’s immigrant population. The survey estimates that 4,996,874 foreign-born individuals lived in Florida in 2023, up from 3,798,062 in 2013. These numbers include those who are in the U.S. legally and illegally and encompass both recent arrivals and long-term residents.

In 2023, about 22% of Florida residents – and nearly 7% of Florida children – were immigrants. An additional 29% of Florida children have at least one immigrant parent.

According to the American Community Survey, nearly half of Florida’s immigrants were born in Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia or Mexico. Despite being born elsewhere, Florida’s immigrants in many ways resemble other Floridians: About 20% hold a bachelor’s degree, compared to 22% of nonimmigrant Floridians, and 13% of both groups have a graduate degree. Nearly all Florida immigrants, 89%, speak English, and the majority, 57%, are naturalized citizens.

Immigrants make up a disproportionate share of Florida’s workforce, particularly in essential sectors of the state’s economy. They account for more than 47% of Florida’s agricultural workers, 41% of hotel workers and 35% of construction workers.

Florida immigrants also work in sectors that many might not consider to be “immigrant jobs.” They constitute 33% of child care workers, 21% of school and university employees and 27% of the health care workers.

Across all sectors, immigrants have lower unemployment rates than nonimmigrants. Although available data cannot tell us the extent to which these numbers are bolstered by undocumented immigrants, the importance of Florida’s immigrants for the state’s economy is undeniable.

Florida’s population is growing at a faster rate than any other state in the country, boosted by people moving in from abroad and from other states. This growth both reflects and feeds the state’s economic vitality. Between 2019 and 2024, Florida’s GDP grew twice as fast as the nation’s as a whole.

Is Florida experiencing an “immigration emergency”? That’s for politicians to decide. Our research suggests that policies that discourage new arrivals or encourage – or force – migrants to leave could jeopardize Florida’s robust economy and the well-being of its population.

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.

– ref. Unpacking Florida’s immigration trends − demographers take a closer look at the legal and undocumented population – https://theconversation.com/unpacking-floridas-immigration-trends-demographers-take-a-closer-look-at-the-legal-and-undocumented-population-261425

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By James N. Gregory, Professor of History, University of Washington

It has happened before: an upset victory by a Democratic Socialist in an important primary election after an extraordinary grassroots campaign.

In the summer of 1934, Upton Sinclair earned the kind of headlines that greeted Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory on June 24, 2025, in the New York City mayoral election.

Mamdani’s win surprised nearly everyone. Not just because he beat the heavily favored former governor Andrew Cuomo, but because he did so by a large margin. Because he did so with a unique coalition, and because his Muslim identity and membership in the Democratic Socialists of America should have, in conventional political thinking, made victory impossible.

This sounds familiar, at least to historians like me. Upton Sinclair, the famous author and a socialist for most of his life, ran for governor in California in 1934 and won the Democratic primary election with a radical plan that he called End Poverty in California, or EPIC.

The news traveled the globe and set off intense speculation about the future of California, where Sinclair was then expected to win the general election. His primary victory also generated theories about the future of the Democratic Party, where this turn toward radicalism might complicate the policies of the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

What happened next may concern Mamdani supporters. Business and media elites mounted a campaign of fear that put Sinclair on the defensive. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats defected, and a third candidate split progressive votes.

In the November election, Sinclair lost decisively to incumbent Gov. Frank Merriam, who would have stood less chance against a conventional Democrat.

As a historian of American radicalism, I have written extensively about Sinclair’s EPIC movement, and I direct an online project that includes detailed accounts of the campaign and copies of campaign materials.

Upton’s 1934 campaign initiated the on-again, off-again influence of radicals in the Democratic Party and illustrates some of the potential dynamics of that relationship, which, almost 100 years later, may be relevant to Mamdani in the coming months.

California, 1934

Sinclair launched his gubernatorial campaign in late 1933, hoping to make a difference but not expecting to win. California remained mired in the Great Depression. The unemployment rate had been estimated at 29% when Roosevelt took office in March and had improved only slightly since then.

Sinclair’s Socialist Party had failed badly in the 1932 presidential election as Democrat Roosevelt swept to victory. Those poor results included California, where the Democratic Party had been an afterthought for more than three decades.

Sinclair decided that it was time to see what could be accomplished by radicals working within that party.

Reregistering as a Democrat, he dashed off a 64-page pamphlet with the futuristic title I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty. It detailed his plan to solve California’s massive unemployment crisis by having the state take over idle farms and factories and turn them into cooperatives dedicated to “production for use” instead of “production for profit.”

Sinclair soon found himself presiding over an explosively popular campaign, as thousands of volunteers across the state set up EPIC clubs – numbering more than 800 by election time – and sold the weekly EPIC News to raise campaign funds.

Mainstream Democrats waited too long to worry about Sinclair and then failed to unite behind an alternative candidate. But it would not have mattered. Sinclair celebrated a massive primary victory, gaining more votes than all of his opponents combined.

Newspapers around the world told the story.

“What is the matter with California?” The Boston Globe asked, according to author Greg Mitchell. “That is the farthest shift to the left ever made by voters of a major party in this country.”

Building fear

Primaries are one thing. But in 1934, the November general election turned in a different direction.

Terrified by Sinclair’s plan, business leaders mobilized to defeat EPIC, forming the kind of cross-party coalition that is rare in America except when radicals pose an electoral threat. Sinclair described the effort in a book he wrote shortly after the November election: “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.”

Nearly every major newspaper in the state, including the five Democratic-leaning Hearst papers, joined the effort to stop Sinclair. Meanwhile, a high-priced advertising agency set up bipartisan groups with names like California League Against Sinclairism and Democrats for Merriam, trumpeting the names of prominent Democrats who refused to support Sinclair.

Few people of any party were enthusiastic about Merriam, who had recently angered many Californians by sending the National Guard to break a Longshore strike in San Francisco, only to trigger a general strike that shut down the city.

The campaign against Sinclair attacked him with billboards, radio and newsreel programming, and relentless newspaper stories about his radical past and supposedly dangerous plans for California.

EPIC faced another challenge, candidate Raymond Haight, running on the Progressive Party label. Haight threatened to divide left-leaning voters.

Sinclair tried to defend himself, energetically denouncing what he called the “Lie Factory” and offering revised, more moderate versions of some elements of the EPIC plan. But the Red Scare campaign worked. Merriam easily outdistanced Sinclair, winning by a plurality in the three-way race.

New York, 2025

Will a Democratic Socialist running for mayor in New York face anything similar in the months ahead?

A movement to stop Mamdani is coming together, and some of what they are saying resonates with the 1934 campaign to stop Sinclair.

The Guardian newspaper has quoted “loquacious billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman, who said he and others in the finance industry are ready to commit ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ into an opposing campaign.”

In 1934, newspapers publicized threats by major companies, most famously Hollywood studios, to leave California in the event of a Sinclair victory. The Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine and other media outlets have recently warned of similar threats.

And there may be something similar about the political dynamics.

Sinclair’s opponents could offer only a weak alternative candidate. Merriam had few friends and many critics.

In 2025, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who abandoned the primary when he was running as a Democrat and is now running as an independent, is arguably weaker still, having been rescued by President Donald Trump from a corruption indictment that might have sent him to prison. If he is the best hope to stop Mamdani, the campaign strategy will likely parallel 1934. All attack ads – little effort to promote Adams.

But there is an important difference in the way the New York contest is setting up. Andrew Cuomo remains on the ballot as an independent, and his name could draw votes that might otherwise go to Adams.

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, will also be on the ballot. Whereas in 1934 two candidates divided progressive votes, in 2025 three candidates are going to divide the stop-Mamdani votes.

Religion also looms large in the campaign ahead. The New York City metro area’s U.S. Muslim population is said to be at least 600,000, compared to an estimated 1.6 million Jewish residents. Adams has announced that the threat of antisemitism will be the major theme of his campaign.

The stop-Sinclair campaign also relied on religion, focusing on his professed atheism and pulling quotations from books he had written denouncing organized religion. However, a statistical analysis of voting demographics suggests that this effort proved unimportant.

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

– ref. When socialists win Democratic primaries: Will Zohran Mamdani be haunted by the Upton Sinclair effect? – https://theconversation.com/when-socialists-win-democratic-primaries-will-zohran-mamdani-be-haunted-by-the-upton-sinclair-effect-260168

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Joyner, Associate Dean and Senior Research Associate, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

New technologies usually follow the technology adoption life cycle. Innovators and early adopters rush to embrace new technologies, while laggards and skeptics jump in much later.

At first glance, it looks like artificial intelligence is following the same pattern, but a new crop of studies suggests that AI might follow a different course – one with significant implications for business, education and society.

This general phenomenon has often been described as “AI hesitancy” or “AI reluctance.” The typical adoption curve assumes a person who is hesitant or reluctant to embrace a technology will eventually do so anyway. This pattern has repeated over and over – why would AI be any different?

Emerging research on the reasons behind AI hesitancy, however, suggests there are different dynamics at play that might alter the traditional adoption cycle. For example, a recent study found that while some causes of this hesitation closely mirror those regarding previous technologies, others are unique to AI.

In many ways, as someone who closely watches the spread of AI, there may be a better analogy: veganism.

AI veganism

The idea of an AI vegan is someone who abstains from using AI, the same way a vegan is someone who abstains from eating products derived from animals. Generally, the reasons people choose veganism do not fade automatically over time. They might be reasons that can be addressed, but they’re not just about getting more comfortable eating animals and animal products. That’s why the analogy in the case of AI is appealing.

Unlike many other technologies, it’s important not to assume that skeptics and laggards will eventually become adopters. Many of those refusing to embrace AI actually fit the traditional archetype of an early adopter. The study on AI hesitation focused on college students who are often among the first demographics to adopt new technologies.

There is some historical precedent for this analogy. Under the hood, AI is just a set of algorithms. Algorithmic aversion is a well-known phenomenon where humans are biased against algorithmic decision-making – even if it is shown to be more effective. For example, people prefer dating advice from humans over advice from algorithms, even when the algorithms perform better.

But the analogy to veganism applies in other ways, providing insights into what to expect in the future. In fact, studies show that three of the main reasons people choose veganism each have a parallel in AI avoidance.

Ethical concerns

One motivation for veganism is concern over the ethical sourcing of animal by-products. Similarly, studies have found that when users are aware that many content creators did not knowingly opt into letting their work be used to train AI, they are more likely to avoid using AI.

These concerns were at the center of the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strikes in 2023, where the two unions argued for legal protections against companies using creatives’ works to train AI without consent or compensation. While some creators may be protected by such trade agreements, lots of models are instead trained on the work of amateur, independent or freelance creators without these systematic protections.

Environmental concerns

A second motivation for veganism is concern over the environmental impacts of intensive animal agriculture, from deforestation to methane production. Research has shown that the computing resources needed to support AI are growing exponentially, dramatically increasing demand for electricity and water, and that efficiency improvements are unlikely to lower the overall power usage due to a rebound effect, which is when efficiency gains spur new technologies that consume more energy.

One preliminary study found that increasing users’ awareness of the power demands of AI can affect how they use these systems. Another survey found that concern about water usage to cool AI systems was a factor in students’ refusal to use the technology at Cambridge University.

Personal wellness

A third motivation for veganism is concern for possible negative health effects of eating animals and animal products. A potential parallel concern could be at work in AI veganism.

A Microsoft Research study found that people who were more confident in using generative AI showed diminished critical thinking. The 2025 Cambridge University survey found some students avoiding AI out of concern that using it could make them lazy.

It is not hard to imagine that the possible negative mental health effects of using AI could drive some AI abstinence in the same way the possible negative physical health effects of an omnivorous diet may drive some to veganism.

How society reacts

Veganism has led to a dedicated industry catering to that diet. Some restaurants feature vegan entrees. Some manufacturers specialize in vegan foods. Could it be the case that some companies will try to use the absence of AI as a selling point for their products and services?

If so, it would be similar to how companies such as DuckDuckGo and the Mozilla Foundation provide alternative search engines and web browsers with enhanced privacy as their main feature.

There are few vegans compared to nonvegans in the U.S. Estimates range as high as 4% of the population. But the persistence of veganism has enabled a niche market to serve them. Time will tell if AI veganism takes hold.

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

– ref. ‘AI veganism’: Some people’s issues with AI parallel vegans’ concerns about diet – https://theconversation.com/ai-veganism-some-peoples-issues-with-ai-parallel-vegans-concerns-about-diet-260277

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Richard Green, Astronomer Emeritus, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona

Outdoor lighting for buildings, roads and advertising can help people see in the dark of night, but many astronomers are growing increasingly concerned that these lights could be blinding us to the rest of the universe.

An estimate from 2023 showed that the rate of human-produced light is increasing in the night sky by as much as 10% per year.

I’m an astronomer who has chaired a standing commission on astronomical site protection for the International Astronomical Union-sponsored working groups studying ground-based light pollution.

My work with these groups has centered around the idea that lights from human activities are now affecting astronomical observatories on what used to be distant mountaintops.

Hot science in the cold, dark night

While orbiting telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope give researchers a unique view of the cosmos – particularly because they can see light blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere – ground-based telescopes also continue to drive cutting-edge discovery.

Telescopes on the ground capture light with gigantic and precise focusing mirrors that can be 20 to 35 feet (6 to 10 meters) wide. Moving all astronomical observations to space to escape light pollution would not be possible, because space missions have a much greater cost and so many large ground-based telescopes are already in operation or under construction.

Around the world, there are 17 ground-based telescopes with primary mirrors as big or bigger than Webb’s 20-foot (6-meter) mirror, and three more under construction with mirrors planned to span 80 to 130 feet (24 to 40 meters).

The newest telescope starting its scientific mission right now, the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, has a mirror with a 28-foot diameter and a 3-gigapixel camera. One of its missions is to map the distribution of dark matter in the universe.

To do that, it will collect a sample of 2.6 billion galaxies. The typical galaxy in that sample is 100 times fainter than the natural glow in the nighttime air in the Earth’s atmosphere, so this Rubin Observatory program depends on near-total natural darkness.

Any light scattered at night – road lighting, building illumination, billboards – would add glare and noise to the scene, greatly reducing the number of galaxies Rubin can reliably measure in the same time, or greatly increasing the total exposure time required to get the same result.

The LED revolution

Astronomers care specifically about artificial light in the blue-green range of the electromagnetic spectrum, as that used to be the darkest part of the night sky. A decade ago, the most common outdoor lighting was from sodium vapor discharge lamps. They produced an orange-pink glow, which meant that they put out very little blue and green light.

Even observatories relatively close to growing urban areas had skies that were naturally dark in the blue and green part of the spectrum, enabling all kinds of new observations.

Then came the solid-state LED lighting revolution. Those lights put out a broad rainbow of color with very high efficiency – meaning they produce lots of light per watt of electricity. The earliest versions of LEDs put out a large fraction of their energy in the blue and green, but advancing technology now gets the same efficiency with “warmer” lights that have much less blue and green.

Nevertheless, the formerly pristine darkness of the night sky now has much more light, particularly in the blue and green, from LEDs in cities and towns, lighting roads, public spaces and advertising.

The broad output of color from LEDs affects the whole spectrum, from ultraviolet through deep red.

The U.S. Department of Energy commissioned a study in 2019 which predicted that the higher energy efficiency of LEDs would mean that the amount of power used for lights at night would go down, with the amount of light emitted staying roughly the same.

But satellites looking down at the Earth reveal that just isn’t the case. The amount of light is going steadily up, meaning that cities and businesses were willing to keep their electricity bills about the same as energy efficiency improved, and just get more light.

Natural darkness in retreat

As human activity spreads out over time, many of the remote areas that host observatories are becoming less remote. Light domes from large urban areas slightly brighten the dark sky at mountaintop observatories up to 200 miles (320 kilometers) away. When these urban areas are adjacent to an observatory, the addition to the skyglow is much stronger, making detection of the faintest galaxies and stars that much harder.

When the Mt. Wilson Observatory was constructed in the Angeles National Forest near Pasadena, California, in the early 1900s, it was a very dark site, considerably far from the 500,000 people living in Greater Los Angeles. Today, 18.6 million people live in the LA area, and urban sprawl has brought civilization much closer to Mt. Wilson.

When Kitt Peak National Observatory was first under construction in the late 1950s, it was far from metro Tucson, Arizona, with its population of 230,000. Today, that area houses 1 million people, and Kitt Peak faces much more light pollution.

Even telescopes in darker, more secluded regions – like northern Chile or western Texas – experience light pollution from industrial activities like open-pit mining or oil and gas facilities.

The case of the European Southern Observatory

An interesting modern challenge is facing the European Southern Observatory, which operates four of the world’s largest optical telescopes. Their site in northern Chile is very remote, and it is nominally covered by strict national regulations protecting the dark sky.

AES Chile, an energy provider with strong U.S. investor backing, announced a plan in December 2024 for the development of a large industrial plant and transport hub close to the observatory. The plant would produce liquid hydrogen and ammonia for green energy.

Even though formally compliant with the national lighting norm, the fully built operation could scatter enough artificial light into the night sky to turn the current observatory’s pristine darkness into a state similar to some of the legacy observatories now near large urban areas.

This light pollution could mean the facility won’t have the same ability to detect and measure the faintest galaxies and stars.

Light pollution doesn’t only affect observatories. Today, around 80% of the world’s population cannot see the Milky Way at night. Some Asian cities are so bright that the eyes of people walking outdoors cannot become visually dark-adapted.

In 2009, the International Astronomical Union declared that there is a universal right to starlight. The dark night sky belongs to all people – its awe-inspiring beauty is something that you don’t have to be an astronomer to appreciate.

Richard Green is affiliated with the International Astronomical Union and the American Astronomical Society, as well as DarkSky International.

– ref. Light pollution is encroaching on observatories around the globe – making it harder for astronomers to study the cosmos – https://theconversation.com/light-pollution-is-encroaching-on-observatories-around-the-globe-making-it-harder-for-astronomers-to-study-the-cosmos-260387

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Elaine Lai, Lecturer in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education, Stanford University

In a story in the Buddhist canon, a grief-stricken mother named Kisa Gautami loses her only child and carries the body around town, searching for some way to resurrect the child.

When she encounters the Buddha, he asks her to collect several mustard seeds from a family that has never experienced death. Not surprisingly, Kisa Gautami is unable to find a single such family. She buries her child and decides to cultivate a spiritual life.

I thought of Kisa Gautami’s story when I first encountered the 2020 Korean documentary “Meeting You,” in which virtual reality technology is used to reunite a grieving mother, Jang Ji-sung, with her deceased 7-year-old daughter, Nayeon. While the virtual reunion was moving to witness, I wondered whether it was truly helping the mother to heal, or whether it was deepening an avoidance of grief and of the truth.

Since the documentary first aired, the business of digitally resurrecting the deceased has grown significantly. People are now using AI to create “grief bots,” which are simulations of deceased loved ones that the living can converse with. There has even been a case where an AI-rendered video of a deceased victim has appeared to deliver a court statement asking for the maximum sentence for the person who took their life.

As a Buddhist studies scholar who has experienced several bereavements this year, I have turned to Buddhist teachings to reflect on how creating a digital afterlife for loved ones may inadvertently enhance our suffering, and what alternative ways of grieving Buddhism might offer.

Buddhism’s view on suffering

According to Buddhist thought, the root of all suffering is clinging to illusions. This clinging creates karma that perpetuates negative cycles – for oneself and others – which endure lifetimes. In Mahayana Buddhism, the path to liberate oneself from this suffering begins by becoming a bodhisattva, someone who devotes their life to the liberation of self and others. Mahayana Buddhism, which introduced the idea of celestial bodhisattvas, is the most widely practiced form of Buddhism, particularly in East Asia and the Tibetan Himalayan regions.

In the “37 Practices of All the Bodhisattvas,” the 14th-century author Gyelse Tokme Zangpo wrote:

The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to let go of grasping
When encountering things one finds pleasant or attractive,
Consider them to be like rainbows in the summer skies –
Beautiful in appearance, yet in truth, devoid of any substance.

A digital avatar of the deceased may provide temporary comfort, but it may distort reality in an unhealthy way and intensify our attachment to an illusion. Interactions with a griefbot that responds to our every request may also diminish our memories of the deceased by creating an inauthentic version of who they were.

Grief as a catalyst for compassion

In the tradition of Buddhism that I specialize in, called the Great Perfection – a tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism, which is a branch of Mahayana – uncomfortable feelings such as grief are considered precious opportunities to cultivate spiritual insight.

In a text called Self-liberating Meditation, a 19th century mendicant teacher of the Great Perfection known as Patrul Rinpoche wrote: “No matter what kind of thoughts arise – be they good or bad, positive or negative, happy or sad – don’t indulge them or reject them, but settle, without altering, in the very mind that thinks.”

The Great Perfection contends that all of our emotions are like temporary clouds, and that our true nature is awareness, like the blue sky behind the clouds. Grief and other challenging emotions should not be altered or suppressed but allowed to transform in their own time.

In a culture where we are taught that negative emotions should be eliminated or pushed aside, not pushing away grief becomes a practice of great kindness toward oneself. By cultivating this awareness of our emotions, grief becomes a catalyst for compassion toward others. In Buddhism, compassion is the seed of awakening to the truth of interdependence – the fact that none of us exist as discreet beings but are deeply interconnected with all other beings and life forms.

Communal rituals

Compassion manifests outwardly in community rituals that process grief, such as the 49-day Buddhist service, common to the Great Perfection and other Buddhist traditions.

Many Buddhists believe that it takes 49 days for the consciousness of the deceased to transition into their next life. During this time, the family sets up a special altar and recites prayers for the deceased, often with the support of ordained monks and nuns. Practicing generosity toward others is also recommended to accumulate merit for the deceased.

These communal rituals provide much-needed outlets, time and support for processing grief and having it witnessed by others. The time and attention given to the grief process sharply contrasts to the situation in the United States, where bereavement leave is often limited to three to five days.

Deepening relationship with impermanence

In opting for digital avatars, we may undermine what Buddhism would consider to be critical moments for genuine transformation and connection.

When I think of the family and friends who have passed away this year, I empathize with the desire to hear their voices again, or to have conversations that provide closure where there was none. Rather than turning to a technological fix that promises a reunion with the deceased, I choose to deepen my relationship with impermanence and to savor the fleeting moments that I have with those I love now.

As Kisa Gautami’s story shows, the desire to bring back the dead is not new, but there is great benefit in allowing grief to run its course, including a felt sense of compassion for oneself and all others who have ever experienced similar forms of grief.

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

– ref. It is becoming easier to create AI avatars of the deceased − here is why Buddhism would caution against it – https://theconversation.com/it-is-becoming-easier-to-create-ai-avatars-of-the-deceased-here-is-why-buddhism-would-caution-against-it-261445

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Elizabeth Sharda, Associate Professor of Social Work, Hope College

I wrap up my workday and head for home, making a quick stop to grab the supplies my sixth grader needs for a project due this week and some ingredients for a quick dinner.

Once home, I check the sixth grader’s school website and discover a missing assignment. Bringing this up sparks a minor meltdown. I summon the emotional energy to help her calm down and problem-solve. My husband arrives home with our high schooler, who’s discouraged by something that happened at soccer practice. We’ll have to process that later.

Around the dinner table, we realize that both kids have sports practices Thursday, on opposite ends of town, at the same time as a mandatory parent meeting at school. And now I’m ready for my own meltdown.

On this particular evening, my family wasn’t navigating anything unique or especially catastrophic. Scenes like this play out nightly in homes across the United States. In fact, my family’s circumstances offer the protections of multiple forms of privilege. Certainly others have more difficult circumstances.

Why is it still so hard?

For a long time, I felt ashamed for being overwhelmed by parenthood. How do others seem to have it all together? Of course, the highlight reel of social media only fueled this comparison game. I often felt that I was falling short, missing some hack that others had found for not feeling constantly exhausted.

The reality is I’m far from alone in experiencing what social scientists term parenting stress. Defined as the negative psychological reaction to a mismatch between the demands of parenting and the resources available, parenting stress has become increasingly prevalent over the past five decades. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half of all parents in the U.S. said their stress was completely overwhelming on most days.

Stress like this has an impact: Parents who experience high levels of parenting stress have decreased mental health and feel less close with their children.

I began researching parental stress and well-being when, several years after becoming a parent, I left my job as a social worker and entered a Ph.D. program. Through this process, I learned something that changed my perspective entirely: Parents today experience such high levels of stress because people have never traditionally raised children in isolation. And yet, we are more isolated than ever.

It clicked: Parents don’t need to do more or try harder. We need connection. We don’t need more social media posts on the “top three ways to keep your family organized.” We need a paradigm shift.

The myth of family self-reliance

Throughout human history, people primarily lived in multigenerational, multifamily arrangements. Out of necessity, our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied upon their clan-mates to help meet the needs of their families, including child-rearing. Research over time and across cultures suggests that parents are psychologically primed to raise children in community – not in isolated nuclear family units.

Anthropologists use the term alloparents – derived from the Greek “allo,” meaning “other” – to describe nonparent adults who provide care alongside that provided by parents.

Research suggests that alloparenting contributes to child well-being and even child survival in populations with high rates of child mortality. A 2021 study of a present-day foraging population in the Philippines found that alloparents provided an astounding three-quarters of the care for infants and an even greater proportion of the care for children ages 2 to 6.

In contrast, the ideal of the nuclear family is incredibly recent. It developed with industrialization, peaking in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the significant changes in family structure – such as an increase in single-parent households – since that period, the paragon of the self-reliant nuclear family persists.

And yet, support from others is a key factor in family resilience. The familiar adage “It takes a village to raise a child” is, in fact, bolstered by social support research among parents in general, as well as those of children with special needs.

Parenting with collective care

Social support, while often viewed as a singular phenomenon, is actually a constellation of actions, each with its own unique function. Social scientists specify at least three types of support:

• Tangible: Material or financial resources or assistance
• Emotional: Expressions of care, empathy and love
• Informational: Provision of information, advice or guidance

Different parenting challenges call for different types of support. When my husband and I realized we had three commitments in a single evening, we didn’t need advice on managing our family’s calendar; we needed someone to take our kid to practice – that’s tangible support. When my tween was blowing up over homework, I didn’t need someone to bring us dinner; I needed to remember what I learned from a book on parenting adolescent girls – that’s informational support.

To move away from the myth of family self-reliance and back toward an ideal of collective care would take a paradigm shift, requiring intervention at every level, from federal to state to family. A 2024 Surgeon General’s Advisory on parenting stress called it an urgent public health issue and provided recommendations for government leaders, service systems and communities. Systemic strategies like providing access to high-quality mental health care, expanding programs like Head Start that support parents and caregivers, and investing in social infrastructure like public libraries and parks could all help reduce parenting stress in the U.S.

Personal steps toward a paradigm shift

Parenting stress is not a problem that can be solved solely by the individuals experiencing it. But here are five ways you can start making the shift toward collective care in your own life:

1. Take stock of your network. Assess not only in terms of the number of supporters, but what types of support they offer. Do you have plenty of people to talk to, but no one who would bring you a meal or give your kid a ride? Identify gaps and consider ways to round out your “village.”
2. Start small. Introduce yourself to your retired neighbor. Sit next to another parent at your kid’s sporting event. Talk to the babysitter you regularly see at the playground. Supportive relationships don’t just happen; they are grown.
3. Offer help to others. While it seems counterintuitive, people who give support to others experience greater well-being and even longevity compared with those who don’t. Helping others also creates the opportunity for reciprocity. Those you support may be more likely to return the favor in the future.
4. Normalize asking for help and taking it when offered. For many people, asking for support is hard. It requires dropping the facade and letting people in on your struggles. However, people are often more willing to help than you might assume. Further, allowing others to help you gives them permission to voice their own needs in the future.
5. Consider your caregiving expectations. The way others care for your children may not mirror your way entirely. Consider what are nonnegotiable practices for your family – such as limits on screen time – and what is worth loosening up on – like veggies at every meal – if it means you have more alloparents helping you out.

None of these suggestions are easy. They take time, vulnerability and courage. In our society of rugged individualism and nuclear family self-reliance, parenting through a lens of collective care is downright countercultural. But perhaps it’s closer to how we, as humans, have raised children throughout the millennia.

Elizabeth Sharda has received research funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Faculty Development Fund. She serves on the board of directors for Michigan Fosters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing support to families involved in the child welfare system.

– ref. Parents don’t need to try harder – to ease parenting stress, forget self-reliance and look for ways to share the care – https://theconversation.com/parents-dont-need-to-try-harder-to-ease-parenting-stress-forget-self-reliance-and-look-for-ways-to-share-the-care-253076

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Cora Sutherland, Interim Assistant Director, Center for Water Policy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Offshore wind power could provide far more electricity than the U.S. uses for residential, commercial and industrial purposes. But the federal government has recently stopped approving offshore projects in the ocean.

Another option is available, though: the Great Lakes, where we are based as water policy researchers, and where state agencies rather than federal officials are the trustees of the lakes. A January 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump attempts to stop all federal permits for offshore and onshore wind power pending a review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.

But the states, not the federal government, handle leases and permits for wind power on the Great Lakes, though federal agencies are involved in the overall process. It is unclear how this executive order might impede federal action, but at the very least states could lay the groundwork now to be prepared to act when the next shift in federal priorities arrives.

A 2023 analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the Great Lakes states have enough offshore wind power potential to provide three times as much electricity as all eight Great Lakes states use currently, which would mean plenty left over to meet increasing demand or send power elsewhere in the country.

States are looking for opportunities

States have been forging their own paths separate from federal clean energy policy for decades. All eight Great Lakes states have state clean energy goals, and five of them – Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin – have a goal to achieve 100% clean or renewable energy by 2040 or 2050.

The challenge is not just to transform the current energy supply. As transportation and other sectors electrify, that increases electricity demand. As artificial intelligence proliferates, tech companies need more and more electricity and water for their data centers. By 2028, data centers are projected to consume nearly 12% of the country’s total usage, which requires massive increases in production in the Great Lakes and other key locations.

Companies and states are looking high and low to find enough electricity to meet the rising demand. They are extending the lives of coal-fired power plants and building new gas-fired power plants. Elon Musk’s xAI company has even been powering an artificial intelligence data center in Tennessee with massive generators that add air pollution without permits.

Government and industry are also looking to other sources, such as investing in nuclear fusion advancement and building geothermal plants.

A brief history

In the 2000s and 2010s, the Great Lakes Commission Wind Collaborative, Wisconsin Public Service Commission and the Michigan Great Lakes Wind Council began to sketch out regulations for offshore wind in the Great Lakes and to identify locations that might be suitable for the turbines.

In 2012, the Obama administration agreed to collaborate with five Great Lakes states – Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania – to streamline a permitting process for offshore wind development. Multiple projects were proposed off the shores of Michigan, Ohio and Ontario, Canada, though Ontario banned offshore wind projects in 2011.

Since then, momentum has stalled. One effort, the Icebreaker project off Cleveland, was approved and survived various legal challenges, but the project backers paused it indefinitely in 2023 due to the economic impacts of the legal delays.

Community activists are split, with some embracing offshore wind in the Great Lakes as part of a clean energy future and others vocally opposing it, citing environmental, health and economic concerns.

As of mid-2025, the Great Lakes were home to no offshore wind turbines.

Big potential, big unknowns

States continue to explore the possibility of offshore wind power in the Great Lakes. In early 2025, Illinois legislators again introduced a bill to create a pilot wind project off Chicago in Lake Michigan.

Also in 2025, Pennsylvania legislators introduced a bill to facilitate offshore wind power in Lake Erie. If adopted, the law would map which areas are fit to be leased for development by avoiding nearshore areas, shipping lanes and migration pathways. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is pushing the province to lift its moratorium and reconsider offshore wind in Canadian waters.

A lot of details remain unknown. New York state supports offshore wind in the ocean but says “Great Lakes Wind does not provide the same electric and reliability benefits” by comparison. Ocean wind tends to be closer to areas where electricity demand is high, which can make those projects more cost-effective.

New York also concluded in 2022 that despite the combined 144.5 terawatt-hours of annual technical potential in state waters in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, “numerous practical considerations … would need to be addressed before such projects can be successfully commercialized.”

To further explore the concerns New York’s report and others have raised, in 2024, with National Science Foundation funding, we collaborated with a team of researchers looking at a wide range of issues, including engineering, environmental effects and law. That effort resulted in articulating research questions whose answers would clarify how realistic different aspects of offshore wind could be in the Great Lakes, such as:

• How does ice that forms in freshwater affect the structural integrity of turbines?
• Are floating turbines a better fit than traditional fixed-bottom turbines to reach the higher wind speeds in the deeper parts of the lakes and out of view from shore?
• If turbine components and installation vessels can’t fit through the St. Lawrence Seaway, could they be built in the region and drive economic development?
• Can turbines be located in places that improve fisheries and avoid migratory paths of birds and bats?
• How can states establish leasing and permitting programs that maximize environmental, social and economic benefits?

State jurisdiction is an opportunity

In the oceans, U.S. states have jurisdiction from shore out three miles, with the federal government’s jurisdiction continuing out for hundreds of miles beyond that. So offshore project sites in the oceans are leased by the federal government.

The Great Lakes are different. The state governments hold the lakes’ waters and submerged lands in trust for the public. And state jurisdiction extends from shore all the way out to the boundary of a neighboring state’s jurisdiction or the international boundary with Canada.

Regulation of planning, site selection, leasing and other elements of offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes are the responsibility of one or another U.S. state. The federal government’s role is secondary, conducting environmental reviews and protecting navigation, but could still result in slowing state-led projects.

In research we published in 2024 and 2025, we explain that states could evaluate and select offshore wind projects based on a range of social and environmental benefits, in addition to financial considerations. For instance, they could look for designs that provide fish habitat or seek corporate partners that agree to train local workers, manufacture turbines and ships near the lakes, and provide cheaper electricity to local consumers.

Despite all the unknowns, we encourage greater support for research to harness the potential of offshore wind energy in the Great Lakes to be a renewable resource for states, the region and the nation as a whole.

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.

– ref. Great Lakes offshore wind could power the region and beyond – https://theconversation.com/great-lakes-offshore-wind-could-power-the-region-and-beyond-261311

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Valere Gaspard, Research Fellow, Leadership and Democracy Lab, Western University

There is a heightened concern about the current state of democracy around the globe. These include worries about a decrease in freedom, the growing number of autocracies around the world and citizens’ dissatisfaction with democracy or government.

A 2022 survey of Canadians found that one-third have little to no trust in democracy and close to half don’t feel represented by government. These concerns aren’t unique to Canada.

A lot of public opinion research on views about democracy focuses on citizens. Surely this is understandable, since they are the ones choosing who is in power in a democratic state.

But what do the people in power or those running for office think about democracy? Surprisingly, for all the attention we place on politicians, we don’t know much about how they regard the democratic systems they operate in.

Why it matters

Why should we care about what politicians think about democracy? Because politicians can influence the views of citizens, and if they’re elected, they can affect or change democratic processes from within major institutions like legislatures.

Therefore, to understand the contemporary health of democracies across the globe, we need to factor in politicians’ satisfaction with the way democracy works.

While there are growing concerns about the current state of democracy around the globe, new open-access research I’ve conducted has hopeful findings, at least from the perspective of politicians. The analysis covers 49 elections in 21 countries — including Canada — from 2005 to 2021.

The results show that politicians’ democratic satisfaction in a country will be higher when:

• Elections in their country have high electoral integrity; in other words, when elections are free and fair
• Electoral management bodies have sufficient resources to administer elections.

This is good news from the perspective of maintaining a healthy democracy, since the people seeking the power of elected office are more satisfied when their democratic system is working well.

But these findings become convoluted once we consider some attributes of politicians. Specifically, politicians’ democratic satisfaction begins to vary once we consider:

• Whether their political party formed the government (winner) or is not part of government (loser)
• Whether they identify with the ideological left or right.

Winning and losing

Nobody likes to lose, so it’s natural that a winner will be more satisfied with democracy.

Although, the view that may be surprising — or troubling — is the extent to which politicians who won tolerate low electoral integrity, at least in terms of their democratic satisfaction.

As illustrated above, when electoral integrity is low in a country, politicians who lose will be much less satisfied with democracy than winners. When electoral integrity is high, there is no noticeable difference between politicians that won or lost.

The difference between winners’ and losers’ democratic satisfaction is problematic, but what is most troubling is that winners’ satisfaction with democracy does not significantly change across different levels of electoral integrity.

When it comes to citizens, previous research has shown that when electoral integrity is low, democratic satisfaction among citizens will also be low, regardless of whether their preferred politician or political party won or lost.

Politicians therefore differ from their citizen counterpart — those who won are much more tolerant of lower electoral integrity (at least in terms of their democratic satisfaction).

In a stable democracy with free and fair elections, this might not matter much. However, if a country begins to experience democratic decline, then these attitudes could become detrimental.

If politicians who win are not concerned with low electoral integrity, then they might lack the incentive needed to make necessary changes to electoral processes. Those concerned about electoral processes in these kinds of circumstances may therefore need to find alternative routes or incentives to encourage change.

Left-to-right political ideology

While the contrast between winners and losers may be discouraging, there are more similarities between those on the ideological left and right. Electoral management bodies having sufficient resources to administer elections matters to both leftist and rightist politicians in terms of their democratic satisfaction.

However, as shown above, having sufficient resources to administer elections matters more to politicians on the ideological right. This may surprise some readers given past claims that right-leaning groups or people might advocate for more restrictive voting processes and laws.

For those concerned with democratic stability, it’s promising to note that politicians across the ideological spectrum will generally be more satisfied with democracy when there are more resources to administer elections.

Read more:
Two of the US’s biggest newspapers have refused to endorse a presidential candidate. This is how democracy dies

Overall, politicians on average tend to be more satisfied with democracy when it is working well — specifically, when elections are free and fair, and when electoral management bodies have the capacity to administer well-run elections. This is good news given concerns surrounding the current global state of democracy.

However, policymakers and practitioners in Canada and abroad focusing on democratic stability and elections should take note of these findings. The attitudes of politicians in democratic countries may not be concerning when everything is working as intended, but if democratic processes begin to weaken or fail, the indifference of winners towards electoral integrity could be troublesome.

At this moment of heightened concern about the current state of democracy around the globe, researchers and practitioners alike need to better understand the attitudes and motivations of the people who lead our systems of government.

Valere Gaspard is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa and a Research Fellow at Western University and Trent University’s Leadership and Democracy Lab. His research is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (CGS Doctoral award). His views do not reflect those of any employer(s).

– ref. How do politicians view democracy? It depends on whether they win or lose – https://theconversation.com/how-do-politicians-view-democracy-it-depends-on-whether-they-win-or-lose-261647

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Fateme Ejaredar, PhD candidate in Sociology, University of Calgary, University of Calgary

The recent war waged by Israel and the United States on Iran killed at least 935 people and wounded another 5,332. There’s currently a ceasefire, but the conflict shocked the world and has had unique impacts on Iranians in the diaspora.

Many Iranians in Canada were glued to their media feeds to stay close to Iran and their friends and families.

Based on preliminary interviews with 30 Iranian activists in Canada, many in the diaspora have experienced what they call “survivor’s guilt.”

The interviews are part of a PhD study conducted online or in person by one of the authors of this story, Fateme Ejaredar, and supervised by co-author Pallavi Banerjee. The information from these interviews helps to untangle the roots of political tensions and evolving solidarities in the Iranian diaspora in Canada. For this research, 30 interviews were conducted, with seven followups after the conflict began on June 13, 2025.

A large share of the Iranian diaspora in Canada is comprised of activists who disavow the Islamic Republic. According to The New York Times, the Iranian diaspora includes “exiled leftists, nationalists, secular democrats, former prisoners, journalists, human rights advocates and artists.” This population of diasporic Iranians has been supporting progressive change in Iran.

There are also those who oppose the Islamic Republic in support of the deposed shah, a movement currently swayed by Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah. They see the U.S. and Israel as liberators of the Iranian people. The current war resurfaced many of these tensions that continue to divide the diaspora.

The war has left Iranian activists in the diaspora contending with contradictions about both their standing as activists while mourning the assaults on their country, both from within and outside.

Living in between homeland and hostland

Canada has the second largest Iranian diaspora in the world. Iran’s tumultuous political climate has kept the diaspora on edge and divided since the 1979 revolution that deposed the shahs.

After the revolution, many left-wing and other opposition activists who resisted both the pre- and post-revolutionary regimes went into exile. Continued political repression and economic hardship later forced even more Iranians, including activists, to leave the country. Strife peaked again in 2022 during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests which deeply impacted the diaspora.

Matin, a participant in her 30s from Alberta (all names of interviewees are pseudonyms), said:

“I’m sad that my home is being bombed. And you don’t have the energy to argue in this situation. For a soul that’s already tired, its wounds from 2022 aren’t healed yet, it can’t go into this again. It’s a dead end.”

Read more:
Iranian women risk arrest: Daughters of the revolution

Sociological research on migration and transnationalism has explained how those exiled from their homelands and living in diaspora reside in the “in-between lands.”

This is heightened when the homeland is in a state of political disarray, producing what sociologists have called “exogenous shocks” for the diaspora.

This is the unsettled feeling Iranians in the diaspora have been contending with for the last 45 years. They are constantly navigating life in between the homeland and hostland.

Fragmented nationalism

People’s fragmented sense of nationalism can shape responses to upheavals in the homeland.

Many we spoke with struggle with their own interpretations of Iranian nationalism that clash with their disdain for the Islamic Republic. Their disdain is rooted in their own lived experiences under the regime — ranging from the loss of basic rights and freedoms, to harsh repression including imprisonment and torture for some, or simply an unfulfilled desire of living in a peaceful and free society.

Vida, an interviewee in her 30s who lives in Saskatchewan, said even though she despised the politics of the Islamic Republic and in the past had celebrated the death of key officials like Qasem Soleimani, the recent war has invoked some conflicting feelings about the death of military leaders.

She took pride in solidarities forged among the diaspora due to the war and interpreted it as nationalism. Vida said:

“I never was a nationalist, and I hate nationalism. But there were moments these days that I felt proud. Seeing all the solidarity between people, seeing how they helped each other…”

Even as the activists feel protective of their country because of the war, they also experience a deep sense of loss and guilt they have always felt in exile.

Tensions in the diaspora

Iran’s relationship with the West has continued to be fraught.

The West, particularly the U.S., has leveraged Iran’s repression of women to economically disable Iran through sanctions, breaking down possibilities of diplomacy between Iran and the U.S. But feminist scholars have argued this stance has only further empowered the authoritarian and patriarchal political forces in Iran..

Iranian activists in the diaspora contend with both resisting the Islamic Republic’s role in oppression of Iranians in Iran and the American role in marginalizing Iranians in Iran.

The ‘Iran of our dreams’

The in-between spaces are precarious and unpredictable. But they also bring new possibilities and in this case, as many interviewees have indicated, acts of resistance from afar.

This can be further activated in moments of upheaval. And those living in the in-between spaces can often form new alliances and solidarities.

For many activist Iranians, the resistance in Palestine has been a source of inspiration since before the revolution of 1979. Many participants in this study mentioned in their interviews how they have long felt solidarity with Palestinians, but they say since June 13, they have an even deeper understanding of their situation.

Zara, in her 40s from Ontario, said she now understands more deeply how the world could be indifferent towards those critiquing the actions of Israel, saying she feels:

“… a sense of helplessness and desperation against all that illogical violent power.”

Despite the desolation expressed by our interviewees about the war, many activists also expressed faith in resistance for freedom and justice that allows them to envision a different future.

Jamshid, in his 60s in British Columbia, shared his future vision of Iran. It is:

“ … an Iran that lives in peace. There is social justice in it and no one is injured. It takes care of itself. It’s very kind, immensely kind… Maybe one day it will happen and we’re not here to see it.”

Pallavi Banerjee receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

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

– ref. Iranian Canadians watch the Israel-U.S. war in Iran from afar – https://theconversation.com/iranian-canadians-watch-the-israel-u-s-war-in-iran-from-afar-259866

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kathryn Dane, Postdoctoral associate, University of Calgary

Rugby union, commonly known as just rugby, is a fast-paced and physical team sport. More girls and women in Canada and around the world are playing it now than ever before.

As of 2021, women’s rugby reached a record 2.7 million players globally, a 25 per cent increase over four years, and by 2023, women’s rugby participation was growing at a rate of 38 per cent year-over-year.

Countries including Australia, England, Ireland and the United States offer professional contracts for women’s teams. While these remain modest compared to the men’s game, they still represent a clear step forward.

Canada’s senior women’s XVs team is currently ranked second in the world and heading into the 2025 Rugby World Cup, which kicks off on Aug. 22 in England. The national sevens team also captured silver at the 2024 Paris Olympics — further evidence of the game’s growing competitiveness in Canada.

However, many systems, including coaching and medical support, have not kept pace with the demands of elite competition. With visibility increasing ahead of the 2025 World Cup, stronger institutional support is needed to match the sports’ growing professionalism and popularity.

Safety concerns

Often described as a “game for all”, rugby builds confidence, resilience and lifelong friendships. For girls and women especially, rugby can be empowering in ways few sports can match. It embraces the physicality of tackling, pushes back against traditional gender expectations and fosters solidarity and inclusion by valuing all body shapes and abilities.

But rugby is also a collision sport, and as such, it carries inherent risks. Tackling is the top cause of injury in rugby, and it has one of the highest concussion rates among youth girls’ sports in Canada. Concussions can have long-term effects on players’ health.

Read more:
Concussion is more than sports injuries: Who’s at risk and how Canadian researchers are seeking better diagnostics and treatments

These concerns are especially urgent as the women’s game becomes more physical and professionalized, and players are hit harder and more often. Unlike men’s rugby, women’s teams often operate with fewer medical or coaching support resources, which can lead to inconsistent or absent injury prevention programs.

Compounding the risk is the fact that many women also come to rugby later in life, often with less experience in contact sports. This delayed exposure restricts proper tackle skill development and player confidence in contact. This means safe tackling is even more important.

Without proper supports, the physical risks of the game may outweigh its benefits.

Science is still playing catch-up

While women’s rugby is growing rapidly, the science behind it is has not kept pace. Most of what we know about rugby safety — how to tackle, how much to train or when it’s safe to return to play after injury — largely comes from research on men.

Decisions around coaching and player welfare have been based on male data, leaving female players under-served and potentially at greater risk. While these foundations may well apply to girls and women, the problem is we don’t yet know for sure.

Only four per cent of rugby tackle research has focused on women. Much of the early evidence on girls rugby comes from Canada, underscoring the country’s leadership in this space. Still, most coaches and clinicians rely on a “one-size-fits-all” approach that may not account for menstrual cycles, pregnancy, different injury profiles or later sport entry.

The differences matter because strength, speed and injury risk all vary. Women are 2.6 times more likely than men to sustain a concussion. Gender also shapes access to training, care and facilities, often limiting opportunities for women to develop safe tackling skills, receive adequate support and train in safe, well-resourced environments, factors that impact both performance and safety.

Read more:
Prevention is better than cure when it comes to high concussion rates in girls’ rugby

Even safety tools reflect this gap. World Rugby’s Tackle Ready and contact load guidelines were designed around male athletes. While well-intentioned, we know little about how they work for girls and women. Instead of discarding these tools, we need to adapt and evaluate them in female contexts to ensure they support injury prevention and provide equal protection.

Women’s rugby needs better data

Change is underway. More research and tools are being designed specifically for girls and women. A search of PubMed, a database of published biomedical research, reveals a steep rise in studies on women’s rugby over the past decade, especially in injury surveillance, injury prevention, performance, physiology and sociocultural contexts.

New rule trials, such as testing lower tackle heights, are being evaluated on women athletes. New technologies like instrumented mouthguards and video analysis are also helping researchers understand how girls and women tackle, how head impacts happen and how they can be prevented.

Much of this new research is led by our team at the Sport Injury Prevention Research Centre, a pan-Canadian, multidisciplinary group focused on moving upstream to prevent concussions in adolescent girls’ rugby.

The women’s game is also driving its own innovations. Resources like World Rugby’s Contact Confident help girls and women safely build tackle skills, particularly those new to contact sport.

Researchers are analyzing injury patterns, interviewing players and coaches and studying return-to-play pathways that reflect girls’ and women’s physiology and life stages.

The scope of research is also expanding to pelvic health, breast protection and more tailored injury prevention. Global collaboration is making this work more inclusive, spanning different countries, skill levels and age groups, not just elite competitions.

But this is just the start.

A golden opportunity lies ahead

Girls’ and women’s rugby is experiencing unprecedented growth. Rising participation, media attention and new sponsorships are fuelling momentum. It’s a golden opportunity to build strong, sustainable foundations.

Gold-standard support requires focused, ongoing research and a commitment to sharing that evidence with players, coaches, health-care providers and policymakers. It’s time to build systems for women’s rugby based on women’s data, not borrowed assumptions from the men’s game.

But challenges remain. Some national teams still have to raise funds to attend World Cups. Others train without consistent access to medical or performance staff — clear signs that the women’s game is still catching up.

To sustain and accelerate the growth of girls’ and women’s rugby, the sport deserves more resources and research tailored specifically to participants. A “one-size-fits-all” model no longer works. By investing in systems that are safer, focused on prevention, more inclusive and grounded in evidence, we can build a thriving future for women’s rugby that lasts for generations to come.

Isla Shill has received funding from World Rugby.

Stephen West has previously received funding from World Rugby

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

– ref. Women’s rugby is booming, but safety relies on borrowed assumptions from the men’s game – https://theconversation.com/womens-rugby-is-booming-but-safety-relies-on-borrowed-assumptions-from-the-mens-game-261055

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By J. Andrew Deman, Professor of English, University of Waterloo

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the second cinematic reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise, and there’s a lot riding on this film.

While cinema-goers have responded enthusiastically to many of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the history of the Fantastic Four on the silver screen is less heralded.

All the previous Fantastic Four films have been “commercial and critical failures,” with the 2015 film being an infamous box office bomb.

Yet in comics history, the Fantastic Four have been up to the challenge of driving a popular media enterprise forward — something that the film producers and Marvel fans alike are both now hoping for.

In the 1960s — the era in which Fantastic Four: First Steps, is notably set — the comics presented a new class of superhero.

From their 1961 debut, Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm/the Invisible Girl, Johnny Storm/the Human Torch and Ben Grimm/the Thing were celebrities who rented office space in a Manhattan highrise and found themselves variously beloved and reviled by both the public and the government.

The team also rejected secret identities. Until the third issue of their series, they even eschewed superhero costumes (in part because of a restriction imposed by the owner of Marvel’s then-distributor, DC Comics).

Pushed representational boundaries

The Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s also pushed boundaries in a number of significant ways. They featured the first pair of married superheroes (Reed and Sue wed in 1965) and the first superhero pregnancy (Sue gave birth to her son Franklin in 1968).

In 1966, Fantastic Four No. 52 introduced the Black Panther, who is widely recognized as the first high-profile Black superhero.

Read more:
*Black Panther* roars. Are we listening?

And though not canonical until 2002, it has been suggested by scholars that Ben Grimm was always envisioned as a Jewish superhero by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, offering another milestone in representation (at least for those readers attuned to the character’s Jewish coding).

These milestones emphasize a dedicated concern for the human aspects of superheroes.

A family with relatable issues

Set amid fittingly fantastic science-fiction landscapes inspired by Space Age optimism was a story about a family who “fought among themselves, sometimes over petty jealousies and insults,” in the words of Christopher Pizzino, an American scholar of contemporary literature, film and television.

This approach of building character dynamics out of internal conflict proved deeply influential.

Famed comics writer Grant Morrison argues that through the example of Fantastic Four, “the Marvel superhero was born: a hero who tussled not only with monsters and mad scientists but also with relatable personal issues.”

In his bestselling book All the Marvels, comics critic and historian Douglas Wolk concurs that the “first hundred issues of Fantastic Four are Marvel’s Bible and manual,” establishing the style, theme, genre and approach of the company’s comics for decades to come.

Defining personal conflicts

In contrast to moral paragons such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (all published by rival DC Comics), each member of Marvel’s Fantastic Four had defining personal conflicts.

Reed Richards, the team’s patriarch, was a world-altering genius who often fell victim to his own hubristic ambition.

Two years before American feminist author Betty Friedan identified “the problem that has no name” in The Feminine Mystique (that post-war suburban housewives faced social expectations of being fully fulfilled as wives and mothers, the Fantastic Four gave audiences Sue Storm, with the superpower to render herself — and others — invisible at will.

Storm, according to scholar Ramzi Fawaz, “made the concept of women’s social invisibility an object of visual critique by making invisible bodies and objects conspicuous on the comic book page.”

Her younger brother, Johnny Storm, a playboy and showboat, had a lot of growing up to do, a journey that was frustrated by his flashy powers.

Ben Grimm, Reed’s college roommate turned best friend turned rock monster, oscillated between childlike rage and world-weary depression, his rocky hide granting him super-strength and invulnerability while burdening him with social isolation.

While none of us are likely to acquire superpowers through exposure to cosmic rays like the Four, we’ve all dealt with anxiety and grief like these heroes.

Origin of the Marvel universe

The world of the Fantastic Four didn’t just feel unusually human. It also felt unusually lived in, partly because the Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s weren’t just the origin of the Marvel style of storytelling — they were also the origin of the Marvel universe.

Fantastic Four began and became the model for Marvel’s shared continuity universe, in which dozens of superheroes passed in and out of each other’s stories and occasionally intersected long enough for whole crossover story arcs and events. For a time, Marvel’s superheroes even aged alongside their readers, with teenage characters like Johnny Storm graduating high school and enrolling in college.

Previous superhero comics hadn’t embraced this shared continuity in a meaningful way, tending to prioritize discrete stories that had no effect on future tales. But Fantastic Four pitched what comics scholar Charles Hatfield calls “intertitle continuity,” which quickly became “Marvel’s main selling tool.”

Case in point, the Fantastic Four shared the cover of 1963’s Amazing Spider-Man No. 1, helping sell the newly created wall-crawler to their adoring readers.

Voluminous, chaotic universe

The 1965 wedding of Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four Annual No. 3 showcased how quickly the Marvel comics universe became vibrantly voluminous and charmingly chaotic.

This event featured at least 19 superheroes fighting 28 supervillains and foregrounded the Fantastic Four’s symbolic mother and father as the progenitors of an extended super-family.

It also featured a cameo by the Fantastic Four’s creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, previously introduced in 1963’s Fantastic Four No. 10 as the official creators of imaginary adventures starring the “real” Fantastic Four, further blurring the boundary between fiction and reality.

Decades later, this sprawling comics universe would become a sprawling cinematic universe. This informs the pressure facing the latest Fantastic Four adaptation.

Phase 6 of universe

Fantastic Four: First Steps marks the start of what Marvel calls “Phase Six” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which began in 2008 with the first Marvel Studios film, Iron Man.

Essentially, Fantastic Four: First Steps is meant to launch a new cluster of shared universe stories, just as Fantastic Four No. 1 did for Marvel Comics in the 1960s.

This cluster will culminate in the release of Avengers: Secret Wars in December 2027. Will Marvel’s first family deliver?

This article is co-authored by Anna Peppard, an independent scholar and editor of ‘Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero.’

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

– ref. How Marvel’s Fantastic Four discovered the human in the superhuman – https://theconversation.com/how-marvels-fantastic-four-discovered-the-human-in-the-superhuman-260883