Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Karen Schlatter, Director, Colorado Water Center, Colorado State University

The seven U.S. states that make up the Colorado River basin are struggling to agree on how best to manage the river’s water as its supply dwindles due to climate change and a period of prolonged drought. Their negotiations, which are not open to the public, missed a Feb. 14, 2026, deadline the federal government had established, after which federal officials said they would impose their own plan.

The federal government has not yet done so, but the prospect of such an action is not good news for the nearly 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River for water, energy, agriculture and recreation, nor for the estimated US$1.4 trillion in economic activity the river supports.

We have led or participated in complex water management discussions from the river’s headwaters in Colorado to its delta in Mexico and elsewhere in the arid Southwest and around the world. Even on less contentious issues, the keys to success involve learning together, understanding one another’s interests, working through conflict and developing inclusive solutions for diverse participants. And that works best with an outside facilitator.

The five most common sources of conflict between people are values, data, relationships, interests and structure. The current Colorado River negotiations include all five. We believe a process designed and facilitated by negotiation experts could help break the logjam.

We recognize it can be very hard to reach an agreement when what’s at stake are countless lives, massive amounts of money, enormous quantities of hydroelectric power and not nearly enough water.

But compromise on Colorado River management is possible and, in fact, was achieved to curb California’s water use in the 2000s, to negotiate an interim agreement to coordinate operations at the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs in 2007, and to enact contingency plans to manage drought in 2019. But this time around, circumstances are different.

Previous negotiations

The negotiations leading up to those agreements were often facilitated by officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation who focused on reaching broad agreements on general principles and concepts before delving into details. Federal staff also actively guided key agreements and provided the science and computer models to make well-informed decisions. And the states’ negotiators knew the Department of Interior would act unilaterally to make damaging cuts to water supply if states couldn’t come to their own agreement.

The negotiators for the states had long-standing relationships and built trust by frequently communicating outside formal meetings and seeking to listen to and understand other states’ perspectives, even if they didn’t agree.

The states also agreed to use the bureau’s computer model for analyzing scenarios of climate change and management decisions. That meant all the negotiators were looking at the same data when delving into possible options. And the political and social environment was less polarized than today.

The current situation

In this round of negotiations, federal leadership has been lagging. The Department of the Interior has not made clear what the consequences might be for the states if they fail to agree. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has been without a permanent commissioner since President Donald Trump retook office in January 2025.

And federal staff have only recently begun helping to facilitate the discussions.

The states are fractured into subgroups, according to whether they are in the river’s Upper Basin – Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – or the Lower Basin, which includes Arizona, Nevada and California. Each basin group holds strong positions and has generally been unwilling to shift.

Each basin group is using a different set of assumptions for the bureau’s computer model to explore options. And the discussion often gets stuck on details, which prevents progress toward broader agreements.

In addition, the political context has shifted significantly, with increased polarization and politicization of the issues, creating barriers to effective dialogue and deliberation. Today, compromise can seem unattainable.

But those relatively new challenges to Colorado River compromise are not an excuse for failure.

A way forward?

The current negotiations have all been done behind closed doors. From talking with people involved in the negotiations, we understand the negotiators have been left to set their own agendas and meeting plans and conduct their own communications and follow-up, with no formal facilitators.

It’s reasonable to expect the negotiators to be ready to represent their states’ interests, working through an incredibly complicated landscape of hydrology, climate and management scenario modeling, water law and administration, and politics. But we believe it’s unreasonable – and unrealistic and unfair – to expect them to also be experts at designing and facilitating an effective process for sorting out their differences.

Federal officials are not necessarily the best people to run the process either. And if the agency that ultimately needs to approve any deal is the one leading the process, real or perceived biases about the states or key issues in the agreement could further complicate the discussions.

We believe that agreement between the seven states is still possible. It may be less effective to bring in a third-party facilitator at this stage in the negotiation process, though, because of the degraded trust, hardened positions and shortage of time.

One possible outcome is that the Bureau of Reclamation will select and enforce one of the five management alternatives it outlined in January 2026. But that could lead to decades of litigation going up to the Supreme Court. No one wins in this scenario.

A more hopeful possibility is that the bureau adopts short-term rules that would give the states another chance to negotiate a longer-term deal – ideally with an unbiased third-party facilitator for support.

A collaborative and consensus-based planning process in the Yakima River Basin in Washington state in the early 2010s is evidence that while nobody gets everything they want in a negotiated agreement, “if they can (all) get something, that’s really the basis of the plan,” as a Washington state official told The New York Times.

Sharon B. Megdal is principal investigator on multiple grants and contracts, none of which funded or influenced the content of this essay. Megdal served as an elected member of the Central Arizona Project Board of Directors from 2009 through 2020.

Karen Schlatter 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. Why Colorado River negotiations stalled, and how they could resume with the possibility of agreement – https://theconversation.com/why-colorado-river-negotiations-stalled-and-how-they-could-resume-with-the-possibility-of-agreement-278029

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Katrine L. Wallace, Epidemiologist, University of Illinois Chicago

Public health advocates have largely applauded a Massachusetts judge’s ruling on March 16, 2026, to temporarily block major changes to vaccine policy made by the Department of Health and Human Services since 2025.

The ruling pauses two major actions ushered in by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since he stepped into the role. First, it blocks Kennedy’s restructuring of a key vaccine panel called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June 2025. Second, it suspends HHS’s overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule in January 2026, which cut the number of routine vaccinations children are recommended to receive from 17 to 11.

As an epidemiologist who studies vaccine hesitancy and a public-facing science communicator, I view these HHS actions as extremely damaging to public health, and I am relieved they have been paused, at least while legal proceedings are ongoing.

However, I also worry that this back-and-forth is detrimental to trust in science, especially for families who are already uneasy about vaccinating their kids or feel hesitant to do so.

What exactly happened?

The March 16 decision follows a lawsuit originally brought in July 2025 by six medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. The medical organizations argued that HHS’s changes were implemented without following established legal and scientific processes.

The ruling seems to align with that view, concluding that the government’s overhaul of the vaccine committee likely “fails to comport with governing law” and that its changes to the vaccine schedule were “arbitrary and capricious.”

The judge’s action suggests that the court believes the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the HHS changes violated federal law.

The ruling returns recommendations on the childhood vaccine schedule – made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of HHS’s primary divisions – to their pre–June 2025 status while the case proceeds. It also blocks HHS’s replacement of members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which reviews evidence and develops recommendations that guide vaccine-related decisions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The ruling effectively pauses the vaccine committee’s work. The members appointed by Kennedy cannot serve at the moment, and the previous members do not automatically return, leaving the committee inactive for now.

Officials from HHS have indicated that they are likely to appeal the ruling.

Does the ruling change people’s ability to access vaccines?

Not at the moment, because right now nothing has changed about what vaccines children should receive. Pediatricians should be following the long-standing vaccine schedule as it existed before the HHS’s change in June 2025. Most physicians already are, having followed the American Academy of Pediatrics’ decision not to back HHS’s revised schedule.

Additionally, private insurers as well as federal health programs such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Vaccines for Children had already agreed to continue covering all the vaccines through 2026, even before the judge intervened.

From a health economics perspective, data shows that the downstream costs of treating vaccine-preventable illnesses are much higher than the cost of reimbursing vaccines, so insurance companies may be motivated to continue covering them.

Moving forward, however, the ongoing court case could affect vaccine availability because many insurance companies and public programs rely on recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to determine which vaccines are covered or provided at no cost.

If your children are behind on any vaccines, it would be a good idea to get them now, given the uncertainty.

What effect might the ruling have longer term?

It’s important to remember that even though policy shifts in vaccine recommendations can be confusing, the data on the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines has not changed. There were no safety alerts or new clinical trials that precipitated HHS’s change to the vaccine schedule.

Even with the prior recommendations back in place, however, all the back-and-forth in the headlines may create confusion for parents. Mistrust of vaccines and public health is at an all-time high, fueled by disinformation, poor communication on the part of public health agencies, and other factors that arose mostly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Parents have long considered health agencies such as the CDC to be trustworthy but increasingly look upon them with skepticism. A survey in January 2026 showed public trust in federal health agencies has declined following HHS’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule.

Immunization rates, meanwhile, are on the decline, particularly for measles. An analysis released by Reuters on March 18, 2026, of vaccination data from Michigan suggests the number of toddlers receiving routine vaccines fell sharply from January 2025 to January 2026, and that Kennedy’s attack on vaccines influenced parents’ decisions to forgo them.

Rebuilding trust in vaccines and public health will take time and will require consistent, transparent communication and strong engagement between clinicians and families. The court ruling potentially represents an initial step in that process.

For parents with questions about vaccines, the best source of information remains their child’s pediatrician. Parents can also look to evidence-based vaccine schedules maintained by health groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Katrine L. Wallace 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. Federal judge temporarily blocks RFK Jr.’s vaccine agenda – an epidemiologist answers questions parents may have – https://theconversation.com/federal-judge-temporarily-blocks-rfk-jr-s-vaccine-agenda-an-epidemiologist-answers-questions-parents-may-have-278709

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mary Magnuson, Associate Science Editor, The Conversation

“Project Hail Mary,” the movie adaptation to Andy Weir’s 2021 novel about a science teacher attempting to save the Earth from sun-eating microbes, was released in March 2026 to stellar ratings from critics and audiences alike. The movie explores a few unique forms that extraterrestrial life could take, from space microorganisms that produce both infrared light and an unfathomable amount of energy, to rocklike aliens that live under crushing pressure and breathe ammonia.

Over the past decade, scientists have come up with a variety of frameworks to guide their search for life in the universe. While it’s most convenient to start looking for life using the knowledge that biologists have about life on Earth, scientists have also begun integrating broader conceptions of life, including life that perhaps evolved in different chemical environments.

To expand on the idea that life out in space might look nothing like life on Earth, here are five articles The Conversation U.S. rounded up from our archives, and written by astronomers and astrobiologists.

1. Why base the search on life on Earth?

Astronomers participating in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence typically start by identifying potentially habitable planets. And to do that, they look for what sustains life on Earth: water.

Planets that are close enough to their Sun that liquid water wouldn’t freeze, but far enough away that it wouldn’t evaporate, fall into what’s called the Goldilocks Zone. But why base the search on water, which complex life on Earth uses to survive, if an extraterrestrial life-form might use different chemistry?

Cole Mathis, a physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University who studies complex adaptive systems, explained that out of convenience, astronomers start by looking for signals similar to those produced by life on Earth.

Detecting chemical signatures using the instruments on telescopes is tricky – it’s like playing hide-and-seek, but you’re outside the house and can only peer in through the window. You might as well start by ruling out the easy and more obvious hiding spots.

Missions to Mars have looked for signs of photosynthesis – the process by which plants take in energy – and telescopes peering deep into space look for oxygen, which organisms on Earth release into the atmosphere.

“Most astronomers and astrobiologists know that if we only look for life that’s like Earth life, we might miss the signs of aliens that are really different,” Mathis wrote. “But honestly, we’ve never detected aliens before, so it’s hard to know where to start. When you don’t know what to do, starting somewhere is usually better than nowhere.”

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Read more:
Why do astronomers look for signs of life on other planets based on what life is like on Earth?

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2. Finding patterns of purpose

Sometimes, scientists find chemical ingredients that make up life on Earth out in space, but they can’t assume that these ingredients on their own indicate life. Geological and environmental processes on planets may produce these chemical signatures without any living organisms involved.

The key difference, to Amirali Aghazadeh, a computational scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is purpose. Life grows, adapts and changes over time to better fit its environment.

His research team came up with a framework that, instead of looking for a specific type of life-form, looks at patterns in collections of chemicals and evaluates whether they could have been produced by processes like metabolism and evolution.

“If we assume that alien life uses the same chemistry, we risk missing biology that is similar – but not identical – to our own, or misidentifying nonliving chemistry as a sign of life,” wrote Aghazadeh.

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Read more:
Can scientists detect life without knowing what it looks like? Research using machine learning offers a new way

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3. Lessons from complex, evolving systems

Like Aghazadeh, many astrobiologists are starting to look more broadly at how complexity emerges, rather than searching for a specific type of molecule that could indicate the presence of extraterrestrial life. Other forms of life may be made up of entirely different chemical ingredients to humans, but to be considered life, they would still have to adapt and evolve over time.

Chris Impey, an astronomer from the University of Arizona, attended a workshop where scientists across disciplines came together to try to understand how and why systems in the universe – from organisms to languages and information – change or grow more complex over time.

Figuring out these underlying drivers of complexity, or finding signals that indicate the presence of a complex system, could help scientists search for unique forms of life in the universe.

“As astrobiologists try to detect life off Earth, they’ll need to be creative,” Impey wrote. “One strategy is to measure mineral signatures on the rocky surfaces of exoplanets, since mineral diversity tracks terrestrial biological evolution. As life evolved on Earth, it used and created minerals for exoskeletons and habitats.”

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Read more:
Extraterrestrial life may look nothing like life on Earth − so astrobiologists are coming up with a framework to study how complex systems evolve

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4. Beyond biology: Looking for ‘technosignatures’

Another option for searching for life has nothing to do with biology. Some scientists, wrote astronomers Macy Huston and Jason Wright from Penn State University, look for “technosignatures:” signals that would come from technology originating beyond Earth.

Human technology – from TV towers to satellite and spacecraft communications – emits enough radio waves to create faint but detectable signals traveling through space. Scientists use this idea to search for artificial signals that could potentially come from an extraterrestrial civilization.

Other technosignatures could include chemical pollution, artificial heat or light from industry, or signals from a large number of satellites.

“While many astronomers have thought a lot about what might make for a good signal, ultimately, nobody knows what extraterrestrial technology might look like and what signals are out there in the universe,” wrote Huston and Wright.

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Read more:
Signatures of alien technology could be how humanity first finds extraterrestrial life

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5. Evaluating extraordinary claims

Detecting extraterrestrial life in any form would be a momentous occasion, so, as Impey wrote, making a declaration might not be cut-and-dried. In “Project Hail Mary,” the fictional scientists sample and study the “space dots” they find extensively before drawing a conclusion.

Scientists must first rule out any possible non-biological explanations for a discovery, meaning the discovery would have to be unexplained by any chemical or geological processes. If scientists ever found a potential life-form very different from all life on Earth, it might take extensive research before they could rule out all other possibilities and determine that it’s a living organism. But setting this bar so high protects scientists from making a claim they would later need to walk back.

“A detection of life would be a remarkable development,” Impey wrote. “On scales large and small, astronomers try to set a high bar of evidence before claiming a discovery.”

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Read more:
‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ − an astronomer explains how much evidence scientists need to claim discoveries like extraterrestrial life

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This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

– ref. ‘Project Hail Mary’ explores unique forms of life in space – 5 essential reads on searching for aliens that look nothing like life on Earth – https://theconversation.com/project-hail-mary-explores-unique-forms-of-life-in-space-5-essential-reads-on-searching-for-aliens-that-look-nothing-like-life-on-earth-278757

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jeffrey Tully, Associate Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, University of California, San Diego

HBO Max’s enormously popular television series “The Pitt” is receiving plaudits for its realistic depiction of the trials and tribulations of health care in an urban emergency room.

Now in its second season, which premiered on Jan. 8, 2026, the show follows Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (played by Noah Wyle) and his colleagues through a single 15-hour clinical shift, divided into one-hour episodes. The team treats patients against a backdrop of all-too-common American societal plagues, from substance use disorder to medical bankruptcies and mass shootings.

Spoiler alert: About halfway through the season, Dr. Robby and the staff at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center grapple with chaos ensuing from a less commonly depicted disaster – a hospital cyberattack. The hospital’s network and computers were incapacitated, resulting in scenes of millennial residents struggling with fax machines, laboratory orders disappearing in a shuffle of papers, and constant communication breakdowns culminating in a missed life-threatening diagnosis.

All this might prompt viewers to wonder: Does this actually happen in real life?

As physicians who study cyberattacks and their impact on patient care, we have seen many of the same events depicted in “The Pitt” play out in the real world.

These attacks have severe clinical consequences. In an unfortunate case of art imitating life, the show’s cyberattack story arc began on the same day that the University of Mississippi Medical Center suffered the same fate, resulting in the sudden closure of more than 30 affiliated clinics across the state while also disrupting Mississippi’s only Level I trauma center.

Modern health care is critically dependent on digital technologies, such as electronic health records, laboratory machines and radiology platforms, that shut down when hospital networks are taken offline. Losing access to these tools for prolonged periods of time puts patients’ lives at grave risk.

What’s at stake

The most dire real-life cyberattacks on hospitals involve ransomware, a class of malicious software that encrypts data and locks down computers and networks, demanding significant amounts of cash for the promise of relief. Unfortunately, these events are not rare. Comparitech, a cybersecurity research firm, recorded 445 ransomware attacks on hospitals and clinics in 2025 – a new peak following several years of annual increases.

Such attacks are especially dangerous for patients with time-sensitive emergencies like strokes, heart attacks or sepsis, but they affect hospital outcomes broadly. For example, a 2026 analysis of Medicare data found that hospitalized patients had a 38% higher risk of death during a ransomware attack.

Moreover, the health impacts of ransomware are not confined to the hospitals under attack. “The Pitt” demonstrates this phenomenon well in earlier episodes. When Westbridge, another hospital in the community, is struck first, a wave of patients arriving by ambulance strains Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s already packed emergency room, leading to delays in care and overwhelming already-strained clinicians. Our team found that a hospital cyberattack cut the odds of surviving a cardiac arrest without devastating brain damage by nearly 90% at nearby hospitals, not just the one that was attacked.

And even when a hospital’s computer systems are restored and normal care resumes, a cyberattack leaves enormous financial damage in its wake. Class action lawsuits, fragmented billing and steep regulatory fines due to patient privacy breaches and other issues often result in tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of losses.

In the worst cases, hospitals or clinics in rural areas have been forced to shutter their doors, leaving their communities with one less place to receive care and exacerbating existing health care deserts.

Protecting cyber infrastructure

We have no doubt that Dr. Robby will rally his team to ultimately save the day from malicious cyberattacks on “The Pitt.” But what is the prognosis for the rest of us, in the real world?

The good news is that a number of efforts are underway to improve the cybersecurity of the U.S. health care system.

The federal government has recognized the particular risk posed to rural and critical access hospitals and has identified increased investment in cybersecurity technologies as one of the goals of the Rural Health Transformation Program, a US$50 billion package distributed across all 50 states.

Several states, including New York and Connecticut, have taken further action, enshrining new bills in 2025 and 2026 mandating hospitals develop specific cybersecurity plans to protect patients. And the Food and Drug Administration now evaluates the cybersecurity of new medical devices prior to their arrival to market, and can issue recalls of those found to have significant vulnerabilities.

Cybersecurity remains one of the few bipartisan issues on Capitol Hill. A health care cybersecurity bill co-sponsored by Senators Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced in December 2025, would require hospitals to adopt security practices, including multifactor authentication and data encryption, allocate additional grants for hospitals and clinics, and strengthen the pipeline for cybersecurity professionals working in the health care sector, among other provisions.

However, this problem isn’t going away. Artificial intelligence and the expansion of remote and virtual care mean that malicious hackers have sophisticated new tools and increased opportunities to target hospitals. Researchers like us will have to find new ways to prevent cyberattacks when possible and protect patients when they inevitably erupt.

Jeffrey Tully is the co-founder of Inoculum Labs. He receives funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. He is affiliated with the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council Cybersecurity Working Group.

Christian Dameff co-founded inoculum labs. He receives funding from ARPA-H.

– ref. HBO’s ‘The Pitt’ nails how hospital cyberattacks create chaos, endanger patients and disrupt critical care – https://theconversation.com/hbos-the-pitt-nails-how-hospital-cyberattacks-create-chaos-endanger-patients-and-disrupt-critical-care-278795

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Laura Aull, Professor of English and Linguistics, University of Michigan

Suspicion and affection. Apprehension and excitement. Most people have mixed feelings about AI English, whether or not they always recognize it. When reading text generated by AI, people feel it sounds off, or fake. When reading English by a human, people are more likely to feel it has a characteristic voice or a personal touch.

What exactly makes English sound human, or sound like AI? And does it matter if AI English never truly achieves a human feel?

I research the institutionalization of English. There is a long, problematic history of people feeling positively or negatively toward different kinds of English, rewarding how it is spoken or written by some sectors of society and devaluing how it is used by others.

When generative AI language tools came along, they scaled up these problems. English-based large language models are trained on text from the public internet. Human instructions tell the models to sound like formal English. Because of that, large language models end up trained on all the bias baked into standardized human texts and ideas.

In my work, I encounter people who would never trust the internet to tell them what is right and wrong, yet they trust generative AI to tell them how to write.

Human vs. AI

The first step to becoming a more informed user of AI English is to try to understand what people mean when they say writing sounds human. This understanding will improve your AI literacy. Most importantly, it will allow you to learn to recognize two qualities that make human English different from AI English: variation and readability.

Human English contains persistent, if subtle, linguistic patterns of variation and readability. By contrast, AI uses what I call exam English – a rather formal, dense English that is favored in academic tests and papers. It is less varied and less readable. People perceive it as robotic, but they also perceive it as smart.

Here’s a quick test: Read the two text messages below and guess which one is by a human and which one is by ChatGPT.

“i’m not sure how to break this to you. there’s no easy way to put it…i can’t make the friday-night fun. sorry. however, feel free to text me during the evening if there are any lulls in conversation. anyway, hope ur exotic trip goes well. see u next term.”

“Hey! I’m really sorry, but I won’t be able to make it Friday night. I hope you all have a great time, and I’ll see you next term!”

A human reader would probably notice several patterns right away. The first message has more “textese”: It defaults to lowercase and includes phonetic spellings “ur” and “u.” The second text has exam English capital letters, commas and spelling.

People are likely to have other impressions, too. Perhaps the first text feels more personal, and less sure of itself. Maybe the second text feels stiff, like it was written by an acquaintance. The first text contains different kinds of phrases and clauses, while the second text repeats the same clause structure four times.

On some level, human readers pick up on such patterns. Most people would say that the first text is by a human and the second is by AI. Indeed, the second passage was generated by ChatGPT.

Even this basic illustration shows that human English includes variation in word usage and grammatical structures that breaks up information and conveys personal meaning. AI English has less variation and more dense noun phrases. In research studies, these patterns appear repeatedly across genres and registers.

Some AI English patterns change

AI writing tools evolve, and large language models vary. GPT 5 was infamously cold-sounding compared with its predecessor GPT 4, for example.

But the patterns I am talking about are likely to persist. AI English favors what exam English has always rewarded: homogeneity and information density. And thus far, instructional tuning – training AI models to follow human instruction – only makes AI English less like human English. It doesn’t help that AI writing is part of what AI bots train on.

The net effect today is that AI English has been trained on English that is much more narrow than actual, collective human English in practice. Humans, by contrast, don’t just use language that is probable, but language that is possible – based on the varied language use they have observed, their creative capacity for new utterances and their propensity to blend personal and impersonal language patterns.

How AI and human English can coexist

If you can become more aware of differences between AI and human English, those insights can help you use both language forms more productively. Here are a few steps to take:

Use language labels. When describing a given passage, use labels like “dense,” “plain,” “interpersonal” or “informational”, not social labels like “sounds smart” or “sounds off.” Consider exploring the actual patterns in human and AI English and trying to describe language patterns, not feelings about them, in other words.

Use AI tools selectively. Not only does human English have more accessible and varied patterns, it also engages the brain more than using AI language tools. To help prevent AI English from overshadowing human varied language in the world, use AI selectively.

Use curated tools. Tools like small language models and programs that you can add to a web browser to root out bias, such as Bias Shield, can help people make principled choices about AI English use. Tools such as translingual chatbots can also bring to AI English much more of the global variation in human English.

Be conscious of what sounds smart, and why. A century and a half of exam English makes it easy to think that dense, impersonal writing patterns are smart. But like any language patterns, they have pros and cons. They are not particularly personable or readable, especially for diverse audiences, and they are not representative of the range of global English in use today.

There can be good reasons to use exam English, but not just because AI bots generate it, or because people have learned to perceive it as smarter.

At its best, AI English is a language database driven by statistics. It’s big, but it’s canned. History tells us that a full range of global human English gives people the greatest possibilities for expression and connection.

Laura Aull 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. How AI English and human English differ – and how to decide when to use artificial language – https://theconversation.com/how-ai-english-and-human-english-differ-and-how-to-decide-when-to-use-artificial-language-277455

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Vice Provost and Dean of College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, Missouri University of Science and Technology

The Trump administration announced a US$10 million reward on March 15, 2026, for information leading to the capture of several senior Iranian figures.

While two of these leaders have since been killed by Israeli strikes, they are included here to provide a more complete picture of Iran’s powerful elite – people deeply embedded in the Islamic Republic’s political, intelligence and security architecture.

As an international affairs scholar, I know their careers reflect the institutional pillars of the regime – clerical authority, intelligence coordination, military power – and help explain why they are considered high-value targets.

Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei

The son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike in February 2026, Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, was chosen as Iran’s new supreme leader in early March.

Long viewed as a powerful behind-the-scenes figure, he operated within his father’s inner circle. He has cultivated strong relationships with Iran’s security and intelligence institutions and earned a reputation as a political fixer and enforcer.

Despite never holding formal elected or senior appointed office, Khamenei had been widely perceived as a potential successor to his father. Such a transition would have been controversial under normal circumstances, given his lack of experience and the ideological sensitivity around hereditary succession in a system born from anti-monarchical revolution.

Khamenei has also been linked to political controversies. During the 2005 presidential election, reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi accused him of involvement in electoral manipulation. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad later alleged that Khamenei engaged in financial misconduct.

Public opposition to his perceived rise was visible during the 2022–23 protests, when demonstrators explicitly rejected the prospect of his leadership by shouting “Mojtaba, may you die and never see leadership.”

Seyyed Ali-Asghar (Mir) Hejazi

A cleric with long-standing ties to Iran’s intelligence apparatus, Seyyed Ali-Asghar Hejazi had been among the closest aides to Ali Khamenei. He began his political career in 1980 as part of a “purification committee” tasked with firing perceived opponents from state institutions in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Hejazi later served as deputy for foreign affairs in the Ministry of Intelligence in the early 1980s and, more recently, as deputy chief of staff in the Office of the Supreme Leader. In this role, he has functioned as a key intermediary between various branches of government as well as religious and political personalities – transmitting Khamenei’s directives, shaping high-level policy and coordinating Iran’s complex intelligence and security networks.

He was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2013 for alleged human rights violations, including involvement in the suppression of the 2009 Green Movement, and by the European Union in 2019. He apparently survived an Israeli attack on March 6, 2026.

Seyyed Esmail Khatib

Seyyed Esmail Khatib, 64, who was killed on March 18, 2026, had built his career within Iran’s intelligence and security establishment. He joined intelligence operations linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1980 and was wounded during the Iran–Iraq War.

Following the war, this cleric held a series of senior intelligence roles, including director general of intelligence for Qom province, starting in 1991. He also held positions within the supreme leader’s security office from 2009–11 and was head of the judiciary’s Protection and Intelligence Center, a counterintelligence body within Iran’s judiciary, from 2012–19. He later served as a senior official within Astan Quds Razavi, a major religious and economic conglomerate controlled directly by Iran’s supreme leader.

Sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2020 for alleged human rights abuses, Khatib became Iran’s minister of intelligence in 2021.

Ali Larijani

Ali Larijani, who was assassinated on March 17, 2026, was one of the Islamic Republic’s most experienced political insiders. Born into a prominent clerical family, he rose through both military and civilian institutions, beginning with roles linked to the Revolutionary Guard in the early 1980s.

Over the decades, Larijani, 68, held numerous senior positions. Those include minister of culture from 1992–94 and head of state broadcasting from 1994–2004. He was also secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 2004–08 and again from 2025–26. Larijani also served as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2005-07.

From early January 2026, and more clearly following the Feb. 28 killing of Ayatollah Khamenei, Larijani emerged as a central decision-maker within the system before his death.

Brig. Gen. Eskandar Momeni

A Revolutionary Guard-affiliated security official, Eskandar Momeni, 64, is a veteran of the Iran–Iraq War and participated in counterinsurgency operations against leftist groups in northern Iran.

He later held a range of senior law enforcement roles, including head of the Police Emergency Center, a dispatch center that directs emergency response units, from 2004–05, deputy for operations of the national police from 2005–08, and chief of traffic police from 2009–14. He also holds a doctorate in national security.

As deputy commander of Iran’s Law Enforcement Force, responsible for public security, from 2015–18, Momeni oversaw security responses during the 2017-18 protests, which were met with force. Since becoming minister of interior in August 2024, he has remained a central figure in domestic security policy, including the lethal response to unrest in early 2026 in which an estimated 7,000 to 30,000 Iranians were killed.

Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi

A senior Revolutionary Guard commander and longtime military strategist, Yahya Rahim Safavi, 73, received military training in Syria prior to the 1979 revolution and later became a key figure during the Iran–Iraq War.

He served as commander of the Revolutionary Guard ground forces, from 1985–89, deputy commander in chief from 1989–97 and commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guard from 1997–2007. During his tenure, he reportedly also earned a Ph.D. in geography.

In December 2006, the U.N. Security Council put Safavi on its sanctions list for his involvement in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. After stepping down as Revolutionary Guard commander, Safavi was appointed senior military adviser to the supreme leader and is still serving in that role. He remains under U.S. sanctions.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi 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. Who are Iran’s new leaders? A look at 6 the US placed a bounty on – 2 of whom are already dead – https://theconversation.com/who-are-irans-new-leaders-a-look-at-6-the-us-placed-a-bounty-on-2-of-whom-are-already-dead-278509