Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rachael Seidler, Professor of Applied Physiology & Kinesiology, University of Florida

Going to space is harsh on the human body, and as a new study from our research team finds, the brain shifts upward and backward and deforms inside the skull after spaceflight.

The extent of these changes was greater for those who spent longer in space. As NASA plans longer space missions, and space travel expands beyond professional astronauts, these findings will become more relevant.

Why it matters

On Earth, gravity constantly pulls fluids in your body and your brain toward the center of the Earth. In space, that force disappears. Body fluids shift toward the head, which gives astronauts a puffy face. Under normal gravity, the brain, cerebrospinal fluid and surrounding tissues reach a stable balance. In microgravity, that balance changes.

Without gravity pulling downward, the brain floats in the skull and experiences various forces from the surrounding soft tissues and the skull itself. Earlier studies showed that the brain appears higher in the skull after spaceflight. But most of those studies focused on average or whole brain measures, which can hide important effects within different areas of the brain.

Our goal was to look more closely.

How we do our work

We analyzed brain MRI scans from 26 astronauts who spent different lengths of time in space, from a few weeks to over a year. To focus on the brain’s movement, we aligned each person’s skull across scans taken before and after spaceflight.

That comparison allowed us to measure how the brain shifted relative to the skull itself. Instead of treating the brain as a single object, we divided it into more than 100 regions and tracked how each one had shifted. This approach enabled us to see patterns that were missed when looking at the whole brain, on average.

We found that the brain consistently moved upward and backward when comparing postflight to preflight. The longer someone stayed in space, the larger the shift. One of the more striking findings came from examining individual brain regions.

In astronauts who spent about a year aboard the International Space Station, some areas near the top of the brain moved upward by more than 2 millimeters, while the rest of the brain barely moved. That distance may sound small, but inside the tightly packed space of the skull, it is meaningful.

Areas involved in movement and sensation showed the largest shifts. Structures on the two sides of the brain moved toward the midline, which means they moved in the opposite direction for each brain hemisphere. These opposing patterns cancel each other out in whole brain averages, which explains why earlier studies missed them.

Most of the shifts and deformations gradually returned to normal by six months after return to Earth. The backward shift showed less recovery, likely because gravity pulls downward rather than forward, so some effects of spaceflight on brain position may last longer than others.

What’s next

NASA’s Artemis program will mark a new era of space exploration. Understanding how the brain responds will help scientists assess long-term risks and develop countermeasures.

Our findings don’t mean that people should not travel to space. While we found that larger location shifts of a sensory-processing brain region correlated with postflight balance changes, the crew members did not experience overt symptoms – such as headaches or brain fog – related to brain position shifts.

Our findings do not reveal immediate health risks. Knowing how the brain moves in spaceflight and subsequently recovers allows researchers to understand the effects of microgravity on human physiology. It can help space agencies to design safer missions.

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

Rachael Seidler receives funding from NASA.

Tianyi Wang received funding from NASA.

– ref. Living in space can change where your brain sits in your skull – new research – https://theconversation.com/living-in-space-can-change-where-your-brain-sits-in-your-skull-new-research-273663

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Timothy Welbeck, Director of the Center for Anti-Racism, Temple University

On the evening of May 21, 1796, Ona Judge made the daring decision to free herself.

Considering the prominence of her owner, the laws of the time and the dangerous trek to New Hampshire, a place where she could discreetly live freely, the act carried remarkable risk. Nevertheless, she slipped out of the President’s House undetected while the first family dined.

The house, then located at the intersection of 6th and Market streets in Philadelphia, served as the first executive mansion. It stood mere feet from Independence Hall, where the nation adopted its lofty language regarding freedom.

Years later, Judge described her narrow escape to Rev. Benjamin Chase in an interview for the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Judge told Chase, “I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington’s house while they were eating dinner.”

Prior to her escape, Judge served as a chambermaid in the President’s House. She spent years tending to Martha Washington’s every need: bathing and dressing her, grooming her hair, laundering her clothes, organizing her personal belongings, and even periodically caring for her children and grandchildren.

Being a chambermaid also included grueling daily tasks such as maintaining fires, emptying chamber pots and scrubbing floors.

Even though she engaged in this arduous labor as property of the Washingtons, living in Philadelphia provided Judge a glimpse of what freedom could eventually look like for her. Historians estimate that 5% to 9% of the city’s population at the time were free Black people. Prior to her escape, Judge befriended several of them.

In the spring of 1796, the Washingtons prepared to return to Virginia to resume private life. President Washington issued his farewell address in the fall of 1796, but he told family and close confidants of his plans earlier in the year.

During that time, Martha Washington made arrangements for their pending return to Mount Vernon. Her plans included bequeathing Ona Judge to her granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis, as a wedding gift. Upon learning this, Judge made plans of her own.

In her interview with Chase she explained, “Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn’t know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty.”

As a civil rights lawyer and professor in the Africology and African American Studies department at Temple University in Philadelphia, I study the intersection of race, racism and the law in the United States. I believe Judge’s story is vital to the telling of America’s history.

Dismantling history

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University, tells Judge’s fascinating story in her book “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave Ona Judge.”

Before January 2026, those who wished to learn about Judge could literally stand on the same walkway in Philadelphia where Judge once stood when she chose to flee. Several footprints, shaped like a woman’s shoes and embedded into the pathway outside of where the President’s House once stood, memorialize the beginning of Judge’s journey. These footprints composed part of an exhibit examining the paradox between slavery, freedom and the nation’s founding.

The exhibit, “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” also included 34 explanatory panels bolted onto brick walls along that sidewalk. They provided biographical details about the nine people the Washingtons owned while living in the presidential mansion. The exhibit presented the sobering reality that our nation’s first president enslaved people while he held the nation’s highest office.

This changed in late January when the National Park Service dismantled the slavery exhibit at Philadelphia Independence National Historic Park. The removal sparked intense, immediate outrage from people across the country dismayed by the attempt to suppress unfavorable aspects of American history.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker responded swiftly. “Let me affirm, for the residents of the city of Philadelphia, that there is a cooperative agreement between the city and the federal government that dates back to 2006,” she said in a public statement. “That agreement requires parties to meet and confer if there are to be any changes made to an exhibit.”

The city of Philadelphia later sued Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and National Park Service acting Director Jessica Bowron. Pennsylvania subsequently filed an amicus brief in support of the city’s lawsuit.

After an inspection of the exhibit’s panels, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who is overseeing the case, ruled that the government must mitigate any potential damage to them while they are stored.

Civil rights activist and Philadelphia-based attorney Michael Coard recently had an opportunity to visit and examine the exhibits in storage. Coard has led the fight to create and preserve the exhibit and now is at the center of the fight to restore it.

Limiting discussion of race

While the court deliberates the future of the exhibits, critics continue to raise key concerns regarding the exhibit’s removal. Many argue the National Park Service’s dismantling of the exhibit is an attempt to “whitewash history” and erase stories like Ona Judge’s.

This is particularly the case considering the Trump administration has restored and reinstalled two Confederate monuments of Albert Pike in Washington, D.C., and Arlington National Cemetery, while removing the slavery exhibit in Philadelphia.

Moreover, during the first week of his second term, Trump signed multiple executive orders to eliminate
diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Similarly, during the first Trump administration, the federal government engaged in various efforts to counterbalance the 1619 Project, a project spearheaded by Pulitzer-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones that discussed the 400th anniversary of slavery’s beginnings in America. The 1619 Project spawned yearslong backlash. This included the 1776 Commission, created during the first Trump administration, which tried to discredit the conclusions of the 1619 project.

It is all part of a broader pattern across the country to limit how public institutions broach topics pertaining to race and racism.

This pattern has intensified as the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the framers signing the Declaration of Independence. As the nation celebrates its history, it must decide how much of it to explore.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Timothy Welbeck has colleagues and affiliates who are members of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, an organization which is mentioned in this article.

– ref. Martha Washington’s enslaved maid Ona Judge made a daring escape to freedom – but the National Park Service has erased her story from Philadelphia exhibit – https://theconversation.com/martha-washingtons-enslaved-maid-ona-judge-made-a-daring-escape-to-freedom-but-the-national-park-service-has-erased-her-story-from-philadelphia-exhibit-274394

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jennifer Lynn McCoy, Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University

In the face of widespread pessimism about the political fate of the United States and growing political polarization, scholars and citizens across the country are reimagining how American democracy could better serve the needs of the whole population.

In an October 2025 poll, a slight majority said that radical change is needed to make life better in America, compared to 32% who answered only small change is needed.

Reimagining a political system’s future effectively begins with the system’s foundation: how the populace chooses the people who will represent them and make collective decisions.

The U.S. Constitution mandates elected representatives in Congress to decide important questions, such as how to tax the population and spend that collective revenue. And they determine whether to go to war or to defend allies if they are invaded.

These representatives are chosen in a winner-take-all system that research shows favors those with money to spend on the race. It also feeds stark polarization, helps restrict choice to two major parties and leaves out the voices of many voters.

What would it take to make that electoral system become more responsive to citizens’ needs? How could it be fairer and more accurate in representing the entire electorate?

One answer is found in proportional representation, an electoral system used in most of the rest of the world’s established democracies. These systems elect multiple representatives in a district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them.

A recent report from the Academy of Arts and Sciences that I participated in analyzed the pros and cons of moving to such a system.

It examined evidence from other countries and concluded that proportional representation could provide more fair and accurate representation and more choice. Proportional representation could also help with the deep political polarization engulfing the United States.

How proportional representation works

This proposal would change the way Americans elect representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives and potentially to state legislatures.

Currently, the winner-take-all system in the U.S. works like this: States are divided into districts based on population and elect one representative to the House of Representatives per district. The winner is the person who gets the most votes. Most states also use this single-member district system to elect members of their state legislatures.

A proportional representation system has larger, multimember districts. Candidates are elected according to the share of votes they or their parties receive.

Different versions of proportional list systems exist. In one version called open list proportional representation, voters choose a candidate from party lists of nominated candidates or from lists of independent candidates.

So if the Good People Party, for example, wins 40% of the vote in a district with 10 members, it will get four seats. And the top four vote-winners on their list will be elected. If the Serious People Party wins 20% of the vote, it will get two seats, with the top two vote-getters on their list elected.

This method simultaneously serves the purpose of a primary election, allowing voters to choose among nominees from a party.

Another version of proportional representation also has multimember districts but uses ranked-choice voting to select the members, where voters rank candidates in order of preference. New Zealand and Australia changed to this system for some of their representative bodies in 1993 and 1948, respectively.

The advantages of proportional representation include outcomes where many more voters would live in a district with at least one of the elected officials representing their choice. That differs from the winner-take-all system where those on the losing side feel unrepresented, especially when the district is split 51% to 49%, for example.

Proportional representation opens the door to more choice because it becomes possible for a smaller party to win one seat out of five, for example. It would begin to break up the two-party system that currently forces some voters to choose the “lesser of two evils,” or to vote strategically against their most disliked party rather than for someone they want.

Proportional representation also eliminates gerrymandering because voters would not be split into small, easily manipulated district boundaries. Proportional representation, additionally, has been shown to give more equal representation to minorities and women.

How the US could get there

To be sure, proportional representation can lead to difficulty in forming a majority coalition. This happened in Belgium in 2010. It can also lead to situations where small, extremist parties can demand major concessions to join a larger party in forming a majority coalition, which Israel recently experienced.

Israel is often cited as a negative example of proportional representation. But the country remains unusual in that its extreme electoral system includes the entire country as one large district with 120 seats, so that many small parties can be elected.

Research indicates that districts with three to eight members are ideal to provide more accurate representation without overly fragmenting the party system.

In the U.S. it’s more likely that proportional representation would allow for different factions of the existing parties to be represented. Imagine a five-seat district that elects one MAGA Republican, one traditional Republican, one progressive Democrat, one centrist Democrat and one third-party or independent candidate. This would begin to break down the polarization and allow for different coalitions to form across different issues.

Changing the system to elect House members does not require a constitutional amendment. The Constitution allows states to determine the manner of elections.

But Congress would need to repeal a 1967 law that mandates single-member districts, written to help implement the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Southern states that had used a bloc system to disenfranchise Black voters.

In a bloc system, voters get as many votes as there are seats in that district. So in a five-seat district, each voter gets five votes instead of only one vote in a proportional system. A majority group, say whites, could thus choose to vote for only white candidates and win across the board, locking out any minority candidate from winning. The repeal could include a prohibition on returning to that bloc system.

Proportional representation would require that lawmakers who hold their seats under the current system agree to change the 1967 law. And they may be reluctant to change to a system that would give voters more choice.

But interviews with retiring lawmakers show their frustration with the dysfunction and toxicity of the current Congress. And some lawmakers are pushing for a committee to study how changes to the electoral system could create a better-functioning Congress.

Additionally, there is growing support for electoral reform in the U.S. A September 2024 poll found that over half of Americans think the U.S. should change the way we elect representatives to Congress. And 63% believe the country would be better off with more than two competitive parties.

One U.S. city – Portland, Oregon – recently moved to proportional representation. The Portland City Council that took office in 2025 has greater gender, minority and neighborhood representation than in the past, even if it experienced some initial difficulty in forming a majority coalition. And Cambridge, Massachusetts, has used proportional representation since 1941, where 95% of voters see one of their top three choices elected.

States and municipalities could thus become laboratories of innovation, experimenting with different versions of proportional representation and providing models and momentum for a national-level change. And the country could begin not only to reimagine but to experience a different democracy that serves all.

Jennifer Lynn McCoy receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation for an Andrew Carnegie fellowship on depolarization as well as the Institute for Humane Studies.. She is Regent’s Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

– ref. ‘Proportional representation’ could reduce polarization in Congress and help more people feel like their voices are being heard – https://theconversation.com/proportional-representation-could-reduce-polarization-in-congress-and-help-more-people-feel-like-their-voices-are-being-heard-270411

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Charles Prior, Professor in History, University of Birmingham

The Trump administration’s drive to increase domestic production of fossil fuels and mining of key minerals likely cannot be accomplished without a key constituency: Native nations.

The U.S. has 374 treaties with 574 governments of sovereign nations inside the United States’ borders, governing 2.5% of the country’s territory, predominantly west of the Mississippi.

Native American tribal lands contain 30% of the nation’s coal, 50% of its uranium and 20% of its natural gas. And they contain materials critical for advanced technologies, including renewable energy: copper for electric grids, lithium and rare earth elements for batteries and electronics, and water for agriculture and power generation.

Significantly expanding domestic access to fossil fuels, critical minerals and water will require the U.S. government to work with Native nations. Their rights to resources on their lands are enshrined in long-standing treaties whose legal power is on equal footing to the U.S. Constitution itself. I study these agreements, negotiated from the late 18th to the late 19th centuries and ratified by the U.S. Senate. They are not mere historical artifacts but rather key documents at the center of modern conflicts over drilling, mining, pipelines and energy infrastructure.

For Indigenous nations, access to natural resources is more than a matter of economic opportunity or environmental sustainability. Managing these lands is inseparable from questions of sovereignty, sacred land and treaty enforcement.

Treaties as living law

Under the U.S. Constitution, treaties are ranked as “the supreme Law of the Land” right alongside the Constitution itself.

Federal Indian Law, largely codified in Title 25 of the U.S. Code, defines the relationship between the United States and tribal nations, including recognizing tribes as possessing and exercising “self-government.” Supreme Court decisions sometimes recognize tribes as sovereign political entities, but that sovereignty is constrained by congressional authority and overlapping state jurisdiction.

The treaties have long been seen as instruments that allowed settlers of European descent to annex Native territory. But they also sanctioned activity on land the tribes never officially gave up. One treaty with the Eastern Shoshone permitted “mining settlements” on lands reserved to the tribe, while another allowed “prospecting” for “minerals and metals.”

But in recent decades, Native nations have used the treaties as grounds for reasserting their sovereign status, restoring the documents to their original purpose as an organized set of nation-to-nation relationships deeply rooted in North American diplomatic history.

In particular, Indigenous activism and litigation since the 1970s have revived treaty claims as tools to protect land, water and cultural practices. Treaties once dismissed as instruments of dispossession are increasingly invoked as binding legal commitments – and as relevant to, and capable of, shaping contemporary energy policy.

Energy projects and treaty disputes

The tribes are demanding the federal government protect sacred lands, ecosystems and community health when evaluating proposals for mining and other developments.

Native-led protests and lawsuits are a common feature of large infrastructure projects that cross their land or threaten their resources. In 2021, the White Earth Nation sought to block the expansion of the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline. The route was planned to run underneath a spiritually significant Minnesota lake where it and other tribes had treaty-protected rights to water, hunting and fishing.

In its effort, which was ultimately unsuccessful, the tribe cited treaties from 1837, 1854 and 1855. The tribe argued that these treaties required the federal government to protect their rights to hunt, fish and gather – a position supported by a 1999 Supreme Court ruling.

More successful was a 2024 move by the Navajo Nation to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject a proposed hydropower project on Navajo lands.

In late January 2026, however, the commission approved a similar hydropower project on a sacred and treaty-protected area of Yakama Nation lands in the state of Washington. The Yakama Nation and other tribes and local groups are asking state courts to block the project.

These cases expose a long-standing tension in U.S. law between the federal government’s treaty-bound responsibility to protect tribal resources and the authority claimed by the federal and state governments over land and development.

Oak Flat and the Apache Stronghold case

One of the most significant current disputes involves the proposed Resolution Copper mine at Oak Flat in Arizona. Known to the Western Apache as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, Oak Flat is a sacred site used for ceremonies central to Apache religious life.

In 2014, Congress authorized the transfer of around 2,422 acres of federally protected land in Tonto National Forest to the mining company through the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act, embedded in a defense spending bill. If allowed, the underground mining proposed on that land presents a risk of subsidence and potential collapse of the site.

In 2021, the Apache-led coalition Apache Stronghold sued the U.S. government, arguing that the land transfer violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and provisions in the 1852 Treaty of Santa Fe that required the government to respect tribal lands.

The courts have so far sided with the federal government on the grounds that Congress, rather than the states, has ultimate authority in what federal law calls “Indian country.”

First, a U.S. District Court denied an injunction to stop the transfer. In March 2024, the justices of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a split ruling upholding that decision and finding that the project did not impose a “substantial burden” on the Apaches’ religious rights.

In May 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. However, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas wrote that they wanted to hear the case. They warned that by not hearing it, the court was allowing the destruction of a sacred religious site.

The Apaches tried again in late 2025, but the Supreme Court denied that request, too, leaving intact the 9th Circuit ruling, which allowed the land transfer to the mining company.

Even so, the conflict is not over. The Apaches took additional claims to the 9th Circuit in a different legal form, and the court issued temporary restraining orders in late 2025, which paused aspects of the land transfer while litigation continues.

Why treaties still matter

The Oak Flat dispute highlights the limits of existing legal protections for Indigenous sacred sites, even when treaties and religious freedom are clearly at stake. It also shows how congressional control over use of federal land can override Indigenous objections in the name of energy security and critical minerals.

This and comparable disputes also show how treaties, federal law and the Constitution can be used to slow, reshape and sometimes halt extractive projects, forcing states and corporations to reckon with Native sovereignty, even where Congress or the executive branch claims the last word.

For Native nations, treaties remain central tools for asserting sovereignty and shaping energy futures. Tribal governments and Indigenous corporations are increasingly active in renewable energy and mineral markets, seeking development on their own terms. In April 2025, Buu Nygren, president of the coal-rich Navajo Nation, called for energy developments that honor tribal sovereignty and secure Indigenous nations’ place in global supply chains.

Treaties are not relics of the past. They continue to shape how energy, law and sovereignty intersect in the United States today.

Charles Prior receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust (Major Research Fellowship, 2024-27).

– ref. Green or not, US energy future depends on Native nations – https://theconversation.com/green-or-not-us-energy-future-depends-on-native-nations-254756

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Erin Clabough, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia

In 2024, 51% of families read aloud to their very young children, while 37% read aloud to their kids between the ages of 6 and 8 years old.

Some parents have said they stop reading aloud to their school-age children because their kids can read on their own.

I’m a neuroscientist with four children, and I wondered whether children might be losing more than just the pleasure of listening to books read aloud. In particular, I wondered whether it affected their empathy and creativity.

A simple idea from the literature

I have studied and written about empathy and creativity as part of my personal effort to better understand how to be a good parent. I have found that empathy and creativity aren’t talents you’re born with or without. They are skills that respond to practice, just like learning to play piano.

But my children weren’t being taught either empathy or creativity in elementary school. And the data showed that young people’s empathy and creativity may have dropped over the past few decades.

Empathy isn’t just about being nice. It’s a superpower that helps children predict behavior and navigate social situations safely. It makes them better at reading faces and emotional cues.

And creativity is essential for self-control and problem-solving. It’s much easier to regulate your behavior if you can imagine multiple solutions to a problem instead of fixating on the one thing you’re not supposed to do.

About 10 years ago, I started making some changes at home to ensure that my children got these skills.

Setting aside 15 minutes at night was sometimes the only one-on-one time I had with each kid, with bedtimes of 7:30, 7:45, 8:00 and 8:15 p.m. It was precious to me. I wondered whether using conflicts in bedtime stories as teachable moments would help them develop more empathy for others and boost their creativity.

I wrote in 2016 about how I think my children became more empathetic when we paused at times during a book to ask: “How do you think this character feels?” and “What would you do?”

But no one had tested this experiment on a broader scale.

Testing the idea

Beginning in 2017, four colleagues and I recruited 38 families in central Virginia with children ages 6 to 8, which is an age when kids are navigating social relationships and experiencing intense brain development. All of the children in our study were somewhat independent beginning readers or they could read independently. In our study, caregivers read one storybook nightly for two weeks.

I chose seven illustrated books: “The Tooth Fairy Wars,” “Library Lion,” “A Letter for Leo,” “Stuck with the Blooz,” “Cub’s Big World,” “Nugget and Fang” and “A New Friend for Marmalade.” There was nothing special about these books except that they all contained some sort of social conflict – and my kids gave them a thumbs-up.

They were about, among other characters, a polar bear cub who becomes separated from his mother in the snow, and a boy who hid his teeth from the tooth fairy.

Half the families in our study read a book each night straight through without pausing. The other half paused at one conflict point per story to ask two reflection questions. For example, when the tooth fairy stole the tooth Nathan desperately wanted to keep, they asked, “How would you feel if you were Nathan?” If the child answered, parents just listened. If not, they waited 30 seconds before continuing.

Before and after two weeks, we tested children’s empathetic ability to understand what others might be thinking and how they are feeling. We also tested creativity using the alternative uses task, which asked kids to generate creative ideas, such as thinking of unusual uses for a paper clip or listing things with wheels.

A boost in empathy either way

After just 14 bedtimes with books, we found – as our 2026 research shows – that children whose parents paused for questions got better at understanding others’ perspectives. But so did children whose parents just read straight through.

We found that what scientists call cognitive and overall empathy improved significantly in both groups between childen’s initial visit and our follow-up visit two weeks after they read the books for a week.

This may be because it is easier to quickly develop cognitive empathy – meaning when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes – as compared to developing emotional empathy, or feeling what others feel. Emotional empathy involves different brain regions and likely requires longer to change deeply rooted emotional processing patterns.

A creative approach

After two weeks of bedtime reading, children in both groups got better at creative thinking. We used a standard creativity test that measures the number and the originality of responses when children were asked to think of uses for everyday objects. For example, if asked about a brick, a common answer would be to build a wall, while a more original response might be to grind it up to make red chalk.

But the children whose parents paused for questions generated significantly more ideas overall.

Their responses delighted me: They suggested using a paper clip as wire in a potato clock, to help put on a doll’s shoes, or to simply see what sound it makes hitting the floor.

We also noticed that the younger kids came up with more original ideas than the older ones. This matches other research showing that creativity may fade as children grow up and they prioritize fitting in with others more than thinking differently.

What we still need to learn

Our study had limitations: We did not have a comparison group that did not read at all. And most families had a higher income, with 92% of families earning more than $50,000 per year.

Future research could address this gap and also investigate whether the benefits we found persist past two weeks – and whether they translate into real-world kindness.

But importantly, we found no gender differences in our study. The practice works equally well for boys and girls. And even though the majority of our families said they already read regularly to their children, this practice still worked to boost empathy and creativity.

Bedtime stories are about more than routine

As a neuroscientist, I know the elementary school years are a particularly powerful window when children experience intense formation of new brain connections.

These 15 minutes of reading aren’t just about preparing kids to sleep or teaching them to decode words. They’re building neural pathways for understanding others and imagining possibilities. With repeated practice, these connections strengthen, just like practicing piano.

In a world designed to pull families toward screens, bedtime reading remains a refuge where parent and child share the same imaginative space.

But the pressure’s off for parents: You don’t have to read in any special way. Just read.

Erin Clabough is affiliated with Neuro Pty Ltd.

– ref. Reading to young kids improves their social skills − and a new study shows it doesn’t matter whether parents stop to ask questions – https://theconversation.com/reading-to-young-kids-improves-their-social-skills-and-a-new-study-shows-it-doesnt-matter-whether-parents-stop-to-ask-questions-274926

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Meg A. Warren, Professor of Management, Western Washington University

What really holds people back from stepping up as allies in support of their marginalized colleagues? For example, why don’t more men say something when they see a colleague or a customer make a sexist remark about a female co-worker?

Our research, published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, suggests that people often hesitate to intervene when co-workers are mistreated because they themselves feel disempowered in their organizations and experience distrust and polarization.

Our findings run counter to the common assumption that people don’t step up to support marginalized colleagues because they don’t care or are unmotivated. Not seeing much action against inequity and injustice can drive this cynical idea. It’s built into many diversity, equity and inclusion training programs that rely on motivational tactics of persuasion, guilting and shaming to get people to act.

We are psychology researchers interested in how people can use their strengths to effectively support others who are marginalized. We surveyed 778 employees in Michigan and 973 employees across all provinces of Canada, representative of urban and rural areas, working-class and professional jobs, and across all demographics, including gender, race and sexual orientation. We asked them, “What makes it hard for you to be an ally for underrepresented and marginalized people (e.g., people of color, women, persons with disability) in your organization?”

Low motivation represented just 8% of the barriers people cited. And lack of awareness that marginalized groups face inequities accounted for only 10% of the barriers people mentioned. Most diversity training money tends to be devoted to teaching employees about these topics – suggesting why many diversity training programs fail.

The most common barrier to allyship that our participants named was distrust and tension between people in their organization, which had them second-guessing themselves and self-censoring. People also reported feeling disempowered, like they didn’t have the power, opportunity or resources to make a real difference for their colleagues.

Why it matters

Researchers, specialists and consultants alike approach issues of workplace inequity with the assumption that to drive action they need to first unblock potential allies’ deep-seated resistance to change. For example, specialists assume that people need to become more motivated, more courageous, less biased or better informed about existing inequities in order to act as allies.

In this study, we temporarily set aside all preexisting assumptions and directly asked people what made it hard for them to be an ally, in their own words. Our goal was to identify practical roadblocks at the top of people’s minds that stop them from taking the first step, or the next logical step.

When popular messaging, like on social media, and organizational interventions misunderstand the causes of people’s inaction, they risk exacerbating frustration and tensions. Interventions need to account for their audience’s true perspectives on what makes allyship difficult. Otherwise, they’ll lack credibility, and people will likely be less receptive to program content.

What still isn’t known

We’d like to further investigate the impacts of the specific barriers mentioned in our study. More insight could help workplaces focus interventions on addressing barriers that are the worst pressure points and avoid overspending on interventions that can move the needle only so much.

More than a quarter of respondents said they experienced no barriers to standing up for colleagues. We’d like to investigate whether these respondents simply didn’t want to engage with our question, are uncertain about the barriers, or are already engaging in some form of allyship. Our team’s previous research has shown that even loud allies who publicly call out bias often also engage in quiet allyship actions, such as privately checking in on how a victim of bias is doing and assisting in strategizing next steps.

What’s next

Our research team is investigating whether programs designed with this study’s findings in mind – starting with building trusting relationships and helping people feel empowered – can increase allyship action. When diversity programs built on inaccurate assumptions don’t show the desired results, they risk having funding withdrawn or being halted altogether. Instead, as organizations take stock and pivot, evidence from our study and others can help them more effectively plan their next move.

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. Distrust and disempowerment, not apathy, keep employees from supporting marginalized colleagues – https://theconversation.com/distrust-and-disempowerment-not-apathy-keep-employees-from-supporting-marginalized-colleagues-274502

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Patrick Aguilar, Managing Director of Health, Washington University in St. Louis

In announcing its “Great Healthcare Plan” in January 2026, the Trump administration became the latest in a long history of efforts by the U.S. government to rein in the soaring cost of health care.

As a physician and professor studying the intersection of business and health, I know that the challenges in reforming the sprawling U.S. health care system are immense. That’s partly for political and even philosophical reasons.

But it also reflects a complex system fraught with competing interests – and the fact that patients, hospitals, health insurance companies and drug manufacturers change their behaviors in conflicting ways when faced with new rules.

Soaring costs

U.S. health care is the most expensive in the world, and according to a poll published in late January 2026, two-thirds of Americans are very worried about their ability to pay for it – whether it’s their medications, a doctor’s visit, health insurance or an unpredictably costly medical emergency.

Disputes over health policy even played a central role in the federal government shutdown in fall 2025.

Trump’s health care framework outlines no specific policy actions, but it does establish priorities to address a number of longtime concerns, including prescription drug costs, price transparency, lowering insurance premiums and making health insurance companies generally more accountable.

Why have these challenges been so difficult to address?

Drug price sticker shock

Prescription drug costs in the U.S. began rising sharply in the 1980s, when drugmakers increased the development of innovative new treatments for common diseases. But efforts to combat this trend have resembled a game of whack-a-mole because the factors driving it are so intertwined.

One issue is the unique set of challenges that define drug development. As with any consumer good, manufacturers price prescription drugs to cover costs and earn profits. Drug manufacturing, however, involves an expensive and time-consuming development process with a high risk of failure.

Patent protection is another issue. Drug patents last 20 years, but completing costly trials necessary for regulatory approval takes up much of that period, reducing the time when manufacturers have exclusive rights to sell the drug. After a patent expires, generic versions can be made and sold for significantly less, lowering the profits for the original manufacturer. Though some data challenges this claim, the pharmaceutical industry contends that high prices while drugs are under patent help companies recover their investment, which then funds the discovery of new drugs. And they often find ways to extend their patents, which keeps prices elevated for longer.

Then there are the intermediaries. Once a drug is on the market, prices are typically set through negotiations with administrators called pharmacy benefit managers, who negotiate discounts and rebates on prescription drugs for health insurers and employers offering benefits to their workers. Pharmacy benefit managers are paid based on those discounts, so they do not have an incentive to lower total drug prices, though new transparency rules enacted Feb. 3 aim to change payment practices. Drugmakers often raise the list price of drugs to make up for the markdowns that pharmacy benefit managers negotiate – and possibly even more than that.

In many countries, centralized government negotiators set the price for prescription drugs, resulting in lower drug prices. This has prompted American officials to consider using those prices as a reference for setting drug prices here. In its blueprint, the Trump administration has called for a “most-favored nation” drug pricing policy, under which some U.S. drug prices would match the lowest prices paid in other countries.

This may work in the short term, but manufacturers say it could also curtail investment in innovative new drugs. And some industry experts worry that it may push manufacturers to raise international prices.

In late 2025, 16 pharmaceutical companies agreed to most-favored nation pricing for some drugs. Consumers can now buy them directly from manufacturers through TrumpRx, a portal that points consumers to drug manufacturers and provides coupons for purchasing more than 40 widely used brand-name drugs at a discount, which launched Feb. 5. However, many drugs available through the platform can be purchased at lower prices as generics

Increasing price transparency

Fewer than 1 in 20 Americans know how much health care services will cost before they receive them. One fix for this seems obvious: Make providers list their prices up front. That way, consumers could compare prices and choose the most cost-effective options for their care.

Spurred by bipartisan support in Congress, the government has embraced price transparency for health care services over the past decade. In February 2025, the Trump administration announced stricter enforcement for hospitals, which must now post actual prices, rather than estimates, for common medical procedures. Data is mixed on whether the approach is working as planned, however. Hospitals have reduced prices for people paying out of pocket, but not for those paying with insurance, according to a 2025 study.

For one thing, when regulations change, companies make strategic decisions to achieve their financial goals and meet the new rules – sometimes yielding unintended consequences. One study found, for example, that price transparency regulations in a series of clinics led to an increase in physician charges to insurance companies because some providers who had been charging less raised their prices to match more expensive competitors.

Additionally, a 2024 federal government study found that 46% of hospitals were not compliant. The American Hospital Association, a trade group, suggested price transparency imposes a high administrative burden on hospitals while providing confusing information to patients, whose costs may vary depending on unique aspects of their conditions. And the fine for noncompliance, US$300 per day, may be insufficient to offset the cost of disclosing this information, according to some health policy experts.

Beyond high costs, patients also worry that insurers won’t actually cover the care they receive. Cigna is currently fighting a lawsuit accusing its doctors of denying claims almost instantly – within an average of 1.2 seconds – but concerns about claims denial are rampant across the industry. Companies’ use of artificial intelligence to deny claims is compounding the problem.

Curbing the rise in health insurance premiums

Many Americans struggle to afford monthly insurance premiums. But curbing that increase significantly may be impossible without reining in overall health care costs and, paradoxically, keeping more people insured.

Insurance works by pooling money paid by members of an insurance plan. That money covers all members’ health care costs, with some using more than they contribute and others less. Premium prices therefore depend on how many people are in the plan, as well as the services insurance will cover and the services people actually use. Because health care costs are rising overall, commercial insurance companies may not be able to significantly lower premiums without reducing their ability to cover costs and absorb risk.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans under age 65 receive health insurance through employers. Another 6.9% of them get it through Affordable Care Act marketplaces, where enrollment numbers are extremely sensitive to premium costs.

Enrollment in ACA plans nearly doubled in 2021, from about 12 million to more than 24 million, when the government introduced subsidies to reduce premiums during the COVID-19 pandemic. But when the subsidies expired on Jan. 1, 2026, about 1.4 million dropped coverage, and for most who didn’t, premiums more than doubled. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another 3.7 million will become uninsured in 2027, reversing some of the huge gains made since the ACA was passed in 2010.

When health insurance costs rise, healthier people may risk going without. Those who remain insured tend to need more health services, requiring those more costly services to be covered by a smaller pool of people and raising premium prices even higher.

The Trump administration has proposed routing the money spent on subsidies directly to eligible Americans to help them purchase health insurance. How much people would receive is unclear, but amounts in previous proposals wouldn’t cover what the subsidies provided.

To sum it up, health care is extremely complicated and there are numerous barriers to reforms, as successive U.S. administrations have learned over the years. Whether the Trump administration finds some success will depend on how well the policies are able to surmount these and other obstacles.

Patrick Aguilar 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 is US health care still the most expensive in the world after decades of cost-cutting initiatives? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-us-health-care-still-the-most-expensive-in-the-world-after-decades-of-cost-cutting-initiatives-273743