Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Valerie Morkevicius, Associate Professor, Political Science, Colgate University

Efforts to end the war in Ukraine have grabbed global attention, fueled by debates over U.S. President Donald Trump’s 28-point plan – which many analysts see as favoring Russia – and European attempts to craft a counterproposal.

We’ve been here before. Failed attempts to end the conflict date back to the beginning, soon after Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donbas. After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, peace discussions started up again within days, and they have continued in fits and starts since.

Prospects for a lasting peace remain dubious. One reason, I believe, is that the proposals pay little attention to the relationship between peace and justice – a flaw shared by previous plans.

Is peace worth having if it’s unjust? Is justice worth pursuing if it prolongs war? Those are questions as troubling as they are old. “Peace is the effect of justice,” as St. Thomas Aquinas argued in the 13th century. Ceasefires built on coercion or exhaustion inevitably fail because they do not resolve the conflict’s causes.

Aquinas is a major figure in the just war tradition, the focus of my research. This area of ethics helps weigh when war is justified – and also how it should end.

Today, the insight that peace and justice are inseparable grounds what international law terms “transitional justice.” By focusing on victims and assuring accountability for past wrongs, this approach seeks to disrupt recurring cycles of violence.

Past agreements and proposals aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine failed because in the rush to stop the fighting, they ignored questions of justice. The literature on transitional justice, by contrast, encourages negotiators to attend to four interdependent principles: truth, justice, reparations and safeguards against future recurrence.

1. Truth

Truth is essential for peace. As St. Augustine, one of the earliest Christian just-war thinkers, put it in the fourth century, “false justice” arises when the pursuit of truth is abandoned.

Durable peace agreements require all sides to cooperate with international efforts to document war crimes and human rights violations, such as the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. This is no small task. So far, Ukraine has granted access to outside investigators, but Russia has refused, even when it has accused Ukraine of war crimes.

But reconciliation requires a complete accounting of the harms done. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of apartheid, explained that “forgiveness depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth.”

Truth-telling also prevents false narratives from creating “justifications” for renewed fighting. Thus, peace in Ukraine will require a global effort to combat disinformation legitimizing Russia’s aggression and obscuring its war crimes.

2. Justice

Justice demands holding perpetrators to account. If, as Aquinas argued, a just war is “one that avenges wrongs” or seeks “to restore what [has been] seized unjustly,” ignoring these concerns when ending a war would itself be unjust.

Treating collaborators with fairness requires nuance. In some cases, pardoning individuals who acted under duress – and even willing but nonviolent collaborators who fully disclose their actions – can support postwar reconciliation. Especially in areas once occupied by enemy forces, frank confessions can help rebuild social trust.

However, amnesty for war crimes and crimes against humanity is impermissible because pardons deny victims justice and may embolden future perpetrators. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for six Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, the Council of Europe has established a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine, which would prosecute senior Russian officials who ordered the illegal invasion.

Realistically, neither forum can try those responsible without either Russia’s defeat or Putin’s removal from power. But in the interim, other countries can continue to support Ukrainian courts handling war crimes cases.

Justice also requires holding one’s own side accountable, even if the other side will not reciprocate. Allegations of war crimes by Ukrainian soldiers are far rarer, but Ukrainian courts must also prosecute these. Fair trials for all combatants are essential, lest, as Aquinas cautions, judgments seek “to sate … hatred under cover of correction.”

3. Reparations

Reparations aim to make survivors whole again. This principle, too, has roots in classical just war thinking. The 16th-century theologian Francisco de Vitoria, for example, argued that reparations within the bounds of “equity and humanity” could help redress losses and restore justice.

The World Bank estimates that direct damage in Ukraine is over US$176 billion; in total, rebuilding will cost three times that. The Council of Europe has recommended using frozen Russian assets to fund reconstruction efforts, as have some American scholars . The illegality of Russia’s invasion means that such countermeasures are likely permissible under international law.

Apologies can also serve as reparations, but Russia is unlikely to proffer any – partly because domestic political pressures mean Putin cannot afford to look like he has lost.

Commemorative events and memorials also validate victims’ suffering. The international community can support Ukrainians in their efforts to meaningfully memorialize the war.

4. Deterrence

Peace lasts when the parties trust that the violence won’t reoccur.

However, Russia has repeatedly broken its treaties with Ukraine. That includes the first agreements meant to bring the conflict to an end, back in 2014.

That summer, Russian-backed separatists downed a Malaysian Airways flight, spurring the international community to seek a quick resolution. The hastily drafted Minsk agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015, established a ceasefire monitoring mission and required the removal of foreign military units. They also demanded Ukrainian constitutional reforms – ostensibly to secure more autonomy for the country’s largely Russian-speaking east.

The Minsk agreements temporarily froze the conflict, but relative quiet didn’t mean peace. Ceasefire violations were perpetual. Russian-supported militias were not disbanded, and Russia continued to send mercenaries and military forces to the Donbas. Human rights violations proliferated in Russian-occupied areas. And in February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Given this history, a durable peace would require that Russia accept constraints on its power. The various peace proposals put forth since 2022, however, have demanded security concessions only from Kyiv, requiring Ukraine to abandon hopes for NATO membership and restricting the size of its military.

Russia is unlikely to agree to caps on its military. Deterrence, then, could take the form of credible commitments from other countries to enforce whatever peace agreement emerges.

Ukraine’s vulnerability to future Russian aggression means it will need binding promises from its partners. Russia will not sign a treaty that permits Ukraine to join NATO, which Moscow claims would be a threat. Other possible safeguards for Ukrainian sovereignty include a proposed international peacekeeping force or an alternative set of security alliances.

Lasting peace

Ultimately, a durable peace requires considering both sides’ legitimate security and justice claims if, as Vitoria wrote in 1539, “they are prepared to negotiate genuinely and fairly.”

Therein lies the catch. Transnational justice can be hijacked, with aggressors trying to portray themselves as victims. Separating fact from fiction, and genuine concerns from manufactured pretext, is essential at the negotiating table.

A quick end to the war is tempting, but a hasty peace is a fragile one. A durable peace, rather than yet another ceasefire, requires attention to justice – even if that takes more time to achieve.

Valerie Morkevicius 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. Getting peace right: Why justice needs to be baked into ceasefire agreements – including Ukraine’s – https://theconversation.com/getting-peace-right-why-justice-needs-to-be-baked-into-ceasefire-agreements-including-ukraines-270638

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ali Besharat, Professor of Marketing, University of Denver

The holiday season sparks a significant increase in consumer spending. This year, Black Friday alone saw consumers shell out a record US$11.8 billion. It’s the time of year when many Americans make purchases to decorate for the holidays — lights, ornaments and Christmas trees.

If you bought a Christmas tree in Denver this year, you may have noticed a pretty steep price tag. It turns out that all festive products are getting more expensive, and that includes Christmas trees, both freshly cut and artificial.

I study the psychology of consumption at the University of Denver. I’ve always been curious about how people make financial decisions under certain circumstances, including around the holidays. Christmas trees are an interesting case study.

What’s driving the increase

The cost of real Christmas trees is directly impacted by a long production cycle and transportation costs, particularly for landlocked markets like Denver.

Christmas trees take 7 to 10 years to grow. Currently, supply is tight, pushing tree prices up, which is a direct and delayed consequence of reduced planting rates that followed the Great Recession – which began in late 2007. This planting deficit effectively drove up wholesale prices and doubled the average price of pre-cut trees over the past decade after adjusting for inflation.

Raising tiny tree seedlings to a marketable size is a fraught business. Growers are exposed to a decade of weather, labor and pest risks, which increases the financial uncertainty of any planting season. This long lead time has made the supply unpredictable, putting constant pressure on Christmas tree wholesale prices.

For Denver retailers, transportation adds disproportionately to the final cost, since most Christmas trees in Denver are brought in from the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina using long-haul freight.

A retailer in Denver must also cover local operational overhead, such as labor costs, storage and the rental of temporary sales lots, which increases prices by about 10% on average based on wholesale Christmas tree prices. This is especially true for large trees, those taller than 9 feet (2.74 meters), as they do not grow in Colorado. Having said that, there are Christmas tree growers in Colorado, and the Douglas Fir is native to Colorado and grows naturally throughout its mountains.

Psychology of Christmas tree purchase decisions

The choice between a pre-cut Christmas tree and an artificial one is classic behavioral economics, which is the combination of economics and psychology to understand how and why people behave the way they do in the real world. It involves a trade-off between two readily available choices.

One option offers an emotional appeal, while the second choice may have to do more with cost savings and perceived environmental impact.

Buyers of real trees are driven by pleasure, satisfaction and emotional fulfillment. Often, buyers of fresh-cut trees are driven by nostalgia and a desire to inhale the powerful scent. Depending on the qualities of the tree, like how long it keeps its needles, how stiff the branches are and how rare it is, Denver customers often spend between $50 and $870 annually on fresh-cut Christmas trees.

On the flip side, artificial tree buyers prioritize the ease of buying a tree at the store and then bringing it out of storage each year. These customers seek convenience, low maintenance and the ability to control how the tree looks from a product that can cost between $250 to $700 initially. Being a durable good, artificial trees are typically replaced only once every five years.

In 2025, however, the decision to buy an artificial tree may feel less rational. Retailers are raising prices by 10% to 15% due to tariffs.

The financial and environmental superiority of the artificial tree is dependent on how long a consumer plans to keep and use it.

The financial break-even point is reached only when the artificial tree is reused for at least five years. The environmental break-even point is higher — around 10 years — due to the carbon emissions from manufacturing and global shipping of artificial trees. Their carbon footprint can be up to 10 times greater than a properly disposed-of real tree.

Behavioral changes in consumption

What about a third option that may appeal to Coloradans’ love of the outdoors?
Choose-and-cut businesses invite customers to visit a farm to select their tree and cut it down themselves. The tree is no longer just something you buy — it is the center of an experience you share.

Advocates go so far as to argue that the outdoor farm environment acts as a therapeutic escape from the stressful holiday season.

For the grower, this model is a highly effective form of agritourism, which makes use of the farm environment to boost revenue. It dramatically enhances profitability by transferring the high cost of harvesting labor – which can run from $15,000 to $50,000 annually – directly to the customer as a labor of love. The purchase of a tree may be the main point of the visit, but growers can improve their bottom lines through the sale of profitable goods and services like wreaths, hot chocolate, food and carriage rides. Motivated consumers are willing to pay more for the experience and the opportunity to recreate a meaningful ritual.

If this option excites you, there are a couple of spots where you can cut your own tree in Colorado, including at the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests. Most of these places, however, require a permit to chop down a tree.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Ali Besharat 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. Christmas trees are more expensive than ever in Colorado — what gives? – https://theconversation.com/christmas-trees-are-more-expensive-than-ever-in-colorado-what-gives-271472

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Kate Kenny, Professor of Business and Society, University of Galway

Across the world, governments are tightening controls on speech, expanding surveillance and rolling back rights once thought to be secure.

From anti-protest laws and curbs on workers’ rights to the growing criminalization of leaks and dissent, the trend is chilling: People who speak out about government wrongdoing are increasingly vulnerable, and the legal systems that once claimed to protect them are now used to punish them.

We are researchers who study whistleblowing, which is when employees disclose information in the public interest about wrongdoing they have witnessed at work. Our new book draws on firsthand accounts from whistleblowers in national security, intelligence and government in the U.S., Australia and the U.K., among other countries. Their experiences show the limits of legal protections, but also the power of networks, solidarity and collective resistance in the face of institutional secrecy.

In this moment of democratic backsliding, whistleblowers show that civil disobedience – breaking the law to uphold the public good – remains an essential principle of political and moral life. They also show how legal reform and support networks designed to protect whistleblowers are critical for protecting accountability and democracy itself.

The limits of legal protections

The whistleblowers featured in the book, including former CIA officer John Kiriakou and Craig Murray, the former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan, learned the hard way that legal protections can end precisely where power begins. Both revealed grave human rights abuses – torture, kidnapping, imprisonment and complicity in war crimes – and both were prosecuted rather than protected.

Their stories underline a paradox: Even as new whistleblower protection laws have proliferated in many countries, prosecutions of national security and intelligence whistleblowers are on the rise. In national security contexts, where no public interest defense is permitted, laws meant to protect whistleblowers have become another weapon of “lawfare” – used to silence, bankrupt and criminalize.

For example, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the U.S. torture program in 2007. The Bush administration initially declined to prosecute him, but this changed under the Obama administration, which imprisoned Kiriakou in 2013 for 30 months. Kiriakou’s refusal to participate in the CIA program of “enhanced interrogation” of terrorism suspects, which included waterboarding, and his later decision to publicly confirm the CIA’s use of torture were acts of conscience. Yet it was he, not the torturers, who went to prison as a result of his disclosures.

The pattern is familiar. From Chelsea Manning in 2010 to Edward Snowden in 2013 and Daniel Hale in 2016, prosecutions under the U.S. Espionage Act and equivalent statutes elsewhere signal a broader shift: Making the powerful transparent is redefined as treason. The prosecution of national security whistleblowers who reveal crimes of the state continues to be an ongoing problem, as highlighted by more recent cases, including Reality Winner and David McBride.

When the law is used to enforce secrecy and punish dissent, the moral terrain shifts. Civil disobedience becomes not only justified but necessary. Human rights lawyers have commented that whistleblowers and journalists who work with them are being subjected to increasingly harsh treatment by the state, including imprisonment and on occasion torture.

From traditional media to networked whistleblowing

Historically, whistleblowers relied on the press to act as an intermediary between them and the public, as well as a protector because of the publicity they offer. But as investigative journalism has been hollowed out – starved of resources and constrained by political and corporate pressure – this model has faltered.

As journalist Andrew Fowler, one of our book’s contributors, wrote, “It may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources.” Across the globe, attacks by governments on journalists criticizing strongman leaders become more brazen.

In 2010, Manning blew the whistle on U.S war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many major outlets turned Manning away before WikiLeaks provided the infrastructure to publish what mainstream media would not. Her disclosures raised the public’s awareness of government complicity in war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Such stories also reveal how reluctant mainstream journalism can be when confronted with power.

More recently, in 2016 McBride blew the whistle on members of the Australian SAS who murdered civilians in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to prison in 2024 and is currently serving a sentence of five years and eight months for his disclosures of war crimes.

This decline in formal protections has given rise to an ecology of “networked whistleblowing”: decentralized alliances of whistleblowers, activists and independent journalists using encrypted tools to share information and protect sources. While these networks can offer safety in numbers, they also carry risks – of being co-opted or exploited by those in power, and of being framed collectively as enemies of the state for their attempts to hold the powerful to account.

Yet they also represent a profound reimagining of public accountability in a digital age where secrecy is structural and systemic, demonstrating the force of people working together.

As the traditional institutions of democracy falter, our research shows these alternative infrastructures embody a new form of democratic practice: horizontal, distributed and defiant.

New alliances supporting whistleblowers

The whistleblowers whose stories appear in our book did more than expose wrongdoing. They built communities of care and resistance – new institutions to protect truth-telling itself.

Each of them, after suffering retaliation and exclusion, turned outward: campaigning for reform, mentoring others and building cross-sector alliances. Their transformation from individual insiders to collective activists reveals a crucial insight: Legal reform alone isn’t enough. What sustains truth-telling isn’t the promise of protection from above but solidarity from below.

Strengthening and supporting these alliances would help preserve freedom of expression and the right to know. That means supporting cross-border networks of journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders who can collectively safeguard disclosure when national laws fail. It also means recognizing whistleblowing as a public good.

At a time when many democracies are retreating from openness, these whistleblowers remind us that law and justice are not the same thing. When laws entrench secrecy or punish dissent, we believe breaking them can be an act of civic virtue. Civil disobedience can renew democratic life by holding power to account.

Kiriakou’s conclusion in his chapter resonates beyond the intelligence world: “We all have to fight. It’s the only way we are going to change anything.” His words recall a longer lineage of civil disobedience – from suffragettes to anti-war protesters to environmental activists – each confronting systems that refused to hear them until they broke the rules.

The cases in our new book illustrate how quickly law can be used to enforce secrecy rather than accountability during periods of democratic backsliding. They also highlight the practical conditions that make truth-telling possible – including collective support that extends beyond any one country’s legal system.

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. From civil disobedience to networked whistleblowing: What national security truth-tellers reveal in an age of crackdowns – https://theconversation.com/from-civil-disobedience-to-networked-whistleblowing-what-national-security-truth-tellers-reveal-in-an-age-of-crackdowns-269488

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Beth DuFault, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Portland

People often see science as a world apart: cool, rational and untouched by persuasion or performance. In this view, scientists simply discover truth, and truth speaks for itself.

But history tells a different story. Scientific theories do not simply reveal themselves; they compete for attention, credibility and uptake. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once suggested that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” a line that helped popularize the metaphor of a “marketplace of ideas.”

In this view, science is not outside the market, but inside a public arena where claims vie for audiences, resources and belief – and where power, persuasion and social position shape which ideas are heard, trusted or forgotten.

As a marketing scholar trained in economic sociology, I study how institutions that are supposedly above or apart from market logics – such as science, religion, medicine and education – use marketing tools to sustain credibility and build or keep moral authority.

When I tell people that one of the areas I study is the marketing of science, they are often surprised at the concept. Yet persuasion is an integral part of the scientific process.

From Isaac Newton’s followers and their coffeehouse demonstrations of physics wonders to today’s TED Talks and TikTok explainers, scientists have long relied on storytelling and demonstration to make invisible truths visible. For scientific theories to supplant other plausible theories, to challenge existing theories and win acceptance, they must be correct – but they must also be convincing.

The original science influencers

In the early 1700s, Isaac Newton’s followers turned abstract theory into public performance and cultural fashion.

At the time, Cartesian philosophy dominated intellectual life. Newton’s 1687 book “Principia Mathematica” proposed a new worldview of gravity, optics and motion, but the mathematics was so dense that few could grasp it.

Although Newton himself was a recluse, a circle of zealous Newtonian men of science, described by historians as devoted disciples and even evangelists for Newton’s natural philosophy, took his new theories on the road. These itinerant lecturers performed experiments and spectaculars in London coffeehouses and aristocratic salons, demonstrating Newtonian physics. They sold tickets, pamphlets and even branded scientific instruments so audiences could reproduce these marvels at home.

Historian of science Jeff Wigelsworth showed that Newton’s evangelizers built what today might be called a brand: experiences, artifacts and emotions that linked scientific authority to Enlightenment ideals of reason and progress, and to their own personalities.

My own research finds that these men of science also used a suite of early marketing activities. Besides developing products to sell to promote Newtonian science, they came up with promotions that targeted different audiences, adjusted their pricing and used varied distribution strategies.

Along with their pure entertainment value, these public demonstrations were integrally entwined with Newtonian scientific viewpoints and helped these ideas gain popularity and legitimacy in public life.

As in our own time, where one’s stance on various scientific debates often signals one’s political ideology or religious beliefs, aligning in support of Newton’s theories over, say, René Descartes’ or Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz’s in discussion and by practice also came to indicate a certain stance on theology and politics, and to be Newtonian became a social signal of a desirable style and social status.

From coffeehouses to TikTok

Three centuries later, the marketing of science is more visible, and more complicated, than ever.

Scientists can now promote their work on social media platforms like Bluesky, YouTube and TikTok, crafting personal brands and cultivating audiences. Influencer-scientists use storytelling, humor and design to reach millions. If scientists don’t do this themselves, their proponents, just like Newton’s disciples, may do it for them.

I call this process the marketization of moral authority: when historically sacred or ostensibly impartial institutions such as science, religion and education increasingly organize themselves as markets, adopting promotional, pricing and product logics to secure their legitimacy, authority, appeal and funding.

None of this effort is inherently bad. As in Newton’s time, effective marketing communications can make complex work accessible and even inspiring. It can publicize and defend important theoretical and practical findings in a competitive, skeptical world.

But it raises questions.

Value of recognizing that science gets marketed

You might wonder why anyone beyond academia should care whether science is marketed. After all, every field uses communication and outreach.

It matters because science is one of the few institutions people still rely on to anchor truth claims in evidence. And when the boundary between scientific fact and promotion blurs, it becomes easy to confuse confidence with credibility, or charisma with responsible consensus.

Scientific rhetoric can easily be co-opted. Think of wellness influencers using “quantum” jargon to sell supplements; AI companies invoking neuroscience to legitimatize untested technologies; charlatans mimicking the language of peer review to sow doubt.

But awareness is a form of protection. When you recognize that scientific authority can be built through persuasion, you become more discerning consumers of it. Faced with a message involving science, you can consider:

• Who is framing this message, and why?
• What evidence supports it? Is this evidence vetted and validated by rigorous studies?
• Is it appealing to emotion or identity, rather than objective logic?

This process can help you become more scientifically literate.

Science has never been the pristine, market-free ideal many imagine. It has always lived – sometimes uneasily – within a marketplace of ideas, competing for belief, attention and authority.

Recognizing that reality humanizes science and reminds us that truth must be discovered, communicated and, ultimately, accepted.

Beth DuFault has received funding from the Ahmanson Foundation.

– ref. Science has always been marketed, from 18th-century coffeehouse demos of Newton’s ideas to today’s TikTok explainers – https://theconversation.com/science-has-always-been-marketed-from-18th-century-coffeehouse-demos-of-newtons-ideas-to-todays-tiktok-explainers-267707

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dipangkar Dutta, Professor of Nuclear Physics, Mississippi State University

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

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What is dark matter and what is antimatter? Are they the same or different? – Namrata, age 13, Ghaziabad, India

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Imagine an epic video game with your favorite hero as a character. Another character is a mirror-image twin who shows up occasionally, exploding everything they touch. And, to add an extra level of difficulty, the game includes a mysterious hive of minions hiding at every corner, changing the rules of the game, but never showing themselves.

If you think of these characters as types of matter, this video game is basically how our universe works.

The hero is regular matter, which is everything we can see around us. Antimatter is the mirror-image explosive twin that scientists understand well but can barely find. And dark matter is the invisible minions. It is everywhere, but we cannot see it, and scientists have no idea what it is.

Despite having similar-sounding names, dark matter and antimatter are completely different. Interestingly, physicists like me know exactly what antimatter is, but there is almost none of it around. On the other hand, we have no idea what dark matter is, but there is a lot of it everywhere.

Antimatter: The mirror-image twin

All the regular matter around you is made of basic building blocks called atoms. Atoms have positively charged particles called protons surrounded by tiny negatively charged electrons.

Think of antimatter as regular matter’s oppositely charged twin.

All particles, like protons and the electrons, have antimatter siblings. Electrons have positrons, which are anti-electrons, while protons have antiprotons. Antiprotons and positrons make up antimatter atoms, or anti-atoms. They’re like mirror images, but with their electric charges flipped. When matter and antimatter meet, they destroy each other in a flash of light and energy and vanish.

Luckily, antimatter is very rare in our universe. But some special regular matter atoms, such as potassium, can decay to produce antimatter. For example, when you eat a banana, or any food rich in potassium, you are eating tiny amounts of these antimatter-producing atoms. The amount is too small to affect your health.

Antimatter was discovered almost 100 years ago. Today, scientists can create, store and study antimatter in the laboratory. They understand its properties very well. Doctors even use it for PET scans. They inject tiny amounts of antimatter-producing atoms into your body, and as these atoms travel through your body, the scan takes pictures of the flashes of light from the annihilation of the antimatter and regular matter in your body. This process lets doctors see what is happening inside your body.

Scientists have also figured out that when the universe was born, there were almost equal amounts of matter and antimatter. They met and annihilated each other. Fortunately, just a tiny bit more regular matter survived to make stars, planets and all of us.

Dark matter: The invisible minions

Dark matter is far more mysterious. Have you ever spun very fast on a merry-go-round? If so, you know how hard it is to stay on it without getting thrown off, especially if you’re the only one on the merry-go-round.

Now imagine there are a bunch of invisible minions on that merry-go-round with you. You can’t see them and you can’t touch them, but they hold you and keep you from flying off as it spins super-fast. You know they’re there because the merry-go-round is heavier than it looks, and it is harder to push and get it spinning. The invisible minions don’t play or talk to anybody; they just hang around, adding their weight to everything.

About 50 years ago, astronomer Vera Rubin discovered a similar mystery in spiral galaxies. She looked at spinning galaxies, which are like cosmic merry-go-rounds, and noticed something strange: The outer stars in these galaxies were spinning much faster than they should. They should have gone flying off into space like sparks from a firework display. But they did not.

It was like watching kids on a merry-go-round move at incredible speed but somehow stay perfectly in place.

The only explanation? There must be a sea of invisible “stuff” holding everything together with their extra gravity. Scientists called this mystery material “dark matter.”

Since then, astronomers have observed similar strange behavior happening throughout the universe. Galaxies within large clusters move in unexpected ways. Light gets bent around galaxies more than it should be. Galaxies stick together far more than the visible matter alone can explain.

It is as if our cosmic playground has swings moving by themselves, and seesaws tipping with nobody visible sitting on them.

Dark matter is just a placeholder name until scientists figure out what it is. For the past 50 years, many scientists have been running experiments that are trying to detect dark matter or produce it in the lab. But so far, they have come up empty-handed.

We don’t know what dark matter is, but it’s everywhere. It could be unusual particles scientists have not discovered yet. It could be something completely unexpected. But astronomers can tell by observing how fast galaxies rotate that there is about five times more dark matter than all the regular matter in the entire universe.

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Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Dipangkar Dutta receives funding from US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

– ref. How are dark matter and antimatter different? – https://theconversation.com/how-are-dark-matter-and-antimatter-different-270362

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Shuang-Ye Wu, Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

The summer of 2025 brought unprecedented flash flooding across the U.S., with the central and eastern regions hit particularly hard. These storms claimed hundreds of lives across Texas, Kentucky and several other states and caused widespread destruction.

At the same time, every hurricane that formed, including the three powerful Category 5 storms, steered clear of the U.S. mainland.

Both scenarios were unusual – and they were largely directed by the polar jet stream.

What is a jet stream?

Jet streams are narrow bands of high-speed winds in the upper troposphere, around four to eight miles (seven to 13 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, flowing west to east around the entire planet. They form where strong temperature contrasts exist.

Each hemisphere hosts two primary jet streams:

The polar jet stream is typically found near 50 to 60 degrees latitude, across Canada in the Northern Hemisphere, where cold polar air meets warmer midlatitude air. It plays a major role in modulating weather systems in the midlatitudes, including the continental U.S. With winds up to 200 mph, it’s also the usual steering force that brings those bitter cold storms down from Canada.

The subtropical jet stream is typically closer to 30 degrees latitude, which in the Northern Hemisphere crosses Florida. It follows the boundary between tropical air masses and subtropical air masses. It’s generally the weaker and steadier of the two jet streams.

These jet streams act like atmospheric conveyor belts, steering storm systems across continents.

Stronger (faster) jet streams can intensify storm systems, whereas weaker (slower) jet streams can stall storm systems, leading to prolonged rainfall and flooding.

2025’s intense summer of flooding

Most summers, the polar jet stream retreats northward into Canada and weakens considerably, leaving the continental U.S. with calmer weather. When rainstorms pop up, they’re typically caused by localized convection due to uneven heating of the land – picture afternoon pop-up thunderstorms.

During the summer of 2025, however, the polar jet stream shifted unusually far south and steered larger storm systems into the midlatitudes of the U.S. At the same time, the jet stream weakened, with two critical consequences.

First, instead of moving storms quickly eastward, the sluggish jet stream stalled storm systems in place, causing prolonged downpours and flash flooding.

Second, a weak jet stream tends to meander more dramatically. Its broad north-south swings in summer 2025 funneled humid air from the Gulf of Mexico deep into the interior, supplying storm systems with abundant moisture and intensifying rainfall.

This moisture surge was amplified by unusually warm conditions over the Atlantic and Gulf regions. A warmer ocean evaporates more water, and warmer air holds a greater amount of moisture. As a result, extraordinary levels of atmospheric moisture were directed into storm systems, fueling stronger convection and heavier precipitation.

Finally, the wavy jet stream became locked in place by persistent high-pressure systems, anchoring storm tracks over the same regions. This led to repeated episodes of heavy rainfall and catastrophic flooding across much of the continental U.S. The same behavior can leave other regions facing days of unrelenting heat waves.

The jet stream buffered US in hurricane season

The jet stream also played a role in the 2025 hurricane season.

Given its west-to-east wind direction, the southward dip of the jet stream – along with a weak high pressure system over the Atlantic – helped steer all five hurricanes away from the U.S. mainland.

Most of the year’s 13 tropical storms and hurricanes veered off into the Atlantic before even reaching the Caribbean.

Climate change plays a role in these shifts

So, how does climate change influence the jet stream?

The strength of jet streams is controlled by the temperature contrast between the equatorial and polar regions.

A higher temperature contrast leads to stronger jet streams. As the planet warms, the Arctic is heating up at more than twice the global average rate, and that is reducing the equator-to-pole temperature difference. As that temperature gradient weakens, jet streams lose their strength and become more prone to stalling.

This increases the risk of persistent extreme rainfall events.

Weaker jet streams also meander more, producing larger waves and more erratic behavior. This increases the likelihood of unusual shifts, such as the southward swing of the jet stream in the summer of 2025.

A recent study found that amplified planetary waves in the jet streams, which can cause weather systems to stay in place for days or weeks, are occurring three times more frequently than in the 1950s.

What’s ahead?

As the global climate continues to warm, extreme weather events driven by erratic behavior of jet streams are expected to become more common. Combined with additional moisture that warmer oceans and air masses supply, these events will intensify, producing storms that are more frequent and more destructive to societies and ecosystems.

In the short term, the polar jet stream will be shaping the winter ahead. It is most powerful in winter, when it dips southward into the central and even southern U.S., driving frequent storm systems, blizzards and cold air outbreaks.

Shuang-Ye Wu 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. 2025’s extreme weather had the jet stream’s fingerprints all over it, from flash floods to hurricanes – https://theconversation.com/2025s-extreme-weather-had-the-jet-streams-fingerprints-all-over-it-from-flash-floods-to-hurricanes-270641

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Sherry Thatcher, Regal Distinguished Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, University of Tennessee

More than 20% of Americans will be diagnosed with mental illness in their lifetimes. They will, that is, experience conditions that influence the way they think, feel and act – and that may initially seem incompatible with the demands of work.

Our new research suggests that what people living with chronic mental illnesses need most to succeed at work is for their managers to be flexible and trust them.

This includes the freedom to adjust their schedules and workloads to make their jobs more compatible with their efforts to manage and treat their symptoms. For that to happen, managers need to trust that these workers are committed to their jobs and their employers.

We’re management professors who reviewed hundreds of blog and Reddit posts and conducted in-depth interviews with 59 people. And those are the most significant findings from our peer-reviewed study, published in the October 2025 issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

Scouring Reddit posts and conducting interviews

We gathered our data from three sources: anonymous blog posts from 171 people, Reddit posts from 781 people, and in-depth interviews with 59 workers employed in a variety of jobs across multiple industries.

All these people worked while dealing with chronic mental illness, such as major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and bipolar disorder. The blog posts were maintained by a nonprofit concerned with the experiences of individuals living with mental illness. We focused on posts tagged “work.”

To identify relevant data on Reddit, we searched using a combination of the word “work” with several terms associated with mental illness. Additionally, we restricted our data collection to unsolicited narratives published prior to mid-March 2020 to avoid overlap with the employment changes that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because this data was gathered from the internet, we couldn’t obtain details about participants’ gender, age, profession or education.

We also recruited people to interview through social media postings, advertising in a public university’s alumni listserv and contacting an organization that focuses on men’s mental health. We also made requests of those we’d already interviewed to see whether they had recommendations for other people to possibly interview.

The interviews took place in 2020 and 2021.

Speaking with people from all walks of working life

About 37% of the people we interviewed identified as women, and their average age was 41.5 years. Approximately 80% of them identified as Caucasian, 3.5% Black, 3.5% Hispanic, and less than 2% identified as either Indian, Korean American, mixed race or Middle Eastern and North African. About 3.5% chose not to answer.

They held a variety of jobs, including lawyer, professor, touring musician, consultant, teacher, real estate manager, chief technology officer, salesperson, restaurant server, travel agency manager, graphic designer, tester for manufacturing plant, chemical engineer and bus driver. Several worked in tech fields.

When the employees who we studied were trusted and given flexibility, they became better able to do their jobs while also attending to their well-being.

Employees who had lived with their condition for years used what we call “personalized disengagement and engagement strategies” to manage their symptoms. That refers to the fact that people with mental illness respond best to different coping strategies depending on their own preferences and symptoms, instead of using generic techniques they learned from self-help resources or peers.

Examples of personalized disengagement strategies ranged from leaving workspaces to meditate to taking a walk, to finding a quiet space to cry.

Engagement strategies included immersing more deeply into work and having conversations with co-workers. These coping strategies will sound familiar to most people, including those without any chronic mental health conditions. But workplaces don’t always give employees, regardless of their disability status, the flexibility and self-determination necessary to enact their strategies. In fact, a recent survey by Mind Share Partners found that nearly half of employees didn’t even feel like they could disconnect from their jobs after working hours or while on vacation.

Many employees also told us that they benefited from trust and flexibility in the period after they were diagnosed, when they needed to explore different therapies and treatment techniques.

When managers allow for flexibility, trust workers to do what they need to do to address their symptoms, and convey their compassion, employees with chronic mental illness are more likely to keep their jobs and get their work done.

Affecting most employers

Mental illnesses became more prevalent in the aftermath of COVID-19,especially among adolescents and young adults.

So, if you’re an employer, chances are that our research is relevant to your workforce.

Depression, a common mental illness, had an estimated cost of US$1 trillion annually in lost productivity in 2019, the World Health Organization has estimated.

People with anxiety and mood disorders, including bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder, may periodically have symptoms that interfere with their ability to do their jobs.

And while doing those jobs, they risk being stigmatized by co-workers who may know little about mental illness or be judgmental about people with those chronic conditions. That adds further stress beyond what others would experience at work.

Employee assistance programs could be falling short

In response, many employers offer benefits to help employees cope with mental and emotional problems, such as employee assistance programs, mental-wellness app subscriptions and stigma-reduction efforts.

These one-size-fits-all initiatives can help improve functioning for those with occasional or short-term emotional problems, and they can help improve leaders’ ability to respond to employees’ distress, which is crucial.

But as a whole, they are not enough to solve the problem.

Employee assistance programs, which nearly all big companies offer, have not proved systematically helpful to workers in achieving their goals. One study found that they reduced employees’ absences but did not reduce their work-related distress.

Another study even found that workers who used these programs became more inclined to leave their jobs.

Not missing out on peak performers

Contrary to stereotypes, people with chronic anxiety and depression, such as those we studied, are generally as capable of success in the workplace as anyone else in the right context.

Extremely high performers, such as the late actor Carrie Fisher and the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, are two such examples of people with a mental illness who were top achievers in their field.

If you were a manager, wouldn’t you want people of this caliber working for you? If so, then it’s important to create the right conditions, which many employers fail to do despite their best efforts.

Needing more mental health support

Companies will face increasing pressure to support those with mental illness and other mental health challenges.

Monster’s 2024 State of the Graduate Report found that Gen Z employees, people born between 1996 and 2010 and are currently in their teens and 20s, are increasingly prioritizing support for mental health at work, with 92% of 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed wanting a job where they are comfortable discussing their mental health at work.

This trend suggests that employers wishing to attract top entry-level talent will need to effectively support mental health, highlighting the importance of continuing to research this issue.

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. Best way for employers to support employees with chronic mental illness is by offering flexibility – https://theconversation.com/best-way-for-employers-to-support-employees-with-chronic-mental-illness-is-by-offering-flexibility-270368