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July 15, 2025

How AI can help protect bees from dangerous parasites

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Farnaz Sheikhi, Postdoctoral Associate in Computer Vision, University of Calgary

Tiny but mighty, honeybees play a crucial role in our ecosystems, pollinating various plants and crops. They also support the economy. These small producers contribute billions of dollars to Canada’s agriculture industry, making Canada a major honey producer.

However, in the winter of 2024, Canada’s honey industry faced a severe collapse. Canada lost more than one-third of its beehives, primarily due to the widespread infestation of Varroa mites.

Traditional methods for controlling these parasites now seem less effective, and the industry needs a transition to smart beekeeping if it is to survive.

We are currently conducting research to develop a non-invasive and sustainable method for the early detection of Varroa mites. Our proposed approach uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze images from beehives, automatically classifying them based on the presence of Varroa mites and the level of infestation.

Varroa infestations

Varroa mites are tiny parasites that attach to honeybees, feed on their body tissue and transmit viruses throughout the colony. Over the years, these parasites have developed resistance to the traditional control methods, necessitating more aggressive treatments. However, these treatments can endanger the health of honeybees.

The Prairie provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — are Canada’s top honey-producing regions, with Alberta alone contributing almost 40 per cent of the country’s total honey production.

Canada lost an average of 34.6 per cent of its bee colonies in the winter of 2024 — 2.4 per cent more than the loss of the previous year. The winter losses across Canada ranged from 9.8 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador to 61.3 per cent on Prince Edward Island. In the Prairie provinces, colony losses reached almost 40 per cent.

Investigations reported that Varroa mite infestations were a key contributing factor causing the devastation.

Economic impact on Canada

Winter 2024 losses had a devastating effect on Canada’s beekeepers. The high cost of honeybees as well as the intensive labour and time needed to rebuild hives make them difficult to replace.

Within a stable environment and a thriving industry, increased investment yields higher returns. In 2023, the number of beekeepers and bee colonies in Canada increased by 3.29 per cent and 2.4 per cent, respectively.

Yet, in 2024, Canada experienced an 18.3 per cent decrease in honey production. The total national value of the harvest declined by 24.5 per cent, dropping from from $283 million in 2023 to $214 million. The Prairie provinces were hit hardest; the value of honey solely produced in Alberta fell from $100 million in 2023 to $75 million in 2024.

Limitations of current monitoring methods

Preventing mites requires frequent hive monitoring. Although timely detection is critical for treating hives, manual inspection is time-consuming and labour-intensive. Furthermore, frequent manual monitoring can pose risks to the health and well-being of honeybees.

Alcohol washes, sugar shakes and using sticky boards are among the methods for Varroa mites monitoring. In a typical alcohol wash test, about 300 bees per colony are sampled. These bees are washed in rubbing alcohol. Then, they are shaken rigorously to check for Varroa mites. The problem with this method is that all the bees tested die in the process.

While other methods, such as the sugar shake and using sticky boards, do not kill the bees tested, they deliver limited results and are not always as accurate.

This makes none of the current methods ideal; each involves a trade-off between invasiveness and accuracy. And given that testing must be done frequently, they all pose risks to the health of honeybees themselves. So what’s the solution?

Using AI to detect Varroa mites

There is an urgent need for the beekeeping industry to evolve to help prevent further losses and support the resilience of bee populations. Climate change and resistance of mites to traditional treatments are environmental alarms demanding a change in our beekeeping approaches.

This is where artificial intelligence comes in. Using imaging systems, sensors embedded in hives, image-processing techniques and AI, researchers are now able to continuously collect and analyze hive data to detect Varroa mites.

In this approach, a camera is placed inside the beehive brood box to capture images of the honeybees. These images are then transmitted via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for storage and analysis.

A neural network can be trained on the collected images — first to detect bees using object-detection algorithms, and then to identify Varroa mites on the bees through colour transformation techniques. Once mites are detected, their number within the hive can be automatically counted.

Using this technology, beekeepers can benefit from automatic monitoring of the hives. When the level of infestation is specified by the system, it can also recommend effective treatments for hives. This way, Varroa mites can be detected and treated at an early stage, allowing hives to survive the winter more smoothly.

Transitioning to smart beekeeping is a strategic solution that is non-invasive and environmentally friendly, cost-effective and profitable in the long term. The good news is that researchers at the University of Calgary and beekeepers are already working together to make this happen and preserve the sweetness of honey across our land.

Farhad Maleki receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Alberta Innovate. He is affiliated with McGill University, where he serves as an adjunct Assistant Professor.

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

– ref. How AI can help protect bees from dangerous parasites – https://theconversation.com/how-ai-can-help-protect-bees-from-dangerous-parasites-259495

July 15, 2025

What Canada could learn from the tragic consequences of the Texas flash flood

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Gordon McBean, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography and Environment, Western University

On July 4, a horrific flash flood occurred in central Texas, mainly impacting Kerr County. The heavy rain started at about 3 a.m., resulting in rainwater surging down mountain slopes, causing the waters in the Guadalupe River to rise by eight metres very quickly.

At least 132 people have been confirmed dead as of July 14; most of them were in Kerr County. The area is under renewed flood warnings as heavy rains threaten to continue.

In recognition of the scope of this tragedy, it’s important to determine why it happened. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott stated that a special session of the state legislature will be held in late July to investigate the emergency response.

Acting to reduce impacts

Local Texas officials are facing questions over their actions in the hours — and years — before the flood. In recent years, multiple efforts in Kerr County to build a more substantial flood warning system have faltered or been abandoned due to budget concerns.

In 2015, a deadly Memorial Day flood in Kerr County rekindled debate over whether to install a flood monitoring system and sirens that would alert the public to evacuate when the river rose to dangerous levels. Some officials, cognizant of a 1987 flood that killed eight people on a church camp bus, thought it should be done, but the idea ran into opposition.

Some residents and elected officials opposed the installation of sirens, citing the cost and noise that they feared would result from repeated alarms. As a result, Kerr Country did not have emergency sirens that could have warned residents about the rising waters.

Critical warnings

The critical challenge for communicating flash floods is ensuring that early warnings reach vulnerable populations. Unlike slow-onset river floods, flash floods leave very limited time for reaction. This makes accurate short-term forecasting and community preparedness essential.

The U.S. National Weather Service issued its first public warning about the flooding in Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. on July 4, warning of life-threatening flash flooding, with subsequent warnings triggering alerts.

Floodwaters surged dramatically as the Guadalupe River rose nearly eight metres in about 45 minutes. The 4:03 a.m. warning instructed residents to “Move to higher ground now! This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation.”

The warnings were disseminated at night through emergency management systems and television and radio stations, but many people, including hundreds of children at summer camps, did not receive them.

Government agencies at all levels need to work together to ensure that residents of impacted areas move effectively to outside of the flood area or at least to higher elevation areas or safe buildings.

CBC News covers the flood warnings issued during the Texas floods.

Societal impacts

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Assessment for 10-year periods ranked extreme weather events as the highest global risk in both the 2024 and 2025 assessments. Floods are a very important extreme weather event.

The U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information published its review of events for the period 1980-2024. Tropical cyclones were the costliest weather and climate disasters, followed by: droughts, wildfires and flooding, which had an average cost of US$4.5 billion per event. The number of billion-dollar inland flood events has increased in the U.S.

Note that the dollar costs of these events in these assessments do not include the many societal impacts, including mental trauma and other health impacts.

Terminations at U.S. agencies

There have been major reductions in the staffing and budgetary support of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Services, which is part of NOAA.

The impacts of these reductions on the weather and flood forecasts that would have alerted Texans on July 4 are not yet clear. At the time of writing, the website for the National Weather Services office for Austin/San Antonio, which covers the region that includes hard-hit Kerr County, shows six of 27 positions are listed as vacant. One important vacancy is that of the key manager responsible for issuing warnings and co-ordinating with local emergency management officials.

The U.S. government has also reduced the funding for research on weather systems, including floods. There have also been reductions in the funding support for scientific analyses of how climate change will affect the severity of storms.

Deep funding cuts to NOAA may result in the termination of both the National Severe Storms Lab and the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations at the University of Oklahoma, which will have a highly negative impact on the understanding of storms.

Canadian floods

The Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory was established in 2024 at Western University to conduct leading research on severe weather in Canada.

Flooding is the most common and costly disaster in Canada. In the past decade, floods have averaged nearly $800 million in insured losses annually.

Over time, the potential for extreme rainfall events is increasing. Heavy rainfall events and their ensuing flood risks are increasing because of warmer temperatures.

Canadian data shows that climate change is driving increasingly severe and frequent floods.

Is Canada prepared?

Flooding will only get worse in the future, and government action is needed to manage this growing risk. One of the ways in which Canada isn’t prepared is that most flood-risk maps are out of date, with some being decades old.

While Environment and Climate Change Canada issues weather watches and warnings for things like tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and rainfall, it doesn’t provide flood forecasts.

Most provinces argue that water resources are natural resources and are therefore under provincial jurisdiction. This means that weather forecasts across the country are provided by the Meteorological Service of Canada, while flood forecasts are produced by each of the provinces.

It is important to take actions to address adaptation and climate resilience that consider future floods and their impacts. Federal, provincial and territorial governments will need to work together to avoid tragedies.

Gordon McBean has received funding from the Canadian funding agencies (SSHRC, NSERC) for academic research in the past. He has received funding for research from Western University including one grant that has not yet been completed and from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction to participate in scientific meetings and conferences.

– ref. What Canada could learn from the tragic consequences of the Texas flash flood – https://theconversation.com/what-canada-could-learn-from-the-tragic-consequences-of-the-texas-flash-flood-260755

July 15, 2025

Africans survived 10,000 years of climate changes by adapting food systems – study offers lessons for modern times

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Leanne N. Phelps, Associate research scientist, Columbia University

Imagine living in a place where a single drought, hurricane, or mudslide can wipe out your food supply. Across Africa, many communities do exactly that – navigate climate shocks like floods, heatwaves, and failed harvests.

What’s often overlooked in the development policies to tackle these threats is a powerful sources of insight: Africa’s own history.

Around 14,700 to 5,500 years ago, much of Africa experienced wetter conditions – a time referred to as the African Humid Period. As wet conditions declined around 5,500 years ago, major social, cultural, and environmental changes ensued across the continent.

We’re part of a multidisciplinary team of scientists who recently published a study about how diverse African communities adapted to climate variability over the past 10,000 years. This is the first study to explore thousands of years of change in people’s livelihoods across the continent using isotopic data.

This continent-wide approach offers novel insights into how livelihoods formed and evolved across space and time.

Prior theories often assumed that societies and their food systems evolved in a linear way. In other words they developed from simple hunting and gathering communities to politically and socially complex societies practising agriculture.

Instead, what we see is a complex mosaic of adaptable strategies that helped people survive. For 10,000 years, African communities adapted by mixing herding, farming, fishing and foraging. They blended different practices based on what worked at different times in their specific environment. That diversity across communities and regions was key to human survival.

That has real lessons for food systems today.

Our research suggests that rigid, top-down development plans, including ones that privilege intensifying agriculture over diversified economies, are unlikely to succeed. Many modern policies promote narrow approaches, like focusing only on cash crops. But history tells a different story. Resilience isn’t about choosing the “best” or most “intensive” method and sticking with it. Rather it’s about staying flexible and blending different strategies to align with local conditions.

The clues left behind

We were able to develop our insights by looking at the clues left behind by the food people ate and the environments they lived in. We did this by analysing the chemical traces (isotopes) in ancient human and domestic animal bones from 187 archaeological sites across the African continent.

We sorted the results into groups with similar features, or “isotopic niches”. Then we described the livelihood and ecological characteristics of these niches using archaeological and environmental information.

Our methods illustrated a wide range of livelihood systems. For example, in what are now Botswana and Zimbabwe, some groups combined small-scale farming with wild food gathering and livestock herding after the African Humid Period. In Egypt and Sudan, communities mixed crop farming – focused on wheat, barley, and legumes – with fishing, dairy, and beer brewing.

Herders, in particular, developed highly flexible strategies. They adapted to hot plains, dry highlands, and everything in between. Pastoral systems (farming with grazing animals) show up at more archaeological sites than any other food system. They also have the widest range of chemical signatures – evidence of their adaptability to shifting environments.

Our study also used isotopic data to build up a picture of how people were using livestock. Most animal management systems were reliant on grasses (plants such as millet and tropical pasture), and adapted to diverse ecological conditions. Some systems were highly specialised to semi-arid and mountainous environments. Others included mixed herds adapted to wetter or lower elevation regions. In other cases, animals were kept as stock in small numbers to supplement other livelihoods – providing milk, dung, and insurance against crop failure.

This adaptability helps clarify why, over the past millennium, pastoral systems have remained so important, especially in areas with increasing aridity.

Mixed livelihood strategies

The study also provides strong evidence for interactions between food production and foraging, whether at community or regional level.

Dynamic, mixed livelihood strategies, including interactions like trade within and between communities near and far, were especially apparent during periods of climatic stress. One of these periods was the end of the African Humid Period (from about 5,500 years ago), when a drier climate created new challenges.

In south-eastern Africa, from 2,000 years ago, there was a rise of diverse livelihood systems blending herding, farming and foraging in complex ways. These systems likely emerged in response to complex environmental and social change. Complex changes in social networks – especially around sharing land, resources, and knowledge – likely underpinned the development of this resilience.

How the past can inform the future

Ancient livelihood strategies offer a playbook for surviving climate change today.

Our analysis suggests that over thousands of years, communities that combined herding, farming, fishing and gathering were making context-specific choices that helped them weather unpredictable conditions. They built food systems that worked with the land and sea, not against them. And they leaned on strong social networks, sharing resources, knowledge and labour.

Past responses to climate shifts can inform current and future strategies for building resilience in regions facing socio-environmental pressures.

Leanne N. Phelps is affiliated with Columbia Climate School at Columbia University; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK; and NGO Vaevae based in Andavadoake, Toliara, Madagascar

Kristina Guild Douglass receives funding from The US National Science Foundation. She is affiliated with the NGO Vae Vae.

– ref. Africans survived 10,000 years of climate changes by adapting food systems – study offers lessons for modern times – https://theconversation.com/africans-survived-10-000-years-of-climate-changes-by-adapting-food-systems-study-offers-lessons-for-modern-times-260240

July 15, 2025

Whose turn is it? The question is at the heart of language and chimpanzees ask it too

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Kayla Kolff, Postdoctoral researcher, Osnabrück University

When we think about what sets humans apart from other animals, language often comes to mind. Language is more than words – it also relies on the ability to build shared understanding through conversation.

At the heart of conversation is turn-taking: the ability to coordinate interaction in time. This means alternating speaking roles, where one person speaks and the other listens, and responding in ways that keep the exchange moving forward.

But is this uniquely human? Increasingly, scientists are finding signs of turn-taking beyond our species – in visual cues in Siamese fish, in meerkat calls, and, as our recent study suggests, also in the grooming behaviour of chimpanzees.

As primatologists and biologists, we are interested in the evolutionary origins and driving forces behind human communication and cognition.

One animal behaviour that’s been said to involve features resembling human communication is grooming – combing through or licking each other’s fur. It’s one of the ways that some animals connect and bond with one another.

Grooming is a central part of the daily lives of chimpanzees, a species that together with bonobos represent humans’ closest living relatives. Chimpanzees engage in grooming to build relationships, reduce stress, and strengthen their friendships. While we know why they groom, and whom they prefer to groom, we do not know much about how it is organised. Does grooming happen randomly, or do chimpanzees take turns? And might things like age, their position in the group, family ties, or friendships influence the interaction? There may be another layer to grooming, shaped by social decisions made in the moment.

To answer this, we looked at whether grooming interactions involve turn-taking. We found that chimpanzees living in their natural environments do take turns, using a range of signals and movements to engage each other within the interaction. We then went on to check whether age, social standing, family ties and friendships affected the exchange of turns.

We found that especially age and social standing shaped how individuals accommodated their partners. This is in line with Communication Accommodation Theory, which is the idea that individuals adapt their communication according to the characteristics of recipients. Our findings open a new window on chimpanzee social cognition and provide perspectives on the evolutionary foundations of human communication.

Grooming coordination in the wild

To investigate how chimpanzees coordinate their grooming interactions, we studied male eastern chimpanzees at the Ngogo field site, in Uganda’s Kibale National Park. Over the course of ten months, we observed and filmed grooming interactions among 42 males in their natural environment using a digital camera.

As chimpanzee grooming is not just a simple back-and-forth where one chimpanzee grooms and then gets groomed in return, we paid close attention to gestures and additional actions. Gestures are bodily movements used to get another chimpanzee’s attention or to ask for something, such as raising an arm to invite more grooming. Actions, on the other hand, are things one chimpanzee does to another, such as grooming, approaching or leaving.

Based on these, we identified four types of turn exchanges:

action–action
action–gesture
gesture–action
gesture–gesture.

We observed that chimpanzees actively managed the interaction, using actions and gestures to start, invite, or respond to their partner’s participation.

What shapes participation in these exchanges?

Some chimpanzees were more likely than others to take turns during grooming. A closer look revealed that age and social status played a key role. Older males, who in chimpanzee societies tend to hold more dominant positions, were more likely to get responses from others. Younger males, especially adolescents, were more likely to take a turn in response to others than to have others take a turn in response to them – suggesting they were more often responding than being responded to.

That makes a lot of sense when you think about chimpanzee social life. Younger individuals are still figuring out their place in the group, and grooming can be a way to build and nurture relationships and to learn the social ropes and finesses. Older males already have stable and strong friendships; they often receive grooming from others and tend to give less in return.

Surprisingly, friendships and family ties did not influence the chances of turn-taking, although these are important aspects of chimpanzee lives. What mattered more were age and social standing. Think of it like choosing a lunch seat at school: you might choose to sit near an older student or someone popular, even if it meant not sitting with your friends or family.

Grooming interaction between Gus (a subadult male) and Jackson (an adult male and the alpha), both of whom also appear in the Netflix documentary Chimp Empire.

When we looked more closely at different types of turn-taking, one stood out: gesture–gesture exchanges. These looked a lot like social negotiations, where both chimpanzees gestured to each other before any grooming happened. These kinds of exchanges were more common when a chimpanzee interacted with an older individual, who may be more experienced in handling social situations and better at getting what they want, whether that means “groom me” or “keep going in grooming me”.

This study suggests that chimpanzees take turns as a strategic social tool to achieve goals like being groomed instead of doing the grooming themselves. Who you are, who you are interacting with, and what you might stand to gain from the exchange all shape how things unfold.

What this tells us

Our findings reveal that chimpanzee grooming is a complex behaviour, organised through structured exchanges of gestures and actions, shaped by strategies for engaging with others. It’s about more than the grooming itself.

This ability to coordinate action and respond to others suggests a basic foundation that may have helped lay the groundwork for the evolution of human communication.

Kayla Kolff received funding from the DFG, German Research Foundation.

This project is part of a project that was funded by an EUConsolidator
grant (772000, TurnTaking) to SP of the European
Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation programme.

– ref. Whose turn is it? The question is at the heart of language and chimpanzees ask it too – https://theconversation.com/whose-turn-is-it-the-question-is-at-the-heart-of-language-and-chimpanzees-ask-it-too-258736

July 15, 2025

Ces silences qui en disent long : enseigner la pornographie à l’université

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Corneau Simon, Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Selon une étude, une très grande majorité d’hommes, et une majorité de femmes, en ont déjà fait usage de la pornographie durant leur vie. (Unsplash)

Depuis plusieurs années, j’enseigne un cours universitaire consacré à la pornographie. Si le sujet suscite l’intérêt, il s’accompagne d’un silence tenace en classe : celui des personnes étudiantes face à leur propre usage. Ce mutisme, loin d’être anodin, révèle les tensions entre intimité, normes sociales et enjeux pédagogiques.

Ce cours, intitulé Pornographies et société, s’inscrit dans une approche pédagogique critique et interdisciplinaire. Contrairement à ce que rapportent certains collègues dans des publications universitaires — où l’enseignement de ce sujet peut se heurter à des résistances institutionnelles —, je n’ai, pour ma part, rencontré aucun obstacle majeur lors de la création et de l’enseignement de ce cours. Les résistances que j’observe se manifestent ailleurs.

Les silences

Très populaire et bien fréquenté, ce cours s’appuie sur une approche critique et engagée en pédagogie qui met de l’avant l’importance d’entendre la voix des personnes étudiantes. On reconnaît également dans cette approche que le partage d’expériences personnelles peut servir d’outil dans l’apprentissage.

Cependant, pour les personnes étudiantes, lorsqu’il s’agit de parler de leur usage personnel de pornographie, le silence s’installe. Peu d’entre elles osent évoquer leur propre expérience, malgré la prévalence documentée de cette pratique. Les résultats de l’étude d’Ingrid Solano et ses collègues, psychologue et chercheuse américaine affiliée à l’Université Stony Brook, menée en 2018 aux États-Unis dévoilent que, au sein de leur échantillon diversifié en matière d’âge (18 à 73 ans), une très grande majorité d’hommes, et une majorité de femmes, en ont déjà fait usage durant leur vie.

Ce constat du silence n’est nullement un jugement envers les personnes étudiantes, ou la perception d’un manque de courage de leur part. Il s’agit d’un simple fait observable (et audible !), qui nous offre toutefois des pistes de réflexions sur les enjeux sociaux, culturels et personnels liés à ce sujet.

Comment expliquer ces silences dans un contexte de sexualisation de la culture ? En effet, depuis les années 2000, les représentations sexuelles sont de plus en plus visibles et discutées, le sexe et la sexualité sont omniprésents, acceptés et acceptables médiatiquement, socialement et culturellement.

Dans un accord tacite adopté sous le couvert de l’humour, sourires en coin, nous parlons donc en classe de l’usage de pornographie « des autres », de l’usage de « nos amis et amies », évitant ainsi de mettre en lumière nos propres pratiques, pouvant être perçues comme intimes ou potentiellement stigmatisantes.

Un sujet sensible

La pornographie et son usage sont des sujets sensibles. Cela signifie qu’ils mobilisent une forte charge émotionnelle et l’aborder de front peut représenter une menace personnelle et faire l’objet de jugements.

La pornographie et ses usages sont souvent associés à des inquiétudes et des paniques morales polarisées, amplifiées par le discours actuel qui campe de plus en plus l’usage comme un enjeu de santé publique, dans une rhétorique de risques entourant la dépendance, ses effets sur l’image corporelle, l’estime sexuelle, les relations interpersonnelles, et la violence sexuelle.

Est-ce la seule raison du silence ? Pas forcément.

La datafication sexuelle et ses implications

En contexte actuel où l’usage de pornographie se fait majoritairement en ligne, les sites Internet pornographiques utilisent des systèmes d’étiquettes (tags) pour catégoriser leurs contenus.

La professeure Rebecca Saunders, de l’Université Cardiff au Pays de Galles, parle de datafication sexuelle pour désigner cette catégorisation, qui permet de surveiller et d’analyser les goûts et habitudes des utilisateurs et utilisatrices de pornographie dans une logique marchande.

Ces étiquettes, cependant, ne sont pas neutres : elles véhiculent fréquemment des stéréotypes et des termes péjoratifs, notamment liés à la couleur de peau, au genre, à l’orientation sexuelle, à certaines pratiques sexuelles ou à des caractéristiques corporelles. Ainsi, parler de son usage personnel de pornographie en classe peut révéler des éléments de stéréotypes et des goûts personnels qui ne sont pas socialement acceptés ou qui risquent d’être jugés négativement. L’option du silence peut s’avérer plus sécuritaire.

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Les rapport de pouvoirs et les stéréotypes sur la base du genre et de la couleur de peau semblent nombreux et courants dans la pornographie commerciale facile d’accès (mainstream), pouvant ainsi contribuer à rendre la prise de parole personnelle encore plus délicate. Se taire n’a pas la même portée selon qui on est, en fonction de nos positionnements sociaux.

Ces silences en contexte universitaire témoignent peut-être de la nature profondément privée et intime des fantasmes, des goûts et des préférences individuelles. Même si la culture ambiante sexualisée influence ces préférences, l’usage de la pornographie demeure une pratique souvent vécue comme personnelle, voire privée. La difficulté à en parler ouvertement ne doit pas être perçue comme un refus ou un manque de légitimité, mais plutôt comme une réaction compréhensible face à la sensibilité du sujet.

Vers une évolution des normes et des pratiques

Aujourd’hui, l’usage de pornographie est parfois décrit comme une pratique banale, voire anodine. Peut-être, mais en tentant de l’aborder ouvertement et publiquement comme toute autre pratique courante, on se bute à certaines barrières (compréhensibles). La pédagogie engagée met en évidence l’importance d’un climat de respect et de confiance en salle de classe, ce qui ne peut pas être garanti dans un grand amphithéâtre.

Les silences, loin d’être définitifs, témoignent de normes sociales. Ces normes sociales évoluent lentement, parfois par reculs ou résistances, notamment sous l’influence de discours politiques ou moraux qui cherchent à censurer ou à limiter les discussions sur la sexualité humaine, sa diversité, et ses représentations.

Les futures cohortes étudiantes nous « diront » si ces silences s’atténuent ou s’intensifient avec l’évolution des normes. En attendant, je choisis de travailler avec eux, avec respect et humour, pour ouvrir la voie à une réflexion plus libre sur ces sujets sensibles.

Corneau Simon ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Ces silences qui en disent long : enseigner la pornographie à l’université – https://theconversation.com/ces-silences-qui-en-disent-long-enseigner-la-pornographie-a-luniversite-259529

July 15, 2025

How women are trapped in years of homelessness that often begin in their teens

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Mary Vaccaro, Lecturer in Social Work, McMaster University

Many women without children in their care who become homeless in Canada remain homeless for many years. Yet their experiences remain misunderstood and largely ignored because of the ways we define and measure homelessness in Canada.

I have worked in the women’s emergency shelter system in Hamilton, Ont., since 2012. I have met many women who have been navigating homelessness for years — with no permanent solution to their housing crisis. For my PhD in social work, I interviewed 21 women who had experienced homelessness for a year or longer in Hamilton. I asked them about their experiences, and through art-based activities, about their ideas for housing and support.

What I learned in the interviews, combined with existing research, highlights a hidden crisis. Within our current system resides a profound human cost that manages, instead of resolves, homelessness.

Many women who experience homelessness do so for far longer than the federal government’s definition of chronic homelessness, which is six consecutive months or 18 months over three years. Research from the United Kingdom that focuses on long-term and unresolved homelessness for women found that the ways women experience homelessness is to “go around in circles” without having their housing or support needs met.

Among the women I spoke with, more than half had been experiencing homelessness for 10 years or longer. Six of the the women said they have never had a safe place of their own to live for the entirety of their adult lives.

All of the women who participated in this project accessed the services offered by the homeless serving sector, including shelters and outreach workers, designed to resolve their homelessness. Yet none of these women were able to have their housing and support needs met.

This means their experience of homelessness has persisted for years, and even decades.

Homelessness often starts in their teens

More than half of the participants I spoke with first experienced homelessness before they turned 18. Their primary route into youth homelessness was gender-based violence. They ran away from home when they were teenaged girls to escape violence and became caught in a cycle of events that include: hospitalization, incarceration, staying in youth shelters, living in group homes and unsafe places.

The Pan-Canadian Women’s Housing and Homelessness Survey, as well as a study on Toronto youth, echo what the women I spoke with told me. Studies from the United States also confirm similar patterns — homelessness begins early in life for a majority of women, and is often followed by a chronic, chaotic churn of precarious housing and homelessness situations.

The women in my study described a frustrating and exhausting cycle of going among institutions such as hospitals, jails, emergency shelters, drop-in programs and transitional housing programs. They had all spent periods of time living outdoors, in encampments, in motels, with unsafe people and in other precarious and temporary housing arrangements. This phenomena is well-documented in existing Canadian research.

Better definitions, better data

The Canadian government defines those who have been homeless and using shelters for more than 180 days a year as experiencing “acute chronicity.”

Another term used by the federal government for individuals who have accessed shelters at least once in each of the last three years is “prolonged instability.”

People who meet one or both of these criteria are considered to have the highest housing needs in the country.

According to recent federal data, women and gender-diverse people across Canada experience slightly higher rates of acute chronicity than men (13.4 per cent for men, 15.4 per cent for women, and 13.9 per cent for gender-diverse people). But the real numbers for women are likely much higher due to under-reporting.

Research shows women remain invisible to official systems during periods of homelessness. For example, the available data relies solely on information about emergency shelter usage. It does not capture experiences of homelessness that occur outside of the shelter system.

Women are less likely than their male counterparts to access shelters and other formal supports. Instead, they rely on precarious, unsafe and temporary housing arrangements to navigate homelessness.

In Canada, there are also fewer emergency women-specific shelter beds than for men

Rethinking responses to long-term homelessness

For the women I spoke with, the official 180 days or three years that makes someone officially chronically homeless in Canada does not even begin to describe the length and complexity of their experiences of homelessness.

They described wanting to live in supportive, gender-specific housing programs that foster community and care. Highly supportive housing typically integrates health and social services and a range of other support services. This type of integrated housing does exist across Canada — examples are the Block Line Supportive Housing Program operated by YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo and the Women’s Building (Alpha House) in Calgary — but there is not enough of it.

The current measurements from the government of Canada fall short of capturing the complexity of the homeless experience for many Canadian women.

Government officials must therefore not only rethink their definitions of those in the most housing need, they must develop responsive housing solutions to meet the needs of women who have been homeless for many years.

Mary Vaccaro consults for YWCA Hamilton. She receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. How women are trapped in years of homelessness that often begin in their teens – https://theconversation.com/how-women-are-trapped-in-years-of-homelessness-that-often-begin-in-their-teens-259239

July 15, 2025

Many Texas communities are dangerously unprepared for floods − lack of funding plays a big role

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ivis García, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University

A deadly flash flood on July 4, 2025, destroyed homes near the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country. Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

The devastating flash floods that swept through Texas Hill Country in July 2025 highlight a troubling reality: Despite years of warnings and recent improvements in flood planning, Texas communities remain dangerously vulnerable to flood damage.

The tragedy wasn’t caused just by heavy rainfall. It was made worse by a lack of money for early warning systems, by drainage systems and emergency communication networks that haven’t been updated to handle more intense storms or growing populations, and by the many older buildings in harm’s way.

A 2024 state report estimated the cost of flood mitigation and management projects needed statewide at US$54.5 billion. But in Texas, most of that work is left to local governments.

We study disaster planning at Texas A&M University and see several ways the state and Texas communities can improve safety for everyone.

Progress since Hurricane Harvey

Since Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area in 2017, Texas has made strides in flood planning.

The state in 2024 created its first comprehensive flood plan, which identifies flood risks statewide and recommends projects to reduce them. The state now requires all local governments to adopt and enforce flood plain regulations that meet federal standards, enabling residents to purchase federal flood insurance.

The plan represented a major shift for a state government that historically left flood planning to local communities.

However, it also revealed widespread risks in Texas: Approximately 5 million Texans live or work in flood-prone areas, and an estimated 1.5 million homes and other structures are in flood plains.

Flood risks are intensifying as Texas experiences more extreme rainfall. State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon and colleagues at Texas A&M University found that extreme one-day precipitation has increased by 5% to 15% in Texas since the late 20th century, and another 10% increase is expected by 2036.

Rural communities lack resources

The biggest problem for small towns and rural communities isn’t just weak regulations. Many of them can’t afford to hire specialized staff for technical work such as hazard assessment and regulatory enforcement.

While the state provides planning frameworks, implementation and enforcement remain local responsibilities.

Budget limitations can mean one emergency manager serves as fire marshal, building inspector, engineer and flood plain administrator for hundreds of square miles.

These officials must still meet federal standards and develop detailed disaster plans. But cash-strapped communities often lack the funding to implement solutions.

A short older man with glasses stands at podium. Three larger men in cowboy hats, two of them in uniforms, stand behind him. — Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring, Jr. speaks at a news briefing about the July 4, 2025, flooding. Most towns in Texas Hill Country are small, and their government officials wear many hats.
Jorge Salgado/Anadolu via Getty Images

What they need is practical hazard mitigation plans. Those include specific evacuation routes for each neighborhood, identifying which buildings house vulnerable populations, such as older adults, and steps local officials can implement immediately during emergencies. It also means aligning of other local planning documents, such as comprehensive plans or land use plans. Access to flood gauge data, weather monitoring and social vulnerability mapping is also important for determining when to close roads or activate emergency shelters.

That work takes time, expertise and funding.

The challenge of older buildings

Creating safer communities also requires investment to address challenges with both new development and vulnerable existing structures.

For new construction, many communities require buildings to be built above flood level. The state could help small communities in this area by funding new local code enforcement jobs, similar to the way it provided training and guidance to local officials after Hurricane Harvey. However, that might not be possible in the Texas Legislature today.

The bigger challenge is older buildings. According to federal requirements, unless a structure floods or gets “substantially damaged” – meaning damage exceeds 50% of its value – there’s no requirement to make it safer.

Rescue workers are seen on land and on a boat as they search for missing people near Camp Mystic along the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the area Sunday, July 6, 2025, in Hunt, Texas. — The July 4, 2025, flash flood tore off the wall of this building in Camp Mystic. The Guadalupe River rose more than 20 feet in less than an hour and a half early that morning.
AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Research shows that retrofitting homes by improving drainage to avoid future flood damage and [voluntary buyout programs can be effective]. Buyout programs allow families to sell their homes at market rate and relocate to higher ground when the programs are properly designed and funded.

Harris County’s buyout program after Hurricane Harvey acquired nearly 200 flood-damaged homes in the Houston area for a total of $20 million. That helped families escape repeated flooding. The homes were demolished, and the land became permanent open space. By preventing future development, the land can take on floodwater in the future without economic harm.

Many counties can’t afford buyout programs, though. A statewide voluntary buyout program could help them by prioritizing the most vulnerable properties. But to have a wide reach, such a voluntary program would need dedicated funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

How Harris County’s buyout program works.

Beyond voluntary buyouts, the state could expand programs that help property owners retrofit existing houses and other buildings, such as elevating structures, installing flood vents that allow water to flow through, or using flood-resistant materials. Tax incentives and low-interest loans could make these improvements more affordable while respecting property owners’ right to choose to participate or not.

Texas currently offers limited retrofit assistance through the General Land Office’s disaster recovery programs. But it lacks a comprehensive retrofit program with dedicated funding that would help homeowners prepare before the disaster strikes.

Where communities are taking important steps

Some innovative approaches are emerging in Texas cities and counties.

Liberty and Comanche counties have partnered with Texas A&M University’s Texas Target Communities program to create comprehensive plans that help their communities grow but in safer ways. Research shows that when communities integrate land use planning, hazard mitigation, emergency response and economic development plans, they can better ensure that new development avoids high-risk areas and that existing vulnerable areas are targeted for improvement projects.

Houston, despite lacking traditional zoning, has implemented strict flood plain regulations that require new construction to be elevated above flood levels and prohibit development in the most dangerous flood-risk areas. By maintaining a top rating in FEMA’s Community Rating System, the city helps residents qualify for discounts on flood insurance.

The tragedy in Hill Country is a reminder that many Texas communities face flood risks yet lack the funding and technical capacity to implement comprehensive flood risk reduction on their own without state support. As extreme weather becomes more common, the question is whether communities will be able to protect themselves without more help.

Shannon Van Zandt is affiliated with Texas Housers, a non-profit advocating for affordable housing for low-income Texans.

Ivis García and Jaimie Hicks Masterson 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. Many Texas communities are dangerously unprepared for floods − lack of funding plays a big role – https://theconversation.com/many-texas-communities-are-dangerously-unprepared-for-floods-lack-of-funding-plays-a-big-role-261090

July 15, 2025

Les psychédéliques sont détournés de leur usage traditionnel par l’industrie médicale, et ce n’est pas pour le mieux

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Kevin Walby, Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg

Autrefois stigmatisés et interdits, les psychédéliques sont passés de la contre-culture à la culture dominante. De l’utilisation de la psilocybine par le prince Harry aux aventures du quart-arrière (quarterback) de la Ligue nationale de football américain Aaron Rodgers avec l’ayahuasca, nos médias regorgent de témoignages vantant leurs bienfaits.

Des centaines d’universités à travers le monde se lancent désormais dans la recherche sur les psychédéliques. Et des initiatives de légalisation prennent forme.

Les psychédéliques sont en train de devenir un marché très lucratif. Tout comme le capital privé a inondé le secteur du cannabis il y a quelques années, une nouvelle ruée vers l’or est en cours, cette fois autour des psychédéliques.

De riches entrepreneurs investissent dans l’industrie psychédélique tandis que des start-up biotechnologiques lèvent des fonds et mènent des essais cliniques sur de nouvelles molécules psychédéliques. Les investisseurs en capital-risque convoitent les perspectives offertes par un nouveau marché de masse lucratif.

Une couverture de livre avec des dessins colorés — Les auteurs de cet article ont publié un nouveau livre : Psychedelic Capitalism.
(Fernwood)

Trois sujets de préoccupation

À ce jour, la plupart des débats sur les psychédéliques ont peu analysé de manière critique leur relation avec l’économie politique du capitalisme moderne et les structures de pouvoir au sens large. Dans notre nouveau livre Psychedelic Capitalism, nous formulons trois constats sur ce que l’on appelle la renaissance psychédélique.

Premièrement, la médicalisation des psychédéliques risque de restreindre leur accès et de renforcer les inégalités sanitaires et sociales existantes.

Deuxièmement, la « corporatisation » des psychédéliques permettra aux élites économiques de dominer le marché tout en s’appropriant le vaste réservoir de connaissances accumulées par les communautés autochtones, les institutions publiques et les chercheurs clandestins.

Déjà des milliers d’abonnés à l’infolettre de La Conversation. Et vous ? Abonnez-vous gratuitement à notre infolettre pour mieux comprendre les grands enjeux contemporains.

Et troisièmement, plutôt que de représenter une réforme progressiste en matière de drogues, la légalisation limitée de certains psychédéliques à des fins médicales contribuera à renforcer et à pérenniser la guerre contre la drogue et la criminalisation de sa consommation.

Ignorer les connaissances communautaires

Partout en Amérique du Nord, nous assistons à une médicalisation des psychédéliques. De nombreux problèmes sont présentés comme pouvant être traités par ces substances. Cela se fait d’une manière qui renforce le contrôle des entreprises sur le processus et met de côté les connaissances communautaires et autochtones.

Nous avons vu ce phénomène en Australie. Certaines substances comme la psilocybine et la MDMA sont désormais légales, mais uniquement sur ordonnance médicale et à un coût financier élevé, ce qui soulève des questions sur l’équité, l’accès et les destinataires de ces thérapies.

Le fait de présenter les psychédéliques comme des produits pharmaceutiques et des solutions de santé individualisées renforce le discours prohibitionniste selon lequel ces substances ne sont pas adaptées à une utilisation en dehors du contexte médical. Ce discours détourne l’attention de la manière dont l’utilisation médicalisée pourrait perpétuer une idéologie néolibérale, qui réduit les troubles mentaux à des problèmes individuels plutôt que de s’attaquer aux causes plus systémiques telles que la pauvreté, les inégalités et l’exclusion sociale.

Il ignore également des siècles de traditions créées par l’usage communautaire autochtone, ainsi que les valeurs de la culture psychédélique underground.

Un système fondé sur des thérapies individuelles coûteuses et un accès clinique hypercontrôlé n’est pas le modèle envisagé par la plupart des défenseurs.

Un modèle basé uniquement sur la pilule pour la productivité et le bonheur

Les fondements du capitalisme psychédélique ont été largement créés par l’innovation publique aux frais du contribuable et sont aujourd’hui en train d’être repris par le capital privé.

Les conférences sur les psychédéliques prennent de plus en plus l’allure de salons commerciaux. L’industrie du tourisme psychédélique continue de se développer et de s’adresser à une clientèle élitiste. Des entreprises à but lucratif telles que Mind Medicine et Compass Pathways éliminent la psychothérapie de leurs protocoles de traitement et adoptent un modèle strictement médicamenteux, privilégié par les grandes entreprises pharmaceutiques.

Les psychédéliques, y compris le microdosage et la thérapie assistée par psychédéliques, sont commercialisés comme un moyen pour la population générale d’améliorer leur productivité dans une vie déjà surchargée, tout en y trouvant du bonheur.

Les entreprises se font concurrence pour s’approprier la propriété intellectuelle afin de tirer profit des composés existants et d’ériger des barrières juridiques autour des nouvelles substances chimiques et de leurs applications.

L’industrie lucrative de la kétamine offre déjà un aperçu de l’avenir de la thérapie psychédélique commercialisée. Cela inclut une négligence des risques, un marketing trompeur et peu de considération pour les soins thérapeutiques.

Il y a eu une vague de nouvelles demandes de brevets (et de brevets accordés) aux États-Unis sur des substances telles que la psilocybine, le LSD, le DMT, le 5-MeO DMT et la mescaline, qui visent à garantir l’exclusivité, à monopoliser les chaînes d’approvisionnement et à privatiser des connaissances qui existent déjà dans le domaine public.

Les psychédéliques ont été intégrés dans les logiques bien établies du capitalisme, où des acteurs privés s’approprient des droits exclusifs sur ce qui est en fin de compte le fruit de la lutte collective de l’humanité et de ses réalisations intellectuelles.

Légalisation médicale des psychédéliques

L’approche médicalisée des psychédéliques est également liée à la législation et à la politique en matière de drogues.

En Amérique du Nord, l’approche biomédicale la principale voie d’accès aux psychédéliques dans la plupart des juridictions. Cette approche est largement soutenue par l’industrie des psychédéliques qui ont un intérêt financier dans la légalisation médicale et souhaitent limiter l’accès légal à tout ce qui ne relève pas du cadre médico-pharmaceutique.

Aux États-Unis, des États comme l’Oregon et le Colorado ont adopté des modèles juridiques plus holistiques qui incluent des éléments de contrôle communautaire afin d’empêcher la mainmise des entreprises. Mais la plupart des initiatives étatiques restent limitées dans leur portée et sont centrées sur les thérapies médicalisées, en particulier pour les anciens combattants. Même dans l’Oregon, qui a été salué pour ses politiques progressistes en matière de drogues, on observe une nette tendance à la médicalisation.

L’industrie canadienne du cannabis illustre parfaitement comment les processus de légalisation peuvent s’entremêler avec les intérêts des industries dominées par les grandes entreprises.

Comme l’explique Michael Devillaer, professeur de psychiatrie et de neurosciences comportementales et auteur de Buzz Kill (2024), l’industrie du cannabis a donné la priorité à la maximisation des profits, à la promotion des produits et à l’augmentation de la consommation au détriment des préoccupations de santé publique.

Qu’est-ce qui est le mieux pour l’intérêt public ?

À mesure que la légalisation médicale des psychédéliques s’accroit, nous assisterons probablement à un durcissement des sanctions pénales pour les usages récréatifs et autres.

En effet, les saisies policières de psychédéliques tels que la psilocybine ont augmenté ces dernières années aux États-Unis. Les arrestations pour le transport de composés tels que l’ayahuasca, l’iboga et le peyotl ont également augmenté dans le monde.

Ces problèmes risquent d’être exacerbés par les systèmes de classification bifurquée, dans lesquels un produit pharmaceutique est classé dans une catégorie différente de celle de son principe actif ou de sa substance.

Par exemple, si la Food and Drug Administration (FDA) américaine autorisait la psilocybine pour traiter la dépression ou la MDMA pour traiter le syndrome de stress post-traumatique, il est probable que seuls les produits médicinaux à base de psilocybine et de MDMA approuvés par la FDA seraient reclassés, tandis que les substances elles-mêmes continueraient d’être interdites en tant que stupéfiants soumis à restriction.

Il est dans l’intérêt public de dépasser une vision étroite de la légalisation médicale pour adopter un modèle plus ouvert et dépénalisé d’accès public. Une telle approche permettrait non seulement d’atténuer les menaces liées à la mainmise des entreprises, mais aussi de réduire les méfaits associés à la criminalisation et à la guerre contre la drogue.

La dépénalisation contrôlée par la communauté est une meilleure voie pour intégrer les psychédéliques dans la société que de céder le pouvoir à l’industrie médicale et aux cartels pharmaceutiques qui fournissent des services monopolistiques à une clientèle principalement aisée.

Et le fait de traiter la consommation de drogues et la dépendance comme une question de santé publique et d’encourager la réduction des risques et les services de soutien aux populations à risque contribueraient grandement à atténuer les tragédies de la guerre contre la drogue.

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

– ref. Les psychédéliques sont détournés de leur usage traditionnel par l’industrie médicale, et ce n’est pas pour le mieux – https://theconversation.com/les-psychedeliques-sont-detournes-de-leur-usage-traditionnel-par-lindustrie-medicale-et-ce-nest-pas-pour-le-mieux-260744

July 15, 2025

Sculptor galaxy image provides brilliant details that will help astronomers study how stars form

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rebecca McClain, Ph.D. Student in Astronomy, The Ohio State University

This image of the Sculptor galaxy will give astronomers detailed information on a variety of stars, nebulae and galactic regions. European Southern Observatory

If you happen to find yourself in the Southern Hemisphere with binoculars and a good view of the night sky on a dark and clear summer night, you might just be able to spot the Sculptor galaxy. And if your eyes were prisms that could separate light into the thousands of colors making it up, then congratulations: After hours of staring, you could have recreated the newest image of one of the nearest neighbors to our Milky Way galaxy.

This is not just another stunningly gorgeous picture of a nearby galaxy. Because it reveals the type of light coming from each location in the galaxy, this image of the Sculptor galaxy is a treasure trove of information that astronomers around the world cannot wait to pick apart.

As an astronomy Ph.D. student at Ohio State University, I (Rebecca) am one of the lucky people who gets to stare at this image for hours every day, alongside my adviser (Adam), discovering meaning behind the beauty everyone can appreciate.

Creating the image

The Sculptor galaxy lies 11 million light-years from the Milky Way. This may sound unfathomably far, but it actually makes Sculptor one of the closest galaxies to Earth.

For this reason, Sculptor has been the primary target for many observations. In 2022, an international team of scientists observed Sculptor with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, MUSE, on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, and publicly released the data this June.

Most astronomical observations obtain either an image of a single color of light – for example, red or blue – or a spectrum, which splits the light coming from the whole galaxy into many different colors.

MUSE, conveniently, does both, producing a spectrum at every location it observes. One observation creates thousands of images in thousands of colors, each tracing the critical components that make up the galaxy: stars, dust and gas.

It may look like only one picture, but this image of Sculptor is actually over 100 individual observations and 8 million individual spectra, painstakingly stitched together to reveal millions of stars all in one cohesive galaxy.

Scientific significance

The light associated with the stars in Sculptor is colored white, and gas made up of charged particles is colored red. The largest concentration of both is found in the spiral arms. At the very center of the galaxy is a nuclear starburst: a region of extreme star formation that is blowing material out of the galaxy.

There is even information in the absence of light. Dust obscures light emitted from behind it, creating a shadow effect called dust lanes. Tracing these dust lanes reveals the cold, dense material that exists between stars. Scientists believe this dark material is the fuel that will form the next generation of stars.

Clouds of gas punctuated by bright dots which represent stars. — Complex gaseous nebulae (red) surround young and massive stars (white) in this zoom-in of a cluster of star-forming regions.
European Southern Observatory/VLT/MUSE

There is a lot to look at in this image, but the subject of my work and what I find most interesting is the gas illuminated in red. In these star-forming regions, young and massive stars excite the gas around them, which then glows with a specific color to reveal the chemical makeup and physical conditions of the gas.

This image represents one of the first times that astronomers have obtained images of thousands of star-forming regions at this impressive level of detail. A component of our team’s research uses the data from MUSE to understand how these regions are structured and how they interact with the surrounding galaxy.

By meticulously piecing all of this information together, astronomers can use this image to learn more about the formation and evolution of stars across the universe.

Rebecca McClain receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

Adam Leroy receives funding from NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute that supports research related to the survey of NGC 253 discussed in this article.

– ref. Sculptor galaxy image provides brilliant details that will help astronomers study how stars form – https://theconversation.com/sculptor-galaxy-image-provides-brilliant-details-that-will-help-astronomers-study-how-stars-form-259754

July 15, 2025

Weird space weather seems to have influenced human behavior on Earth 41,000 years ago – our unusual scientific collaboration explores how

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Raven Garvey, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan

Wandering magnetic fields would have had noticeable effects for humans. Maximilian Schanner (GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany)

Our first meeting was a bit awkward. One of us is an archaeologist who studies how past peoples interacted with their environments. Two of us are geophysicists who investigate interactions between solar activity and Earth’s magnetic field.

When we first got together, we wondered whether our unconventional project, linking space weather and human behavior, could actually bridge such a vast disciplinary divide. Now, two years on, we believe the payoffs – personal, professional and scientific – were well worth the initial discomfort.

Our collaboration, which culminated in a recent paper in the journal Science Advances, began with a single question: What happened to life on Earth when the planet’s magnetic field nearly collapsed roughly 41,000 years ago?

Weirdness when Earth’s magnetic shield falters

This near-collapse is known as the Laschamps Excursion, a brief but extreme geomagnetic event named for the volcanic fields in France where it was first identified. At the time of the Laschamps Excursion, near the end of the Pleistocene epoch, Earth’s magnetic poles didn’t reverse as they do every few hundred thousand years. Instead, they wandered, erratically and rapidly, over thousands of miles. At the same time, the strength of the magnetic field dropped to less than 10% of its modern day intensity.

So, instead of behaving like a stable bar magnet – a dipole – as it usually does, the Earth’s magnetic field fractured into multiple weak poles across the planet. As a result, the protective force field scientists call the magnetosphere became distorted and leaky.

The magnetosphere normally deflects much of the solar wind and harmful ultraviolet radiation that would otherwise reach Earth’s surface.

So, during the Laschamps Excursion when the magnetosphere broke down, our models suggest a number of near-Earth effects. While there is still work to be done to precisely characterize these effects, we do know they included auroras – normally seen only in skies near the poles as the Northern Lights or Southern Lights – wandering toward the equator, and significantly higher-than-present-day doses of harmful solar radiation.

The skies 41,000 years ago may have been both spectacular and threatening. When we realized this, we two geophysicists wanted to know whether this could have affected people living at the time.

The archaeologist’s answer was absolutely.

Human responses to ancient space weather

For people on the ground at that time, auroras may have been the most immediate and striking effect, perhaps inspiring awe, fear, ritual behavior or something else entirely. But the archaeological record is notoriously limited in its ability to capture these kinds of cognitive or emotional responses.

Researchers are on firmer ground when it comes to the physiological impacts of increased UV radiation. With the weakened magnetic field, more harmful radiation would have reached Earth’s surface, elevating risk of sunburn, eye damage, birth defects, and other health issues.

In response, people may have adopted practical measures: spending more time in caves, producing tailored clothing for better coverage, or applying mineral pigment “sunscreen” made of ochre to their skin. As we describe in our recent paper, the frequency of these behaviors indeed appears to have increased across parts of Europe, where effects of the Laschamps Excursion were pronounced and prolonged.

lump of reddish crumbly rock — Naturally occurring ochre can act as a protective sunscreen if applied to skin.
Museo Egizio di Torino

At this time, both Neanderthals and members of our species, Homo sapiens, were living in Europe, though their geographic distributions likely overlapped only in certain regions. The archaeological record suggests that different populations exhibited distinct approaches to environmental challenges, with some groups perhaps more reliant on shelter or material culture for protection.

Importantly, we’re not suggesting that space weather alone caused an increase in these behaviors or, certainly, that the Laschamps caused Neanderthals to go extinct, which is one misinterpretation of our research. But it could have been a contributing factor – an invisible but powerful force that influenced innovation and adaptability.

Cross-discipline collaboration

Collaborating across such a disciplinary gap was, at first, daunting. But it turned out to be deeply rewarding.

Archaeologists are used to reconstructing now-invisible phenomena like climate. We can’t measure past temperatures or precipitation directly, but they’ve left traces for us to interpret if we know where and how to look.

satellite image of Earth with a glowing green circle extending down across Europe — An artistic rendering of how far into lower latitudes the aurora might have been visible during the Laschamps Excursion.
Maximilian Schanner (GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany)

But even archaeologists who’ve spent years studying the effects of climate on past behaviors and technologies may not have considered the effects of the geomagnetic field and space weather. These effects, too, are invisible, powerful and best understood through indirect evidence and modeling. Archaeologists can treat space weather as a vital component of Earth’s environmental history and future forecasting.

Likewise, geophysicists, who typically work with large datasets, models and simulations, may not always engage with some of the stakes of space weather. Archaeology adds a human dimension to the science. It reminds us that the effects of space weather don’t stop at the ionosphere. They can ripple down into the lived experiences of people on the ground, influencing how they adapt, create and survive.

The Laschamps Excursion wasn’t a fluke or a one-off. Similar disruptions of Earth’s magnetic field have happened before and will happen again. Understanding how ancient humans responded can provide insight into how future events might affect our world – and perhaps even help us prepare.

Our unconventional collaboration has shown us how much we can learn, how our perspective changes, when we cross disciplinary boundaries. Space may be vast, but it connects us all. And sometimes, building a bridge between Earth and space starts with the smallest things, such as ochre, or a coat, or even sunscreen.

Agnit Mukhopadhyay has received funding from NASA Science Mission Directorate and the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School.

Raven Garvey and Sanja Panovska 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. Weird space weather seems to have influenced human behavior on Earth 41,000 years ago – our unusual scientific collaboration explores how – https://theconversation.com/weird-space-weather-seems-to-have-influenced-human-behavior-on-earth-41-000-years-ago-our-unusual-scientific-collaboration-explores-how-257216