Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Lee Rafuse Haines, Associate Research Professor of Molecular Parasitology and Medical Entomology, University of Notre Dame

Hours after savoring that perfectly grilled steak on a beautiful summer evening, your body turns traitor, declaring war on the very meal you just enjoyed. You begin to feel excruciating itchiness, pain or even swelling that can escalate to the point of requiring emergency care.

The culprit isn’t food poisoning – it’s the fallout from a tick bite you may have gotten months earlier and didn’t even notice.

This delayed allergic reaction is called alpha-gal syndrome. While it’s commonly called the “red meat allergy,” that nickname is misleading, because alpha-gal syndrome can cause strong reactions to many products, beyond just red meat.

The syndrome is also rapidly spreading in the U.S. and around the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates as many as 450,000 people in the U.S. may have it. And it’s carried by many more tick species than most people realize.

What is alpha-gal syndrome?

Alpha-gal syndrome is actually an allergy to a sugar molecule with a tongue-twisting name: galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, shortened to alpha-gal.

The alpha-gal sugar molecule exists in the tissues of most mammals, including cows, pigs, deer and rabbits. But it’s absent in humans. When a big dose of alpha-gal gets into your bloodstream through a tick bite, it can send your immune system into overdrive to generate antibodies against alpha-gal. In later exposure to foods containing alpha-gal, your immune system might then launch an inappropriate allergic response.

Often this allergy is triggered by eating red meat. But the allergy also can be set off by exposure to a range of other animal-based products, including dairy products, gelatin (think Jell-O or gummy bears), medications and even some personal care items. The drug heparin, used to prevent blood clotting during surgery, is extracted from pig intestines, and its use has triggered a dangerous reaction in some people with alpha-gal syndrome.

Once you have alpha-gal syndrome, it’s possible to get over the allergy if you can modify your diet enough to avoid triggering another reaction for a few years and also avoid more tick bites. But that takes time and careful attention to the less obvious triggers that you might be exposed to.

Why more people are being diagnosed

As an entomologist who studies bugs and the diseases they transmit, what I find alarming is how rapidly this allergy is spreading around the globe.

Several years ago, experts thought alpha-gal syndrome was primarily limited to the southeastern U.S. because it was largely associated with the geographical range of the lone star tick.

However, both local and global reports have now identified many different tick species across six continents that are capable of causing alpha-gal syndrome, including the prolific black-legged tick, or deer tick, which also transmits Lyme disease.

These ticks lurk in yards and urban parks, as well as forests where they can stealthily grab onto hikers when they touch tick-infested vegetation. As tick populations boom with growing deer and human populations, the number of people with alpha-gal syndrome is escalating.

Why ticks are blamed for alpha-gal syndrome

There are a few theories on how a tick bite triggers alpha-gal syndrome and why only a small proportion of people bitten develop the allergy. To understand the theories, it helps to understand what happens as a tick starts feeding on you.

When a tick finds you, it typically looks for a warm, dark area to hide and attach itself to your body. Then its serrated teeth chew through your skin with rapid sawing motions.

As it excavates deeper into your skin, the tick deploys a barbed feeding tube, like a miniature drilling rig, and it secretes a biological cement that anchors its head into its new tunnel.

Once secure, the tick activates its pumping station, injecting copious amounts of saliva containing anesthetics, blood thinners and, sometimes, alpha-gal sugars into the wound so it can feed undetected, sometimes for days.

One theory about how a tick bite causes alpha-gal syndrome is linked to the enormous quantity of tick saliva released during feeding, which activates the body’s strong immune response. Another suggests how the skin is damaged as the tick feeds and the possible effect of the tick’s regurgitated stomach contents into the bite site are to blame. Or it may be a combination of these and other triggers. Scientists are still investigating the causes.

What an allergic reaction feels like

The allergy doesn’t begin right away. Typically, one to three months after the sensitizing tick bite, a person with alpha-gal syndrome has their first, disturbing reaction.

Alpha-gal syndrome produces symptoms that range from hives or swelling to crushing abdominal pain, violent nausea or even life-threatening anaphylactic shock. The symptoms usually start two to six hours after a person has ingested a meat product containing alpha-gal.

Due to a general lack of awareness about the allergy, however, doctors can easily miss the diagnosis. A study in 2022 found that 42% of U.S. health care practitioners had never heard of alpha-gal syndrome. A decade ago, people with alpha-gal syndrome might go years before the cause of their symptoms was accurately diagnosed. Today, the diagnosis is faster in areas where doctors are familiar with the syndrome, but in many parts of the country it can still take time and multiple doctor visits.

Unfortunately, with every additional tick bite or exposure to food or products containing alpha-gal, the allergy can increase in severity.

If you think you have alpha-gal syndrome

If you suspect you may have alpha-gal syndrome, the first step is to discuss the possibility with your doctor and ask them to order a simple blood test to measure whether your immune system is reacting to alpha-gal.

If you test positive, the main strategy for managing the allergy is to avoid eating any food product from a mammal, including milk and cheese, as well as other potential triggers, such as more tick bites.

Read labels carefully. Some products contain additives such as carrageenan, which is derived from red algae and contains alpha-gal.

In extreme cases, people with alpha-gal syndrome may need to carry an EpiPen to prevent anaphylactic shock. Reputable websites, such as the CDC and alphagalinformation.org, can provide more information and advice.

Mysteries remain as alpha-gal syndrome spreads

Since alpha-gal syndrome was first formally documented in the early 2000s, scientists have made progress in understanding this puzzling condition. Researchers have connected the allergy to specific tick bites and found that people with the allergy can have a higher risk of heart disease, even without allergy symptoms.

But important mysteries remain.

Scientists are still figuring out exactly how the tick bite tricks the human immune system and why tick saliva is a trigger for only some people. With growing public interest in alpha-gal syndrome, the next decade could bring breakthroughs in preventing, diagnosing and treating this condition.

For now, the next time you are strolling in the woods or in long grasses, remember to check for ticks on your body, wear long sleeves, long pants and tick repellent to protect yourself from these bloodthirsty hitchhikers. If you do get bitten by a tick, watch out for odd allergic symptoms to appear a few hours after your next steak or handful of gummy bears.

Lee Rafuse Haines is affiliated with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as an Honorary Fellow.

– ref. A red meat allergy from tick bites is spreading – and the lone star tick isn’t the only alpha-gal carrier to worry about – https://theconversation.com/a-red-meat-allergy-from-tick-bites-is-spreading-and-the-lone-star-tick-isnt-the-only-alpha-gal-carrier-to-worry-about-262428

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Alan Jenn, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis

The U.S. government is in full retreat from its efforts to make vehicles more fuel-efficient, which it has been waging, along with state governments, since the 1970s.

The latest move came on July 29, 2025, when the Environmental Protection Agency said it planned to rescind its landmark 2009 decision, known as the “endangerment finding,” that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. If that stands up in court and is not overruled by Congress, it would undo a key part of the long-standing effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

As a scholar of how vehicle emissions contribute to climate change, I know that the science behind the endangerment finding hasn’t changed. If anything, the evidence has grown that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and threatening people’s health and safety. Heat waves, flooding, sea-level rise and wildfires have only worsened in the decade and a half since the EPA’s ruling.

Regulations over the years have cut emissions from power generation, leaving transportation as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

The scientific community agrees that vehicle emissions are harmful and should be regulated. The public also agrees, and has indicated strong preferences for cars that pollute less, including both more efficient gas-burning vehicles and electric-powered ones. Consumers have also been drawn to electric vehicles thanks to other benefits such as performance, operation cost and innovative technologies.

That is why I believe the EPA’s move will not stop the public and commercial transition to electric vehicles, but it will make that shift harder, slower and more expensive for everyone.

Putting carmakers in a bind

The most recent EPA rule about vehicle emissions was finalized in 2024. It set emissions limits that can realistically only be met by a large-scale shift to electric vehicles.

Over the past decade and a half, automakers have been building up their capability to produce electric vehicles to meet these fleet requirements, and a combination of regulations such as California’s zero-emission-vehicle requirements have worked together to ensure customers can get their hands on EVs. The zero-emission-vehicle rules require automakers to produce EVs for the California market, which in turn make it easier for the companies to meet their efficiency and emissions targets from the federal government. These collectively pressure automakers to provide a steady supply of electric vehicles to consumers.

The new EPA move would undo the 2024 EPA vehicle-emissions rule and other federal regulations that also limit emissions from vehicles, such as the heavy-duty vehicle emissions rule.

The possibility of a regulatory reversal puts automakers into a state of uncertainty. Legal challenges to the EPA’s shift are all but guaranteed, and the court process could take years.

For companies making decade-long investment decisions, regulatory stability matters more than short-term politics. Disrupting that stability undermines business planning, erodes investor confidence and sends conflicting signals to consumers and suppliers alike.

A slower roll

The Trump administration has taken other steps to make electric vehicles less attractive to carmakers and consumers.

The White House has already suspended key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that provided tax credits for purchasing EVs and halted a US$5 billion investment in a nationwide network of charging stations. And Congress has retracted the federal waiver that allowed California to set its own, stricter emissions limits. In combination, these policies make it hard to buy and drive electric vehicles: Fewer, or no, financial incentives for consumers make the purchases more expensive, and fewer charging stations make travel planning more challenging.

Overturning the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding would remove the legal basis for regulating climate pollution from vehicles altogether.

But U.S. consumer interest in electric vehicles has been growing, and automakers have already made massive investments to produce electric vehicles and their associated components in the U.S. – such as Hyundai’s EV factory in Georgia and Volkswagen’s Battery Engineering Lab in Tennessee.

Global markets, especially in Europe and China, are also moving decisively toward electrifying large proportions of the vehicles on the road. This move is helped in no small part due to aggressive regulation by their respective governments. The results speak for themselves: Sales of EVs in both the European Union and China have been growing rapidly.

But the pace of change matters. A slower rollout of clean vehicles means more cumulative emissions, more climate damage and more harm to public health.

The EPA’s proposal seeks to slow the shift to electric vehicles, removing incentives and raising costs – even though the market has shown that cleaner vehicles are viable, the public has shown interest, and the science has never been clearer. But even such a major policy change can’t stop the momentum of those trends.

Alan Jenn 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. EPA removal of vehicle emissions limits won’t stop the shift to electric vehicles, but will make it harder, slower and more expensive – https://theconversation.com/epa-removal-of-vehicle-emissions-limits-wont-stop-the-shift-to-electric-vehicles-but-will-make-it-harder-slower-and-more-expensive-262384

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By D. Brian Blank, Associate Professor of Finance, Mississippi State University

When business researchers analyze data, they often rely on assumptions to help make sense of what they find. But like anyone else, they can run into a whole lot of trouble if those assumptions turn out to be wrong – which may happen more often than they realize. That’s what we found in a recent study looking at financial data from about a thousand major U.S. companies.

One of the most common assumptions in data analysis is that the numbers will follow a normal distribution – a central concept in statistics often known as the bell curve. If you’ve ever looked at a chart of people’s heights, you’ve seen this curve: Most people cluster near the middle, with fewer at the extremes. It’s symmetrical and predictable, and it’s often taken for granted in research.

But what happens when real-world data doesn’t follow that neat curve?

We are professors who study business, and in our new study we looked at financial data from public U.S. companies – things like firm market value, market share, total assets and similar financial measures and ratios. Researchers often analyze this kind of data to understand how companies work and make decisions.

We found that these numbers often don’t follow the bell curve. In some cases, we found extreme outliers, such as a few large firms being thousands of times the size of other smaller firms. We also observe distributions that are “right-skewed,” which means that the data is bunched up on the left side of the chart. In other words, the values are on the lower end, but there are a few really high numbers that stretch the average upward. This makes sense, because in many cases financial metrics can only be positive – you won’t find a company with a negative number of employees, for example.

Why it matters

If business researchers rely on flawed assumptions, their conclusions – about what drives company value, for example – could be wrong. These mistakes can ripple outward, influencing business decisions, investor strategies or even public policy.

Take stock returns, for example. If a study assumes those returns are normally distributed, but they’re actually skewed or full of outliers, the results might be distorted. Investors hoping to use that research might be misled.

Researchers know their work has real-life consequences, which is why they often spend years refining a study, gathering feedback and revising the article before it’s peer-reviewed and prepared for publication. But if they fail to check whether data is normally distributed, they may miss a serious flaw. This can undermine even otherwise well-designed studies.

In light of this, we’d encourage researchers to ask themselves: Do I understand the statistical methods I’m using? Am I checking my assumptions – or just assuming they’re fine?

What still isn’t known

Despite the importance of data assumptions, many studies fail to report tests for normality. As a result, it’s unclear how many findings in finance and accounting research rest on shaky statistical grounds. We need more work to understand how common these problems are, and to encourage best practices in testing and correcting for them.

While not every researcher needs to be a statistician, everyone using data would be wise to ask: How normal is it, anyway?

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. When it comes to finance, ‘normal’ data is actually pretty weird – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-finance-normal-data-is-actually-pretty-weird-259365

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton

With the start of another high school football season around the corner, a long-simmering dispute has heated up: prayers at games.

Kennedy v. Bremerton, the case of a high school football coach praying on the field after games, has been in the spotlight since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling. But another football controversy first emerged in 2015, when two Christian schools in Florida made it to the state championships. The games were run by the state’s high school athletic association, a government body.

Association officials barred the teams from conducting a joint prayer over the loudspeaker at the public stadium before kickoff. Allowing a prayer, they said, would violate federal and constitutional law. The First Amendment’s establishment clause forbids the government from establishing an official religion, from giving preference to a specific religion and from giving favor to or disfavoring religion in general.

Officials at one of the schools, Cambridge Christian, filed suit, arguing that banning the prayer violated its right to free speech and to the free exercise of religion. Lower courts entered orders in the association’s favor, but attorneys for the school petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case.

As a faculty member who teaches and researches law relating to religion and education, I believe the justices are likely to take the case – and that its outcome could be consequential. I say this because the Supreme Court’s recent record in First Amendment cases has been more friendly to religious plaintiffs than ever in its history.

Government speech

Following multiple rounds of litigation, Cambridge Christian School v. Florida High School Athletic Association reached a federal appeals court in September 2024. The 11th Circuit unanimously affirmed an order upholding the association’s policy not to allow prayer over the public address system.

The 11th Circuit based its findings in its view that prayer would be a form of “government speech”: that it would be perceived as representing the state association, not just the Christian schools. While the First Amendment limits the government’s ability to regulate private speech, the government is free to regulate its own speech.

Therefore, the court held that association officials did not violate the school’s right to free speech or free exercise of religion.

In part, the 11th Circuit relied on a similar Supreme Court case from 2000, which also examined prayer at a high school football game: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe.

In the Santa Fe ruling, the justices invalidated a board’s policy of allowing prayer over the public-address system “by a speaker representing the student body, under the supervision of school faculty.” Such a policy violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause, they determined, because “an objective Santa Fe High School student will unquestionably perceive the inevitable pregame prayer as stamped with her school’s seal of approval.”

Endorsement test

According to reasoning known as the “endorsement test,” a message violates the establishment clause if someone listening would reasonably assume that the government is endorsing religion. This test originated in Lynch v. Donnelly, a 1984 dispute over a public Christmas display in a Rhode Island park owned by a nonprofit.

Recently, however, the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the endorsement test – potentially strengthening Cambridge Christian’s case. The court rejected it and a similar set of criteria, called the “Lemon test,” in another football-related case, 2022’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

The majority opinion upheld the right of a football coach in a public high school, Joseph Kennedy, to pray silently on the field at the end of games. The justices explained that the establishment clause does not “require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor,” adding that the court “long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot.”

The Lemon test“ was the standard the Supreme Court had used since 1971 to evaluate interactions between the government and religion. Under Lemon, there were three key criteria for whether a law or government speech violated the establishment clause. To be permitted, a governmental action must have a secular purpose, and its main effect cannot either advance or inhibit religion. Lastly, the action “must not foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.‘”

In Bremerton, repudiating Lemon, the justices declared that courts should instead assess establishment clause claims based on “historical practices and understandings.”

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear Cambridge Christian’s appeal, the justices will face two issues. The first is whether communal prayer over a loudspeaker before a state athletic association game is indeed government speech – especially because officials permitted a wide array of nonreligious private speech over the loudspeaker. The second issue is whether the endorsement factor of the government-speech doctrine revives the endorsement test.

Recent record

If the justices agree to hear Cambridge Christian, it must be viewed against the court’s recent history in disputes over religion. The majority has often been friendly toward religious plaintiffs in cases under both religion clauses of the Constitution: establishment and free exercise.

In recent years, for example, the justices allowed aid to faith-based school students, found that a board could not prevent Kennedy from praying silently on the field after games, and granted employees time off to worship.

Two important issues remain to be seen: first, whether the justices will continue expanding the boundaries of religious freedom; and second, whether Cambridge Christian will generate such a result.

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules – and whether it does rule – Florida has already adopted a law requiring athletic associations to allow participating high schools “to make brief opening remarks, if requested … using the public address system at the event.”

Come fall 2025, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case. If so, its judgment may clarify whether private speech using public PA systems becomes governmental speech. Because the 11th Circuit relied on the endorsement test that the Supreme Court expressly repudiated, it seems likely that the justices will hear the appeal and rule in Cambridge Christian’s favor.

If the court does agree to review Cambridge Christian, it may well expand the parameters of religious expression in public – not just at football games.

Charles J. Russo 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. Football and faith could return to the Supreme Court – this time, over loudspeakers – https://theconversation.com/football-and-faith-could-return-to-the-supreme-court-this-time-over-loudspeakers-262104

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Ross Channing Reed, Lecturer in Philosophy, Missouri University of Science and Technology

In his powerful book “The Burnout Society,” South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that in modern society, individuals have an imperative to achieve. Han calls this an “achievement society” in which we must become “entrepreneurs” – branding and selling ourselves; there is no time off the clock.

In such a society, even leisure risks becoming another kind of work. Rather than providing rest and meaning, leisure is often competitive, performative and exhausting.

People feeling pressure to self-promote, for example, might spend their free time posting photos of an athletic race or an elaborate vacation on social media
to be viewed by family, friends and potential employers, adding to exhaustion and burnout.

As a philosopher and philosophical counselor, I study connections between unhealthy forms of leisure and burnout. I have found that philosophy can help us navigate some of the pitfalls of leisure in an achievement society. The celebrated Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 B.C.E., in particular, can offer important insights.

Aristotle on self-development

Aristotle begins the famous “Nicomachean Ethics” by pointing out that we are all searching for happiness. But, he says, we are often confused about how to get there.

Aristotle believed that pleasure, wealth, honor and power will not ultimately make us happy. True happiness, he said, required ethical self-development: “Human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue.”

In other words, if we want to be happy, Aristotle contended, we must make reasoned choices to develop habits that, over time, become character traits such as courage, temperance, generosity and truthfulness.

Aristotle is explicitly linking the good life to becoming a certain kind of person. There is no shortcut to ethical self-development. It takes time – time off the clock, time not engaged in some kind of entrepreneurial self-promotion.

Aristotle is also telling us about the power of our choices. Habits, he argues, are not just about action, but also motives and character. Our actions, he says, actually change our desires. Aristotle says: “By abstaining from pleasures we become temperate, and it is when we have become so that we are most able to abstain from them.”

In other words, good habits are the result of moving incrementally in the right direction through practice.

For Aristotle, good habits lead to ethical self-development. The converse is also true. To this end, for Aristotle, having good friends and mentors who guide and support moral development are essential.

How Aristotle helps us understand leisure

In an achievement society, we are often conditioned to respond to external pressures to self-promote. We may instead look to pleasure, wealth, honor and power for happiness. This can sidetrack the ethical development required for true happiness.

True leisure – leisure that is not bound to the imperative to achieve – is time we can reflect on our real priorities, cultivate friendships, think for ourselves, and step back and decide what kind of life we want to live.

The Greek word “eudaimonia,” often translated simply as happiness, is the term Aristotle uses to describe human thriving and flourishing. According to philosopher Jane Hurly, Aristotle views “leisure as essential for human thriving.” Indeed, “for both Plato and Aristotle leisure … is a prerequisite for the achievement of the highest form of human flourishing, eudaimonia,” as philosopher Thanassis Samaras argues.

While we may have limited means to acquire pleasure, wealth, honor and power, Aristotle tells us that we have control over the most important variable in the good life: what kind of person we will become. Leisure is crucial because it is time in which we get to decide what kind of habits we will develop and what kind of person we will become. Will we capitulate to achievement society? Or utilize our free time to develop ourselves as individuals?

When leisure is preoccupied with entrepreneurial self-promotion, it is difficult for moral development to take place. Free time that is not hijacked by the imperative to achieve is required for the development of a consistent relationship to oneself – what I call a relationship of self-solidarity – a kind of reflective self-awareness necessary to aim at the right target and make moral choices. Without such a relationship, the good life will remain elusive.

Leisure reimagined

Rather than adopting the achievement society’s formulation of the good life, we may be able to formulate our own vision. Without one’s own vision, we risk becoming mired in bad habits, leading us away from the moral development through which the good life becomes possible.

Aristotle makes it clear that we have the power to change not only our behaviors but our desires and character. This self-development, as Aristotle writes, is a necessary part of the good life – a life of eudaimonia.

The choices we make in our free time can move us closer to eudaimonia. Or they could move us in the direction of burnout.

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

– ref. Why leisure matters for a good life, according to Aristotle – https://theconversation.com/why-leisure-matters-for-a-good-life-according-to-aristotle-260392