Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Germán Reyes, Assistant Professor of Economics, Middlebury

Over 80% of Middlebury College students use generative AI for coursework, according to a recent survey I conducted with my colleague and fellow economist Zara Contractor. This is one of the fastest technology adoption rates on record, far outpacing the 40% adoption rate among U.S. adults, and it happened in less than two years after ChatGPT’s public launch.

Although we surveyed only one college, our results align with similar studies, providing an emerging picture of the technology’s use in higher education.

Between December 2024 and February 2025, we surveyed over 20% of Middlebury College’s student body, or 634 students, to better understand how students are using artificial intelligence, and published our results in a working paper that has not yet gone through peer review.

What we found challenges the panic-driven narrative around AI in higher education and instead suggests that institutional policy should focus on how AI is used, not whether it should be banned.

Not just a homework machine

Contrary to alarming headlines suggesting that “ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project” and “AI Cheating Is Getting Worse,” we discovered that students primarily use AI to enhance their learning rather than to avoid work.

When we asked students about 10 different academic uses of AI – from explaining concepts and summarizing readings to proofreading, creating programming code and, yes, even writing essays – explaining concepts topped the list. Students frequently described AI as an “on-demand tutor,” a resource that was particularly valuable when office hours weren’t available or when they needed immediate help late at night.

We grouped AI uses into two types: “augmentation” to describe uses that enhance learning, and “automation” for uses that produce work with minimal effort. We found that 61% of the students who use AI employ these tools for augmentation purposes, while 42% use them for automation tasks like writing essays or generating code.

Even when students used AI to automate tasks, they showed judgment. In open-ended responses, students told us that when they did automate work, it was often during crunch periods like exam week, or for low-stakes tasks like formatting bibliographies and drafting routine emails, not as their default approach to completing meaningful coursework.

**In the graphic explainer, add “tasks” after

Of course, Middlebury is a small liberal arts college with a relatively large portion of wealthy students. What about everywhere else? To find out, we analyzed data from other researchers covering over 130 universities across more than 50 countries. The results mirror our Middlebury findings: Globally, students who use AI tend to be more likely to use it to augment their coursework, rather than automate it.

But should we trust what students tell us about how they use AI? An obvious concern with survey data is that students might underreport uses they see as inappropriate, like essay writing, while overreporting legitimate uses like getting explanations. To verify our findings, we compared them with data from AI company Anthropic, which analyzed actual usage patterns from university email addresses of their chatbot, Claude AI.

Anthropic’s data shows that “technical explanations” represent a major use, matching our finding that students most often use AI to explain concepts. Similarly, Anthropic found that designing practice questions, editing essays and summarizing materials account for a substantial share of student usage, which aligns with our results.

In other words, our self-reported survey data matches actual AI conversation logs.

Why it matters

As writer and academic Hua Hsu recently noted, “There are no reliable figures for how many American students use A.I., just stories about how everyone is doing it.” These stories tend to emphasize extreme examples, like a Columbia student who used AI “to cheat on nearly every assignment.”

But these anecdotes can conflate widespread adoption with universal cheating. Our data confirms that AI use is indeed widespread, but students primarily use it to enhance learning, not replace it. This distinction matters: By painting all AI use as cheating, alarmist coverage may normalize academic dishonesty, making responsible students feel naive for following rules when they believe “everyone else is doing it.”

Moreover, this distorted picture provides biased information to university administrators, who need accurate data about actual student AI usage patterns to craft effective, evidence-based policies.

What’s next

Our findings suggest that extreme policies like blanket bans or unrestricted use carry risks. Prohibitions may disproportionately harm students who benefit most from AI’s tutoring functions while creating unfair advantages for rule breakers. But unrestricted use could enable harmful automation practices that may undermine learning.

Instead of one-size-fits-all policies, our findings lead me to believe that institutions should focus on helping students distinguish beneficial AI uses from potentially harmful ones. Unfortunately, research on AI’s actual learning impacts remains in its infancy – no studies I’m aware of have systematically tested how different types of AI use affect student learning outcomes, or whether AI impacts might be positive for some students but negative for others.

Until that evidence is available, everyone interested in how this technology is changing education must use their best judgment to determine how AI can foster learning.

Germán Reyes 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. At one elite college, over 80% of students now use AI – but it’s not all about outsourcing their work – https://theconversation.com/at-one-elite-college-over-80-of-students-now-use-ai-but-its-not-all-about-outsourcing-their-work-262856

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Margaret Levenstein, Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

People rely on data from federal agencies every day – often without realizing it.

Rural residents use groundwater level data from the U.S. geological survey’s National Water Information System to decide where to dig wells. High school coaches turn to weather apps supported by data from the National Weather Service to decide when to move practice inside to avoid life-threatening heat. Emergency managers use data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to ensure that residents without vehicles have seats on evacuation buses during local emergencies.

On Jan. 31, 2025, websites and datasets from across the federal government began to disappear. As that happened, archivists and researchers from around the world sprang into action, grabbing what they could before it was gone.

Trust in the federal statistical system took another hit when Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer was fired on the heels of a dismal Aug. 1, 2025, employment report.

And reduced data collection at the bureau was already causing concern before her dismissal. The bureau has ceased collection of critical inputs to the Consumer Price Index, likely reducing that inflation indicator’s accuracy, especially at the level of specific locations and products.

As researchers of economics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, we have spent years working with data, often from the federal government. When data and information began to disappear, we were spurred into action to preserve these important public goods.

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, where we work – commonly known as ICPSR – has been making data from governments and researchers available for more than 60 years. We are stewards of this data, preserving it and ensuring that it is accessible in a safe and responsible manner.

Unfortunately, government data is now at risk of becoming less available or disappearing. But there are steps that researchers – and the public – can take to reduce that risk.

Data at risk

Some 8,000 pages were removed from federal websites within a few days of Jan. 31, 2025. Though many were soon restored following substantial outcry and some court orders, it’s still unclear how the restored webpages and datasets may have been changed.

In one preliminary examination, researchers found that 49% of the 232 datasets they reviewed had been substantially altered, including the replacement of the word “gender” with “sex.” This alteration can obscure nonbinary gender identities. Only 13% of the changes the researchers found were documented by the government.

U.S. government data has also become less accessible because of mass firings of federal workers and the dismantling of entire agencies.

Important efforts like the Data Rescue Project and the Internet Archive have been able to preserve a great deal of knowledge and data, but they are mostly limited to publicly available data and information.

No one left to vet data

Many important government data resources contain sensitive or identifying information. This means officials must vet requests before they grant access to data rescue efforts. But many agencies have had their ability to conduct vetting and manage access severely curtailed and, in some cases, eliminated altogether.

Take the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, which provides key data on maternal and child health from around the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention integrates data collected at state and local levels and adds population information to come up with estimates. While some of this data is publicly available, access to most data from 2016 and later requires a request to the CDC and a signed data use agreement.

At the start of 2025, multiple researchers reported to our team at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research that the CDC had stopped processing these requests. In February, researchers discovered that the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System would be discontinued.

The CDC suggested that data collection would restart at some point. But on April 1, the entire Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System team was laid off. This made one of the most valuable sources of data on the health of mothers and babies largely inaccessible, and put plans for its future in limbo.

Similar situations have played out at other agencies, including the dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Center for Education Statistics. Data collected, cleaned and harmonized using taxpayer dollars is now languishing on inaccessible servers.

Inaccessible data

The portal that researchers use to apply for access to restricted federal statistical data now includes a list of data that researchers can no longer access.

Some organizations are leading efforts to restore access to particular datasets. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, for instance, has an agreement with USAID to preserve and provide access to USAID’s education data. Unfortunately, these efforts barely scratch the surface. With very few staff left, there isn’t a clear estimate of which other USAID resources remain inaccessible.

According to our count, 354 restricted datasets from the federal statistical system’s Standard Application Portal have become unavailable due to firings, layoffs and funding cuts.

Data is critical for people and the state and local governments that represent them to make good decisions. Federal data is also used for oversight, so that researchers can verify that the government is doing what it’s supposed to in accordance with its congressionally mandated missions. Government efficiency requires accountability.

And accountability requires high-quality and timely data on operations.

The mass firings of federal employees means that those tasked with ensuring this accountability are doing so while struggling to obtain necessary data.

So where do we go from here?

While the pace of intentional government data removal appears to have slowed, it hasn’t stopped. New datasets under threat of disappearing are being rescued daily. Restructured federal agencies and related changes to – or neglect of – official websites can make data difficult or impossible to find.

What you can do

If you identify data that is at risk, perhaps because its collection has been discontinued or it covers a controversial topic, you can report your observations to the Data Rescue Project, a grassroots effort of archivists, librarians and other concerned people.

The Data Rescue Project has been working for months to identify data and preserve government data, including in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research’s DataLumos open-access archive.

Similarly, the Public Environmental Data Partners, a coalition of nonprofits, archivists and researchers, are preserving federal environmental data and have a nomination form.

Efforts to identify restored data that has been altered are also gaining steam.

Dataindex tracks Federal Register notices that describe proposed changes to 24 widely used datasets from across the federal government, including the American Community Survey from the Census Bureau, the National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the National Health Interview Survey from the CDC. The website also facilitates comment on proposed alterations.

You can help researchers understand the scale of data alterations that have been, and continue to be, made. If you notice changes in public datasets, you can share that information with the American Statistical Association’s FedStatMonitoring project.

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research is continuing our efforts to ensure the preservation of, and access to, existing data, including from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

At the same time, we and other groups are planning future efforts in data collection to avoid gaps in our knowledge.

The federal statistical system is both large and complex, including hundreds of thousands of datasets that people depend on in many ways, from weather forecasts to local economic indicators. If the federal government continues to step back from its role as a provider of high-quality, trusted data, others – including state and local governments, academia, nonprofits and companies – may need to fill the gap by stepping up to collect it.

Margaret Levenstein receives or has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

John Kubale receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and Flu Lab. He previously worked for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. .

– ref. Data that taxpayers have paid for and rely on is disappearing – here’s how it’s happening and what you can do about it – https://theconversation.com/data-that-taxpayers-have-paid-for-and-rely-on-is-disappearing-heres-how-its-happening-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-251787

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Massumeh H. Toosi, PhD Student in Philanthropic Studies, Indiana University

Twelver Shiism is the largest branch within Shiism – one of the two major sects within Islam. Shiism is the second-largest tradition within Islam overall, following the Sunni tradition.

Iran is the only country to have Twelver Shiism as its official religion. In this tradition, religious leaders known as the marājiʿ al-taqlīd – the highest-ranking cleric within Twelver Shiism – and other high-ranking clerics, including ayatollahs, are regarded as moral and spiritual authorities whose guidance extends to both religious and political matters.

The second-largest population of Twelvers after Iran is in Iraq. Other major communities live in Pakistan, India, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and other countries of the Persian Gulf, such as Bahrain and Kuwait. There are also Twelver communities in some Western countries.

I am a practicing Twelver and have worked for an anthropological research project that highlights the rich cultural traditions of ethnic groups across Iran, based on written historical documents that cover various topics. This experience deepened my appreciation for Iran’s diversity, including the many ways in which Twelver Shiism is practiced and understood. Twelver Shiism is deeply rooted in a spiritual, theological and ethical tradition with over a millennium of history.

In Twelver Shiism, these values touch many aspects of daily and communal life. They are present in traditions and rituals, such as during Muḥarram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. They are also reflected in art, architecture and philanthropy as moral and religious obligations.

History and core beliefs

According to the Shiite tradition, the Prophet Muhammad’s family holds a special, divinely guided role in both religious and political leadership of the Muslim community.

Twelver Shiites, however, believe in a continuous line of 12 imams, considered to be descendants of the prophet through his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali. These imams represent moral integrity and spiritual authority and have a deep knowledge of the Quran and Islamic law.

The origin of Shiite identity traces back to the period following Muhammad’s death in A.D. 632. One group of Muslims supported Abu Bakr, a close companion of the prophet, as the first caliph – the successor to Muhammad and the leader of the Muslim community. This group later came to be known as Sunnis. Others believed that Ali, the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, had been designated to lead. This group became known as Shi‘at Ali – the Party of Ali – which eventually evolved into the Shiite branch of Islam.

In the following years, Imam Hussein ibn Ali – the grandson of Muhammad – refused to recognize the authority of the Umayyad caliph Yazid, the ruler of the Umayyad dynasty from 680 to 683. Yazid’s rule marked the beginning of dynastic succession in the caliphate, a change many Shiites criticized as a departure from earlier Islamic principles of leadership. Hussein objected to Yazid’s claim on both political and moral grounds. He questioned Yazid’s legitimacy and refused to pledge allegiance to a ruler he believed was unjust.

Accompanied by a small group of companions and family members, Hussein embarked on a journey toward Kufa, Iraq, where he was intercepted and ultimately killed at the Battle of Karbala in 680. In Twelver Shiism, this death is revered as martyrdom, and the event holds enormous historical and religious significance, as it stands as a symbol of resistance to injustice when faced with tyranny. The remembrance of Karbala stands at the heart of the Shiite worldview. Within the Twelver tradition, it affirms the right to resist injustice.

In the following centuries, further differences over succession led to divisions within Shiites. Twelver Shiites recognize 12 imams, while other groups, such as the Ismailis and Zaydis, follow different descendants of Ali and have formed their own interpretations of religious authority.

Mourning and reflection

The battle of Karbala is mourned as a tragedy but remembered as a moral triumph among Shiite Muslims.

During the month of Muḥarram, the first 10 nights are set aside for reflection on the martyrdom of Hussein. This period culminates on the 10th day known as Āshūrā.

During these nights, Shiite families and communities create spaces of grief and remembrance. In many neighborhoods, shrines and mosques – grand or modest – are adorned with black flags, handwritten prayers, chains and candles.

Taziyyah – elegies and processions – enact the story of the martyrdom of Hussein as a symbol of resistance and sacrifice.

During those 10 days, people often turn living rooms, basements or alleyways into mourning spaces. They hang black, red and green cloth on the walls, and they light candles. Families and neighbors gather to recite poetic elegies and serve tea and food. These moments bring mourning into the rhythm of daily life.

Culture and art

Love for the prophet’s family, and a continuing search for justice and spiritual meaning, has inspired poetry, architecture, ritual and daily practice among Twelver Shiites across generations.

In Twelver contexts, especially in Iran and Iraq, grief is expressed through shrine design. Holy shrines are decorated with mirror mosaics, glowing tiles and engraved prayers. This architecture has symbolic and spiritual significance that deepens the sense of awe and respect in visitors, conveying a sense of hope for divine light and inviting reflection on martyrdom as the most honored form of death, or ashraf al-mawt.

There are other examples of how the spiritual memory of Karbala has inspired Twelver Shiites across generations: Artists in the the Saqqakhana movement, an Iranian art movement that emerged in the 1950s and ‘60s, drew inspiration from devotional structures and other popular rituals of Shiite piety. The word saqqakhanan – house of the water-giver – refers to small shrinelike fountains installed on neighborhood corners, where water is offered in remembrance of Hussein’s thirst at Karbala.

These structures, often decorated with chains, candles, mirrors and handwritten prayers, serve as modest devotional spaces where passersby pause for reflection or prayer. The artists used materials such as calligraphy, amulets, talismans, prayer beads and cloth, and combined them with techniques from modern painting and sculpture. Their goal was not to depict faith directly but to translate its emotional and symbolic language of devotion into visual expression. This movement carried into modern art galleries.

Philanthropic practices

This living tradition also shapes how Twelver Shiism understands generosity and philanthropy as a moral and religious obligation.

Philanthropy in Twelver Shiism evolved under the guidance of contemporary “marāji,” the highest-ranking religious scholars, who interpret the obligations of giving in light of present-day realities.

Like all Muslims, Twelvers are required to give zakat, a key Islamic philanthropic tradition and an obligatory act of giving. In addition, Shiite tradition uniquely includes Khums, a 20% religious obligation on annual savings and surplus income, which Twelvers pay directly to recognized Shiite religious authorities or their appointed representatives. Half is allocated to the needy descendants of the prophet, while the other half is entrusted to religious authorities to support religious, educational and charitable initiatives.

Shiite communities also sustain charitable giving through the institution of waqf, or charitable endowment, which supports mosques, religious schools and aid for the poor.

According to Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the diversity within Islam, including the Shiite tradition, reflects the richness of Islam. Twelver Shiism, in this view, stands as a profound spiritual path within the broader Islamic tradition.

Massumeh H. Toosi 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. Twelver Shiism – a branch of Islam that serves both as a spiritual and political force in Iran and beyond – https://theconversation.com/twelver-shiism-a-branch-of-islam-that-serves-both-as-a-spiritual-and-political-force-in-iran-and-beyond-259853

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Claire Therese Hemingway, Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee

People often prioritize aesthetics when choosing plants for their gardens. They may pick flowers based on colors that create visually appealing combinations and varieties that have bigger and brighter displays or more fragrant and pleasant-smelling flowers. Some may also choose species that bloom at different times in order to maintain a colorful display throughout the growing season.

Many gardeners also strive for ecological harmony, seeking to maintain pollinator-friendly gardens that support bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators. But there are some notable ways in which the preferences of humans and pollinators have the potential to diverge, with negative consequences for pollinators.

As a cognitive ecologist who studies animal decision-making, I find that understanding how pollinators learn about and choose between flowers can add a helpful perspective to garden aesthetics.

Pollinator preferences and rewards

Over millions of years, plants have evolved suites of floral traits to attract specific types of pollinators.

Pollinators can be attracted to flowers based on color, pattern, scent and texture. For instance, hummingbirds typically visit bright red and orange flowers with narrow openings and a tubular shape. The striking red cardinal flower is one that is primarily pollinated by hummingbirds, for example.

Bees are often attracted to blue, yellow and white flowers that can be either narrow and tubular or open. Lavender, sage and sunflower plants all bear flowers that attract bee pollinators.

Flowers offer rewards to visiting pollinators. Nectar is a sugar-rich solution that flowers produce to attract pollinators, which use it to meet their energy needs.

Flowers have an ulterior motive for providing this energy source. While drinking the nectar, pollen can get stuck on the pollinator and transferred to the next flower it visits. This process is essential for the plant’s reproductive success. Pollen contains the plants’ male gametes, which, when deposited onto another flower in the right place, can fertilize the female gametes and produce seeds that grow into new plants. Pollen is also nutrient-rich, containing proteins, lipids and amino acids. Many species, such as bees, collect pollen to feed their developing young.

A battle for resources

Pollinators visit flowers in search of floral rewards. But modifying the features of flowers for aesthetics can be a hindrance to pollinators trying to get these rewards. For example, popular garden plants such as roses and peonies are often bred to have more petals and larger flower heads, making them more visually striking and appealing to humans. But these extra petals may block a pollinator’s access to the center of the flower, where floral rewards are located.

Further, plants have limited resources. Spending them on building aesthetically pleasing but energetically expensive features can mean there’s less left to invest in signals and rewards essential for attracting pollinators. In extreme cases, breeding for aesthetics has led to plants with what scientists and gardeners call “double flowers.” In these varieties, extra petals replace reproductive parts entirely. These plants are often altogether unrewarding for pollinators, since the flowers no longer produce nectar or pollen. Double flowers occur from mutations that convert the pollen-producing stamens and other reproductive organs into petals. They can occur naturally but are rare in wild populations.

Since these double flowers cannot spread pollen or produce seeds effectively, they are unable to reproduce in the wild and pass these mutations on. To cultivate them as garden varieties, people propagate these plants through cuttings – small sections cut from the stem that can be rooted to grow clones of the parent plant. Many common garden plants have popular double-flowered varieties, including roses, peonies, camellias, marigolds, tulips, dahlias and chrysanthemums.

Roses, for example, have become synonymous with having many densely-packed petals. But these popular garden varieties are usually double-flowered or have many extra petals blocking access to the center of the rose and provide no rewards to pollinators.

Consider making your gardens friendlier to pollinators by avoiding these double-flowered plants, and ask your local garden center for recommended varieties if you need help.

Sometimes gardeners intentionally prevent plants from flowering, which limits or eliminates their value to pollinators.

For example, herbs such as thyme, oregano, mint and basil are generally most flavorful and tender before the plant begins to flower. Once it flowers, the plant diverts energy to reproductive structures, and leaves become tougher and lose flavor. As a result, gardeners often pinch off flower buds and harvest leaves frequently to promote continued growth and delay flowering. Letting some of your herbs flower occasionally can help pollinators without affecting your kitchen supplies too much.

Finding the right flowers

Flowers with unusual colors and stronger fragrances can be difficult for pollinators to detect and recognize.

People might favor bright and unusual flower colors in their gardens over naturally occurring shades. But this preference might not align with what the pollinators have evolved to favor in nature. For example, planting human-preferred colors, such as white or pink morphs of hummingbird-pollinated flowers that are typically red, can reduce a flower’s visibility and attractiveness. Even when cultivated varieties have a similar enough color to natural ones to attract pollinators, they may lack other important visual components, such as ultraviolet floral patterns that can guide pollinators to nectar sources.

Breeding plant varieties to accentuate particular aesthetic traits may have unintended consequences for other traits. Changes in flower color through selective breeding can also affect leaf color, as genes involved in pigment production can affect multiple plant tissues. Besides changing the overall appearance of the plant, changing leaf color may alter background contrast between flowers and the leaves, which can make flowers less conspicuous to pollinators.

Many pollinators use a combination of color and scent to detect and discriminate between flowers. But breeding for traits such as color and brightness can alter floral scents due to unintended genetic changes or energetic trade-offs.

Scent helps pollinators locate flowers from farther distances, so unfamiliar or reduced fragrance may make flowers harder to find in the first place. Disruption in either color or scent can make flowers less noticeable to pollinators expecting a familiar pairing and can hinder a pollinator’s ability to learn which flowers are suitable for them in the first place.

A balanced approach for healthy gardens

When flowers are harder to find, pollinators are less likely to visit them. When they offer poor or no rewards, pollinators quickly abandon them for better options. This disruption in plant-pollinator interactions has implications not only for pollinator health but also for garden vitality. Many plants rely on animal pollinators to reproduce and make mature seeds. These are either collected by gardeners or allowed to drop to the ground and sprout on their own to grow new flowering plants the following year.

When selecting plants for a garden, gardeners who want to support pollinators might consider choosing native varieties that have evolved alongside local pollinators.

In most areas of the country, there are native plants with colorful and interesting flowers that bloom at different times, from early spring to late fall. These plants tend to produce reliable floral signals and offer the nectar and pollen needed to support pollinator nutrition and development.

Sterile varieties and double flowers offer little or no rewards for pollinators, and gardens with them may not attract as many pollinators. Letting herbs flower after some harvesting is another simple way to support beneficial insects.

With choices informed by not just your aesthetic preferences but also those of pollinators, you can create colorful gardens that support wildlife and stay in bloom across various seasons.

Claire Therese Hemingway 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. Cultivating for color: The hidden trade-offs between garden aesthetics and pollinator preferences – https://theconversation.com/cultivating-for-color-the-hidden-trade-offs-between-garden-aesthetics-and-pollinator-preferences-261631