Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ronald W. Pruessen, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Toronto

Donald Trump still has the capacity to shock. The American president’s unauthorized war against Iran finds him in a vicious destructive mode, recently threatening to push Iran “into the Stone Ages” and to end Iranian civilization if Iran did not agree to “unconditional surrender.”

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Read more:
Donald Trump’s apocalyptic and profane threats against Iran expose the unhinged language of war

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Even as the passing weeks have left Iran still standing, Trump’s words and deeds have already inflicted severe damage on the global economy and regional peace in the Middle East.

Trump’s turn toward a wartime posture is striking, but not entirely unexpected. His second-term conduct shows a growing tendency to push an earlier taste for disruption toward outright destruction — at home and abroad.

He now routinely acts in the belief that those who dare to resist his plans deserve the severest forms of punishment that imperial presidential power can deliver.

But Trump’s conduct is grounded in centuries of American experience. The United States has an enduring tendency toward retribution and destruction.

Trump 2.0

Trump’s scorched-Earth proclivity was obvious before the war with Iran. Warning shots came on Jan. 6, 2021, with the assault on both the Capitol and constitutional provisions for presidential succession. Similarly bold efforts began in 2025.

Globally, Trump has been sweeping away leaders, regimes and multilateral systems, using both military and political weaponry: the special operations extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, for example, as well as the launch of illegal attacks on purportedly drug-running fishing boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific (now tallying more than 50 obliterating strikes and 163 deaths).

International ravaging has been a hallmark of Trump 2.0: dismantling highly integrated global trading networks; fuelling a surge in military recruits in allied countries like Canada and Denmark/Greenland; denouncing NATO.

There’s been destruction on the home front too: Elon Musk’s DOGE chain-sawed through congressionally authorized agencies and funding, for example, including the Environmental Protection Agency and 5,800 research projects at the National Institutes of Health. The anti-woke Trump administration has eviscerated diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government, the private sector and academia.

Trump has also literally bulldozed the White House East Wing.

American roots

Centuries of American history foreshadow Trump’s strategy of destruction. The precedents are complex for two reasons.

First, American personal and national interests have often mixed admirable aims with a more basic drive for wealth and power — combining genuine pursuits of democracy and civil liberties and ambitions for social welfare and community with less noble impulses.

Second, the scope and settings in which Trump-like behaviour appears have changed dramatically over more than three centuries — from a chain of Atlantic colonies to a continental nation and, ultimately, a global economic, military and cultural power. Yet across these shifting arenas, similar patterns of destructive and tragic outbursts have repeatedly surfaced.

Among countless examples, the most profound involved the treatment of Indigenous populations. White colonial appetites for land and resources always paired negotiation and repression, with superior weaponry leading to episodes of genocidal annihilation when forced migrations and “reservations” were deemed insufficient.

The names of ruthless slaughters pockmark American history: the Apalachee Massacre (Florida, 1704), the Sand Creek Massacre (Colorado, 1864), the Wounded Knee Massacre (South Dakota,1890), among numerous others.

Estimates suggest that in 1492, five million Indigenous people lived in what would become American territory, declining to 300,000 by 1900.

While the histories of Canada, Mexico and broader Latin America are also replete with such tragedies, the evidence of deep and specifically American roots beneath Trump’s virulent destructive impulses is clear.

Slaves and free men

The history of Black Americans is another heinous example of the American capacity for carnage. The experiences of Black slaves and their descendents are soaked in blood.

Prior to the Civil War, estimates suggest the brutality of chattel labour meant life expectancy that was half that of white Americans (21 years versus 43). When freedom came, life remained perilous as violence supplemented Jim Crow segregation laws.

Black homes and businesses burned — the 1921 Tulsa massacre, for example, saw 35 square blocks of Black businesses and residential neighbourhoods destroyed.

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A forgotten coup in the American heartland echoes Trump

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Shotguns and hanging ropes for lynchings also ended lives, stretching from the post-Reconstruction era of the 1880s to 1968.

Racialized people were the most common targets of an American appetite for total destruction — but not the only one. The U.S. Civil War remains one of the most catastrophic in world history, with Union and Confederate deaths now estimated at 698,000.

Destruction abroad

American power in the 20th century saw the periodic unleashing of destructive impulses abroad, some within living memory. Examples include:

• Theodore Roosevelt’s attempt to crush rebellion in the newly acquired Philippines between 1899 and 1902; 120,000 U.S. forces were involved, with 4,300 American and 20,000 “insurrecto” deaths and the loss of as many as 200,000 civilian lives.
• The devastation produced by the Second World War’s “area bombing” campaigns, designed to sap enemy morale by targeting industrial and civilian sites. The campaign escalated into the 1945 “firebomb” assaults on cities like Dresden and Tokyo — and the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• The ecological destruction produced by Agent Orange campaigns in Vietnam and the micro-level horror of the My Lai massacre in the 1960s.
• The Iraq War’s casualty figures: 4,492 American service men were killed and 200,000 Iraqi civilians.

No restraints

American episodes of wanton destruction are part of a broader global history marked by the cruelties of many nations and groups.

At the same time, U.S. leaders and citizens have often been guided — if not fully constrained — by countervailing ideals: respect for human rights, adherence to the laws of war and a desire for the security and opportunity that peace provides.

But how strong are those restraints in 2026? And how vulnerable are hard-won ethical and political norms to Trump’s chilling rhetoric and actions, especially alongside Republican conduct in U.S. Congress and a Supreme Court that has weakened limits on presidential power?

Rising gas prices may prove the least of the consequences.

Ronald W. Pruessen has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

– ref. ‘Bombing our little hearts out’ — How Trump taps into America’s enduring appetite for destruction – https://theconversation.com/bombing-our-little-hearts-out-how-trump-taps-into-americas-enduring-appetite-for-destruction-280699

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Mo Pareles, Associate Professor of English and Medieval Studies, University of British Columbia

How can Pete Hegseth, the United States defense secretary who claims to be a devout evangelical Christian, have placed Quentin Tarantino on the same footing as the word of God?

An example from the early 11th century explains how fake Bible passages can function smoothly in mergers of state and secular power.

Hegseth led a recent Pentagon prayer service with a fictitious Bible verse from Pulp Fiction. From outside the #MAGA ecosystem, this bold fabrication of a Biblical verse is confusing.

That’s because scripture is valued very highly by evangelical Protestants, and it may seem counter-intuitive or blasphemous for Hegseth, who has done so much to merge MAGA rule and militant Christianity, to proclaim Tarantino’s words as the word of God.

But he’s not the first Christian bureaucrat to write his own Biblical verse. In fact, the practice has a long tradition.

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Read more:
Evangelical holy war: Why some Christians think Trump will end the world

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Wulfstan of York

An early example is Archbishop Wulfstan of York, who did something similar in a sermon called Be Godcundre Warnunge (God’s Threat to Sinning Israel).

Wulfstan, who died in 1023, was both a public intellectual and one of the most powerful churchmen in England when the kingdom was under attack, initially, by non-Christian Danish forces.

His generation of literate, high-ranking clerics had found an unusual symbiosis with their secular rulers, often serving them as bureaucrats. Wulfstan, for instance, not only supervised the church bureaucracy and lands; he also wrote laws in the names of successive secular kings.

These laws were vast and ambitious. Among many other things, they categorized clerical ranks and rights, regulated widow remarriage, expelled witches and gave a three-day respite to enslaved people (for fasting and praying).

The laws placed many previously local or unlegislated matters under kingly sovereignty and declared the co-equality of king and God (represented on Earth by archbishops). As such, they both empowered the increasingly centralized state and merged it with, even subsumed it under, church authority.

Chastised citizens

In some of Wulfstan’s sermons he used a prophetic voice, chastising and threatening in God’s name like the Biblical prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.

This was not usual in his milieu, although there are some medieval examples: the 14-century Swedish/Roman abbess St. Birgitta, for instance, openly rebuked the Pope in the voice of Jesus Christ.

Wulfstan’s most famous speech, Sermo Lupi (The Wolf’s Sermon) in 1014, excoriates the English for their sins, saying they’d invited the Danish invasion, and stresses the importance of tithing, praying and respecting the Church.

The 1,000-year-old speech uses surprisingly modern tropes: victimized nationalism, claims of mass sexual vulnerability and an authoritative voice that speaks clearly for both religious and secular power. (The Danes Wulfstan reviles in this sermon did successfully conquer England for a time, and Wulfstan then served the newly Christian King Cnut as a lawmaker).

Translation and forgery

There was at this time no ban on Bible translation; learned churchmen like Wulfstan often translated scripture into the vernacular for pedagogical or pastoral reasons. In Western Europe, the Latin Vulgate, largely translated by St. Jerome in the fourth century from Hebrew and Greek, was the standard scriptural text.

Wulfstan’s later sermon, Be Godcundre Warnunge, quotes the book of Leviticus, Chapter 26, first in Latin and then old English, the language most listeners could actually understand. The passage describes God’s devastating potential vengeance if ancient Hebrews break the covenant; in Wulfstan’s loose and stylish translation, it is transparently about the present-day English at the time.

There is nothing odd about translating the Bible, especially the part called the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, into the vernacular in a way people can understand better.

What’s unusual is that while Wulfstan explicitly says that both passages are God’s words from the Bible, about half of the Latin is Wulfstan’s own composition: Leviticus 26:14-45 is summarized in his distinct barn-burning, hypnotically rhythmic style.

An example: In place of a more mundane verse about being overpowered by and fleeing enemies, Wulstan writes: “… et persequentur uos inimici uestri, et fugietis nullo persequente” (and you will be pursued by your enemies, and you will flee pursued by no one).

Enduring popularity

It’s likely other churchmen at the time noticed Wulfstan wrote these supposed Vulgate verses himself. But there’s no evidence anyone was bothered by it.

This vibrant Latin/English sermon was copied into other manuscripts and continued to be popular into the 12th century, even after the Norman Conquest had marginalized the English language in the church.

This was also not Wulfstan’s first “forgery.” As scholar Nicholas P. Schwartz, an expert in Anglo-Saxon history, notes, Wulfstan had earlier in his career authored The Laws of Edgar and Guthrum, which was presented as a 150-year-old political document.

On these occasions, as with Wulfstan’s ghost-written laws, he does not seem to have been trying particularly hard to cover his tracks. Wulfstan had in essence become the voice of God in England, authorized to interpret and convey God’s will. He had also been gifted with great creativity and inventiveness with which to do so. Attribution was clearly a minor detail.

The demands of Christian leadership

This merging of many forms of authority, both secular and religious (already so obvious in Donald Trump, who has imagined himself as Jesus) may well explain Hegseth’s creative borrowing, as well as for its general acceptance by his political allies.

As with Wulfstan, Hegseth sees himself as responsible for conveying and implementing what he sees as God’s revealed will — in this case, apocalyptic racial violence — through a militant, theocratic state apparatus.

Borrowing and supplementing the divine voice is a traditional aspect of what Hegseth apparently regards as his job.

Mo Pareles is affiliated with the Jewish Faculty Network.

– ref. From Wulfstan of York to Pete Hegseth, fake Bible verses have often been politicized – https://theconversation.com/from-wulfstan-of-york-to-pete-hegseth-fake-bible-verses-have-often-been-politicized-281064

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Allyson Brady, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Carleton University

NASA’s Curiosity rover has identified seven new organic compounds on the planet Mars, according to new research published in Nature Communications.

The researchers believe this organic matter may have been preserved on Mars for more than 3.4 billion years. But is it evidence of life?

It’s not yet possible to determine whether it was delivered by a meteor (or comet or interplanetary dust particles), was formed through geological processes or may be linked to potential ancient life on Mars.

This begs a few questions: What exactly is life? How do we know what to look for? Why is it so hard to determine if an organic compound came from life or not?

As an astrobiologist, my job is to study life in the universe. I have participated in several NASA and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) projects focused on learning how to detect signs of life, as well as training astronauts to be field scientists.

This has taken me to field sites in the Antarctic, hot springs in Western Canada, volcanoes in Hawaii and underwater in British Columbia.

The study of extreme environments on Earth, along with exploration of the lifeless surface of the moon, can help us understand what life can look like. It can also help us understand the other potential non-biological processes that can form organic compounds like ones that have been found on Mars.

Life in extreme environments on Earth

On Earth, scientists study life in extreme environments that we might also expect to find on early Earth or other planets such as Mars. We call these “analogue” environments.

For example, micro-organisms can thrive in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, deep underground or in cold icy places like Antarctica.

As astrobiologists, we can use these analogue environments to test equipment and concepts of operation that may be used to plan life-detection missions on other planets. They also help us better understand how life can survive in extreme environments.

Importantly, these environments help us recognize what kinds of evidence life can leave behind. Identifying biosignatures, or unambiguous signs of life, that can be targeted when looking for life elsewhere is critically important.

On Earth, it’s not hard to find evidence of life. Simply look around you. We are also constantly discovering the existence of life in places where it may have once seemed impossible, such as these microbes buried deep in ocean mud.

In fact, finding locations where there is no life is often more challenging.

What is not a sign of life?

The moon does not contain life. Unlike Mars, where there’s mounting evidence of a warmer watery past, as far as we know there’s little evidence to suggest the moon ever had the right conditions to support life.

The moon is a valuable study site for astrobiology because it offers clues about what is not a sign of life. The moon is constantly being hit by objects such as meteorites and asteroids, objects that would have also hit early Earth and Mars, leaving visible craters on the surface.

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How the Artemis II crew trained to observe and photograph the moon: A NASA science team geologist explains

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Meteorites can contain organic molecules such as amino acids and hydrocarbons that look very much like ones we would expect to be left behind by living organisms.

Micro-organisms, just like your own cells, contain lipids, proteins and nucleic acids. When they die, their organic molecules can become trapped in material such as sediments or minerals, and in some cases, preserved over long periods of time. Even if somewhat degraded, they might survive over millions or even billions of years in a recognizable form even if life itself is no longer present.

But life is not the only way organic molecules can form. Some abiotic chemical reactions can produce organic molecules with no life required. These abiotic processes can lead to the formation of simple organic molecules, life’s building blocks, that form the basis of more complex components.

Reports of gases such as methane or the detection of hydrocarbons on Mars could be related to life. However, scientists know that there are other ways these could have formed. As with the compounds discovered by NASA’s Curiosity rover, they may not readily meet the biosignature criteria of being unambiguously biological.

It’s not easy to decide what is a biosignature and what might have an alternative explanation. Studying other locations or materials without life can help.

Analysis of samples brought back to Earth from the asteroid Bennu in 2023 found organics such as sugars, including ribose, for example. Ribose is a component of RNA. This does not mean that there is life on Bennu, instead it shows that these biologically important molecules may be widely distributed in the solar system.

These kinds of investigations tell us that there are some organics that may not make good biosignatures because there is an alternative non-biological explanation.

From the moon to Mars

Exploration of the moon helps create an inventory of organic molecules that, while often associated with life, also have another explanation. They may have been delivered by a meteorite and been preserved all this time.

For example, studies of lunar regolith — the dusty moon version of soil — brought back from the Apollo missions and from recent Chinese-led missions have identified organic molecules such as amino acids, ketones and amines. If these same organics are found on other planets, it means that they are not necessarily signs of life. At least, not on their own.

Prior to NASA’s recent Artemis II mission, astronauts, including Canadian Jeremy Hansen, underwent geology training at sites like the Kamestastin Lake impact structure in Labrador. This training prepared them to make detailed geological observations of the moon.

These geological features might play a role in the preservation of organics, possibly shielding them from high temperatures and destructive radiation, sort of like a fridge. Similar features on Mars may then be good targets for astrobiology investigations.

With a 2028 moon landing planned for NASA’s Artemis IV mission, we will soon have even more lunar material to study. These missions are critical for helping astrobiologists fine-tune those unambiguous signs of life that we can then search for when we get to Mars.

As NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers continue exploring Mars, and new missions are planned, in the future we may be able to more confidently answer the question of is it life?

Allyson Brady receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and has been supported by the Canadian Space Agency in the past.

– ref. Did NASA’s Curiosity rover find signs of ancient life on Mars? An astrobiologist explains how we determine ‘life’ – https://theconversation.com/did-nasas-curiosity-rover-find-signs-of-ancient-life-on-mars-an-astrobiologist-explains-how-we-determine-life-280658

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Franklin Calazana, Ph.D student, psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Erectile disorder (ED) refers to a persistent difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection sufficient for satisfying sexual activity. It affects millions of men worldwide, including up to one in four in the United States. Beyond physical functioning, erectile difficulties can impact sexual confidence, self-esteem, relationship satisfaction and quality of life.

Although prevalence increases with age, age alone does not explain ED. Medical conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and the after-effects of surgery (prostate surgery particularly) can disrupt erectile functioning.

Psychological contributors are also common. Performance anxiety, stress and relational concerns frequently cause ED or interact with biological factors, making ED a complex condition, not a single, isolated problem.

Treatment for erectile dysfunction

Currently, most treatment approaches include medication, sex therapy or a combination of both. Phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, such as Viagra and Cialis, are widely prescribed and increase blood flow to the penis in response to sexual stimulation.

Their on-demand dosing and ease of oral use make them appealing. However, they are not appropriate for everyone. Certain medical conditions, side-effects, concerns about reduced spontaneity, lack of efficacy or cost can limit their usefulness.

Sex therapy offers another well-established treatment option. It can help individuals and couples reduce performance anxiety, improve communication and sexual satisfaction and rebuild sexual confidence. Yet access is uneven. Cost, waitlists, geographic limitations and stigma prevent many people from receiving timely care.

At the same time, technology is transforming how ED is assessed and treated. From app-connected devices to immersive virtual-reality environments, new tools are expanding both research and clinical possibilities.

At the EROS Research Chair, we study how innovations can be integrated into ED treatment. Several promising directions are already emerging.

Monitoring erectile health: Anytime, anywhere

Smart penile rings are transforming assessment. These wearable devices are placed around the penis during sleep or sexual activity and collect continuous data on erection strength and duration. The data are stored online, accessible through the user’s app, and can be shared with specialists.

The data are more objective than patient recall and offer more information than a clinic visit can provide, making it possible to assess whether difficulties are consistent or situational, or if they are improving with treatment.

Devices such as the Techring connect to a smartphone app and can be used independently at home, providing greater privacy, convenience and patient engagement.

Virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) creates immersive, computer-generated environments that simulate real-life experiences. In sexual health research, VR allows arousal and erectile responses to be examined in controlled, yet realistic contexts.

Recent studies show men with ED display different responses to VR sexual scenarios compared to men without the condition. In 2024, our team found reduced arousal levels, while other researchers observed weaker and shorter-lasting erections during scenarios such as masturbation, oral sex and penetrative intercourse.

Beyond diagnosis, VR may help identify which situations are most challenging for a given individual: specific activities, partner contexts or environmental factors. This information can guide more personalized treatment planning rather than relying solely on generalized recommendations.

The promise of regenerative medicine

Most existing treatments manage symptoms rather than address underlying tissue damage. Regenerative approaches, including platelet-rich plasma, stem cell therapies and low intensity shock-wave therapy aim to stimulate blood vessel and tissue growth and repair.

Pre-clinical studies, largely in animal models, suggest potential improvements in erectile function and acceptable short-term safety. Early human findings for shock-wave therapy indicate possible benefits for penile blood flow.

However, these interventions remain experimental. Protocols are not standardized and long-term effectiveness and safety are still unclear. Larger, high-quality human trials are needed.

Vacuum devices: A low-tech option, reimagined

Vacuum erection devices have existed for decades. They create negative pressure around the penis to draw blood in, then a constriction ring helps maintain the erection.

Older models use a physical pump to create that negative pressure. Newer models are battery-operated, quieter and can be app-connected, reducing awkwardness and required physical effort of older models.

Although not new, vacuum devices remain a valuable option, particularly for people who cannot use medications or prefer non-pharmacologic approaches. They may also be combined with medication for additive effect.

A new era for erectile health

For decades, ED treatment relied heavily on self-reporting and a narrow set of treatment options. Now, wearable technologies offer objective, real-time data, VR provides insight into situational and contextual factors and regenerative therapies seek to rectify damaged tissue. Even established tools like vacuum devices continue to evolve.

Together, these advances support an increasingly personalized, data-driven and patient-centred care model. Although many technologies are still emerging, they promise a future in which ED is understood and treated with greater precision, nuance and compassion.

This article was co-authored by Elisabeth Gordon, MD, CST. She is a psychiatrist and certified sex therapist and a fellow at the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health.

David Lafortune receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Franklin Calazana and Éliane Dussault do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Erectile disorder: How science is moving beyond viagra – https://theconversation.com/erectile-disorder-how-science-is-moving-beyond-viagra-270935

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Elizabeth Buckner, Associate Professor of Higher Education, University of Toronto

Canada’s 2024 cuts to international study permits led to significantly larger reductions in study permit approvals than intended, according to a report by the auditor general tabled in March 2026.

The report found the reduction in study permit approvals was driven by a decline in applications and lower-than-projected approval rates, with smaller provinces disproportionately affected.

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Should I stay or should I go? Rural international students face housing, job crunch

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The report also highlights how the reforms failed to meaningfully improve oversight and program integrity. Instead, they emphasized surveillance and monitoring.

For decades, international students were celebrated in Canada for their economic contributions, skills and diversity. But as the number of temporary migrants in Canada skyrocketed after the COVID-19 pandemic, international students became convenient scapegoats for a broader housing and affordability crisis.

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International students cap falsely blames them for Canada’s housing and health-care woes

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In 2024, the federal government announced a major shift, cutting the number of international study permits it would issue by roughly a third. In part, this was justified in the name of reining in excess and fraud.

Examining shifting policy

As researchers who have studied the racialization of Asian international students and their experiences, we’ve watched as federal policy and public discourse around international students has dramatically shifted, making students’ daily lives more difficult, often with inadequate institutional supports.

In our recent book Not your Cash Cow, Not Your Scapegoat: Student Migration and Canadian Universities, we study the experiences of over 145 international students from China, India and South Korea at five flagship universities.

We find that colleges and universities continue to support international students through piecemeal services, rather than reckoning with what it would mean to become anti-racist organizations.

Changing notions of student migrants

Another report issued recently from the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, presented to the House of Commons, acknowledges aspects of international students’ precarity and vulnerabilities.

But solutions to address these conditions are notably absent from its recommendations. Instead, it reinforces claims that position international students as contributing to housing costs, health-care wait times and youth unemployment.

In the 2025 budget, the federal government signalled yet another shift in its approach and language around international students.

The budget announced a desire to welcome international graduate students as part of a broader strategic effort to recruit exceptional “global talent,” with new scholarships for international doctoral students.

This approach repositions certain international students as highly desirable. It privileges those with high levels of cultural and economic capital. At the same time, it signals a desire to further cut the number of study permits available generally.

A racialized group facing racist backlash

As the volatility of the past few years makes clear, policy efforts remain focused on managing the scale and composition of international student populations.

University discussions of international students tend to celebrate their diversity while ignoring race, while student migrants have been on the receiving end of xenophobia and racism.

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Read more:
International students are not to blame for Canada’s housing crisis

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The vast majority of international students in Canada come from Asia: Indian students make up the largest share, with many hailing from Punjab.

Much of the blame in terms of casting international students as responsible for housing pressures has been directed at these Indian students, even as they themselves are among the most affected. This has occurred alongside an alarming rise in police-reported hate crimes targeting South Asians.

Chinese international students also experienced the brunt of anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Skepticism around Canada’s global alliances

The federal government’s current shift towards welcoming “global talent” is its Canada-India Talent and Innovation Strategy, which aims to boost national science and innovation capacity.

This also coincides with rampant skepticism over China’s growing role in international science and concerns over intellectual property.

At the same time, international students face greater scrutiny, regulations and differential tuition policies.

Many international students pay up to six times what domestic students pay. Average international student tuition has continued to increase since 2024, while many programs and student services are being cut to the detriment of students and communities.

Diverse experiences of Asian students

Our research examines how the administrative and legal category of the “international student” flattens the diverse and heterogeneous experiences of students from Asia and their multidimensional everyday lives.

The stereotypes, micro-aggressions, othering and racism that international students face on- an off-campus were exacerbated by COVID-19 but predate and outlast the pandemic.

We also found that international students are often not included in their institutions’ equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) efforts, which tend to focus primarily on domestic students.

International students are also under-supported by campus support services that often lack cultural awareness and sensitivity. Such conditions contribute to a sense of conditional belonging and inclusion.

Yet, despite these structural and interpersonal challenges, many international students from Asia build deep connections and communities, often through online networks or in spaces comprised of multiple ethnic communities. Many continue to hold long-term aspirations to stay in Canada.

Shift in buzzwords

The shift in federal language, which now names selected “exceptional” international students as a source of “global talent,” is not new.

It echoes earlier innovation strategies of the 2000s, which sought to recruit international students as skilled migrants and “highly qualified personnel” for a knowledge economy.

As with prior waves, this language shift represents long-standing patterns in Canadian history, whereby immigration policy oscillates between recruitment and restriction.

If our project teaches us anything, it’s that the shift from scapegoating international students to now selectively welcoming “global talent” will not change broader structural conditions. New recruits will still face challenges around racism and integration.

It may even introduce new forms of academic competition and suspicion in a society where some institutions have already been criticized as “too Asian.”

Neighbours, classmates, friends

Our research has made clear that recent policy shifts risk reproducing long-standing assumptions — that international students are welcome only to the extent that they are useful. We call this “transactional integration” in our book. Previously, international students were useful for their revenue and future labour, but now Canada needs them for its competitiveness agenda.

Yet again, this transactional and conditional approach to inclusion means Canadian may never get to know the international students who come to study, with their full and complex lives and their distinctive needs.

These are people who will be our neighbours, classmates and friends — if we are willing to see student migrants defined by qualities other than their visa status.

Elizabeth Buckner receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Government of Canada.

Ashley Manuel, Eun Gi (Cathy) Kim, and Sophie Xiaoyi Liu do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Cash cows, scapegoats — and now global talent: Asian international students want to be seen for who they are – https://theconversation.com/cash-cows-scapegoats-and-now-global-talent-asian-international-students-want-to-be-seen-for-who-they-are-278359

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Erin Leigh Courtice, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Psychology, Toronto Metropolitan University

You’ve typed it, deleted it and typed it again. You need to let your colleague know there’s a problem with a project at work. Should you use a grinning face — 😄 — in that Slack message to soften the blow, or an angry face — 😠 — to show your distress?

If you’ve experienced this type of internal debate, you’re not alone. Instant messaging now dominates workplace communication, with 91 per cent of businesses using two or more chat platforms. But when we instant message, we can’t see our colleagues’ facial expressions. We try to compensate with emojis, using them as stand-ins for non-verbal cues.

But do emojis actually help, or can they backfire?

My recent study, conducted with colleagues at the University of Ottawa and published in Collabra: Psychology, reveals that emoji choice matters. The emoji you pick, and whether it matches the tone of your message, may impact both how competent your co-workers think you are, and how appropriate your message is for the workplace.

The research project

We asked 243 research participants to read short workplace instant messages from a hypothetical co-worker.

The messages varied on three dimensions: the emotional tone (positive, negative or neutral), the emoji attached (a grinning face 😀, an angry face 😠 or none) and whether the sender was described as a woman or a man.

Participants rated how competent they thought the message sender was. They also rated how appropriate the message felt for a professional setting.

No emoji is often the safest bet

Overall, messages with no emoji received the highest ratings for competence and appropriateness. A neutral “Can I have Tuesday off?” read as perfectly professional. So did a more positive: “Just attended another super-effective presentation.”

When the sender added a 😀 to either message, the ratings held steady. This is likely a reassuring finding if you’re someone who likes using emojis to sprinkle warmth into your messages.

On the other hand, when the sender added a 😠, competence and appropriateness ratings dropped.

This finding was remarkably consistent: across positive, neutral and negative sentence content, the no-emoji version was either the top-rated option or statistically tied for first place.

Match emoji and message tone

But the real story is that emojis need to match the tone of your message. A grinning face 😀 attached to “Someone broke the printer again” came across as less competent and less appropriate than either a negative emoji or no emoji at all.

Here, the mismatch may have created the impression that the message was passive-aggressive or insincere.

Notably, an angry face 😠 paired with a negative message fared better than one tacked onto a positive or neutral one. However, sending that same negative message with no emoji still outperformed the congruent but angry version.

For negative messages, emojis that fit the emotional tone of the text don’t really help. Those that clash actively hurt.

Women rated women more strictly

We also tested whether the sender and participant gender changed any of this. For competence, they didn’t — which is notable given evidence that women are judged more harshly for expressing negative emotion in face-to-face workplace settings.

One possibility is that text-based communication mutes the impact of gender enough to blunt that bias. When gender cues are reduced to a name or profile picture at the top of a chat window, rather than continuously signalled through appearance or voice, recipients may simply process them less.

For appropriateness, we found a small but significant effect: women rated negative emojis from women senders as less appropriate than men did. It’s a modest finding, but it aligns with research suggesting that women sometimes hold other women to stricter professional standards — an interesting thread worth pulling on in future work.

Small choices carry weight

The key takeaway for emojis at work is this: match, don’t mask. A positive emoji appended to a positive or neutral message is fine, but using one to sugarcoat bad news may detract from perceptions of competence.

Negative emojis are generally riskier than their positive counterparts, but if you’re going to use one, at least make sure the message underneath is genuinely negative. And when in doubt, the plainest option — no emoji — almost never hurts.

We’re still collectively figuring out the norms of digital professional communication. Of course, a controlled study with undergraduates reading hypothetical messages can only tell us so much about your workplace messaging thread. Workplaces will all have their own norms to navigate, and most of us run private experiments every day in our chat apps.

Studies like this one suggest that the small choices — a grinning face here, or an angry face there — may carry more weight than we think. The good news is that the underlying principle is pretty intuitive: say what you mean, and let the emoji agree with you.

The current study was supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. How emoji use at work can determine how competent your colleagues think you are – https://theconversation.com/how-emoji-use-at-work-can-determine-how-competent-your-colleagues-think-you-are-280702

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By James Horncastle, Assistant Professor and Edward and Emily McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Simon Fraser University

Many analysts feared the war in Iran waged by the United States and Israel would have disastrous consequences for Ukraine.

A range of issues resulting from the conflict have in fact hurt Ukraine. But the biggest consequence of the war, both globally and for Ukraine, has been its impact on oil.

Money, and the economy more broadly, are known as the sinews of war. In Russia, oil revenues are the sinews that power the Russian economy and the country’s military more broadly.

The war in the Middle East, as expected, disrupted global oil supplies and caused a significant uptick in the price of oil. The U.S. lifted restrictions on countries like India that buy Russian oil to alleviate pressure on key allies. In many respects, this chain of events has been the perfect storm to advance Russian interests.

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Read more:
How the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran helps Russia in its war against Ukraine

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Ukraine fights back

But even though shifting international attention is to Ukraine’s disadvantage, a key aspect of warfare is that all participants generally play a role in its outcome.

Ukraine, rather than idling, has increased its targeting of Russia’s energy infrastructure during the war in Iran.

Ukrainian officials, in fact, were quite explicit about this approach after Donald Trump once again lifted sanctions on Russian oil, striking Russian oil refineries within hours of the president’s announcement.

The Ukrainian attacks have prevented Russia from effectively exploiting higher oil prices — and its own war effort in Ukraine is facing a sustained challenge as well.

Surviving the winter

Both Russia and Ukraine have long sought to undermine the each other by attacking infrastructure. Russia, in particular, has become noteworthy for attacking civilian infrastructure in an effort to break the will of the Ukrainian people.

The winter typically marks an escalation in this Russian strategy; this past winter was no exception. The cold weather, combined with declining U.S. support for Ukraine, meant Russia’s infrastructure attacks were particularly devastating.

But the damage has given Ukraine an opportunity, allowing it to determine what attacks create the biggest challenges for its repair and reconstruction teams.

These lessons are now being weaponized against Russia. After determining what Russian attacks most damaged its own energy infrastructure, Ukraine is returning the favour via its strikes on Russia.

Ukrainian innovations

The Russia-Ukraine war has exposed numerous innovations and developments in terms of war-fighting technology — especially drones.

Both Ukraine and Russia have improved drone technology, but Ukraine is at the forefront of drone technology development — so much so western countries like the United Kingdom and Germany are approaching Ukraine’s government to acquire it.

Tech evangelists have oversold the efficacy of drones in direct combat operations. But Ukraine has developed drone technology to make up for shortages of artillery ammunition.

Drones may have limited impact at the battlefront due to drone countermeasures, but their long range makes them highly effective against softer targets — like Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian response

Just as Ukraine began to increased its attacks against Russian oil infrastructure, the U.S. and Israel launched their war in Iran. The lessons Ukraine has learned from Russia’s strikes on its own energy infrastructure over the years suddenly became all the more critical.

The rising price of oil, as well as an absence of international attention because of the Middle East conflict, created a scenario that many feared would provide Russia with a free hand in Ukraine.

Russia, after all, already possesses significant material advantages over Ukraine. But it faces a major challenge: the morale of both Ukrainians and Russians.

For the Ukrainians, the war against Russia is existential. In Russia’s case, despite Putin’s efforts to label the war a necessity, it’s more a threat to his government than to the Russian people.

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Read more:
Cities helping cities rebuild: How local partnerships are shaping Ukraine’s recovery

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The importance of the economy

The health of a nation’s economy is critical to the success of any country at war. For Russia, the economy is even more vital because of the Ukraine war’s aforementioned weakness in purpose. With a strong economy, the Russian government is better able to sell the war both abroad and domestically.

Putin has tried to offset the cost of the war on the Russian people by outsourcing the conflict, including using Iranian drones and North Korean soldiers.

Russia has also recruited soldiers globally with the promise of wealth, particularly from the Global South.

This type of outsourcing minimizes the direct impact on the Russian people. But it also requires money.

Impact of Ukrainian attacks

Ukraine has proven remarkably effective at targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure. Using cheap drones, as well as domestically developed missiles, Ukraine’s campaign against Russian energy is bearing fruit.

Ukrainian strikes initially reached a scale where more than 40 per cent of Russia’s oil industry was disrupted. This took place as Russia’s budget deficit had already exceeded its forecast for 2026.

Ukraine’s strikes have been so successful that allied countries have requested Ukrainians roll them back due to the ongoing war in Iran. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, has rejected such appeals.

Ukraine needs outside support to keep fighting, but international backing has not proven decisive. Continuing to undermine the Russian economy, however, has the potential to yield decisive results.

James Horncastle 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. Ukraine is countering the impact of the war in Iran by attacking Russian energy facilities – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-is-countering-the-impact-of-the-war-in-iran-by-attacking-russian-energy-facilities-280204

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kanwal Bokhari, Assistant Professor (Teaching) Finance, University of Calgary

When an entrepreneur leaves a salaried job to pursue a venture, the conversation nearly always centres on them: the risk they’re taking, the opportunity they’re pursuing and the funding they need.

But for every entrepreneur who makes that leap, there’s often a spouse or partner who may not have chosen the startup life but is about to live it anyway.

These partners frequently lend savings, absorb extra housework and provide the emotional scaffolding that keeps the venture going. Despite this, they remain nearly invisible in both policy and research even though without them, many new businesses would never get off the ground.

Instead, governments typically pour resources like grants, accelerators and mentorship programs squarely at founders. These kinds of supports are usually designed for individual founders, and rarely acknowledge the wider household that is often sharing that risk in practice.

The costs borne by partners are real, and research like ours is only beginning to measure them.

The cost nobody is counting

More than 83,000 Canadian businesses were created in 2023 alone, according to Statistics Canada, and the vast majority of them were small, with four employees or fewer. For many of the entrepreneurs creating those businesses, there are families at home absorbing the consequences.

Scholars have paid close attention to how starting a business affects founders’ own mental health and happiness. What they have largely overlooked is the person standing next to the founder, even though work and family life are deeply intertwined, and stress in one domain often spills over into the other.

The scattered evidence that does exist is troubling. In Denmark, researchers found that spouses of new entrepreneurs were significantly more likely than spouses of non-entrepreneurs to be prescribed sleep aids and anti-anxiety medication in the two years after the business launched.

Similarly, in Australia, a recent study found measurable drops in psychological health among partners whose spouses entered self-employment.

These findings confirm that spousal strain is real, but they leave a crucial question unanswered: Why does it happen, and does the answer depend on what kind of business gets started and who starts it? Our recent study addressed exactly that question.

Three decades, 628 couples

We followed 628 British couples through three decades of life, drawing on two large national surveys that tracked the same households from 1991 to 2022. In every couple, one partner left a salaried job to start a business. Most went solo; around 20 per cent hired employees. About 58 per cent of the founders were men.

We also compared these households to similar couples where one partner changed jobs but stayed in paid employment. Partners of new entrepreneurs reported a meaningful drop in their own mental health compared to partners of people who simply switched employers.

We also found that this toll on well-being crossed over from the founder to their spouse along two specific routes: money and time.

New businesses typically earn less than the salaried job they replaced, especially in the early years. The mortgage, the school fees, the grocery bill — none of these shrink to match the new income. The financial squeeze manifests as constant low-grade worry.

Founders also work long hours, often nights and weekends, and those hours come directly out of a couple’s shared life. The partner left at home picks up the domestic tasks the founder used to handle, often without anyone explicitly agreeing to the new arrangement.

Both routes showed up clearly in our data. Which one mattered more depended on two things: the founder’s gender and the type of business.

How gender and business type change the picture

The money route hurt spouses across the board, regardless of whether the founder was a man or a woman. The time route was different. When men started businesses, their working hours shot up, and their partners paid the price through increased responsibilities at home.

When women started businesses, however, the same spike in hours did not appear, and their partners’ well-being was not affected through this route. Instead, women who launched ventures continued shouldering the bulk of the housework and child care alongside their businesses, rather than passing those responsibilities to their partners. They absorbed the time cost themselves.

This pattern reflects broader, persistent inequalities in how domestic labour is distributed within households.

The type of venture mattered, too. Founders who worked alone bore the brunt of the income hit, as they had no employees to generate revenue, so their own earnings dropped sharply — pulling household finances with them. For their partners, money was the main source of strain.

Founders who hired staff faced a different problem: managing employees meant longer hours spent on recruiting, training and oversight, even if the business was earning enough. For their partners, lost time together was the bigger issue.

Recognizing the family behind the founder

Our results suggest a one-size-fits-all support package for entrepreneurs will inevitably miss the mark. Different kinds of ventures create different pressures at home: Solo founders may need financial breathing room, employer-founders may need help reclaiming time.

Before launching a business, couples can benefit from conducting a “family-stress audit” — a conversation that involves mapping out the likely income hit and time demands for the specific type of business being planned.

For policymakers and support organizations, support should be matched to the type of strain. Entrepreneurship support organizations could expand to include partner-oriented resources, such as information sessions or planning tools, to support those who didn’t start the business but are living with its consequences every day.

Entrepreneurship is widely credited with creating jobs, driving innovation and economic growth. But it also imposes private costs on the partners who provide the hidden labour and emotional support that make new ventures possible.

Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward building startup ecosystems that sustain not just entrepreneurs and their ventures, but the families behind both.

Seok-Woo Kwon received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Jia Bao, Kanwal Bokhari, and Wei Yu do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. When a spouse starts a business, the other partner pays a hidden price – https://theconversation.com/when-a-spouse-starts-a-business-the-other-partner-pays-a-hidden-price-280414

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By David Roger Marples, Professor, Russian and East European History, University of Alberta

The explosion at the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine on April 26, 1986, changed the lives of thousands of Soviet citizens.

The plant was located 20 kilometres from of the Belarus border, near the confluence of the Uzh and Prypiat rivers and the Kyiv Reservoir. The area was remote, with scattered farms across a rural landscape.

Wind and rainfall dispersed the radiation to the north and northwest. The authorities evacuated the city of Prypiat, three kilometres to the north where 55,000 workers lived, 40 hours after the accident.

More than 70 officials in the Soviet Union’s ruling Communist Party fled the plant. Two operators were killed instantly, while 28 firemen and first aid workers sent to the site died of radiation sickness within three months.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the party’s central committee, had only been in office for six weeks at the time.

In March, he had appeared before the 27th party congress to announced “new thinking,” with watchwords “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring). Nonetheless, the Soviet government’s reaction to news of the Chernobyl disaster was to stay silent for 40 hours.

On April 28, Soviet citizens heard that an accident had taken place, two people had died and a government commission had been set up to investigate.

What happened at Chernobyl?

The accident at Chernobyl occurred as a result of a safety experiment to determine power generation during a shutdown. It occurred over a holiday period with neither the plant director nor chief engineer present. To ensure the experiment’s success, operators dismantled seven mechanisms that would have safely shut down the reactor.

The graphite-moderated RBMK reactor, based on control rods, had an innate flaw unknown to the operators. It became unstable if operated at low power. When an operator lowered the power, it caused a surge that blew the roof off the reactor, spreading graphite from the core and creating a radiation cloud.

In early May, Gorbachev appeared on television but used the time to denounce “sensational” reports about mass casualties.

Members of the public in the main fallout areas of Ukraine and Belarus were desperate for information. Some 600,000 “liquidators” had the task of removing contaminated topsoil. Coal miners from the Russia and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine constructed a shelf below the reactor to prevent it falling to the water table.

It took three years before Soviet authorities published maps detailing where radioactive cesium had fallen. The area covered most of Belarus, large areas of northern and western Ukraine, and part of southern Russia.

Thousands of liquidators died between 1986 and 1989, mostly from heart attacks. They were men in their 20s and 30s.

Thyroid cancer developed among children in Belarus by 1990, affecting more than 3,000. Ukraine placed a moratorium on building new reactors by 1990, and Chernobyl itself was shut down by 2000 with a roof (sarkofag or sarcophagus) over the damaged reactor.

Public reaction

As the scale of the disaster became clearer, anger and disillusionment grew among the population. In particular, many questioned why all the energy industries were under Moscow’s control, in ministries that had little knowledge of the local area.

In a way, Chernobyl created glasnost. Journalists wrote critiques of scientists supervising the accident’s aftermath and about the health consequences. The casualty rates far exceeded the totals publicized by the World Health Organization.

In November 1988, anti-nuclear power protests took place in Kyiv under the slogan “The Environment and Us.” Dr. Yuriy Shcherbak (later Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada) formed the Green World Association, which later became the Green Party of Ukraine. A popular movement called Rukh was founded in 1989 and focused on Ukrainian sovereignty, language and telling the truth about Chernobyl.

Both Ukraine and Belarus, however, were slow to accept political change. Party leaders did little to help overcome the aftermath of Chernobyl. A notable rift was evident in both societies between the scientific and party elite on the one hand, and activists, journalists and the general public on the other.

The aftermath of Chernobyl

In August 1986, a Soviet team arrived in Vienna to explain the causes of the accident to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Led by Soviet chemist Valery Legasov, it blamed the accident entirely on human error, ignoring more than 30 known flaws in the RBMK reactor.

On the eve of the accident’s second anniversary, Legasov committed suicide. He was demoralized by the authorities’ failure to heed his warnings about the safety of the reactor. He was likely also suffering from radiation sickness.

Anti-nuclear sentiment across the Soviet Union halted the vast program to expand atomic energy. Political movements in the Baltic States, Ukraine, Georgia and other republics coalesced, forcing the Soviet leadership to make concessions.

By 1991, Gorbachev limited glasnost and introduced the concept of a revised union of sovereign republics. Chernobyl was not the only factor in such a development, but it was a catalyst.

The plant has long been shut down and decommissioned, but its significance remains. Ukraine still depends on nuclear power for about half its energy needs. The Russian invasion saw a brief occupation of the defunct Chernobyl station and a takeover of Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia.

We should remember the bravery of those who fought the fire and cleaned the area. We should also remember the courage of ordinary people who defied the authorities in a quest for hard information and societal change. And we should keep the memory of the date, one of significant change in the former Soviet Union.

David Roger Marples 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. Forty years after the Chernobyl disaster, its legacy still resonates – https://theconversation.com/forty-years-after-the-chernobyl-disaster-its-legacy-still-resonates-279715

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Scott Lear, Professor of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Being regularly active can improve your mental well-being, reduce your chances of disease and increase your lifespan.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate activity (brisk walking, easy cycling) or at least 75 minutes of vigorous activity (running, tennis), along with at least two strengthening sessions, per week. But only 73 per cent of adults meet these guidelines worldwide, and 51 per cent of Canadian adults are considered physically inactive.

I’m a professor in Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and I study how behaviours relate to health and disease. I also write a blog on the role health behaviours play in your health.

What is physical inactivity?

Physical inactivity is defined as not meeting the minimum guidelines for being active. Being physically inactive, however, doesn’t mean you’re not active at all. You could still be doing light activity, like general walking or household chores — just not moderate or vigorous activity. And in general, people who are inactive spend more of their time being sedentary.

Sedentary activities are those of very little or no movement and include sitting, lying down and standing. For most people, the majority of sedentary time is spent sitting.

Various studies report adults spend on average six hours per day sitting. But these studies are based on self-report. The few studies that have used direct measures of activity (such as accelerometers) indicate it may be closer to 10 hours of sitting per day.

This is a concern as the WHO labels physical inactivity as the fourth leading modifiable risk factor for death. It’s estimated that with a 10 per cent increase in activity, 500 million early deaths could be prevented.

Biological changes and health concerns

From a biological perspective, being inactive is more than the opposite of being active. This is because sedentary activities result in unique physiological changes. When you sit, your metabolism slows down. This makes sense, as your energy needs are much lower. It’s not much different from a car engine shutting down at a stoplight.

Prolonged sitting can lead to an accumulation of fats (triglycerides) in your blood. As your body needs less energy when sitting (or lying) down, production of certain enzymes goes down. One of those is lipoprotein lipase (LPL), which breaks down fats in the blood so muscles and organs can use fat for energy.

In rodent studies, LPL decreased when the rodents were inactive. With continuous sitting over months and years, the excess fats can impair insulin and glucose metabolism, and increase your risk for Type 2 diabetes.

Other health risks include weakened muscles. Muscles need movement to keep strong. If they’re not being used, they shrink and get weaker. Varicose veins and deep vein thrombosis can also result from the continually pooling of blood in the lower legs that comes with sitting. And over years, your risk for dementia, cancer, heart disease and early death rise.

It’s quite common to wonder if being active can compensate for sitting. The short answer is yes — being active, even in the presence of long periods of sitting, is better for you than not being active. But it depends on how active you are, and how much you sit.

In a study I co-authored, we found increased sitting was associated with early death regardless of how active you are. But the risk was worse for those who were less active. For those who met the WHO’s physical activity guidelines, sitting for more than six hours per day had the same risk as those who sat less than six hours per day but did not meet the guidelines.

Managing sitting and sedentary behaviour

We’re not going to do away with sitting, nor should we. Sitting is needed to provide time for rest and recovery. Also, many tasks are more comfortably performed while sitting. At present, there isn’t a specific target for sitting time, other than to reduce how much siting you do.

Standing is often mentioned as a solution. And the standing desk industry has exploded in recent years. While standing will result in less sitting, standing for long periods has a similar effect on metabolism as sitting. Other health concerns of prolonged standing include muscle fatigue, varicose veins and potential for greater risk for heart disease.

Replacing sitting (or standing) with movement is the best solution. Our study found replacing 30 minutes of sitting with movement reduced risk for early death by two per cent in people who sat more than four hours per day. But getting up and moving for 30 minutes may not be possible in all situation, so it’s important to reduce continuous, uninterrupted sitting time.

Breaking up sitting every 20-30 minutes with two minutes of activity (light walking, jumping jacks, squats or anything else) is enough to keep your metabolism running and manage insulin and glucose levels. To remind yourself, set your phone alarm every 20-30 minutes and get up and move.

Other ways to decrease sitting time include taking phone calls while pacing in the office and holding walking meetings.

While most people are aware that being active has health benefits, it’s also important to know that being sedentary has health risks. Physical inactivity can adversely affect your health.

Scott Lear has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, Novo Nordisk, Hamilton Health Sciences and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

– ref. Not getting enough physical activity may be harming your health: Here’s what being sedentary does to your body – https://theconversation.com/not-getting-enough-physical-activity-may-be-harming-your-health-heres-what-being-sedentary-does-to-your-body-273675