Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

After years of steady decline in the number of people executed in the United States, there has been a sharp reversal in 2025.

So far this year, 41 people have been killed in 11 states, with five more executions scheduled before the end of the year.

If all the scheduled executions are carried out, that would make 2025 the year with the most executions since 2010, when 46 inmates were put to death. That year, Texas led the way with 17 executions, while Florida carried out only one.

But this year, the Sunshine State is leading the charge. Florida has executed 15 prisoners in 2025 – the most ever in a single year since 1976, when a brief national moratorium on the death penalty was lifted. Two of the five remaining executions scheduled for 2025 are set to happen in Florida. Texas and Alabama are tied for a distant second, with five executions each.

As someone who has studied the death penalty for decades, what is happening in Florida right now seems to me to be especially important. While in some ways the state is distinctive, in many others it is a microcosm of America’s death penalty system.

The history of the death penalty in Florida

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Florida carried out its first execution in 1827, 18 years before it became a state.

Almost 100 years later, in 1923, Florida replaced hanging with the electric chair as its method of execution. After a brief pause in the use of capital punishment in the 1970s, it was one of the first states to get back in the death penalty business.

In the 1990s, the state had several gruesome botched electrocutions. In three cases, the condemned man caught on fire before dying in the chair. To this day, the electric chair remains legal in Florida, though in 2000 the state Legislature enacted a law whereby prisoners may choose between the electric chair and lethal injection.

Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken the state to task for various constitutional defects in its death penalty laws and practices. In its 1982 decision in Enmund v. Florida, the court ruled that Florida could not use the death penalty to punish people who were minor participants in a crime that led to a murder. And in 2014, the Supreme Court found that Florida was unconstitutionally denying the kind of intellectual disability claims by people with low IQ scores that made them ineligible to be given death sentences.

But these rulings have not stopped the state from continuing to go its own way in death penalty cases. In 2020, the Florida Supreme Court ended the practice of having a court review capital sentences. This review was meant to ensure that those sentences met the U.S. Constitution’s requirements that they be meted out only in cases that truly warrant them and that they be proportional. To determine proportionality, the court undertaking such a review would compare the case in front of them with similar cases in the same jurisdiction in which the death penalty had been imposed.

Then in 2023, Florida enacted legislation ending the requirement of jury unanimity in death cases. Now, it takes only eight out of 12 jurors to send someone to death row. Only three other death penalty states do not require jury unanimity. In Missouri and Indiana, a judge may decide if the jury’s decision isn’t unanimous, and in Alabama, a 10-2 decision is sufficient.

Racial inequality on death row

As in the rest of the country, racial discrimination has long been a feature of Florida’s death penalty system.

Thirty-five percent of the 278 people currently on Florida’s death row are Black. But Black people make up only about 17% of Florida’s overall population.

This is actually lower than the approximately 40% of inmates on death row who are Black nationwide, despite the fact that Black people make up just 14% of the U.S. population.

Across the nation, 13 of the 41 inmates executed so far in 2025 have been Black or Latino men.

Florida leads the nation in the number of people – 30 – who have been sentenced to death only to be exonerated later. Of those, 57% were Black.

A record-setting year

Today, Florida has the second-largest death row population in the United States, with 256 inmates awaiting executions. Only California has more, with 580 inmates on death row, but it has had a moratorium on executions since 2006.

As Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis is responsible for issuing death warrants. In 2025, he has signed a record-setting 15 so far. That’s the most death warrants in the state in a single year since 2014, when Gov. Rick Scott signed off on putting eight people to death.

Though he is Catholic, DeSantis does not subscribe to the church’s staunch opposition to the death penalty. The Florida Catholic Conference of Bishops has been outspoken in taking him to task for his position on capital punishment and for presiding over an execution spree. But that has not stopped him.

Indeed, on Nov. 3, 2025, the governor said that capital punishment is “an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders.” He added that it could be a “strong deterrent” if the state carried out executions more quickly.

DeSantis has served as governor since 2019, and prior to 2025, he had signed nine death warrants. He says that he was focused on other priorities early in his term and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The governor, who is term limited, is in his second and last term. DeSantis’ critics allege that the recent uptick in executions is an attempt to garner attention and prove his tough-on-crime bona fides to a national audience.

Florida: Setting the trend, or bucking it?

The total number of executions in the U.S. went from a high of 98 executions in 1999 to a low of 11 in 2021. But that number has increased every year since.

While only one state, Indiana, has resumed executions after a long hiatus, no other state has increased its use of the death penalty as quickly as Florida has. Elsewhere, the common pattern of allowing people to languish on death row for decades, and in some states seemingly permanently, has held.

And although the problems that have long plagued Florida’s death penalty system remain unaddressed, it now stands alone in dramatically escalating its own pace of executions and is leading America to its own 2025 execution revival.

Read more stories from The Conversation about Florida.

Austin Sarat 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. Under Ron DeSantis’ leadership, Florida leads the nation in executions in 2025 – https://theconversation.com/under-ron-desantis-leadership-florida-leads-the-nation-in-executions-in-2025-269125

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Daniel K. Schwartz, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder

In the home, the lab and the factory, electric fields control technologies such as Kindle displays, medical diagnostic tests and devices that purify cancer drugs. In an electric field, anything with an electrical charge – from an individual atom to a large particle – experiences a force that can be used to push it in a desired direction.

When an electric field pushes charged particles in a fluid, the process is called electrophoresis. Our research team is investigating how to harness electrophoresis to move tiny particles – called nanoparticles – in porous, spongy materials. Many emerging technologies, including those used in DNA analysis and medical diagnostics, use these porous materials.

Figuring out how to control the tiny charged particles as they travel through these environments can make them faster and more efficient in existing technologies. It can also enable entirely new smart functions.

Ultimately, scientists are aiming to make particles like these serve as tiny nanorobots. These could perform complex tasks in our bodies or our surroundings. They could search for tumors and deliver treatments or seek out sources of toxic chemicals in the soil and convert them to benign compounds.

To make these advances, we need to understand how charged nanoparticles travel through porous, spongy materials under the influence of an electric field. In a new study, published Nov. 10, 2025, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, our team of engineering researchers led by Anni Shi and Siamak Mirfendereski sought to do just that.

Weak and strong electric fields

Imagine a nanoparticle as a tiny submarine navigating a complex, interconnected, liquid-filled maze while simultaneously experiencing random jiggling motion. While watching nanoparticles move through a porous material, we observed a surprising behavior related to the strength of the applied electric field.

A weak electric field acts only as an accelerator, boosting the particle’s speed and dramatically improving its chance of finding any exit from a cavity, but offering no directional guidance – it’s fast, but random.

In contrast, a strong electric field provides the necessary “GPS coordinates,” forcing the particle to move rapidly in a specific, predictable direction across the network.

This discovery was puzzling but exciting, because it suggested that we could control the nanoparticles’ motion. We could choose to have them move fast and randomly with a weak field or directionally with a strong field.

The former allows them to search the environment efficiently while the latter is ideal for delivering cargo. This puzzling behavior prompted us to look more closely at what the weak field was doing to the surrounding fluid.

By studying the phenomenon more closely, we discovered the reasons for these behaviors. A weak field causes the stagnant liquid to flow in random swirling motions within the material’s tiny cavities. This random flow enhances a particle’s natural jiggling and pushes it toward the cavity walls. By moving along walls, the particle drastically increases its probability of finding a random escape route, compared to searching throughout the entire cavity space.

A strong field, however, provides a powerful directional push to the particle. That push overcomes the natural jiggling of the particle as well as the random flow of the surrounding liquid. It ensures that the particle migrates predictably along the direction of the electric field. This insight opens the door for new, efficient strategies to move, sort and separate particles.

Tracking nanoparticles

To conduct this research, we integrated laboratory observation with computational modeling. Experimentally, we used an advanced microscope to meticulously track how individual nanoparticles moved inside a perfectly structured porous material called a silica inverse opal.

We then used computer simulations to model the underlying physics. We modeled the particle’s random jiggling motion, the electrical driving force and the fluid flow near the walls.

By combining this precise visualization with theoretical modeling, we deconstructed the overall behavior of the nanoparticles. We could quantify the effect of each individual physical process, from the jiggling to the electrical push.

Devices that move particles

This research could have major implications for technologies requiring precise microscopic transport. In these, the goal is fast, accurate and differential particle movement. Examples include drug delivery, which requires guiding “nanocargo” to specific tissue targets, or industrial separation, which entails purifying chemicals and filtering contaminants.

Our discovery – the ability to separately control a particle’s speed using weak fields and its direction using strong fields – acts as a two-lever control tool.

This control may allow engineers to design devices that apply weak or strong fields to move different particle types in tailored ways. Ultimately, this tool could improve faster and more efficient diagnostic tools and purification systems.

What’s next

We’ve established independent control over the particles’ searching using speed and their migration using direction. But we still don’t know the phenomenon’s full limits.

Key questions remain: What are the upper and lower sizes of particles that can be controlled in this way? Can this method be reliably applied in complex, dynamic biological environments?

Most fundamentally, we’ll need to investigate the exact mechanism behind the dramatic speedup of these particles under a weak electric field. Answering these questions is essential to unlocking the full precision of this particle control method.

Our work is part of a larger scientific push to understand how confinement and boundaries influence the motion of nanoscale objects. As technology shrinks, understanding how these particles interact with nearby surfaces will help design efficient, tiny devices. And when moving through spongy, porous materials, nanoparticles are constantly encountering surfaces and boundaries.

The collective goal of our and others’ related research is to transform the control of tiny particles from a process of trial and error into a reliable, predictable science.

Daniel K. Schwartz receives funding from the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

Ankur Gupta receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

– ref. Electric fields steered nanoparticles through a liquid-filled maze – this new method could improve drug delivery and purification systems – https://theconversation.com/electric-fields-steered-nanoparticles-through-a-liquid-filled-maze-this-new-method-could-improve-drug-delivery-and-purification-systems-268553

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Robert B. Talisse, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

The United States was founded on the idea that government exists to serve its people. To do this, government must deliver services that promote the common good. When the government shuts down, it fails to meet its fundamental purpose.

While government shutdowns are not new in the U.S., most have lasted less than a week. At 40 days, the current shutdown may well be on the way to an end this week, as enough Senate Democratic caucus members have voted with Republicans on a measure to reopen the government. But it will remain the longest in the history of the nation.

When the government shuts down for such a long time, it inflicts hardships, anxieties and irritations on its citizens. You might wonder why elected officials allow lengthy disruptions to happen.

It is common to blame the politicians for the shutdown. However, as a philosopher who researches democracy, I think the fault lies also with us, the citizens. In a democracy, we generally get the politics we ask for, and the electorate has developed a taste for political spectacle over competent leadership.

American democracy has grown increasingly tribal, leading us to become more invested in punishing our partisan rivals than in demanding competent government. We are infatuated with the spectacle of our side dominating the other.

Understandably, politicians have embraced obstruction. They have learned that deadlock can pay, because they have the support of their voters in behaving this way. Politics is no longer about representation and policy, it’s now about vanquishing and even humiliating the other side.

More fervent, not better informed

To see this, we must examine polarization. Let’s start by distinguishing two kinds of polarization.

First is political polarization. It measures the divide between the U.S.’s two major parties. When political polarization is severe, the common ground among the parties falls away. This naturally undermines cooperation. That Republicans and Democrats are politically polarized is certainly part of the explanation for the shutdown.

But that’s not the entire story. As I argue in my book “Civic Solitude,” the deeper trouble has to do with belief polarization.

Unlike political polarization, which measures the distance between opposing groups, belief polarization occurs within a single group. In belief polarization, like-minded people transform into more extreme version of themselves: Liberals become more liberal, conservatives become more conservative, Second Amendment advocates become more pro-gun, environmentalists become more green, and so on.

Importantly, this shift is driven by the desire to fit in with one’s peers, not by evidence or reason. Hence, we become more fervent but no better informed.

Additionally, our more extreme selves are also more tribal and conformist. As we shift, we become more antagonistic toward outsiders. We also become more insistent on uniformity within our group, less tolerant of differences.

Animosity and obstruction

The combination of intensifying antagonism toward those on the “other side” and escalating cohesion among those on “your side” turns all aspects of life into politics.

In the U.S. today, liberals and conservatives are heavily socially segregated. They live in different neighborhoods, work in different professions, vacation in different locations, drive different vehicles and shop in different stores. Everyday behavior has become an extension of partisan affiliation.

Ironically, as everyday life becomes politically saturated, politics itself becomes more about lifestyle and less about policy. Research suggests that while animosity across the parties has intensified significantly, citizens’ disagreements over policy have either remained stable or eased. We dislike one another more intensely yet are not more divided.

This paints a grim portrait of U.S. democracy. Note that this condition incentivizes politicians to amplify their contempt for political rivals. Politicians seek to win elections, and stoking negative feelings such as fear and indignation are potent triggers of political behavior, including voting.

Consequently, when citizens are belief polarized, animosity and obstruction become winning electoral strategies. Meanwhile, politicians are released from the task of serving the common good.

Channeling contempt

It is no surprise that discussions of the shutdown have consistently focused on blame.

The Republicans, who hold the congressional majority, have sought to score points by depicting the shutdown as the Democrats’ fault. Several official websites maintained by the federal government included statements denouncing the shutdown as strictly the doing of the Democrats. Their aim has been to channel citizens’ frustration into contempt for the Democratic Party.

At the beginning of the shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that there was “literally nothing to negotiate” with congressional Democrats.

But there’s the rub. Democratic government is fundamentally a matter of negotiation. Neither winning an election nor being a member of the majority party means that you can simply call the shots. The constitutional procedures by which our representatives govern are designed to force cooperation, collaboration and compromise.

Thanks to polarization, however, these noble ideals of political give-and-take have dissolved. Cooperation is now seen as surrender to political enemies. That’s very clear in many Democrats’ outraged reactions to the eight senators from their caucus who have now voted with Republicans to end the shutdown.

Meanwhile, more than 1 million government employees haven’t been paid, many crucial government services have been interrupted, diminished or suspended, and, with the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, travelers are experiencing flight disruptions. While there may be an end to the shutdown on the near horizon, any deal could simply postpone crucial policy debates and could well end in another shutdown in the new year.

The key to avoiding this kind of failure is to become a citizenry that demands competent government over partisan domination.

Robert B. Talisse 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. Blame the shutdown on citizens who prefer politicians to vanquish their opponents rather than to work for the common good – https://theconversation.com/blame-the-shutdown-on-citizens-who-prefer-politicians-to-vanquish-their-opponents-rather-than-to-work-for-the-common-good-269041

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jason Gray, Environmental Attorney, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles

The world is losing vast swaths of forests to agriculture, logging, mining and fires every year — more than 20 million acres in 2024 alone, roughly the size of South Carolina.

That’s bad news because tropical forests in particular regulate rainfall, shelter plant and animal species and act as a thermostat for the planet by storing carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would heat up the planet. The United Nations estimates that deforestation and forest degradation globally contribute about 11% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the years, countries have committed to reverse that forest loss, and many organizations, governments, and Indigenous and local communities have worked hard to advance those goals. Many of their efforts have been at least partly successful.

For instance, Brazil credits stronger law enforcement and better monitoring at the state and national levels for helping reduce illegal land clearing and deforestation in the Amazon. The deforestation rate there fell by 31% from 2023 to 2024.

Funding from governments and the private sector is helping communities restore land that has already been cleared. Often this involves planting native tree species that bring additional economic value to communities by providing fruits and nuts.

Other programs protect forests through payments for ecosystem services, such as paying landowners to maintain existing forests and the benefits those forests provide. These programs provide money to a government, community or landowner based on verified results that the forest is being protected over time.

And yet, despite these and many other efforts, the world is falling short on its commitments to protect tropical forests. The planet lost 6.7 million hectares of tropical forest, nearly 26,000 square miles (67,000 square kilometers), in 2024 alone.

Law enforcement is not enough by itself. When enforcement is weakened, as happened in Brazil from 2019 to 2023, illegal land clearing and forest loss ramp back up. Programs that pay landowners to keep forests standing also have drawbacks. Research has shown they might only temporarily reduce deforestation if they don’t continue payments long term.

The problem is that deforestation is often driven by economic factors such as global demand for crops, cattle and minerals such as gold and copper. This demand provides significant incentives to farmers, companies and governments to continue clearing forests.

The amount of money committed to protecting forests globally is about US$5.7 billion per year – a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars banks and investors put into the companies that drive deforestation.

Simply put, the scale of the deforestation problem is massive, and new efforts are needed to truly reverse the economic drivers or causes of deforestation.

In order to increase the amount of funding to protect tropical forests, Brazil launched a global program on Nov. 6, 2025, ahead of the annual U.N. climate conference, called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, or TFFF. It is an innovative approach that combines money from countries and private investors to compensate countries for preserving tropical forests.

As an environmental law scholar who works in climate policy development, including to protect tropical forests, I believe this program has real promise. But I also see room to improve it by bringing in states and provinces to ensure money reaches programs closer to the ground that will pay off for the environment.

What makes the Tropical Forest Forever Facility different?

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility seeks to tackle the deforestation problem by focusing on the issue of scale – both geographic and economic.

First, it will measure results across entire countries rather than at the smaller landowner level. That can help reduce deforestation more broadly within countries and influence national policies that currently contribute to deforestation.

Second, it seeks to raise billions of dollars. This is important to counter the economic incentives for clearing forests for agriculture, livestock and timber.

The mechanics of raising these funds is intriguing – Brazil is seeking an initial $25 billion from national governments and foundations, and then another $100 billion from investors. These funds would be invested in securities – think the stock and bond markets – and returns on those investments, after a percentage is paid to investors, would be paid to countries that demonstrate successful forest protection.

These countries would be expected to invest their results-based payments into forest conservation initiatives, in particular to support communities doing the protection work on the ground, including ensuring that at least 20% directly supports local communities and Indigenous peoples whose territories often have the lowest rates of deforestation thanks to their efforts.

Finally, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility recognizes that, like past efforts, it is not a silver bullet. It is being designed to complement other programs and policies, including carbon market approaches that raise money for forest protection by selling carbon credits to governments and companies that need to lower their emissions.

What has been the reaction so far?

The new forest investment fund is attracting interest because of its size, ambition and design.

Brazil and Indonesia were the first to contribute, committing $1 billion each. Norway added $3 billion on Nov. 7, and several other countries also committed to support it.

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility still has a long way to go toward its $125 billion goal, but it will likely draw additional commitments during the U.N. climate conference, COP30, being held Nov. 10-21, 2025, in Brazil. World leaders and negotiators are meeting in the Amazon for the first time.

How can the Tropical Forest Forever Facility be improved?

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility’s design has drawn some criticism, both for how the money is raised and for routing the money through national governments. While the fund’s design could draw more investors, if its investments don’t have strong returns in a given year, the fund might not receive any money, likely leaving a gap in expected payments for the programs and communities protecting forests.

Many existing international funding programs also provide money solely to national governments, as the Amazon Fund and the U.N.’s Global Environment Facility do. However, a lot of the actual work to reduce deforestation, from policy innovation to implementation and enforcement, takes place at the state and provincial levels.

One way to improve the Tropical Forest Forever Facility’s implementation would be to include state- and provincial-level governments in decisions about how payments will be used and ensure those funds make it to the people taking action in their territories.

The Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force, a group of 45 states and provinces from 11 countries, has been giving feedback on how to incorporate that recommendation.

The task force developed a Blueprint for a New Forest Economy, which can help connect efforts such as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility to state- and community-level forest protection initiatives so funding reaches projects that can pay off for forest protection.

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility is an example of the type of innovative mechanism that could accelerate action globally. But to truly succeed, it will need to be coordinated with state and provincial governments, communities and others doing the work on the ground. The world’s forests – and people – depend on it.

Jason Gray is the Project Director of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force, a project of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law. The GCF Task Force receives funding support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

– ref. A bold new investment fund aims to channel billions into tropical forest protection – one key change can make it better – https://theconversation.com/a-bold-new-investment-fund-aims-to-channel-billions-into-tropical-forest-protection-one-key-change-can-make-it-better-269374

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Kathryn H. Jacobsen, William E. Cooper Distinguished University Chair, Professor of Health Studies, University of Richmond

In the wake of a measles outbreak in Canada that has infected thousands of people over the past year, an international health agency revoked the country’s measles-free status on Nov. 10, 2025.

The Pan American Health Organization, which serves as the World Health Organization’s regional office for the Americas, made this announcement after the agency’s measles elimination commission met in Mexico City to review the latest public health data.

As a global health epidemiologist who studies the spread of infectious diseases, this change in status does not surprise me. Measles is highly contagious, and a drop in childhood vaccination rates in Canada and in other countries has left many children unprotected from the disease.

The resurgence of measles in Canada after decades with very low numbers of cases is not an isolated problem. The U.S. has also had large outbreaks of measles this year, and it will likely soon lose its measles-free designation as well.

The loss of measles elimination status is a symptom of a deeper issue: declining trust in public messaging about science and health, which has led to decreased vaccination rates and growing vulnerability to vaccine-preventable diseases.

What does it mean for a country to be measles-free?

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases on the planet. Before the measles vaccine was licensed for use in 1963, nearly every child got measles infection and more than 2 million children died from measles each year.

The vaccine decreased that risk dramatically. By 1968, five years after the vaccine became available, case counts in the U.S. had dropped by more than 95%. Cases in Canada also decreased substantially after the vaccine was introduced.

Tragically, about 100,000 children still die from measles each year even though a safe, effective and low-cost vaccine is available. Almost all of those deaths occur in low-income countries where many children do not have access to recommended vaccines.

The World Health Organization uses three labels to describe how well a country is preventing the spread of infectious diseases such as measles. A disease is said to be controlled when public health interventions such as routine childhood vaccinations significantly lower the rate of new infections. A disease is considered to be eliminated from a country when the only cases that happen are small outbreaks linked to international travel. And finally, a disease is deemed eradicated only after several years of no cases occurring anywhere in the world.

To achieve the status of measles elimination, a country must have no ongoing local transmission of the disease for at least one year. It will lose that status if it has a chain of cases that spread from person to person for more than one year.

Once a country has eliminated measles, there is almost no risk from the disease as long as vaccination rates stay high. But when vaccination rates drop, outbreaks will soon start happening.

What happened in Canada?

In 1998, the Pan American Health Organization confirmed that Canada had eliminated measles transmission. Two years later, the U.S. also gained the measles-free designation.

By 2016, every country in the Americas had achieved measles elimination status. The region lost that status in 2018 after outbreaks in Brazil and Venezuela, and then regained it in 2024.

But childhood vaccination rates have been falling worldwide, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To protect communities from measles outbreaks, about 95% of the population must be vaccinated against the disease.

In Canada, the percentage of 2-year-olds who have received at least one dose of measles vaccine dropped from about 90% in 2019 to about 82% in 2022 and 2023. As the number of unvaccinated people in the population increased, the risk of measles outbreaks grew.

After having only 16 total cases of measles nationwide between 2020 and 2023, the number of measles cases in Canada jumped to more than 100 in 2024 and more than 5,000 cases in 2025. Cases have occurred among infants, children and adults in every Canadian province in 2025, and two infants have died.

Fewer than 10% of the people who have gotten sick had been vaccinated against the disease.

What happens next?

It is likely that both the U.S. and Mexico will lose their measles-free designation in 2026, because both countries have had sustained outbreaks of measles since early 2025.

Although more than 90% of kindergartners in the U.S. are vaccinated against measles, that rate is too low to protect communities from outbreaks. An outbreak that started in Texas in January 2025 infected more than 760 people and caused the deaths of two children.

In total, more than 1,600 Americans in more than 40 states have gotten sick from measles in 2025. That is more cases than any year since 1992. More than 90% of the people who got sick were unvaccinated.

Mexico has also had thousands of measles cases this year, mostly among unvaccinated people.

Central America, South America and the Caribbean will retain their measles-free status for now. But the outbreaks in North America increase the risk of measles spreading to other countries.

Without a significant improvement in vaccination coverage and public trust in community health measures, many countries are likely to face more, and bigger, outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases in the coming years.

Kathryn H. Jacobsen 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. Canada loses its official ‘measles-free’ status – and the US will follow soon, as vaccination rates fall – https://theconversation.com/canada-loses-its-official-measles-free-status-and-the-us-will-follow-soon-as-vaccination-rates-fall-269090

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Azarang Asadi, Data Scientist, Oklahoma State University

People often take walking for granted. We just move, one step after another, without ever thinking about what it takes to make that happen. Yet every single step is an extraordinary act of coordination, driven by precise timing between spinal cord, brain, nerves, muscles and joints.

Historically, people have used stopwatches, cameras or trained eyes to assess walking and its deficits. However, recent technological advances such as motion capture, wearable sensors and data science methods can record and quantify characteristics of step-by-step movement.

We are researchers who study biomechanics and human performance. We and other researchers are increasingly applying this data to improve human movement. These insights not only help athletes of all stripes push their performance boundaries, but they also support movement recovery for patients through personalized feedback. Ultimately, motion could become another vital sign.

From motion data to performance insights

Researchers around the world combine physiology, biomechanics and data science to decode human movement. This interdisciplinary approach sets the stage for a new era where machine learning algorithms find patterns in human movement data collected by continuous monitoring, yielding insights that improve health.

It’s the same technology that powers your fitness tracker. For example, the inertial measurement unit in the Apple Watch records motion and derives metrics such as step count, stride length and cadence. Wearable sensors, such as inertial measurement units, record thousands of data points every second. The raw data reveals very little about a person’s movement. In fact, the data is so noisy and unstructured that it’s impossible to extract any meaningful insight.

That is where signal processing comes into play. A signal is simply a sequence of measurements tracked over time. Imagine putting an inertial measurement unit on your ankle. The device constantly tracks the ankle’s movement by measuring signals such as acceleration and rotation. These signals provide an overview of the motion and indicate how the body behaves. However, they often contain unwanted background noise that can blur the real picture.

With mathematical tools, researchers can filter out the noise and isolate the information that truly reflects how the body is performing. It’s like taking a blurry photo and using editing tools to make the picture clear. The process of cleaning and manipulating the signals is known as signal processing.

After processing the signals, researchers use machine learning techniques to transform them into interpretable metrics. Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that works by finding patterns and relationships in data. In the context of human movement, these tools can identify features of motion that correspond to key performance and health metrics.

For example, our team at the Human Performance and Nutrition Research Institute at Oklahoma State University estimated fitness capacity without requiring exhaustive physical tests or special equipment. Fitness capacity is how efficiently the body can perform physical activity. By combining biomechanics, signal processing and machine learning, we were able to estimate fitness capacity using data from just a few steps of our subjects’ walking.

Beyond fitness, walking data offers even deeper insights. Walking speed is a powerful indicator of longevity, and by tracking it, we could learn about people’s long-term health and life expectancy.

From performance to medicine

The impact of these algorithms extends far beyond tracking performance such as steps and miles walked. They can be applied to support rehabilitation and prevent injuries. Our team is developing a machine learning algorithm to detect when an athlete is at an elevated risk of injury just by analyzing their body movement and detecting subtle changes.

Other scientists have used similar approaches to monitor motor control impairments following a stroke by continuously assessing how a patient’s walking patterns evolve, determining whether motor control is improving, or if the patient is compensating in any way that could lead to future injury.

Similar tools can also be used to inform treatment plans based on each patient’s specific needs, moving us closer to true personalized medicine. In Parkinson’s disease, these methods have been used to diagnose the condition, monitor its severity and detect episodes of walking difficulties to prompt cues to the patients to resume walking.

Others have used these techniques to design and control wearable assistive devices such as exoskeletons that improve mobility for people with physical disabilities by generating power at precisely timed intervals. In addition, researchers have evaluated movement strategies in military service members and found that those with poor biomechanics had a higher risk of injury. Others have used wrist-worn wearables to detect overuse injuries in service members. At their core, these innovations all have one goal: to restore and improve human movement.

Motion as a vital sign

We believe that the future of personalized medicine lies in dynamic monitoring. Every step, jump or squat carries information about how the body functions, performs and recovers. With advances in wearable technology, AI and cloud computing, real-time movement monitoring and biofeedback are likely to become a routine part of everyday life.

Imagine an athlete’s shoe that warns them before an injury occurs, clothing for the elderly that detects and prevents a fall before it occurs, or a smartwatch that detects early signs of stroke based on walking patterns. Combining biomechanics, signal processing and data science turns motion into a vital sign, a real-time reflection of your health and well-being.

Matthew Bird has previously received funding from the Department of Defense. The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of Oklahoma State University.

Azarang Asadi and Collin D. Bowersock do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Turning motion into medicine: How AI, motion capture and wearables can improve your health – https://theconversation.com/turning-motion-into-medicine-how-ai-motion-capture-and-wearables-can-improve-your-health-266671

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christina Nicholas, Associate Professor of Orthodontics and of Anthropology, University of Illinois Chicago

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

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Why do people have two sets of teeth? – Ivy D., age 11, Hyde Park, New York

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Teeth help animals bite and chew food. Meat-eating carnivores tend to have sharp teeth to sink into their prey, while herbivores tend to have flatter teeth to grind down their plant-based meals.

Some animals also use their pearly whites for specialized purposes like digging or fighting. Tusks, like you see in elephants, walruses and warthogs, are one special kind of teeth – they grow continuously for as long as the animal is alive.

Over time, no matter what you use them for, teeth wear down. This is good news if you’re a rodent, such as a beaver or a rat. Because their teeth never stop growing, rodents rely on gnawing and chomping to grind their teeth down so they don’t grow so long that they cause problems.

Some animals deal with wear and tear by continuously developing new teeth as their old ones fall out. Sharks and crocodiles, for example, are what scientists call polyphyodont: They can grow nearly infinite sets of teeth.

Like most mammals, humans are diphyodont: We have two sets of teeth – baby teeth and adult teeth. The technical term for our baby teeth is deciduous teeth because they fall out, the same way deciduous leaves fall off trees in autumn.

We are a dentist who focuses on treating kids and an anthropologist who studies how humans’ teeth and faces grow. We are both passionate about teeth and oral health care, and love thinking and learning about teeth. How did two sets become standard for human beings?

How human teeth develop

Most people are born with no teeth showing in their mouths at all, even though your baby teeth start developing before you’re even born. Baby teeth usually start poking through the gums when you’re between 6 and 8 months old. Sometimes when dentists take X-rays to check for cavities or other problems, they can see adult teeth growing within the gums.

Baby teeth are relatively small because they need to fit in the small faces of babies and little kids. As you grow older and your face gets bigger, you have room in your mouth for more and larger teeth. Teeth have different sizes and shapes, depending on their purpose. Human front teeth are good at biting into things and tearing off a piece of food. Your back teeth are good at chewing foods into smaller bits before you swallow.

Most kids lose their first baby tooth when they’re between 5 and 6 years old, and the process slowly continues until you’re between 10 and 12 years old and all 20 of your original choppers have fallen out.

During that same time, your adult, or permanent, teeth gradually take their spots in your mouth. They’re bigger than your baby teeth and can help you chew more food at once. Eventually you have a set of 28, with the potential of four more wisdom teeth at the very back. Some people just naturally don’t ever grow wisdom teeth, some have wisdom teeth that don’t fit their jaws and need to be removed, and some have big, wide smiles with 32 teeth.

So, getting two sets of teeth means your teeth fit the size of your face as you grow, and helps make sure you can chew food your entire life.

Baby teeth deserve gentle care

You might be thinking that if baby teeth are just going to fall out, they can’t be that important. But that’s not true.

If you were a shark, every time you got a bunch of cavities or chipped a tooth, you’d just grow a new one and keep on chewing. But unlike sharks or crocodiles or even manatees, we humans only get two sets of teeth. By taking care of your baby teeth, you can keep them healthy and make sure they stay right where they belong until they’re ready to fall out.

If you don’t take care of your baby teeth, they can wind up with lots of cavities. If the cavities get too large or teeth become infected, they may need to be removed by the dentist. Not only is this process not fun, but taking out baby teeth too early can create problems for your adult teeth.

You can wind up with not enough space for your adult teeth to come in – that is, what dentists call “erupt” – into the right spots. This issue happens in part because the other teeth around where the baby tooth was will shift and may move into the space where your adult teeth are supposed to come in. Teeth can get stuck in the jaw and not erupt, or your teeth can be crowded in your mouth. If there is a mismatch between the size of your teeth and the size of your jaws, an orthodontist might attach braces to your teeth to reposition them so they all fit.

What is the future of teeth?

Because people can live long lives, 70 or 80 years or more, many outlive their teeth even if they do their best to take care of them. While there are lots of options for artificial teeth – like removable dentures or even dental implants, which are fake teeth that are screwed into your jaws – it’s not quite the same as having natural teeth.

If you break a bone, it heals because you can grow new bone to patch up the part that broke. Scientists call this process fracture healing. Human teeth aren’t bone and, unfortunately, do not heal themselves. Unlike your bones, which are mostly composed of a structural protein your body makes called collagen, your teeth are primarily made up of minerals such as calcium-rich hydroxyapatite. In some ways, teeth are closer to being like hard stones than living bones.

Regenerative dentistry is the study of how teeth grow and develop, with the goal of ultimately designing new ways to repair and replace our teeth. Scientists are working hard to figure out ways to grow new teeth or help existing teeth regenerate. They’re learning about the environment and materials needed to grow new teeth.

For now, the best thing you can do is take good care of the teeth you have and keep the gums and bones that support them healthy. Brush your teeth twice a day with toothpaste that contains fluoride, and floss once a day. Try to limit sugary, sticky foods and drinks – a good diet keeps your whole body healthy, not just your teeth. See a dentist regularly, and protect your teeth from injury.

Being kind to your teeth now can help your future self have a beautiful, healthy smile.

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

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

David Avenetti receives funding from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research) and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

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

– ref. Why do people have baby teeth and adult teeth? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-have-baby-teeth-and-adult-teeth-256198

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Robert A. Strong, Senior Fellow, Miller Center, University of Virginia

People trying to understand politics in the United States today often turn to history for precedents and perspective. Are our current divisions like the ones that preceded the American Revolution or the Civil War? Did the dramatic events of the 1960s generate the same kind of social and political forces seen today? Are there lessons from the past that show us how eras of intense political turmoil eventually subside?

As a scholar of American politics and the presidency, I believe one American historical period is especially worth revisiting in this turbulent moment in the U.S.: the 20 tumultuous years between the presidencies of Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley in the second half of the 19th century.

The two decades between 1876 and 1896 are usually remembered as a time when the cities in the East grew rich and the West was wild – a “Gilded Age” in New York City and gunslingers on the frontier.

It was also a time when Americans struggled with immigration issues, racial injustice, tariff levels, technological change, economic volatility and political violence.

There was even a president, Grover Cleveland, who served two nonconsecutive terms in the White House – the only time that happened before Donald Trump.

In the elections between Grant and McKinley, the nation was closely divided. No president in those years – not Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Cleveland or Benjamin Harrison – served for two consecutive terms. No presidential candidate won more than 50% of the popular vote, except the Democrat Samuel Tilden. And Tilden, after winning 50.1% of the ballots cast in 1876, lost in the Electoral College. That happened again in 1888 when Cleveland, the first time he was seeking a second term, won the popular vote but failed in the Electoral College.

The narrow victories that characterized presidential politics in the 1870s and 1880s were matched by constant shifts on Capitol Hill. In the 20 years between Grant and McKinley, there were only six years of unified government, when one political party controlled the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the remaining 14 years, presidents encountered opposition in Congress.

The U.S. has the same kind of divided politics today.

Heating up partisanship and raising stakes

President Bill Clinton had two years of unified government; President George W. Bush had less than that. Barack Obama, Donald Trump in his first term and Joe Biden all came into office with party majorities in the House and Senate, and then, like Clinton, their parties lost the House two years later.

Divided politics, with close elections and neither party in power for very long, make partisanship more intense, campaigns harder fought and the stakes sky high whenever voters go to the polls. That’s part of what produced instability in the second half of the 19th century and part of what produces it today.

Divided government is, of course, one of the most powerful “checks” in the constitutional system of checks and balances. Intense competition between political parties can prevent the national government from making rash decisions and serious mistakes. It can sometimes generate compromise.

But there’s a cost. Political division can also allow critical problems to fester for far too long. The dramatic changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution after the Civil War were not seriously addressed in federal legislation until the Progressive Era early in the 20th century.

In the second half of the 19th century, Congress raised or lowered tariffs – depending on which party controlled the White House and Capitol Hill. The nation debated immigration but only once passed meaningful legislation, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. A long list of issues connected to railroads, banks, currency, civil service, corruption and the implementation of the post-Civil War constitutional amendments were ignored or only partially addressed.

When major legislation was passed in 1883 to create a merit-based civil service – reforming the spoils system of political appointments – it passed because Garfield’s 1881 assassination by a disgruntled federal job seeker temporarily pushed the issue to the top of the national agenda.

Immigration, fake news and riots

Political violence accompanied the period of closely divided national elections in the 1870s and 1880s.

In the 1880 presidential campaign, both candidates – the Republican, Garfield, and the Democrat, Winfield Hancock – called for restrictions on Chinese immigration to the United States. Neither supported the complete ban that many Westerners wanted.

But just before Americans went to the polls, newspapers across the country printed a letter, allegedly written and signed by Garfield, that endorsed an open border to Chinese immigrants. Before anyone could learn that the letter was a fake, there was public uproar. In Denver, an angry mob burned down all the homes in Chinese neighborhoods.

There were more incidents of political violence: anti-Chinese riots in Los Angeles in 1871, in San Francisco in 1877 and in Seattle in 1886.

Throughout the 1880s, anti-immigrant nativists targeted immigrants from Italy and sometimes vandalized Catholic churches.

Political violence in the South successfully suppressed Black voting rights and reestablished white control of state and local politics.

Realignment

Political division in the second half of the 19th century produced more problems than solutions. How and when did it end, or become less intense?

The simple answer is what political scientists call a “realignment,” a major shift in national electoral patterns.

In 1893, the first year of Cleveland’s second term, the nation suffered a financial crisis followed by a severe economic depression. As a result, McKinley was able to win solid victories in 1896 and 1900 and build a Republican coalition that dominated presidential politics until the election in 1932 of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt.

It’s not hard to imagine how an economic disaster, or a crisis of some kind, could shake the country out of a period of closely divided politics. But that’s a painful way of building a higher level of national unity.

Can it happen when large numbers of voters get thoroughly frustrated by languishing issues, swings back and forth in Washington, nasty elections and rising political violence?

Perhaps.

But either way – responding to crisis or finding a public change of heart – is a reminder that voters are the ultimate arbiters in a functioning democracy. Today, as in late-19th-century America, elections make a difference. They can mark continued division or they can take the nation in a new, and perhaps more unified, direction.

Robert A. Strong 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. What America’s divided and tumultuous politics of the late-19th century can teach us – https://theconversation.com/what-americas-divided-and-tumultuous-politics-of-the-late-19th-century-can-teach-us-267292

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Gabriel Guillén, Professor of Language Studies, Middlebury College

Your host in Osaka, Japan, slips on a pair of headphones and suddenly hears your words transformed into flawless Kansai Japanese. Even better, their reply in their native tongue comes through perfectly clear to you.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, neither of you is lost in translation. What once seemed like science fiction is now marketed as a quick fix for cross-cultural communication.

Such AI-powered tools will be useful for many people, especially for tourists or in any purely transactional situation, even if seamless automatic interpretation remains at an experimental stage.

Does this mean the process of learning another language will soon be a thing of the past?

As scholars of computer-assisted language learning and linguistics, we disagree and see language learning as vital in other ways. We have devoted our careers to this field because we deeply believe in the lasting and transformative value of learning and speaking languages beyond one’s mother tongue.

Lessons from past language ‘disruptions’

This isn’t the first time a new technology has promised massive disruption to learning languages.

In recent years, language learning startups such as Duolingo aimed to make acquiring a language easier than ever, in part by gamifying language. While these apps have certainly made learning more accessible to more people, our research shows most platforms and apps have failed to fully replicate the inherently social process of learning a language.

One thing’s clear: The massive popularity of language apps shows there’s still strong demand for language learning, despite a sharp decline in formal education settings. Duolingo alone had 113.1 million monthly active users around the world at the end of 2024, a 36% increase over the prior year. This is about 10 times more than the number of students who take languages other than English in U.S. schools.

The meaning of learning a language

Numbers aside, the gold standard of language learning is the ability to follow and contribute to a live group conversation.

Since World War II, government departments and education programs recognized that text-centered grammar-translation methods did little to support real interaction. Interpersonal conversational competence gradually became the main goal of language classes. While technologies you can put in your ear or wear on your face now promise to revolutionize interpersonal interaction, their usefulness in such conversations actually falls along a spectrum.

At one end, you have simple tasks you have to navigate while visiting a city where they speak a different language, like checking out of a hotel, buying a ticket at a kiosk or finding your way around town. That is, people from different backgrounds working together to achieve a goal – a successful checkout, a ticket purchase or getting to the famous museum you want to visit. Any mix of languages, gestures or tools – even AI tools – can help in this context. In such cases, where the goal is clear and both parties are patient, shared English or automated interpretation can get the job done while bypassing the hard work of language learning.

At the other end, identity matters as much as content. Meeting your in-laws, introducing yourself at work, welcoming a delegation or presenting to a skeptical audience all involve trust and social capital. Humor, idioms, levels of formality, tone, timing and body language shape not just what you say but who you are.

The effort of learning a language communicates respect, trust and a willingness to see the world through someone else’s eyes. We believe language learning is one of the most demanding and rewarding forms of deep work, building cognitive resilience, empathy, identity and community in ways technology struggles to replicate.

The 2003 movie “Lost in Translation,” which depicts an older American man falling in love with a much younger American woman, was not about getting lost in the language but delved into issues of interculturality and finding yourself while exposed to the other.

Indeed, accelerating mobility due to climate migration, remote work and retirement abroad all increase the need to learn languages – not just translate them. Even those staying in place often seek deeper connections through language as learners with familial and historical ties.

Where AI falls short

The latest AI technologies, such as those used by Apple’s newest AirPods to instantly interpret and translate, certainly are powerful tools that will help a lot of people interact with anyone who speaks a different language in ways previously only possible for someone who spent a year or two studying it. It’s like having your own personal interpreter.

Yet relying on interpretation carries hidden costs: distortion of meaning, loss of interactive nuance and diminished interpersonal trust.

An ethnography of American learners with strong motivation and near limitless support found that falling back on speaking English and using technology to aid translation may be easier in the short term, but this undercuts long-term language and integration goals. Language learners constantly face this choice between short-term ease and long-term impact.

Some AI tools help accomplish immediate tasks, and generative AI apps can support acquisition but can take away the negotiations of meaning from which durable skills emerge.

AI interpretation may suffice for one-on-one conversations, but learners usually aspire to join ongoing conversations already being had among speakers of another language. Long-term language learning, while necessarily friction-filled, is nevertheless beneficial on many fronts.

Interpersonally, using another’s language fosters both cultural and cognitive empathy.

In addition, the cognitive benefits of multilingualism are equally well documented: resistance to dementia, divergent thinking, flexibility in shifting attention, acceptance of multiple perspectives and explanations, and reduced bias in reasoning.

The very attributes companies seek in the AI age – resilience, lifelong learning, analytical and creative thinking, active listening – are all cultivated through language learning.

Rethinking language education in the age of AI

So why, in the increasingly multilingual U.K. and U.S., are fewer students choosing to learn another language in high school and at university?

The reasons are complex.

Too often, institutions have struggled to demonstrate the relevance of language studies. Yet innovative approaches abound, from integrating language in the contexts of other subjects and linking it to service and volunteering to connecting students with others through virtual exchanges or community partners via project-based language learning, all while developing intercultural skills.

So, again, what’s the value of learning another language when AI can handle tourism phrases, casual conversation and city navigation?

The answer, in our view, lies not in fleeting encounters but in cultivating enduring capacities: curiosity, empathy, deeper understanding of others, the reshaping of identity and the promise of lasting cognitive growth.

For educators, the call is clear. Generative AI can take on rote and transactional tasks while excelling at error correction, adapting input and vocabulary support. That frees classroom time for multiparty, culturally rich and nuanced conversation.

Teaching approaches grounded in interculturality, embodied communication, play and relationship building will thrive. Learning this way enables learners to critically evaluate what AI earbuds or chatbots create, to join authentic conversations and to experience the full benefits of long-term language learning.

Thor Sawin has received funding for teacher development projects through the State Department Fulbright Specialist and English Language Specialist program, as well as the US Air Force and LCC International University in Lithuania.

Gabriel Guillén 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. What AI earbuds can’t replace: The value of learning another language – https://theconversation.com/what-ai-earbuds-cant-replace-the-value-of-learning-another-language-264965

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Suvrat Dhanorkar, Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology

Imagine walking out of a Walmart, Target or Costco. As you push your large shopping cart to your car, you ask yourself: Did I really need all that stuff?

The answer is you probably didn’t.

In a recent study, my co-authors Lina Wang, Sungho Park and I found that the presence of supercenters – large retailers that sell groceries alongside general merchandise – results in a significant uptick in consumer waste due to overpurchasing.

These supercenters often sit on lots in excess of 150,000 square feet. But figuring out how all that real estate affects people’s shopping habits – if it does at all – is tricky. That’s because a lot of factors influence how much people buy on a single shopping trip.

To answer this question, we looked at the impact of the spread of Walmart supercenters across the U.S. over a decade, using a technique called difference-in-differences – an analytical method in which we compared consumer waste trends in counties that saw supercenter launches with “matched” counties that did not. This matching ensured that counties were otherwise closely comparable on socioeconomic factors such as housing, income and education.

Our analysis showed that the launch of a supercenter results in an increase in consumer waste of up to 7%. Furthermore, this increase in consumer waste is larger for new supercenter openings compared with conversions, when existing regular stores are expanded into large-format ones.

Why it matters

For decades, neighborhood stores across the U.S. were edged out by large-format retailers: department stores, supercenters and shopping malls. Although there is evidence that many of these big-name retailers are beginning to look toward smaller stores, the shopping landscape remains dotted by supercenters.

And these large stores stimulate mass consumption through gradual shifts in consumer behaviors. For example, in their attempt to generate more sales, large-format retailers often underprice smaller neighborhood stores.

Take, for example, Walmart’s “everyday low price” strategy, which is key to its business model. This pricing strategy offers shoppers a largely consistent year-round low price rather than relying on occasional sales and discounts.

Further contributing to overpurchasing is the supercenters’ typical location, which tends to be away from residential areas. Naturally, in their effort to avoid multiple trips, consumers tend to maximize the utility of each visit by making their basket sizes larger.

Unfortunately, this overpurchasing often leads to waste as more goods reach expiration date or sit unused in people’s homes.

While this may be a profitable strategy for retailers, it’s bad for society and the environment and creates billions of dollars in waste. To put this into context, the United States generates close to 300 million tons of consumer waste every year, and then spends billions of dollars managing this waste.

What still isn’t known

Now that we have measured the “supercenter effect,” we are keen to look at potential solutions to this problem. Some existing solutions are based on implementing policies that encourage behavioral shifts in consumers. For example, many cities have adopted a pay-as-you-throw policy that charges people based on the volume of waste generated.

Other solutions are more structural, such as bringing back neighborhood convenience stores and developing stronger circular economy channels. For example, neighborhood convenience stores can play an important role in mitigating the supercenter effect and could allow for smaller, more frequent shopping trips and significantly less waste.

In many cities, initiatives promoting local vendors and stores are gaining momentum. Such solutions would not only encourage sustainable consumption but also have benefits for local economic growth by promoting small businesses that have historically accounted for 62% of net new job creation.

A second solution entails leveraging the “reuse economy,” which can provide a back-end channel for circulating surplus and used goods. While both offline and online reuse channels exist – through the likes of thrift stores, food banks and Facebook Marketplace, for example – they currently remain vastly underused.

Identifying and aggressively implementing such solutions might turn out to be both economically meaningful and environmentally beneficial. But more work needs to be done to figure out which solutions are more effective, and why.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Suvrat Dhanorkar 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. The ‘supercenter’ effect: How massive, one-stop retailers fuel overconsumption − and waste – https://theconversation.com/the-supercenter-effect-how-massive-one-stop-retailers-fuel-overconsumption-and-waste-267939