Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jacob S. Suissa, Assistant Professor of Plant Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee

There are few forms of the botanical world as readily identifiable as fern leaves. These often large, lacy fronds lend themselves nicely to watercolor paintings and tricep tattoos alike. Thoreau said it best: “Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line.”

But ferns are not just for art and gardens. While fern leaves are the most iconic part of their body, these plants are whole organisms, with stems and roots that are often underground or creeping along the soil surface. With over 400 million years of evolutionary history, ferns can teach us a lot about how the diversity of planet Earth came to be. Specifically, examining their inner anatomy can reveal some of the intricacies of evolution.

Sums of parts or an integrated whole?

When one structure cannot change without altering the other, researchers consider them constrained by each other. In biology, this linkage between traits is called a developmental constraint. It explains the limits of what possible forms organisms can take. For instance, why there aren’t square trees or mammals with wheels.

However, constraint does not always limit form. In my recently published research, I examined the fern vascular system to highlight how changes in one part of the organism can lead to changes in another, which can generate new forms.

Before Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution by natural selection, many scientists believed in creationism – the idea that all living things were created by a god. Among these believers was the 19th-century naturalist Georges Cuvier, who is lauded as the father of paleontology. His argument against evolution was not exclusively based in faith but on a theory he called the correlation of parts.

Cuvier proposed that because each part of an organism is developmentally linked to every other part, changes in one part would result in changes to another. With this theory, he argued that a single tooth or bone could be used to reconstruct an entire organism.

He used this theory to make a larger claim: If organisms are truly integrated wholes and not merely sums of individual parts, how could evolution fashion specific traits? Since changes in one part of an organism would necessitate changes in others, he argued, small modifications would require restructuring every other part. If the individual parts of an organism are all fully integrated, evolution of particular traits could not proceed.

However, not all of the parts of an organism are tethered together so tightly. Indeed, some parts can evolve at different rates and under different selection pressures. This idea was solidified as the concept of quasi-independence in the 1970s by evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin. The idea of organisms as collections of individually evolving parts remains today, influencing how researchers and students think about evolution.

Fern vasculature and the process of evolution

Ferns are one of four lineages of land plants that have vascular tissues – specialized sets of tubes that move water and nutrients through their bodies. These tissues are composed of vascular bundles – clusters of cells that conduct water through the stem.

How vascular bundles are arranged in fern stems varies substantially. Some have as many as three to eight or more vascular bundles scattered throughout their stem. Some are arranged symmetrically, while others such as the tobacco fern – Mickelia nicotianifolia – have bundles arranged in a whimsical, smiley-face pattern.

For much of the 20th century, scientists studying the pattern and arrangement of vascular bundles in fern stems thought these broad patterns may be adaptive to environmental conditions. I set out in my own research to test whether certain types of arrangements were more resistant to drought. But contrary to my initial hypotheses – and my desire for a relationship between form and function – the arrangement of vascular bundles in the stem did not seem to correlate with drought tolerance.

This may sound counterintuitive, but it turns out the ability of a fern to move water through its body has more to do with the size and shape of the water-conducting cells rather than how they’re arranged as a whole in the stem. This finding is analogous to looking at road maps to understand traffic patterns. The patterning of roads on a map (how cells are arranged) may be less important in determining traffic patterns than the number and size of lanes (cell size and number).

This observation hinted at something deeper about the evolution of the vascular systems of ferns. It sent me on a journey to uncover exactly what gave rise to the varying vascular patterns of ferns.

Simple observations and insights into evolution

I wondered how this variation in the number and arrangement of vascular bundles relates to leaf placement around the stem. So I quantified this variation in vascular patterning for 27 ferns representing roughly 30% of all fern species.

I found a striking correlation between the number of rows of leaves and the number of vascular bundles within the stem. This relationship was almost 1-to-1 in some cases. For instance, if there were three rows of leaves along the stem, there were three vascular bundles in the stem.

What’s more, how leaves were arranged around the stem determined the spatial arrangement of bundles. If the leaves were arranged spirally (on all sides of the stem), the vascular bundles were arranged in a radial pattern. If the leaves were shifted to the dorsal side of the stem, the smiley-face pattern emerged.

Importantly, based on our understanding of plant development, there was a directionality here. Specifically, the placement of leaves determines the arrangement of bundles, not the other way around.

This may not sound all that surprising – it seems logical that vasculature should link up between leaves and stems. But it runs counter to how scientists have viewed the fern vascular system for over 100 years. Many studies on fern vascular patterning have tended to focus on individual parts of the plant, removing vascular architecture from the context of the plant as a whole and viewing it as an independently evolving pattern.

However, this new work suggests that the arrangement of vascular bundles in fern stems is not able to change in isolation. Rather, like Cuvier’s idealized organisms, vascular patterning is linked to and explicitly determined by the number and placement of leaves along the stem. This is not to say that vascular patterns could not be adaptive to environmental conditions, but it means that the handle of evolutionary change in the number and arrangement of vascular bundles is likely changes to leaf number and placement.

From parochial to existential

While this study on ferns and their vascular system may seem parochial, it speaks to the broader question of how variation – the fuel of evolution – arises, and how evolution can proceed.

While not all parts of an organism are so tightly linked, considering the individual as a whole – or at least sets of parts as a unit – can help researchers better understand how, and if, observable patterns can evolve in isolation. This insight takes scientists one step closer to understanding the minutia of how evolution works to generate the immense biodiversity on Earth.

Understanding these processes is also important for industry. In agricultural settings, plant and animal breeders attempt to increase one aspect of an organism without changing another. By taking a holistic approach and understanding which parts of an organism are developmentally or genetically linked and which are more quasi-independent, breeders may be able to more effectively create organisms with desired traits.

Constraint is often viewed as restricting, but it may not always be so. The Polish nuclear physicist Stanisław Ulam noted that rhymes “compel one to find the unobvious because of the necessity of finding a word which rhymes,” paradoxically acting as an “automatic mechanism of originality.” Whether from the literary rules of a haiku or the development of ferns, constraint can be a generator of form.

Jacob S. Suissa receives funding from The National Science Foundation. He is affiliated with Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and Let’s Botanize Inc.

– ref. Fern stems reveal secrets of evolution – how constraints in development can lead to new forms – https://theconversation.com/fern-stems-reveal-secrets-of-evolution-how-constraints-in-development-can-lead-to-new-forms-267401

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Shaina Sadai, Associate in Earth Science, Five College Consortium

When polar ice sheets melt, the effects ripple across the world. The melting ice raises average global sea level, alters ocean currents and affects temperatures in places far from the poles.

But melting ice sheets don’t affect sea level and temperatures in the same way everywhere.

In a new study, our team of scientists investigated how ice melting in Antarctica affects global climate and sea level. We combined computer models of the Antarctic ice sheet, solid Earth and global climate, including atmospheric and oceanic processes, to explore the complex interactions that melting ice has with other parts of the Earth.

Understanding what happens to Antarctica’s ice matters, because it holds enough frozen water to raise average sea level by about 190 feet (58 meters). As the ice melts, it becomes an existential problem for people and ecosystems in island and coastal communities.

Changes in Antarctica

The extent to which the Antarctic ice sheet melts will depend on how much the Earth warms. And that depends on future greenhouse gas emissions from sources including vehicles, power plants and industries.

Studies suggest that much of the Antarctic ice sheet could survive if countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement goal to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to before the industrial era. However, if emissions continue rising and the atmosphere and oceans warm much more, that could cause substantial melting and much higher sea levels.

Our research shows that high emissions pose risks not just to the stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is already contributing to sea-level rise, but also for the much larger and more stable East Antarctic ice sheet.

It also shows how different regions of the world will experience different levels of sea-level rise as Antarctica melts.

Understanding sea-level change

If sea levels rose like the water in a bathtub, then as ice sheets melt, the ocean would rise by the same amount everywhere. But that isn’t what happens.

Instead, many places experience higher regional sea-level rise than the global average, while places close to the ice sheet can even see sea levels drop. The main reason has to do with gravity.

Ice sheets are massive, and that mass creates a strong gravitational pull that attracts the surrounding ocean water toward them, similar to how the gravitational pull between Earth and the Moon affects the tides.

As the ice sheet shrinks, its gravitational pull on the ocean declines, leading to sea levels falling in regions close to the ice sheet coast and rising farther away. But sea-level changes are not only a function of distance from the melting ice sheet. This ice loss also changes how the planet rotates. The rotation axis is pulled toward that missing ice mass, which in turn redistributes water around the globe.

2 factors that can slow melting

As the massive ice sheet melts, the solid Earth beneath it rebounds.

Underneath the bedrock of Antarctica is Earth’s mantle, which flows slowly like maple syrup. The more the ice sheet melts, the less it presses down on the solid Earth. With less weight on it, the bedrock can rebound. This can lift parts of the ice sheet out of contact with warming ocean waters, slowing the rate of melting. This happens quicker in places where the mantle flows faster, such as underneath the West Antarctic ice sheet.

This rebound effect could help preserve the ice sheet – if global greenhouse gas emissions are kept low.

Another factor that can slow melting might seem counterintuitive.

While Antarctic meltwater drives rising sea levels, models show it also delays greenhouse gas-induced warming. That’s because icy meltwater from Antarctica reduces ocean surface temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere and tropical Pacific, trapping heat in the deep ocean and slowing the rise of global average air temperature.

But as melting occurs, even if it slows, sea levels rise.

Mapping our sea-level results

We combined computer models that simulate these and other behaviors of the Antarctic ice sheet, solid Earth and climate to understand what could happen to sea level around the world as global temperatures rise and ice melts.

For example, in a moderate scenario in which the world reduces greenhouse gas emissions, though not enough to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) in 2100, we found the average sea-level rise from Antarctic ice melt would be about 4 inches (0.1  meters) by 2100. By 2200, it would be more than 3.3 feet (1  meter).

Keep in mind that this is only sea-level rise caused by Antarctic melt. The Greenland ice sheet and thermal expansion of seawater as the oceans warm will also raise sea levels. Current estimates suggest that total average sea-level rise – including Greenland and thermal expansion – would be 1 to 2 feet (0.32 to 0.63 meters) by 2100 under the same scenario.

We also show how sea-level rise from Antarctica varies around the world.

In that moderate emissions scenario, we found the highest sea-level rise from Antarctic ice melt alone, up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) by 2200, occurs in the Indian, Pacific and western Atlantic ocean basins – places far from Antarctica.

These regions are home to many people in low-lying coastal areas, including residents of island nations in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, and the central Pacific, such as the Marshall Islands, that are already experiencing detrimental impacts from rising seas.

Under a high emissions scenario, we found the average sea-level rise caused by Antarctic melting would be much higher: about 1 foot (0.3  meters) in 2100 and close to 10 feet (more than 3 meters) in 2200.

Under this scenario, a broader swath of the Pacific Ocean basin north of the equator, including Micronesia and Palau, and across the middle of the Atlantic Ocean basin would see the highest sea-level rise, up to 4.3 meters (14 feet) by 2200, just from Antarctica.

Although these sea-level rise numbers seem alarming, the world’s current emissions and recent projections suggest this very high emissions scenario is unlikely. This exercise, however, highlights the serious consequences of high emissions and underscores the importance of reducing emissions.

The takeaway

These impacts have implications for climate justice, particularly for island nations that have done little to contribute to climate change yet already experience the devastating impacts of sea-level rise.

Many island nations are already losing land to sea-level rise, and they have been leading global efforts to minimize temperature rise. Protecting these countries and other coastal areas will require reducing greenhouse gas emissions faster than nations are committing to do today.

Shaina Sadai has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Hitz Family Foundation.

Ambarish Karmalkar receives funding from National Science Foundation.

– ref. Sea level doesn’t rise at the same rate everywhere – we mapped where Antarctica’s ice melt would have the biggest impact – https://theconversation.com/sea-level-doesnt-rise-at-the-same-rate-everywhere-we-mapped-where-antarcticas-ice-melt-would-have-the-biggest-impact-269788

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Mijeong Kwon, Assistant Professor of Management, Rice University

It’s popular advice for new graduates: “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Love for one’s work, Americans are often told, is the surest route to success.

As a management professor, I can attest that there is solid research supporting this advice. In psychology, this idea is described as “intrinsic motivation” – working because you find the work itself satisfying. People who are intrinsically motivated tend to experience genuine enjoyment and curiosity in what they do, relishing opportunities to learn or master challenges for their own sake. Research has long shown that intrinsic motivation enhances performance, persistence and creativity at work.

Yet my and my co-authors’ recent research suggests that this seemingly innocent idea of loving your work can take on a moral edge. Increasingly, people seem to judge both themselves and others according to whether they are intrinsically motivated. What used to be a personal preference has, for many, become a moral imperative: You should love your work, and it is somehow wrong if you don’t.

Moralizing motivation

When a neutral preference becomes charged with moral meaning, social scientists call it “moralization.” For example, someone might initially choose vegetarianism for their own health reasons but come to view it as the right thing to do – and judge others accordingly.

The moralization of intrinsic motivation follows a similar logic. People work for many reasons: passion, duty, family, security or social status. But once intrinsic motivation becomes moralized, loving what you do is seen as not only enjoyable but virtuous. Working for money, prestige or family obligation starts to look less admirable, even suspect.

In a 2023 study, fellow business researchers Julia Lee Cunningham, Jon M. Jachimowicz and I surveyed over 1,200 employees, asking whether they thought working for personal enjoyment was virtuous.

People who did, we found, tended to believe everyone else should be intrinsically motivated, too. They were also more likely to see other motives, such as working for pay or recognition, as morally inferior. They tended to agree, for example, that “you are morally obligated to love the work itself more than you love the rewards and perks.”

These employees had internalized the idea that you work either for love or money – even though most people, in reality, do both.

Costs for you

At first glance, treating love for work as a virtue seems to offer nothing but benefits. If a job’s mission or day-to-day tasks are personally meaningful, you may persist through challenges, because quitting could feel like betraying an ideal.

But this virtue can also backfire. When intrinsic motivation becomes a moral duty rather than a joy, you may feel guilty for not constantly loving your work. Emotions that are normal in any job, such as boredom, fatigue or disengagement, can prompt feelings of moral failure and self-blame. Over time, this pressure can contribute to burnout if you stay in unsustainable roles out of guilt.

By idealizing your “dream job” when you’re applying, you may overlook security, stability and other important life needs – risking financial strain and underusing your talents. This unrealistic standard could also lead you to leave a job too soon when reality disappoints or initial passion fades.

Costs for a company

Moralizing intrinsic motivation doesn’t stop at the self; it also reshapes how we judge others. People who moralize intrinsic motivation often expect it from everyone else.

In a study of nearly 800 employees across 185 teams, we found that employees who moralized intrinsic motivation were more generous toward teammates they perceived as loving their work. However, they were less willing to help out colleagues they considered less passionate. In other words, moralizing intrinsic motivation can make employees “discerning saints” – good to some, but selectively so.

This dynamic can create problems for work teams. Leaders who strongly moralize intrinsic motivation may adopt leadership styles aimed at igniting passion in their teams – emphasizing workers’ autonomy, for example.

While inspiring on the surface, this approach can alienate employees who work for more pragmatic reasons. Over time, I would argue, this can breed tension and conflict, as some team members are celebrated as “true believers” and others are quietly marginalized. Expressing love for one’s work becomes a kind of commodity – one more way to get ahead.

Embracing many motives

People all around the world experience intrinsic motivation. But if that feeling is universal, its moralization is not.

My current research with management researcher Laura Sonday suggests that moralizing intrinsic motivation is more pronounced in some cultures than in others. Where work is viewed as a means of service, duty or balance, rather than a source of personal fulfillment, loving one’s job may be appreciated but not treated as a moral expectation.

I would urge office leaders to recognize the double-edged nature of moralizing intrinsic motivation. Expressing genuine love for work can inspire others, but enforcing it as a moral norm can silence or shame those with different values or priorities. Leaders should be careful not to equate enthusiasm with virtue, or assume that passion always signals integrity or competence.

For employees, it may be worth reflecting on how we talk about our own motivation. Loving one’s work is wonderful, but it’s also perfectly human to value stability, recognition or family needs. In a culture where “do what you love” has become a moral commandment, remembering that it’s not the be-all, end-all reason to work may be the most moral stance of all.

Mijeong Kwon 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. Treating love for work like a virtue can backfire on employees and teams – https://theconversation.com/treating-love-for-work-like-a-virtue-can-backfire-on-employees-and-teams-266983

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Virginia McCarthy, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Early childhood educators and staff nurture and teach children under the age of 5. At its best, this type of early care sets kids up for long-term success.

But educators who are experiencing poor mental health are less able to cultivate positive relationships with the children in their care, which negatively affects the children’s development.

“We work in a field that has a high demand for kids to be safe and enjoy learning,” one educator told us. “We have … little people that depend on us, parents depend on us, and we need to make sure that we are there for the kids when they need us.”

Our research team – led by a clinical associate professor and a research assistant professor in public health – set out to learn how child care workers were coping with all of this responsibility.

What we learned was concerning and needs to be understood by parents and policymakers alike.

Studying 42 Head Start centers

Our peer-reviewed study examined the mental health of 332 early child care educators and other staff at 42 Head Start centers in the Denver metropolitan area and southeast Colorado.

We found that roughly 25% of early child care staff in Colorado self-reported discrimination and condescending or demeaning treatment from a colleague in the past year, with 15% experiencing more than one kind.

We measured discrimination tied to age, race, ethnicity and gender. We also measured types of demeaning treatment, which included bullying, harassment and condescending behavior. And we looked at physical violence.

Higher levels of workplace mistreatment were related to greater numbers of poor mental health days. The child care staff we surveyed reported an average of seven poor mental health days in the month prior to completing the survey.

Mistreatment in early childhood education

The early child care workforce also reports higher rates of depression than the national workforce.

High stress of educators and staff even pushes some workers out of the profession.

Working conditions matter, too, with early child care workers reporting substantial physical and psychological workplace challenges, such as lifting and carrying children, as well as managing a wide range of ages and capabilities among children in the classroom.

Our survey also revealed that 1 in 4 early child care staff experienced condescending or demeaning treatment by colleagues or superiors in the past 12 months. This was the most common type of workplace mistreatment.

In early child care, teamwork and collegiality are integral and are linked to educator well-being. Mistreatment between colleagues can strain relationships, contribute to burnout and reduce the likelihood of educators stepping into leadership roles.

Our study found that 1 in 10 early child care staff reported discrimination at work based on race or ethnicity. Experiences of discrimination have an impact beyond mental health and also affect physical health, job attitudes and engagement in the workplace.

Younger workers are struggling

Discrimination was three times as likely to be reported by the younger workforce, ages 18-29, than older workers. Discrimination between age groups affects trust and can reduce employee engagement.

Mistreatment of early child care workers can take several forms that happen at the same time. For example, age discrimination can occur in either direction. Younger staff may be viewed by older colleagues as less experienced, less committed or less capable than more experienced colleagues. Older colleagues may be perceived to be less creative or less willing to adapt to new strategies and practices.

Yet overall, younger workers seemed to be struggling more. Workers under 35 reported an average of eight to nine poor mental health days in a 30-day window; older workers reported an average of 5.6.

Improving staff well-being

Our study indicates a need for both societal and organizational change to prevent mistreatment of early child care staff, which can improve worker well-being and lead to better care for young children.

At a societal level, it is important to acknowledge the integral role of the early child care workforce and compensate these workers at a level commensurate with their importance. In 2023, the average U.S. preschool teacher earned an annual income of $37,120 compared to the $63,680 annual income of elementary school teachers.

Adequate pay and appreciation can reduce turnover. Rates of turnover are four times higher among early child care educators than elementary school teachers.

“Turnover has a lot to do with pay, unfortunately, and we don’t get paid a whole lot of money,” one educator said. “And … I don’t think I’ve always felt valued in the position I’m in.”

At an organizational level, leaders can implement health-centered policies and offer managerial training on how to build supportive teams. Total Worker Health interventions may also help to guide needed policy changes with input from staff. These interventions are holistic programs that focus on both the safety and well-being of workers and include elements such as environmental and social supports. They are shown to improve worker well-being.

One initiative compared wellness intervention models across six Early Head Start and Head Start networks nationally to address the comprehensive well-being in staff. Direct outcomes of the programs included workplace and organizational culture improvements, as well as higher staff well-being.

We designed the WELL Program, which has successfully been implemented at five Colorado-based Head Start networks. The program includes training to promote better sleep and mindfulness.

“WELL help(ed) people keep going every day and deal with their stress in a healthy way so it didn’t come out in the classroom, or come out against kiddos that are tough,” one participant said.

Our study also suggests there may be generational differences in workplace communication and a varied understanding of what it is to be mistreated. Additional research on these differences may help us to address causes of mistreatment and find solutions.

Charlotte Farewell receives funding from the Administration for Children and Families.

Jini Puma receives funding from the Administration for Children and Families.

Kyla Hagan-Haynes and Virginia McCarthy 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. A quarter of early child care educators in Colorado reported mistreatment from co-workers – https://theconversation.com/a-quarter-of-early-child-care-educators-in-colorado-reported-mistreatment-from-co-workers-264666

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Pelle G. Tracey, Assistant Professor of Information, University of Washington

Seeing a person huddled under a makeshift roof of tarps or curled up on a warm grate can evoke powerful emotions and questions.

How did they get here? Why doesn’t someone help them? What can I do about this?

The answers to these questions are complex. However, a significant body of research suggests that there is a highly effective solution for many individuals who experience homelessness. It is called supportive housing.

Supportive housing programs combine a housing subsidy – financial assistance that helps make housing affordable even for those with very low incomes – with wraparound supportive services that help a person remain stably housed. Supportive services often include case management, occupational therapy and mental health and addiction treatment. These programs have helped thousands of Philadelphians end their experiences of homelessness.

As a researcher and former social worker, I have spent much of the past decade working in and studying homeless services in Philadelphia. For my dissertation research, I conducted hundreds of hours of ethnographic fieldwork at a soup kitchen and outreach center in the city between 2022 and 2024. I interviewed 75 homeless services workers, volunteers and people who were experiencing or had experienced homelessness. I also analyzed hundreds of pages of policy documents.

I have found that while the city has succeeded in centralizing services to support unhoused people, there remain major bureaucratic challenges exacerbated by insufficient funding and a shortage of supportive housing. These challenges impact both people seeking supportive housing and front-line workers trying to help them.

Khalil’s story

Consider the case of Khalil, a 48-year-old from West Philly who became homeless during the pandemic. (As for all the interviewees’ names used in this article, Khalil is a pseudonym I’m using to protect his privacy.) Khalil told me that he lost his job as an IT technician at Verizon, where he had worked for nine years. Sleeping outside and unable to afford life-sustaining kidney medication, he said, his physical and mental health spiraled.

A supportive housing program changed that, providing him with a stable and affordable place to live, while social workers helped him enroll in Medicaid and connect with a community health clinic. This support, Khalil explained, allowed him to “transition back into residential living and back into employment and back into being a working member of society.”

Despite the efficacy of supportive housing, cities do not receive sufficient federal funding to provide this service to all residents who are eligible. As a result, the need for these housing programs vastly outstrips the supply.

So how do officials in Philadelphia decide who will continue to sleep on the street or in a shelter, and who can move into a supportive housing facility with a warm bed and access to valuable wraparound services?

How the city determines who gets housing

Like other localities, Philadelphia uses a Coordinated Entry System. CES is a form of automated bureaucracy that combines several different algorithms and administrative processes with the goal of helping officials and social service workers allocate resources fairly and efficiently.

CES is intended to help workers identify which people experiencing homelessness are in greatest need of aid. These systems work by combining a central pool of resources like housing programs and a central list of people seeking help. Unhoused people are scored using a vulnerability assessment tool, and those that score highest are matched to an opening in a supportive housing program.

Because most of these systems are premised on targeting resources to the most vulnerable people, defining and gauging vulnerability becomes fraught with tension. After all, vulnerability is inherently subjective, and there is no universally agreed-upon best way to measure it.

These systems will soon come under even greater pressure as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development prepares to slash funding for supportive housing programs. As many as 170,000 people nationwide who were previously homeless will be at risk of returning to the streets once these funding changes are implemented.

CES has benefits and drawbacks

Coordinated entry has made real progress on several long-standing challenges for Philadelphia’s homeless services system. Chief among these is centralization.

Most resources available for people experiencing homelessness are administered by nonprofit social services organizations. Prior to CES, a person seeking assistance would separately apply to various nonprofits and put their name on multiple waiting lists.

CES centralizes resources into a common pool, accessed through the vulnerability assessment process. As one administrator with the city’s Office of Homeless Services told me, this arrangement is “immensely more supportive and fair” than the scattered process that came before. For example, individual nonprofit providers are less able to earmark resources for clients they already work with.

However, there are downsides to Philadelphia’s approach to CES.

Vulnerability assessments, like those used in Philadelphia, have been criticized for failing to capture a full picture of a person’s plight. Assessments involve asking unhoused people a series of yes or no questions about their housing, health and financial history, and generate a vulnerability score based on the responses. A person who has a relatively mild experience with several different risk factors can end up with a much higher score than a person with an extremely serious experience with just a few.

And similar to other automated assessments, such as in the criminal legal system, they have the potential to introduce racial bias into allocation outcomes.

Furthermore, the way CES works is, by design, hidden from the people it impacts most. The ambiguity is intended to prevent people from gaming the system, but it also creates confusion for those living in shelters and on the street. Some seeking aid may hide evidence of their vulnerability, such as addiction, out of fear it will disqualify them from housing. Others may amplify their vulnerability in an effort to improve their odds of receiving help.

The result is a perception among people experiencing homelessness that the system is unfair.

As Andre, a 60-year-old who had been sleeping in shelters off and on for nearly a decade, told me, a person who “goes in there and tells the absolute truth, they’re put on the back burner.”

‘You’ve got to have a record of being homeless’

Leon, a 25-year-old from North Philadelphia, told me as we chatted over coffee that in order to be prioritized through CES, “You’ve got to have a record of being homeless.”

But generating such a paper trail can be difficult. A city database tracks shelter stays that can serve as proof of homelessness, but not all shelters participate. And for those sleeping outside, like Leon, proof depends on regular interactions with outreach workers, which requires being in the right place at the right time.

If an unhoused person cannot prove the length of their time on the street, or provide documentation of a mental health diagnosis, they may be deprioritized through CES, even if they are highly vulnerable.

For all its advantages, CES in Philly is not designed to take into account the input of unhoused people themselves. In the words of Richie, a 32-year-old who was seeking housing for himself and his pregnant wife, “There is no voice for homeless people … because homeless people don’t have a voice.”

Despite these challenges, the city has lowered barriers to participating in CES. For example, the city has launched a pilot program involving mobile assessors who can complete assessments in different locations beyond city shelters, such as at soup kitchens, to meet unhoused people where they are.

3 ways to improve the system

Here are three concrete ways the city could reduce more of the bureaucratic hurdles to supportive housing.

First, the city could expand pathways to supportive housing through a model called multiprinciple allocation. This approach combines different methods for determining who gets housing. Some subsidies could be allocated through new vulnerability assessments that are better vetted for bias, while others are distributed based on length of homelessness or a lottery system. This could bolster fairness by ensuring that people whose vulnerability is not picked up through the assessment tool could still have a shot at aid.

Second, the city could provide opportunities for unhoused people and front-line workers to attest to vulnerability and experiences of homelessness in their own words – allowing someone to say, “I am struggling with housing for reasons that the assessment did not cover.”

And third, Philadelphia could reduce the degree of automation in the CES matching process. As things stand, people with high scores are mechanically matched to open programs, even if that program is a poor fit for the individual person. Giving staff and unhoused people more agency in making housing matches could produce better outcomes.

No amount of tinkering with CES can address the fundamental resource constraints that shape the fight against homelessness in Philadelphia. Simply put, Philadelphia lacks sufficient funding for housing the most vulnerable. But thoughtful changes to CES could make the response to homelessness more effective, compassionate and fair.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Pelle G. Tracey has received funding from the Google Award for Inclusion Research.

– ref. Automated systems decide which homeless Philadelphians get housing and who stays on the street – often in ways that feel arbitrary to those waiting – https://theconversation.com/automated-systems-decide-which-homeless-philadelphians-get-housing-and-who-stays-on-the-street-often-in-ways-that-feel-arbitrary-to-those-waiting-266563

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Audrey T. Lin, Research Associate in Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution

Dogs were the first of any species that people domesticated, and they have been a constant part of human life for millennia. Domesticated species are the plants and animals that have evolved to live alongside humans, providing nearly all of our food and numerous other benefits. Dogs provide protection, hunting assistance, companionship, transportation and even wool for weaving blankets.

Dogs evolved from gray wolves, but scientists debate exactly where, when and how many times dogs were domesticated. Ancient DNA evidence suggests that domestication happened twice, in eastern and western Eurasia, before the groups eventually mixed. That blended population was the ancestor of all dogs living today.

Molecular clock analysis of the DNA from hundreds of modern and ancient dogs suggests they were domesticated between around 20,000 and 22,000 years ago, when large ice sheets covered much of Eurasia and North America. The first dog identified in the archaeological record is a 14,000-year-old pup found in Bonn-Oberkassel, Germany, but it can be difficult to tell based on bones whether an animal was an early domestic dog or a wild wolf.

Despite the shared history of dogs and wolves, scientists have long thought these two species rarely mated and gave birth to hybrid offspring. As an evolutionary biologist and a molecular anthropologist who study domestic plants and animals, we wanted to take a new look at whether dog-wolf hybridization has really been all that uncommon.

Little interbreeding in the wild

Dogs are not exactly descended from modern wolves. Rather, dogs and wolves living today both derive from a shared ancient wolf population that lived alongside woolly mammoths and cave bears.

In most domesticated species, there are often clear, documented patterns of gene flow between the animals that live alongside humans and their wild counterparts. Where wild and domesticated animals’ habitats overlap, they can breed with each other to produce hybrid offspring. In these cases, the genes from wild animals are folded into the genetic variation of the domesticated population.

For example, pigs were domesticated in the Near East over 10,000 years ago. But when early farmers brought them to Europe, they hybridized so frequently with local wild boar that almost all of their Near Eastern DNA was replaced. Similar patterns can be seen in the endangered wild Anatolian and Cypriot mouflon that researchers have found to have high proportions of domestic sheep DNA in their genomes. It’s more common than not to find evidence of wild and domesticated animals interbreeding through time and sharing genetic material.

That wolves and dogs wouldn’t show that typical pattern is surprising, since they live in overlapping ranges and can freely interbreed.

Dog and wolf behavior are completely different, though, with wolves generally organized around a family pack structure and dogs reliant on humans. When hybridization does occur, it tends to be when human activities – such as habitat encroachment and hunting – disrupt pack dynamics, leading female wolves to strike out on their own and breed with male dogs. People intentionally bred a few “wolf dog” hybrid types in the 20th century, but these are considered the exception.

Tiny but detectable wolf ancestry

To investigate how much gene flow there really has been between dogs and wolves after domestication, we analyzed 2,693 previously published genomes, making use of massive publicly available datasets.

These included 146 ancient dogs and wolves covering about 100,000 years. We also looked at 1,872 modern dogs, including golden retrievers, chihuahuas, malamutes, basenjis and other well-known breeds, plus more unusual breeds from around the world such as the Caucasian ovcharka and Swedish vallhund.

Finally, we included genomes from about 300 “village dogs.” These are not pets but are free-living animals that are dependent on their close association with human environments.

We traced the evolutionary histories of all of these canids by looking at maternal lineages via their mitochondrial genomes and paternal lineages via their Y chromosomes. We used highly sensitive computational methods to dive into the dogs’ and wolves’ nuclear genomes – that is, the genetic material contained in their cells’ nuclei.

We found the presence of wild wolf genes in most dog genomes and the presence of dog genes in about half of wild wolf genomes. The sign of the wolf was small but it was there, in the form of tiny, almost imperceptible chunks of continuous wolf DNA in dogs’ chromosomes. About two-thirds of breed dogs in our sample had wolf genes from crossbreeding that took place roughly 800 generations ago, on average.

While our results showed that larger, working dogs – such as sled dogs and large guardian dogs that protect livestock – generally have more wolf ancestry, the patterns aren’t universal. Some massive breeds such as the St. Bernard completely lack wolf DNA, but the tiny Chihuahua retains detectable wolf ancestry at 0.2% of its genome. Terriers and scent hounds typically fall at the low end of the spectrum for wolf genes.

We were surprised that every single village dog we tested had pieces of wolf DNA in their genomes. Why would this be the case? Village dogs are free-living animals that make up about half the world’s dogs. Their lives can be tough, with short life expectancy and high infant mortality. Village dogs are also associated with pathogenic diseases, including rabies and canine distemper, making them a public health concern.

More often than predicted by chance, the stretches of wolf DNA we found in village dog genomes contained genes related to olfactory receptors. We imagine that olfactory abilities influenced by wolf genes may have helped these free-living dogs survive in harsh, volatile environments.

The intertwining of dogs and wolves

Because dogs evolved from wolves, all of dogs’ DNA is originally wolf DNA. So when we’re talking about the small pieces of wolf DNA in dog genomes, we’re not referring to that original wolf gene pool that’s been kicking around over the past 20,000 years, but rather evidence for dogs and wolves continuing to interbreed much later in time.

A wolf-dog hybrid with one of each kind of parent would carry 50% dog and 50% wolf DNA. If that hybrid then lived and mated with dogs, its offspring would be 25% wolf, and so on, until we see only small snippets of wolf DNA present.

The situation is similar to one in human genomes: Neanderthals and humans share a common ancestor around half a million years ago. However, Neanderthals and our species, Homo sapiens, also overlapped and interbred in Eurasia as recently as a few thousand generations ago, shortly before Neanderthals disappeared. Scientists can spot the small pieces of Neanderthal DNA in most living humans in the same way we can see wolf genes within most dogs.

Our study updates the previously held belief that hybridization between dogs and wolves is rare; interactions between these two species do have visible genetic traces. Hybridization with free-roaming dogs is considered a threat to conservation efforts of endangered wolves, including Iberian, Italian and Himalayan wolves. However, there also is evidence that dog-wolf mixing might confer genetic advantages to wolves as they adapt to environments that are increasingly shaped by humans.

Though dogs evolved as human companions, wolves have served as their genetic lifeline. When dogs encountered evolutionary challenges such as how to survive harsh climates, scavenge for food in the streets or guard livestock, it appears they’ve been able to tap into wolf ancestry as part of their evolutionary survival kit.

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

– ref. Thousands of genomes reveal the wild wolf genes in most dogs’ DNA – https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-genomes-reveal-the-wild-wolf-genes-in-most-dogs-dna-261897

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

As Russian bombs continued to pound Ukraine, a different conflict has blown up over plans to end that almost four-year-long war. The Trump administration on Nov. 20, 2025, formally presented Ukraine with a 28-point proposal to end the war, and President Donald Trump announced the country had until Thanksgiving to sign it. But Ukraine and its European and U.S. allies said the plan heavily favored Russia, requiring Ukraine to give up territory not even held by Russia, diminish the size of its military and, ultimately, place its long-term sovereignty at risk. The Trump administration was accused by policy experts and some lawmakers of fashioning a plan to serve Russia’s interests, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio got enmeshed in an argument with U.S. senators over whether the U.S. or Russia had authored the document. On Nov. 23, Ukrainian and U.S. officials held talks in Geneva, which Rubio declared were “productive and meaningful,” and those negotiations continue. The Conversation U.S. politics editor Naomi Schalit asked longtime diplomat Donald Heflin, now teaching at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, to help make sense of the chaotic events.

I have a whole list of questions to ask you, but my first question is what on earth is going on?

It’s hard to say. Ever since the Trump administration took power for the second time, it’s alternated between leaning towards Russia in this war or being more neutral, with occasional leaning towards Ukraine. They go back and forth.

This particular peace plan gives Russia a lot at once. It gets the size of the Ukrainian army cut down from 800,000-plus to 600,000, when the country is barely hanging on defending itself with 800,000 troops. Russia gets land, including land that it has conquered. A lot of people expected that might be one of the conditions of a Ukraine-Russia peace deal. But this also gives Russia land that it hasn’t taken yet and may never take.

It bars Ukraine from seeking NATO membership. That’s not a huge surprise. That was probably always going to be part of an eventual deal. Ukraine gets security guarantees from the West. Unfortunately, the U.S. gave ironclad security guarantees in 1994 when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons voluntarily. It’s been invaded by Russia twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. So our security guarantees really don’t mean a whole lot in that area of the world.

And there’s more, right?

I think this is the most important part, what Putin is looking for more than anything else. Russia gets released from economic sanctions and it rejoins the group of G7 industrialized countries.

Putin’s economy is under a lot of stress. The cash that would flow in for the sale of Russian goods, particularly energy, would enable him to build a whole new army from scratch, if he needed to. That’s a huge strategic advantage. This would be a major shot in the arm for the Russian economy and for the Russian war economy.

So this is a very pro-Russian deal, unless it’s modified heavily, and there’s argument in Washington now whether the Russians just plain drafted it, or whether our State Department drafted it but for some reason leaned heavily towards Russia.

I’m inclined to think the original draft came from the Russians. It’s just too loaded up with the stuff that they want.

There was a fair amount of confusing back-and-forth on Nov. 23 that Rubio had told some senators that, in fact, the plan wasn’t generated by the United States, that it reflected a Russian wish list. The senators revealed this publicly. Then a State Department spokesman called that claim “blatantly false.” You’re a former diplomat. When you see that kind of thing happening, what do you think?

It’s amateur hour. We’ve seen this before. With this administration, it puts a lot of very amateurish people – Rubio’s not one of them – in place in important offices, like Steve Witkoff, the special envoy for Russia and Ukraine who is also the special envoy for the Middle East. And they’ve gotten rid of all the professionals. They either just fired some or ran some off.

So you know, the problem here is implementation. Politicians can have great thoughts, but they usually then turn to the professionals and say, “Here’s what I’m thinking.” The people they would turn to are gone. And that was their own doing – the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

How might that affect the ultimate goal, which is peace?

This is a very delicate situation that calls for delicate peace talks from professional diplomats. There are a couple of things that need to happen and aren’t happening very much. First off, this is a war in Eastern Europe. Europe should be very involved now. They lean against Russia, so they probably can’t be honest brokers, but they need to be involved in every step of this process. If there’s going to be any rebuilding of Ukraine, Europe’s going to have to help with that. If there’s going to be pressure on Russia, Europe buys a lot of its goods, especially energy. They’re just a necessary player, and they haven’t been included.

What else?

The other is that when people have these great ideas, normally they would turn to their professionals. Those professionals would then talk to the professionals on the other side or other sides. Staff work would be done, then your presidents or your prime ministers or your secretaries of state would meet and hammer out the deal.

None of that’s happening in this process. People are having great thoughts and getting on planes, and that’s not a recipe for a permanent peace deal.

Europe is champing at the bit to try to get involved in this, because they’ve got professional diplomats still in place, and it affects them.

Why is this happening now?

The timing of all this is really interesting. Winter’s coming, and Northern Europe, particularly Germany, is very dependent on Russian natural gas to heat their homes. These sanctions against Russia make that difficult. They make it more expensive. Should Russia decide it wanted to play hardball, it could cut off its natural gas in Northern Europe, and people in Germany would be freezing in the dark this winter. This timing is not an accident.

Trump said he wanted an agreement by Thanksgiving. Is that a reasonable requirement of a process to bring peace after a multiyear war?

No, it’s not. I don’t know if they even realize this in the
Trump administration, but that’s another sign – just as we had ahead of the Alaska Summit between Putin and Trump – that this isn’t really about trying to make peace. It’s for show and to get credit. In a war that’s been going on now for almost four years, you don’t say, “OK, within the next week, come up with a very complicated peace deal and sign off on it and it’s going to stick.” That’s just not the way it works.

Donald Heflin 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. Peace plan presented by the US to Ukraine reflects inexperienced, unrealistic handling of a delicate situation – https://theconversation.com/peace-plan-presented-by-the-us-to-ukraine-reflects-inexperienced-unrealistic-handling-of-a-delicate-situation-270488

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Francesco Agnellini, Lecturer in Digital and Data Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York

The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI.

Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study showing that more than 50% of articles on the web are being generated by artificial intelligence.

As a scholar who explores how AI is built, how people are using it in their everyday lives, and how it’s affecting culture, I’ve thought a lot about what this technology can do and where it falls short.

If you’re more likely to read something written by AI than by a human on the internet, is it only a matter of time before human writing becomes obsolete? Or is this simply another technological development that humans will adapt to?

It isn’t all or nothing

Thinking about these questions reminded me of Umberto Eco’s essay “Apocalyptic and Integrated,” which was originally written in the early 1960s. Parts of it were later included in an anthology titled “Apocalypse Postponed,” which I first read as a college student in Italy.

In it, Eco draws a contrast between two attitudes toward mass media. There are the “apocalyptics” who fear cultural degradation and moral collapse. Then there are the “integrated” who champion new media technologies as a democratizing force for culture.

Back then, Eco was writing about the proliferation of TV and radio. Today, you’ll often see similar reactions to AI.

Yet Eco argued that both positions were too extreme. It isn’t helpful, he wrote, to see new media as either a dire threat or a miracle. Instead, he urged readers to look at how people and communities use these new tools, what risks and opportunities they create, and how they shape – and sometimes reinforce – power structures.

While I was teaching a course on deepfakes during the 2024 election, Eco’s lesson also came back to me. Those were days when some scholars and media outlets were regularly warning of an imminent “deepfake apocalypse.”

Would deepfakes be used to mimic major political figures and push targeted disinformation? What if, on the eve of an election, generative AI was used to mimic the voice of a candidate on a robocall telling voters to stay home?

Those fears weren’t groundless: Research shows that people aren’t especially good at identifying deepfakes. At the same time, they consistently overestimate their ability to do so.

In the end, though, the apocalypse was postponed. Post-election analyses found that deepfakes did seem to intensify some ongoing political trends, such as the erosion of trust and polarization, but there’s no evidence that they affected the final outcome of the election.

Listicles, news updates and how-to guides

Of course, the fears that AI raises for supporters of democracy are not the same as those it creates for writers and artists.

For them, the core concerns are about authorship: How can one person compete with a system trained on millions of voices that can produce text at hyper-speed? And if this becomes the norm, what will it do to creative work, both as an occupation and as a source of meaning?

It’s important to clarify what’s meant by “online content,” the phrase used in the Graphite study, which analyzed over 65,000 randomly selected articles of at least 100 words on the web. These can include anything from peer-reviewed research to promotional copy for miracle supplements.

A closer reading of the Graphite study shows that the AI-generated articles consist largely of general-interest writing: news updates, how-to guides, lifestyle posts, reviews and product explainers.

The primary economic purpose of this content is to persuade or inform, not to express originality or creativity. Put differently, AI appears to be most useful when the writing in question is low-stakes and formulaic: the weekend-in-Rome listicle, the standard cover letter, the text produced to market a business.

A whole industry of writers – mostly freelance, including many translators – has relied on precisely this kind of work, producing blog posts, how-to material, search engine optimization text and social media copy. The rapid adoption of large language models has already displaced many of the gigs that once sustained them.

Collaborating with AI

The dramatic loss of this work points toward another issue raised by the Graphite study: the question of authenticity, not only in identifying who or what produced a text, but also in understanding the value that humans attach to creative activity.

How can you distinguish a human-written article from a machine-generated one? And does that ability even matter?

Over time, that distinction is likely to grow less significant, particularly as more writing emerges from interactions between humans and AI. A writer might draft a few lines, let an AI expand them and then reshape that output into the final text.

This article is no exception. As a non-native English speaker, I often rely on AI to refine my language before sending drafts to an editor. At times the system attempts to reshape what I mean. But once its stylistic tendencies become familiar, it becomes possible to avoid them and maintain a personal tone.

Also, artificial intelligence is not entirely artificial, since it is trained on human-made material. It’s worth noting that even before AI, human writing has never been entirely human, either. Every technology, from parchment and stylus paper to the typewriter and now AI, has shaped how people write and how readers make sense of it.

Another important point: AI models are increasingly trained on datasets that include not only human writing but also AI-generated and human–AI co-produced text.

This has raised concerns about their ability to continue improving over time. Some commentators have already described a sense of disillusionment following the release of newer large models, with companies struggling to deliver on their promises.

Human voices may matter even more

But what happens when people become overly reliant on AI in their writing?

Some studies show that writers may feel more creative when they use artificial intelligence for brainstorming, yet the range of ideas often becomes narrower. This uniformity affects style as well: These systems tend to pull users toward similar patterns of wording, which reduces the differences that usually mark an individual voice. Researchers also note a shift toward Western – and especially English-speaking – norms in the writing of people from other cultures, raising concerns about a new form of AI colonialism.

In this context, texts that display originality, voice and stylistic intention are likely to become even more meaningful within the media landscape, and they may play a crucial role in training the next generations of models.

If you set aside the more apocalyptic scenarios and assume that AI will continue to advance – perhaps at a slower pace than in the recent past – it’s quite possible that thoughtful, original, human-generated writing will become even more valuable.

Put another way: The work of writers, journalists and intellectuals will not become superfluous simply because much of the web is no longer written by humans.

Francesco Agnellini 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. More than half of new articles on the internet are being written by AI – is human writing headed for extinction? – https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-new-articles-on-the-internet-are-being-written-by-ai-is-human-writing-headed-for-extinction-268354

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Bethany Bradley, Professor of Biogeography and Spatial Ecology, UMass Amherst

When the Trump administration began freezing federal funding for climate and ecosystem research, one of the programs hit hard was ours: the U.S. Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers.

These nine regional centers help fish, wildlife, water, land – and, importantly, people – adapt to rising global temperatures and other climate shifts.

The centers have been helping to track invasive species, protect water supplies and make agriculture more sustainable in the face of increasing drought conditions. They’re improving wildfire forecasting, protecting shorelines and saving Alaska salmon, among many other projects.

All of this work happens through partnerships: Scientists, many of them affiliated with universities, team up with public and private resource managers – the people who manage water supplies, wildlands, recreation areas, shorelines and other natural resources – to develop the research and solutions those managers need.

But in spring 2025, after 15 years of operation of the centers, the president’s proposed federal budget zeroed out funding for them. Federal workers at the centers were threatened with layoffs.

Three of the nine regional centers – covering the South Central, Pacific Islands and Northeast regions – were left unfunded when the Office of Management and Budget withheld and then blocked funds Congress had already appropriated.

In spite of these challenges, we have hope that the work will eventually continue. Congress’ proposed budgets in both the U.S. House and Senate recommend fully funding the Climate Adaptation Science Centers, and there’s a reason: Natural resources managers and the public have consistently told their elected officials that the work is important.

Here are three examples of projects in regions where funding has been blocked that show why resource managers are speaking up.

Sustainable water supplies in arid lands

In south-central Texas, the Edwards Aquifer Authority is responsible for providing sustained water resources for 2.5 million people in cities such as San Antonio and Uvalde. It also maintains the groundwater-fed springs that support threatened and endangered species.

In recent decades, however, both heavy rainfall and prolonged, intense droughts have increased uncertainty about how much water will be available from the aquifer.

At the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, researchers from the University of Oklahoma teamed up with the aquifer authority to develop high-resolution climate projections for assessing future changes to groundwater recharge and ecologically sensitive springs.

The climate projections are helping the authority determine whether its existing drought-mitigation practices are effective for sustaining freshwater springs and groundwater levels.

Losing funding for the Climate Adaptation Science Center means this technical guidance for water management and many other projects in the region are no longer available.

Stalled science doesn’t just hurt Texas. Many arid and semi-arid regions of the U.S. rely on aquifers to provide water supplies for homes, businesses and agriculture, and they need this type of research to maintain water security.

Solutions for agriculture and fire protection

On the Hawaiian island of O’ahu, up to 40% of agricultural land is unmanaged and unplanted pasture that is often invaded by non-native grasses. These grasses increase fire risk as the islands face more intense and longer-lasting droughts.

The Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center has been working on a solution to help restore fallow lands through agroforestry, in which farmers grow crops among trees, mirroring Indigenous practices.

Climate Adaptation Science Center researchers at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa partnered with Kākoʻo ʻŌiwi, a nonprofit organization that is restoring Indigenous food systems, to identify lands that will remain suitable for agroforestry even under worsening drought caused by climate change. The research has shown how management practices can increase soil health and increase the soil’s carbon storage.

Since 2019, researchers have taught hundreds of volunteers from the community and student groups about restoration practices that include food production, forest conservation and climate resilience.

Lost funding for Climate Adaptation Science Centers put the brakes on science that supports local communities.

Managing invasive species in a warming world

Invasive species cost the U.S. economy an estimated US$10 billion a year in damage to crops, forests and ecosystems. At the same time, climate change is increasing the range of many invasive species and making them harder to control.

In 2016, researchers from the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst learned that resource managers were concerned about how climate change would affect invasive species ranges. To understand and address the needs of resource managers, Climate Adaptation Science Center researchers created the Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change Network, which has become a primary source for mapping invasive species’ movement and sharing invasive species research across the region.

Climate Adaptation Science Center researchers conducted a series of projects to identify invasive plants expanding into northern and southern New England and mid-Atlantic states. The results have helped the state of Massachusetts update its invasive plant risk assessment and expanded regulators’ lists of invasive species to prohibit from sales in New York and Maine.

States recently asked the center’s researchers to develop a database of current and emerging invasive plants across the Northeast to help them build consistent and proactive defenses against emerging invasive species. Stalled funding has also stalled this project.

These are the kind of real-world solutions that federal funding cuts are stopping. When that work disappears, it leaves America and Americans more vulnerable to climate change.

Bethany Bradley receives funding from the US Geological Survey as the University Director of the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

Adrienne Wootten previously received funding from the US Geological Survey for research projects through the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center and is currently engaged in research with the Edwards Aquifer Authority.

Ryan Longman receives funding from the US Geological Survey as the University Director of the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center

– ref. From invasive species tracking to water security – what’s lost with federal funding cuts at US Climate Adaptation Science Centers – https://theconversation.com/from-invasive-species-tracking-to-water-security-whats-lost-with-federal-funding-cuts-at-us-climate-adaptation-science-centers-269908

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Katherine Fink, Associate Professor of Media, Communications, and Visual Arts, Pace University

Although advertising revenue largely sustained the news media in the 20th century, it’s been harder to come by in the digital age. News media outlets just aren’t as important these days for advertisers when they can reach potential customers so many other ways, including through social media.

Some news outlets are relying more on subscription revenue. But that can also be a tough sell when readers have so many alternatives – often free – for finding news, if they’re even looking for it at all.

Increasingly, local news media outlets are adopting nonprofit models to be able to obtain grants from foundations and donations from individuals as new revenue sources.

At the same time, some nonprofit news leaders have avoided selling ads because the IRS has said their organizations would have to pay taxes on that revenue. They have also heard that selling too many ads might jeopardize their tax-exempt status altogether.

My research suggests that they need not worry about that – although, given recent threats by the Trump administration against Harvard University and other nonprofits, they may have reasons to be wary.

Encouraging earned revenue

I’m a former public radio journalist who now researches the nonprofit news sector.

I interviewed 23 nonprofit news leaders in 2023 about their fundraising practices. I also reviewed hundreds of 990 forms that most nonprofits are required to file annually with the IRS.

In early 2025, I published a study that found most nonprofit news leaders still depended heavily on foundations and individual donors. That’s despite calls from foundations and the Institute for Nonprofit News, an organization representing these media outlets, that they should diversify their revenue sources.

The Institute for Nonprofit News especially encourages news nonprofits to consider adding earned revenue. That category can include lots of things, but most often it means selling ads. The nonprofit news leaders I spoke with had mixed feelings about that.

Taxing unrelated business income

The philanthropic dollars that charitable nonprofits get from foundations, individual donors and corporations are exempt from taxes. But their earned revenue from sources such as advertising, sponsorships or ticketed events is often taxable.

That’s because U.S. tax law requires nonprofits to pay taxes on income deemed to be “not substantially related” to their public service missions.

Take, for example, money that a nonprofit museum earns through its gift shop. The government taxes that as unrelated business income so nonprofits don’t get an unfair edge over their for-profit competitors.

Money raised through ad sales has also historically counted as unrelated business income for nonprofits, according to the IRS. Some nonprofit news leaders say that’s not how it should be.

Some news nonprofits are directly challenging the traditional classification of advertising revenue as unrelated business income.

For example, the San Antonio Report, a nonprofit news outlet, reported receiving US$361,649 in advertising revenue in tax year 2022. But the organization did not pay taxes on it, because it identifies advertising as part of its mission. In fact, a Supreme Court ruling in the 1986 United States v. American College of Physicians case left open the possibility that advertising could be a tax-exempt form of revenue if it had an “educational function” related to the nonprofit’s purpose.

Selling ads anyway

Nonprofit news leaders not trying to challenge that classification still had reason to be concerned about running paid ads.

The IRS has warned it could revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that had too much unrelated business income in their portfolios. That’s one of the top six reasons organizations lose their nonprofit status, according to the IRS. Other reasons include failure to serve an exempt purpose, lobbying, political campaigning, mission drift and failure to complete annual 990 forms.

How much unrelated business income is too much? The IRS has not provided clear guidance on this, despite pleas from local nonprofit news advocates.

One editor I interviewed, whose free weekly newspaper had recently converted from a for-profit enterprise to a nonprofit, lamented that her copious ad portfolio could put her tax-exempt status in jeopardy. Ads had always been part of what readers appreciated about her newspaper, she said – it was how they learned about restaurants and nightlife.

Some tax advisers recommend that nonprofits keep unrelated business income below 25% of their total revenue. But the ambiguity is enough to make some nonprofit news leaders prefer to not get any at all.

Some local news nonprofits are selling ads, despite their reservations about the potential tax impact and the potential threat of the IRS revoking their tax-exempt status. Of the Institute for Nonprofit News’ roughly 201 local newsroom members, 21 reported earning at least $1,000 in unrelated business income in the most recent year for which data was available when I conducted these interviews – usually 2022 or 2023. That happens to be the minimum reportable amount.

Paying no taxes

Only three of these 21 local news nonprofits paid taxes on their advertising revenue – and the ones that paid did so at reduced amounts. The outlets were largely able to avoid taxes due to exemptions the IRS allows nonprofits to claim for advertising-related expenses, such as commissions, agency fees and production. Several news nonprofits were also able to deduct readership costs, such as printing and distribution.

Local news nonprofits also appeared not to draw the ire of the IRS for accepting too much advertising revenue. While most reported unrelated business income that amounted to less than 25% of their total revenue, five news nonprofits did exceed that percentage, sometimes by quite a bit.

Rarely revoking tax exemptions

It turns out the IRS rarely revokes the tax-exempt status of charitable nonprofits of any kind for collecting too much unrelated business income.

IRS records indicate that the most common reason for revocations was the failure of nonprofits to file their 990 forms annually.

Not doing so for three years in a row triggers an automatic revocation, which can be reversed if nonprofits get back into compliance by belatedly filing their overdue paperwork. Revocations for all other reasons, including excessive unrelated business income, have impacted less than 0.1% of nonprofits, according to my analysis of IRS records.

In other words, two common concerns about advertising expressed by the nonprofit news leaders I interviewed – the potential tax burden and the risk of running afoul of the IRS – appear to have been unfounded.

At the same time, it can be hard to keep up with what might run afoul of IRS rules.

Starting in April 2025, the Trump administration threatened to revoke the nonprofit status of Harvard University after its leaders resisted numerous demands, including changes to its leadership and admissions policies.

Nonprofit news organizations have also faced pressure from the Trump administration. Several public media outlets are planning to shut down or reduce their operations following the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s loss of government funding in 2025. It’s part of what’s widely seen as the administration’s attempt to control news media, a campaign that has also led to defamation lawsuits, a leadership shakeup at CBS News, and the Federal Communications Commission’s deregulation efforts.

So far, Harvard’s nonprofit status remains intact, and legal experts say it’s likely to stay that way. Still, at a time when many local news nonprofits are struggling to keep the lights on, I can understand why they might choose to tread lightly.

The Conversation U.S. is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and does not get any revenue from advertising.

Katherine Fink 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. Nonprofit news outlets are often scared that selling ads could jeopardize their tax-exempt status, but IRS records show that’s been rare – https://theconversation.com/nonprofit-news-outlets-are-often-scared-that-selling-ads-could-jeopardize-their-tax-exempt-status-but-irs-records-show-thats-been-rare-268844