Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Emily A. Margolis, Curator of Contemporary Spaceflight, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

While I was leading a tour of the National Air and Space Museum in January 2026, a visitor posed this insightful question: “Why has it taken so long to return to the Moon?”

After all, NASA had the know-how and technology to send humans to the lunar surface more than 50 years ago as part of the Apollo program. And, as another tour guest reminded us, computers today can do so much more than they could back then, as evidenced by the smartphones most of us carry in our pockets. Shouldn’t it be easier to get to the Moon than ever before?

The truth is that sending humans into space safely continues to be difficult, especially as missions increase in complexity.

New technologies require years of study, development and testing before they can be certified for flight. And even then, systems and materials can behave in ways that surprise and worry engineers and mission planners; look no further than Boeing’s Starliner CFT mission or the performance of the Orion heat shield on Artemis I.

Issues with Starliner’s thrusters led NASA to return the spacecraft from the International Space Station without its crew. Unanticipated chipping of the Orion heat shield resulted in years of research, culminating in NASA altering the atmospheric reentry plans for the Artemis II mission.

NASA’s programs also require sustained political will and financial support across multiple presidential administrations, Congresses and fiscal years. As a historian of human spaceflight, I have studied the space agency’s efforts to engage the broader public to convince American taxpayers that their programs hold value for the nation.

NASA is now on the eve of the first crewed flight to the Moon since the Apollo era: Artemis II. A crew of four will conduct a lunar flyby, laying the groundwork, the agency hopes, for a landing on the Artemis IV mission.

The story of NASA’s effort to return humans to the Moon is long and winding, demonstrating the complexities of turning grand ambitions into real missions.

Post-Apollo

In early 1970, with two successful Moon landings on the books, President Richard Nixon sought to reduce NASA’s budget to better align with his administration’s priorities. This decision put the space agency in a difficult position, which ultimately led to the cancellation of three planned Apollo missions to conserve funding for its plans for long-term human activity in low Earth orbit.

NASA repurposed the third stage of a Saturn V rocket to create the first U.S. space station, Skylab, which operated from 1973 to 1974. The space agency used leftover Saturn IB rockets and Apollo command and service modules to send crews to the station.

Over the next three decades, NASA developed and operated the space shuttle. The fleet of space shuttle orbiters supported satellite deployment and microgravity research on orbital missions of up to 17 days. This work was meant to enable future long-duration human missions and provide benefits to people on Earth. For example, data from protein crystal growth experiments have informed the development of medicines.

The space shuttle program facilitated the construction, maintenance and staffing of a continuously inhabited research platform in orbit, the International Space Station. The first modules launched in late 1998.

Where to next?

As the new millennium approached, the Clinton administration tasked NASA to think beyond the space station. What could robots and humans do next in space? And where could they do it? Notably, the White House expressed an interest in locations beyond low Earth orbit.

NASA, it turned out, was well positioned to meet the administration’s request. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin was already thinking about preparing proposals for the next presidential administration and had recently sponsored a human lunar return study. In 1999, he established a team to investigate new technologies, missions and destinations for the 21st century.

This work took on new significance following the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia crew in February 2003. Many people, including those in the new George W. Bush White House, wondered whether the human spaceflight program should continue – and, if so, how.

Administration discussions culminated in Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration in 2004, which directed NASA to retire the space shuttle after the completion of the space station. It called for returning humans to the Moon on a crew exploration vehicle designed for destinations beyond low Earth orbit.

It also called for continuing robotic exploration of Mars and engaging companies and international partners in space. Fifteen years earlier, President George H. W. Bush had also announced a Moon and Mars exploration program, but congressional concerns about cost kept space travelers close to home.

The Constellation program’s legacy

In December 2004, NASA began the process of finding a manufacturer for the crew exploration vehicle. By August 2006, the space agency awarded Lockheed Martin the contract to build the capsule, which it had named Orion – the same Orion planned to carry Artemis astronauts to the Moon.

Years of research, development and testing followed for Orion as well as the Ares I crew and Ares V cargo launch vehicles. Together, these technologies made up the Constellation program.

Constellation had two primary objectives: in the near term, to help transport crew to and from the space station after the space shuttle program ended; in the long term, to enable human lunar exploration.

Building systems that could work in both Earth orbit and around the Moon was supposed to save the time and cost of developing two vehicles. Similarly, adapting space shuttle program hardware could supposedly cut costs.

During the first months of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009, the administration initiated an independent review of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. The Augustine Committee, chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, found that the agency’s ambitions outstripped its limited budget, leading to significant delays. The first Orion spacecraft was likely to arrive after the space station ceased operations.

The committee proposed several paths forward at the current funding level, which prioritized space shuttle and space station programs. An additional annual investment of US$3 billion would allow for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

Ultimately, the Obama administration canceled Constellation, but two of its technologies lived on, thanks to U.S. senators from states that would have been affected by cuts.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 funded Orion’s continued development, shifting responsibility for space station crew transportation to commercial vehicles. It also directed NASA to develop the space launch system, a redesigned Ares V heavy booster, to send Orion to the Moon. The technical strategy had political benefits, too, preserving jobs in numerous congressional districts by providing continuity for aerospace contractors.

In December 2014, a Delta IV heavy rocket launched the first Orion capsule on a test flight, providing engineers with data on spacecraft systems and the heat shield. By October 2015, the space launch system had completed a critical design review, the last step before manufacturing could begin.

Introducing Artemis

In December 2017, the new Trump administration issued a policy directive shifting the focus of NASA’s human spaceflight program back to the Moon. The space agency would use Orion and the space launch system in a race to meet an ambitious 2024 landing date. NASA officially named the program Artemis in May 2019.

The 25-day Artemis I mission, launched in November 2022, was a major milestone for the program. This uncrewed flight was the first flight of the space launch system and the first to integrate SLS and Orion. It laid the groundwork for Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS.

Over more than 50 years, each new presidential administration has reassessed the place of spaceflight among its priorities, either encouraging or curtailing NASA’s efforts to return humans to the lunar surface.

Each crewed flight requires the alignment of technical expertise, political will and financial support over years if not decades. For the space fans who plan to watch the Artemis II launch, the wait for countdown may feel long. But it’s just a blink in NASA’s long journey back to the Moon.

Emily A. Margolis 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. Artemis II’s long countdown – a space historian explains why it has taken over 50 years to return to the Moon – https://theconversation.com/artemis-iis-long-countdown-a-space-historian-explains-why-it-has-taken-over-50-years-to-return-to-the-moon-274165

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Deana L. Weibel, Professor of Anthropology, Grand Valley State University

Early in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s science fiction blockbuster “Project Hail Mary,” middle school teacher Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, is tasked by an international coalition to uncover the biology of a strange microbe known as an “astrophage” that has been absorbing energy from an ever-dimming Sun.

Grace is a molecular biologist by training, but his controversial ideas and overconfident attitude have kept him out of academia. The viewer will see through flashbacks that as he’s matured, he’s developed a vital skill for solving the astrophage crisis: intellectual humility.

I’m an anthropologist who studies astronauts and space professionals to understand what space symbolizes to the people who experience it firsthand. Grace’s character in “Project Hail Mary” developed several of the traits that I’ve observed in the astronauts I’ve interviewed. These characteristics prove essential to success in high-stakes, uncertain situations. Warning: some plot points will be revealed ahead.

Grace has been chosen as one of the first to study astrophage because of his Ph.D. dissertation on whether life can exist without water, a hot take in the world of science that, along with his rude response to peer reviewers, has gotten him banned from polite science conferences. The solar microbes eating the Sun seem to live without water, so Grace is the acknowledged expert.

Unfortunately, Grace can’t see into the mysterious, opaque little organisms until a dead one becomes translucent. Finally, Grace can see inside the microbe to study it, and he believes his hypothesis about life not needing water will be proven. However, chemical analysis reveals astrophage is made up of mostly water.

In a moment that undercuts both his expertise and his expectations, Grace is wrong. Crushed, he throws a tantrum, observed by a bemused assembly of international leaders.

What actually matters isn’t that Grace is wrong but what he does next. Only after Grace overcomes his frustration and need to be right is he able to move forward, returning to the problem with curiosity rather than defensiveness and the resolve to learn enough about astrophage to make saving the world a possibility.

Admitting what you don’t know

Perhaps the real hero of the story is not Ryland Grace himself but his intellectual humility. Intellectual humility, the admission of your own limited knowledge and a willingness to learn from others, sometimes seems to be undervalued, particularly by those in leadership positions.

People who are intellectually humble will say things like, “Tell me more,” or “I wish I had thought of that.” They don’t feel threatened when admitting vulnerability.

Some people, however, do feel threatened by the thought of admitting incomplete knowledge or appearing to have limitations. Instead of confessing what they don’t know, they may claim a kind of certainty that goes beyond their true expertise, shutting down further questioning. Intellectual humility, in contrast, encourages someone to remain engaged by highlighting how much they still have to learn.

Being contradicted by the facts can produce diverse reactions. For someone without intellectual humility, not knowing can feel like failure. It can lead to defensiveness, denial or a refusal to engage. With humility, however, not knowing is more interesting than scary. The defensiveness is gone, replaced by curiosity.

When Grace realizes his expectations about astrophage aren’t supported by scientific evidence, he goes from feeling sure to feeling unsure. Reality itself hasn’t changed, but Grace’s sense of reality shifts in an important way. He realizes that there is a great deal he still needs to learn about these microbes, without assumptions blocking new knowledge. His intellectual humility gives him a path forward, a way to reset and take in new information without shutting down.

Intellectual humility as a method

Ryland Grace is willing to learn, and this serves him well throughout the movie. His intellectual humility operates as a method, guiding how he approaches problems step by step.

For instance, once he realizes, to his dismay, that astrophage is made of water, Grace acknowledges this new truth. He doesn’t like it, but he accepts it. Moving forward, he avoids making assumptions about astrophage. Instead, he tests hypotheses using simple tools that have been cobbled together from items available in a big-box store.

His partner in this experiment is Carl, played by Lionel Boyce, who is there as a sort of half-“babysitter,” half-security guard, keeping an eye on Grace but also being irresistibly pulled into his scientific orbit.

Grace’s intellectual humility transforms Carl from a minder into a partner. Even though Carl isn’t a scientist himself, when Grace has to figure out how to make the lab’s astrophage experiment replicate the conditions causing the crisis in our solar system, it is Carl who suggests a solution.

Instead of being bothered that a nonscientist knew better than he did, Grace acknowledges the solution’s value, thanks Carl and uses Carl’s idea to reach a crucial discovery, proving himself to be open to ideas and feedback from others.

When Grace’s experiments struggle, he moves forward without defensiveness and instead displays increasing curiosity. His method of intellectual humility is to admit ignorance, test variables and revise working hypotheses based on new data, staying open to suggestions from others the whole time. To borrow a phrase from a different space story, “this is the way.”

Science fiction to real space exploration

Although “Project Hail Mary” is fictional, the attitude displayed by Ryland Grace is something I have seen in ethnographic interviews with astronauts and other space professionals, including engineers, astronomers and flight surgeons. Ethnography is a method of research, usually done in the long term, that combines interviews and participant observation.

When confronted with the reality of the universe – an enormous starry void we humans are only beginning to understand – scientists and space explorers are often stunned and humbled by the extent of their own ignorance. Although there are, without a doubt, less-than-humble people building rockets or going into space, intellectual humility is often a guiding force among many successful space researchers.

In my book, “The Ultraview Effect,” I trace the way a sense of cosmic awe can provoke feelings of humility and openness, which serve as catalysts for curiosity. This pattern, which I began to notice after an astronaut told me how seeing billions of stars with his own eyes made him realize how little he actually knew, is very similar to what Grace experiences in the movie.

Being open to awe and willing to be humbled by it isn’t weakness but strength. And in his embrace of intellectual humility, Grace lives up to his name.

Deana L. Weibel has received a research award from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for upcoming archival research. She is an advisor to Cosmic Girls and a Fellow of the Explorers Club.

– ref. ‘Project Hail Mary’ demonstrates how intellectual humility can be a guiding force for scientists and astronauts – https://theconversation.com/project-hail-mary-demonstrates-how-intellectual-humility-can-be-a-guiding-force-for-scientists-and-astronauts-279404

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ann E. Carlson, Professor of Environmental Law, University of California, Los Angeles

Cars on the road today are 99% cleaner than they were in 1970. Air quality in the United States is much, much better as a result. In Los Angeles, where I live, lead levels in the air were 50 times higher in the 1970s than today, and the amount of lead in kids’ blood has plummeted.

What made that drop possible is arguably the most important environmental technology ever invented: the catalytic converter.

California has long had the authority under the federal Clean Air Act to set emissions standards for cars and trucks that are higher than the nation’s, and its early use of that authority is a major reason why catalytic converters are now standard in vehicles and people are healthier across the country.

At a time when the Trump administration is attacking California’s ability to cut air and climate pollution and revoking its Clean Air Act waivers, it’s helpful to remember just how important the state’s leadership has been in making the air Americans breathe so much healthier.

As I recount in my forthcoming book, “Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air,” California’s role in the emergence of catalytic technology is often downplayed. The passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act is typically given the credit. That law deserves accolades for its key role. So does William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But without California’s willingness in the early 1970s to push automakers to meet tough standards, the technology would have developed more slowly and the air would have remained dirtier for many more years.

Birth of the catalytic converter

Eugene Houdry invented the first catalytic converter technology in the 1950s. Years earlier, he had developed the Houdry process for catalytic cracking, which makes converting crude oil into gasoline much easier. That invention in the mid-1930s helped spur the mass adoption of cars and trucks in the U.S.

Widespread car ownership altered American life, changing where people lived, worked and vacationed. But cars also brought terrible smog as their use skyrocketed. When Houdry realized his life’s work was choking the air of Los Angeles, he decided to do something about it. By the late 1950s, Houdry had invented a rudimentary catalytic converter.

You might think that this invention, which Houdry said could make “the lung cancer curve dip,” would lead carmakers to install the technology on their new vehicles.

But that is not what happened. Instead, auto manufacturers engaged in what the government described as a yearslong conspiracy to keep emissions-limiting technology off the market, ultimately leading to an antitrust legal settlement.

It wasn’t until the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act that carmakers got serious about improving upon Houdry’s invention for mass market installation.

The Clean Air Act’s ambition

The 1970 Clean Air Act is a remarkable piece of legislation. Passed with only one negative vote and signed into law by President Richard Nixon, the act set wildly ambitious goals. They included a requirement that carmakers cut auto pollutants by 90% by 1975.

Congress passed this requirement knowing that the technology to cut emissions wasn’t ready for prime time. Houdry’s catalytic invention couldn’t work with leaded gasoline, and it hadn’t been tested in tough conditions, such as freezing cold or sweltering heat.

The Ford Motor Co., with Lee Iacocca as its president, told Congress in 1970, “If such (pollution cuts) are established … the technology as we know it today would not permit us to continue to produce cars after January 1, 1975.”

Congress ignored Ford’s dire warning and passed the stringent cuts.

Automakers responded with two separate tactics. The first was to gear up – alongside companies like Corning Glass and the Engelhard Company – to develop technology to meet the 90% cuts. Most of their efforts focused on improving the catalytic converter, made more plausible when Engelhard determined that catalytic converters wouldn’t corrode with unleaded gasoline. The EPA’s Ruckelshaus ordered gas stations to make unleaded gasoline available as of Jan. 1, 1975.

While the auto companies worked to meet the congressional mandate, they also pressured Congress and the courts to weaken or delay it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit obliged, ordering Ruckelshaus to extend the deadline for compliance by a year. Congress eventually extended the deadline to 1981.

But California did not let up.

A gamble that paid off

California has the authority under federal law to issue its own automobile pollution standards, as long as the standards are stronger than federal standards and the state receives a waiver from the EPA. No other state has similar power, but states can adopt California’s higher standards.

After the federal appeals court gave carmakers an extra year to comply with the federal rules, California decided it would not let car companies off the hook.

The state asked Ruckelshaus to grant a waiver for California to issue standards tough enough that carmakers would have to install catalytic technology to meet them.

Ruckelshaus faced enormous pressure to deny the waiver, with automakers arguing that the technology was neither effective nor available. But in a hint of the resolve he would later show in refusing Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Ruckelshaus gave California the go-ahead in 1973, and the state’s rules went into effect for the 1975 model year.

He reasoned that doing so would maintain “continued momentum toward installation of (catalyst) systems … while minimizing risks incident to national introduction of a new technology.” In other words, California could serve as a guinea pig for the rest of the country by adopting tough standards.

The gamble paid off. Since California was the nation’s largest auto market, companies had strong economic incentives to change their models to meet the state’s standards. Catalytic technology is now not only standard on American vehicles but also on vehicles around the world, and air quality in the U.S. is vastly improved.

With the adoption of the catalytic converter, leaded gasoline was banned and eventually phased out, and lead levels began to drop almost immediately.

Continuing California’s legacy

Catalytic converters have removed 8 billion tons of pollution from the air in the U.S. They have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and led to the removal of a deadly neurotoxin, lead, from the atmosphere.

California’s standards have spurred important technological innovations for vehicles, including new types of less-polluting gasoline and vehicles that emit no pollution at all.

But the state’s ability to set higher standards is under attack. Congress – at the behest of the Trump administration – has overturned three waivers the state was granted to cut even more pollutants and the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The Trump administration has also sued California to invalidate its mandates for automakers to sell zero-emissions vehicles.

Today, California officials are searching for alternative ways to continue to make cars and trucks cleaner. The state has set aside money to replace federal tax incentives for electric vehicles, and the Legislature is exploring creative ways to hold indirect sources of emissions, such as rail yards, ports and warehouses where vehicles are constantly running, accountable for air pollution.

But these alternatives aren’t as powerful as the authority to exceed federal standards to make the air cleaner.

Ann E. Carlson’s research was supported by UCLA. President Biden appointed her to serve as Chief Counsel and Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2021-2024.

– ref. How California’s war on smog and its ambitious car pollution rules made everyone’s air cleaner – https://theconversation.com/how-californias-war-on-smog-and-its-ambitious-car-pollution-rules-made-everyones-air-cleaner-279533

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Simon Bowmaker, Distinguished Clinical Professor of Economics, New York University

Since President Donald Trump named Kevin Warsh as his choice for Federal Reserve chair on Jan. 30, 2026, financial markets have focused on one question: Is he still the inflation hawk he once was, or is he now more comfortable with the lower interest rates that the president has long demanded?

We have a different take. Drawing on decades of research on central banking and an extended interview with Warsh conducted by one of us (Bowmaker) in 2023 for a forthcoming book on the Fed, we think the real change would be not in interest rates but in how the Fed communicates.

‘About right’

It’s no small matter. In modern central banking, policymakers’ pronouncements often shape the economy as much as their actual decisions.

The 2023 interview supports that view. Two themes ran through Warsh’s answers. The first was expected – a commitment to price stability. The second was more revealing: a desire to rethink how the Federal Reserve conducts its internal policy discussions and communicates them to the public.

In the interview, Warsh illustrated this with a story from 2006, when he was nominated to the Fed’s Board of Governors and sought advice from former chair Paul Volcker. Volcker told him the first task was to get interest rates “about right” – a phrase that, as Warsh noted, reflects the reality that policymakers never know the precise optimal level.

But Volcker added a second lesson he considered even more important: Make sure you look like you know what you are doing.

As Warsh interpreted it, modern central banking is not only about setting policy but also about presenting outcomes as the result of fulsome deliberation.

Warsh said he favors what he calls a “family fight” model of policymaking: open disagreement behind closed doors followed by unity in public. Recalling the 2007-09 financial crisis when the Fed was led by Ben Bernanke, he described arguments running their course in the chair’s office before members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee, known as the Federal Open Market Committee, reached their final decision and spoke collectively.

According to Warsh, large institutions – especially in times of crisis – need to project a single voice.

Shifting toward openness

In a 2014 review for the Bank of England, Warsh recommended that their policy meetings begin with an unrecorded discussion – essentially the same “family fight.”

His concern was that transcripts, even when released years later, can shape how officials speak. If policymakers know their words will eventually be scrutinized, they tend to hedge and qualify their views rather than speaking plainly. In that sense, the effort to avoid appearing wrong can weaken decision-making.

That position puts him at odds with the Federal Reserve’s path over the past three decades – all in the name of reducing uncertainty, stabilizing expectations and improving policy effectiveness.

Beginning in 1994, under Alan Greenspan, the Fed started publicly announcing its interest rate decisions, a major break from earlier practice when markets had to infer policy changes.

Bernanke expanded that shift after the financial crisis, introducing quarterly press conferences and forward guidance on interest rates, as well as publishing FOMC participants’ projections – the so-called “dot plot.”

His successors, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell, largely kept the framework in place, with current chair Powell holding a press conference after every meeting and trying to replace “Fed speak” with clearer language. The result is a central bank far more open than at any point in its history, explaining not only its decisions but also how it interprets the economy.

Fed credibility

Warsh is skeptical about this approach. He worries that publishing policymakers’ projections engenders “a troubling convergence of views,” as he said in the 2023 interview, stifling genuine disagreement inside the committee.

In his view, short-term forecasting offers limited benefit while subtly shaping how officials think about policy.

Warsh’s concern extends to communication more broadly. In his view, expansive messaging can make it harder to adjust policy as conditions change. As he said in the interview, extensive communication constrains a central banker’s “ability to change his mind,” yet “a central bank that can’t change its mind isn’t credible.”

For Warsh, credibility comes from adaptability rather than consistency – a stance that could call into question practices such as the dot plot.

Predictable vs flexible

Why does this all matter?

Modern financial markets respond as much to signals as they do to actions. Investors do not wait for interest rates to change; they adjust their behavior based on expectations of the central bank’s moves. Forward guidance and projections reduce uncertainty by helping markets anticipate policy.

A shift toward less explicit signaling would not necessarily make policy tighter or looser, but we believe it would make it less predictable – even though speaking with a single voice might partially offset this. Market reactions could become more sensitive to incoming data due to fewer clues about the Fed’s intentions.

The implications extend beyond Wall Street. Mortgage rates, business investment and hiring decisions all depend on expectations about future borrowing costs. Clear communication stabilizes those expectations, while greater discretion gives policymakers flexibility to respond to surprises.

Warsh’s approach, based on the 2023 interview, suggests he wants to trade some of that predictability for flexibility. In our assessment, the public may hear less about where policy is heading but see faster changes when economic conditions shift.

We cannot predict whether Warsh will push for lower interest rates or follow Volcker’s advice to get policy “about right.” But his own words suggest he will try to reshape how the Federal Reserve debates, signals and justifies its decisions – and in modern central banking, changing communication can change policy itself.

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. Trump Fed pick Kevin Warsh could shake up the central bank with his ‘family fight’ model – https://theconversation.com/trump-fed-pick-kevin-warsh-could-shake-up-the-central-bank-with-his-family-fight-model-275999

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Parker Bach, PhD Student in Media and Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Though prediction markets have been legal in the U.S. for less than 18 months, they can’t stop making news and making money.

On prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, users can stake real money on just about anything, from the winner of the 2028 U.S. presidential election to when Taylor Swift will get married.

But this isn’t simple entertainment: In theory, these wagers serve as a means of collecting the public’s insights into the future.

That’s why you may have seen CNN’s pundits casually mention Kalshi’s election odds for the 2026 primaries, or watched CBS offer real-time Polymarket projections of which actors would win awards during the Golden Globes.

Existing research on the principles and history of prediction markets suggests they can be a valuable way of pooling collective knowledge about the future.

But as researchers like me, journalists and legislators race to understand the impact these markets are having on society and politics, several questions have emerged about the regulation of these platforms and their forecasting abilities.

The what and why of prediction markets

In practice, prediction markets are quite simple.

Each market offers what are known as “event contracts” on whether some future outcome will occur. Each contract costs between 1 and 99 cents, paying out US$1 if the event occurs or nothing if it does not.

Similar to sports betting, purchasing a contract represents a wager. There are higher returns for positions on outcomes deemed less likely. Like in the stock market, a trader can buy and sell contracts over time, as odds – and thus prices – fluctuate.

At the time of writing, Kalshi traders put the odds of the passage of the SAVE Act, legislation centered on requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote, at about 10%. So each contract for this outcome costs 10 cents. If I think the act is more likely to pass than that, I could purchase some “shares” and sell them at a higher price if the odds go up in the future. If I hold them and the bill ultimately becomes law, I would receive a return that’s 10 times what I originally paid.

Two theories support the idea that prediction markets should excel at forecasting: the wisdom of crowds and the efficient market hypothesis.

First described over a century ago, the wisdom of crowds refers to the idea that the median judgment of a large, diverse group of people operating independently is often more accurate than that of a single expert.

A related argument appears in the efficient market hypothesis, which emerged in the mid-20th century among economists who championed free markets. It holds that prices encode all available information, reflecting the collective judgments of profit-seeking sellers and deal-seeking buyers.

At their best, then, prediction markets aggregate collective intelligence to weigh the likelihood of future events.

Polling’s credibility crisis creates an opening

Gambling on the outcomes of the day’s events has a long history. In 16th-century Italy, gamblers could wager on the election of civic magistrates and the outcome of papal conclaves. And from the 1880s to 1930s, New York City was the hub of political wagering, which sometimes exceeded the stock market in daily volume.

Reporting on bets ahead of the 1924 presidential election, The New York Times observed, “It is an old axiom in the financial district that Wall Street betting odds are ‘never wrong.’”

However, the rise of scientific polling and legal crackdowns on political wagering forced prediction markets to fade to the background.

That changed in 2024.

One month before the U.S. elections, a federal court granted the prediction market startup Kalshi permission to legally operate prediction markets concerning U.S. election results.

Around the same time, Elon Musk posted on X about Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris in prediction market odds. Trump followed suit. Kalshi put up billboards with live election odds in Times Square. Users and dollars flowed in. By election day, a volume of over $500 million in presidential election bets had been traded on Kalshi alone. Polymarket featured over $3.6 billion more in volume.

Political polling, meanwhile, was facing a crisis of confidence. Response rates had been declining for decades, and Trump voters had been undercounted in 2016 and 2020.

The polls forecast the presidential election as a coin toss. The prediction market, meanwhile, favored Trump at roughly 60% odds to win.

After Trump won at the ballot box, prediction markets declared victory over polling as the new, trustworthy forecasters of public opinion.

The utility of the markets

Over the past 50 years, journalists have increasingly incorporated quantitative data in their reporting, and audiences have come to expect political forecasting as part of their news diet.

With polling experiencing a crisis of confidence, prediction markets have become an increasingly attractive way for journalists to offer a data-backed snapshot of public beliefs.

Prediction markets have other advantages over polls for journalists. They respond to events in real time, and they’re free to access. Polls, meanwhile, take time and money to administer. They provide forecasts for political outcomes that go beyond elections – such as Cabinet nominations and Supreme Court decisions – which are usually outside the purview of polling.

In recent months, Kalshi and Polymarket have inked several partnership deals with news outlets. There’s a symbiotic relationship at play: Prediction markets provide journalists with data to report and discuss. Journalists, in turn, legitimize prediction markets by citing them as a trusted source.

Prediction markets have historically performed well on elections. Whether they’re more accurate than polls on other kinds of questions is still up for debate.

If traders behave purely rationally, in the economic sense, they might flit between positions to maximize profit based on new information, personal biases aside.

But when wagering on elections, most traders have seemed to consistently buy and sell only one position, rather than switching between them. They may think they’re trading rationally while exhibiting a “wishful thinking” bias. Or, like many sports bettors, they may be wagering out of fandom or for entertainment.

All of these scenarios could undercut the accuracy of these markets.

The elephant in the room

Many journalists are embracing the data even as their news outlets run stories about concerns over insider trading in predictive markets. Because the outcome of events is often determined by human actors, those privy to certain plans – say, a looming ceasefire deal – would have access to information not available to the public and could profit handsomely off that information.

Two anonymous accounts made hundreds of thousands of dollars predicting the downfall of Nicolás Maduro and betting on the toppling of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, with traders putting their money down just before the U.S. took military action. This timing has raised some eyebrows.

Kalshi prohibits insider trading, and in early 2026 it fined and suspended two high-profile traders who were using inside information.

Likely in response to bad press and statements from lawmakers seeking to regulate the platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket also announced new insider trading rules on March 23, 2026, centered on politics and sports.

The legal mechanisms for enforcing these rules, however, are less clear. SEC Rule 10b5-1 prohibits trading securities on the basis of material nonpublic information.

But event contracts are not governed by the SEC. They’re under the purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a much smaller agency. As things stand, the small agency has too few employees to regulate the legality of specific event contracts, which are governed by the Commodity Exchange Act. Kalshi and certain other prediction market platforms are instead given the latitude to self-certify the legality of each contract.

Any efforts to meaningfully regulate insider trading would, in my view, require clear rules and viable enforcement mechanisms.

From participation to profit

As I conduct my research, I often consider what the booming popularity of prediction markets says about American culture and politics in 2026.

In 1969, sociologist Erving Goffman theorized that Americans’ attraction to gambling stemmed from a need for “action” in an increasingly bureaucratized society. Similarly, studies have suggested that betting on sports makes fans feel like they’re participating, not just observing.

Congress is less productive than ever. Most Americans feel they have little influence over the workings of the government, with many looking on helplessly as democratic guardrails have been dismantled.

Who knows what will happen in the coming year. The filibuster might be weakened, or the U.S. could invade Cuba. Most Americans will have little say. But prediction markets at least offer the chance to make a buck off the action.

Parker Bach 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. How polling failures, gambling legalization and political gridlock paved the way for the explosive rise of prediction markets – https://theconversation.com/how-polling-failures-gambling-legalization-and-political-gridlock-paved-the-way-for-the-explosive-rise-of-prediction-markets-278873

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Yuval Hadash, Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University

Imagine being asked to sit alone in a quiet room for 15 minutes with nothing to do – no phone, no music, no external distraction. In a well-known 2014 study, many participants found that task so challenging that they chose to press a button to give themselves an unpleasant electric shock instead of continuing to sit with their thoughts and sensations.

Because being with their own thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations can be so difficult, people often turn away from them. Smartphones offer constant distraction from boredom or stress, allowing users to disengage from their present-moment sensations and thoughts with a quick swipe or tap.

But avoiding unpleasant internal experience can backfire. Studies show that doing so is associated with a range of mental health problems, including anxiety and depression.

We are psychological scientists who study mindfulness and how it affects stress, health and well-being.

Mindfulness is a mental state that people can learn to cultivate through training. When people are mindful, they direct their attention toward their moment-to-moment bodily sensations, emotions and thoughts, and they meet those experiences with an attitude of curiosity and open acceptance.

Mindfulness can be cultivated through “mindful moments” in daily life, moments in which people intentionally stay present with what they do, hear, see or feel. However, formal mindfulness meditation involves sustained practice that systematically trains attention and acceptance. Our research shows that training acceptance during mindfulness meditation can substantially improve your emotional well-being.

Tuning into experience can be hard – and helpful

Popular culture often portrays mindfulness as a way of relaxing. But we’ve found that mindfulness practice can often feel surprisingly difficult. In one of our studies, participants who directed their attention to their thoughts and feelings during a 20-minute mindfulness meditation noticed six times more unpleasant experiences than pleasant ones.

This doesn’t mean they were doing it wrong. Turning your attention inward can feel challenging. Often, it brings you into contact with experiences that you normally try to push away, such as feeling bored, uncomfortable or agitated. However, we’ve also found that facing difficult experiences during mindfulness training can have positive effects.

In particular, adopting an accepting attitude toward your experiences seems to drive many of the positive effects of mindfulness. Our research shows that developing the capacity for acceptance through mindfulness meditation can reduce feelings of loneliness and increase positive emotions, such as happiness. It also reduces stress hormones and helps people notice more positive experiences during stressful situations.

In these studies, we have found that acceptance is the critical driver. When acceptance is removed from mindfulness training, these benefits largely disappear.

The power of learning to accept experience

A key part of mindfulness practice involves turning toward difficult experiences, such as like stress, boredom and pain, rather than seeking distractions or pushing those experiences away. It means noticing feelings and thoughts as they arise, sensing how they show up in the body, and approaching them with an attitude of acceptance rather than judgment or resistance.

A helpful way to think about this comes from the “two arrows” metaphor, which is rooted in East Asian Buddhist traditions. It teaches that there are two types of suffering, which can be likened to being struck by two arrows.

The first arrow is the unavoidable unpleasant experience that comes with being human – for example, feeling exhausted after a poor night’s sleep. The second arrow is how we react to that unpleasantness: tensing up, resisting it, replaying it in our mind, criticizing ourselves or trying to escape it. Often this second arrow adds more suffering than the original unpleasant experience.

In mindfulness practice, the goal is not to stop having unpleasant sensations and feelings. Instead, mindfulness helps people accept the unavoidable difficulties of that first arrow and to soften the second arrow by letting go of struggle with those experiences and reactions that make them worse.

For example, let yourself feel bored without immediately reaching for distraction. Acknowledge anxiety, sadness or grief with openness, instead of trying to suppress those feelings or fueling them with harsh self-criticism.

Practicing mindfulness in everyday life

One way to cultivate this attitude is to treat thoughts, emotions and sensations as guests in your inner landscape. Instead of fighting them or clinging to them, notice when they arise. Acknowledge and welcome them, and when they naturally change, let them go. Some people find it helpful to imagine holding a difficult feeling as they would a crying baby, with a touch that’s steady, supportive and kind.

If you want to try this in daily life, the next time you feel a challenging experience, pause and open to the experience for a moment. Notice what you are feeling. Where does it show up in your body – a tightness in the chest or heaviness in the stomach? Can you allow it to be there, even briefly, without trying to fix it or distract yourself from it?

Then observe what happens. Does the challenging experience change over time in any way? Do your reactions shift or soften with repeated practice? Remember that a brief practice is unlikely to produce instant relief, and expecting quick results can actually make it harder to stay open to your experience as it is.

Rather, our findings suggest that meaningful change comes through consistent, ongoing practice. Every small step matters. Over time, brief moments of responding to stress or discomfort with mindfulness can reshape how you relate to challenges and provide greater resilience and ease.

In the study where people chose electric shocks over sitting alone with their thoughts, being with their inner experience felt almost intolerable. Mindfulness offers a different path: not escaping that experience but learning to stay with it. In doing so, what once felt unbearable can become something you can meet with greater emotional balance and well-being.

Yuval Hadash received funding for his mindfulness meditation research from Yad Hanadiv Foundation and Mind & Life Institute.

J. David Creswell receives funding for his mindfulness meditation research from the National Institutes of Health. He is also the Chief of Science at Equa Health, Inc.

– ref. Benefits of mindfulness meditation go far beyond relaxation – here’s what it is and how to practice it – https://theconversation.com/benefits-of-mindfulness-meditation-go-far-beyond-relaxation-heres-what-it-is-and-how-to-practice-it-273700

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Danielle Tufts, Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology and Immunology, University of Pittsburgh

As spring unfolds, new research highlights an issue for southwestern Pennsylvania residents: Most people know ticks are in their backyard, but few believe they’re actually at risk of contracting tick-borne illnesses.

Every year in the United States, an estimated 500,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease. The illness, caused by a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi, is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected black-legged tick. A common early sign of Lyme disease is a distinctive “bull’s-eye” rash, occurring in 70% to 80% of infected people.

If not treated early, the infection can progress to more serious symptoms, such as joint swelling and arthritis, nerve pain, tingling or numbness, facial muscle weakness, heart inflammation and difficulties with memory or concentration.

Behind these infections is a complex ecological cycle that unfolds largely unnoticed in forests, parks and even backyards. Ticks acquire the bacterium when they take a blood meal from an infected animal. One of the most important hosts in this cycle is the white-footed mouse which are reservoirs for several tick-borne pathogens. Young ticks frequently feed on these mice and become infected. This allows them to transmit the bacteria later in life when they bite other animals or humans.

We are a disease ecologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh, where we study the ecology of ticks, wildlife hosts and tick-borne pathogens in western Pennsylvania. Our research examines how Lyme disease circulates in local environments and how communities interact with tick habitats in their everyday lives.

Understanding the biology of ticks is only part of the story. Effectively reducing disease risk also requires understanding how people perceive ticks and the pathogens they transmit, and what prevention strategies they are willing to use.

The cycle behind tick bites

Both black-legged ticks and white-footed mice are widespread across Pennsylvania. This creates conditions for Lyme disease bacteria transmission. As a result, Pennsylvania consistently ranks among the top three states in the country for reported Lyme disease cases each year.

During the summer of 2024, our team conducted a community survey in neighborhoods across Allegheny, Washington and Westmoreland counties. These areas were selected because they border parks and forested habitats where ticks are commonly found. Homeowners were invited to participate in a short questionnaire that explored their experiences with ticks and tick-borne diseases.

Fifty-two residents completed the 12-question survey. We asked participants whether they had observed ticks on their property, whether they believed tick-borne diseases posed a health risk and what personal or property-level precautions they used to prevent tick bites.

The results revealed a striking contrast between awareness of ticks and perception of risk.

Most people don’t fear ticks

Over 80% of respondents reported seeing ticks on their property at some point. Despite this widespread exposure, far fewer homeowners believed tick-borne diseases posed a major health threat. Only 32% considered diseases such as Lyme disease to be a significant health risk to themselves or their family. More than half of respondents believe tick-borne diseases represent only a minor health concern, and 14% said they posed no health risk at all.

The survey also revealed clear patterns in how people protect themselves from ticks. Nearly all participants reported taking at least some precautionary measures when spending time outdoors. The most common strategy was performing tick checks, a simple but effective method for reducing infection risk, as ticks typically need to be attached for 24 to 48 hours to transmit the bacteria. Other reported precautions include wearing protective clothing, showering after outdoor activities, or changing clothes once returning indoors.

Interestingly, most homeowners reported they did not use pest control treatments to reduce tick populations in their yards. When asked how they might respond if ticks were discovered on their property, most participants said they would simply increase their use of personal protective behaviors over treating their property or consulting a pest management company.

Prevention starts with people

These findings highlight an important challenge in tick-borne disease prevention. While many residents recognize that ticks are present in their nearby environment, they may underestimate the health risks associated with them. Some may also prefer prevention strategies that focus on individual behavior rather than environmental control.

From a public health perspective, understanding these attitudes is essential. Strategies designed to reduce tick populations, such as yard treatments or rodent-targeted tick control devices, which kill ticks on mice or other wildlife carriers, are effective if homeowners are willing to adopt them. Research that examines community perceptions can help scientists and public health officials design prevention programs that are both practical and acceptable to the people who live in tick-endemic areas. These are the regions where specific tick populations are permanently established, constantly present and actively transmitting diseases.

The study also represents one of the first efforts to examine tick-related perceptions specifically in western Pennsylvania. As climate change, expanding wildlife populations and changes in land use continue to influence tick distributions, understanding how communities experience and respond to ticks is increasingly important. Our team will continue exploring ways to reduce tick exposure that will benefit homeowners and affected communities. This includes field evaluations of rodent-targeted tick control strategies and studies of how ticks and pathogens circulate among wildlife hosts.

For homeowners living near wooded areas, the message remains simple but important: Ticks are common, and taking precautions – performing tick checks, using repellents and managing yard habitats – can help reduce the risk of tick-borne diseases.

As research continues, combining ecological science with community perspectives may prove to be one of the most effective ways to combat Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

Danielle Tufts receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Emily Bache 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. Ticks are the backyard threat southwestern Pennsylvania homeowners keep ignoring – https://theconversation.com/ticks-are-the-backyard-threat-southwestern-pennsylvania-homeowners-keep-ignoring-277594

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Shannon Fogg, Professor of History, Missouri University of Science and Technology

In 1945, an angry mob confronted Aba Mizreh and four of his sons outside their former home in Paris. The Jewish family had hidden in Lyon during World War II, only to learn that their apartment had been looted and rented in their absence. Despite an eviction notice, the new tenants refused to leave, leading to a street fight.

Following the violent confrontation, Mizreh wrote to the French government. “Don’t I have the right, after having suffered so much, to get my property back?” he asked. “Haven’t I really paid enough for this war?”

Mizreh, then 68, was just one of the 160,000 Holocaust survivors from Paris who struggled to rebuild their lives after the devastation of the Nazi occupation. Of his 11 children, five sons had fought for France and six of his children had been deported; at least two were murdered at Auschwitz. Now he simply wanted to return to the two-bedroom apartment that served as his home and furrier workshop in order to support his wife and orphaned grandchildren.

In my research on the looting and restitution of Jewish homes in Paris, I have discovered that property issues are often overlooked in Holocaust studies. But for ordinary Jews in France, attempts to reclaim their homes and furnishings were key to rebuilding their lives. What’s more, they are important for understanding the Holocaust’s lasting financial and emotional impact.

They also reveal the limits of the government’s attempts to repair the past. French laws related to recovering apartments, looted furniture and war damages promised equality to all war victims. Instead, they created bureaucratic barriers and favored non-Jewish war victims. For many who tried to reclaim their property, the answer to Mizreh’s question was “no.” They would continue to “pay” for the war for years to come.

Looting and return

Paris was the largest city under German occupation and home to the largest Jewish population in Western Europe. Tragically, around 75,000 Jews living in France were murdered during the Holocaust. For the 75% of the French Jewish population that survived, rebuilding their lives was a difficult and extended process.

With the aid of French citizens, the Nazis looted more than 38,000 private apartments in the capital, and as many as 25,000 empty apartments that had been home to Jewish families were rented to non-Jewish tenants. Social workers estimated that nearly 100,000 Parisian Jews had been evicted from their apartments during the war. For many surviving Jews, returning home was their first priority.

Memoirs and oral histories recount these first moments of return. As a girl, Rachel Jedinak survived the war by hiding under a false identity after her parents’ arrest. She remembered returning to her family home: “We tore the seals from the door and went in. There was nothing left – nothing. This empty apartment – without furniture, without belongings, without photos that would have allowed us to remember those who were gone, to reconnect us to our parents – made us cry. The loss of our memorabilia was even more painful than the loss of our material goods.”

Reclaiming and then furnishing these apartments was both practical and emotional. Their homes provided a bed to sleep on, as well as the last links to family members lost in the Holocaust. The scale of loss meant that rebuilding would require a coordinated governmental effort.

Restitution and reparations

Two orders issued on Nov. 14, 1944, addressed renters’ rights to return to their prewar homes. Another ordinance, published on April 11, 1945, was meant to help return recovered furniture to its original owners.

These measures largely failed to meet Jewish survivors’ needs, however. The housing laws included exceptions that favored the new, non-Jewish tenants, such as Allied bombing victims and former prisoners of war. Additionally, only about 2,000 pieces of furniture were returned to survivors or heirs.

As a result, many survivors would rely on financial compensation for their losses. Jews whose apartments had been looted could file a claim under the War Damages Law of Oct. 28, 1946. But this long-awaited law proved to be a further disappointment.

Enacted two years after the liberation of Paris, the War Damages Law provided only limited funds for personal items. Eligible victims could receive 90,000 francs – less than US$10,300 or 9,000 Euros today – per household for the total loss of furnishings, or half the insured value of their stolen goods.

Claimants had to file a four-page form and submit documents proving their nationality, family status, legal standing and property rights, as well as witness statements to verify the losses.

If the government approved a survivor’s claim, payment was not immediate. A sample of the 2,750 files held in the Paris Archives reveals that more than 85% of claimants wrote to the government asking for faster payments.

One survivor writing to officials in 1948 summarized the feelings of many looting victims: “I think that we have all paid our dues and suffered enough for you to compensate us for at least a part of what the Germans stole from us almost six years ago.”

But for many, the payment process associated with the War Damages Law dragged on into the 1960s, underlining the long-term economic impact of wartime looting.

Continued exclusion

Only French citizens or foreigners who had fought for France were eligible for payments under the War Damages Law. More than half the Jews living there during the Holocaust, however, were foreigners – including nearly 100,000 refugees who had recently fled Nazi violence.

Arthur Deutsch was born in Vienna to Polish parents and moved to Paris in 1922, where he married and had five children. In 1938, he filed a request for naturalization, but it was not finalized before war broke out. He tried to volunteer for military service but was not called up.

The family fled Paris ahead of the Nazi invasion, ending up in the central city of Limoges, where they were arrested in December 1940. They were eventually transferred to the Rivesaltes internment camp, where Deutsch was assigned to forced labor. When the family returned to Paris after its liberation, they found their apartment completely empty.

Deutsch filed a claim for war damages, which was rejected in 1952 due to his citizenship status. He contested his exclusion, writing: “If I am not French on paper, I am in my thoughts because one does not spend thirty years in Paris without being assimilated, and it is not four years of internment or the rejection of my furniture indemnity claim that will make me change my mind.”

As anthropologist Damiana Oţoiu notes, “the psychological damage caused by forced resettlement, seizure of property, and the loss of social and cultural capital cannot be compensated by the mere restitution of property years or decades after the crimes were perpetrated.”

But for Parisian Holocaust survivors, recovering or replacing stolen goods represented their ability to live with dignity and security. The struggle for compensation and for recognition of the persecution they faced continued for decades after the war’s end – and in some cases, continues today.

Funding for this research was provided through Seed Grant Funding for the Humanities, Social, and Behavioral Sciences by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Missouri University of Science & Technology.

– ref. Holocaust survivors in France came home to stolen apartments, looted furniture and bureaucratic hurdles – https://theconversation.com/holocaust-survivors-in-france-came-home-to-stolen-apartments-looted-furniture-and-bureaucratic-hurdles-276312

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John Femiani, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Miami University

U.S. intelligence officials have assessed that Iranian forces have deployed a small number of mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point for global shipping, according to reports. The move gives the Iranians a means, along with missiles and drones, of threatening ships.

The U.S. Navy recently decommissioned the minesweeping vessels that it had operating in the Persian Gulf region. However, it has other ships and aircraft for finding and destroying mines.

As a computer scientist who researches how to detect mines, I have been researching how artificial intelligence techniques, such as machine learning, can help navies detect modern sea mines. Here’s what I’ve learned about how the mines work and how they can be neutralized.

Types of mines

The mines most people picture, like those seen in films such as “Godzilla Minus One,” are floating spheres tethered to the seabed, with small protrusions called Hertz horns that trigger the mine when it makes contact with a ship. These are called moored mines.

In the film, characters use a small wooden boat to sweep mines without triggering them because the mines responded to a metal-hulled ship’s magnetic field. Detecting magnetic fields is characteristic of influence mines, which respond to a ship’s magnetic, acoustic or pressure signature, as opposed to simple contact mines that detonate when ships run into them.

Modern mines typically combine multiple sensing modes. Some are designed to detonate only after a certain number of ships have passed, allowing them to ignore smaller vessels or minesweeping attempts and target higher-value ships. Examples include the Iranian Maham 3, which uses both magnetic and acoustic sensors.

Not all mines float. Many modern mines instead sit on the seabed. These mines are most effective in shallow water, where ships pass closer to the seabed. Some bottom mines sit exposed on the seabed, while others are partially or completely buried in sediment. Examples include the Iranian Maham 7 and the Manta mine, a low-profile bottom mine used by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. These mines can be deployed by small vessels or laid from aircraft, making them relatively easy to place. They are triggered when they sense a ship passing overhead.

Many modern mines are cylindrical or torpedo-shaped, allowing them to be deployed from aircraft or submarines and descend in a controlled way before settling on the seabed. More advanced designs include so-called rising mines, which sit on the seabed and launch upward toward a target once it is detected.

Mine countermeasures

A key advantage of naval mines is not just the damage they can cause, but also the time and resources required to find and clear them. This is because it’s challenging to do so over large areas quickly and reliably.

Even the possibility of mines can disrupt shipping and force extensive and costly clearance operations. This has been demonstrated in practice: During the 1980s, Iran and Iraq deployed relatively small numbers of mines against each other in the so-called Tanker War in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. This caused significant disruption to shipping and forced costly, time-consuming clearance operations, even when direct damage was limited.

Some countermeasures use uncrewed systems to trigger mines by mimicking the magnetic or acoustic signatures of ships, or to disable them with explosive charges. However, more targeted approaches require identifying individual mines, which motivates the need for reliable detection.

Mine hunting

Mine detection is best understood as a wide-area sonar search, which produces many contacts – essentially, anything unusual in the sonar data. Automatic target recognition algorithms then triage these contacts and classify them as either minelike objects or benign. Divers or camera systems then provide higher-confidence identification or confirmation to validate the result. This is known as a detect-classify-identify pipeline.

To collect data, an uncrewed surface vehicle – deployed from a larger ship – can tow a sonar platform at a fixed height above the seabed. The platform, called a towfish, resembles a small missile and carries multiple sensors, including port and starboard side-scan sonar. The British Royal Navy is also preparing to send this type of towed sonar array to the Persian Gulf region, according to a report.

These sonar devices use sound rather than light to form images. Unlike a photograph, a sonar image is built from one-dimensional measurements of returned sound energy as a function of distance from the sensor. As the platform moves, these slices are assembled to form a continuous image of the seabed. The center of the image corresponds to the water column directly beneath the sonar device and appears dark. The seabed appears as if illuminated from the sensor, with objects characterized by a bright highlight facing the sonar and a shadow extending away from it.

At the detection stage, researchers have developed a range of techniques to detect minelike objects in sonar imagery. Early methods segmented sonar imagery into regions that show as highlights paired with acoustic shadows. Other statistical approaches model seabeds and identify anomalies that deviate from it. Template-like matched filters are used to identify objects with known geometric characteristics.

More advanced approaches incorporate machine learning, using carefully selected features derived from texture, intensity and shadow geometry to classify objects.

More recently, researchers have applied deep learning methods directly to sonar imagery and have often shown improved performance, particularly in complex environments. But their effectiveness depends on the availability of representative training data.

Unlike the data for training many other computer vision systems, high-resolution side-scanning sonar data is particularly expensive to collect and label in large enough amounts to successfully train deep learning mine detection systems.

Perhaps, when it becomes safe to do so, navies can clear mines from the Strait of Hormuz and add to the limited supply of this data.

John Femiani receives U.S. Navy SBIR-funded research support related to underwater mine detection.

– ref. How sea mines threaten global trade, and how navies detect them – https://theconversation.com/how-sea-mines-threaten-global-trade-and-how-navies-detect-them-279305

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Daniel Thomas Potts, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and History, New York University

The British- and American-backed plot to overthrow Iran’s prime minister in 1953 laid the groundwork for the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and decades of hostility with the U.S. that have now culminated in a war launched on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.

Many Americans only know the anger and tension with Iran that has grown from those roots set down during the middle of the last century. But as an archaeologist who has spent over 50 years specializing in Iran, and from my research on Iranian history in the context of changes undergone by Iran’s nomadic population through time, I believe it is worth recalling the time when the two countries had a distinctly different relationship.

In the 1800s, American missionaries journeyed to what was then called Persia.

The missionaries helped build important institutions – schools, colleges, hospitals and medical schools – in Persia, many of which still exist.

Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran, an American physician fluent in Persian, Turkish, Kurdish and Assyrian, founded a hospital in Urmia in 1879, as well as Iran’s first medical school. When Cochran died at Urmia in northwestern Iran in 1905, over 10,000 people attended his funeral.

This image clashes with most American stereotypes of Iran and its people, and is at odds with decades of anti-Iranian sentiment emanating from Washington.

Iran and the United States, in fact, have a deep history of mutual respect and friendship.

From 1834, when the first Protestant American mission was established in Urmia, until 1953, when the CIA’s involvement in Iran’s internal affairs set the United States on the road to conflict with Tehran, Americans were the good guys.

Imperial bad guys

For years, Americans have seen images of Iranians shouting “Death to America.” President Donald Trump returned the sentiment during his first term, vowing to bring Iran death and destruction. And on Feb. 28, 2026, after weeks of threats and military preparation, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; that war continues to this day.

But before all that happened, when Americans were the good guys, there were other countries who were instead manipulators and who exerted undue influence over Iran.

The bad guys, at whose hands Iran suffered most, were Russia and Great Britain. Those two nations – often at the invitation of Iran’s leaders – economically exploited Persia to further their own imperial ambitions, using sustained diplomatic, military and economic pressure.

After two ill-judged wars fought against Russia – the First (1804-1813) and Second Russo-Persian Wars (1826-1828) – Persia (the name Iran was officially adopted in 1935) lost large amounts of territory to the czar.

Much later, Russia found another means of exerting control over the Persian crown, loaning millions of rubles to its rulers, like Mozaffar ed-Din Shah, who reigned from 1896-1902 and needed capital to fund his lavish lifestyle.

With the exception of the Anglo-Persian War (1856-1857), Persian relations with Great Britain were less openly hostile. But what they lacked in martial vigor was more than compensated for by economic exploitation.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the shah granted exclusive concessions to the British for everything from telegraph lines to tobacco. Rights to Iran’s oil were given to the Anglo-Persian (later Anglo-Iranian) Oil Company.

So assured were Britain and Russia in their control of Persia that, in 1907, they signed the infamous Anglo-Russian Convention. That agreement divided the country – unbeknownst to its Parliament, let alone its inhabitants – into Russian, British and “neutral” spheres of influence. After it became public it provoked the outrage of ordinary Persians and the international community at large.

America the good

Iran’s relations with the United States were completely different.

The 19th- and early 20th-century history of British and Russian imperial ambitions and involvement in Iran put Iran in a dependent, exploited position at the hands of the governments of these two countries.

But the presence in Iran of American missionaries and, later, invited government technocrats, was of an entirely different quality. These were Americans offering aid, with no expectation of advantage to be gained officially for the United States government.

American Presbyterian missionary efforts in Iran began in 1834 and focused on education, with 117 schools established around Urmia by 1895. Efforts were also directed at medical and social welfare. These were nongovernmental missions. The U.S. government was conspicuous by its absence in Iran and Iranian affairs.

By the late 19th century, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions had opened new stations in cities across northern Iran, from Tehran to Mashhad. American diplomatic relations with Persia were established in 1883. A decade later the American Presbyterian Hospital was founded in Tehran by John G. Wishard.

After the First World War, Presbyterian schools for both boys and girls proliferated, the most famous of which were the American College of Tehran for boys, established in 1925, and Iran Bethel School for girls.

In 1910, the Persian Parliament, aware that the country’s finances were in disarray, invited the U.S. to identify a “disinterested American expert as treasurer-general to reorganize and conduct collection and disbursement of revenue.”

Despite Russian attempts to block the initiative, W. Morgan Shuster, a distinguished career civil servant, was appointed by Persia in February 1911. He arrived in Tehran in May, bringing with him four other Americans.

The mission was a failure, lasting only eight months, and, unsurprisingly, was adroitly sabotaged by the combined efforts of British and Russian diplomats in Tehran.

The country’s financial situation after the First World War was still precarious. With none of the colonialist baggage associated with the two European superpowers, America was turned to, almost as a last resort, to fix what ailed Iran. Riza Shah, father of the last shah, appointed an American, Arthur C. Millspaugh, as the administrator-general of the finances of Persia.

When Millspaugh arrived in Tehran in 1922, a newspaper editorial addressed him with these words: “You are the last doctor called to the death-bed of a sick person. If you fail, the patient will die. If you succeed, the patient will live.”

Despite his often testy relations with foreigners, Riza Shah acknowledged Millspaugh’s American Financial Mission was “the last hope of Persia.” The fact that the mission was far from an unqualified success does not detract from its importance. Nor did it diminish America’s image as an honest broker in Iranian eyes, in contrast to that of Russia and Great Britain.

Of course, not every Iranian-American interaction during this period was positive. Robert Imbrie, the American consul in Tehran, was brutally murdered in 1924, allegedly because a fanatical religious leader accused him of being a Baha’i and poisoning a well.

Riza Shah used the episode to crack down on dissidents and impose strict controls on public gatherings.

America the bad

America’s benign image in Iran was forever shattered in 1953 when the CIA, working with Great Britain, engineered a coup against Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister who had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Even though the overthrow of Mossadegh damaged Iranian trust in America, the years just prior to Iranian revolution in 1979 saw the number of Iranian students in the United States steadily rise.

Over one-third of the approximately 100,000 Iranian students pursuing university degrees abroad in 1977 were in the U.S. By the time of the Islamic revolution two years later, that number had climbed to 51,310, making Iran by far the biggest single source of foreign students in America, with 17% of the total foreign student population. The next-largest contributor of foreign students, Nigeria, accounted for only 6%.

“Iranian students have been here for nearly a century … there are deep and abiding connections that reveal themselves when you look at the historical record,” researcher Steven Ditto, who wrote a report on Iranian students in the U.S., told The Washington Post in 2017.

The legacy of American goodwill, personal friendship and doing the right thing by Iran has not been completely lost, although the war now underway may make it seem as though America’s good relationship with Iran has been lost irretrievably.

Deep friendships dating back well over a century can withstand a great deal. A reservoir of goodwill and affection may lie dormant while political storms rage. Iran and America were good friends in the past, and for good reason. I believe that Americans would do well to remember that.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Aug. 19, 2020.

Daniel Thomas Potts 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. Decades of hostility between Iran and the US were preceded by a little-remembered century-long friendship – https://theconversation.com/decades-of-hostility-between-iran-and-the-us-were-preceded-by-a-little-remembered-century-long-friendship-279636