When business researchers analyze data, they often rely on assumptions to help make sense of what they find. But like anyone else, they can run into a whole lot of trouble if those assumptions turn out to be wrong – which may happen more often than they realize. That’s what we found in a recent study looking at financial data from about a thousand major U.S. companies.
One of the most common assumptions in data analysis is that the numbers will follow a normal distribution – a central concept in statistics often known as the bell curve. If you’ve ever looked at a chart of people’s heights, you’ve seen this curve: Most people cluster near the middle, with fewer at the extremes. It’s symmetrical and predictable, and it’s often taken for granted in research.
A one-minute introduction to the concept of the bell curve.
But what happens when real-world data doesn’t follow that neat curve?
We are professorswho study business, and in our new study we looked at financial data from public U.S. companies – things like firm market value, market share, total assets and similar financial measures and ratios. Researchers often analyze this kind of data to understand how companies work and make decisions.
We found that these numbers often don’t follow the bell curve. In some cases, we found extreme outliers, such as a few large firms being thousands of times the size of other smaller firms. We also observe distributions that are “right-skewed,” which means that the data is bunched up on the left side of the chart. In other words, the values are on the lower end, but there are a few really high numbers that stretch the average upward. This makes sense, because in many cases financial metrics can only be positive – you won’t find a company with a negative number of employees, for example.
Why it matters
If business researchers rely on flawed assumptions, their conclusions – about what drives company value, for example – could be wrong. These mistakes can ripple outward, influencing business decisions, investor strategies or even public policy.
Take stock returns, for example. If a study assumes those returns are normally distributed, but they’re actually skewed or full of outliers, the results might be distorted. Investors hoping to use that research might be misled.
Researchers know their work has real-life consequences, which is why they often spend years refining a study, gathering feedback and revising the article before it’s peer-reviewed and prepared for publication. But if they fail to check whether data is normally distributed, they may miss a serious flaw. This can undermine even otherwise well-designed studies.
In light of this, we’d encourage researchers to ask themselves: Do I understand the statistical methods I’m using? Am I checking my assumptions – or just assuming they’re fine?
What still isn’t known
Despite the importance of data assumptions, many studies fail to report tests for normality. As a result, it’s unclear how many findings in finance and accounting research rest on shaky statistical grounds. We need more work to understand how common these problems are, and to encourage best practices in testing and correcting for them.
While not every researcher needs to be a statistician, everyone using data would be wise to ask: How normal is it, anyway?
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.
With the start of another high school football season around the corner, a long-simmering dispute has heated up: prayers at games.
Kennedy v. Bremerton, the case of a high school football coach praying on the field after games, has been in the spotlight since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling. But another football controversy first emerged in 2015, when two Christian schools in Florida made it to the state championships. The games were run by the state’s high school athletic association, a government body.
Association officials barred the teams from conducting a joint prayer over the loudspeaker at the public stadium before kickoff. Allowing a prayer, they said, would violate federal and constitutional law. The First Amendment’s establishment clause forbids the government from establishing an official religion, from giving preference to a specific religion and from giving favor to or disfavoring religion in general.
Officials at one of the schools, Cambridge Christian, filed suit, arguing that banning the prayer violated its right to free speech and to the free exercise of religion. Lower courts entered orders in the association’s favor, but attorneys for the school petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case.
The Supreme Court is expected to announce this fall whether it will hear Cambridge Christian’s case. AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib
Government speech
Following multiple rounds of litigation, Cambridge Christian School v. Florida High School Athletic Association reached a federal appeals court in September 2024. The 11th Circuit unanimously affirmed an order upholding the association’s policy not to allow prayer over the public address system.
The 11th Circuit based its findings in its view that prayer would be a form of “government speech”: that it would be perceived as representing the state association, not just the Christian schools. While the First Amendment limits the government’s ability to regulate private speech, the government is free to regulate its own speech.
In part, the 11th Circuit relied on a similar Supreme Court case from 2000, which also examined prayer at a high school football game: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe.
In the Santa Fe ruling, the justices invalidated a board’s policy of allowing prayer over the public-address system “by a speaker representing the student body, under the supervision of school faculty.” Such a policy violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause, they determined, because “an objective Santa Fe High School student will unquestionably perceive the inevitable pregame prayer as stamped with her school’s seal of approval.”
Endorsement test
According to reasoning known as the “endorsement test,” a message violates the establishment clause if someone listening would reasonably assume that the government is endorsing religion. This test originated in Lynch v. Donnelly, a 1984 dispute over a public Christmas display in a Rhode Island park owned by a nonprofit.
Recently, however, the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the endorsement test – potentially strengthening Cambridge Christian’s case. The court rejected it and a similar set of criteria, called the “Lemon test,” in another football-related case, 2022’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.
The majority opinion upheld the right of a football coach in a public high school, Joseph Kennedy, to pray silently on the field at the end of games. The justices explained that the establishment clause does not “require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor,” adding that the court “long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot.”
Former assistant football coach Joseph Kennedy after his case, Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District, was argued before the Supreme Court on April 25, 2022. Win McNamee/Getty Images
The Lemon test“ was the standard the Supreme Court had used since 1971 to evaluate interactions between the government and religion. Under Lemon, there were three key criteria for whether a law or government speech violated the establishment clause. To be permitted, a governmental action must have a secular purpose, and its main effect cannot either advance or inhibit religion. Lastly, the action “must not foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.‘”
If the Supreme Court agrees to hear Cambridge Christian’s appeal, the justices will face two issues. The first is whether communal prayer over a loudspeaker before a state athletic association game is indeed government speech – especially because officials permitted a wide array of nonreligious private speech over the loudspeaker. The second issue is whether the endorsement factor of the government-speech doctrine revives the endorsement test.
Recent record
If the justices agree to hear Cambridge Christian, it must be viewed against the court’s recent history in disputes over religion. The majority has often been friendly toward religious plaintiffs in cases under both religion clauses of the Constitution: establishment and free exercise.
Two important issues remain to be seen: first, whether the justices will continue expanding the boundaries of religious freedom; and second, whether Cambridge Christian will generate such a result.
Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules – and whether it does rule – Florida has already adopted a law requiring athletic associations to allow participating high schools “to make brief opening remarks, if requested … using the public address system at the event.”
Come fall 2025, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case. If so, its judgment may clarify whether private speech using public PA systems becomes governmental speech. Because the 11th Circuit relied on the endorsement test that the Supreme Court expressly repudiated, it seems likely that the justices will hear the appeal and rule in Cambridge Christian’s favor.
If the court does agree to review Cambridge Christian, it may well expand the parameters of religious expression in public – not just at football games.
Charles J. Russo 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.
In his powerful book “The Burnout Society,” South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that in modern society, individuals have an imperative to achieve. Han calls this an “achievement society” in which we must become “entrepreneurs” – branding and selling ourselves; there is no time off the clock.
In such a society, even leisure risks becoming another kind of work. Rather than providing rest and meaning, leisure is often competitive, performative and exhausting.
People feeling pressure to self-promote, for example, might spend their free time posting photos of an athletic race or an elaborate vacation on social media
to be viewed by family, friends and potential employers, adding to exhaustion and burnout.
Aristotle begins the famous “Nicomachean Ethics” by pointing out that we are all searching for happiness. But, he says, we are often confused about how to get there.
Aristotle believed that pleasure, wealth, honor and power will not ultimately make us happy. True happiness, he said, required ethical self-development: “Human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue.”
In other words, if we want to be happy, Aristotle contended, we must make reasoned choices to develop habits that, over time, become character traits such as courage, temperance, generosity and truthfulness.
Aristotle is explicitly linking the good life to becoming a certain kind of person. There is no shortcut to ethical self-development. It takes time – time off the clock, time not engaged in some kind of entrepreneurial self-promotion.
Aristotle is also telling us about the power of our choices. Habits, he argues, are not just about action, but also motives and character. Our actions, he says, actually change our desires. Aristotle says: “By abstaining from pleasures we become temperate, and it is when we have become so that we are most able to abstain from them.”
In other words, good habits are the result of moving incrementally in the right direction through practice.
In an achievement society, we are often conditioned to respond to external pressures to self-promote. We may instead look to pleasure, wealth, honor and power for happiness. This can sidetrack the ethical development required for true happiness.
True leisure – leisure that is not bound to the imperative to achieve – is time we can reflect on our real priorities, cultivate friendships, think for ourselves, and step back and decide what kind of life we want to live.
While we may have limited means to acquire pleasure, wealth, honor and power, Aristotle tells us that we have control over the most important variable in the good life: what kind of person we will become. Leisure is crucial because it is time in which we get to decide what kind of habits we will develop and what kind of person we will become. Will we capitulate to achievement society? Or utilize our free time to develop ourselves as individuals?
When leisure is preoccupied with entrepreneurial self-promotion, it is difficult for moral development to take place. Free time that is not hijacked by the imperative to achieve is required for the development of a consistent relationship to oneself – what I call a relationship of self-solidarity – a kind of reflective self-awareness necessary to aim at the right target and make moral choices. Without such a relationship, the good life will remain elusive.
Leisure reimagined
Rather than adopting the achievement society’s formulation of the good life, we may be able to formulate our own vision. Without one’s own vision, we risk becoming mired in bad habits, leading us away from the moral development through which the good life becomes possible.
Aristotle makes it clear that we have the power to change not only our behaviors but our desires and character. This self-development, as Aristotle writes, is a necessary part of the good life – a life of eudaimonia.
The choices we make in our free time can move us closer to eudaimonia. Or they could move us in the direction of burnout.
Ross Channing Reed 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.
Consider the tracking of U.S. maternal mortality, which is the highest among developed nations. Since 1987, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has administered the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System to better understand when, where and why maternal deaths occur.
So far, there are no indications that any BLS data has been deleted or disrupted. But there have been reports of that occurring in other agencies of all kinds.
I study the role that data plays in political decision-making, including when and how government officials decide to collect it. Through years of research, I’ve found that good data is essential – not just for politicians, but for journalists, advocates and voters. Without it, it’s much harder to figure out when a policy is failing, and even more difficult to help people who aren’t politically well connected.
I believe that disrupting data collection will make it harder to figure out who qualifies for these programs, or what happens when people lose their benefits. I also think that all this missing data will make it harder for supporters of safety net programs to rebuild them in the future.
Why the government collects this data
There’s no way to find out whether policies and programs are working without credible data collected over a long period of time.
For example, without a system to accurately measure how many people need help putting food on their tables, it’s hard to figure out how much the country should spend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program, formerly known as food stamps, the federal supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC, and related programs. Data on Medicaid eligibility and enrollment before and after the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 offers another example. National data showed that millions of Americans gained health insurance coverage after the ACA was rolled out.
No doubt these nongovernmental data collection efforts will continue, and maybe even increase. However, it’s highly unlikely that these independent efforts can replace any of the government’s data collection programs – let alone all of them.
The government, because it takes the lead in implementing official policies, is in a unique position to collect and store sensitive data collected over long periods of time. That’s why the disappearance of thousands of official websites can have very long-term consequences.
What makes Trump’s approach stand out
The Trump administration’s pausing, defunding and suppressing of government data marks a big departure from his predecessors.
As early as the 1930s, U.S. social scientists and local policymakers realized the potential for data to show which policies were working and which were a waste of money. Since then, policymakers across the political spectrum have grown increasingly interested in using data to make government work better.
President George W. Bush speaks about education in 2005 at a high school in Falls Church, Va., outlining his plans for the No Child Left Behind Act. Alex Wong/Getty Images)
How this contrasts with the Obama and Biden administrations
Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden emphasized the importance of data for evaluating the impact of their policies on low-income people, who have historically had little political clout.
For example, he insisted on the collection of demographic data and its analysis when assessing the impacts of new safety net policies. This approach shaped how his administration handled changes in home loan practices, the expansion of broadband access and the establishment of outreach programs for enrolling people in Medicaid and Medicare.
Why rebuilding will be hard
It’s harder to make a case for safety net programs when you don’t have relevant data. For example, programs that help low-income people see a doctor, get fresh food and find housing can be more cost-effective than simply having them continue to live in poverty.
Blocking data collection may also make restoring government funding after a program gets cut or shut down even more challenging. That’s because it will be more challenging for people who in the past benefited from these programs to persuade their fellow taxpayers that there is a need for investing in a expanding program or creating a new one.
Without enough data, even well-intended policies in the future may worsen the very problems they’re meant to fix, long after the Trump administration has concluded.
This article was updated on Aug. 4, 2025, with the BLS news.
Sarah James 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Masako Toki, Senior Education Project Manager and Research Associate, Nonproliferation Education Program, Middlebury
Supporters of nuclear disarmament, including Hibakusha, demonstrate in Oslo, Norway, in 2024.Hideo Asano, CC BY-ND
Those who survived – known as Hibakusha – have carried their suffering as living testimony to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, with one key wish: that no one else will suffer as they have.
Now, in 2025, as the world marks 80 years of remembrance since those bombings, the voices of the Hibakusha offer not only memory, but also moral clarity in an age of growing peril.
As someone who focuses on nuclear disarmament and has heard Hibakusha testimonies in my native Japanese language, I have been enthusiastically promoting disarmament education grounded in their voices and experience. I believe their message is more vital than ever at a time of rising nuclear risk. Nuclear threats have reemerged in global discourse, breaking long-standing taboos against even talking about their use. From Russia and Europe to the Middle East and East Asia, the possibility of nuclear escalation is no longer unthinkable.
Ironically, increasing nuclear threats are contributing to further reliance on nuclear deterrence, the strategy of preventing attack by threatening nuclear retaliation, rather than renewed efforts toward nuclear disarmament, which seeks to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely.
Masako Wada, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki, speaks about the risk of nuclear weapons in the 21st century.
Listen to Hibakusha voices
For eight decades, the Hibakusha have shared their stories to prevent future tragedy – not to assign blame, but to awaken conscience and spark action.
Masako Wada, assistant secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo, a nationwide organization of atomic bomb survivors working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, was just under 2 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Her home, 1.8 miles from the blast center, was shielded by surrounding mountains, sparing her from burns or injury. Though too young to remember the bombing herself, she grew up hearing about it from her mother and grandfather, who witnessed the devastation firsthand.
In July 2025 at a nuclear risk reduction conference in Chicago, Wada told the attendees:
In a piece she wrote for Arms Control Today that same month, she further implored:
“The Hibakusha are the ones who know the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. We will continue to convey that reality. Please listen to us, please empathize with us. Find out what you can do and take action together with us. Nuclear weapons cannot coexist with human beings. They were created by humans; let us assume the responsibility to abolish them with the wisdom of public conscience.”
This plea – rooted in lived experience and moral responsibility – was recognized globally when the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo. The award honored not only the survivors’ suffering, but their decades-long commitment to preventing future use of nuclear weapons through education, activism and testimony.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial stands as it has since 1945, partially destroyed by the atomic bomb blast and serving as a reminder of the 140,000 people who died in the attack and its aftermath. Masako Toki, CC BY-ND
A dwindling number
But time is running out. Most Hibakusha were children or young adults in 1945. Today, their average age is over 86. In March 2025, the number of officially recognized Hibakusha fell below 100,000, according to Japan’s Ministry of Health.
As Terumi Tanaka, a Hiroshima survivor and longtime leader of Nihon Hidankyo, said at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony:
“Ten years from now, there may only be a handful of us able to give testimony as firsthand survivors. From now on, I hope that the next generation will find ways to build on our efforts and develop the movement even further.”
Terumi Tanaka, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, delivers the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize lecture.
The role of empathy in disarmament education
Empathy is not a luxury in disarmament education – it is a necessity. Without it, nuclear weapons remain abstract. With it, they become personal, real and morally unacceptable.
That’s why disarmament education begins with human stories. The Hibakusha testimonies illuminate not only the physical destruction caused by nuclear weapons, but also the long-term trauma, discrimination and intergenerational pain that follow. They remind us that nuclear policy is not just a matter of strategy – it is a question of human survival. Nuclear weapons are the only weapons ever created with the power to annihilate all of humanity – and that makes disarmament not just a political issue, but a moral imperative.
Yet opportunities for young people to learn about nuclear risks, or hear from the Hibakusha directly, are extremely limited. In most countries, these issues are absent from school and university classrooms. This lack of education feeds ignorance and, in turn, complacency – allowing the flawed logic of deterrence to remain unchallenged.
Disarmament education that puts empathy and ethics at its center, along with survivors’ voices, can empower the next generation not only with knowledge, but with moral strength to choose their path.
Masako Wada, a Hibakusha who survived the U.S. bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945, speaks at a church in California in 2019, spreading the message of the horror of the attack and its aftermath, and urging people to promote nuclear disarmament. Masako Toki, CC BY-ND
From remembrance to responsibility
Commemorating 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not about history alone. It is about the future. It is about what people choose to remember – and what people choose to do with that memory.
The Hibakusha have never sought revenge. Their message is clear: This can happen again. But it doesn’t have to.
The Hibakusha’s journey shows that human beings are not destined to remain divided, nor are they doomed to repeat cycles of destruction. In the face of unimaginable loss, many Hibakusha chose not to dwell on anger or seek retribution, but instead to speak out for the good of all humanity. Their activism has been marked not by bitterness, but by an unwavering commitment to peace, empathy and the prevention of future suffering. Rather than directing their pain toward blame, they have transformed it into a powerful appeal to conscience and global solidarity. Their concern has never been only for Japan – but for the future of the entire human race.
That moral clarity, grounded in lived experience, remains profoundly instructive. In a world increasingly filled with conflict and fear, I believe there is much to learn from the Hibakusha. Their testimony is not just a warning – it is a guide.
I try to listen, and urge others, as well, to truly listen to what they have to say. I seek the company of people who also refuse complacency, question the legitimacy of nuclear deterrence, and work for a future where human dignity, not mutual destruction, defines human security.
Masako Toki 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.
A researcher collects water samples in Everglades National Park in Florida to monitor ecosystem health.AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
The United States’ national parks have an inherent contradiction. The federal law that created the National Park Service says the agency – and the parks – must “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife … unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
That means both protecting fragile wild places and making sure people can visit them. Much of the public focus on the parks is about recreation and enjoyment, but the parks are extremely important places for research and conservation efforts.
These places contain a wide range of sensitive and striking environments: volcanoes, glaciers, sand dunes, marshlands, ocean ecosystems, forests and deserts. And these areas face a broad variety of conservation challenges, including the effects of climate change, the perils of popularity driving crowds to some places, and the Trump administration’s reductions to park service staff and funding.
Gray wolves, long native to the Yellowstone area, were reintroduced to the national park in the mid-1990s and have helped the entire ecosystem flourish since. National Park Service via AP
Returning wolves to Yellowstone
One of the best known outcomes of conservation research in park service history is still playing out in the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.
Gray wolves once roamed the forests and mountains, but government-sanctioned eradication efforts to protect livestock in the late 1800s and early 1900s hunted them to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the mid-20th century. In 1974, the federal government declared that gray wolves needed the protections of the Endangered Species Act.
The return of wolves has not only drawn visitors hoping to see these beautiful and powerful predators, but their return has also triggered what scholars call a “trophic cascade,” in which the wolves decrease elk numbers, which in turn has allowed willow and aspen trees to survive to maturity and restore dense groves of vegetation across the park.
Increased vegetation in turn led to beaver population increases as well as ecosystem changes brought by their water management and engineering skills. Songbirds also came back, now that they could find shade and shelter in trees near water and food sources.
Black bear protection in the Great Smoky Mountains
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most biologically diverse park in the country, with over 19,000 species documented and another 80,000 to 100,000 species believed to be present. However, the forests of the Appalachian Mountains were nearly completely clear-cut in the late 1800s and early 20th century, during the early era of the logging industry in the region.
Because their habitat was destroyed, and because they were hunted, black bears were nearly eradicated. By 1934, when Great Smoky Mountains National Park was designated, there were only an estimated 100 bears left in the region. Under the park’s protection, the population rebounded to an estimated 1,900 bears in and around the park in 2025.
Much like the gray wolves in Yellowstone, bears are essential to the health of this ecosystem by preying on other animals, scavenging carcasses and dispersing seeds.
When Everglades National Park was created in 1947, it was the first time a U.S. national park had been established to protect a natural resource for more than just its scenic value.
With their help, the parks – and the landscapes, resources and beauty they protect– can be preserved for the benefit of nature and humans, in the parks and far beyond their boundaries.
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.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Harold Wallace, Curator, Electricity Collections, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
This combined satellite image shows how Earth’s city lights would look if it were night around the entire planet at once. White areas of light show cities with larger populations.NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Electricity is a form of energy that is made using many different fuels. Power plants are electricity factories that generate electricity from sources including coal, natural gas, uranium, water, wind and sunlight. Then they feed it into a network of transmission and distribution wires called the power grid, which delivers the electricity to homes and businesses.
To keep the grid stable, electricity must be supplied on demand. When someone turns on a light, they draw power from the grid. A generator must immediately feed an equal amount of power into the grid. If the system gets out of balance, even for a few seconds, a blackout can happen.
System operators use sensors and sophisticated computers to track electricity demand so they can adjust power production up or down as needed. Total power demand, which is called load, varies a lot from hour to hour and season to season. To see why, think of how much electricity your home uses during the day compared with the middle of the night, or during a summer heat wave compared with a cool fall day.
These images show patterns of electricity use. Through the year (large graph), people use more electricity for summer cooling and winter heating than in spring and fall. Weekly, consumption drops on weekends, when many businesses are closed. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Hourly Electric Grid Monitor
Meeting a demand spike
If everyone turned on their lights all at once around the world, they would create a huge, sudden demand for electricity. Power plants would have to ramp up generation very quickly to avoid a system crash. But these plants respond to changing demand in different ways.
Coal and nuclear plants can provide lots of electricity at almost any time, but if they’re shut off for maintenance or they malfunction, they can take many hours to bring back online. They also respond slowly to load changes.
Power plants that burn natural gas can respond more quickly to changing load, so they typically are the tool of choice to cover periods when the most electricity is needed, such as hot, sunny summer afternoons.
Renewable electricity sources such as solar, wind and water power produce less pollution but are not as easily controlled. That’s because the wind doesn’t always blow at the same speed, nor is every day equally sunny in most places.
Grid managers use large batteries to smooth out power flow as demand rises and falls. But it’s not yet possible to store enough electricity in batteries to run an entire town or city. The batteries would be too expensive and would drain too quickly.
Some hydropower operators can pump water into lakes during periods of low demand, then release that water to generate electricity when demand is high by running it through machines called turbines.
Fortunately, if everyone turned on their lights at once, two things would work to prevent a total system crash. First, there is no single worldwide power grid. Most countries have their own grids, or multiple regional grids.
Neighboring grids, such as those in the United States and Canada, are typically connected so that countries can move electricity across their borders. But they can disconnect quickly, so even if the power went out in some areas, it’s unlikely that all the grids would crash at once.
Second, over the past 20 years, light bulbs called LEDs have replaced many older electric lights. LEDs operate differently from earlier light bulb designs and produce much more light from each unit of electricity, so they require much less power from the grid.
LEDs, or light–emitting diodes, are semiconductor devices called transistors that generate light with almost no heat.
More glare, fewer stars
Beyond powering lights, it’s also important to think about where all that light would go. A big spike in lighting would dramatically increase sky glow − the hazy brightness that hangs over towns and cities at night.
Sky glow happens when light reflects off haze and dust particles in the air, creating a diffuse glow that washes out the night sky. Light is very difficult to control: For example, it can reflect off bright surfaces, such as car windows and concrete.
Lighting is often overused at night. Think of empty office buildings where lights burn around the clock, or street lights that shine upward instead of down on streets and sidewalks where illumination is needed.
Night sky in California’s Joshua Tree National Park, with light pollution from artificial lights in the Coachella Valley. NPS/Lian Law
If people worldwide all turned on their lights at once, we’d see a modest increase in power consumption, but a lot more sky glow and no stars in the night sky. That’s not a very enticing view.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
Harold Wallace is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society.
The number of vacancies is likely an undercount, because this number does not include substitutes or unqualified teachers who may have been hired to fill gaps.
Local news reports and job boards suggest that at least some Michigan districts are still struggling to fill open positions for the fall of 2025.
For more than two decades, my work at Michigan State University has centered on designing and leading effective teacher preparation programs. My research focuses on ways to attract people to teaching and keep them in the profession by helping them grow into effective classroom leaders.
Low pay and lack of support
Teacher shortages are the result of a combination of factors, especially low salaries, heavy workloads and a lack of ongoing professional support.
From my experience working with teachers and district leadership across the state, I know that beginning teachers – especially those in districts which have severe shortages – are often given the most challenging teaching loads. And in some districts, teachers have been forced to work without the benefit of any kind of planning time in their daily schedule.
Even some school districts, including the Detroit Public Schools Community District, have adopted this strategy in order to certify teachers and fill vacant positions.
Perhaps even more visible are national programs such as Teachers of Tomorrow and Teach for America. Candidates in such programs often work as full-time teachers while completing teacher training coursework with minimal oversight or support.
‘Stuffing the pipeline’ is not the solution
But simply “stuffing the pipeline” with new recruits is not enough to solve the teacher-shortage problem in Michigan.
The primary reasons for the higher attrition rates include a lack of awareness of the complexity of schools and schooling, the lack of effective mentoring during the certification period, and the absence of instructional and other professional guidance in the early years of teaching.
How to repair the leaky faucet
So how can teachers be encouraged to stay in the profession?
Temper expectations. Teaching is a critically important career, but leading individuals to believe that they can repair the damage done by a complex set of socioeconomic issues – including multigenerational poverty and lack of access to healthy and affordable food, housing, drinking water and health care – puts beginning teachers on a short road to early burnout and departure.
Recognize the limits of online learning. Online teacher preparation programs are convenient and have their place but don’t provide student teachers with real-world experience and opportunities for guided discussion about what they see, hear and feel when working with students.
Respect the process of “becoming.” Professional support should not end when a new teacher is officially certified. Teachers, like other professionals such as nurses, doctors and lawyers, need time to develop skills throughout their careers.
Providing this support sends a powerful message: that teachers are valued members of the community. Knowing that helps them stay in their jobs.
Gail Richmond 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Rebecca Dore, Director of Research of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, The Ohio State University
Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, speaks during a House hearing in March 2025, months before Congress rescinded two years of public media funding.Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images CC BY-ND
At U.S. President Donald Trump’s request, Congress voted in July 2025 to claw back US$1.1 billion it had previously approved for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That measure, which passed in the House and the Senate by very narrow margins, will cut off all federal tax dollars that would have otherwise flowed to PBS and its affiliated TV stations for the next two fiscal years.
The public media network has played a crucial role in producing educational TV programs, especially for children, for nearly 60 years. It has been getting 15% of its budget in recent years from the federal government. Many of its affiliate stations are far more reliant on Washington than that – leading to a flurry of announcements regarding planned program cuts.
“Sesame Street” is still in production, joined by newer TV shows like “Wild Kratts” and “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.” PBS KIDS, in addition to producing popular age-appropriate programs, has a website and multiple apps with games and activities that provide other opportunities for learning.
I’m a child development researcher studying how kids engage with digital media and how educational programming and other kinds of content help them learn. I also have two children under 5, so I’m now immersed in children’s media both at work and at home.
What kids watch
In a study about the kinds of media kids consume that the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology published in June 2025, my colleagues and I surveyed the parents and other kinds of caregivers of 346 first graders. The study participants listed the TV shows, videos, apps and games the kids used the most.
Our research team then used a systematic coding process to look at how much children access educational programming in their favorite media – whether it’s through their favorite TV shows, web videos or video games.
We found that only 12% of this content could be described as educational. This amount varied widely: For some children, according to the adults we surveyed, educational media comprised their top three to five sources. Others listed no educational media consumption at all.
We also looked into who is taking advantage of educational media.
Our team found no differences in kids’ educational media use according to how many years of education their parents had. That finding suggests that kids of all backgrounds are equally likely to consume it.
This peer-reviewed study didn’t break down our results by specific media outlets. But in light of the cessation of federal funding, I wanted to find out how much of the educational content that children watch comes from PBS.
By revisiting our data with this objective in mind, I learned that PBS accounted for 45% of the educational TV or videos parents said their kids watched most often. This makes PBS the top source for children’s educational programming by far. Nickelodeon/Nick Jr. was in second place with 14%, and YouTube, at 9%, came in third.
PBS accounted for a smaller portion, just 6%, of all educational apps and games. I believe that could be because a few non-PBS apps, like Prodigy and i-Ready, which can be introduced in school, dominate this category.
‘Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,’ a cartoon, will seem familiar to anyone who grew up watching ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.‘
An Uncertain future
Independent production companies collaborating on programming with PBS consult experts in child development and children’s media and conduct research throughout the production process to see how children respond and learn, often in partnership with PBS KIDS.
This rigorous production process can include observing children watching the show, conducting focus groups and surveying parents about their experiences. It requires a lot of time and money to produce this kind of thoughtfully crafted educational media. This process ensures that the programming is both fun for children and helps them learn.
What the end of federal funding will mean for PBS’ educational programming for kids is still unclear. But to me, it seems inevitable that my children – and everyone else’s kids – will have fewer research-informed and freely accessible options for years to come.
At the same time, there will likely be no shortage of flashy and shallow content marketed to kids that offers little of value for their learning.
Rebecca Dore has conducted previous consulting work for PBS KIDS and engages with a PBS KIDS staff member who is a member of the advisory board for one of Dore’s current federally funded grants.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Betsy Pudliner, Associate Professor of Hospitality and Technology Innovation, University of Wisconsin-Stout
The American South – and the nation more broadly – continues to wrestle with how to remember its most painful chapters. Tourism is one of the arenas where that struggle is most visible.
This tension came into sharp relief in May 2025, when the largest antebellum mansion in the region – the 19th-century estate at Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana – burned to the ground. While some historians, community members and tourism advocates mourned the loss of a landmark site, many activists and others critical of slavery’s pastcelebrated its destruction.
Soon after the fire, Nottoway’s owner indicated an interest in rebuilding. And within weeks, a new restaurant had opened on a different part of the site. That speed underscores how quickly memory, history and economics can collide – and how tourism sits at the center of that tension.
Nottoway is one of more than 300 such plantation sites across the country, which together generate billions of dollars in revenue each year. This type of tourism forces communities and visitors alike to ask a difficult question: What parts of the past do Americans preserve, and for whom?
A local news segment about the Nottoway fire.
Nottoway, completed in 1859, was built by 155 enslaved people. Blending Greek Revival and Italianate styles, it stood as a monument to wealth built on forced labor and racial exploitation. Over the decades, it passed through different owners, survived the Civil War and was eventually restored and converted into a resort and wedding venue. Critics have long argued that this commercial reinvention downplayed the lives and labor of enslaved people, neglecting the site’s foundations in brutality.
Beyond its symbolism, Nottoway has long been recognized as a cornerstone of Iberville Parish’s tourism economy. Research shows that sites like Nottoway can anchor regional economies by encouraging longer stays and local spending. These can stimulate nearby businesses through the multiplier effect.
Nottoway’s sociocultural significance was far more complex – as shown by the celebrations that followed the fire. For many, Nottoway was a site of trauma and erasure. With its white columns and manicured lawns, Nottoway was pervaded by a sense of romanticism that relied on selective memory. For example, as of June 2025, the Nottoway website’s “History” page made no mention of slavery.
In other words, the fire didn’t just destroy a building. It disrupted a layered ecosystem of economic livelihood, memory and contested meaning.
Tourism and the power of the past
To understand why people visit places like Nottoway, it helps to turn to the four main categories of travel motivation: physical, cultural, interpersonal and status. Plantation venues typically draw cultural tourists seeking heritage, history and architecture.
They also draw those engaged in what scholars call “dark tourism”: traveling to places associated with tragedy and death. While dark tourism may imply voyeurism, many such visits are deeply reflective. These travelers seek to confront hard truths and process collective memory. But if interpretation is selective – focusing on opulence while minimizing suffering – tourism then becomes a force of historical distortion.
Some tourists choose plantations for a sense of romance, others for education, and still others for reckoning. These motivations complicate how such places should be preserved, interpreted or transformed.
Over the past decade, innovative sites like the Whitney Plantation have gained national attention for centering the lives and stories of the enslaved, rather than the architecture or planter families. Opened to the public in 2014, Whitney reframed the traditional plantation tour by prioritizing historical truth over nostalgia – featuring first-person slave narratives, memorials and educational programming focused on slavery’s brutality.
A CBS News report on Whitney Plantation.
This approach reflects a growing segment of travelers seeking deeper engagement with difficult histories. As Whitney draws visitors for its honesty and restorative framing, it raises a key question: Is the future of plantation tourism splitting into two tracks – one rooted in reflection, the other in romanticism?
Many Americans still picture the antebellum South through the lens of popular culture – a romanticized vision shaped by novels and films like “Gone with the Wind,” with its iconic Tara plantation. This “Tara effect” continues to influence how plantations are portrayed and remembered, often emphasizing beauty and grandeur while downplaying the brutality of slavery.
That’s why sites like the Donato House in Louisiana are important. Built and owned by Martin Donato, a formerly enslaved man who later became a landowner – and, complicating the narrative, also a slaveholder – this modest home offers a counterpoint to the opulence of estates like Nottoway.
Still in the hands of Donato’s descendants and slowly developing as a tourist site, the Donato House reflects the layered and often uncomfortable truths that challenge simple historical categories. Sites like this remind us that tourism plays a vital role in educating society about the complexity of our past. Heritage travel isn’t just about iconic landmarks; it’s about broadening our perspective, confronting historical bias and helping visitors to engage with the fuller, often uncomfortable, truths behind the stories we tell.
Controlling the narrative: Who tells the story?
What is chosen to be preserved – or let go of – shapes not only our memory of the past but our vision for the future.
When the last generation with firsthand experience of a historical moment is gone, their stories remain in fragments – photos, recordings such as those in the National Archives, or family lore. Some memories are factual, others softened or sharpened with time. That’s the nature of memory: It changes with us.
My late father, a high school history teacher, often reminded his students and his children to study the full spectrum of history: the good, the bad and the profoundly uncomfortable. He believed one must dive deep into its complexity to better understand human behavior and motivation.
He was right. Tourism has always echoed the layered realities of the human experience. Now, as Americans reckon with what was lost at Nottoway, we’re left with the question: “What story will be told – and who will get to tell it?”
