Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael Liemohn, Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan

When I imagine the future of space commerce, the first image that comes to mind is a farmer’s market on the International Space Station. This doesn’t exist yet, but space commerce is a growing industry. The Space Foundation, a nonprofit organization for education and advocacy of space, estimates that the global space economy rose to US$613 billion in 2024, up nearly 8% from 2023, and 250 times larger than all business at farmer’s markets in the United States. This number includes launch vehicles, satellite hardware, and services provided by these space-based assets, such as satellite phone or internet connection.

Companies involved in spaceflight have been around since the start of the Space Age. By the 1980s, corporate space activity was gaining traction. President Ronald Reagan saw the need for a federal agency to oversee and guide this industry and created the Office of Space Commerce, or OSC.

So, what exactly does this office do and why is it important?

As a space scientist, I am interested in how the U.S. regulates commercial activities in space. In addition, I teach a course on space policy. In class, we talk about the OSC and its role in the wider regulatory landscape affecting commercial use of outer space.

The OSC’s focus areas

The Office of Space Commerce, an office of about 50 people, exists within the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. To paraphrase its mission statement, its chief purpose is to enable a robust U.S. commercial interest in outer space.

OSC has three main focus areas. First, it is the office responsible for licensing and monitoring how private U.S. companies collect and distribute orbit-based images of Earth. There are many companies launching satellites with special cameras to look back down at the Earth these days. Companies offer a variety of data products and services from such imagery – for instance, to improve agricultural land use.

A second primary job of OSC is space advocacy. OSC works with the other U.S. government agencies that also have jurisdiction over commercial use of outer space to make the regulatory environment easier. This includes working with the Federal Aviation Administration on launch licensing, the Federal Communications Commission on radio wavelength usage and the Environmental Protection Agency on rules about the hazardous chemicals in rocket fuel.

This job also includes coordinating with other countries that allow companies to launch satellites, collect data in orbit and offer space-based services.

In 2024, for example, the OSC helped revise the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, one of the main documents restricting the shipping of advanced technologies out of the country. This change removed some limitations, allowing American companies to export certain types of spacecraft to three countries: Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The OSC also coordinates commercial satellites’ flight paths in near-Earth space, which is its third and largest function. The Department of Defense keeps track of thousands of objects in outer space and issues alerts when the probability of a collision gets high. In 2018, President Donald Trump issued Space Policy Directive-3, which included tasking OSC to take this role over for nongovernment satellites – that is, those owned by companies, not NASA or the military. The Department od Defense wants out of the job of traffic management involving privately owned satellites, and Trump’s directive in 2018 started the process of handing off this task to OSC.

To prevent satellites from colliding, OSC has been developing the traffic coordination system for space, known as TraCSS. It went into beta testing in 2024 and has some of the companies with the largest commercial constellations – such as SpaceX’s Starlink – participating. Progress on this has been slower than anticipated, though, and an audit in 2024 revealed that the plan is way behind schedule and perhaps still years away.

Elevating OSC

Deep in the text of Trump’s Aug. 13, 2025, executive order called Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry, there’s a directive to elevate OSC to report directly to the office of the secretary of commerce. This would make OSC equivalent to its current overseer, NOAA, with respect to importance and priority within the Department of Commerce. It would give OSC higher stature in setting more of the rules regarding commercial use of space, and it would make space commerce more visible across the broader economy.

So, why did Trump include this line about elevating OSC in his Aug. 13 executive order?

Back in 2018, Trump issued Space Policy Directive-2 during his first term, which included a task to create the Space Policy Advancing Commerce Enterprise Administration, or SPACE. SPACE would have been an entity reporting directly to the secretary of commerce. While it was proposed as a bill in the House of Representatives later that year, it never became law.

The Aug. 13 executive order essentially directs the Department of Commerce to make this move now. Should the secretary of commerce enact the order, it would bypass the role of Congress in promoting OSC. The 60-day window that Trump placed in the executive order for making this change has closed, but with the government shutdown it is unclear whether the elevation of OSC might still occur.

Troubles for OSC

While all of this sounds good for promoting space as a place for commercial activity, OSC has been under stress in 2025. In February, the Department of Government Efficiency targeted NOAA for cuts, including firing eight people from OSC. Because about half of the people working in OSC are contractors, this represented a 30% reduction of force.

In March, Trump’s presidential budget request for the 2026 fiscal year proposed a cut of 85% of the $65 million annual budget of OSC. In July, space industry leaders urged Congress to restore funding to OSC.

The Aug. 13 executive order appeared to be good news for OSC. On Sept. 9, however, Bloomberg reported that the Department of Commerce requested a 40% rescission to OSC’s fiscal year 2025 budget.

Rescissions are “clawbacks” of funds already approved and appropriated by Congress. The promised funding is essentially put on hold. Once proposed by the president, rescissions have to be voted on by both chambers of Congress to be enacted. This must occur within 45 days, or before the end of the fiscal year, which was Sept. 30.

This rescission request came so close to that deadline that Congress did not act to stop it. As a result, OSC lost this funding. The loss could mean additional cutbacks to staff and perhaps even a shrinking of its focus areas.

Will OSC be elevated? Will OSC be restructured or even dismantled? The future is still uncertain for this office.

Michael Liemohn receives or has received funding from NASA, NSF, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the European Union. He is currently the President-Elect of the Space Physics and Aeronomy section of the American Geophysical Union and has served in other leadership roles with that society.

– ref. Office of Space Commerce faces an uncertain future amid budget cuts and new oversight – https://theconversation.com/office-of-space-commerce-faces-an-uncertain-future-amid-budget-cuts-and-new-oversight-265710

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Lee Ann Rawlins Williams, Clinical Assistant Professor of Education, Health and Behavior Studies, University of North Dakota

Heavy teaching loads, shrinking university budgets and expanding workload expectations have fueled stress and burnout among professors and other university employees in recent years.

Now, an increasingly polarized political climate, as well as emerging concerns around university funding cuts, self-censorship and academic freedom, has created new pressures for university and college employees.

The result is an academic profession caught in the crosscurrents of culture and politics, with implications that extend far beyond the classroom.

What faculty say

Since June 2025, I have spoken with 33 faculty members across disciplines and institutions in the U.S. about how they are managing their careers and day-to-day lives at work and home.

Their accounts reveal common themes: persistent anxiety about job security, uncertainty around how to teach controversial subjects, and frustration that institutional support is often fragmented or short-lived.

“We’re asked to make room for students’ struggles, but are rarely acknowledged when we crack under the same weight,” one professor told me.

A 2024 National Education Association survey found that 33% of 900 public administration faculty are “often” or “always” physically exhausted, while 38% of faculty say they are “often” or “always” emotionally exhausted.

Another 40% of faculty from this survey say they are simply “worn out.”

Other research shows that growing workloads and constant role juggling are taking a toll on faculty members’ well-being and ability to teach effectively.

Burnout among educators can have ripple effects on the university and college students they teach, leading to students feeling less motivated and engaged in school.

As a scholar of education, health and behavior studies, I know that when universities and colleges invest in supporting their faculty’s mental health and well-being, they’re not just helping their employees. They are protecting the quality of education that their students receive.

When politics enters the classroom

Surveys spanning 2017 through 2021 found that 6,269 faculty members have increasingly self-censored and avoided controversial topics or moderated their language when talking with their students and colleagues in order to avoid backlash from legislators, university boards or school administrators.

The result is a form of burnout, in which protecting one’s mental health and job security can mean speaking more carefully when teaching.

A January 2025 Inside Higher Ed survey published shortly before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration found that over half of 8,460 surveyed U.S. professors have altered what they said or wrote, whether it was course materials or emails, to avoid expressing a possibly controversial opinion.

Nearly half of surveyed professors have also withheld opinions in the classroom entirely, according to the same survey, which was conducted from December 2023 to February 2024.

Scholars call this a “chilling effect” on academic freedom, where self-censorship becomes part of daily decision-making.

In the current political climate, faculty in many institutions continue to express reluctance to speak openly, citing concerns about professional or public repercussions. Even though comprehensive research since January 2025 is still emerging, early findings already suggest a further narrowing of what feels safe to say.

One-third of faculty reported in January that they feel they have less freedom to express their views, reflecting an environment in which faculty members’ voices are increasingly constrained

Faculty I spoke with over the past few months described “navigating sensitive boundaries” in their lectures, avoiding having any discussion about race, gender and religion. They also talked about not using terms like diversity, equity and inclusion.

Watching what you say

For professors on contingent contracts – meaning they are not on a track to receive tenure, a secure work position that typically lasts a lifetime – the fear is heightened. The same is true for other faculty members like adjunct professors, who depend on short-term or renewable contracts.

Without the protection of tenure, even a single complaint or potential controversy can jeopardize a professor’s position – and recent cases of tenured professors suggest that even tenure no longer offers the same level of security it once did.

One adjunct professor put it bluntly: “When your next contract depends on staying in bounds, watching what you say is survival.”

For many instructors, the need to continually reassess how a comment, reading or assignment might be received changes the experience of teaching in subtle but meaningful ways.

Faculty members I spoke with described heightened anxiety, sleepless nights and a persistent fear that a misstep could derail their careers. This psychological strain, compounded by workload and financial stress, leaves little space for creativity, innovation or joy in teaching.

The downstream effects on students

Faculty members’ well-being is inseparable from how students experience college. Burnout and disengagement ripple outward, reducing students’ motivation and eroding the quality of students’ classroom interactions, as noted in a 2025 study.

When professors self-censor, students can also lose exposure to complex or controversial perspectives that might challenge their thinking and deepen discussions.

Restrictions on free expression and debate can also stifle students’ intellectual curiosity, curb engagement and hinder critical-thinking development.

Equally concerning is the long-term impact on innovation.

When academic freedom is restricted or self-censored, there is a greater potential that research questions will become more narrow, classroom discussions will flatten, and students will lose exposure to the breadth of perspectives that higher education promises.

A new kind of academic life

Faculty mental health is a pressing concern across higher education.

Expanding workloads, shifting public expectations and uncertainty around job security have created an environment of sustained strain.

The professors I have spoken with say they feeling caught between professional demands and personal limits, navigating burnout, self-censorship and ongoing attention to what they teach and say.

The cumulative effect is reshaping academic life, altering how faculty teach, communicate and engage with students, with a very careful eye on how others are perceiving them.

Lee Ann Rawlins Williams 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. College faculty are under pressure to say and do the right thing – the stress also trickles down to students – https://theconversation.com/college-faculty-are-under-pressure-to-say-and-do-the-right-thing-the-stress-also-trickles-down-to-students-267400

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Yurou Wang, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Alabama

Imagine a student using a writing assistant powered by a generative AI chatbot. As the bot serves up practical suggestions and encouragement, insights come more easily, drafts polish up quickly and feedback loops feel immediate. It can be energizing. But when that AI support is removed, some students report feeling less confident or less willing to engage.

These outcomes raise the question: Can AI tools genuinely boost student motivation? And what conditions can make or break that boost?

As AI tools become more common in classroom settings, the answers to these questions matter a lot. While tools for general use such as ChatPGT or Claude remain popular, more and more students are encountering AI tools that are purpose-built to support learning, such as Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, which personalizes lessons. Others, such as ALEKS, provide adaptive feedback. Both tools adjust to a learner’s level and highlight progress over time, which helps students feel capable and see improvement. But there are still many unknowns about the long-term effects of these tools on learners’ progress, an issue I continue to study as an educational psychologist.

What the evidence shows so far

Recent studies indicate that AI can boost motivation, at least for certain groups, when deployed under the right conditions. A 2025 experiment with university students showed that when AI tools delivered a high-quality performance and allowed meaningful interaction, students’ motivation and their confidence in being able to complete a task – known as self-efficacy – increased.

For foreign language learners, a 2025 study found that university students using AI-driven personalized systems took more pleasure in learning and had less anxiety and more self-efficacy compared with those using traditional methods. A recent cross-cultural analysis with participants from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Poland who were studying diverse majors suggested that positive motivational effects are strongest when tools prioritize autonomy, self-direction and critical thinking. These individual findings align with a broader, systematic review of generative AI tools that found positive effects on student motivation and engagement across cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions.

A forthcoming meta-analysis from my team at the University of Alabama, which synthesized 71 studies, echoed these patterns. We found that generative AI tools on average produce moderate positive effects on motivation and engagement. The impact is larger when tools are used consistently over time rather than in one-off trials. Positive effects were also seen when teachers provide scaffolding, when students maintain agency in how they use the tool, and when the output quality is reliable.

But there are caveats. More than 50 of the studies we reviewed did not draw on a clear theoretical framework of motivation, and some used methods that we found were weak or inappropriate. This raises concerns about the quality of the evidence and underscores how much more careful research is needed before one can say with confidence that AI nurtures students’ intrinsic motivation rather than just making tasks easier in the moment.

When AI backfires

There is also research that paints a more sobering picture. A large study of more than 3,500 participants found that while human–AI collaboration improved task performance, it reduced intrinsic motivation once the AI was removed. Students reported more boredom and less satisfaction, suggesting that overreliance on AI can erode confidence in their own abilities.

Another study suggested that while learning achievement often rises with the use of AI tools, increases in motivation are smaller, inconsistent or short-lived. Quality matters as much as quantity. When AI delivers inaccurate results, or when students feel they have little control over how it is used, motivation quickly erodes. Confidence drops, engagement fades and students can begin to see the tool as a crutch rather than a support. And because there are not many long-term studies in this field, we still do not know whether AI can truly sustain motivation over time, or whether its benefits fade once the novelty wears off.

Not all AI tools work the same way

The impact of AI on student motivation is not one-size-fits-all. Our team’s meta-analysis shows that, on average, AI tools do have a positive effect, but the size of that effect depends on how and where they are used. When students work with AI regularly over time, when teachers guide them in using it thoughtfully, and when students feel in control of the process, the motivational benefits are much stronger.

We also saw differences across settings. College students seemed to gain more than younger learners, STEM and writing courses tended to benefit more than other subjects, and tools designed to give feedback or tutoring support outperformed those that simply generated content.

There is also evidence that general-use tools like ChatGPT or Claude do not reliably promote intrinsic motivation or deeper engagement with content, compared to learning-specific platforms such as ALEKS and Khanmigo, which are more effective at supporting persistence and self-efficacy. However, these tools often come with subscription or licensing costs. This raises questions of equity, since the students who could benefit most from motivational support may also be the least likely to afford it.

These and other recent findings should be seen as only a starting point. Because AI is so new and is changing so quickly, what we know today may not hold true tomorrow. In a paper titled The Death and Rebirth of Research in Education in the Age of AI, the authors argue that the speed of technological change makes traditional studies outdated before they are even published. At the same time, AI opens the door to new ways of studying learning that are more participatory, flexible and imaginative. Taken together, the data and the critiques point to the same lesson: Context, quality and agency matter just as much as the technology itself.

Why it matters for all of us

The lessons from this growing body of research are straightforward. The presence of AI does not guarantee higher motivation, but it can make a difference if tools are designed and used with care and understanding of students’ needs. When it is used thoughtfully, in ways that strengthen students’ sense of competence, autonomy and connection to others, it can be a powerful ally in learning.

But without those safeguards, the short-term boost in performance could come at a steep cost. Over time, there is the risk of weakening the very qualities that matter most – motivation, persistence, critical thinking and the uniquely human capacities that no machine can replace.

For teachers, this means that while AI may prove a useful partner in learning, it should never serve as a stand-in for genuine instruction. For parents, it means paying attention to how children use AI at home, noticing whether they are exploring, practicing and building skills or simply leaning on it to finish tasks. For policymakers and technology developers, it means creating systems that support student agency, provide reliable feedback and avoid encouraging overreliance. And for students themselves, it is a reminder that AI can be a tool for growth, but only when paired with their own effort and curiosity.

Regardless of technology, students need to feel capable, autonomous and connected. Without these basic psychological needs in place, their sense of motivation will falter – with or without AI.

Yurou Wang 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. Can AI keep students motivated, or does it do the opposite? – https://theconversation.com/can-ai-keep-students-motivated-or-does-it-do-the-opposite-264728

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jackson Trager, Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Across cultures, people often wrestle with whether having lots of money is a blessing, a burden or a moral problem. According to our new research, how someone views billionaires isn’t just about economics. Judgment also hinges on certain cultural and moral instincts, which helps explain why opinions about wealth are so polarized.

The study, which my colleague Mohammad Atari and I published in the research journal PNAS Nexus in June 2025, examined survey data from more than 4,300 people across 20 countries. We found that while most people around the world do not strongly condemn having “too much money,” there are striking cultural differences.

In wealthy, more economically equal countries such as Switzerland and Belgium, people were more likely to say that having too much money is immoral. In countries that are poorer and more unequal, such as Peru or Nigeria, people tended to view wealth accumulation as more acceptable.

Beyond economics, we found that judgments about excessive wealth are also shaped by deeper moral intuitions. Our study drew on moral foundations theory, which proposes that people’s sense of right and wrong is built on six core values – care, equality, proportionality, loyalty, authority and purity. We found that people who highly value equality and purity were more likely to see excessive wealth as wrong.

The equality result was expected, but the role of purity was more surprising. Purity is usually associated with ideas about cleanliness, sanctity or avoiding contamination – so finding that it is associated with negative views about wealth gives new meaning to the phrase “filthy rich.”

As a social psychologist who studies morality, culture and technology, I’m interested in how these kinds of judgments differ across groups and societies. Social and institutional systems interact with individual moral beliefs, shaping how people view culture war issues such as wealth and inequality − and, in turn, how they engage with the policies and conflicts that emerge around them.

Why it matters

Billionaires wield growing influence in politics, technology and global development. The richest 1% of people on Earth own more wealth than 95% of people combined, according to Oxfam, an organization focused on fighting poverty.

Efforts to address inequality by taxing or regulating the rich may, however, rest on a mistaken assumption — that the public generally condemns extreme wealth. If most people instead view amassing wealth as morally justifiable, such reforms could face limited support.

Our findings suggest that in countries where inequality is highly visible and persistent, people may adapt by morally justifying their structural economic system, arguing that it is fair and legitimate. In wealthier, more equal societies, people appear more sensitive to the potential harms of excess.

While our study shows that most people around the world do not view excessive wealth as morally wrong, those in wealthier and more equal countries are far more likely to condemn it.

That contrast raises a sharper question: When people in privileged societies denounce and attempt to limit billionaires, are they shining a light on global injustice − or projecting their own sense of guilt? Are they projecting a moral principle shaped by their own prosperity onto poorer countries, where wealth may represent survival, progress or even hope?

What still isn’t known

One open question: How do these views change over time? Do attitudes shift when societies become wealthier or more equal? Are young people more likely than older generations to condemn billionaires? Our study offers a snapshot, but long-term research could reveal whether moral judgments track broader economic or cultural changes.

Another uncertainty is the unexpected role of purity. Why would a value tied to cleanliness and sanctity shape how people judge billionaires? Our follow-up study found that purity concerns extended beyond money to other forms of “excess,” such as disapproving of having “too much” ambition, sex or fun. This suggests that people may see excess itself – not just inequality – as corrupting.

What’s next

We’re continuing to study how cultural values, social systems and moral intuitions shape people’s judgments of fairness and excess – from views of wealth and ambition to knowledge and AI computing power.

Understanding these gut-level, moral reactions within larger social systems matters for debates about inequality. But it can also help explain how people evaluate technologies, leaders and institutions that accumulate disproportionate, excessive power or influence.

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

Jackson Trager 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. Is it wrong to have too much money? Your answer may depend on deep-seated values – and your country’s economy – https://theconversation.com/is-it-wrong-to-have-too-much-money-your-answer-may-depend-on-deep-seated-values-and-your-countrys-economy-265247

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Larisa R. G. DeSantis, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University

Imagine a sloth. You probably picture a medium-size, tree-dwelling creature hanging from a branch. Today’s sloths – commonly featured on children’s backpacks, stationery and lunch boxes – are slow-moving creatures, living inconspicuously in Central American and South American rainforests.

But their gigantic Pleistocene ancestors that inhabited the Americas as far back as 35 million years ago were nothing like the sleepy tree huggers we know today. Giant ground sloths – some weighing thousands of pounds and standing taller than a single-story building – played vital and diverse roles in shaping ecosystems across the Americas, roles that vanished with their loss at the end of the Pleistocene.

In our new study, published in the journal Biology Letters, we aimed to reconstruct the diets of two species of giant ground sloths that lived side by side in what’s now Southern California. We analyzed remains recovered from the La Brea Tar Pits of what are colloquially termed the Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis) and Harlan’s ground sloth (Paramylodon harlani). Our work sheds light on the lives of these fascinating creatures and the consequences their extinction in Southern California 13,700 years ago has had on ecosystems.

Dentin dental challenges

Studying the diets of extinct animals often feels like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with only a portion of the puzzle pieces. Stable isotope analyses have revolutionized how paleoecologists reconstruct the diets of many ancient organisms. By measuring the relative ratios of light and heavy carbon isotopes in tooth enamel, we can figure out what kinds of foods an animal ate – for instance, grasses versus trees or shrubs.

But the teeth of giant ground sloths lack enamel, the highly inorganic and hard outer layer on most animal teeth – including our own. Instead, sloth teeth are made primarily of dentin, a more porous and organic-rich tissue that readily changes its chemical composition with fossilization.

Stable isotope analyses are less dependable in sloths because dentin’s chemical composition can be altered postmortem, skewing the isotopic signatures.

Another technique researchers use to glean information about an animal’s diet relies on analyzing the microscopic wear patterns on its teeth. Dental microwear texture analysis can infer whether an animal mostly ate tough foods such as leaves and grass or hard foods such as seeds and fruit pits. This technique is also tricky when it comes to sloths’ fossilized teeth because signs of wear may be preserved differently in the softer dentin than in harder enamel.

Prior to studying fossil sloths, we vetted dental microwear methods in modern xenarthrans, a group of animals that includes sloths, armadillos and anteaters. This study demonstrated that dentin microwear can reveal dietary differences between leaf-eating sloths and insect-consuming armadillos, giving us confidence that these tools could reveal dietary information from ground sloth fossils.

Distinct dietary niches revealed

Previous research suggested that giant ground sloths were either grass-eating grazers or leaf-eating browsers, based on the size and shape of their teeth. However, more direct measures of diet – such as stable isotopes or dental microwear – were often lacking.

Our new analyses revealed contrasting dental wear signatures between the two co-occurring ground sloth species. The Harlan’s ground sloth, the larger of the two, had microwear patterns dominated by deep pitlike textures. This kind of wear is indicative of chewing hard, mechanically challenging foods such as tubers, seeds, fungi and fruit pits. Our new evidence aligns with skeletal adaptations that suggest powerful digging abilities, consistent with foraging foods both above and below ground.

In contrast, the Shasta ground sloth exhibited dental microwear textures more akin to those in leaf-eating and woody plant-eating herbivores. This pattern corroborates previous studies of its fossilized dung, demonstrating a diet rich in desert plants such as yucca, agave and saltbush.

Next we compared the sloths’ microwear textures to those of ungulates such as camels, horses and bison that lived in the same region of Southern California. We confirmed that neither sloth species’ dietary behavior overlapped fully with other herbivores. Giant ground sloths didn’t perform the same ecological functions as the other herbivores that shared their landscape. Instead, both ground sloths partitioned their niches and played complementary ecological roles.

Extinctions brought ecological loss

The Harlan’s ground sloth was a megafaunal ecosystem engineer. It excavated soil and foraged underground, thereby affecting soil structure and nutrient cycling, even dispersing seed and fungal spores over wide areas. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some anachronistic fruits – such as the weird, bumpy-textured and softball-size Osage orange – were dispersed by ancient megafauna such as giant ground sloths. When the Pleistocene megafauna went extinct, the loss contributed to the regional restriction of these plants, since no one was around to spread their seeds.

The broader consequence is clear: Megafaunal extinctions erased critical ecosystem engineers, triggering cascading ecological changes that continue to affect habitat resilience today. Our results resonate with growing evidence that preserving today’s living large herbivores and understanding the diversity of their ecological niches is crucial for conserving functional ecosystems.

Studying the teeth of lost giant ground sloths has illuminated not only their diets but also the enduring ecological legacies of their extinction. Today’s sloths, though charming, only hint at the profound environmental influence of their prehistoric relatives – giants that shaped landscapes in ways we are only beginning to appreciate.

Larisa R. G. DeSantis received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Vanderbilt University. DeSantis is also a research associate at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum.

Aditya Reddy Kurre received funding from Vanderbilt University.

– ref. Giant ground sloths’ fossilized teeth reveal their unique roles in the prehistoric ecosystem – https://theconversation.com/giant-ground-sloths-fossilized-teeth-reveal-their-unique-roles-in-the-prehistoric-ecosystem-267601

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrew Rojecki, Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago

A grim-faced President Donald J. Trump looks out at the reader,
under the headline “LAW AND ORDER.” Graffiti pictured in the corner of the White House Facebook post reads “Death to ICE.” Beneath that, a photo of protesters, choking on tear gas. And underneath it all, a smaller headline: “President Trump Deploys 2,000 National Guard After ICE Agents Attacked, No Mercy for Lawless Riots and Looters.”

The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.

The post is not an outlier.

In the Trump administration, White House social media posts often blur the lines between politics and entertainment, and between reality and illusion.

The White House has released AI images of Trump as the pope, as Superman and as a Star Wars Jedi, ready to do battle with “Radical Left Lunatics” who would bring “Murderers, Drug Lords … & well-known MS-13 Gang Members” into the country.

Most recently, on the weekend of the No Kings protests, both Trump and the White House released a video of the president wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet, from which he dispenses feces onto a crowd of protesters below.

Underpinning it all is a calculated political strategy: an appeal to Trump’s political base – largely white, working-class, rural or small-town, evangelical and culturally conservative.

As scholars who study communication in politics and the media, we believe the White House’s rhetoric and style is part of a broader global change often found in countries experiencing increased polarization and democratic backsliding.

White House style

In the past, national leaders generally favored a professional tone, whether on social or traditional media. Their language was neutral and polished, laced with political jargon.

While populist political communication has become more common along with the proliferation of social media, the communication norms are further altered in Trump White House social media posts.

They are partisan, theatrical and exaggerated. Their tone is almost circuslike. The process of governing is portrayed as a reality TV show, in which political roles are performed with little regard for real-world consequences. Vivid color schemes and stylized imagery convert political messaging into visual spectacle. The language is colloquial, down-to-earth.

Just as other influencers in a variety of domains might create an emotional bond by tailoring social media messages, content, products and services to the needs and likes of individual customers, the White House tailors its content to the beliefs, language and worldview of Trump’s political base.

In doing so, the White House echoes a broad, growing trend in political communication, portraying Trump as “a champion of the people” and using direct and informal communication that appeals to fear and resentment.

Trump White House social media makes no effort to promote social unity or constructive dialogue, or reduce polarization – and often heightens it. Undocumented immigrants, for example, are often portrayed as inherently evil. White House social media amplifies dramatic, emotionally charged content.

In one video, Trump recites a poem about a kind woman who takes in a snake, a stand-in for an immigrant who in reality is a dangerous serpent. “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite,” Trump recites.

Talking to the base

While some scholars have called the White House social media style “amateurish,” that hasn’t resulted in change.

The lack of response to negative feedback is partially explained by the strategic goal of these communications: to appeal to the frustrations of Trump’s deeply disaffected political base, which seems to revel in the White House social media style.

Scholars identify a large number of these voters as “the precariat,” a group whose once-stable, union-protected jobs have been outsourced or replaced with low-wage, insecure service work. These workers, many former Democrats, can no longer count on a regular paycheck, benefits or work they can identify with.

As a result, they are more likely to support political candidates whom they believe will respond to their economic instability.

In addition, many of these voters blame a breakdown in what they perceive as the racial pecking order for a loss of social status, especially when compared with more highly educated workers. Many of these workers distrust the media and other elite institutions they feel have failed them. Research shows that they are highly receptive to messages that confirm their grievances and that many regard Trump as their champion.

Trump and the White House social media play to this audience.

On social media, the president is free to violate norms that anger his critics but have little effect on his supporters, who view the current political system as flawed. One example: A White House Valentine’s Day communication that said “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”

In addition, Trump and the White House social media use the president’s status as a celebrity, coupled with comedy and spectacle, to immunize the administration from fallout, even among some of its critics.

Trump’s exaggerated gestures, over-the-top language, his lampooning of opponents and his use of caricature to ridicule whole categories of people – including Democrats, the disabled, Muslims, Mexicans and women – is read by his political base as a playful and entertaining take down of political correctness. It may form a sturdy pillar of his support.

But prioritizing entertainment over facts has long-term significance.

Trump’s communication strategies are already setting a global precedent, encouraging other politicians to adopt similar theatrical and polarizing tactics that distort or deny facts.

These methods may energize some audiences but risk alienating others. Informed political engagement is reduced, and democratic backsliding is increasingly a reality.

Although the communication style of the White House is playful and irreverent, it has a serious goal: the diffusion of ideological messages whose intent is to create a sense of strength and righteousness among its supporters.

In simple terms, this is propaganda designed to persuade citizens that the government is strong, its enemies evil and that fellow citizens – “real Americans” – think the same way.

Scholars observe that the White House projection of the often comical images of authority echoes the visual style of authoritarian governments. Both seek to be seen as in control of the social and political order and thereby to discourage dissent.

The chief difference between the two is that in a deeply polarized democracy such as the U.S., citizens interpret these displays of authority in sharply different ways: They build opposition among Trump opponents but support among supporters.

The rising intolerance that results erodes social cohesion, undermines support for democratic norms and weakens trust in institutions. And that opens the door to democratic backsliding.

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. King, pope, Jedi, Superman: Trump’s social media images exclusively target his base and try to blur political reality – https://theconversation.com/king-pope-jedi-superman-trumps-social-media-images-exclusively-target-his-base-and-try-to-blur-political-reality-259950

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrea Katz, Associate Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis

If you’re confused about what the law does and doesn’t allow the president to do with the National Guard, that’s understandable.

As National Guard troops landed in Portland, Oregon, in late September 2025, the state’s lawyers argued that the deployment was a “direct intrusion on its sovereign police power.”

Days before, President Donald Trump, calling the city “a war zone,” had invoked a federal law allowing the government to call up the Guard during national emergencies or when state authorities cannot maintain order.

The conflict throws into relief a question as old as the Constitution itself: Where does federal power end and state authority begin?

One answer seems to appear in the 10th Amendment’s straightforward language: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This text is considered to be the constitutional “hook” for federalism in our democracy.

The founders, responding to anti-Federalist anxieties about an overbearing central government, added this language to emphasize that the new government possessed only limited powers. Everything else – including the broad “police power” to regulate health, safety, morals and general welfare – remained with the states.

Yet from the beginning, the text has generated plenty of confusion. Is the 10th Amendment merely a “truism,” as Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote in 1941 in United States v. Darby, restating the Constitution’s structure of limited powers? Or does it describe concrete powers held by the states?

Turns out, there’s no simple answer, not even from the nation’s highest court. Over the years, the Supreme Court has treated the 10th Amendment like the proverbial magician’s hat, sometimes pulling robust state powers from its depths, other times finding it empty.

10th Amendment’s broad range

The arguments over the 10th Amendment for almost 200 years have applied not only to the National Guard but to questions about how the federal and state governments share powers over everything from taxation to government salaries, law enforcement and regulation of the economy.

For much of the 19th century, the 10th Amendment remained dormant. The federal government’s weakness and limited ambitions, especially on the slavery question, meant that boundaries were rarely tested before the courts.

The New Deal era brought this equilibrium crashing down.

The Supreme Court initially resisted the expansion of federal power, striking down laws banning child labor in Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918, setting a federal minimum wage in 1923 in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, and offering farmers subsidies in U.S. v. Butler in 1937. All these decisions were based on the 10th Amendment.

But this resistance wore down in the face of economic crisis and political pressure. By the time of the Darby case in 1941, which concerned the Fair Labor Standards Act and Congress’ power to regulate many aspects of employment, the court had relegated the 10th Amendment to “truism” status: The Amendment, wrote Stone, did nothing more than restate the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment.

The 1970s marked an unexpected revival. In the 1976 decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, a dispute over whether Congress could directly exercise control over minimum wage and overtime pay for state and local government employees, the court held that Congress could not use its commerce power to regulate state governments.

But that principle was abandoned nine years later, with the court doubling back on its position. Now, if the states wanted protection from federal overreach, they would have to seek it through the political process, not judicial intervention.

Yet less than a decade later, the court reversed course again. The modern federalism renaissance began in the ’90s with a pair of divided opinions stating that the federal government cannot force the states to enforce federal regulatory programs: this was the “anti-commandeering principle.”

The 10th Amendment’s meandering path

In recent decades, the court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has invoked the amendment to protect state power in varied, even surprising contexts: states’ entitlement to federal Medicaid spending; state authority over running elections, despite patterns of voter exclusion; even legalization of sports gambling.

On the other hand, in 2024, Colorado was barred by the court from excluding Trump from the presidential ballot as part of its power to administer elections.

That brings us back to the present, where Trump has deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests against immigration enforcement, and bids to send them to Portland and Chicago as well.

From the point of view of federalism, two factors lend this conflict some constitutional complexity.

One is the National Guard’s dual state-federal character. Most Guard mobilizations, including disaster relief, take place under Title 32 of the U.S. Code, which maintains state control of troops with federal funding.

By contrast, Title 10 allows the president to assert federal control over Guard units in case of “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against the government or where “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

The other factor is political.

Since World War II, the National Guard has been deployed only 10 times by presidents, mostly in support of racial desegregation and the protection of civil rights. All but one of these mobilizations came at the governor’s request – the lone exception, pre-Trump, being President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1957 mobilization of the Arkansas National Guard to desegregate schools in Little Rock over the wishes of Gov. Orval Faubus.

In sharp contrast, Trump has now attempted three times to send troops to large cities over the explicit objection of Democratic governors. Such is the case in Portland.

National Guard deployments and constitutional stakes

Oregon’s lawsuit argues that there is no national emergency in the city, and that deploying Guard troops to the state without Gov. Tina Kotek’s consent – indeed, over her explicit objection – and absent the extraordinary circumstances that might justify Title 10 federalization, is illegal. The National Guard, asserts the lawsuit, remains a state institution that federal authorities cannot commandeer.

The two deployments, in Oregon and Illinois, are making their way through the federal courts, and the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene to authorize the deployments. What the court will do, if the cases reach it, is uncertain. Roberts has proved willing to invoke state sovereignty in some contexts while rejecting it in others.

For now, the court has upheld several Trump administration actions while constraining others, suggesting a jurisprudence driven more by specific contexts than categorical rules.

Whether Oregon’s challenge succeeds may depend less on the long and changing history of 10th Amendment doctrine than on how the court views immigration enforcement, presidential authority and the consequences of Trump’s frequent invocations of emergency power for American democracy.

Andrea Katz 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. Trump’s National Guard deployments reignite 200-year-old legal debate over state vs. federal power – https://theconversation.com/trumps-national-guard-deployments-reignite-200-year-old-legal-debate-over-state-vs-federal-power-267259

Source: The Conversation – USA – By David W. Lawson, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara

In July 2025, Uganda’s courts swiftly dismissed a petition challenging the legality of polygamy, citing the protection of religious and cultural freedom. For most social scientists and policymakers who have long declared polygamy a “harmful cultural practice,” the decision was a frustrating but predictable setback in efforts to build healthier and more equal societies.

In the vast majority of cases, polygamy takes the form of one husband and multiple wives – more precisely referred to as polygyny, originating from the Greek words “poly” (“many”) and “gynē” (“woman or wife”). The opposite arrangement of one wife and multiple husbands is referred to as polyandry (from “anēr” meaning “man” or “husband”) and is exceedingly rare worldwide.

Critics of polygyny present two main arguments. First, they contend it squeezes low-status men out of the marriage market, fostering social unrest, crime and violence against women by frustrated unwed men. Second, it harms women and children by dividing limited resources among more dependents.

This logic has led leading political scientist Rose McDermott to describe polygyny as evil. Other researchers, such as anthropologist Joseph Henrich, even go as far as to credit Christianity’s derision of polygyny as a driving force of Western prosperity.

However, a trio of new studies, all relying on the highest standards of data analysis, contend that these arguments are misguided.

I have spent my career working at the intersection of anthropology and global health, researching how and why family structure varies – and what this diversity means for human well-being. Much of this work has been carried out with colleagues in Tanzania where, like Uganda, polygyny is relatively common. This new wave of work underscores the value of our research, effectively demonstrating that good intentions and intuition are no substitute for cultural sensitivity and evidence.

Does polygyny lock men out of marriage?

A new study published in October 2025 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents the first comprehensive, large-scale analysis of polygyny and men’s marriage prospects. The project is a collaboration between demographer Hampton Gaddy and evolutionary anthropologists Rebecca Sear and Laura Fortunato.

The researchers drew on demographic modeling and an extraordinary trove of census data – over 84 million records from 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Oceania, plus the entire U.S. census from 1880, when polygyny was practiced in some American communities. They demonstrate that polygyny does not lock large numbers of men out of marriage. In fact, in many contexts, men are actually more likely to marry where polygyny is common than where it is rare.

The narrative that polygyny leads to lonely bachelors is intuitive. In a community with equal numbers of men and women, if one man marries two wives, then another man must remain unmarried. Expand that across a whole society, and polygyny looks like a recipe for an army of resentful, single men.

Parallel arguments have been made about the rise of incel – a portmanteau of “involuntary” and “celibate” – subcultures within monogamous nations, including the U.S. Here, the argument is that high-status men leave low-status men sexless and frustrated, ultimately leading to violence.

The trouble is that real demography is not so simple. Women typically live longer than men, men frequently marry younger women, and populations in many parts of the world are growing, ensuring younger spouses are available for older cohorts. These factors, which are characteristic of many contemporary African nations, tilt the marriage market toward a surplus of women. Under many realistic conditions, a sizable proportion of men can have multiple wives without leaving their peers out in the cold.

In fact, in nearly half of the countries examined, higher rates of polygyny were associated with fewer, not more, unmarried men. Only a handful of countries showed the expected positive relationship, and even then inconsistently over time.

The case of historical Mormon communities in North America is equally revealing. When the researchers compared counties with documented Mormon polygyny to others in the 1880 census, they found lower rates of unmarried men in polygynous areas. Gaddy and his colleagues contend that this is explained by the tendency for cultural norms that favor polygyny to also be relatively pronatalist, driving marriage rates upward for all.

Do women and children get a smaller share?

What about the argument that polygyny harms women and children by dividing male-owned wealth among more mouths to feed? There certainly are studies that have demonstrated associations between polygyny and poor health. But another line of thinking argues that correlation should not be equated with causation.

Ten years ago, my colleages and I documented that polygyny is associated with higher food insecurity and poor child health when comparing outcomes across over 50 Tanzanian villages. However, this pattern was an artifact of polygyny being most common in marginalized Maasai communities, which tend to live in drought-prone areas with inadequate health care. Moreover, when comparing families within communities, polygynous households were typically wealthier, a key factor in making polygyny attractive to women, and children were not disadvantaged.

Echoing these results, anthropologist Riana Minocher and her colleagues recently published a study that uses a detailed, longitudinal dataset from a 20-year prospective study in another region of Tanzania. Analyzing survival, growth and education for thousands of children, they found no evidence that monogamous marriage is advantageous.

Together, these results support a theory known as the polygyny threshold model. Simply put, provided women have choice in marriage, sharing a husband is unlikely to be economically detrimental, since they will prioritize marrying men with sufficient wealth to offset any cost. This scenario may not fit all contexts, but these studies clearly undercut claims that polygyny is unequivocally harmful.

Hidden advantages of polygyny

Another recent study, published in August 2025 by economist Sylvain Dessy and his colleagues, goes further, suggesting that polygyny has unrecognized advantages when times are tough.

Drawing on crop yield data from over 4,000 farm households across Mali, census data on marriage patterns and detailed meteorological records, they found that in villages where polygyny is rare, droughts cut harvests dramatically. But in villages where polygyny is common, that blow is softened.

The researchers argue that polygynous marriage, by increasing the number of in-laws, creates stronger networks of social support. Furthermore, with wives often coming from different villages and regions, extended kin are well positioned to send food, money or labor when local crops fail. Such support helps to explain both the resilience of polygynous communities during drought and the continued endurance of the marriage practice from one generation to the next.

So, is polygyny harmless?

These studies don’t mean that polygyny is harmless. Indeed, allowing men but not women to have multiple spouses is clearly unequal and entwined with patriarchal ideology that positions women as subordinate or inferior to men. Recent studies, for example, have suggested that polygynous marriages are more prone to intimate partner violence.

In short, there remain multiple ways polygyny can be harmful.

Nevertheless, the best evidence suggests that polygyny is unlikely to be a root cause of social unrest. Moreover, within wider patriarchal systems that afford few women, regardless of marital status, economic and social security, polygyny may not just be a tolerable choice but in some contexts a preferred arrangement with tangible benefits for both genders.

Simplistic stories about the dangers of polygyny can be compelling and intuitive, but they risk misleading the public, reinforcing stubborn notions of Western cultural superiority and disrupting effective global health policy by sidelining more pertinent initiatives. Building healthier societies necessitates paying attention to the evidence and remaining open to the possibility that all family structures have capacity to cause harm.

David W. Lawson 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. Rethinking polygamy – new research upends conventional thinking about the advantages of monogamous marriage – https://theconversation.com/rethinking-polygamy-new-research-upends-conventional-thinking-about-the-advantages-of-monogamous-marriage-267201

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Taylor Lonner, Ph.D. Candidate in Aerospace Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder

When learning about the effects of spaceflight on human health, you typically will hear about the dangers of radiation, bone density loss and changes in eyesight. While these long-term risks are important, a less frequently discussed concern is motion sickness.

As a child, one of us (Taylor) was highly prone to motion sickness – whether in the backseat of a car, sitting on a train or riding a bus. At the time, she considered it a cruel twist of fate, but as an adult – and a scientist to boot – Taylor can tell you with confidence that it was entirely her fault.

You see, like most children during long car rides, Taylor would get bored. So, to combat this boredom, she would either read a book or play on her Gameboy. She would stare down at whatever form of entertainment was in her lap that day until the familiar creeping sensation of nausea developed.

Sometimes, looking out the side window would help, but more often than not, Taylor’s dad would have to pull over at the next gas station for a short break, or else they’d all suffer the consequences.

Now, she understands what was happening on a more fundamental level. As children, you are taught about the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. However, there is a hidden sixth sense that helps your body understand how you are moving – the vestibular system. The brain takes information from all these senses and compares it to what it might expect when moving, based on past experiences.

Optimally, any disagreement between your vestibular senses and your brain’s expectations would be small. But when there are large, sustained conflicts, you get sick.

While reading in the car, Taylor was staring at nonmoving words on a page while her vestibular system told her brain she was traveling down a road. This discrepancy confused her brain since usually, when Taylor felt movement, she should see the world shifting around her in the same way – hence her motion sickness. Had she been looking out the window and watching the world pass by, she would have been fine. Even better, had she been in the front seat, she would have been able to see the road ahead and predict how she would move in the future.

The sensory conflict between what you experience and what your brain expects doesn’t cause only carsickness. It is also the leading suspect behind cybersickness from using virtual reality headsets, seasickness on ships and spaceflight-driven motion sickness. Our team of aerospace engineers is particularly interested in the latter.

Motion sickness during spaceflight

To date, all astronauts have grown up on Earth. So, their brains expect any motion cues to include the presence of Earth’s gravity. But when they get to orbit in space, that is no longer the case.

When in orbit around Earth in microgravity, the vestibular system does not have any gravitational input. The conflict between the brain’s expectation of Earth’s gravity and the reality of no gravity causes space motion sickness.

Thankfully, the brain’s expectations can change over time, after enough exposure to a new environment. Often referred to as “getting your sea legs” in the nautical community, astronauts also eventually overcome space motion sickness while in space. However, overcoming it introduces another problem when they return.

If an astronaut’s brain expects microgravity, what happens when they come back to Earth? As you might expect, the process starts again, and astronauts are now prone to terrestrial readaptation motion sickness. To make matters worse, since the retirement of the space shuttle, crew vehicles frequently land in the water, which means astronauts may deal with choppy waves until their capsule is recovered. Seasickness can potentially exacerbate terrestrial readaptation motion sickness.

These conditions are not rare. Over half of all astronauts experience some symptoms of space motion sickness when they first get to space, and terrestrial readaptation motion sickness occurs at a similar incidence rate when they come back down.

Dangers to astronauts

If you have ever experienced motion sickness, you know how hard it is to do anything other than close your eyes and take deep breaths to expel the creeping urge to vomit. As a passenger in a car, that may be OK, since you aren’t expected to jump into action at a moment’s notice. But while isolated on the water in a return capsule, astronauts need to remain focused and clearheaded. In case of an emergency, they’ll need to respond rapidly.

If the astronauts need to get out of the capsule prior to pickup up by the recovery team, any motion sickness they have could delay their response time and impede evacuation attempts.

Potential solutions

Presently, most astronauts rely on medication that interrupts the brain’s ability to use hormones to trigger motion sickness. However, as with many commercial products, these drugs can cause side effects such as drowsiness and can lose efficacy over time.

Our research team completed two experiments to investigate how we might be able to manipulate visual information to mitigate motion sickness in astronauts, without relying on pharmaceuticals.

Our participants were exposed to motions meant to simulate transitions between gravity environments and then ocean wavelike motion. During the hour of wavelike motion, we investigated whether a “virtual window” could reduce the incidence of motion sickness.

When in a capsule on the ocean, astronauts are strapped into their seats and likely cannot see out of the small windows built into the capsule. In place of windows, we used virtual reality headsets to create a full-view virtual window.

In our control group, the subjects received no visual cues of motion – akin to Taylor’s poorly advised backseat reading. Meanwhile, one countermeasure group got to see a visual scene that moved naturally with their motion, like looking out the side window of the car at the surrounding world. The other countermeasure group saw a scene that moved appropriately and was provided an overlay showing future motion, like looking out the front window and seeing the road ahead.

As expected, the group with no cues of motion got the sickest. Two-thirds of the subjects needed to stop prior to finishing an hour of wavelike motion, due to excessive nausea. Only about one-fifth of the group that was given the side window view needed to stop early. Only one-tenth of the front window group that received present and future visual cues dropped out.

These results mean that by tracking the capsule motion and projecting it on a headset for the astronauts inside, our team may be able to reduce debilitating motion sickness by roughly half. If we could figure out how to predict how the capsule would move, we could give them that front window experience and improve the landing even more. In case of emergency, they could always take off the headsets.

This work shows promise for motion sickness interventions that do not rely on pharmaceuticals, which are currently used to combat these effects. Our solutions don’t have the same concerns around shelf life, stability or side effects. In addition to the benefits for astronauts, such approaches could help those prone to motion sickness here on Earth, particularly in scenarios where looking out the front window at the road isn’t feasible, such as on planes, trains, buses or high-speed transportation.

This work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Human Research Program under Grant No. 80NSSC21K0257.

Torin Clark receives funding from NASA, the Office of Naval Research and the National Institutes for Health, and he receives fellowships from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.

– ref. Astronauts can get motion sick while splashing back down to Earth – virtual reality headsets could help them stay sharp – https://theconversation.com/astronauts-can-get-motion-sick-while-splashing-back-down-to-earth-virtual-reality-headsets-could-help-them-stay-sharp-263706

Source: The Conversation – USA – By James Higgins, Professor of Aviation, University of North Dakota

Approximately 185,000 people have died in civilian aviation accidents since the advent of powered flight over a century ago. However, over the past five years among the U.S. airlines, the risk of dying was almost zero. In fact, you have a much better chance of winning most lotteries than you do of dying as a passenger on a U.S. air carrier.

How did flying get so safe? And can we apply the hard-earned safety lessons from aviation to artificial intelligence?

When humanity introduces a new paradigm-shifting technology and that technology is rapidly adopted globally, the future consequences are unknown and often collectively feared. The introduction of powered flight in 1903 by the Wright brothers was no exception. There were many objections to this new technology, including religious, political and technical concerns.

It wasn’t long after powered flight was introduced that the first airplane accident occurred – and by not long I mean the same day. It happened on the Wright brothers’ fourth flight. The first person to die in an aircraft accident was killed five years later in 1908. Since then, there have been over 89,000 airplane accidents globally.

I’m a researcher who studies air travel safety, and I see how today’s AI industry resembles the early – and decidedly less safe – years of the aviation industry.

From studying accidents to predicting them

Although tragic, each accident and each fatality represented a moment for reflection and learning. Accident investigators attempted to recreate every accident and identify accident precursors and root causes. Once investigators identified what led up to each crash, aircraft makers and operators put safety measures into effect in hopes of preventing additional accidents.

For example, if a pilot in the earlier era of flight forgot to lower the landing gear prior to landing, a landing accident was the likely result. So the industry figured out to install warning systems that would alert pilots about the unsafe state of the landing gear – a lesson learned only after accidents. This reactive process, while necessary, is a heavy price to pay to learn how to improve safety.

Over the course of the 20th century, the aviation world organized and standardized its operations, procedures and processes. In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Civil Aeronautics Act, which established the Civil Aeronautics Authority. This precursor to the Federal Aviation Administration included an Air Safety Board.

The fully reactive safety paradigm shifted over time to proactive and eventually predictive. In 1997, a group of industry, labor and government aviation organizations formed a group called the Commercial Aviation Safety Team. They started to look at the data and attempted to find trends and analyze user reports to identify risks and hazards before they became full-blown accidents.

The group, which includes the FAA and NASA, decided early on that there would be no competition among airlines when it came to safety. The industry would openly share safety data. When was the last time you saw an airline advertising campaign claiming “our airline is safer than theirs”?

It’s down to data

The Commercial Aviation Safety Team helped the industry transition from reactive to predictive by adopting a data-driven, systemic approach to tackling safety issues. It generated this data using reports from people and data from aircraft.

Every day, millions of flights occur worldwide, and on every single one of those flights, thousands of data points are recorded. Aviation safety professionals now use Flight Data Recorders – long used to investigate accidents after the fact – to analyze data from every flight. By closely examining all this data, safety analysts can spot emerging and troublesome events and trends. For example, by analyzing the data, a trained safety scientist can spot if certain aircraft approaches to runways are becoming riskier due to factors like excessive airspeed and poor alignment – before a landing accident occurs.

To further increase proactive and predictive capabilities, anyone who operates within the aviation system can submit anonymous and nonpunitive safety reports. Without guarantees of anonymity, people might hesitate to report issues, and the aviation industry would miss crucial safety-related information.

All of this data is stored, aggregated and analyzed by safety scientists, who look at the overall system and try to find accident precursors before they lead to accidents. The risk of dying as a passenger onboard a U.S. airline is now less than 1 in 98 million. You are more likely to die on your drive to the airport than in an aircraft accident. Now, more than 100 years since the advent of powered flight, the aviation industry – after learning hard lessons – has become extremely safe.

A model for AI

AI is rapidly permeating many facets of life, from self-driving cars to criminal justice actions and hiring and loan decisions. The technology is far from foolproof, however, and errors attributable to AI have had life-altering – and in some cases even life-and-death – consequences.

Nearly all AI companies are trying to implement some safety measures. But they appear to be making these efforts individually, just like the early players in the aviation field did. And these efforts are largely reactive, waiting for AI to make a mistake and then acting.

What if there was a group like the Commercial Aviation Safety Team where all AI companies, regulators, academia and other interested parties convened to start the proactive and predictive processes of ensuring AI doesn’t lead to calamities?

From a reporting perspective, imagine if every AI interface had a report button that a user could click to not only report potentially hallucinated and unsafe results to each company, but also report the same to an AI organization modeled on the Commercial Aviation Safety Team. In addition, data generated by AI systems, much like we see in aviation, could also be collected, aggregated and analyzed for safety threats.

Although this approach may not be the ultimate solution to preventing harm from AI, if Big Tech adopts lessons learned from other high-consequence industries like aviation, it just might learn to regulate, control and, yes, make AI safer for all to use.

James Higgins receives funding from the FAA to conduct research regarding flight safety topics. He is also the co-founder of two companies, one is HubEdge, which is a company that helps airlines optimize their ground operations. The other is Thread, which helps utilities operate drones to collect information about their assets.

– ref. Flying is safe thanks to data and cooperation – here’s what the AI industry could learn from airlines on safety – https://theconversation.com/flying-is-safe-thanks-to-data-and-cooperation-heres-what-the-ai-industry-could-learn-from-airlines-on-safety-265960