Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Andrew Garin, Associate Professor of Economics, Carnegie Mellon University

If you’ve ever ordered food through DoorDash, Uber Eats or Instacart, you may have realized the person who delivers it isn’t a salaried employee. They’re gig workers – independent contractors who pick up delivery tasks through an app, get paid per delivery and have no guaranteed hours, benefits or minimum wage protections.

Policymakers in several cities have tried to change that.

Seattle is a good example. In January 2024, the city implemented a law requiring delivery apps to pay drivers a minimum rate for each task: a combination of per-minute and per-mile minimum compensation that set a floor of US$5 per delivery.

The goal was straightforward: ensure that the people bringing you your lunch earn a decent living.

We are labor economists who have extensively studied the emergence of the gig economy and previous policy efforts designed to provide economic security to workers in unstable employment situations. We wanted to know how new gig economy regulations like the one in Seattle were playing out in practice.

When we studied what happened to delivery drivers’ earnings after Seattle’s payment rule took effect, we found that despite base pay per delivery roughly doubling, their total monthly earnings barely changed. That’s because competition among drivers for delivery tasks intensified while customers made fewer orders and tipped less on each order in the aftermath. Those effects combined washed out almost all of the intended gains.

No change in monthly earnings

To understand the policy’s effects, we used detailed data from Gridwise, an app that gig workers use to track their earnings across multiple delivery and ride-sharing platforms. This gave us an unusually complete view of how much the drivers were earning across all of the apps and platforms they were using.

We compared what happened to the earnings of drivers who were primarily working in Seattle before the law took effect with the earning of drivers working in other parts of Washington state, where nothing had changed. By tracking both groups over the months before and after the policy, we isolated the policy’s impact from broader trends affecting all drivers.

Base pay per delivery in Seattle jumped from about $5 to over $12, as intended. But base pay is only part of the picture. Tips typically make up most of a platform delivery driver’s income, since customers generally tip 10% to 20% of the cost of their meals.

After the law took effect, tips fell sharply. Delivery apps passed higher costs on to consumers through new fees. DoorDash added a roughly $5 “regulatory response fee” to Seattle orders, and customers responded by tipping less.

Some platforms went further: Uber Eats removed the option for Seattle customers to tip at checkout. The drop in tips offset more than one-third of the base pay increase.

The other major change was that drivers started completing fewer deliveries.

Beginning in the second month after the policy took effect, Seattle drivers who had been consistently active on the apps prior to the change completed roughly 20% to 30% fewer monthly deliveries than they would have without the policy.

Importantly, these drivers didn’t leave the apps. They were still logging on and spending about the same amount of time working. They just weren’t getting as many delivery offers.

What were drivers doing with all that extra time on the app? Our data shows they were spending more of it waiting.

The share of on-app time spent actually performing paid deliveries fell substantially. Wait times between tasks increased by about five minutes, nearly doubling from pre-policy levels. And drivers went farther between deliveries – suggesting they were actively cruising toward restaurant-dense areas to find their next task, burning more gas without being paid for those extra miles they were logging.

Put those pieces together – higher pay per delivery, but fewer deliveries and lower tips – and they almost exactly cancel out. After a brief bump in the first month, monthly earnings returned to pre-policy levels.

Why gig markets are different

To understand why this happened, it helps to think about how gig delivery markets differ from traditional employment.

In a conventional job, raising the minimum wage creates a clear divide: Workers who keep their jobs earn more, while others may struggle to find work if their employers cut jobs.

But in gig delivery, there’s no such divide. There’s no hiring or firing involved; anyone can download the app and start looking for work. Delivery tasks are distributed among everyone who is online, and there’s no sharp boundary between having a job and not having one.

When what drivers get paid per delivery rises, gig work becomes more attractive, drawing new drivers into the market. Meanwhile, higher costs to pay drivers are passed along to consumers through increased delivery prices, which can lead to fewer orders and lower tips. More drivers chasing fewer deliveries means longer waits for tasks.

This process continues until the higher pay per task is fully offset by the longer gaps between paid work.

Our data confirms this pattern.

While deliveries by existing drivers fell sharply in Seattle, new entrants arrived. Within three months, newcomers were doing most of Seattle’s deliveries.

What this means going forward

To be sure, gig workers’ low pay is a real problem. The impulse behind Seattle’s law reflects legitimate concerns.

But our findings do suggest that efforts to directly regulate what gig workers earn per task they complete won’t easily fix that problem.

As long as anyone can join the platform and start competing for deliveries, the guarantee of higher pay per task will attract more drivers until the benefit is competed away through longer wait times.

Other cities and states are choosing this route

Actually raising earnings might require limiting the number of active drivers – something like the taxi medallion systems some cities once used to ensure high driver pay.

But entry barriers undermine the flexibility that draws many people to gig work in the first place. And platform behavior matters too: If apps eventually restore normal tipping features rather than strategically discouraging tips, which New York City and some other jurisdictions are now requiring, the picture for drivers could improve somewhat.

Still, there may not be a solution that preserves all the benefits of the current system while also guaranteeing higher pay.

Nevertheless, several cities across the country are considering similar regulations.

New York City implemented its own minimum pay rate for delivery workers in late 2023. City councils and state lawmakers in Chicago, Colorado, Minnesota and elsewhere have proposed similar protections.

Seattle’s experience suggests all cities should proceed with caution and be aware of the limits of what per-task pay regulations can achieve when the door is always open to new workers.

To purchase access to the data used in this study Brian K. Kovak received funding from the Block Center for Technology and Society at Carnegie Mellon University.

– ref. Seattle tried to guarantee higher pay for delivery drivers – here’s why it didn’t work as intended – https://theconversation.com/seattle-tried-to-guarantee-higher-pay-for-delivery-drivers-heres-why-it-didnt-work-as-intended-276576

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Beth DuFault, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Portland

You check your credit score before applying for an apartment. Your fitness watch tells you whether you slept well enough. A workplace dashboard measures your productivity. Parents can buy devices that track their baby’s breathing and heart rate while they sleep.

Increasingly, numbers tell us how we are doing.

These systems promise something appealing: clear feedback about whether we are behaving well. They appear objective, neutral and data-driven. But they also signal a deeper cultural shift, as algorithms define what counts as virtuous behavior.

In other words, we are living in a world where metrics are being translated into moral judgments. As a researcher who has long studied how markets and technologies shape moral responsibility, I’ve seen how these metrics quietly reshape how people understand themselves and how other people judge them.

Defining the good life

For generations, religious congregations structured everyday life for many people, offering templates for identity and for what a “worthy” life should look like.

As societies grow more diverse, however, and as fewer people affiliate with formal religious groups, faiths’ moral influence on society is waning. With their authority no longer taken for granted, some religious groups market themselves almost like brands: lifestyle choices that one can choose to follow or ignore.

People start to assemble their own sense of right or wrong from a patchwork of sources – and increasingly, that involves for-profit scores, rankings and dashboards.

Credit scoring offers a clear example of how this works. A credit score seems like an objective measure of financial worthiness.

But the actions required to optimize a score define what worthy financial behavior looks like in U.S. society today. It’s not just about paying bills on time. Achieving an optimum credit score most often involves having at least one credit card; keeping a low debt-to-credit ratio, which might involve requesting credit limit increases instead of paying down debt; not canceling any credit cards so that average account length is maximized; and having the “right” credit mix, which often includes a consumer loan. Today, a consumer with no credit cards – something that at one time might have seemed financially virtuous – doesn’t develop the kind of “file” that is readily rewarded with a high score, and they might not be able to obtain credit to buy a house or a car.

In our work on consumer credit scoring, consumer culture researcher John Schouten and I found that people often incorporate their credit scores into their sense of identity and narrative about their life, interpreting scores as reflections of their character and morality. A high score feels like a sign of virtue. A low score can trigger feelings of shame or failure and a determination to be better.

One consumer described discovering her credit score for the first time as finding out what kind of person she actually was. Another, working to rebuild his score after a medical debt caused a cascade of defaults, related that he checked it every morning, to see if he was someone people could trust again.

Moral mirrors

Credit scoring is only one example. Health apps convert exercise, sleep and heart rate into performance indicators. Workplace platforms turn everyday tasks into dashboards, rankings and streaks. Reputation systems rate drivers, sellers and freelancers, often with a single number that stands in for trustworthiness.

Even parenting, one of the most emotional human roles, is touched by this logic. Wearable infant monitors translate babies’ breathing, oxygen levels and sleep patterns into charts, alerts and “insights.” These technologies are marketed as tools for reassurance, but in a 2026 paper, my co-authors and I found that these tools also nudge expectations.

Parents describe feeling that if a device exists that can watch a baby’s breathing all night, then a truly responsible caregiver must use it. “All the parents in our social group have one breathing monitor or another,” one dad said. “My boss has one. If I could prevent something horrible by spending a little money and watching the monitors, and I didn’t, what kind of parent would I be?”

The emotional weight of that shift is striking. One mother said that she felt guilty on the nights she forgot to charge the device – not because anything had gone wrong, but because she had failed to be watchful in the way the market now defines good parenting. Another said simply, “If something happened and I didn’t have it on, I don’t know how I could live with myself.” The monitor had become less a tool than a test.

Measurement can be genuinely useful. When scores appear precise and impersonal, they can feel more solid than the messy, subjective judgments we make in everyday life. But as historian Jerry Muller lays out in “The Tyranny of Metrics,” scoring systems subtly embed assumptions about what responsible behavior looks like, then reflect those assumptions back to us as if they were simple facts. A high credit score begins to look like proof of moral worthiness. A steady stream of productive hours on a work dashboard looks like evidence of commitment.

As these metrics spread, they start to stitch together a new, data-driven sense of what it means to be a good person. This shows up in ordinary decisions: choosing a loan because it will help your score; taking your phone on a run so it “counts” toward your fitness goals; waking in the night to check a baby only because the app suggests you should. The line between caring for others and optimizing for a number becomes easy to blur.

Into the void

For centuries, religious traditions, philosophers and moral communities have wrestled with what it means to live a good and virtuous life. Algorithmic scoring systems do not claim to answer those questions, but as traditional forms of moral authority weaken among many Americans, I would argue that algorithmic systems are moving into the void.

They do not claim to answer questions about the soul, but they do offer something that can feel almost as reassuring: clear indicators of whether you’re on the right track. A high score, a green check mark, a completed streak – these are small, everyday reassurances that we are, in some sense, measuring up.

The deeper question is how comfortable society is letting these systems become our go-to mirrors for moral self-assessment. Instinctively looking to a number to tell whether someone is doing well as a borrower, worker, patient or parent risks forgetting that numbers can only capture a thin slice of what it means to be a good human being.

Many of these scoring systems are built by for-profit companies with a specific interest in the outcome. They are not designed simply to measure behavior; they are designed to shape it, nudging consumers to continuously improve their scores in ways that make them more valuable, more legible and more profitable to the companies doing the measuring. The goal is not necessarily for you to flourish; it’s for your behavior to benefit corporations.

The next time you check your rating or a ranking and feel a small surge of pride or unease, it may be worth pausing to ask: Whose idea of “good” am I seeing reflected there, and is it really the one I want to live by?

Beth DuFault 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. Moral metrics: Are corporate algorithms becoming our new moral authorities? – https://theconversation.com/moral-metrics-are-corporate-algorithms-becoming-our-new-moral-authorities-273178

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Christopher Niezrecki, Director of the Center for Energy Innovation, UMass Lowell

The Trump administration temporarily suspended the Jones Act on March 18, 2026, as part of its efforts to bring down soaring U.S. gasoline prices.

But what does this more-than-century-old law, which originally was designed to support the shipping industry, have to do with the price of gas?

As the director of the Center for Energy Innovation at UMass Lowell, I’ve learned that the impact of the Jones Act ripples beyond shipping and can have a profound effect on the price of many things, including consumer goods, electricity and what you pay at the pump.

What is the Jones Act?

The Jones Act is more formally known as Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920.

One of the act’s most impactful features is its ability to limit domestic maritime shipping and coastal trade. Under the act, a foreign-designated ship is not allowed to transport goods between two U.S. ports or territories without either leaving U.S. waters first or transporting those goods to a U.S.-flagged vessel – which must be staffed primarily by U.S. sailors.

The federal law was originally intended to bolster and protect the American maritime industry by ensuring that the U.S. has the infrastructure and personnel to support shipping, commerce, defense and naval operations needed during war or national emergencies. Since then, the act has been revised and updated numerous times.

This rule helps to protect the U.S. shipbuilding industry from foreign competition and the jobs of American sailors; however, it also limits free trade.

Benefits and costs

Proponents of the Jones Act claim that it supports the transport of goods between states and territories, enhances national security and helps to sustain hundreds of thousands of American jobs as well as the shipbuilding industry, while contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy.

However, critics of the Jones Act claim that it increases the cost of goods between U.S. ports and especially in regions that rely heavily on marine transport, such as Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

And despite the ostensible intent to protect the shipbuilding industry, the act has also hurt it because it has made U.S. ships up to five times more expensive to build than those manufactured abroad.

These factors have resulted in a smaller supply of American ships that are available to transport goods. And when there is limited competition, costs of ship construction and transportation increase.

Impact on gas prices

The average price of a gallon of gas has soared nearly a third since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, 2026 – from $2.98 to $3.84 as of March 18, according to data compiled by AAA.

Suspending the Jones Act allows foreign ships to transport oil and gas between ports within the U.S., which should lead to lower transportation costs and increased supply. This should ease gas costs over time – but we’re talking months, not days or weeks.

In 2022, analysts at JPMorgan estimated that a temporary suspension of the Jones Act could save East Coast motorists about 10 cents a gallon.

However, if the duration of the suspension is short – the government said it would waive the act for only 60 days – the impact on gas prices will be minimal because of the time required for the marine industry to respond and the fact that domestic shipping costs are not the primary factor that influences fuel cost.

Should the Jones Act be permanently repealed, fuel prices would fall more steeply.

The Jones Act has been temporarily suspended in the past, primarily for urgent economic or supply chain issues, such as to aid Puerto Rico after it was hit by a hurricane in 2022 and following a cyberattack on a fuel pipeline in 2021.

Other impacts of the Jones Act

Another important cost impact of the Jones Act involves offshore wind energy.

It has been shown that the energy generated by offshore wind farms provides additional energy close to load centers – cities or industrial sites that consume significant power – helping to reduce costs by providing additional supply. This is especially important now and will become more important over the next few years, as electricity demands are expected to increase due to rapid growth in artificial intelligence data centers.

The numerous approved wind farms currently being constructed off the U.S. coast are constrained by the Jones Act because there aren’t enough U.S.-flagged ships available to install and service all the offshore wind turbines that are needed. Many wind farm developers are skirting the issue by leveraging U.S. barges to transport equipment prior to installation by foreign vessels. But even so, the Jones Act raises the cost of offshore wind farm installations, making energy less affordable for Americans.

Suspending the Jones Act for a couple of months, however, will have minimal impact on the U.S. offshore wind and other energy industries.

Christopher Niezrecki receives funding from the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, ARROW Center, and several companies that support the WindSTAR Industry-University Cooperative Research Center.

– ref. Soaring gas prices prompt Trump to ease oil tanker rules – how waiving the Jones Act affects what you pay at the pump – https://theconversation.com/soaring-gas-prices-prompt-trump-to-ease-oil-tanker-rules-how-waiving-the-jones-act-affects-what-you-pay-at-the-pump-278387

Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Hu, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biology, Adjunct Professor of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology

“Four minutes is too long.”

That’s the note undergraduate Chris Zuo sent me along with photos of countless mosquito bites on his bare skin. This full-body massacre wasn’t the result of a camping trip gone awry. He’d spent that limited amount of time in a room with 100 hungry mosquitoes while wearing nothing but a mesh suit we thought would have protected him.

Thus began our three-year journey trying to understand the behavior of a deceivingly simple insect, the mosquito. It may sound like a professor’s sadistic plan, but, really, we did everything by the book. Our university’s institutional review board approved our procedures, making sure Chris was safe and not coerced in any way. The mosquitoes were disease-free and native to our home state of Georgia. And this session resulted in the first and last bites anyone received during the study.

Besides my role as torturer of students, I am an author and professor at Georgia Tech with over 20 years of experience studying the movement of animals.

Mosquitoes are the world’s most dangerous animal. The diseases they carry, from malaria to dengue, cause over 700,000 deaths per year. More people have died from mosquitoes than wars.

The world spends US$22 billion per year on billions of liters of insecticides, millions of pounds of larvicides, and millions of insecticide-treated bed nets – all to fight a tiny insect that weighs 10 times less than a grain of rice and has only 200,000 neurons.

Yet, people are losing the war on mosquitoes. These insects are evolving to thrive in cities and spreading disease more rapidly with climate change. How can such simple animals find us so easily?

Scientists know mosquitoes have terrible eyesight and depend on chemical cues to make up for it. Knowing what attracts a mosquito, though, isn’t enough to predict its behavior. You can know a heat-seeking missile is drawn to heat, but you still won’t know how a missile works.

Enter Chris and his self-sacrifice in the mosquito room. By tracking the flight of many mosquitoes around him, we hoped to determine how they made decisions in response to his presence. Understanding how mosquitoes respond to humans is a first step to controlling them.

How mosquitoes zero in on their meal

Out of 3,500 species of mosquitoes, over 100 species are classified as anthropophilic, meaning they prefer humans for lunch. Certain species of mosquitoes will find the one person among a whole herd of cattle in order to suck human blood.

This is quite a feat considering mosquitoes are weak flyers. They stop flying in a slight 2-3 mph breeze, the same air speed generated by a horse’s swinging tail. In calmer conditions, mosquitoes use their minuscule brains to follow human heat, moisture and odors that are carried downwind.

Carbon dioxide, the byproduct of respiration of all living animals, is particularly attractive. Mosquitoes notice carbon dioxide as well as you notice the stink of a full dumpster, detecting it up to 30 feet (9 meters) away from a host, where concentrations dip to a few parts per million, like a few cups of dye in an Olympic-size pool.

Mosquitoes’ vision isn’t much help as they hunt for their next blood meal. Their two compound eyes have several hundred individual lenses called ommatidia, each about the width of a human hair. They produce a somewhat blurry mosaic or pixelated image. Due to the laws of optics, mosquitoes can discern an adult-size human only at a few meters away. With their vision alone, they cannot distinguish a human from a small tree. They inspect every dark object.

Gathering the flight-path data

The challenge with studying mosquito flight is that, like trash-talking teenagers, most of what they do is meaningless noise. Mosquitoes flying in an empty room are largely making random changes in flight speed and direction. We needed many flight trajectories to cut through the noise.

One of our collaborators, University of California, Riverside, biologist Ring Cardé, told us that back in the 1980s, scientists conducted “bite studies” by stripping down to their underwear and slapping the mosquitoes that landed on their naked bodies. He said nudity prevented confounding variables, such as the color of a shirt’s fabric.

Chris and I looked at each other. Sit naked and wait to become mosquito prey? Instead, we designed the mesh suit that Chris originally wore into the mosquito room. But after seeing Chris’ bites, we needed a better way.

Instead, Chris washed long-sleeved clothes in unscented detergent and wore gloves and a face mask. Fully protected, Chris only had to stand and wait, while a cloud of mosquitoes swarmed him.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced us to the Photonic Sentry, a camera that simultaneously tracks hundreds of flying insects in a room. It records 100 frames per second at 5 mm resolution for a space like a large studio apartment. In just a few hours, Chris and another graduate student, Soohwan Kim, generated more mosquito flight data than had previously been measured in human history.

Jörn Dunkel, Chenyi Fei and Alex Cohen, our mathematician collaborators at MIT, told us that the geometry of Chris’ body was still too complicated to study the mosquitoes’ reactions. Mathematicians excel at simplifying complex problems to their essence. Chenyi suggested we go easy on Chris – why not replace him with a simple dummy: a black Styrofoam ball on a stick combined with a canister of carbon dioxide.

Over the next two years, Chris filmed the mosquitoes circling the Styrofoam dummies mercilessly. Then he vacuumed up the mosquitoes, trying not to get bitten.

Deciphering the trajectories

A mosquito flies like you would an airplane: it turns left or right, accelerates or hits the brakes. We determined a mosquito’s flight behavior as a function of its speed, location and direction with respect to the target as the first step in creating our model of their behavior.

Our confidence in our behavioral rules increased as we read more trajectories, ultimately using 20 million mosquito positions and speeds. This idea of incorporating observations to support a mathematical hypothesis is a 200-year-old idea called Bayesian inference. We illustrated the mosquito behavior we’d observed in a web application.

Using our model, we showed how different targets cause mosquitoes to fly differently. Visual targets cause fly-bys, where mosquitoes fly past the target. Carbon dioxide causes double takes, where mosquitoes slow down near the target. The combination of a visual cue and carbon dioxide creates high-speed orbiting patterns.

Up until now, we had used only experiments with Styrofoam spheres to train our model. The true test was whether it could predict mosquito flights around a human. Chris returned to the chamber, this time wearing all white clothes and a black hat, turning himself into a bull’s-eye. Our model successfully predicted the distribution of mosquitoes around him. We identified zones of danger, where there was a high chance of a mosquito circling around him.

Predicting mosquito behavior is a first step toward outsmarting them. In mosquito-prone areas, people design houses with features to prevent mosquitoes from following human cues and entering. Similarly, mosquito traps suck in mosquitoes when they get too close but still allow between 50% and 90% of mosquitoes to escape. Many of these designs are based on trial and error. We hope that our study provides a more precise tool for designing methods for mosquito capture or deterrence.

When Chris’ mother attended his master’s degree defense, I asked her how she felt about her son using himself as bait for mosquitoes. She said she was very proud. So am I – and not just because I’m relieved Chris didn’t ask me to take his place in the mosquito chamber.

David Hu 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. Hundreds of hungry mosquitoes, a student volunteer and a mesh suit helped us figure out how these deadly insects reach their targets – https://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-hungry-mosquitoes-a-student-volunteer-and-a-mesh-suit-helped-us-figure-out-how-these-deadly-insects-reach-their-targets-278486

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass Lowell

Every major escalation in the Middle East sends shock waves far beyond the region. In the United States, those shock waves arrive not as distant tremors but as catalysts for domestic radicalization and violence, particularly against Jewish communities.

The data is unambiguous.

Following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which led to the deaths of more than 1,200 Israelis and taking of more than 200 hostages, Israel’s military responded in a campaign that intensified the following year, killing more than 70,000 Gazans.

At the same time, in 2024 the Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. – averaging more than 25 acts per day – the highest figure in the audit’s 46-year history.

FBI hate-crime statistics documented 1,938 anti-Jewish offenses in 2024, constituting 69% of all religion-based hate crimes. Jews comprise roughly 2% of the population.

The Secure Community Network, which provides Jewish communities in North America security services, tracked over 10,000 threat incidents and suspicious-activity reports since Oct. 7, 2023, including more than 500 credible threats to life in 2024.

Research shows similar trends following past military escalations in the Middle East.

Geopolitical violence abroad translates, with alarming efficiency, into homegrown threats in the U.S. and Canada. For the first time in the ADL audit’s history, a majority of incidents in 2024, 58%, contained elements explicitly related to Israel or Zionism. As someone who has studied domestic terrorism and hate for over 20 years, such dynamics are not surprising. They illustrate what my own research and that of others calls “imported conflict.”

The recent attacks against Jewish targets in Toronto, Michigan and possibly the one in San Jose underscore that the threat is neither abstract nor hypothetical.

Radicalization of strange bedfellows

Foreign conflict can become domestic violence via multiple pathways.

Left-wing extremists, Jihadi-inspired militants and far-right white supremacists occupy distinct spaces along the ideological spectrum, yet they converge on a shared target: Jews.

Each escalatory cycle in the Middle East energizes their exposure to and gradual adoption of extremist views. Online ecosystems accelerate the process dramatically.

Encrypted Telegram channels circulate operational guidance from jihadist media wings within hours of a Middle East strike, encouraging attacks against Jews wherever they can be found. On platforms like 4chan and Gab, white-supremacist accelerationists seize on the same events to amplify “great replacement” narratives casting Jews as orchestrators of unwanted demographic change.

Meanwhile, TikTok and Instagram accounts repackage eliminationist slogans, advocating the end of the state of Israel – “from the river to the sea,” “glory to the resistance” – as mainstream progressive content, reaching millions of young users whose algorithmic feeds reward outrage over nuance.

What once required years of indoctrination within a closed network can now unfold in weeks of passive scrolling.

On university campuses, the atmosphere has grown particularly volatile. Campus Jewish organization Hillel International documented 2,334 antisemitic incidents during the 2024–25 academic year, the highest since tracking began.

These confrontations involve physical intimidation, exclusion from student organizations and what the organization describes as the normalization of eliminationist language cloaked in social justice vocabulary.

Antisemitism as anti-racism

To understand the increasing ease with which geopolitical violence abroad turns into antisemitic violence in the U.S. requires understanding the ideological developments in recent progressive thinking.

One observation that our research demonstrates is that today’s antisemitism may not come from the political fringes but from within progressive movements themselves. Much of progressive ideological frameworks tend to divide the world into oppressors and oppressed. Because Jews are often seen as white, wealthy and well connected, they can get placed on the oppressor side of that line.

Intersectionality – a concept originally designed to show how different forms of disadvantage overlap – is now regularly used to justify shutting Jews out of progressive coalitions and solidarity campaigns.

According to ADL survey data, Americans who agreed with the belief that problems in the world “come down to the oppressor vs. the oppressed” were 2.6 times more likely to hold negative or stereotypical views about Jewish people compared to those who disagreed with the statement.

I believe this is not a fringe problem. Among some parts of the intellectual and cultural elite, such as parts of academia, nonprofits and political parties, hostility toward Jews has become more apparent, with some suggesting that Jews simply do not deserve the same moral sympathy extended to other minorities. In some of these circles, if you do not accept that Jewish collective life is inherently oppressive, you are labeled a bad progressive and exiled.

A coalition of progressive California Democratic delegates pushed a resolution that opponents described as a Zionism “litmus test,” effectively requiring that delegates reject Zionism to be considered legitimate progressives. The D.C. chapter of the Sunrise Movement, an influential progressive climate group, boycotted a voting rights rally because of “the participation of a number of Zionist organizations.”

Such dynamics reflect that there is little room in this framework for the complexity of Jewish history, people who have been both persecuted and resilient.

Furthermore, they can facilitate the rebranding of antisemitism as anti-racism. Some writers have noted that attacking Jewish influence can become a moral duty rather than a bigoted act. Antisemitism is renovated with concepts such as equity, decolonization and liberation, despite promoting the same traditional antisemitic tropes.

Strange alliance

I assert that multiple ideological movements targeting Jews reflect a deeper structural alignment between political Islam and segments of the progressive left.

Superficially, the two camps could hardly appear more different. Contemporary left-wing activism champions LGBTQ rights, environmentalism, social and economic equality, human rights and government transparency. Radical Islamist movements reject most of these commitments outright.

Beneath these contradictions appears to exist a shared ideological architecture powerful enough to sustain cooperation: anti-globalization, anti-imperialism, rejection of the Western nation-state, the primacy of collective identity over individual rights, a revolutionary vision and, most critically, a common set of enemies.

This alliance is visible in the protest movements that have erupted on American streets and campuses since the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Marches under the banner of Palestinian liberation routinely feature Islamist slogans such as “From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab” alongside progressive placards, or Hezbollah iconography beside “Queers for Palestine” signs. What binds this coalition is opposition to Israel, to American power, and, increasingly, to Jews as symbols of both.

For domestic security, this Red-Green alliance matters because it creates a shared radicalization experience in which grievances originating in very different worldviews are fused into a single call to action.

And as a scholar of political violence and extremism, I believe that when a progressive activist and an Islamist militant attend the same rally, share the same social media space and chant the same slogans, the boundary between political protest and operational violence becomes dangerously thin. Consider two recent cases.

In May 2025, Elias Rodriguez − steeped in anti-Zionist rhetoric and whom the ADL has called a far-left activist − shot and killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, two young Israeli Embassy staffers, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., pulling out a keffiyeh and chanting “Free Palestine” as he was subdued. Weeks later in Boulder, Colorado, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, allegedly yelling “Free Palestine,” hurled Molotov cocktails at a weekly vigil for hostages held by Hamas, killing 82-year-old Karen Diamond.

These attackers occupied different positions on the spectrum between ideological radicalism and organized militancy, but they drew from the same well of dehumanizing language that circulates freely in spaces where political protest and incitement to violence have become indistinguishable.

Foreign crises, domestic failures

The structures governing how security agencies carry out their work in the U.S. are inadequate to this challenge.

Counterterrorism agencies seem to continue to treat Islamist militancy, far-right extremism and far-left radicalism as separate, unrelated threats. But the examples above point in a different direction: Ideologically distinct movements are converging on the same target − Jewish communities.

Meanwhile, civil rights agencies and nonprofit advocacy groups struggle to name progressive antisemitism for what it is, caught between legitimate commitments to anti-racism and the uncomfortable recognition that some anti-racist discourse has itself become bigotry.

Addressing the feedback loop between Middle East escalation and domestic antisemitic violence requires an honest reckoning with all of its sources – not only the familiar threats from jihadist networks and white supremacist cells, but also the ideological currents within progressive spaces that make hatred of Jews newly respectable.

Until policymakers, educators and leaders of civil society confront this threat’s full topology, Jewish Americans will continue to face a reality in which more than half report experiencing antisemitism in the past year and nearly half doubt that their neighbors would stand with them if the worst were to come.

Arie Perliger receives funding from Federal grants affiliated with DHS and DOJ.

– ref. How hatred of Jews became a common ground for Islamic terrorists and left-wing extremists, fueling domestic terrorism – https://theconversation.com/how-hatred-of-jews-became-a-common-ground-for-islamic-terrorists-and-left-wing-extremists-fueling-domestic-terrorism-278373

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jeffrey Shook, Professor of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh

Data released in January 2026 to Allegheny County officials offers a clear look at who is being held at Highland Detention Center – and how much it costs taxpayers. The numbers show short stays, significant racial disparities and millions spent to operate the facility. These findings raise new questions about whether detention is being used effectively in the county’s youth justice system.

In 2025, 220 young people passed through the center. The county paid nearly US$800 per day for each of the 12 beds in the facility, whether they were occupied or not.

The center operates at the site of the former Shuman Juvenile Detention Center in Allegheny County. After a documented history of child abuse, medical issues, unauthorized use of restraints and other violations, Shuman closed in September 2021 when the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services revoked its license.

Shuman opened in 1974 with an occupancy of approximately 120 beds. At the time it was closed, the daily population had dropped to 20 juveniles at an annual cost of $11 million.

As a professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh, my research centers on law, policy and child welfare. I have spent my career studying how the juvenile justice system can shape – and also damage – the lives of young people while creating significant costs to taxpayers.

Here’s what local taxpayers in Pennsylvania are paying for juvenile detention.

A costly reinvention

Allegheny County signed a five-year, $73 million contract with nonprofit organization Adelphoi to operate a detention facility at the old Shuman site in 2023. It was renamed Highland Juvenile Detention Facility.

The county agreed to pay $650.25 per bed, per day for the first year of the contract. That rate, the contract specifies, “shall be adjusted each year.” By the end of 2025, it had already climbed to $825 per day. In total, the county paid Adelphoi nearly $7 million last year to hold kids for an average stay of 13 days.

The facility offered 12 beds in 2025. The contract calls for that number to increase to 60 beds, with the costs also rising to $19 million annually. The county has an option to renew the contract when it expires at the end of 2028.

In March 2026, there were seven juveniles being held at Highland. As of late February 2026, there were approximately 12 to 14 juveniles held in the Allegheny County Jail. They can be held in the jail for a variety of reasons but are primarily there if they are being charged as an adult.

Who’s being locked up

Statistics show a correlation between juvenile detention and adult involvement with the criminal legal system.

According to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, more than a third of people in state prisons have served time in a juvenile facility.

Black youth are more than five times more likely to be placed in juvenile facilities than white peers, and two-thirds of state prisoners experienced an arrest before age 19.

In the juvenile system, detention is intended to be short term and is generally used prior to an adjudication, the determination of someone’s guilt or innocence.

Detention is typically used for kids who pose a threat of committing additional crimes or a risk of not appearing in court, based on a determination by a probation officer, a state risk-assessment test or a judge, typically. Dentention is not a destination but part of a continuum with a goal of moving a young person to less restrictive alternatives, such as community-based programs and services that allow youth to remain at home, in school and in their communities while receiving supervision, treatment and support. These alternatives are often more effective at reducing recidivism and less costly than secure confinement.

While kids in detention have the right to receive a free public education and should be offered physical, behavioral, mental health and recreational services, according to state law, detention is not a treatment facility.

EG: There’s usually a brief caption beneath video links like this one.

The number of kids in detention facilities in the U.S has dropped substantially over the past 20 years, from approximately 400,000 to 135,000. However, an average of 13,000 to 14,000 kids remain in detention facilities across the country daily. Youth of color are disproportionately represented, and many kids are detained for minor crimes, technical violations or status offenses, such as breaking curfew.

Based on available data and my own experience working in and with detention facilities, it is clear that youth locked in these facilities are not only those at risk of committing another crime or not appearing in court. Many have education, mental health and substance abuse needs, come from poor families or identify as LGBTQ+. In many respects, detention facilities have served as a dumping ground for youth dealing with a vast array of issues in their lives.

The juvenile justice system was built primarily around managing risk and ensuring court appearances. It does little to address the underlying needs of the children moving through it. Unstable housing, missed school and lack of supervision can trigger detention even when a child poses no real threat. In many cases, juvenile detention ends up filling a gap left by social services.

Doubling down on detention

Despite its limited capacity, the Allegheny County Highland Detention Center dashboard shows 220 youths were detained at Highland in 2025. Eighty-six percent of these kids are Black. Firearms charges are the most common offense.

More than half had an individualized education plan, a legally binding document that outlines the specific educational support and services a student with a physical or mental disability is entitled to receive in school.

Over 60% were involved with the child welfare system, 88% had family involvement in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and 72% had received a crisis mental health service at some point before entering Highland.

Research shows that young people who are detained are more likely to commit additional offenses when they are released, experience educational and economic disruption, and face increased mental health challenges. Detention does not promote the social development of young people or community safety.

A variety of alternatives to detention exist that have been shown to be more effective and cost significantly less – such as mentoring programs, family therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and restorative justice programs.

Restorative justice programs bring victims, accused youth and trustworthy adults in their lives together to discuss the harm caused by the offense. They come up with a plan to help make things “right” between the parties to avoid subsequent offenses and help the youth learn from the incident.

The dollars being spent to confine kids in Allegheny County could be reinvested in the young people themselves and in their families, schools and communities. The new advisory board was appointed to Highland in July 2025. The board was created to provide a layer of accountability over the facility and Adelphoi – but what that looks like in practice remains up in the air.

Jeffrey Shook 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. Pittsburgh spends millions on juvenile detention – research points to cheaper, more effective alternatives – https://theconversation.com/pittsburgh-spends-millions-on-juvenile-detention-research-points-to-cheaper-more-effective-alternatives-275043

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tal Slemrod, Associate Professor of Special Education, California State University, Chico

K-12 teachers and students across the country are increasingly using AI in and out of classrooms, whether it is teachers turning to AI to refine lesson plans or students asking AI to help them research a particular topic.

An estimated 85% of K-12 public school teachers recently reported that they used AI during the 2024-2025 school year – often for curriculum and content development.

In 2023, 13% of teens said they used ChatGPT to complete their schoolwork, while 26% of them said in 2025 that they were using ChatGPT for this purpose.

Similarly, 86% of K-12 students shared in 2025 that they have used AI in general. An estimated 50% of students reported that they use it for schoolwork, such as for learning more about topics outside of what was taught in class, tutoring on specific subjects, receiving help with a homework assignment or asking for college advice.

However, policies and training have not kept pace with how frequently teachers and students are using AI.

Only 35% of school district leaders reported in 2025 that they provided students with any AI training, according to the global policy think tank RAND Corporation. Additionally, 45% of principals reported school or district policies or guidance on the use of AI in schools, according to these findings.

Another challenge is that students are also using AI for potentially dangerous uses. There are recent examples of students who self-harmed or died by suicide after they used AI for mental health support. A 2025 study found that when a chatbot responded to 60 simulated scenarios that posed mental health questions, the chatbots sometimes made harmful proposals – such as cutting off all human contact for a month or dropping out of school.

So, is it safe for young students to use AI? Does using AI provide better learning outcomes for students when compared to traditional instruction? Does AI help teachers reduce their workload?

The answers to these questions are complicated. It is not yet clear how AI influences learning in K-12 settings or when and how it is best for teachers and students to use AI.

Some clear pros

As an associate professor of inclusive teacher education, I’m trying to answer some of these big questions about AI and K-12 education.

Some university centers that I’ve worked with, such as the Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning at the University of Kansas, are conducting research on how AI can be used to support students with learning disabilities.

In 2025, 57% of special education teachers said they use AI to help develop individualized plans, often called an individualized education program, for their students with learning disabilities.

I believe there is no doubt that AI can, in some ways, reduce barriers and support students with disabilities. In my own research, for example, my co-authors and I show that AI can help students learn by adapting assignments to meet their personal learning needs and pace. It can also help teachers reduce their time spent grading or editing assignments.

There remain concerns over student privacy and whether AI systems will reinforce bias, but special education teachers are testing the benefits of generative AI.

The missing evidence

Among the broader available research and evidence on AI and K-12 education, some studies from 2019 through 2022 show that AI might help students learn and stay motivated by providing a personalized learning experience. However, the evidence appears less promising when considering how students learn after they use AI and then stop using it.

For example, Guilherme Lichand, an economics scholar at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, found in 2026 that when students use AI and then are told they can no longer use it for their studies, students actually perform worse than those who never used AI. This shows that additional research on how AI influences students’ long-term learning and development is necessary.

The Brookings Institution also recently warned in a 2026 AI and K-12 education report that the risks of using generative AI in education overshadow its benefits. These risks include weakened relationships between students and teachers, as well as students’ safety.

A 2025 report by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology also shows that an average of 71% of K-12 teachers reported that when students use AI to complete their schoolwork, it is hard for the teachers to understand whether student work is their own.

Similarly, almost two-thirds of parents of K-12 students said in 2025 that AI is weakening important academic skills that their child needs to learn, such as writing, reading comprehension and critical thinking.

Lessons from the past

AI is being introduced to K-12 classrooms faster than evidence and understanding can support. But schools have rushed to incorporate educational technologies into their classrooms before.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, schools needed to quickly equip teachers and students with online platforms for remote learning.

But the rush also challenged educators to learn how to effectively teach and provide individual support for each student – and to ensure that all students, including students with disabilities, could participate in remote learning.

Similarly, not long ago, some educators thought that social media and smartphones would bring the next frontier in education, with the idea that these technologies could increase student engagement. Yet we now know the dangers that both social media and smartphones pose for children.

Slowing down how students especially are using AI in the classroom does not mean rejecting it altogether. I think it means being responsible – especially when there is a good chance children’s academic skills, behaviors or emotions are at risk.

New evidence on AI and education is coming from scholars like me and my colleagues. There is little doubt that AI and future technologies are game changers in society and education.

I think it is also critical that we slow down and follow the evidence that is available. Speed is a choice, and education deserves intention.

Tal Slemrod receives funding from the US Department of Education.

– ref. More and more teachers and students are using AI – even though it might do more harm than good – https://theconversation.com/more-and-more-teachers-and-students-are-using-ai-even-though-it-might-do-more-harm-than-good-275650

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Peter Gunderman, Assistant Clinical Professor of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana University

Recently, a patient came to the hospital where I work with a persistent cough. Their doctor had ordered a CT scan – a type of imaging that creates detailed cross-sectional pictures of the body’s interior – to look for pneumonia or another infection.

The scan ruled that out, but it also showed something unexpected: calcium buildup in the walls of the coronary arteries. That finding had nothing to do with the cough, but it pointed toward a much more serious problem. After weighing other risk factors, the patient and their doctor decided to start medication to reduce the risk of a heart attack.

Stories like this are becoming more common, and I think about them differently than I used to. I am a cardiothoracic radiologist at Indiana University. In practice, that means I use imaging to diagnose diseases of the heart and lungs. My job is to answer the clinical question in front of me.

But every scan contains far more information than anyone requested, and most of it never gets reported. That is not a failure of any individual radiologist; it is a gap built into how medicine processes imaging data. Closing that gap could matter enormously for patients.

Data hiding in plain sight

A single chest CT produces hundreds of cross-sectional images. Within those images, a trained eye – or an increasingly capable algorithm – can see calcium accumulating in coronary arteries, assess the condition of the muscles along the spine, estimate bone density and detect early changes in the liver. None of this requires an extra scan, radiation or appointment. The information is already there.

This is the idea behind opportunistic screening: using imaging ordered for one purpose to identify other health risks at the same time.

Coronary artery calcium

Coronary artery calcium, or CAC, is probably the best demonstration of what opportunistic screening can accomplish. When calcium builds up in the walls of the coronary arteries, it reflects underlying atherosclerosis, the disease process behind most heart attacks. CAC scoring is one of the strongest predictors of future heart attacks, and it adds predictive information beyond what traditional risk calculators provide.

Dedicated cardiac CT scans can measure this calcium precisely. So can a standard lung cancer screening CT, if someone takes the time to look. Studies have found that calcium measurements from lung screening CTs agree closely with those from dedicated cardiac scans, meaning the information is there even when the scan was not designed for cardiac evaluation.

That overlap matters because roughly 19 million noncardiac chest CTs are performed each year in the United States. Every one of those scans passes through the heart. The presence of calcium is visible in the images – yet studies find that when CAC is present, radiologists report it in fewer than half of cases.

The connection runs in both directions. In research my team conducted at Indiana University studying nearly 15,000 patients undergoing dedicated cardiac calcium scans, roughly 1 in 4 were potentially eligible for lung cancer screening, yet fewer than 11% had ever been screened. Patients at risk for heart disease and those at risk for lung cancer overlap substantially, and right now, medicine is not doing enough for either group.

The scale of this missed opportunity becomes clearer when you look at the National Lung Screening Trial, a study that established low-dose CT as an effective lung cancer screening tool. Among participants in that trial, the most common cause of death was not lung cancer. It was cardiovascular disease. More people died of heart attacks than of the cancer the trial was designed to detect.

When high-risk patients are already getting these scans, the question of whether doctors should be doing more with the data becomes hard to ignore.

Other findings worth looking for

Coronary calcium is the proof of concept, but it is not the only finding hiding in these images.

CT scans can measure muscle loss – a condition called sarcopenia – and patients with low muscle mass consistently face higher rates of postoperative complications and death compared with those with normal muscle mass. Bone density from CT predicts fractures related to osteoporosis, and liver fat visible on CT can flag early metabolic disease before a patient has any symptoms. Each of these findings is present in scans already being done, at essentially no added cost.

The point is not to turn every radiology report into a comprehensive evaluation of a patient’s health. It is to capture measurable findings that point toward something treatable, and to make sure that information actually reaches someone who can act on it.

Getting there is difficult. CT protocols vary across institutions, and measurement accuracy depends on how a scan was acquired. Radiology reports are often written in plain prose rather than structured data fields, which is hard to analyze systematically. And extracting data is only half the problem. Using that data in a way that actually changes care requires coordination across radiology, cardiology and primary care that most health systems have not yet built.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to help. Automated tools can now measure bone density, muscle mass, body fat and coronary calcium from routine scans with reasonable accuracy. A study published in March 2026 found that AI analysis of routine mammograms can identify calcium deposits in breast arteries that predict heart attacks and strokes in women. As these tools become more integrated into everyday radiology practice, a scan that answers the question it was asked and also catches something else worth knowing becomes less of an aspiration and more of a realistic near-term goal.

What you can do now

There are practical steps that patients can take while health systems catch up to advances in medical imaging.

If you are undergoing imaging for any reason, it is worth asking your doctor whether the scan showed anything else relevant to your overall health. That question does not always get a full answer, but asking opens a door that otherwise stays closed.

If you are between 50 and 80 with a significant smoking history, you may already qualify for annual lung cancer screening with low-dose CT. Only about 1 in 5 eligible patients are currently being screened. If you have not discussed it with your doctor, bring it up. Cancers found early are far more likely to be cured, and there is good evidence that the same scan can uncover cardiovascular risk that’s worth knowing about.

The mechanic who changes your oil and mentions that your brake pads are worn is not overstepping. He is doing what an attentive, skilled person in his position should do. Opportunistic screening asks whether radiology can be that kind of attentive – not just occasionally and by chance, but routinely and at scale. The data is already there. The only thing missing is the will to use it.

Peter Gunderman 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. Millions of CT scans are done every year – most leave important data behind – https://theconversation.com/millions-of-ct-scans-are-done-every-year-most-leave-important-data-behind-264736

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Adrienne Lapidos, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Michigan

Imagine your dream is to get a job at the local library. You have a love for people and for books. You also have schizophrenia, a psychiatric disability that makes life in the community more challenging.

You often have extreme psychological experiences. When you leave your apartment, you hear voices that tell you it’s not safe, and you feel scared. People seem to keep their distance from you. You feel lonely sometimes.

Most of the people you spend time with are mental health staff members, who provide medications and psychological therapies to make the voices and paranoia less intense. Their treatment philosophy is based on the belief that by reducing the symptoms, working at the library might be possible for you someday.

But what if they have it backward? What if waiting for your symptoms to get better means waiting too long, or even forever?

That’s where the concept of psychiatric rehabilitation, or PSR, turns traditional mental health treatment on its head. While PSR does not minimize the significance of psychiatric symptoms, reducing those symptoms is seen as neither necessary nor sufficient for improving quality of life. Instead of asking “What are your symptoms?” and “How can we make them better?” providers instead ask, “What do you want to do?” and “What’s getting in the way?”

These questions might lead to interventions that are not traditionally considered mental health services: practicing job interviews, scheduling wake-up calls, learning unfamiliar bus routes or making environmental changes like negotiating accommodations. Irrespective of symptoms, such interventions can support people diagnosed with psychiatric disabilities like schizophrenia, major depression and bipolar disorder.

We are psychologists and researchers who have worked in these settings and who study ways to support people with psychiatric disabilities like schizophrenia. And we believe rehabilitative approaches to psychiatric disabilities can help people engage in activities they value, including work, relationships, passions and public service.

Origins of psychiatric rehabilitation

Psychiatric rehabilitation originated at a time of upheaval and hope. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act into law, establishing mental health centers in the community with the goal of decreasing the number of people living in long-term psychiatric institutions. By 1975, the number of patients in state and county mental hospitals had rapidly declined by 62%.

However, the law never really fulfilled its promise. Even when connected to outpatient care, people with psychiatric disabilities had unmet needs related to community living, including educational attainment, employment, housing and community participation, leading to a lower quality of life.

But what if building a meaningful and self-directed life in the community really was possible, if people were given the right support?

Psychiatric rehabilitation emerged during the 1970s and 1980s in part as a response to the deinstitutionalization movement, where more and more people with psychiatric disabilities lived in the community. Psychologist William Anthony, a pioneer of psychiatric rehabilitation, described the purpose and values of this approach as analogous to physical rehabilitation. Both are centered on improving patients’ ability to live within their chosen environment.

For example, in physical rehabilitation, a person with a serious mobility impairment would not only receive treatment that improves their ability to walk on their own, but also supervised practice using a wheelchair. Modifying their environment, such as adding curb cuts to public sidewalks, is also critical.

Psychiatric rehabilitation challenges mental health professionals to consider questions like “What is the equivalent of a wheelchair or curb cut for a person with schizophrenia?”

One key example of this approach is a form of supported employment called individual placement and support. In this model, employment specialists learn from patients about their goals and preferences; help them search for jobs and identify potential employers; and assist with applications, resumes and interview preparation. Staff will systematically visit businesses in the community to learn about their needs and hiring preferences. Research has shown that this model effectively increases competitive employment for people with psychiatric disabilities, and that most who become employed have a better quality of life.

In addition to gaining employment, psychiatric rehabilitation can help people with severe psychiatric disabilities reduce hospital admissions, obtain housing, improve cognitive function and reduce stigma. Each of these interventions is designed to improve a person’s functioning in the community, either by modifying their skills or their environment.

Because many of these services can be delivered by people without advanced degrees, psychiatric rehabilitation also opens careers in mental health services to a broader swath of the community.

The future of psychiatric rehabilitation

Despite its effectiveness, many factors limit access to psychiatric rehabilitation, including underfunding, lack of appropriate Medicaid reimbursement, an unprepared workforce and an overemphasis on pharmaceutical treatment.

Psychiatric rehabilitation practices could improve the extent to which they are culturally tailored and centered on serving the most vulnerable and disenfranchised populations. For example, research has found that having a low income is correlated with worse outcomes in these services, and that not enough programs consider cultural diversity.

Progress in treating mental illness has been elusive, and it’s not because researchers don’t know which treatments are effective. Rather, it’s because care quality varies greatly and the best services are often inaccessible. Psychiatric rehabilitation relies primarily on financing through state mental health agencies and Medicaid, and its future depends on sustainable financing.

Until investments match need, disparities in the health and quality of life of people living with psychiatric disabilities will continue.

In community, with support

Just like those recovering from a physical illness, we believe people recovering from psychiatric disabilities are deserving of comprehensive rehabilitation services that enable their full participation in community life.

So imagine once more that you love books, love the library and live with schizophrenia. You got confirmation from your employment specialist that she found a library in the community seeking a part-time worker. She mentioned you to them, and they’re willing to give you a chance.

You and your peer support specialist take the bus back and forth to the library one more time to make sure you’re confident about the route. To prepare for your interview, you sit in your community mental health center’s computer lab and use a virtual reality program to practice your job interview skills. Later that afternoon, you share your excitement and fears with peers in a Hearing Voices Network support group.

Tomorrow’s your interview. With your support network at your back, you believe your dream could come true.

Adrienne Lapidos’s research work is funded by the CareQuest Foundation, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health. She is Associate Editor of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal.

Elizabeth Thomas receives funding from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. She is Associate Editor of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal.

Kristen Abraham has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Health Administration and the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition. She maintains an appointment at the Veterans Health Administration Serious Mental Illness Treatment Resource and Evaluation Center and is Editor of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal.

– ref. What’s the equivalent of a wheelchair for a person with schizophrenia? How psychiatric rehabilitation brings community into care – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-equivalent-of-a-wheelchair-for-a-person-with-schizophrenia-how-psychiatric-rehabilitation-brings-community-into-care-274724

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Matthew D. Dean, Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine

When the power goes out and stays off for hours, the result can be more than just a hassle – for millions of Americans who rely on medical equipment, losing electricity can become a medical emergency.

Your neighbor might rely on an oxygen concentrator to breathe – a machine the size of a carry-on bag that hums quietly through the night. Or they might need a CPAP – continuous positive airway pressure – machine to keep them breathing safely in their sleep, or a ventilator.

Most home medical devices run on backup batteries that last only 3 to 8 hours. Yet people in over half of U.S. counties experienced at least one outage lasting more than eight hours between 2018 and 2021. Power outages are becoming more common in the U.S., too. They grew 9% more frequent and lasted 56% longer between 2014 and 2023, driven by severe weather, winter storms, hurricanes and wildfires linked to climate change.

Studies following major blackouts show an increase in disease-related deaths, including a 25% rise during a three-day blackout in New York City in August 2003. Emergency rooms can become overwhelmed with device users seeking backup power and medical care.

But not everyone with a medical device faces the same risks during a power outage. In a new study published in the journal Environmental Research: Health, we show which groups need the most help and who is slipping through the cracks in life-threatening ways.

Four very different realities

We analyzed data from more than 2,600 households reporting the use of medical devices, drawn from a nationally representative federal survey of nearly 18,500 American homes. Using statistical modeling, we identified four distinct groups, each facing a very different situation when the power goes out.

About 60% of medically dependent households are financially stable homeowners. They face outages, but they are the most likely group to have backup generators.

A second group, roughly 20%, are homeowners who struggle to pay their energy bills and sometimes skip medicine or meals to keep the lights on, but who also tend to have backup power sources. This group had the highest likelihood of experiencing dayslong power outages in the past year, but was also more likely to have a generator or access to solar power than the average American.

A third group is apartment renters who can afford their electricity bills but are typically unable to make long-term upgrades for more resilient power supplies. For example, they can’t install solar panels or add permanent backup power because those decisions belong to their landlord, not them.

The fourth class is the smallest, roughly 7% of medical device households, and by far the most at risk. These are mostly low-income urban renters, and they face two compounding problems: They struggle to pay their electricity bills every month, and they have almost no backup resources when the power goes out.

Nearly 58% of these at-risk renters said they had received a disconnection notice from their utility within the previous year. One in eight had needed medical attention because their home got too hot or too cold. This group is also disproportionately Black or Hispanic.

Our findings confirm what researchers have long suspected: Energy insecurity among medical device users is deeply tied to income, housing type and race. Our study also shows the importance of understanding where people are both energy insecure and less likely to have access to backup power sources during outages.

What communities are doing today

Some communities are finding ways to tackle pieces of this problem.

Most utility companies maintain lists of households with medical devices, and they are supposed to notify customers ahead of power shutoffs and prioritize restoring power to their homes. However, studies show that these registries capture only a fraction of the people who qualify.

If medical device users were instead automatically enrolled during a doctor’s visit, or if landlords were required to notify new tenants of these registries, those steps could help reach more people.

Portable battery programs, like those run by California’s largest utilities, provide free or low-cost rechargeable batteries and a solar panel kit to homeowners and renters with medical devices who are most at risk of power shutoffs. Contractors can work with households to choose an appropriate battery to ensure it isn’t too heavy or difficult to transport if evacuating because of a wildfire or other disaster.

As climate change makes blackouts longer and more frequent – and as federal low-income energy assistance programs face cuts – providing help to residents falls increasingly on states and cities. Knowing which households face the greatest risks can make it easier to target aid to those in need.

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. Power outages can threaten the lives of medical device users – knowing who is most at risk will help cities respond – https://theconversation.com/power-outages-can-threaten-the-lives-of-medical-device-users-knowing-who-is-most-at-risk-will-help-cities-respond-276501