Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By William J. (Bill) Kovarik, Professor of Communication, Radford University

Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, who died March 15, 2026, in Palo Alto, California, was a scientific crusader whose dire predictions about population growth, world hunger and environmental collapse made headlines and sparked controversy for decades.

Sometimes called a “prophet of doom” by his detractors, Ehrlich was among the most public figures of the environmental movement. He was admired and often honored for his prophetic warnings. But he was also excoriated when his worst predictions failed to come true.

Ehrlich founded Stanford’s Center for Nature and Society in 1984 and wrote more than 40 books and over 1,100 scientific articles on ecology, the environment and population dynamics. He is best known outside of academia for writing “The Population Bomb” in 1968, along with his wife, conservation biologist Anne H. Erhlich, who survives him.

The book became a bestseller that was reprinted more than 20 times and translated into multiple languages. It starkly predicted that population growth would exhaust Earth’s resources, leading to wars and social collapse.

Ultimately, the book both popularized and polarized the U.S. environmental movement.

As a scholar of communications and environmental history, I see Ehrlich’s difficult fight for the environment as emblematic of the vast chasm between science on one side and political culture influenced by the mass media on the other side.

And I see Ehrlich’s passing – along with others of his generation, such as Carl Sagan, E.O. Wilson and Jane Goodall – as a loss for a world that needs visionaries and public scientists now more than ever. Public understanding of science and technology is critical for political discussion, for environmental preservation and, in the words of British physical chemist C.P. Snow, for the sake of “the poor who needn’t be poor if there is intelligence in the world.”

The battle over the book

“The Population Bomb” opened with a verbal blast: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” And because the “stork had passed the plow,” the Ehrlichs wrote, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Overpopulated India was doomed, they contended, and England “will not exist in the year 2000,” following a massive social and environmental breakdown.

These stark warnings, while overstated, seemed at least plausible at the time. Older scientists, including Snow and oceanographer Roger Revelle, had also warned about population growth overtaking food production.

The Ehrlichs were influenced by books such as the 1948 bestsellers “Road to Survival,” by ecologist William Vogt, and “Our Plundered Planet,” by paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. All of these thinkers owed a debt to the original Cassandra of population catastrophe, English economist Thomas Malthus, whose 1798 book “An Essay on the Principle of Population” warned that the world’s population would inevitably outstrip its food supply.

Even worse, Malthus predicted, efforts to produce more food would simply continue the cycle of famine and poverty. However, new crops and agricultural techniques forestalled Malthus’ catastrophe in the 19th century. As a result, the term “Malthusian” came to signify overly pessimistic views about complex social problems.

A different sort of Malthusian

Handsome and well-spoken, Ehrlich captured the public imagination through news articles, public lectures and television appearances. “The Population Bomb” launched him into the center of a raging global debate over environment and conservation. He appeared as a guest on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson more than 20 times in the 1970s and early ’80s.

This wasn’t the typical public profile for a biology professor. As New York Times reporter Robert Reinhold observed in 1969, Ehrlich was “representative, perhaps, of a growing new breed of scientists who are willing to get involved in the unscientific and sometimes rough business of crusading in public against such things as DDT, highway building and population growth.”

Not all environmental advocates agreed with Ehrlich’s view that population growth was the critical threat. Another prominent biologist, Barry Commoner, saw faulty technology as the primary source of environmental problems.

In fairness, Ehrlich and his frequent collaborator, physicist John Holdren, saw technology and population as cofactors in a complex social problem, which they summarized with the equation I = P x A x T, or Impact equals Population times Affluence times Technology. Put another way, population growth, wealth and the types of technologies people chose to use all contributed to human impacts on the environment.

The debate between Ehrlich and Commoner perplexed some people, but it showed two different approaches to environmental policy. With Commoner’s approach, technological problems such as toxic waste and nuclear radiation, would be solved through cleanups and improved processes.

Ehrlich said reducing overconsumption and addressing population growth would also help ease these challenges. To slow population growth, Ehrlich called for promoting contraception and increasing access to abortions, and perhaps even resorting to coercive methods, such as forced sterilization.

By the 1970s, a focus on population growth had become widely accepted. The first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, ranked population growth alongside pollution and underdevelopment as the top action items on the global agenda. Later that year, a prominent European think tank, the Club of Rome, echoed Ehrlich’s warnings in its widely circulated Limits to Growth report.

Scarcity or abundance?

World population continued to grow through the 1970s and ’80s, but the impacts that Ehrlich predicted did not occur. This was largely due to the Green Revolution, a broad campaign by governments and research institutes to provide high-yield varieties of wheat and rice, along with pesticides and mechanized agriculture, to developing countries. These new tools increased harvests and dramatically reduced the risk of famine.

Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, a leader of this effort, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Borlaug made a point of agreeing with Ehrlich in his Nobel lecture, saying the Green Revolution was a temporary reprieve and that population control was also essential in the ongoing battle against hunger.

Conservative economists and scientists weren’t persuaded. One prominent critic, academic economist Julian Simon, argued for what came to be called the cornucopian view, which held that the only limits to growth were imagination and ingenuity. Simon said the Earth had infinite capacity to provide materials and that humans would constantly innovate and find new ways to use them.

In 1980 Simon publicly bet Ehrlich that prices of five important industrial raw materials – copper, nickel, tungsten, chromium and tin – would fall rather than rise over the next decade. Ehrlich said he would have preferred some environmental measure rather than metals, but he said resources would become scarce and prices would rise.

Simon, on the other hand, argued that markets and new technologies would drive prices down. Ultimately, although prices for these five metals had risen during the preceding decades and would also rise during the 1990s, they declined between 1980 and 1990. Simon won the bet, and Ehrlich wrote him a check in 1990 for US$576.07, the difference between the 1980 and 1990 prices.

A matter of when

After the catastrophes that Ehrlich predicted in “The Population Bomb” failed to occur, many critics had a laugh at his expense. “As you may have noticed, England is still with us. So is India,” chuckled New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman in 2015.

“Paul Ehrlich is a misanthrope who’d make you apply for a government permit to have a baby if he could,” wrote Chelsea Follett of the libertarian Cato Institute in 2023.

Ehrlich and his supporters replied that while the Green Revolution might have forestalled widespread famine, human impacts were weighing ever more heavily on the planet. Taking problems such as climate change and toxic pollution into account, Ehrlich asserted in 2009 that “The Population Bomb” had been “way too optimistic.”

In his 2023 memoir, “Life,” Ehrlich expressed deep gratitude for a 70-year career in science. However, he was frustrated over what he saw as the inability of science to penetrate America’s stubbornly unscientific political culture. He was also saddened that the environmental movement was failing to effectively oppose “the forces that pose existential threats to civilization.” Throughout his career as a public scholar, Ehrlich was never afraid to look into the abyss.

William J. (Bill) Kovarik 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. Paul Ehrlich, often called alarmist for dire warnings about human harms to the Earth, believed scientists had a responsibility to speak out – https://theconversation.com/paul-ehrlich-often-called-alarmist-for-dire-warnings-about-human-harms-to-the-earth-believed-scientists-had-a-responsibility-to-speak-out-178492

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Erin Potter, Lecturer in Geography and Ph.D. student in Earth Sciences, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

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What was the very first plant in the world? – Ivy, age 6, Phoenix

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Long before dinosaurs roamed the land, Earth looked very different from the planet we know today. Around 500 million years ago, most of Earth’s surface was bare rock and dry soil. There were no trees, no grass and no flowers. Life existed almost entirely in the oceans.

Then something amazing happened: Plants began to grow on land.

This moment was one of the most important events in Earth’s history because it changed the planet forever. As a geoscientist, I am interested in changes in the diversity of flora and fauna – that’s plants and animals – over time.

Predecessors of plants lived in water

The story of plants begins in the water. The earliest plantlike organisms were simple, tiny green life-forms such as algae. You can still see algae today as seaweed along beaches or as green slime on rocks in ponds.

Algae have lived in Earth’s oceans and lakes for over 1 billion years. They can make their own food, using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to create sugars. This process is called photosynthesis; it releases oxygen – the gas we need to breathe – as a byproduct.

At first, Earth’s atmosphere had very little oxygen. Over millions of years, photosynthesizing organisms like algae and some bacteria slowly released oxygen into the air. This change, sometimes called the Great Oxygenation Event, made it possible for larger and more complex life to evolve. Without oxygen-producing organisms, animals, including humans, could never have existed.

Scientists believe the first true plants evolved from green algae around 470 million years ago. These early plants lived in shallow water near shorelines, where conditions changed often. Sometimes they were underwater, and sometimes they were exposed to air. This habitat helped them slowly adapt to life on land.

Getting a foothold on dry land

Moving onto land was not easy. Water plants are supported by water and can absorb nutrients easily, but land plants faced new challenges. How would they avoid drying out? How could they stand upright without floating? How would they get water and nutrients from dry ground?

To survive, early plants evolved important new features. One key adaptation was a waxy coating, called a cuticle, which helped keep water inside the plant. Plants also developed stronger cell walls that allowed them to stand upright against gravity. Simple rootlike structures, called rhizoids, helped anchor plants to the ground and absorb water and minerals from the soil.

The earliest land plants were very small and simple. They looked similar to modern mosses, liverworts and hornworts, which still grow today in damp places like forest floors and stream edges. These plants did not have true roots or stems, and they stayed close to the ground. Fossils of early land plants, such as Cooksonia, date back to about 430 million years ago and show small branching stems only an inch or two tall.

Even though these plants were tiny, they had a huge impact on Earth. As plants spread across land, their roots helped break down rocks into soil, a process called weathering. This created richer soil that could support more life.

Plants also released more oxygen into the atmosphere, improving air quality and helping animals breathe. Plants created new habitats and food sources, allowing insects and other animals to move from water onto land.

Increasing complexity across millions of years

Once plants became established on land, evolution continued. Around 420 million years ago, plants evolved vascular tissue: tiny tubes that transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. This adaptation allowed plants to grow taller and stronger because water could be moved upward from the roots to the leaves. These vascular plants included early relatives of ferns and club mosses.

With vascular tissue, plant life really started to flourish. By about 360 million years ago, vast forests covered much of Earth. Giant ferns and treelike plants, some over 100 feet (30 meters) tall, dominated the landscape. Over time, dead plant material from these forests was buried and compressed, eventually forming coal, which people still use as an energy source today.

Another major step in plant evolution was the development of seeds, around 380 million years ago, found in seed ferns. Other seed plants, such as early conifers – a group that includes modern pine trees – could reproduce without needing water for fertilization. Seeds protected plant embryos and allowed plants to survive harsh conditions like drought or cold.

The most recent major plant evolution happened around 140 million years ago, when flowering plants, what scientists call angiosperms, appeared. Flowers helped plants attract animals like insects and birds, which spread pollen and seeds. Fruits developed to protect seeds and help them travel. Today, flowering plants make up most of the plants we see, including trees, grasses, fruits and vegetables.

The first plants didn’t just survive; they transformed Earth. They changed the atmosphere, built soil, and created ecosystems that allowed animals to thrive on land. Thanks to plant evolution, Earth became a green, living planet full of diverse life.

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Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Erin Potter 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. What was the very first plant in the world? – https://theconversation.com/what-was-the-very-first-plant-in-the-world-271828

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael Carrafiello, Professor of History, Miami University

Apollo 11 first landed astronauts on the Moon in 1969, but the journey to the lunar surface actually began 43 years before, in snowy Massachusetts.

Exactly 100 years ago, on March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket. Liquid-fueled rockets would eventually provide the power to send humans to the Moon. Still, Goddard’s vehicle was small, flew for only 42 seconds, reached a height of a mere 184 feet and sustained damage that created more doubters than believers in the prospects for human space flight.

Despite this less-than-spectacular start to the space age, Goddard’s rocket was the beginning of a century of innovation. Today, hundreds of rockets launch each year. Giant liquid-fueled rockets combine liquid oxidizer – a substance that releases oxygen – and liquid fuel. These create chemical reactions that produce the explosive thrust necessary to propel humans to the Moon.

As a historian, I’ve spent 40 years studying the winding path that led to the development of modern rocketry. I’ve also seen how, over the past few years, private companies have played a much larger role in spaceflight than they did throughout most of its history.

Early days of spaceflight

After Goddard’s first liquid-fueled rocket launch, the development of American rocketry crept along at a snail’s pace until World War II. Nazi Germany’s invention of the V-2 missile proved that rockets could provide immense strategic and scientific value during both war and peace.

In war, the V-2 terrorized Britain and its allies. In peace, scientists looked at launching artificial satellites, or “moons” as they were originally called, to survey weather and boost intercontinental communication.

The United States government did not invest heavily in rocketry throughout most of the 1950s. Then, on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world by launching the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. Millions of Americans feared that the USSR would soon rain nuclear missiles on them.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisers, however, displayed little anxiety at this prospect. They believed that America’s problems down on Earth were more urgent than those that might emanate from space.

Political pressure from the Senate majority leader, Lyndon B. Johnson, caused Eisenhower to reconsider. Late in 1958, the Republican president gave his consent for Congress’ establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This new agency then went about selecting America’s first seven astronauts, introducing them to the nation in 1959.

Americans to the Moon

The arrival of a new, young chief executive, John F. Kennedy, sharpened the United States’ commitment to space. In September 1962, the president publicly challenged the nation to land an astronaut on the Moon before 1970. To Kennedy, the enormity of such a scientific and public achievement would provide unimpeachable proof to the world that the American way was superior to life behind the Iron Curtain.

JFK’s untimely death in the autumn of 1963 only served to strengthen the nation’s commitment to the late president’s lofty goal.

A mere five-and-a-half years later, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 mission. To get them there, NASA had spent nearly US$26 billion – $338 billion today. They had employed hundreds of scientists and engineers, and hired thousands of workers from dozens of contractors.

Yet, at almost the very moment the supreme triumph of Apollo 11 unfolded, public support for the manned space program evaporated. Preoccupation with the Vietnam War, economic inflation and nagging social and political inequality, as well as boredom with moonshots, led most Americans to turn away from the cosmos.

Richard Nixon, who followed Johnson into the Oval Office, slashed NASA’s budget. Three of the remaining lunar missions were abruptly and unceremoniously canceled. NASA had to abandon spectacular yet wasteful rockets like the Saturn V in favor of cheaper and more versatile launch vehicles.

Enter the Space Shuttle

Unlike earlier rockets, the next generation of rockets had to become almost completely reusable. The result: development of the Space Shuttle. NASA promised that the shuttle would launch no later than 1977 and that, when fully operational, it would rocket into orbit every two weeks.

That vision never materialized. By the time the first shuttle finally took off in 1981, it was grossly over budget. Problems with the heat tiles necessary for reentry persisted. Ultimately, the shuttles never came close to launching biweekly. Instead, only six to eight missions per year proved feasible. Worst of all, the program would eventually sustain two heartbreaking tragedies.

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. In 2003, Columbia – the first shuttle to ever reach space – disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas. The following year, President George W. Bush announced that the remaining shuttle fleet would retire no later than 2011.

NASA’s air of invincibility and inexhaustible stream of funding had long vanished. The final shuttle flight served as a coda to the heady days of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Subsequent presidents talked of missions to Mars and created a Space Force, but the old Apollo launchpads at Cape Canaveral were abandoned, or “mothballed,” as NASA termed it. Thousands of workers were laid off. Leadership in space passed to private corporations like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Enter private companies

As early as 2006, NASA began contracting with SpaceX to launch its payloads and astronauts to the International Space Station. By 2024, SpaceX had realized the unfulfilled vision of NASA, launching on a nearly biweekly basis.

Meanwhile, while NASA’s Artemis program plans to send a crewed mission around the Moon using a launch system developed by the agency, the program remains years behind schedule. To date, it has cost at least three times more than originally budgeted.

Across the Pacific, China has announced that it will place astronauts on the Moon by 2030, with missions to Mars planned after that. For America’s rival on the world stage, government, industry and science all move in concert. Compared with China, the United States’ future in space appears far less unified, coordinated and purposeful.

A dynamic president once galvanized the U.S. government and its people to produce a “giant leap for mankind.” But since that July day in 1969, leadership in space has steadily passed from government to private hands, with the future of American space flight appearing murky.

Michael Carrafiello 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. The first modern rocket launched 100 years ago, beginning a century of both innovations and challenges for spaceflight – https://theconversation.com/the-first-modern-rocket-launched-100-years-ago-beginning-a-century-of-both-innovations-and-challenges-for-spaceflight-269061

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Paul C. Sereno, Professor of Paleontology, University of Chicago

My fixation on a small, desolate locale in the heart of the Sahara Desert started with a single line buried in a 630-page tome in French about the rocks of the central Sahara: “Dent de Carcharodontosaurus saharicus Depéret,” which translates to “tooth of Carcharodontosaurus saharicus Depéret” – “Depéret” refers to the scientist who originally named the species.

The intrepid French geologist Hugues Faure (1928-2003) had collected one saber-shaped tooth in the early 1950s at a small exposure he labeled “Akarazeras” on one of his maps, identifying the tooth as belonging to the T. rex-size predator Carcharodontosaurus. That beast was named years before based on fossils in the Western Desert of Egypt, and Faure correctly figured the tooth and outcrop in Niger might be the same age. Faure’s tooth, unfortunately, was never figured or photographed and has been lost.

In the 70 years since Faure’s account, no paleontologist had ventured back to this hyperarid, windswept landscape to attempt to relocate Akarazeras. In truth, the tooth might have been all that was there, and the site itself could easily have disappeared under drifting dunes. Yet, after reading about it early in my career as a paleontologist, Akarazeras became my fossil Shangri-La, a place I dreamed of visiting.

Akarazeras relocated

With a small exploratory team in 2019, I followed a desert trail to the remote oasis of Tanout, the closest inhabited point to Akarazeras. There we refreshed our supplies – food, water and fuel – to survive a three-day foray in the open desert in search of the locale. Besides binoculars, we had a few gadgets Faure couldn’t have imagined: GPS hand units and a drone.

Navigating using Faure’s map brought us to a flat, barren spot with nothing in sight to the horizon. We drove several kilometers to the north, climbed to the top of our vehicles and launched the drone. One of my team members spotted a low rocky outcrop at distance.

Soon after arriving at the exposure, we found several Carcharodontosaurus teeth and, a short distance away, the rim of an infilled, hand-dug well. We had found Akarazeras. By the next afternoon, we had finished packing up a few dozen fossil teeth and bones. We probed in every direction and sent the drone farther to see if there was anything else to find. Nothing but sand.

A chance encounter

That might have been the end of the story had not a tall, lanky man arrived in our Tanout campground the evening we returned. Looking like a Tuareg Marvel character, Abdoul Nasser stood next to his Honda motorbike, dressed in a full-length black overcoat, a cheche head wrap, sunglasses and a sheathed sword slung over his shoulder.

“I can take you to some large bones, farther than Akarazeras,” he said in Tamasheq, with guides translating to French. This seemed more than a boast or scam. I decided to devote our final three days to this venture.

A day and a half later, we had spent half our fuel chasing our motorbike guide over an endless dunescape. Just as we questioned going farther, Abdoul slowed to a stop in front of the largest fossil hind leg I had ever seen, its thigh bone nearly 6 feet (2 meters) long.

As the sun set, we scurried from skeleton to skeleton – it was a veritable dinosaur graveyard. The next morning we had a half-hour at this place locals called Jenguebi before we had to leave. I and my colleague, Spanish paleontologist Dan Vidal, quickly collected large jaw pieces of what we assumed was Carcharodontosaurus.

Epiphany in the lab and field

Back in Chicago, the cleaned and assembled jaw pieces told another story. They belonged to the giant fish-eating dinosaur called Spinosaurus, which refers to a group of semiaquatic, T. rex-size beasts known from the northern shores of Africa.

For more than two years, plans to return to Niger were scuttled by the pandemic. Finally, in 2022, I led an international, 20-person field crew with a larger guard back to Jenguebi to see whether we could turn up more of the elusive predator.

I was busy arranging the campsite an hour after arriving when Dan Vidal approached, wide-eyed.

“You won’t believe what we just found … the snout end of our skull!”

The team quickly gathered around the toothed bone jutting from the surface of the desert, some in tears, bearing witness to an extraordinary discovery. The snout end fit onto one of the jaw pieces we had collected in 2019. Hours later, Dan approached again with a curved bone in hand.

“What do you think this is?” he asked, wanting confirmation for what we both immediately recognized as a landmark discovery.

The scimitar-shaped bone he held came from the top of the skull. Unlike the low, fluted crest atop the cranium of Spinosaurus from Egypt, called Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, this bone swept upward and backward over the orbital – the space for the eyes. In the cool of the evening, the team gathering around Dan and his laptop to get a glimpse of an initial skull reconstruction, an assembly of digital versions of the bones we had discovered. In awe, we saw the Jenguebi spinosaurid for the first time, a spectacular southern variant of the sail-backed predator first described in Egypt in 1915.

Back in the lab, we coined a species name in Latin that captured our collective “astonishment” upon its discovery, Spinosaurus mirabilis.

An organization I launched with Nigeriens, NigerHeritage, has visualized new museums in the country’s capital, Niamey, and closer to the fossil sites in Agadez that will preserve and display these and many other fossils. A secure homecoming for these remarkable finds also involves a new generation of Nigerien museologists, scholars and museums.

An inland fish-eater

Other animals at the site included two new long-necked plant-eaters, a partial skull of Carcharodontosaurus, a large skull of a freshwater fish and fossil wood. All of the fossils came from a layer of river-borne sediment less than a meter thick, indicating they lived in the same forested inland area far from a marine coastline.

In recent years, the giant fish-eater Spinosaurus has been depicted in Hollywood’s “Jurassic World Rebirth” as a swimming, diving ocean predator alongside other undoubtedly marine creatures like mosasaurs. In 2020, a team of researchers had reinterpreted Spinosaurus aegyptiacus in this way.

Dubbed the “aquatic hypothesis,” the key inspiration was the discovery that the sail on its back extended over its tail. The structure of the tail and other lines of evidence, however, led me and my research team to an alternative view of the fish-eater – as a shallow-water, wading, ambush predator with little capacity for swimming and none for diving.

Aside from its crest, S. mirabilis is very similar to its cousin S. aegyptiacus from the northern coast of Africa. Their lifestyles likely also were very similar.

Evolutionary stages

The early record of spinosaurids, known only from a few teeth, is rooted in the Jurassic, when they first gained a taste for fish. Over the past few years, researchers have found spinosaurid fossils in many locales in rocks of Early Cretaceous age in southern Europe and Asia, sites that once were near the ancient Tethys Sea. At that time, 115 to 130 million years ago, spinosaurids had split into two subgroups – baryonychines and spinosaurines – that collectively dominated the Tethyan realm as the largest predators of the day.

By the dawn of the Late Cretaceous, only spinosaurines remained as larger and more specialized and flamboyant fish-eaters on the southern side of the Tethys Sea in coastal and inland habitats.

S. mirabilis is among the last of these great predators. It is perhaps best understood as a “hell heron,” the likes of which we can only imagine when observing the more graceful, if less fearsome, herons of today.

Paul C. Sereno received funding from an anonymous donor for the 2022 expedition and subsequent research on the new spinosaurid.

– ref. Paleontologists uncover a new ‘Spinosaurus’ species by following a clue from a decades-old book into the Sahara Desert – https://theconversation.com/paleontologists-uncover-a-new-spinosaurus-species-by-following-a-clue-from-a-decades-old-book-into-the-sahara-desert-274182

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Kristi Girdharry, Associate Teaching Professor of Arts and Humanities, Babson College

I was early to the generative AI wave in higher education: I was among the first professors who teach writing to publish in an academic journal about generative AI and critical thinking, and I am now part of an interdisciplinary team at Babson College thinking about how AI is impacting education, industry and society.

But that does not mean I am all in on AI – nor am I anti-AI. I am pro-learning. As my co-authors and I argue in a forthcoming book on realizing the promise of higher education, even the most powerful tools are only as good as the learning environments we build around them.

So what does “getting learning right” look like in the age of generative AI? It involves a lot of experimentation and leaning in with students as a co-learner when I don’t have all of the answers, while remaining staunchly committed to sharing my expertise in writing, critical thinking and learning. I also hope that they trust me enough to follow my lead and persevere when the work becomes difficult.

From hope to grief

Navigating the rise of generative AI seemed easier to me in the earlier days. In spring 2023, for example, soon after ChatGPT went public, I asked students to use it to research their favorite musical artist and then fact-check the results as part of a unit in my senior-level social media class. The responses sounded polished and confident, but they were often wrong. Album dates were scrambled. Tours were invented. At one point, a student threw up her hands and shouted, “It lies!” The room erupted. The “lies” were especially apparent with less popular artists, about whom less had been written. “How might that translate to other knowledge areas?” I asked. They were pretty quick to thinking about whose voices might not make the cut in a different scenario.

While this was a promising start, by fall 2023 I found myself starting to grieve the passing of the pre-AI-everywhere world. Once again, I leaned in with my students, now in a sophomore-level research writing class. In their proposals, I included a new required section called “Be Better Than a Robot” – the gist being that if ChatGPT could write your research paper, what was the point of us spending weeks on it?

I asked: Where would your own work – your own human thinking – need to come in to create a tiny piece of new knowledge in the world? We practiced primary research, we used time during class for reading and annotating, and I extended deadlines to account for the rigor we were undertaking.

AI usage was discouraged but not outright banned: If used, careful and explicit descriptions of exactly how were required, and I even gave examples of things like brainstorming academic titles as a potential option. While not all of the final research projects seemed completely AI-generated, the few that did caused me to spiral – like it was my fault that I didn’t come down harder on not using AI when I was trying to be neutral and understand how we could use it as a tool and not as a replacement.

Cognitive blind spots

Since those early days in 2023, discussions around college students’ use of AI have only become more fraught and complicated. There are no easy answers, and there are a lot of fears about overreliance, loss of learning and even the value of a college degree. There are also plenty of ethical concerns that go beyond academic integrity, such as the environmental impact of AI and concerns over data and privacy. But AI usage is not slowing down.

Recent data from the Pew Research Center shows that more than half of teenagers are turning to AI for help with finding information and getting help with schoolwork. By the time these students arrive in my classes, many have already developed habits around these tools, and these habits may or may not serve their learning. For me, that’s not an argument for banning AI in the classroom, but rather an argument for taking it seriously.

But here’s the honest difficulty: When students use AI, they often can’t tell when they’re shortcutting their own thinking. A study published from late 2024 in the British Journal of Educational Technology found that students using ChatGPT improved their essay scores in the short term but showed no meaningful gains in knowledge. Moreover, they were prone to what the researchers called “metacognitive laziness,” meaning a dependence on the tool that undermined their ability to self-regulate and engage deeply in learning. This is a result of cognitive offloading.

Teaching discernment

At this point, I feel my role is shifting from neutral observer or co-learner to something more like a guide with a point of view. I know what rigorous thinking looks like in my discipline. I know the difference between a paper that has moved through genuine intellectual struggle and one that has been assembled. My job is to make that difference visible to students who may not yet have the experience to see it themselves.

So, yes, there are moments in my writing courses where I ask students to write without AI. Not as a purity test, although I could see it used that way, and not because I believe they’ll go on to spend their careers avoiding it, but because understanding what AI does to your thinking first requires knowing what your thinking can do without it.

This matters especially now as many college students I meet arrive already anxious, already performing, already optimizing for the grade rather than the learning. Many have spent years learning to produce the right answer rather than to wrestle with hard questions. Before they can develop discernment about any tool, they need something more foundational: a sense of their own thinking as worth trusting.

In practice, this looks like drafting with AI and without it, comparing versions, and being asked to justify choices out loud. It looks like noticing when the tool accelerates routine work and when it flattens complexity.

Like many faculty navigating this moment, I find myself in what Auburn University professors Christopher Basgier and Lydia Wilkes describe as an “unsettled middle,” neither fully embracing nor refusing the technology, but doing the uncomfortable work of engaging with it critically. My students, I’ve found, often end up in a version of that same uncertain space. Learning to sit with that uncertainty – to tolerate the slowness and mess of thinking things through rather than reaching for the frictionless answer – is where discernment begins.

If students are going to continue encountering these tools throughout their lives, then ignoring that reality does them no favors. My responsibility is to help them develop the judgment to decide when a shortcut is strategic and when it undermines their own thinking. That is pro-learning.

Kristi Girdharry 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. A writing professor’s new task in the age of AI: Teaching students when to struggle – https://theconversation.com/a-writing-professors-new-task-in-the-age-of-ai-teaching-students-when-to-struggle-276590

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jonathan Deutsch, Professor of Food and Hospitality Management, Drexel University

Springtime in Pennsylvania is peanut butter egg season. This year some consumers may taste the eggs a bit more critically and scrutinize the ingredients and label more carefully.

Reese’s, a Hershey brand, is known for combining chocolate and peanut butter in delicious and iconic ways. Reese’s products come in a variety of formats, called “line extensions.” These include everything from peanut butter chips for baking and chocolate peanut butter popcorn for snacking to limited-time offers for holidays – such as the popular Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs for Easter.

On Feb. 14, 2026, Brad Reese, grandson of the founder, issued an open letter criticizing the Hershey Company for introducing line extensions – in this case, mini hearts for Valentine’s Day, with the flavors familiar to Reese’s lovers but made with cheaper ingredients, such as “chocolate candy” and “peanut butter creme.”

Ingredients like these seem similar but do not meet the FDA standards of identity for milk chocolate and peanut butter, the key components of the original Reese’s cups. For example, the FDA standard for milk chocolate requires at least 10% chocolate liquor.

Hershey responded in a statement: “As we’ve grown and expanded the Reese’s product line, we make product recipe adjustments that allow us to make new shapes, sizes and innovations that Reese’s fans have come to love and ask for, while always protecting the essence of what makes Reese’s unique and special: the perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter.”

I am a certified research chef and food and hospitality professor in Philadelphia, where I founded the Drexel Food Lab, a culinary innovation and food product development lab. I am also a huge fan of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. When my older daughter was a toddler, learning her colors and shapes, I trained her to organize her trick-or-treat loot by separating the orange squares for dad.

As someone with decades of experience in product formulation, I am not surprised that the ingredients for some Reese’s products have changed over the years. One of my first jobs as an intern in corporate R&D was formulating cost reductions for existing products and later developing cost-effective line extensions building on the brand equity of the original product. What Hershey is doing with the Reese’s brand is Consumer Packaged Goods Marketing 101.

How food manufacturers deal with rising costs

Much has changed in the marketplace since Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were developed by H.B. Reese in 1928 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, about two hours northwest of Philadelphia.

Inflation, tariffs, labor costs, fuel costs, employee benefits, competition and the vulnerability of climate-threatened crops, such as cacao, vanilla and sugar – none of which are produced anywhere near Pennsylvania – have made the confectionery business increasingly challenging.

When faced with rising costs, food manufacturers have three options:

1. Shrink the product. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have gradually shrunk from 0.9 ounce in the 1980s to 0.75 ounce today. That’s a 17% reduction. This phenomenon has been dubbed “shrinkflation.”

2. Raise prices. There is certainly a market for premium peanut butter cups, but how much will a consumer pay for the Reese’s brand? $5? $10? I suspect most consumers expect a single serving to be a couple of bucks at most.

3. Lower costs. While the company can improve operational efficiencies, changing the formula to reduce or eliminate high-cost ingredients is a standard industry practice to keep prices consistent for consumers in the midst of a dynamic supply chain. This phenomenon has been dubbed “skimpflation” and is Brad Reese’s main complaint.

Reformulations are common in the food industry. In addition to prices rising in general, a supplier could go out of business or have a shortage. A regulatory change or shift in consumer sentiment might prohibit the use of an ingredient. Wars, tariffs or climate change can raise costs temporarily or permanently.

Reformulations can be done well

Sensory and food science tools that we teach in our Drexel culinary and food science programs help ensure little market disruption and a consumer mostly unaware of the changes.

For example, a consumer discrimination test that food product developers love is a called the triangle test. Two samples from the original formula and one sample from the new formula – or vice versa – are presented to the consumer. If the consumer can identify the different one, the product developer did a poor job in preserving the beloved brand through the reformulation. But if consumers can’t tell the difference, the reformulation may be able to move forward.

Sometimes product developers get it wrong in introducing a new formulation. Some of us are old enough to remember Crystal Pepsi, the McLean Deluxe burger or Doritos made with olestra. These products failed, respectively, due to lack of defined consumer benefit, misalignment with the brand, and bad press due to digestive side effects.

But most reformulations go unnoticed – the good work of food technologists who strive to keep food safe, affordable and delicious for consumers.

So, are these new Reese’s products inferior to the original? Maybe. Like with taste in art or wine, if it tastes good to you, it’s good. If not, send the company a note like Brad Reese did.

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

Jonathan Deutsch has previously consulted with The Hershey Company. The Drexel Food Lab has conducted multiple projects with The Hershey Company.

– ref. Controversy over Reese’s ingredients reveals standard food industry practices most consumers never notice – https://theconversation.com/controversy-over-reeses-ingredients-reveals-standard-food-industry-practices-most-consumers-never-notice-276808

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Benjamin F. Henwood, Professor of Social Policy and Health, University of Southern California

When homeless shelters allow people to stay with their dogs and other pets, more unhoused people become more willing to stay in a shelter.

That’s what my team at the University of Southern California’s Homelessness Policy Research Institute learned when we evaluated California’s Pet Assistance and Support Program.

California’s Department of Housing and Community Development established this pilot program in 2019. Its goals were straightforward: to make homeless shelters more accommodating to people with pets – mostly dogs – so that people living on the streets don’t have to choose between staying in shelters or abandoning their pets.

The program disbursed US$15.75 million between 2020 and 2024 to 37 organizations across the state. The funding allowed shelters to build kennels or other pet-friendly spaces, provide pet food and supplies, and offer basic veterinary care. It also covered the costs of staffing and maintaining insurance required to operate pet-friendly shelters.

Evaluating the program

We did this evaluation in collaboration with My Dog Is My Home, a nonprofit that supports pet-inclusive housing and services for the homeless, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

By all accounts, the program was a success.

We found that the program helped 4,407 people experiencing homelessness keep their pets while getting support. Many were able to enter shelters, and their animals received needed veterinary care. A total of 886 people ultimately moved into permanent housing with their pets – a higher success rate than the statewide average for homeless people in California.

Theoretically, this funding should have reduced the number of pet owners living on the streets. Yet since 2019, the year the program began, the number of homeless people in Los Angeles with dogs and other pets has increased.

I’ve seen this change firsthand.

Since 2017, I’ve led the USC research team that produces the annual homeless count estimates for Los Angeles. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires this exercise for any city seeking federal funding for homelessness services.

One of the questions my team asks when interviewing thousands of homeless people each year is whether they have any pets.

Before the pandemic, we generally found that roughly 1 in 8 people did. We also found that nearly half of homeless pet owners had been turned away from a homeless shelter because it couldn’t accommodate their animal.

Despite programs like California’s Pet Assistance and Support program, my research team has found that the share of people living on the streets of Los Angeles who say they have a pet increased to roughly 1 in 5 by 2025.

Need for more pet-friendly programs

We still don’t know why the share of homeless people with pets has gotten so much larger.

It could be that rising housing costs, which is the main driver of homelessness, is pushing more pet owners into homelessness. Or, perhaps more homeless are adopting pets to deal with their social isolation and loneliness, two common conditions for people with nowhere to go.

Either way, proposed cuts by the federal government to affordable housing and homeless services will only make matters worse.

The number of homeless people in Los Angeles has fallen by more than 4% since 2023 to just over 72,000 people in 2025. But based on my research findings, I would expect the number of people living on the city’s streets – with and without pets – to rise over time unless more affordable housing becomes available.

And growth in the homeless population may be hard to avoid without more efforts like California’s Pet Assistance and Support Program – on a larger scale than the pilot we studied.

Benjamin F. Henwood receives funding from National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Hilton Foundation, Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority, LA Care.

– ref. A pet-friendly homeless shelter pilot reduced the rate of homelessness among the people it helped in California – https://theconversation.com/a-pet-friendly-homeless-shelter-pilot-reduced-the-rate-of-homelessness-among-the-people-it-helped-in-california-276255

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jennifer Pollitt, Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Temple University

Four years ago, I started a class at Temple University titled, “Social Perspectives of Digital Pornography: The Other Sex Ed,” centered on porn literacy, or what young people learn – or don’t learn – from digital porn.

I wanted to create a space to examine these issues, not from the assumption that pornography is entirely good or entirely bad, but that avoiding the conversation altogether only does harm.

Teaching this semester-long course to college students has given me a unique window into the virtual spaces young people turn to not, only when they want to be turned on, but also when they want to learn about sex.

Only recently did AI porn start to crop up in our class discussions. And this semester marked the first time that “gooning” and “gooners” entered our class’s collective consciousness.

If you’re unfamiliar with gooning, you’re not alone. Until recently, so was I. Then I began noticing it written on Post-its in the elevator on the way to my office – “gooner forever,” “goon life” and “welcome to the goonverse.” Soon I started seeing the term on social platforms and elsewhere: in Reddit threads, on TikTok, in video titles uploaded to porn sites and in memes circulating on X.

Gooning is a form of prolonged masturbation. The goal is not orgasm but staying in a sustained state of arousal for an extended period of time. Self-proclaimed “gooners” may deliberately delay or avoid climax to experience what they describe as a “goon state” – a trancelike condition characterized by reduced self-awareness and a sense of time distortion.

It draws on familiar sex techniques such as edging – the practice of delayed orgasm – and prolonged arousal.

But unlike edging, gooning usually involves streaming online pornography across multiple screens and browsers for hours at a time; frenetically edited videos, which are often called porn music videos, or PVMs; and, in some cases, real-time interaction with other gooners through online platforms.

Gooning isn’t just about masturbating alone in your room. It’s a community that appears to be born out of the broader dynamics of digital life: abundant stimulation, parasocial connection and forms of intimacy that can feel safer and more controllable than face-to-face relationships.

Stimulation overload

The more I learned about gooning, the more the scale and intensity of the visual stimulation stood out to me.

Gooners, awash in algorithmically curated sexual content designed to maximize novelty and attention, often stream these rapid-cut porn clips on multiple screens. Music thumps in the background. There’s no plot.

In other words, this isn’t like finding some X-rated VHS tapes or a stack of Playboy magazines tucked away in your father’s closet.

Gooning has also morphed into an identifiable online subculture, replete with a shared language, rituals, memes and groups hosted on platforms such as Discord, Reddit and X. Members recommend pornography clips, circulate memes and tell inside jokes. They share tips for extending or intensifying porn-viewing sessions. They also trade screenshots, discuss favorite performers or genres, and post encouragement to other participants.

Some see gooning as a form of sexual exploration or experimentation. For others, it functions as a coping mechanism for loneliness, anxiety or emotional distress. And for others still, it’s a place for community, belonging and joy in reaching the “goon state.”

Sex repackaged for the digital age

While gooning may feel new, elements of gooning have long existed.

Edging and delayed orgasm have been studied for decades in sexology and sexuality studies; practitioners of tantric sex and members of fetish communities also seek to reach trancelike states; and porn enthusiasts – whether they perused cam sites or collected magazines, VHS tapes and DVDs – have long participated in porn marathons.

Gooning simply packages old sexual practices inside a radically new digital landscape, one defined by physical isolation, an abundance of images and videos, and connection mediated through a screen. Though there is a communal element to gooning among users, intimacy toward performers is often one-sided: Content flows toward the user, affirmation is algorithmic, and arousal is engineered, rather than negotiated.

But to many gooners, that’s the appeal.

Intimate relationships with real people can involve rejection, awkwardness, time and emotional labor. In the “goonverse,” on the other hand, desire is predictable, endlessly available and never says no.

Focus and fragmentation

It’s important to remember that not all prolonged masturbation is pathological, and gooning illustrates a familiar pattern in sexual subcultures: When pleasure is abundant and easily accessible, transgression becomes a way to make it meaningful again.

Sometimes, when an experience becomes routine, people often seek to intensify it. Similar dynamics appear outside of sexuality as well: extreme eating challenges, endurance drinking games or ultra-spicy food competitions transform ordinary pleasures like eating or drinking into tests of excess, risk or spectacle.

Millions of Americans view porn every day, typically in private, spending roughly 10 minutes per session perusing.

Gooners, on the other hand, can spend hours intensely focused on masturbating while deliberately delaying climax.

The over-the-top excess twinned with control may seem appealing in a world where smartphones offer a mindless, constant and banal source of stimulation. For gooners, the arousal could come as much from the boundary crossing as from the sexual imagery itself.

Immersion without vulnerability

My recent class discussion on gooning was one of the most lively of the semester.

Whereas many students commonly use “to goon” as a verb, meaning to excessively masturbate, they were less familiar with the intricacies and inner workings of goon subculture and the lives of the gooners themselves.

The more they learned, the more some of my students became dispirited by what seemed to be a dystopian and lonely form of pleasure seeking. Others, however, were enthusiastic participants in the “goonverse,” taking great joy and pleasure in this form of sexual exploration.

The most revealing aspect of gooning may not be what it says about porn, but what it says about intimacy in the digital age.

In the U.S., dating apps have turned romance into a swipe-based marketplace. Influencer culture encourages one-sided, parasocial bonds. People present curated versions of themselves on social media. Relationships, attention and arousal are increasingly mediated by screens and shaped by algorithms. These shifts may also be changing behavior. Surveys suggest that Gen Z is dating less frequently, having less sex and spending less time socializing with friends in person than previous generations did at the same age.

“Gooning” is unlikely to be the last new term that enters my classroom. But there’s some logic to its rise in a digital world characterized by endless content, battles for attention and fleeting relationships. It offers immersion without vulnerability, community without physical presence and arousal without negotiation.

Sex, as it often does, is simply where the culture shows its hand first.

Jennifer Pollitt is affiliated with Woodhull Freedom Foundation.

– ref. What ‘gooning’ reveals about intimacy in a world cordoned off by screens – https://theconversation.com/what-gooning-reveals-about-intimacy-in-a-world-cordoned-off-by-screens-273185

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Deldhy Nicolás Moya Sánchez, Psychiatrist and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

For decades, one of the greatest challenges to treating neurological disorders like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is that its symptoms often resemble those of several other conditions. Overlapping disorders are extremely common when it comes to neurological diagnoses.

A child who struggles to sit still, focus or complete tasks could have ADHD, anxiety, a learning disability or simply be reacting to stress at home. A teenager who seems emotionally volatile and impulsive might be showing early signs of a mood disorder, ADHD or trauma. An adult who constantly misses deadlines, forgets important obligations and feels chronically overwhelmed might be dealing with workplace burnout, a severe anxiety disorder or undiagnosed ADHD.

I am a practicing psychiatrist at the National Medical Center “20 de Noviembre” in Mexico City, and a professor of medicine at UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In my work, I frequently see cases that initially look like anxiety, but I often find that this issue is only the tip of the iceberg. Anxiety improves, and what emerges is undiagnosed ADHD.

The reverse can also be true: What looks like ADHD — difficulty focusing, restlessness, poor performance — sometimes turns out to be driven primarily by anxiety. However, in my practice, I most frequently see the opposite scenario. Young adults arrive seeking treatment for severe anxiety, but clinical evaluation often shows that their condition is rooted in executive functions – such as planning and problem-solving – that have been fragile since childhood. Patients in this situation have compensated for their undiagnosed ADHD for years through exhausting effort and the fear of failure.

Diagnosing untreated ADHD matters because in adults, this condition is associated with depression, anxiety, work difficulties, academic problems and financial stress.

Because these conditions are so tightly interwoven, it is not always possible to know which came first — and in many cases, both are genuinely present at the same time. Treating only what is visible may bring real but only partial relief, leaving the underlying driver unaddressed.

This is why evaluation by a clinician who can assess the full picture matters. When ADHD is properly identified and treated, secondary anxiety often resolves more completely than it ever did with therapy or medication alone. But the reverse is not reliably true: Treating anxiety does not correct the underlying attention issues that may be driving it. Identifying the right target – or targets – is what leads to lasting improvement. This comprehensive approach is especially important given the growing recognition that emotional dysregulation – such as intense, rapid mood shifts or an inability to manage one’s distress – is often a core, yet historically overlooked, symptom of undiagnosed ADHD.

Here’s why undiagnosed ADHD can hide behind anxiety, some signs that can help differentiate these two conditions, and why this diagnostic blind spot – treating the visible anxiety while missing the underlying ADHD – is so common.

How ADHD lurks

I had been seeing a patient in his late 20s for some time who suffered from anxiety when he came to an appointment convinced that he was finally emerging from a terrible year. He had stopped having panic attacks, was sleeping better and no longer lived intensely focused on his own body, waiting for the next wave of fear. After months of antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy, the crises seemed controlled.

But then something different emerged: constant difficulty concentrating, procrastination that left him stuck for hours, impulsive speech and a stubborn inner restlessness. These symptoms are often overshadowed when someone feels suffocated by anxiety and consumed by worries.

Anxiety and ADHD have many common symptoms, including restlessness, irritability, sleep difficulties and concentration problems. This overlap can lead to diagnostic errors and treatments that don’t address the root cause.

During childhood, many ADHD symptoms are interpreted as personality traits. A child may be labeled as distracted, inconsistent, impulsive or restless. Over time, these people learn to compensate through excessive effort, perfectionism or constant self-monitoring – strategies that raise baseline stress and may trigger anxiety years later.

When the brain leaves survival mode

Anxiety is often the first way the body expresses overload. When this threat response eases, previously masked struggles with planning, organization, sustained attention and time management surface.

Several studies show a strong association between ADHD traits, anxiety and depression. In the United Kingdom, recent research found that ADHD traits predict emotional problems more strongly than traits related to the autism spectrum.

Systematic reviews indicate that 25% to 50% of adults with ADHD experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Major depressive disorder is also more common among this group than in the general population. For many people, anxiety is the consequence of years trying to function with an impaired executive system, the part of the brain that manages planning, organization and impulse control.

Why ADHD can elude early detection

It can be easy for parents, teachers or co-workers to misinterpret ADHD symptoms as character traits. Impulsivity can be seen as bad temper, disorganization as laziness, and difficulty maintaining attention as lack of interest. In adults, these difficulties are often interpreted as personal flaws rather than neuropsychiatric disorders.

ADHD rarely causes physical symptoms, but anxiety does. Heart palpitations, intense fear or insomnia drive people to seek care, while attention symptoms are less recognized.

ADHD is strongly genetic, with inheritance rates estimated at 70% to 80%. This genetic component also means that closely related relatives have a higher risk of emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression. When several family members share similar traits, these attributes often are considered part of the family personality.

Primary anxiety versus anxiety due to ADHD

The key question in clinical practice is this: What remains when the anxiety decreases?

If emotional distress diminishes but the following symptoms persist, then the pattern aligns more with adult ADHD:

– prolonged procrastination

– difficulty initiating tasks requiring mental effort

– frequently forgetting instructions or appointments

– constant inner restlessness

– daily disorganization

– easy distraction by minimal stimuli

A formal diagnosis, made by a trained health professional, requires an assessment of symptoms that have been present since childhood and a determination that the patient is impaired in more than one life area. Caregivers will rule out other medical or psychiatric causes, using validated tools such as structured interviews and specific scales.

Neurobiological studies have shown that people with ADHD have identifiable differences in several brain regions, including their connections in the deep neural tissue known as white matter and the reward circuitry of the brain. They also have imbalances in dopamine and norepinephrine — brain chemicals that regulate attention, motivation and impulse control. These differences can make it harder for people to initiate tasks or sustain efforts.

The risk of treating only what is visible

Antidepressants and therapy can reduce emotional distress and overlapping symptoms such as restlessness or sleep disruption, but they do not modify the attention difficulties that create daily chaos – affecting relationships, academic performance and work functioning. If this root is not addressed, the patient improves partially but continues living in disorganization, leading to new cycles of distress.

When I explain how anxiety can mask ADHD to patients, their most common reaction is a mix of relief and frustration. They finally understand their emotional history, but see that they spent years interpreting their symptoms and struggles as flaws.

Studies show that adults with anxiety and untreated ADHD suffer greater functional impairment and more frequent relapses, meaning their severe anxiety or depressive episodes keep returning despite therapy or medication. They live under a burden of self-reproach that harms their self-esteem. This cycle can repeat for years: emotional improvement, relapse and seeking treatment again, without identifying the main problem.

The good news is that once ADHD is diagnosed, it is treatable. Robust evidence shows that treatment for ADHD reduces impulsivity and improves sustained attention and daily functioning at all ages.

Regulating dopamine and norepinephrine enables patients to initiate tasks and sustain their efforts until the work is completed. When this happens, secondary anxiety often decreases more deeply and stably because people no longer have to work twice as hard just to keep up. This also improves their relationships at home, school and work.

Identifying hidden ADHD does not erase the past, but it changes the future. When people understand the root cause of their anxiety and gain tools to manage it, they can move from surviving to living a more functional life.

Deldhy Nicolás Moya Sánchez 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. Anxiety and ADHD can overlap – here’s how to untangle these widespread mental health disorders – https://theconversation.com/anxiety-and-adhd-can-overlap-heres-how-to-untangle-these-widespread-mental-health-disorders-271124

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Daniel M. Stuart, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of South Carolina

Silent retreats have become increasingly common in the United States in recent years.

To calm down and reset their nervous systems, people relinquish their phones and reading materials and commit to speaking at a bare minimum to learn practices of self-awareness.

Silent meditation and silent prayer have shaped spiritual lives within a variety of religious traditions for thousands of years. Today, however, those practices are often being offered in secular settings.

One particular form of meditative silence, the 10-day mindfulness retreat, has had an outsized impact. Research I have carried out over the past two decades sheds light on the role of the Burmese meditation master Sayagyi U Ba Khin in popularizing mindfulness meditation. The term “sayagyi” means “respected teacher.”

Ba Khin was one of a small number of prominent Buddhist lay meditation teachers in late colonial and early postcolonial Burma. His silent, 10-day retreat became a model for a wide range of intensive meditation traditions. Three of Ba Khin’s students were instrumental in bringing his teaching to the United States.

The emergence of mass meditation

Mindfulness meditation practices can be traced to ancient India. The clearest historical evidence of such practices comes from the teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and his contemporaries.

Most of these practitioners were monastics or ascetics. Historical questions remain, however, regarding whether such practices were primarily reserved for monastics or widely practiced among laypeople.

The monk and scholar Bhikkhu Anālayo argues that the oldest historical sources provide evidence for widespread lay meditation practice beginning in the fifth century B.C.E. Other scholars suggest that laypeople had access only to teachings on devotional practices, such as reflections on the qualities of the Buddha, that would encourage offerings and lay support for the monastic community.

A striking development in the mid-20th century was the emergence of mass Buddhist meditation movements in Southeast Asia. Countries such as Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka promoted meditation among lay people to build national identities in the face of colonialism.

In post-colonial Burma – Myanmar’s name until 1989 – being an ideal citizen meant being an ideal Buddhist; meditation was seen as a visible expression embodying that ideal. With the globalization of such meditation practices in the latter half of the 20th century, such meditation practices expanded beyond the borders of these countries.

The Burmese silent retreat

Following Burma’s independence in 1948, Ba Khin became its first accountant general – a role in which he developed a close relationship with the first prime minister, U Nu.

With the blessing of U Nu, Ba Khin began teaching meditation to his employees. At the time, many of his students were neither Burmese nor Buddhist; they were civil servants originally working for the colonial government.

The context of teaching was therefore both lay-oriented – taking place in work contexts – and religiously pluralistic, involving Buddhists and non-Buddhists.

Ba Khin had learned meditation from Maung Po Thet, who was born in colonial Burma in 1873. A farmer by profession, Thet learned meditation from teachers who believed that lay people, and not just monks, should practice meditation.

To make practice accessible, Maung Po Thet introduced a seven-day retreat for lay people. At the time, meditation typically involved longer periods of retreat.

Following his teacher’s approach, Ba Khin started teaching 10-day retreats in 1952. He later authorized students to carry his teaching abroad – to North America, Europe, Australia and India.

Globalization of the silent retreat

The most famous of these students was S.N. Goenka. Born in colonial Burma in 1924, Goenka was a wealthy businessman and leader of the Hindu community in Rangoon.

He initially sought out Ba Khin for relief from severe migraine headaches; Ba Khin was known as a healer. Despite reservations about Buddhist practice, Goenka enrolled in a 10-day retreat after experiencing relief from his headaches in an initial encounter with Ba Khin.

The experience proved transformative.

From 1969 until his death in 2013, Goenka devoted his life to spreading Ba Khin’s teachings globally while retaining his Hindu identity. Like his teacher, and his teacher’s teacher, Goenka taught practices of meditation that focused on the cultivation of continuous concentration on a single object of focus for sustained periods of time.

This was done through the observation of the breath, leading to a comprehensive awareness of bodily sensations in all postures and at all times when not sleeping.

Along with his wife, Ilaichidevi Goenka, he taught hundreds of 10-day retreats and trained assistants to facilitate retreats at roughly 200 meditation centers worldwide.

Millions have participated in these retreats, and many influential meditation teachers in India, Europe, Australia and North America first encountered meditation under Goenka’s guidance.

Roots of techno-mindfulness

One particularly consequential aspect of Goenka’s work was his use of audio and video recordings, beginning in the 1980s. In the face of increased demand for his courses, Goenka recorded teachings and instructions and established a highly structured retreat format.

This innovation allowed retreats to be facilitated worldwide in his absence, dramatically accelerating the global spread of the practice and foreshadowing later developments, such as meditation apps.

Goenka was also skilled at using the language of universalism to secularize Buddhist meditation, presenting himself as a committed non-Buddhist who nevertheless accessed its benefits.

This approach echoed that of Ba Khin, who spoke of teaching meditation without interfering in his students’ personal faith. Such rhetorical tactics proved crucial in making meditation accessible to global audiences.

Two lesser-known figures

Two other students of Ba Khin, rarely mentioned in historical accounts, also catalyzed the study of mindfulness in the U.S.: aerospace engineer Robert H. Hover and Leon E. Wright, a Black Christian theologian.

Robert H. Hover played a crucial role in initiating the scientific study of mindfulness and in the founding of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, one of the first U.S. centers dedicated to Southeast Asian Buddhist meditation.

Hover’s work helped bring mindfulness into mainstream medicine and society. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School to help patients cope with chronic pain and stress, credits Hover as one of his primary teachers.

From the 1970s through the ’80s, Hover taught 10-day silent retreats across the U.S., Europe, India and Australia, helping to build communities of meditators through newsletters and informal networks.

Leon E. Wright
began teaching Ba Khin’s meditation techniques in the U.S. in the late 1950s, well before any of Ba Khin’s other students.

Wright’s work remained largely unknown because he was working primarily in the Black community. Until quite recently, very little attention has been paid to the role of Black practitioners in the modern history of Buddhism. Over the course of the past decade, however, scholars have begun to fill that gap.

Wright taught Ba Khin’s techniques for decades at Howard University and organized silent retreats for the broader public. He was also a spiritual healer with interests in extrasensory perception and psychic experience.

His universalist teachings influenced generations of Black theologians. The Covenant Christian Community, a church in the Washington, D.C., area, continues to practice his meditation teachings in silence as well as gather for communal rituals on Sundays.

When people come to silent retreats today, they rarely learn about the networks and the individuals who made the teachings they receive possible to access, or whose work is seen and which voices may have been silenced.

An awareness of this history enriches the silence of a silent retreat.

Daniel M. Stuart 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. The long history of silent meditation retreats and the individuals who helped shape them – https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-silent-meditation-retreats-and-the-individuals-who-helped-shape-them-272034