Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Md S Hossain, Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington

Globally, more than 400 million tons of plastic are produced each year, and less than 10% is recycled. Much of the rest ends up burned, buried or drifting through waterways, a problem that’s only getting worse.

As a civil engineer, I started asking a simple question: Instead of throwing used plastic away, what if we could build something useful with it?

That question led to a technology that mixes small amounts of recycled plastic with asphalt – the black, sticky material used to make roads and parking lots. The result is a stronger road that lasts longer and keeps some used plastic out of the environment.

You can see these roads on my university’s campus at the University of Texas at Arlington, where my team has paved test sections in parking lots. Perhaps more importantly for testing this technology at scale, we have constructed a one-mile section of plastic-infused road in Rockwall, Texas, a city near Dallas. We’ve gotten interest from more cities in and outside Texas as well.

My goal is to take one problem – plastic pollution – and use it to fix another: deteriorating roads.

Where the idea came from

I grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Bangladesh, near a large dump site. As a child, I noticed that people living closest to the piles of waste were often sick, while those farther away were healthier.

At the time, I didn’t know the science behind it – I just saw neighbors having to choose between buying medicine and buying dinner. That memory left a long-lasting impact on me.

Years later, when I became an engineer, I learned that poor waste management doesn’t just harm the environment – it harms people. That realization became the foundation of my work.

How plastic roads work

Traditional asphalt is made from a mix of stones, sand and a petroleum-based binder called bitumen, which holds everything together. In my research team’s process, we replace a small part of that bitumen – about 8% to 10% – with melted plastic from everyday items, such single-use plastic bags and plastic bottles. For our plastic road construction project near Dallas, we used 4.5 tons of plastic waste for nearly a mile of a one-lane road.

We first clean the plastic, then shred it into small flakes. Finally, we mix it into the asphalt at high temperatures. These steps ensure that it melts completely and bonds tightly, leaving no loose plastic behind.

This process is like adding rebar to concrete: The plastic adds flexibility and strength. Roads with this mix can better handle extreme temperatures and heavy traffic. In hot places, that means fewer cracks and potholes.

During an extreme heat wave in April 2024, plastic road constructed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, showed no visible signs of distress or cracks, whereas many roads in Bangladesh had visible cracks and distress during the same period.

It also reduces the demand for new petroleum-based materials, since we’re reusing recycled plastic that already exists. Plastic road replaces bitumen, an already petroleum-based ingredient in the road, with waste.

The plastic waste problem

Plastic waste has grown dramatically over the past several decades. In the U.S., plastic waste has increased every year since the 1960s, with the steepest rise between 1980 and 2000.

In 2018 alone, landfills received nearly 27 million tons of plastic, making up 18.5% of all municipal solid waste nationwide. That’s a staggering amount of material sitting unused.

Plastic-infused asphalt can also save money. Because it lasts longer and resists cracking, cities may spend less on repairs and maintenance. In Rockwall, for example, early estimates suggest these roads could extend the pavement’s life by several years.

Under extreme heat, bitumen can melt. During a performance evaluation of a plastic road test section in Bangladesh, we found that adding plastic to the mix increases the road’s heat resistance. These results are especially helpful for states like Texas that deal with extreme heat over the summer. For our sites in UTA’s parking lot and in Rockwall, the pavement has so far stayed intact on days when temperatures surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Overcoming challenges

But there are still challenges. Scaling up production requires a consistent supply of clean, sorted plastic, which not all cities have the infrastructure to provide. Some types of plastic can’t be safely melted or may release harmful fumes if not processed correctly. We’re studying these issues closely to make sure the process is safe.

There are also questions about what happens when plastic roads reach the end of their life. Could they release microplastics – tiny plastic fragments – as they wear down? Early research suggests the risk is low because the plastic is bound within the asphalt, but we’re continuing to monitor it.

My own lab studies show very minimal microplastic release, and a 2024 study found that the release of microplastics from recycled plastic-asphalt was estimated to be a thousand times less than the release of rubber particles from worn tires.

Eventually, we may need to come up with alternative materials for these roads if plastic waste begins to decline. But in the meantime, this type of waste is still readily available.

Building toward a sustainable future

Our next steps involve expanding this technology to more regions, testing different types of plastic blends and ensuring that every road built this way is durable, affordable and environmentally safe.

Right now, we are working on testing and implementing plastic roads in cities beyond Texas and even in other countries. We also have filed for a patent for the technology and in the long term plan to eventually commercialize it.

When I see plastic roads being built in Bangladesh – sometimes not far from where I grew up – I think back to the people who lived near those dump sites. This work isn’t just about roads or recycling. It’s about dignity and keeping at least some waste away from the places where people live.

Md S Hossain is listed under a patent filed for plastic-infused asphalt.

– ref. Infusing asphalt with plastic could help roads last longer and resist cracking under heat – https://theconversation.com/infusing-asphalt-with-plastic-could-help-roads-last-longer-and-resist-cracking-under-heat-264156

Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Joffe, Associate Professor of Physics, Kennesaw State University

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.

---

Can we generate a way to interact with dark matter with current technology? – Leonardo S., age 13, Guanajuato, Mexico

---

That’s a great question. It’s one of the most difficult and fascinating problems right now in both astronomy and physics, because while scientists know that the elusive substance called dark matter makes up the majority of all matter in the universe, we’ve never actually observed it directly. Dark matter is so difficult to interact with because it’s “dark,” which means it doesn’t interact directly with light in any way.

I’m a physicist, and scientists like me observe the world around us mainly by looking for signals from different wavelengths of light. So no matter what type of technology scientists use, they run into the same issue in the hunt for dark matter.

It’s not completely impossible to interact with dark matter, though, because it can interact with ordinary matter in other ways that don’t involve light. But those interactions are generally very weak. What we call dark matter is really anything that we can see only through these weaker interactions, especially gravity.

How we know dark matter exists

One way that dark matter can interact with ordinary matter is through gravity. In fact, gravity is the main reason scientists even think dark matter exists at all.

For decades, scientists have been observing how galaxies spin and move throughout the universe. Gravity acts on stars and galaxies, in the same way it keeps you from floating off into space. Heavier objects have a stronger gravitational pull. At these huge scales, researchers have spotted some unexpected quirks that gravity alone can’t explain.

For example, almost 100 years ago, a Swiss astronomer named Fritz Zwicky studied a cluster of galaxies called the Coma Cluster. He noticed the galaxies inside it were moving very fast, so much so that they should have flown apart many millions of years ago.

The only way the cluster could have stayed together for so long is if there was much more matter holding it together with gravity than the telescope could see. This extra matter necessary to hold the galaxies together became known as dark matter.

About 40 years after Zwicky, an American astronomer named Vera Rubin looked at the individual stars moving around the centers of spiral galaxies as they rotated. She saw that the stars at the outside edges of the spiral were moving much faster than you’d expect if only the gravity from the stars you could see was keeping them from flying off into intergalactic space.

Just as with the galaxies moving around the cluster, the motion of the stars around the edges of the galaxies could be best explained if there was much more matter in the galaxies than what we could see.

More recently, scientists have combined optical telescopes that observe visible light with X-ray telescopes. Optical telescopes can take pictures of galaxies as they move and rotate. Sometimes, galaxies in these images are distorted or magnified by gravity coming from large masses in front of them. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing, which is when the gravity around a very heavy object is so strong that it bends the light passing by it, acting like a lens.

X-ray telescopes, on the other hand, can see the clusters of hot gases that surround galaxies. By combining these two telescopes, astronomers can see galaxies as well as the gases surrounding them – all the observable matter. Then, they can compare these images with the optical results. If there’s more gravitational lensing seen than what could be caused by the gas, there must be more mass hiding somewhere and causing the lensing.

How we might be able to see dark matter

Unfortunately, all this tells astronomers only that dark matter must be there, not what it really is. The evidence for dark matter is all based on how it interacts with gravity at very large scales. It’s still “dark” to scientists in the sense that it hasn’t interacted directly with any measurement devices.

The good news is that light and gravity aren’t the only forces in the universe. A force called the weak force might be able to interact directly with dark matter and give scientists a direct signal to observe. Most of the ideas about what the dark matter might be include the possibility of it interacting through the weak force, converting energy into signals that are visible.

The weak force is not observable at normal scales of distance. But for objects the size of an atom’s nucleus or smaller, it can change one type of subatomic particle into another. The weak force can also transfer energy and momentum at very short distances – this is the main effect scientists hope to observe with dark matter. These processes might be extremely rare, but in theory they should be possible to see.

Most experiments looking to see dark matter directly are searching for signals of rare weak interactions in an underground detector, or for gamma rays that can be seen in a special gamma-ray telescope.

In either case, a signal from dark matter would likely be very faint, resulting from an interaction that can’t be explained any other way, or a signal that doesn’t seem to have any other possible source. Even if the effect is faint, it might still be possible to observe, and any such signal would be an exciting step forward in being able to see the dark matter more directly.

In the end, it may be a combination of signals from experiments deep underground, in particle colliders, and different types of telescopes that finally lets scientists see dark matter more directly. Whichever technology ends up being successful, hopefully sometime soon the matter that makes up our universe will be a little less dark.

---

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.

David Joffe receives funding from NASA through a grant from the Georgia Space Grant Consortium.

– ref. How do scientists hunt for dark matter? A physicist explains why the mysterious substance is so hard to find – https://theconversation.com/how-do-scientists-hunt-for-dark-matter-a-physicist-explains-why-the-mysterious-substance-is-so-hard-to-find-269876

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charles Edward Gehrke, Deputy Division Director of Wargame Design and Adjudication, US Naval War College

In the first weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a strange pattern emerged in Western media coverage. Headlines oscillated between confidence and confusion. Kyiv would fall within days, one story would claim, then another would argue that Ukraine was winning. Russian forces were described as incompetent, then as a terrifying existential threat to NATO.

Analysts spoke with certainty about strategy, morale and endgames, but often reversed themselves within weeks. To many news consumers, this felt like bias – either pro-Ukraine framing or anti-Russia narratives. Some commentators accused Western media outlets of cheerleading or propaganda.

But I’d argue that something more subtle was happening. The problem was not that journalists were biased. It was that journalism could not keep pace with the war’s informational structure. What looked like ideological bias was, more often, temporal lag.

I serve in the Navy as a war gamer. The most critical part of my job is identifying institutional failures. Trust is one of the most critical and, in this sense, the media is losing ground.

The gap between what people experience in real time and what journalism can responsibly publish has widened. This gap is partly where trust erodes. Social media collapses the distance between event, exposure and interpretation. Claims circulate before journalists can evaluate them.

This matters in my world because the modern battlefield is not just physical. Drone footage circulates instantly. Social media channels release claims in real time. Intelligence leaks surface before diplomats can respond.

These dynamics also matter for the public at large, which encounters fragments of reality, often through social media, long before any institution can responsibly absorb and respond to them.

Journalism, by contrast, is built for a slower world.

Slow journalism

At the core of their work, journalists observe events, filter signal from noise, and translate complexity into narrative. Their professional norms – editorial gatekeeping, standards for sourcing, verification of facts – are not bureaucratic relics. They are the mechanisms that produce coherence rather than chaos.

But these mechanisms evolved when information arrived more slowly and events unfolded sequentially. Verification could reasonably precede publication. Under those conditions, journalism excelled as a trusted intermediary between raw events and public understanding.

These conditions no longer exist.

Information now arrives continuously, often without clear provenance. Social media platforms amplify fragments of reality in real time, while verification remains necessarily slow. The key constraint is no longer access; it is tempo.

Granted, reporters often present accounts as events are occurring, whether on live broadcasts or through their own social media posts. Still, in this environment, journalism’s traditional strengths become sources of lag.

Caution delays response. Narrative coherence hardens fast. Corrections then feel like reversals rather than refinements.

Covering real-time events

The war in Ukraine has made this failure mode unusually visible. Modern warfare generates data faster than any institution can metabolize. Battlefield video and real-time casualty claims flood the system continuously.

For their part, journalists are forced to operate from an impossible position: expected to interpret events at the same speed they are livestreamed. And so journalists are forced sometimes to improvise.

Early coverage of the war leaned on simplified frames, including Russian incompetence, imminent victory and decisive turning points. They provided provisional stories generated to satisfy intense public demand for clarity.

As the war evolved, however, those stories collapsed.

This did not mean the original reporting was malicious. It meant the narrative update cycle lagged behind the underlying reality. What analysts experienced as iterative learning, audiences experienced as contradiction.

The acceleration trap

This forces journalism into a reactive posture. Verification trails amplification, meaning accurate reports often arrive after the audience has already formed a first impression.

This inverts journalism’s historical role. Audiences encounter raw claims first and journalism second. When the two diverge, journalism appears disconnected from reality as people experienced it.

Over time, this produces a structural shift in trust. Journalism is no longer perceived as the primary interpreter of events, but as one voice among many, arriving late. Speed becomes a proxy for relevance. Interpretation without immediacy is discounted.

Although partisan bias certainly exists, it is insufficient to explain the systemic incoherence Americans are witnessing.

Can journalism adapt?

Institutions optimized for one tempo rarely adapt cleanly to another. Journalism is now confronting the risk that its interpretive cycle no longer matches the speed of the world it is trying to explain.

Its future credibility will depend less on accusations of bias or even error than the question of whether it can reconcile rigor with speed, perhaps by trading the illusion of early certainty for the transparency of real-time doubt.

If it cannot, trust will continue to drain. An institution that evolved to help society see is falling behind what society is already watching.

The opinions and views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.

Charles Edward Gehrke 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. Journalism may be too slow to remain credible once events are filtered through social media – https://theconversation.com/journalism-may-be-too-slow-to-remain-credible-once-events-are-filtered-through-social-media-273748

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kate Price, Associate Research Scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College

The January 2026 release of additional files related to the Justice Department’s investigation of convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell has brought renewed attention to the late financier’s connections to the world’s rich and powerful.

However, the failure to redact identifying victim information and explicit photos has also brought unwanted attention to survivors. The lack of consideration for their welfare illustrates how legal proceedings can add to child sex trafficking victims’ existing trauma and burden instead of offering a stable path forward.

Some states have passed laws in recent years to protect child victims of sex trafficking. But at the same time, most states have passed laws that allow those same children to be arrested or prosecuted for prostitution. It’s a tug of war between advocates, law enforcement and policymakers to determine the best approach for keeping vulnerable children safe from pimps, predators and dangerous family members.

Often these intentions to “keep kids safe” end up harming the very children the laws are supposed to protect. This is done by identifying them as criminals and not victims.

As a sociologist and scholar who researches the commercial sexual exploitation of children, I believe Americans have to look at the many different ways states treat sexually exploited minors to fully understand this issue and the harm that is being done.

Retraumatizing victims

When approved in 2000, the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act established that children under 18 who experience commercial sexual exploitation are sex trafficking victims.

Criminally charging a child with prostitution, as most states allow, asserts they are willfully participating in the commercial sex trade, while identifying a minor as a sex trafficking victim recognizes they are not in this situation by choice.

Some states require minors to prove a third party forced, deceived or coerced them into prostitution to be considered a child sex trafficking victim. Their innocence, despite their age, is not automatically assumed. This approach risks retraumatizing victims by labeling and stigmatizing them as criminal, as voluntary participants in the commercial sex trade.

Examining these state statutes is important because these minors are more likely to interact with local law enforcement than federal agents. That’s because in the U.S. federalist system, states have more power than the national government to set rules regarding crime.

Arresting and prosecuting minors for prostitution

As of 2025, 15 states do not arrest and prosecute children for prostitution, while seven states allow a minor to be arrested but not prosecuted for this charge, according to my unpublished research. As a result, sexually exploited minors can be criminalized in 35 states for their maltreatment because they can be charged or prosecuted for prostitution.

These laws determine how courts identify commercially sexually exploited minors, as victims or criminals.

Safe harbor laws have been adopted by 31 states as a legal strategy to divert sex trafficked minors from the criminal legal system. These measures connect them to specialized services, including trauma-informed health care and safe housing. But safe harbor statutes do not guarantee that children will be protected from arrest or prosecution for prostitution.

For example, New York’s 2008 safe harbor law requires a child charged with prostitution to admit they participated in this crime. The child also has to explain why they shouldn’t be held liable for the charge.

Another common strategy adopted by some states, including Rhode Island, requires a minor to fulfill a specific “child sex trafficking victim” definition – such as proving force, fraud or coercion by a third party – to avoid being criminalized for prostitution. Yet mandating sexually exploited minors to meet such requirements places the burden of proof on the child.

Conversely, Massachusetts’ safe harbor law does not afford any protections to minors, allowing a child to be arrested and prosecuted for prostitution. State and local police collaborate with child protective services and are trained not to arrest sexually exploited minors. But some officials argue law enforcement needs the threat of criminal charges to pressure minors they see as “noncompliant” to accept services or leave trafficking situations.

This approach blurs the line between criminal legal mechanisms and social work. It positions police as “helpers” who expect trafficked youth to accept support or risk criminal punishment.

In sum, unlike federal law, which recognizes all sexually exploited minors as victims, some state authorities present minors with a choice: comply with law enforcement or prove their innocence.

The adultification of child victims

These demands that shift legal burdens to sexually exploited minors signal that law enforcement and legislators expect them to have the capacity to make mature and rational choices. Yet, neuroscience research indicates juveniles don’t have the same decision-making capacity as adults until their early to mid-20s.

Further, sexually exploited minors with trauma may appear as uncooperative in stressful situations. Those include being detained or arrested for prostitution.

By blaming sex trafficked minors for “making bad choices,” the criminal legal system treats commercial sexual exploitation victims as complicit. And this may lead to prostitution charges instead of support. Furthermore, focusing on a child’s “choices” does not address the financial, familial and traumatic adversities that make victims vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation in the first place.

Commercial sexual exploitation risk factors include complex post-traumatic stress disorder, low socioeconomic status, limited educational access and child sexual abuse prior to this exploitation. That includes exploitation from fraught family living situations where a parent, relative or caregiver sexually exploits a child.

Racial inequality in prostitution charges

Similarly, racial bias has deeply influenced trafficking legislation.

In 1910, Congress passed The Mann Act, also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act. This measure framed commercial sexual exploitation as a problem affecting only white women and girls, erasing the exploitation of people of color.

This pattern continues today. Black and brown children in the U.S. are more likely to be arrested and detained for prostitution than all other racial groups. Children who live in states with higher levels of structural economic inequality, which affects children of color at higher rates that white children, are at higher risk of being arrested and prosecuted for prostitution.

My research with Keith Bentele indicates that states with higher levels of structural economic inequality are less likely to adopt legislation protecting children from arrest and prosecution for prostitution.

Increasing compassion for victims

Without addressing these structural inequalities and the lack of a social safety net, sex trafficked children, particularly children of color and LGBTQ+ youth, are at risk of facing further marginalization and criminalization for prostitution.

One state has risen above the rest in recognizing and addressing these systemic barriers. Minnesota’s “No Wrong Door” framework utilizes a public health approach and is regarded as the gold standard of state-level commercial sexual exploitation legislation.

Protecting youth up to age 24 from prostitution charges, Minnesota offers housing and medical services to victims instead of criminal punishment. It also coordinates trauma-informed training for professionals, such as police and social workers.

An evaluation of this model indicates that it has successfully increased compassion for youth victims in the community, particularly among law enforcement.

Mallika Sunder, a student at Wellesley College and intern in its Wellesley Centers for Women, co-authored this article.

Kate Price does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How the law can add to child sex trafficking victims’ existing trauma – https://theconversation.com/how-the-law-can-add-to-child-sex-trafficking-victims-existing-trauma-271922

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Joel Lisonbee, Senior Associate Scientist, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

Cattle auctions aren’t often all-night affairs. But in Texas Lake Country in June 2022, ranchers facing dwindling water supplies and dried out pastures amid a worsening drought sold off more than 4,000 animals in an auction that lasted nearly 24 hours – about 200 cows an hour.

It was the height of a drought that has gripped the Southern Plains for the past six years – a drought that is still holding on in much of the region in 2026.

The drought cost the agriculture industry across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas an estimated US$23.6 billion in lost crops, higher feed costs and selling off cattle from 2020 through 2024 alone. As rangeland dried out, it also fueled devastating wildfires.

Historically, droughts of this magnitude happen in the Southern Plains about once a decade, but the severe droughts of this century have been lasting longer, leaving water supplies, native rangelands and farms with little time to recover before the next one hits.

Many cattle producers and rangelands were still recovering from a severe 2010-2015 drought when a flash drought hit western Texas in spring 2020, marking the beginning of the current multibillion-dollar, multiyear and multistate drought. Ample spring rainfall in 2025 and severe flooding in central Texas that year weren’t enough to end the drought, and a powerful winter storm in late January 2026 missed the driest parts of the region.

In a recent study with colleagues at the Southern Regional Climate Center and the National Integrated Drought Information System, we assessed the causes and damage from the ongoing drought in the Southern Plains.

We found three key reasons for the enduring drought and its damage: rising temperatures and a La Niña climate pattern; water supply shortages; and lingering economic impacts from the previous drought.

Weather and climate helped drive the drought

The Southern Plains is known to be a hot spot for rapid drought development, and the ongoing drought that started in 2020 is no exception.

Documented “flash droughts” – defined as periods of rapid drought onset or intensification of existing droughts – occurred at least five times in the region from 2020 to 2025. As global temperatures rise and climates warm, research warns that the frequency and severity of flash drought events will increase.

For the southern part of the Southern Plains, winter precipitation is closely linked to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern that affects weather around the world. Five of the past six years exhibited a La Niña pattern, which typically means the region sees winters that are warmer and drier than normal.

La Niña was likely the primary driver – although not the only driver – of the drought for Texas and southwest Oklahoma, and one of the reasons drought conditions have continued into 2026.

The Southern Plains have a long history with severe droughts. The Dust Bowl of the early 1930s may be the best-known example. But a history with drought doesn’t make it any easier to manage when crops and water supplies dry up.

Deeply rooted water shortages

The heat and dryness since 2020 have left many of the region’s rivers, reservoirs and even groundwater reserves well below average.

San Antonio’s reservoirs all reached record-low levels in 2024 and 2025, as did the Edwards Aquifer, which provides water for roughly 2.5 million people. They were still low as 2026 began. Surface water and groundwater resources across central and western Texas have been depleted to the point that even a few big storms can’t replenish them.

A few major rivers flow into the Southern Plains from other drought-affected regions. Consider the Rio Grande, which begins in Colorado and winds through New Mexico and along Texas’ southern border: Not only has the Lower Rio Grande valley in southern Texas missed out on needed precipitation this winter, so did the Rio Grande headwaters in southern Colorado.

Colorado is facing a snow drought in winter 2026, as is much of the western U.S. If it continues, there will be less snowmelt come summer to feed rivers, such as the Rio Grande, or fill reservoirs. In early February, the Elephant Butte, Amistad and Falcon reservoirs, along the Rio Grande, were only 11%, 34%, and 20% full, respectively.

Lingering economic impacts

Like water supplies, the economy doesn’t just recover when the rains return.

One of the reasons the current drought has been so costly is that parts of the region had not fully recovered from the 2010-2015 drought when the latest one began in 2020. With only a five-year break between droughts, the landscape behaved like someone with an already weakened immune system who caught a cold.

During the 2010-2015 drought, cattle producers in Texas sold off about 20% of the statewide herd as water became scarce and rangeland dried up. Rebuilding a herd after a drought is a slow process. Pasture recovery can take a year or more, and a newborn heifer will take two years to mature and produce her own first calf.

Cattle herds had still not returned to pre-2010 levels when the 2022 drought peak forced another mass sell-off. From 2020 through 2024, Texas’s herd size declined from 13.1 million to 12 million; Oklahoma’s declined from 5.3 million to 4.7 million; and Kansas’ declined from 6.5 million to 6.15 million.

Looking beyond livestock, a large percentage of the Southern Plains’ crops failed in 2022, the peak year of the drought. In Texas, 25% of the corn crop was planted but never harvested, and 45% of the soybean crop was similarly abandoned. A normal season would have yielded a $2.4 billion cotton crop in Texas, but 74% of that crop was abandoned, slashing its value to roughly $640 million.

Ending the Southern Plains drought

Is the end in sight? With La Niña fading in early 2026 and its opposite, El Niño, potentially on the horizon, there’s a chance for wetter conditions that could reduce the drought in the fall and winter months of 2026.

But the Southern Plains still have to get through spring and summer first. Ending a drought like this requires consistent precipitation over several months, and drought conditions are likely to get worse before they get better.

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. Sixth year of drought in Texas and Oklahoma leaves ranchers bracing for another harsh summer – https://theconversation.com/sixth-year-of-drought-in-texas-and-oklahoma-leaves-ranchers-bracing-for-another-harsh-summer-275219

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University

When the early 2000s hit series “The West Wing” returned on Netflix in December 2025, it spurred conversation about how the idealistic political drama would play in Donald Trump’s second term.

The series features a Democratic presidential administration led by President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, and his loyal White House staff negotiating political challenges with character, competence and a fair bit of humor.

It sparked cultural commentary long after it ceased its original run in 2005.

In 2016, The Guardian’s Brian Moylan asserted that the “The West Wing” was appealing because it portrayed “a world where the political system works. It reminds us of a time, not too long ago, when people in political office took their jobs very seriously and wanted to actually govern this country rather than settle scores and appeal to their respective bases.”

In 2025, Vanity Fair’s Savannah Walsh mused that “The West Wing” might be dismissed by younger audiences as a “form of science fiction” or lauded by the demographic currently watching “Jed Bartlet fancams scored to Taylor Swift’s ‘Father Figure’” on TikTok.

Audiences have been comfort-streaming the “The West Wing” since Trump’s first term. Interest in the series spiked after Trump’s election in 2016, and it served as an escape from the contentious 2020 campaign.

When the cast reunited at the 2024 Emmy awards, the Daily Beast’s Catherine L. Hensley remarked that the series’ “sense of optimism about how American government actually functions … rang hollow, almost like watching a show from another planet.”

Nonetheless, Collider’s Rachel LaBonte hailed its Netflix return in late 2025 as a “balm for these confusing times.”

“The West Wing’s” transition from broadcast television behemoth to “bittersweet comfort watch” in today’s streaming era reveals a lot about how much our media and political landscapes have changed in the past 25 years.

As professors of media studies and political communication, we study the fracturing of our media and political environments.

The shifting appeal of “The West Wing” during the past quarter century raises a sobering question: Is political competence and an idealized respect for democratic norms losing popularity in 2026? Or does the new political reality demand engagement with the seamier side of politics?

‘The West Wing’s’ optimistic big tent

“The West Wing” premiered on NBC in the fall of 1999, blending political intrigue with workplace drama in a formula audiences found irresistible. The show surged in viewership in its second and third seasons, as it imagined responses from a Democratic administration to the values and ideology of the newly installed Republican President George W. Bush.

But the series was undergirded by an ethic of political cooperation, reinforcing the idea that, according to Walsh, “we’re all a lot more aligned than we realize.” In 2020, Sheen observed in an interview that writer “Aaron Sorkin never trashed the opposition,” choosing instead to depict “people with differences of opinion trying to serve.”

In 2019, The New York Times observed that the “The West Wing” presented “opposition Republicans, for the most part, as equally honorable,” and noted that the show earned fan mail from viewers across the political spectrum.

At its height of popularity, episodes of “The West Wing” garnered 25 million viewers. Such numbers are reserved today only for live, mass culture events like Sunday night football.

Of course, “The West Wing” aired in a radically different television environment from today.

Despite competition from cable, that era’s free, over-the-airwaves broadcasters like NBC accounted for roughly half of all television viewing in the 2001-02 season. Currently, they account for only about 20%.

Gone are the days of television’s ability to create the “big tents” of diverse audiences. Instead, since “The West Wing’s” original airing, television gathers smaller segments of viewers based on political ideology and ultraspecific demographic markers.

Darker, more polarized media environment

The fracturing of the television audience parallels the schisms in America’s political culture, with viewers and voters increasingly sheltering in partisan echo chambers. Taylor Sheridan has replaced Sorkin as this decade’s showrunner, pumping out conservatively aligned hits such as “Yellowstone” and “Landman.”

Liberals, conversely, now see “West Wing” alumni recast in dystopian critiques of contemporary conservatism. Bradley Whitford morphed from President Bartlet’s political strategist to a calculating racist in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” and a commander in “The Handmaid’s Tale’s” misogynist army.

Allison Janney, who played “The West Wing’s” earnest and scrupulous press secretary, is now a duplicitous and potentially treasonous U.S. president in “The Diplomat,” whose creator in fact got her start on “The West Wing.”

Even Sheen has been demoted from serving as America’s favorite fictional president to playing J. Edgar Hoover in the film “Judas and the Black Messiah,” whom Sheen described as “a wretched man” and “one of the worst villains imaginable.”

Television as equipment for living

Philosopher Kenneth Burke argued that stories function as “equipment for living.” Novels, films, songs, video games and television series are important because they not only reveal our cultural predilections, they shape them, providing us with strategies for navigating the world around us.

Films and series like “Get Out,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Diplomat” and “Judas and the Black Messiah” urge audiences to confront the racism and sexism ever-present in media and politics. That includes, as some scholars and viewers have noted, the often casual misogyny and second-string roles for some women and Black men in “The West Wing.”

As U.S. citizens protest authoritarianism in the streets from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, a comfort binge of a series in which the White House press secretary, as Vanity Fair said, “dorkily performs ‘The Jackal’ and doesn’t dream of restricting West Wing access – even on the administration’s worst press days” is appealing.

But indulging an appetite for what one critic has called “junk-food nostalgia for a time that maybe never even existed” may leave audience members less equipped to build the healthy democracy for which the characters on “The West Wing” always strived. Or it may invigorate them.

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. Why ‘The West Wing’ went from a bipartisan hit to a polarized streaming comfort watch over 2 decades, reflecting profound shifts in media and politics – https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-wing-went-from-a-bipartisan-hit-to-a-polarized-streaming-comfort-watch-over-2-decades-reflecting-profound-shifts-in-media-and-politics-274173

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

Many of America’s iconic holiday candies have Philadelphia or Pennsylvania roots – like Peeps on Easter, Reese’s peanut butter cups on Halloween, and a good, old-fashioned Whitman’s Sampler box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day.

As a Philadelphian and a cultural historian who teaches students about the history of American corporations, the role of the city in the nation’s food history often comes up in my class.

Philadelphia was one of the largest port cities in the U.S. through the early 20th century. Sugar and other candy ingredients were readily available from Delaware River docks. Improvements to sugar refining made the product significantly cheaper during the first half of the 19th century, while the Second Industrial Revolution, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, expanded transportation and trade.

This led to a dramatic increase in candymakers and confectioners in Philadelphia. Many, like Whitman’s Chocolates, one of the oldest still in existence, were concentrated in the Old City neighborhood.

Old City was also home to the oldest candy distributor in the country. Casani Candy Company was founded in 1865. While the company now operates across the Delaware River in Pennsauken, New Jersey, it continues to distribute hundreds of products, including Asher’s candy, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1892.

A box of chocolates

The company that would become Wilbur’s Chocolate was founded in 1865 by Henry Oscar Wilbur and Samuel Croft. After several moves, and a split between the founders in 1884, Wilbur opened a new facility in 1887 at the corner of Third and New streets, where the Chocolate Works condominiums are located today.

There, they began production of their famous Buds, made by pouring hot liquefied chocolate into molds that resembled flower buds.

Phillip Wunderle, maker of gumdrops and other candies, set up shop in North Liberties, just north of Old City, in 1871. An employee of Wunderle Candy Company named George Renninger is often credited with the invention of candy corn, the iconic Halloween staple. However, it would be a decade before this sugary treat, also called “chicken feed,” became popular.

Wunderle also employed a salesman who would go on to become a candy legend: Milton Hershey.

In 1900, Hershey revolutionized the chocolate industry by introducing the Hershey Bar, the first mass-produced milk chocolate in the United States. Seven years later, the Hershey Company introduced a bite-sized, teardrop-shaped chocolate similar to Wilbur’s buds. Legend has it that the name, Hershey’s Kisses, originated from the sound of the machine that manufactured the candies, but there were several other candies with the name that predate Hershey’s.

As Hershey grew more successful, Whitman’s looked for a way to maintain its market share. Whitman’s advertised heavily after the Civil War, and by the end of the 19th century, promoted its products with suggestive ads that linked chocolate with romance.

In 1912, Whitman’s introduced its Sampler box. It became a Valentine’s Day staple, especially after it became available in a heart-shaped box – a marketing stunt that English chocolate brand Cadbury reportedly started in 1868.

Chewing gum and movie snacks

The candy market in Philly – and nearby Hershey, Pennsylvania – continued to grow during the Roaring ‘20s.

A former dairy manager at Hershey named H.B. Reese built his own candy factory in Hershey in 1926, and two years later, he introduced his famous Peanut Butter Cups. Reese’s merged with Hershey’s in 1963 and later introduced their popular candy in different holiday shapes, like Easter eggs, Christmas trees and Valentine’s Day hearts.

Another company now owned by Hershey is York Peppermint Pattie, a chocolate-covered soft mint candy introduced in 1940 in a town 40 miles south of Hershey.

Back in Philadelphia, Frank H. Fleer, an inventor of Chiclets, the peppermint- flavored candy-coated gum, founded his confectionery company in 1885 in the Fairmount neighborhood. Fleer sold the invention to the Trenton, New Jersey-based American Chicle Company in 1914. In 1923, Fleer Corporation first included sports cards with its candy, and in 1928, company accountant Walter Diemer helped perfect the formula for Dubble Bubble, the first bubble gum.

Meanwhile, Goldenberg Candy Company, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1890, introduced their Peanut Chews in 1917 as an energy source for troops during World War I. Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews are now owned by Just Born, which makes the popular Easter candy Peeps and has its headquarters in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. However, Peanut Chews are produced out of a facility in the Holmesburg section of Northeast Philadelphia.

Further establishing southeast Pennsylvania as the chocolate capital of America was the emergence of Philadelphia-based Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate Company in 1909. Beginning in the mid-1920s, it began producing candy for movie concessions after being approached by Philadelphia concessions entrepreneur Jacob Beresin when some theaters placed a ban on popcorn in the 1920s, which was considered too messy. Blumenthal’s Goobers, Raisinets and Sno-Caps are still popular movie snacks, and a sweet complement to date night.

The post-World War II era brought a number of business and market changes that led many of these candy companies to move out of Philadelphia.

Yet vestiges of Philadelphia’s candy dominance can still be found around the city. For unique handmade candy this Valentine’s Day, Philly residents can visit Shane’s Confectionery, which is arguably the oldest, continuously operated candy shop in America. (There’s some debate to that claim because the space has been a candy shop since 1863, but Shane’s didn’t open until 1910.) And stop back in March to pick up some “Irish Potatoes” – coconut cream rolled in cinnamon – for St. Patrick’s Day.

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

Jared Bahir Browsh 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. Philadelphia was once a sweet spot for chocolatiers and other candymakers who made iconic treats for Valentine’s Day and other holidays – https://theconversation.com/philadelphia-was-once-a-sweet-spot-for-chocolatiers-and-other-candymakers-who-made-iconic-treats-for-valentines-day-and-other-holidays-274714

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Margret Grebowicz, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Americans love dogs.

Nearly half of U.S. households have one, and practically all owners see pets as part of the family – 51% say pets belong “as much as a human member.” The pet industry keeps generating more and more jobs, from vets to trainers, to influencers. Schools cannot keep up with the demand for veterinarians.

It all seems part of what Mark Cushing, a lawyer and lobbyist for veterinary issues, calls “the pet revolution”: the more and more privileged place that pets occupy in American society. In his 2020 book “Pet Nation,” he argues that the internet has caused people to become more lonely, and this has made them focus more intensely on their pets – filling in for human relationships.

I would argue that something different is happening, however, particularly since the COVID-19 lockdown: Loving dogs has become an expression not of loneliness but of how unhappy many Americans are with society and other people.

In my own book, “Rescue Me,” I explore how today’s dog culture is more a symptom of our suffering as a society than a cure for it. Dogs aren’t just being used as a substitute for people. As a philosopher who studies the relationships between animals, humans and the environment, I believe Americans are turning to dogs to alleviate the erosion of social life itself. For some owners, dogs simply offer more satisfying relationships than other people do.

And I am no different. I live with three dogs, and my love for them has driven me to research the culture of dog ownership in an effort to understand myself and other humans better. By nature, dogs are masters of social life who can communicate beyond the boundaries of their species. But I believe many Americans are expecting their pets to address problems that they cannot fix.

Dogs over people

During the pandemic, people often struggled with the monotony of spending too much time cooped up with other humans – children, romantic partners, roommates. Meanwhile, relationships with their dogs seemed to flourish.

Rescuing shelter animals grew in popularity, and on social media people celebrated being at home with their pets. Dog content on Instagram and Pinterest now commonly includes hashtags like #DogsAreBetterThanPeople and #IPreferDogsToPeople.

“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog” appears on merchandise all over e-commerce sites such as Etsy, Amazon and Redbubble.

One 2025 study found that dog owners tend to rate their pets more highly than their human loved ones in several areas, such as companionship and support. They also experienced fewer negative interactions with their dogs than with the closest people in their lives, including children, romantic partners and relatives.

The late primatologist Jane Goodall celebrated her 90th birthday with 90 dogs. She stated in an interview with Stephen Colbert that she preferred dogs to chimps, because chimps were too much like people.

Fraying fabric

This passion for dogs seems to be growing as America’s social fabric unravels – which began long before the pandemic.

In 1972, 46% of Americans said “most people can be trusted.” By 2018, that percentage dropped to 34%. Americans report seeing their friends less than they used to, a phenomenon called the “friendship recession,” and avoid having conversations with strangers because they expect the conversation to go badly. People are spending more time at home.

Today, millennials make up the largest percentage of pet owners. Some cultural commentators argue dogs are especially important for this generation because other traditional markers of stability and adulthood – a mortgage, a child – feel out of reach or simply undesirable. According to the Harris Poll, a marketing research firm, 43% of Americans would prefer a pet to a child.

Amid those pressures, many people turn to the comfort of a pet – but the expectations for what dogs can bring to our lives are becoming increasingly unreasonable.

For some people, dogs are a way to feel loved, to relieve pressures to have kids, to fight the drudgery of their job, to reduce the stress of the rat race and to connect with the outdoors. Some expect pet ownership to improve their physical and mental health.

And it works, to a degree. Studies have found dog people to be “warmer” and happier than cat people. Interacting with pets can improve your health and may even offer some protection against cognitive decline. Dog-training programs in prisons appear to reduce recidivism rates.

Unreasonable expectations

But expecting that dogs will fill the social and emotional gaps in our lives is actually an obstacle to dogs’ flourishing, and human flourishing as well.

In philosophical terms, we could call this an extractive relationship: Humans are using dogs for their emotional labor, extracting things from them that they cannot get elsewhere or simply no longer wish to. Just like natural resource extraction, extractive relationships eventually become unsustainable.

The late cultural theorist Lauren Berlant argued that the present stage of capitalism creates a dynamic called “slow death,” a cycle in which “life building and the attrition of life are indistinguishable.” Keeping up is so exhausting that, in order to maintain that life, we need to do things that result in our slow degradation: Work becomes drudgery under unsustainable workloads, and the experience of dating suffers under the unhealthy pressure to have a partner.

Similarly, today’s dog culture is leading to unhealthy and unsustainable dynamics. Veterinarians are concerned that the rise of the “fur baby” lifestyle, in which people treat pets like human children, can harm animals, as owners seek unnecessary veterinary care, tests and medications. Pets staying at home alone while owners work suffer from boredom, which can cause chronic psychological distress and health problems. And as the number of pets goes up, many people wind up giving up their animal, overcrowding shelters.

So what should be done? Some philosophers and activists advocate for pet abolition, arguing that treating any animals as property is ethically indefensible.

This is a hard case to make – especially with dog lovers. Dogs were the first animal that humans domesticated. They have evolved beside us for as long as 40,000 years, and are a central piece of the human story. Some scientists argue that dogs made us human, not the other way around.

Perhaps we can reconfigure aspects of home, family and society to be better for dogs and humans alike – more accessible health care and higher-quality food, for example. A world more focused on human thriving would be more focused on pets’ thriving, too. But that would make for a very different America than this one.

Margret Grebowicz 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. Americans are asking too much of their dogs – https://theconversation.com/americans-are-asking-too-much-of-their-dogs-256768

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Nareman Amin, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Islam, Michigan State University

Fifteen years ago, Egyptians from all walks of life took to the street to demand “bread, freedom, social justice.” They were protesting the oppressive 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt had been under martial law for 31 years. This meant that political opposition was silenced, and opponents were often imprisoned and tortured. Police brutality was the norm.

Egypt’s economy was also weak and relied heavily on foreign aid and loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Even though the country’s per capita gross domestic product was growing, almost 25% of the population was living in poverty by 2011.

Neighboring Tunisia had toppled its dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, on Jan. 14, 2011, after 28 days of protest. The Tunisian revolution’s success led to a wave of uprisings against corruption, injustice and economic inequality across the region, including the January 2011 revolution in Egypt.

For many who joined the movement in Egypt, there was a newfound sense of unity, equality and nationalism. Egyptians young and old, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor, man and woman, stood arm-in-arm for 18 days, until Mubarak resigned on Feb. 11, 2011.

Mubarak’s resignation signaled to many Egyptians the power of common will and determination.

Slowly, however, political divisions set in. While there were exciting voting opportunities that seemed free and fair for the first time in modern Egyptian history, there were many disappointments in this nascent and short-lived democratic experiment.

In my recently published book, “Is God for Revolution? Affect, Youth and Islam,” I investigate these political changes, but through the lens of religion.

Islam in Egypt

Egypt is a Muslim-majority country. Islam can be felt, seen and heard in every corner of the nation: The melodic call to prayer rings out five times a day to remind Muslims to stop what they are doing and turn their attention to God in worship.

Minarets of mosques and domes of churches dot the sepia-toned Egyptian sky. The Quran plays in shops, taxi cabs and on radios and television in local cafes. Most women wear veils as part of a religious obligation; men grow long beards, which they believe to be a prophetic tradition.

Scholars of Islam like Saba Mahmood, Charles Hirschkind, Aaron Rock-Singer and others have noted a resurgence in these physical aspects of Islamic piety since the 1970s. Some of these scholars attribute it to Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, established by Hasan al-Banna in 1928 as a response to the cultural and political incursions of the British occupation.

Salafis are another group who urged people to be good Muslims by believing in Allah – the Arabic word for God – and looking and acting the part as well. The Salafis believe they follow the Islam of the “pious predecessors,” or salaf – that is, the generations during and immediately following the life of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis offered social services for the poor and preached their versions of Islam widely.

The research

I lived in Egypt between 2007 and 2012 and visited every summer until 2018, when I formally began conducting interviews for this book.

In 2018 and 2019, I spoke with 61 middle- and upper-middle class Muslim Egyptians who were in their early- to mid-20s when the Egyptian uprising began in 2011. Most interviewees were from big cities like Cairo and Alexandria, but some also grew up in smaller villages and towns across Egypt.

For them, the revolution and the social and political freedoms it came with offered them a space to question everything in their lives, including how they relate to the Islamic teachings they grew up with and heard from Muslim parents and preachers.

For example, many of the interviewees came to believe that there are many paths to gaining God’s favor. Some turned to Sufism, or mystical Islam, for answers. Others left Islam altogether.

My interviewees all grew up with the sights and sounds of Islam surrounding them. Their parents and schools also taught them an Islam that highlighted both belief in God and physical practices like the veil, beards and prayer. For many of the people I spoke to, these rituals and visible markers of Islam were no longer as important as they had been raised to believe.

Heidi, a human rights activist, explained that the revolution was an eye-opener, especially for women. She explained that, after the revolution, she took off the veil and now places more importance on the ethical and spiritual rather than the ritualistic aspects of Islam.

“The revolution broke the fear barrier we had of thinking for ourselves … including about religion,” she said.

Similarly, Hasan, a tech entrepreneur, who once used to be conservative in his understanding of what makes one a good Muslim, told me that after the uprising, he came to believe that “religion is not one single path, and that no one action can take you to heaven.” He became more accepting of the different ways people relate to Islam.

Some of my interviewees turned to Eastern practices like yoga and meditation, sometimes even mixing them with Sufism or Islamic mysticism. I spoke to Sonia, an Egyptian American Muslim woman who received training in various wellness methods like pranic healing, breath work and meditation, and I attended her sessions online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In post-revolution Egypt, she held sessions in yoga studios in which she guided practitioners through traditional breath work and meditation. She asked practitioners to chant the names of Allah in Arabic: al-Nur (the Light) and al-Rahman (the Merciful), in sync with their rhythmic, conscious breathing.

In these spaces, one would find energy crystals, and incense wafting in and out of the room. Attendees, both Muslim and non-Muslim, would sit in a semicircle around Sonia, trying to reach something transcendent, spiritual, maybe even universal.

Not all my interviewees approved of this spiritual practice. Basim, an entrepreneur, felt that practices like Sonia’s were not Islamic; they were a mishmash of Eastern practices that pull on the Islamic tradition selectively for marketing purposes.

Sonia, however, felt that people should not be judged for how they choose to build a connection with God or something transcendent.

Other interviewees left Islam altogether. Six of the people I spoke to had become atheist or agnostic. There were atheists in Egypt before 2011, but shortly after the uprising, more people became vocal about their lack of belief. The media widely reported on what it framed as a worrying trend in society.

Why did this happen?

The revolution opened a space for people who may never have come together to join one another in protest. Once Mubarak fell, people found unprecedented freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to take part in politics.

Among those who openly joined the political scene after Mubarak’s removal were the Muslim Brotherhood and political arms of the Salafis, who made considerable political gains in 2011 and 2012.

In June 2012, Muhammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood became the first democratically elected president of Egypt. But just a year into his administration, Mursi was deposed by the military. People who staged demonstrations and sit-ins to protest his deposition were violently removed from public squares and killed.

Religion in post-revolution politics

How religion was used in the political processes led almost all my interviewees to rethink matters of faith, practice and religious authority.

Data from the Arab Barometer, which conducts public opinion surveys in the Middle East, shows similar trends over the past decade. In 2011, when respondents were asked if Egypt would be better off if religious people held public office, 53% disagreed. By 2022, the figure had risen to 80%. Views on religious practice also indicated a change.

At the very beginning of the 2011 movement, for example, many of the Islamic scholars my interviewees followed argued that revolting against a ruler, no matter how unjust, is a sin and forbidden in the Islamic tradition. Later, when Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, most of my interviewees were shocked that many of these Islamist politicians played the political game, which meant lying and reneging on promises made.

When Mursi became president, his supporters compared his rule with that of the prophet. Others used offensive language to describe political opponents who did not share their political vision.

My interviewees believed that these behaviors were antithetical to the ethical and moral codes of the Islamic tradition that these Islamists and their supporters preached for years prior to the uprising and their political ascent.

Things came to a head when Mursi was deposed through a violent coup. The country was divided between those who praised the military for restoring order and stability in Egypt and those who decried the move as a massacre that ushered in the end of the democratic experiment.

All my interviewees were horrified by the massacre, leading a few to question why a just God would allow hundreds of innocent people to be killed in such a way. Worse yet was that some of the religious scholars who forbade people from protesting against Mubarak in 2011 urged people to protest against Mursi in 2013, with a few even condoning the massacre or at least staying silent in the face of renewed oppression.

The Egyptians I interviewed witnessed all these events and reacted emotionally to them. And because religion was at the center of these political processes in ways that almost all my interviewees viewed as hypocritical and opportunistic, my interviewees wanted to break away from the version of Islam that the Islamists and their supporters represented.

Fifteen years on, though the political and economic aims of the 2011 movement have not been realized, the social afterlives of a revolution live on.

Nareman Amin 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. Fifteen years after Egypt’s uprising, how faith and politics reshaped a generation – https://theconversation.com/fifteen-years-after-egypts-uprising-how-faith-and-politics-reshaped-a-generation-274430

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Cara Ocobock, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame

The Winter Olympics and Paralympics are upon us once again. This year the games come to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, where weather forecasts are predicting temperatures in the upper 30s to mid-40s Fahrenheit (1 to 10 degrees Celsius).

These temperatures are a good deal warmer than one might expect for winter, particularly in a mountainous area. They’re warm enough that athletes will need to adjust how they are preparing their equipment for competition, yet still cold enough to affect the physiology of athletes and spectators alike.

As a biological anthropologist and a materials scientist, we’re interested in how the human body responds to different conditions and how materials can help people improve performance and address health challenges. Both of these components will play a key role for Olympic athletes hoping to perform at their peak in Italy.

Athletes in the cold

The athletes taking part in outdoor events are no strangers to cold and unpredictable weather conditions. It is an inherent part of their sports. Though it is highly unlikely the athletes this year will be exposed to extreme cold, the outdoor conditions will still affect their performance.

One concern is dehydration, which can be less noticeable, as sweating is typically less frequent and intense in cold conditions. However, cold temperatures also mean lower relative humidity. This dry air means the body needs to use more of its own water to moisten the air before it reaches the delicate lungs. Athletes breathing heavily during competition are losing more body water that way than they would in more temperate conditions.

When cold, the body also tends to narrow its blood vessels to better maintain core body temperature. Narrower blood vessels lose less heat to the cooler air, but this results in the body pushing more fluid out of the circulatory system and toward the kidneys, which then increases urine output.

Though the athletes may not be sweating to the same degree as they would in warmer temperatures, they are still sweating. Athletes dress to improve their performance and protect themselves from cold. The layers of clothing and material used in conjunction with the heat produced from physical activity can lead to sweating and create a hot, wet space between the athlete’s body and what they are wearing.

This space is not only another site of water loss, but also a potential problem for athletes who need to take part in different rounds or runs for their competition – for example, the initial heats for skiing or snowboarding.

These athletes are physically active and working up a sweat, and then they wait around for their next heat. During this waiting period, that damp layer of sweat will make them more vulnerable to body heat loss and cold injury such as frostbite or hypothermia. Athletes must stay warm between rounds of competition.

Science of winter apparel

Staying warm is all about materials selection and construction.

Many apparel companies adopt a three-layer system approach to keep wearers warm, dry and comfortable. Specifically, there is a bottom layer – in direct contact with the skin – that is typically composed of a moisture-wicking synthetic fabric such as nylon or a natural fabric such as wool.

The second layer in winter apparel is an insulating one that is generally porous to trap warm air generated by the body and to slow heat loss. Great options for this are down and fleece.

The final layer is the external protection layer, which keeps you dry and protected from the elements. This layer needs to be waterproof and breathable to keep the inner insulating layers dry but to simultaneously let out sweat. Polyester and acrylic are good options here, as they are lightweight, durable and resist moisture.

The gear athletes wear can be customized to their needs. For example, the synthetic fabrics used on the innermost layer are versatile, and engineers can introduce new properties and functionalities for users. Adding a specific coating to a fabric like nylon can give it new properties – such as wind and water resistance.

Frequently, both the synthetic fibers and the coatings materials scientists add to them are made up of polymers, which are long chains of molecules. They can be human-made and petroleum-based, like polyethylene trash bags, polyester and Teflon. But polymers can also be natural and derived from nature. Your DNA and the proteins in your body are examples of polymers.

In addition to polymer technology, conventional battery-powered heating jackets are also an option.

Smart materials

As an added bonus, there is also a class of smart materials called phase change materials that are made of polymers and composite materials. They automatically absorb excess body heat when too much is created and release it again to the body when needed to passively regulate your body temperature. These materials release or take in heat as they transition between solid and liquid states and respond to the body’s natural cues.

Phase change materials are less about warming you up. Instead, they work by keeping your temperature balanced.

While these aren’t commonly used in the gear athletes wear, NASA has been experimenting with them for a long time, and many commercially available products leverage this technology. Cooling fabrics, such as bedding and towels, are often made of phase change textiles because they do not overheat you.

Risks to the rest of us

Athletes are not the only ones at risk for cold injury.

While most of us will be watching the Games with the comfort of indoor heating, thousands of people and support staff will be watching or working those outdoor events in person. Unlike the athletes, these individuals will not have the added benefit of their bodies producing extra heat from exercise. The nonathletes in attendance will be at greater risk in the cold.

If you’re planning to spectate or work at an event this winter, drink more water than usual and time your bathroom breaks accordingly. Plan to wear several layers of clothing you can add and remove as needed, and pay special attention to the more vulnerable parts of the body, such as the hands, feet and nose.

Colder temperatures elicit a variety of metabolic responses in the body. One example is shivering, caused by tiny muscle contractions that produce heat. Your body’s brown adipose tissue – a type of fat – also becomes active and produces heat rather than energy.

Both of these processes burn extra calories, so expect to be more hungry if you’re out in the cold for a while. Trips to the bathroom or to get food are a welcome opportunity to warm up – especially those hands and feet.

It is easy to think of Olympians as exceptional athletes at the mercy of Mother Nature’s cold wrath. However, both the human body’s natural physiology and the impressive advances scientists have made in winter apparel technology will keep these athletes warm and performing at their best.

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. Winter Olympians often compete in freezing temperatures – physiology and advances in materials science help keep them warm – https://theconversation.com/winter-olympians-often-compete-in-freezing-temperatures-physiology-and-advances-in-materials-science-help-keep-them-warm-275070