Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Corinne Brion, Associate Professor in Educational Administration, University of Dayton

Cellphones are everywhere – including, until recently, in schools.

Since 2023, 29 states, including New York, Vermont, Florida and Texas, have passed laws that require K-12 public schools to enforce bans or strict limits on students using their cellphones on campus.

Another 10 states have passed other measures that require local school districts to take some kind of action on cellphone usage.

Approximately 77% of public schools now forbid students from having their phones out during class – an increase from the 66% of schools that forbade students from using phones at school in 2015.

Schools across the country are finding different ways to enforce no-phone policies. Some schools have students lock their phones in pouches that only open at the end of the day. Others use simple classroom bins or lockers.

Some research shows that spending a lot of time looking at phones instead of people’s faces can make it harder for children and teenagers to get the basic human skills they need for developing and maintaining friendships and other relationships.

As a scholar of educational leadership, I believe that school is about more than just classes – it’s where young people learn how to get along with others. When phones are put away, students actually start looking at each other and talking again. School hallways and the lunchroom turn into spaces where students learn to resolve conflicts face-to-face and make human connections.

Putting phones away in Ohio

Ohio is an example of a state that has clamped down on students’ cellphone usage over the past 18 months.

In May 2024, Ohio went from suggesting some cellphone guidelines for different schools to adopt to requiring that all public districts limit students’ phone use during class. School districts could choose to allow phones at lunch or between classes.

Many schools began using lockable pouches, plastic bins or lockers to keep phones out of sight. They still needed to allow some students to have phones for medical reasons, like monitoring blood sugar on an app.

Ohio then adopted an even stricter cellphone use policy in 2025. This new law required all Ohio public school boards to adopt policies by Jan. 1, 2026, that prohibit phone use during the entire school day, including lunch and the time between classes.

A needed break

In the fall of 2025, I surveyed 13 Ohio public school principals from rural, urban and suburban districts. Principals reported that the partial phone bans increased students’ social interactions and reduced peer conflicts:

• 62% of principals described more verbal, face-to-face socializing during recess, at lunch time and between classes.

• 68% noted that students can stay on one task for more than 20 minutes without seeking a quick digital break.

• 72% observed a shift from heads-down scrolling to active conversation in common areas such as the cafeteria.

• 61% reported fewer online social conflicts spilling over into the classroom.

A tension for students

In late January 2026, I also surveyed and spoke with 18 Ohio high school students about the new phone bans in place at their schools as part of research that has not yet been published.

Their responses revealed a complex tension between understanding the need for the phone ban and feeling a significant loss of personal safety and autonomy.

A few students said they felt safe knowing a phone in the main office is available for emergencies.

Some students said they felt anxious about not being reachable if there is an emergency – like if a relative were in an accident, or if the younger siblings they care for required their help.

Finally, 13 out of 18 students argued that they should be learning the self-discipline required to balance technology with focus. Students said that phone bans made them feel as though they were children who could not make responsible decisions – rather than young adults preparing for professional environments.

Some students also said that not having their phones made it impossible to fill out college and scholarship applications during the school day, since many application systems require multifactor authentication and require phones to log in.

Lessons from Ohio

Rules are more likely to be respected when students feel they have a voice in the boundaries that affect their daily lives. I think that school leaders could address students’ safety and security concerns in different ways, including by establishing a dedicated family emergency hotline that people can call.

Principals could designate supervised areas where more senior high school students can briefly use their phones for multifactor authentication. School leaders could also offer a specific time window for students to check messages on their phones, or an easy way for the school’s main office to deliver them messages from family.

While these insights from Ohio students and principals offer a helpful starting point, they are just one part of a much larger conversation.

More research is needed to see how these bans affect different types of schools and communities across multiple states. Because every district is different, what works in one town might cause unexpected challenges in another. By continuing to study these effects and listening to everyone involved, especially the students, researchers like myself can figure out how to keep classrooms focused and students interacting without making students feel less safe or less prepared for the adult world.

Corinne Brion 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. Schools are increasingly telling students they must put their phones away – Ohio’s example shows mixed results following new bans – https://theconversation.com/schools-are-increasingly-telling-students-they-must-put-their-phones-away-ohios-example-shows-mixed-results-following-new-bans-274261

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Bess Rowen, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Villanova University

Most theater subscriptions offer a patron access to a single theater’s season. But Philadelphia’s new Citywide James Ijames Pass provides tickets to three James Ijames – pronounced EYE-ms, rhymes with “chimes” – plays at three theaters in Philadelphia. Subscribers will also get one mustard-colored beanie, one of Ijames’ signature accessories.

The full pass, which costs US$130, includes tickets for the Arden Theatre’s “Good Bones,” which premiered Jan. 22 and runs through March 22, the Wilma Theater’s “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” which runs March 17 to April 5, and the Philadelphia Theatre Company’s “Wilderness Generation,” a world premiere that runs April 10 to May 3. There is also a two-show pass for $90 without “Good Bones.”

I’m a theater theorist, historian and practitioner who has written about Ijames’ work before and after his 2022 Pulitzer Prize. I believe this landmark collaboration between three important Philadelphia theaters is a fitting celebration of a multi-hyphenate theater artist who continues to champion his longtime artistic home.

Actor, playwright, director

Ijames, 46, was born in North Carolina and attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned his Master of Fine Arts degree at Temple University and stayed in Philadelphia after graduating.

Notably, this playwright’s MFA is in the study of acting. Ijames is also a talented director, and he performed and directed at multiple theaters around Philadelphia before starting to work as a playwright. He was also a tenured professor of theater at Villanova University, where I had the privilege to work with him and watch his creative process before he moved to New York City in 2025 to run the playwriting concentration at Columbia University.

Ijames was already a local celebrity in Philly before winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Fat Ham,” his Hamlet adaptation centered on a queer Black Hamlet named Juicy and the legacy of his father’s barbecue joint. The New York theater scene took notice of him when the National Black Theatre staged “Kill Move Paradise” in 2017. This haunting piece is set in limbo, where unarmed Black men who have been killed by police examine how they have come to this place and how society continues to enable this pattern.

Other Ijames plays include “White,” a satire of the art world that tells the story of a gay white male artist who hires a Black woman actor to pretend to have done his work to see if that makes a difference in how his art is viewed. “TJ Loves Sally 4Ever” sets Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ relationship on a college campus where “TJ” is a dean and Sally is a student. And “Reverie” is a chamber play, which is an intimate meditation with an earnest and somber tone. In it, the father of a recently deceased Black gay man comes to meet the man he believed was his son’s partner.

Most recently, in 2025, Ijames partnered with the Australian pop singer Sia on a musical called “Saturday Church.” It is a story about reconciling queer community and Christian faith, and relying on the support of family, both biological and chosen.

Charting new dramatic territory

Although his theatrical styles and genres vary, at his core, Ijames writes nuanced, character-driven works that revolve around interpersonal relationships. His plays are playgrounds for performers, particularly due to his ability to write complex queer Black characters.

Influential American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks notes in her 1994 essay “Elements of Style” that the conflict between Black people and white people is the default trope of how Black people have been represented onstage – by almost exclusively white playwrights – for most of U.S. theater history. Parks posits that a way to avoid this centering of white conflict in Black lives comes from new dramatic territory that depicts conflicts between Black people and anything else.

Ijames never sets his Black characters in opposition to white society alone. He also refuses to take up the tropes of LGBTQ identity as incompatible with religion, or the idea that characters can be only gay or straight. Instead, Ijames creates narratives with queer religious people and pansexual men whose identities are not sources of conflict.

The citywide pass

The plays in the citywide pass offer an exciting cross section of what makes Ijames’s work so vibrant.

“Good Bones” is the story of a now-affluent Black woman, Aisha, who moves back to her blue-collar hometown. Aisha might be from this working-class neighborhood, but her elaborate renovations and white-collar sensibilities make her return seem more like gentrification than homecoming, at least as far as her local contractor can see.

“Miz Martha” follows the titular Martha Washington through a fever-dream-inspired trial in her final moments, as enslaved people care for her while knowing her death means their freedom.

And “Wilderness Generation” follows five cousins reunited in the U.S. South after many years apart, ready to talk about the secrets from their pasts.

With theater’s ever-changing and unstable financial landscape, I believe the Citywide James Ijames Pass is an exciting new subscriber model. The collaboration highlights Philadelphia’s theatrical talent and banks on local theaters working together to build audiences instead of treating each other as competition – a new development that could change how regional theater scenes operate.

James and I worked at Villanova University together for 6 years. I am still in touch with him.

– ref. Philly theaters unite to stage 3 plays by Pulitzer-winning playwright James Ijames – https://theconversation.com/philly-theaters-unite-to-stage-3-plays-by-pulitzer-winning-playwright-james-ijames-274263

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By E. Andrew Taylor, Associate Professor and Director of Arts Management, American University

President Donald Trump announced on Feb. 1, 2026, that he would shut down the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years. Trump said this closure would begin on July 4 and was necessary for “Construction, Revitalization and Complete Rebuilding.” The next day, he denied that this meant he would demolish the facility altogether. The multi-venue arts center has endured cancellations by performing artists and boycotts by patrons throughout the first year of Trump’s second term, during which he made himself chairman of its board. Trump’s handpicked board members then voted to rebrand the center to include his name.

To help readers understand what this upheaval means, The Conversation U.S. asked E. Andrew Taylor, an arts management professor at American University – which like the Kennedy Center is located in Washington, D.C. – to explain whether Trump has the power or justification to carry out a complete overhaul of this living memorial to President Kennedy.

Does Trump have the authority to shut the center?

Trump wears many hats in this drama.

None of them give him individual or direct authority over the Kennedy Center’s buildings, grounds or operations. However, those hats give him multiple points of leverage.

As president of the United States, Trump has authority to appoint about half of the members of the Kennedy Center governing board – which he stacked with his appointees in February 2025. As chair, appointed by that newly constructed board, Trump has significant influence over how the governing body works.

By law, the Kennedy Center is governed by its full board, while its federal funding for operations and facilities is reviewed and approved by Congress. In practice, both the board and Congress appear to have deferred to the President, as have most of the enforcement agencies that might challenge him here.

In yet another twist, the center’s board reportedly changed its bylaws in 2025 to limit voting by the 23 board members not appointed by the president. One of those members, Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat, sued the board and the center’s executive leadership team in December. In her lawsuit, she claimed the board had exceeded its statutory authority and improperly excluded active board members when it renamed the center to add the president’s name. That lawsuit is pending in federal court; no rulings have been issued.

Why is his actual authority hard to define?

The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as “a living memorial to John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” Since its opening in 1971, it has remained a complex public-private enterprise that is both a part of the federal government and a tax-exempt nonprofit.

The center was built with a and long-term revenue bonds held by the Treasury Department. Its ongoing operations have always been funded by a mix of public money, private contributions and earned revenue from ticket sales, events, food service, parking and the like.

To oversee this complex enterprise, Congress established and authorized a governing board, granting it authority to “plan, design, and construct each capital repair, replacement, improvement, rehabilitation, alteration, or modification necessary to maintain the functionality of the building and site at current standards of life, safety, security, and accessibility.”

Until now, major expansions and updates of the campus have been approved by Congress.

Is Trump’s claim that the center needs major upgrades accurate?

There are two claims here that deserve separate attention.

One is that the center needs major upgrades. That is true. The other is that those upgrades require full closure of the entire campus for multiple years. That is suspect.

As for upgrades, the original Kennedy Center building is a sprawling and complex facility with more than 50 years of wear and tear.

A comprehensive engineering and architectural review of the center in 2021 identified 323 capital and minor repair projects that would cost roughly US$252 million to carry out. Only about $45 million has been spent on those projects so far.

The remaining big-ticket items include fully replacing seats in the Concert Hall, replacing the original Opera House pit lift system, dealing with parking garage and loading dock structural issues, and attending to long-deferred elevator repair and replacement.

At the same time, many parts of the Kennedy Center campus are fairly new. The REACH, a $250 million complex with all new buildings and infrastructure, opened in 2019 to increase capacity for community and educational events.

While the need for major upgrades is well supported, the dramatic and disruptive closure of the entire campus for two years is not. A thoughtful, phased renovation and repair strategy would allow for major improvements while the lifeblood of the center – the artists, audiences and donors – could still flow through the campus with at least some performances, programs and events taking place.

In fact, that phasing was the plan in the most recent budget request the center delivered to Congress, until Trump pivoted.

How have Trump’s interventions affected the center so far?

That depends on who you ask.

Ticket sales and attendance have reportedly dropped dramatically, and multiple artists and arts organizations have canceled their planned performances, including singer Renée Fleming, composer Philip Glass, banjoist Béla Fleck and “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz. The Washington National Opera, a longtime resident organization, announced its separation and departure from the center in January.

Kennedy Center communications leader Roma Daravi blamed declining attendance on “liberal intolerance.” She also claimed the center’s renaming “recognizes that the current Chairman saved the institution from financial ruin and physical destruction.” Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell dismissed the artists canceling their shows as being “booked by the previous far left leadership.”

What would happen should the center shut down altogether?

The Kennedy Center is not only a venue for its own productions, programs and touring performances.

It’s a hub for live performing arts and arts education for the entire region and the nation as a whole. Independent producers and promoters rent its venues for their performances and events. Each year, it serves over 2.1 million students, educators and school administrators in all 50 states with professional development, summer intensives for young artists and performances for young audiences. And its free and public performances have been a mainstay of cultural life in Washington for decades.

Where all of this activity would relocate for years is unclear. There are few comparable venues in the region, and those available are already booked with productions and tours that were bypassing the Kennedy Center. The National Symphony Orchestra would be particularly vulnerable to a two-year closure of its primary venue. It is not obvious where a large ensemble with such an active rehearsal and concert schedule would be able to perform.

There are also touring productions currently scheduled to perform after the proposed closing date, including “The Outsiders,” “Back to the Future: The Musical” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Although those tickets were still for sale as of Feb. 3, whether those performances will take place is now in doubt. Those shows’ national tours may be disrupted if the center shuts down.

The center itself, like all such arts venues, survives and thrives on an enduring and connected network of relationships – among artists, touring productions, artist managers, production teams, technical staff, venue management, audiences and donors.

These relationships are sustained through trust and consistency. My three decades of experience teaching and studying arts management suggest that once those relationships are betrayed or delayed, it’s a long road to build them back.

What might be next? And what does it mean?

It’s anyone’s guess whether Trump’s Truth Social post about closing the center will prove true or merely provocative. The board, the center’s leaders, its staff and the people scheduled to perform there after July 4 appeared to be surprised by the announcement.

As a rule, any multi-hundred-million-dollar renovation or demolition requires deliberate and collaborative effort, rather than a decree.

In the short term, the sudden announcement is yet another twist in a wrenching narrative for makers and lovers of the arts across the Washington region and around the country. While a few years and a few hundred million dollars might restore the building’s physical infrastructure, it may take much more time, effort and energy to restore its reputation.

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

– ref. Trump wants to shutter the Kennedy Center for 2 years – an arts management professor explains what that portends – https://theconversation.com/trump-wants-to-shutter-the-kennedy-center-for-2-years-an-arts-management-professor-explains-what-that-portends-274906

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Thomas A. DuBois, Professor of Scandinavian Studies, Folklore, and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

At the outset of the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic, a singer bemoans his separation from a beloved friend who grew up beside him. Today, the friends rarely meet “näillä raukoilla rajoilla, poloisilla Pohjan mailla” – lines which translator Keith Bosley renders “on these poor borders, the luckless lands of the North.”

The Kalevala, a poetic masterpiece of nearly 23,000 lines, first appeared in 1835. Now, nearly 200 years later, those “luckless lands of the North” are an increasingly tense border zone.

On one side sits Finland, affluent and famously “happy.” The Nordic nation of 5.6 million is a member of the European Union and, more recently, the NATO alliance. On the other side sits the Republic of Karelia, with a population of around a half-million. Originally home to the Karelians, a people closely related to the Finns, today Karelia is part of the Russian Federation – and the percentage of Karelian speakers is in the single digits.

Finland celebrates Feb. 28 as Kalevala Day, or the “Day of Finnish Culture.” Yet the epic’s songs were collected in both Finland and Karelia, reflecting a cultural affinity sundered by the politics of empire. And as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on, that border zone has become more tense.

Shared roots

The people of Finland and Karelia – “Suomi” and “Karjala,” in their own languages – have lived in the forests, lakes, marshes and farmlands of northeastern Europe since time immemorial. Their languages are closely related, but they differ markedly from Swedish and Russian, the idioms of the empires that usurped control over the region in the Middle Ages. Finns came under the dominion of Sweden and were converted to Roman Catholicism – and later Lutheranism. Karelians came under the dominion of Russia and were converted to Orthodox Christianity.

Centuries of wars and saber-rattling between the Swedish and Russian empires created hardship for Finns and Karelians alike. Their lands became battlegrounds for warring forces, and their men served as conscripted soldiers for opposing sides in conflicts like the Great Northern War of 1700–1721, which devastated both lands and populations.

Despite the enmity of rival emperors, over the course of centuries daily life and culture had remained remarkably similar for Finns and Karelians. Both sang songs of a mythic past, colorful heroes and powerful magic using a distinctive poetic meter – one that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow later imitated in “The Song of Hiawatha.”

Mythic songs

In 1809, after yet another war, Russia acquired Finland as an autonomous grand duchy, bringing its people under the same crown as Karelians.

Finnish physician and admirer of folklore Elias Lönnrot took advantage of this political union to collect folk songs across the region. Wandering from village to village, writing down songs from dictation, he amassed a body of texts out of which to make an epic.

The contents of the Kalevala are varied and intriguing – starting with the creation of the Earth from an egg, and the felling of a primordial oak tree that threatened to block out the sun.

One of the epic’s most famous tales is the forging of a mysterious object, the Sampo – a sort of magic mill that will produce whatever its owner wishes. It becomes an object of conflict between the people of “Kalevala” and the people of “Pohjola,” the “north.”

The Kalevala hero Väinämöinen, a wizened worker of magic – along with Ilmarinen, the skilled but brooding blacksmith who originally created the Sampo, and their incorrigible friend, Lemminkäinen – attempt to steal the Sampo away from Pohjola, where Louhi, the stern Mistress of the North, has sequestered it. The resulting struggle destroys the Sampo, and its promised life of ease and prosperity.

Lönnrot hoped to unearth a history and an identity for Finns and Karelians, one separate from that of either Sweden or Russia. On the Finnish side of the border, in particular, the epic helped convince people that they were a valuable and creative nation, distinct from the empires that sought to control them.

As the 19th century wore on, the Russian government became less friendly to its cultural minorities. Authorities attempted to “Russify” Finland and other parts of the empire. But Finns resisted, drawing on images from Lönnrot’s Kalevala to articulate their cultural and historical independence.

The paintings of Akseli Gallen-Kallela drew on the epic for themes and inspiration at the turn of the 20th century. Composer Jean Sibelius’ famed Lemminkäinen Suite of 1896, or “Four Legends from the Kalevala,” made elements of the story familiar to audiences around the world and helped bolster international awareness of Finland’s culture. An early Finnish photographer, I.K. Inha, retraced Lönnrot’s wanderings through Finland and Karelia in a book entitled “Finland in Pictures.”

Independent Finland

Finland achieved independence in 1917, in the aftermath of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. But civil war soon broke out between the “Finnish Whites” and socialist “Finnish Reds.” It was the first of several conflicts that shifted borders and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

After the Whites’ victory in Finland’s civil war, many socialist-minded Finns moved to Karelia hoping to build a workers’ paradise. After the rise of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, however, they were labeled as dangerous foreign influences. Thousands were arrested and deported, as Stalin sought to replace the population with Russian-speaking loyalists.

After decades of Russification, assimilation and migration, Karelian-speakers today represent only a small minority of the Republic of Karelia. Another small population resides in Finland, where they were resettled after the wars.

During World War II, Finland fought the Soviet Union several more times, striving to maintain its independence and even incorporate parts of Karelia. Finland managed to remain outside of the Soviet Union, but lost portions of its territory close to the Karelian border.

The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, signed in 1948, encouraged cultural exchanges between Finland and the Soviet Union. The first joint Finnish-Soviet feature film, 1959’s “Sampo,” was a recounting of the Kalevala spearheaded by Aleksandr Ptushko, the “Disney of Soviet film” – but stripped of any nationalist symbolism.

Rising tension

In the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Finnish-Karelian border became once again a place of lively meeting and exchange. Through the work of organizations like Finland’s Juminkeko foundation, the heritage of the Kalevala has been explored and celebrated on both sides of the border. Finnish and Karelian folk revival and heavy metal bands drew on the Kalevala for inspiration and materials. Shopping centers developed in border towns, and tourists began crossing the border in ever increasing numbers.

Yet Russia’s war in Ukraine has turned the Finnish-Russian border once again into a place of tension. Finland became a member of NATO in 2023, concerned by Vladimir Putin’s regime’s disregard for the rights of other sovereign nations. In December 2023, the Finnish government indefinitely closed the 835-mile (1,344-kilometer) land border, and is now building a fence along part of it. Meanwhile, Russia is expanding military infrastructure near the border, as European countries raise alarm about threats to NATO.

On Feb. 28, the anniversary of the day on which Lönnrot completed the first edition of the Kalevala, public buildings in Finland will fly the country’s flag. Schools and cultural institutions will organize events to celebrate the Kalevala and the cultural and political independence it helped achieve. On the other side of the border, perhaps Karelian speakers and some other inhabitants will celebrate as well. In a Russia where cultural and ethnic minorities’ activism can attract suspicion, though, any observance is likely to be far more muted: The situation remains regrettably tense “on these poor borders, the luckless lands of the North.”

Thomas A. DuBois 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. An epic border: Finland’s poetic masterpiece, the Kalevala, has roots in 2 cultures and 2 countries – https://theconversation.com/an-epic-border-finlands-poetic-masterpiece-the-kalevala-has-roots-in-2-cultures-and-2-countries-261444

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Grace Mackleby, Research scientist of Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California

Medicare has launched a six-year pilot program that could eventually transform access to health care for some of the millions of people across the U.S. who rely on it for their health insurance coverage.

Traditional Medicare is a government-administered insurance plan for people over 65 or with disabilities. About half of the 67 million Americans insured through Medicare have this coverage. The rest have Medicare Advantage plans administered by private companies.

The pilot program, dubbed the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model, is an experimental program that began to affect people enrolled in traditional Medicare from six states in January 2026.

During this pilot, medical providers must apply for permission, or prior authorization, before giving 14 kinds of health procedures and devices. The program uses artificial intelligence software to identify treatment requests it deems unnecessary or harmful and denies them. This is similar to the way many Medicare Advantage plans work.

As health economists who have studied Medicare and the use of AI in prior authorization, we believe this pilot could save Medicare money, but it should be closely monitored to ensure that it does not harm the health of patients enrolled in the traditional Medicare program.

Prior authorization

The pilot marks a dramatic change.

Unlike other types of health insurance, including Medicare Advantage, traditional Medicare generally does not require health care providers to submit requests for Medicare to authorize the treatments they recommend to patients.

Requiring prior authorization for these procedures and devices could reduce wasteful spending and help patients by steering them away from unnecessary treatments. However, there is a risk that it could also delay or interfere with some necessary care and add to the paperwork providers must contend with.

Prior authorization is widely used by Medicare Advantage plans. Many insurance companies hire technology firms to make prior authorization decisions for their Medicare Advantage plans.

Pilots are a key way that Medicare improves its services. Medicare tests changes on a small number of people or providers to see whether they should be implemented more broadly.

The six states participating are Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington. The 14 services that require prior authorization during this pilot include steroid injections for pain management and incontinence-control devices. The pilot ends December 2031.

If the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare, deems the pilot successful, the Department of Health and Human services could expand the program to include more procedures and more states.

Introducing a hurdle

This pilot isn’t changing the rules for what traditional Medicare covers. Instead, it adds an extra hurdle for medical providers before they can administer, for example, arthroscopic treatment for an osteoarthritic knee.

If Medicare issues a denial rather than authorizing the service, the patient goes without that treatment unless their provider files an appeal and prevails.

Medicare has hired tech companies to do the work of denying or approving prior authorization requests, with the aid of artificial intelligence.

Many of these are the same companies that do prior authorizations for Medicare Advantage plans.

The government pays the companies a percentage of what Medicare would have spent on the denied treatments. This means companies are paid more when they deny more prior authorization requests.

Medicare monitors the pilot program for inappropriate denials.

What to watch for

Past research has shown that when insurers require prior authorization, the people they cover get fewer services. This pilot is likely to reduce treatments and Medicare spending, though how much remains unknown.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services chose the services targeted by the pilot because there is evidence they are given excessively in many cases.

If the program denies cases where a health service is inappropriate, or of “low value” for a patient’s health, people enrolled in traditional Medicare could benefit.

But for each treatment targeted by the pilot, there are some cases where that kind of health care is necessary.

If the program’s AI-based decision method has trouble identifying these necessary cases and denies them, people could lose access to care they need.

The pilot also adds to the paperwork that medical providers must do. Paperwork is already a major burden for providers and contributes to burnout.

AI’s role

No matter how the government evaluates prior authorizations, we think this pilot is likely to reduce use of the targeted treatments.

The impact of using AI to evaluate these prior authorizations is unclear. AI could allow tech companies to automatically approve more cases, which could speed up decisions. However, companies could use time saved by AI to put more effort into having people review cases flagged by AI, which could increase denials.

Many private insurers already use AI for Medicare Advantage prior authorization decisions, although there has been limited research on these models, and little is known about how accurate AI is for this purpose.

What evidence there is suggests that AI-aided prior authorization leads to higher denial rates and larger reductions in health care use than when insurers make prior authorization decisions without using AI.

The bottom line

Any money the government saves during the pilot will depend on whether and how frequently these treatments are used inappropriately and how aggressively tech companies deny care.

In our view, this pilot will likely create winners and losers. Tech companies may benefit financially, though how much will depend on how big the treatment reductions are. But medical providers will have more paperwork to deal with and will get paid less if some of their Medicare requests are denied.

The impact on patients will depend on how well tech companies identify care that probably would be unnecessary and avoid denying care that is essential.

Taxpayers, who pay into Medicare during their working years, stand to benefit if the pilot can cut long-term Medicare costs, an important goal given Medicare’s growing budget crisis.

Like in Medicare Advantage, savings from prior authorization requirements in this pilot are split with private companies. Unlike in Medicare Advantage, however, this split is based on a fixed, observable percentage so that payments to private companies cannot exceed total savings, and the benefits of the program are easier for Medicare to quantify.

In our view, given the potential trade-offs, Medicare will need to evaluate the results of this pilot carefully before expanding it to more states – especially if it also expands the program to include services where unnecessary care is less common.

Grace Mackleby receives funding from Arnold Ventures and the Commonwealth Foundation.

Jeff Marr receives funding from Arnold Ventures and the National Institute on Aging.

– ref. Medicare is experimenting with having AI review claims – a cost-saving measure that could risk denying needed care – https://theconversation.com/medicare-is-experimenting-with-having-ai-review-claims-a-cost-saving-measure-that-could-risk-denying-needed-care-273754

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By William Bahnfleth, Professor of Architectural Engineering, Penn State

Recently, the German term “lüften” has been circulating on social media and trending on Google. The term refers to the practice of opening windows and doors to replace stale indoor air with outdoor air, a longtime practice in many European homes. Americans have dubbed it “house burping” in many videos on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

William Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at Penn State, has personal and professional experience with lüften. He spoke to The Conversation’s Pittsburgh Editor Cassandra Stone about the science behind it and how Pittsburgh homeowners can best navigate the “house burping” trend.

What does “lüften” actually mean in Germany and other parts of Europe, and how is it different from the way Americans typically ventilate homes?

Literally, “lüften” means “to air out.” It refers to opening windows – and sometimes doors – to rapidly flush a house with outdoor air, typically at least twice daily. This improves indoor air quality and controls humidity to prevent condensation, which can damage buildings and promote mold growth.

The practice is not unique to Germany, although it may not go by that name in other regions. I spent a sabbatical leave at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen, and upon arriving at the house I’d been assigned, I found instructions to air it twice a day for about 15 minutes. The stated purpose in this case was to prevent excessive humidity, because the climate in Denmark can be cool and damp. Moisture produced by bathing, laundry and cooking can raise indoor humidity to high levels if not controlled. The house also had a shower squeegee to remove water from walls and a sensor-controlled bathroom exhaust fan. Without mechanical cooling, opening windows for a bit early in the day kept the house comfortable as weather warmed.

Lüften is uncommon in the U.S., even in older, naturally ventilated homes. Americans tend to rely on HVAC systems for thermal comfort with windows closed, disconnecting indoor air quality from temperature control. The way American buildings are heated and cooled actually discourages window opening. After returning from Denmark, I started opening windows during mornings in cooling season – and leaving them open until it became too hot or humid indoors – and briefly in winter. This reduced summer cooling costs and improved indoor air quality all year – I was surprised how many days I could skip the air conditioner.

Is there scientific evidence that short, intense “airing out” improves air quality more effectively than just cracking a window all day?

It depends on whether a “cracked” window admits a lot of outdoor air or a little. Opening windows continuously provides better ventilation than brief, 5- to 10-minute periods, but with potential downsides for thermal comfort and energy use.

The best approach today is continuous outdoor air supply at design standard levels via an energy recovery ventilator. The ventilator uses fans to bring in a reliable outdoor air supply that’s partially conditioned by exchanging heat and moisture with exhausted air, providing good indoor air quality with low energy impact and stable indoor conditions. Researchers have also investigated “smart ventilation” systems that maintain desired average ventilation rates by bringing in more outdoor air to reduce operational strain and reduce energy costs– a kind of “next-generation lüften.”

One important aspect of indoor air quality that may not be improved by lüften is indoor particle control. Small particles that come from cooking, some cleaning activities or burning candles, for example, are the most harmful contaminants in most indoor environments. In urban areas, outdoor particle levels may exceed acceptable limits, so opening windows may release indoor pollutants such as cooking fumes and lower humidity inside, but it can also let in bad air from cars and industry.

Pittsburgh struggles with outdoor air pollution at times. How should locals think about the trade-off between bringing in outdoor air and introducing pollutants into the home?

“Fresh air” isn’t a synonym for outdoor air because it’s not actually “fresh” in many locations. It’s best to filter outdoor air to remove particles before bringing it into the house, which can be done with an energy recovery ventilator. Unit prices range from $600 to $1,500 on average, but these ventilators can reduce utility bills by 10% or more by preconditioning incoming fresh air with the outgoing air’s energy.

If that isn’t possible, portable air purifiers are a good solution with many benefits, such as a reduced risk of transmitting airborne respiratory infections, control of seasonal allergens such as pollen, resilience during wildfires, better air quality when you are using your wood-burning fireplace, and capturing emissions from cooking.

Can lüften make an older, damp home more comfortable?

It can lower humidity in the air, which reduces the potential concentration, but it doesn’t eliminate indoor sources of moisture. If a house is damp, especially if there are specific wet spots, the owner should try to identify and fix the causes. Lüften, and ventilation in general, are mitigation measures, not solutions.

Why do you think practices like lüften persist culturally?

The simplest answer is that they actually work. It’s a good place to start with taking responsibility for managing the air quality in your home. The better understanding of the causes and effects of poor indoor air quality, and the technology available to measure and control it, can beneficially update a good historical practice to obtain even more value from it.

William Bahnfleth 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. Lüften sounds simple – but ‘house-burping’ is more complicated in Pittsburgh – https://theconversation.com/luften-sounds-simple-but-house-burping-is-more-complicated-in-pittsburgh-274507

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christopher M. Filley, Professor Emeritus of Neurology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

On Oct. 25, 2023, a 40-year old man named Robert Card opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at a bowling alley and nearby bar in Lewiston, Maine, killing 18 people and wounding 13 others. Card was found dead by suicide two days later. His autopsy revealed extensive damage to the white matter of his brain thought to be related to a traumatic brain injury, which some neurologists proposed may have played a role in his murderous actions.

Neurological evidence such as magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, is widely used in court to show whether and to what extent brain damage induced a person to commit a violent act. That type of evidence was introduced in 12% of all murder trials and 25% of death penalty trials between 2014 and 2024. But it’s often unclear how such evidence should be interpreted because there’s no agreement on what specific brain injuries could trigger behavioral shifts that might make someone more likely to commit crimes.

We are two behavioral neurologists and a philosopher of neuroscience who have been collaborating over the past six years to investigate whether damage to specific regions of the brain might be somehow contributing to people’s decision to commit seemingly random acts of violence – as Card did.

With new technologies that go beyond simply visualizing the brain to analyze how different brain regions are connected, neuroscientists can now examine specific brain regions involved in decision-making and how brain damage may predispose a person to criminal conduct. This work may in turn shed light on how exactly the brain plays a role in people’s capacity to make moral choices.

Linking brain and behavior

The observation that brain damage can cause changes to behavior stretches back hundreds of years. In the 1860s, the French physician Paul Broca was one of the first in the history of modern neurology to link a mental capacity to a specific brain region. Examining the autopsied brain of a man who had lost the ability to speak after a stroke, Broca found damage to an area roughly beneath the left temple.

Broca could study his patients’ brains only at autopsy. So he concluded that damage to this single area caused the patient’s speech loss – and therefore that this area governs people’s ability to produce speech. The idea that cognitive functions were localized to specific brain areas persisted for well over a century, but researchers today know the picture is more complicated.

As brain imaging tools such as MRI have improved since the early 2000s it’s become increasingly possible to safely visualize people’s brains in stunning detail while they are alive. Meanwhile, other techniques for mapping connections between brain regions have helped reveal coordinated patterns of activity across a network of brain areas related to certain mental tasks.

With these tools, investigators can detect areas that have been damaged by brain disorders, such as strokes, and test whether that damage can be linked to specific changes in behavior. Then they can explore how that brain region interacts with others in the same network to get a more nuanced view of how the brain regulates those behaviors.

This approach can be applied to any behavior, including crime and immorality.

White matter and criminality

Complex human behaviors emerge from interacting networks that are made up of two types of brain tissue: gray matter and white matter.Gray matter consists of regions of nerve cell bodies and branching nerve fibers called dendrites, as well as points of connection between nerve cells. It’s in these areas that the brain’s heavy computational work is done. White matter, so named because of a pale, fatty substance called myelin that wraps the bundles of nerves, carries information between gray matter areas like highways in the brain.

Brain imaging studies of criminality going back to 2009 have suggested that damage to a swath of white matter called the right uncinate fasciculus is somehow involved when people commit violent acts. This tract connects the right amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain involved in emotional processing, with the right orbitofrontal cortex, a region in the front of the brain involved in complex decision-making. However, it wasn’t clear from these studies whether damage to this tract caused people to commit crimes or was just a coincidence.

In a 2025 study, we analyzed 17 cases from the medical literature in which people with no criminal history committed crimes such as murder, assault and rape after experiencing brain damage from a stroke, tumor or traumatic brain injury. We first mapped the location of damage in their brains using an atlas of brain circuitry derived from people whose brains were uninjured. Then we compared imaging of the damage with brain imaging from more than 700 people who had not committed crimes but who had a brain injury causing a different symptom, such as memory loss or depression.

In the people who committed crimes, we found the brain region that popped up the most often was the right uncinate fasciculus. Our study aligns with past research in linking criminal behavior to this brain area, but the way we conducted it makes our findings more definitive: These people committed their crimes only after they sustained their brain injuries, which suggests that damage to the right uncinate fasciculus played a role in triggering their criminal behavior.

These findings have an intriguing connection to research on morality. Other studies have found a link between strokes that damaged the right uncinate fasciculus with loss of empathy, suggesting this tract somehow regulates emotions that affect moral conduct. Meanwhile, other work has shown that people with psychopathy, which often aligns with immoral behavior, have abnormalities in their amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex regions that are directly connected by the uncinate fasciculus.

Neuroscientists are now testing whether the right uncinate fasciculus may be synthesizing information within a network of brain regions dedicated to moral values.

Making sense of it all

As intriguing as these findings are, it is important to note that many people with damage to their right uncinate fasciculus do not commit violent crimes. Similarly, most people who commit crimes do not have damage to this tract. This means that even if damage to this area can contribute to criminality, it’s only one of many possible factors underlying it.

Still, knowing that neurological damage to a specific brain structure can increase a person’s risk of committing a violent crime can be helpful in various contexts. For example, it can help the legal system assess neurological evidence when judging criminal responsibility. Similarly, doctors may be able to use this knowledge to develop specific interventions for people with brain disorders or injuries.

More broadly, understanding the neurological roots of morality and moral decision-making provides a bridge between science and society, revealing constraints that define how and why people make choices.

Isaiah Kletenik receives funding from the NIH.

Nothing to disclose.

Christopher M. Filley 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. Certain brain injuries may be linked to violent crime – identifying them could help reveal how people make moral choices – https://theconversation.com/certain-brain-injuries-may-be-linked-to-violent-crime-identifying-them-could-help-reveal-how-people-make-moral-choices-262034

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Margaret Landis, Assistant Professor of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University

Almost as tall as a football field, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and capsule stack traveled slowly – just under 1 mile per hour – out to the Artemis II launchpad, its temporary home at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on Jan. 17, 2026. That slow crawl is in stark contrast to the peak velocity it will reach on launch day, over 22,000 miles per hour, when it will send a crew of four on a journey around the Moon.

While its first launch opportunity is on Feb. 8., a rocket launch is always at the mercy of a variety of factors outside of the launch team’s control – from the literal position of the planets down to flocks of birds or rogue boats near the launchpad. Artemis II may not be able to launch on Feb. 8, but it has backup launch windows available in March and April. In fact, Feb. 8 already represents a small schedule change from the initially estimated Feb. 6 launch opportunity opening.

Artemis II’s goal is to send people to pass by the Moon and be sure all engineering systems are tested in space before Artemis III, which will land astronauts near the lunar south pole.

If Artemis II is successful, it will be the first time any person has been back to the Moon since 1972, when Apollo 17 left to return to Earth. The Artemis II astronauts will fly by the far side of the Moon before returning home. While they won’t land on the surface, they will provide the first human eyes on the lunar far side since the 20th century.

To put this in perspective, no one under the age of about 54 has yet lived in a world where humans were that far away from Earth. The four astronauts will orbit the Moon on a 10-day voyage and return through a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. As a planetary geologist, I’m excited for the prospect of people eventually returning to the Moon to do fieldwork on the first stepping stone away from Earth’s orbit.

Why won’t Artemis II land on the Moon?

If you wanted to summit Mount Everest, you would first test out your equipment and check to make sure everything works before heading up the mountain. A lunar landing is similar. Testing all the components of the launch system and crew vehicle is a critical part of returning people safely to the surface of the Moon and then flying them back to Earth.

And compared to the lunar surface, Everest is a tropical paradise.

NASA has accomplished lunar landings before, but the 54-year hiatus means that most of the engineers who worked on Apollo have retired. Only four of the 12 astronauts who have walked on the Moon are still alive.

Technology now is also vastly different. The Apollo lunar landing module’s computer only had about 4 kilobytes of RAM. A single typical iPhone photo is a few megabytes in size, over 1,000 times larger than the Apollo lunar landing module’s memory.

The two components of the Artemis II project are the rocket (the Space Launch System) and the crew capsule. Both have had a long road to the launchpad.

The Orion capsule was developed as part of the Constellation program, announced in 2005 and concluded in 2010. This program was a President George W. Bush-era attempt to move people beyond the space shuttle and International Space Station.

The Space Launch System started development in the early 2010s as a replacement vehicle for the Ares rocket, which was meant to be used with the Orion capsule in the Constellation program. The SLS rocket was used in 2022 for the Artemis I launch, which flew around the Moon without a crew. Boeing is the main contractor tasked with building the SLS, though over 1,000 separate vendors have been involved in the rocket’s fabrication.

The Apollo program, too, first sent a crewed capsule around the Moon without landing. Apollo 8, the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, launched and returned home in December 1968. William Anders, one of the astronauts on board tasked with testing the components of the Apollo lunar spacecraft, captured the iconic “Earthrise” image during the mission.

“Earthrise” was the first time people were able to look back at the Earth as part of a spacefaring species. The Earthrise image has been reproduced in a variety of contexts, including on a U.S. postage stamp. It fundamentally reshaped how people thought of their environment. Earth is still far and beyond the most habitable location in the solar system for life as we know it.

Unique Artemis II science

The Artemis II astronauts will be the first to see the lunar far side since the final Apollo astronauts left over 50 years ago. From the window of the Orion capsule, the Moon will appear at its largest to be about the size of a beach ball held at arm’s length.

Over the past decades, scientists have used orbiting satellites to image much of the lunar surface. Much imaging of the lunar surface has been accomplished, especially at high spatial resolution, by the lunar reconnaissance orbiter camera, LROC.

LROC is made up of a few different cameras. The LROC’s wide angle and narrow angle cameras have both captured images of more than 90% of the lunar surface. The LROC Wide Angle Camera has a resolution on the lunar surface of about 100 meters per pixel – with each pixel in the image being about the length of an American football field.

The LROC narrow angle camera provides about 0.5 to 2 meters per pixel resolution. This means the average person would fit within about the length of one pixel from the narrow angle camera’s orbital images. It can clearly see large rocks and the Apollo lunar landing sites.

If the robotic LROC has covered most of the lunar surface, why should the human crew of Artemis II look at it, at lower resolution?

Most images from space are not what would be considered “true” color, as seen by the human eye. Just like how the photos you take of an aurora in the night sky with a cellphone camera appear more dramatic than with the naked eye, the image depends on the wavelengths the detection systems are sensitive to.

Human astronauts will see the lunar surface in different colors than LROC. And something that human astronauts have that an orbital camera system cannot have is geology training. The Artemis II astronauts will make observations of the lunar far side and almost instantly interpret and adjust their observations.

The proceeding mission, Artemis III, which will include astronauts landing on the lunar surface, is currently scheduled to launch by 2028.

What’s next for Artemis II

The Artemis II crew capsule and SLS rocket are now waiting on the launchpad. Before launch, NASA still needs to complete several final checks, including testing systems while the rocket is fueled. These systems include the emergency exit for the astronauts in case something goes wrong, as well as safely moving fuel, which is made of hydrazine – a molecule made up of nitrogen and hydrogen that is incredibly energy-dense.

Completing these checks follows the old aerospace adage of “test like you fly.” They will ensure that the Artemis II astronauts have everything working on the ground before departing for the Moon.

Margaret Landis receives research funding from NASA. She is affiliated with the Planetary Society as a member for over 20 years.

– ref. NASA’s Artemis II plans to send a crew around the Moon to test equipment and lay the groundwork for a future landing – https://theconversation.com/nasas-artemis-ii-plans-to-send-a-crew-around-the-moon-to-test-equipment-and-lay-the-groundwork-for-a-future-landing-273688

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Thomas Morgan, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State University

Born on the same day, Bill and Ben both grew up to have high status. But in every other way they were polar opposites.

As children, Bill was well-liked, with many friends, while Ben was a bully, picking on smaller kids. During adolescence, Bill earned a reputation for athleticism and intelligence. Ben, flanked by his henchmen, was seen as formidable and dangerous. In adulthood, Bill was admired for his decision-making and diplomacy, but Ben was feared for his aggression and intransigence.

People sought out Bill’s company and listened to his advice. Ben was avoided, but he got his way through force.

How did Ben get away with this? Well, there’s one more difference: Bill is a human, and Ben is a chimp.

This hypothetical story of Bill and Ben highlights a deep difference between human and animal social life. Many mammals exhibit dominance hierarchies; forms of inequality in which stronger individuals use strength, aggression and allies to get better access to food or mating opportunities.

Human societies are more peaceable but not necessarily more equal. We have hierarchies, too – leaders, captains and bosses. Does this mean we are no more than clothed apes, our domineering tendencies cloaked under superficial civility?

I’m an evolutionary anthropologist, part of a team of researchers who set out to come to grips with the evolutionary history of human social life and inequality.

Building on decades of discoveries, our work supports the idea that human societies are fundamentally different from those of other species. People can be coercive, but unlike other species, we also create hierarchies of prestige – voluntary arrangements that allocate labor and decision-making power according to expertise.

This tendency matters because it can inform how we, as a society, think about the kinds of social hierarchies that emerge in a workplace, on a sports team or across society more broadly. Prestige hierarchies can be steep, with clear differences between high and low status. But when they work well, they can form part of a healthy group life from which everyone benefits.

Equal by nature?

Primate-style dominance hierarchies, along with the aggressive displays and fights that build them, are so alien to most humans that some researchers have concluded our species simply doesn’t “do” hierarchy. Add to this the limited archaeological evidence for wealth differences prior to farming, and a picture emerges of humans as a peaceful and egalitarian species, at least until agriculture upended things 12,000 years ago.

But new evidence tells a more interesting story. Even the most egalitarian groups, such as the Ju/‘hoansi and Hadza in Africa or Tsimané in South America, still show subtle inequalities in status, influence and power. And these differences matter: High-ranking men get their pick of partners, sometimes multiple partners, and go on to have more children. Archaeologists have also uncovered sites that display wealth differences even without agriculture.

So, are we more like other species than we might care to imagine, or is there still something different about human societies?

Dominance and prestige

One oddity is in how human hierarchies form. In other animals, fighting translates physical strength into dominance. In humans, however, people often happily defer to leaders, even seeking them out. This deference creates hierarchies of prestige, not dominance.

Why do people do this? One current hypothesis is that we, uniquely, live in a world that relies on complex technologies, teaching and cooperation. In this world, expertise matters. Some people know how to build a kayak; others don’t. Some people can organize a team to build a house; others need someone else to organize them. Some people are great hunters; others couldn’t catch a cold.

In a world like this, everyone keeps an eye out for who has the skills and knowledge they need. Adept individuals can translate their ability into power and status. But, crucially, this status benefits everyone, not just the person on top.

That’s the theory, but where’s the evidence?

There are plenty of anthropological accounts of skillful people earning social status and bullies being quickly cut down. Lab studies have also found that people do keep an eye on how well others are doing, what they’re good at, and even whom others are paying attention to, and they use this to guide their own information-seeking.

What my colleagues and I wanted to do was investigate how these everyday decisions might lead to larger-scale hierarchies of status and influence.

From theory to practice

In a perfect world, we’d monitor whole societies for decades, mapping individual decisions to social consequences. In reality, this kind of study is impossible, so my team turned to a classic tool in evolutionary research: computer models. In place of real-world populations, we can build digital ones and watch their history play out in milliseconds instead of years.

In these simulated worlds, virtual people copied each other, watched whom others were learning from and accrued prestige. The setup was simple, but a clear pattern emerged: The stronger the tendency to seek out prestigious people, the steeper social influence hierarchies became.

Below a threshold, societies stayed mostly egalitarian; above it, they were led by a powerful few. In other words, “prestige psychology” – the mental machinery that guides whom people learn from – creates a societal tipping point.

The next step was to bring real humans into the lab and measure their tendency to follow prestigious leaders. This can tell us whether we, as a species, fall above or below the tipping point – that is, whether our psychology favors egalitarian or hierarchical groups.

To do this, my colleagues and I put participants into small groups and gave them problems to solve. We recorded whom participants listened to, and let them know whom their group mates were learning from, and we used this information to find the value of the human “hierarchy-forming” tendency. It was high – well above the tipping point for hierarchies to emerge, and our experimental groups ended up with clear leaders.

One doubt lingered: Our volunteers were from the modern United States. Can they really tell us about the whole human species?

Rather than repeat the study across dozens of cultures, we returned to modeling. This time, we let prestige psychology evolve. Each simulated person had their own tendency for how much they deferred to prestige. It guided their actions, affected their fitness and was passed on to their children with minor mutations.

Over thousands of generations, natural selection identified the most successful psychology: a sensitivity to prestige nearly identical to that we measured in real humans – and strong enough to produce the same sharp hierarchies.

Inequality for everyone?

In other primates, being at the bottom of the social ladder can be brutal, with routine harassment and bullying by group mates. Thankfully, human prestige hierarchies look nothing like this. Even without any coercion, people often choose to follow skilled or respected individuals because good leadership makes life easier for everyone. Natural selection, it seems, has favored the psychology that makes this possible.

Of course, reality is messier than any model or lab experiment. Our simulations and experiment didn’t allow for coercion or bullying, and so they give an optimistic view of how human societies might work – not how they do.

In the real world, leaders can selfishly abuse their authority or simply fail to deliver collective benefits. Even in our experiment, some groups rallied around below-average teammates, the snowballing tendency of prestige swamping signs of their poor ability. Leaders should always be held to account for the outcomes of their choices, and an evolutionary basis to prestige does not justify the oppression of the powerless by the powerful.

So hierarchies remain a double-edged sword. Human societies are unique in the benefits that hierarchies can bring to followers, but the old forces of dominance and exploitation have not disappeared. Still, the fact that natural selection favored a psychology that drives voluntary deference and powerful leaders suggests that, most of the time, prestige hierarchies are worth the risks. When they work well, we all reap the rewards.

Thomas Morgan has received research funding from DARPA, the NSF and the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

– ref. A human tendency to value expertise, not just sheer power, explains how some social hierarchies form – https://theconversation.com/a-human-tendency-to-value-expertise-not-just-sheer-power-explains-how-some-social-hierarchies-form-271711

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anne Schmitz, Associate Professor of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Stout

If you break open a chicken bone, you won’t find a solid mass of white material inside. Instead, you will see a complex, spongelike network of tiny struts and pillars, and a lot of empty space.

It looks fragile, yet that internal structure allows a bird’s wing to withstand high winds while remaining light enough for flight. Nature rarely builds with solid blocks. Instead, it builds with clever, porous patterns to maximize strength while minimizing weight.

Human engineers have always envied this efficiency. You can see it in the hexagonal perfection of a honeycomb, which uses the least amount of wax to store the most honey, and in the internal spiraling architecture of seashells that resist crushing pressures.

For centuries, however, manufacturing limitations meant engineers couldn’t easily copy these natural designs. Traditional manufacturing has usually been subtractive, meaning it starts with a heavy block of metal that is carved down, or formative, which entails pouring liquid plastic into a mold. Neither method can easily create complex, spongelike interiors hidden inside a solid shell.

If engineers wanted to make a part stronger, they generally had to make it thicker and heavier. This approach is often inefficient, wastes material and results in heavier products that require more energy to transport.

I am a mechanical engineer and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where I research the intersection of advanced manufacturing and biology. For several years, my work has focused on using additive manufacturing to create materials that, like a bird’s wing, are both incredibly light and capable of handling intense physical stress. While these “holey” designs have existed in nature for millions of years, it is only recently that 3D printing has made it possible for us to replicate them in the lab.

The invisible architecture

That paradigm changed with the maturation of additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, when it evolved from a niche prototyping tool into a robust industrial force. While the technology was first patented in the 1980s, it truly took off over the past decade as it became capable of producing end-use parts for high-stakes industries like aerospace and health care.

Instead of cutting away material, printers build objects layer by layer, depositing plastic or metal powder only exactly where it’s needed based on a digital file. This technology unlocked a new frontier in materials science focused on mesostructures.

A mesostructure represents the in-between scale. It is not the microscopic atomic makeup of the material, nor is it the macroscopic overall shape of the object, like a whole shoe. It is the internal architecture, including the engineered pattern of air and material hidden inside.

It’s the difference between a solid brick and the intricate iron latticework of the Eiffel Tower. Both are strong, but one uses vastly less material to achieve that strength because of how the empty space is arranged.

From the lab to your closet

While the concept of using additive manufacturing to create parts that take advantage of mesostructures started in research labs around the year 2000, consumers are now seeing these bio-inspired designs in everyday products.

The footwear industry is a prime example. If you look closely at the soles of certain high-end running shoes, you won’t see a solid block of foam. Instead, you will see a complex, weblike lattice structure that looks suspiciously like the inside of a bird bone. This printed design mimics the springiness and weight distribution found in natural porous structures, offering tuned performance that solid foam cannot match.

Engineers use the same principle to improve safety gear. Modern bike helmets and football helmet liners are beginning to replace traditional foam padding with 3D-printed lattices. These tiny, repeating jungle gym structures are designed to crumple and rebound to absorb the energy more efficiently than solid materials, much like how the porous bone inside your own skull protects your brain.

Testing the limits

In my research, I look for the rules nature uses to build strong objects.

For example, seashells are tough because they are built like a brick wall, with hard mineral blocks held together by a thin layer of stretchy glue. This pattern allows the hard bricks to slide past each other instead of snapping when put under pressure. The shell absorbs energy and stops cracks from spreading, which makes the final structure much tougher than a solid piece of the same material.

I use advanced computer models to crush thousands of virtual designs to see exactly when and how they fail. I have even used neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence, to find the best patterns for absorbing energy.

My studies have shown that a wavy design can be very effective, especially when we fine-tune the thickness of the lines and the number of turns in the pattern. By finding these perfect combinations, we can design products that fail gradually and safely – much like the crumple zone on the front of a car.

By understanding the mechanics of these structures, engineers can tailor them for specific jobs, making one area of a product stiff and another area flexible within a single continuous printed part.

The sustainable future

Beyond performance, mimicking nature’s less-is-more approach is a significant win for sustainability. By “printing air” into the internal structure of a product, manufacturers can use significantly less raw material while maintaining the necessary strength.

As industrial 3D printing becomes faster and cheaper, manufacturing will move further away from the solid-block era and closer to the elegant efficiency of the biological world. Nature has spent millions of years perfecting these blueprints through evolution – and engineers are finally learning how to read them.

Anne Schmitz 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. Building with air – how nature’s hole-filled blueprints shape manufacturing – https://theconversation.com/building-with-air-how-natures-hole-filled-blueprints-shape-manufacturing-270640