Ancient hunter-gatherers from Europe may have voyaged across the Mediterranean to Northern Africa around 8,500 years ago, new research suggests. Ancient DNA collected from the remains of Stone Age individuals from the eastern Maghreb region, which spans Tunisia and northeastern Algeria, revealed that they may have descended, in part, from European hunter-gatherers, according to a paper published March 12 in the journal Nature . The remains of one of the ancient humans found at a Tunisia site named Djebba was found to have about 6% of his DNA originating from European hunter-gatherer ancestry. These results represent the first clear genetic evidence of contact between early European and North African populations, indicating that Stone Age European hunter-gatherers and North Africans may have interacted more than we initially thought. "Several decades ago, some biological anthropologists proposed that European and North African hunter-gatherers had made contact, based on morphological analyses of skeletal traits," study co-author Ron Pinhasi , an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna, said in a statement . "At the time, this theory appeared overly speculative," he added. "However, 30 years later, our new genomic data has validated these early hypotheses. This is really exciting." Related: 7,000-year-old canoes from Italy are the oldest ever found in the Mediterranean The Stone Age began with the use of stone tools about 3 million years ago (before modern humans existed) and ended about 5,000 years ago in parts of North Africa and Europe with the rise of metal tools and early civilizations . During the Stone Age, humans in Europe and North Africa mostly lived as hunter-gatherers, gradually transitioning to farming and more complex societies during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, which occurred between roughly 10,000 and 2,000 B.C. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors Image 1 of 3 (Image credit: Google Earth) A map of the eastern Maghreb in North Africa, including (1) Afalou Bou Rhummel; (2) Djebba; (3) Doukanet el Khoutifa; and (4) Hergla. (Image credit: Giulio Lucarini) The eastern Maghreb archaeological dig site at Doukanet el Khoutifa, Tunisia. (Image credit: Simone Mulazzani) The archaeological site at Hergla, Tunisia Before now, archaeologists didn't know much about the transition to farming in North Africa, with most genomic data coming from sites in the far western Maghreb (modern-day Morocco). "There's not been much of a North African story," study co-author David Reich , a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School, told Nature News . "It was a huge hole." Previous research in the western Maghreb found that people in this area had high levels of European farmer ancestry — genetically distinct from hunter-gatherers — reaching up to 80% in some populations due to the movement of farmers via the Gibraltar Strait around 7,000 years ago. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Giulio Lucarini) A researcher excavates human remains at Doukanet el Khoutifa, Tunisia (Image credit: David Reich) Scientists process samples from the North African archaeological sites at Harvard Medical School. The new study reveals that the eastern Maghreb people had comparatively little European farmer ancestry, instead remaining quite genetically isolated — with the surprising exception of some earlier European hunter-gatherer influences. The archaeologists analyzed the DNA from bones and teeth of nine people who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago in the eastern Maghreb. The DNA showed that one of the ancient humans, who lived about 8,500 years ago, shared about 6% of his DNA with European hunter-gatherers. This suggests that the hunter-gatherers may have boated across the Mediterranean, possibly aboard long wooden canoes. Traces of volcanic glass or obsidian from Pantelleria, an island in the Strait of Sicily, was also found at one of the sites, indicating that these hunter-gatherers may have stopped off at several islands on their journey across the sea.

What if you could listen to music or a podcast without headphones or earbuds and without disturbing anyone around you? Or have a private conversation in public without other people hearing you? Our newly published research introduces a way to create audible enclaves – localized pockets of sound that are isolated from their surroundings. In other words, we’ve developed a technology that could create sound exactly where it needs to be. The ability to send sound that becomes audible only at a specific location could transform entertainment, communication and spatial audio experiences. What is sound? Sound is a vibration that travels through air as a wave. These waves are created when an object moves back and forth, compressing and decompressing air molecules. The frequency of these vibrations is what determines pitch. Low frequencies correspond to deep sounds, like a bass drum; high frequencies correspond to sharp sounds, like a whistle. Controlling where sound goes is difficult because of a phenomenon called diffraction – the tendency of sound waves to spread out as they travel. This effect is particularly strong for low-frequency sounds because of their longer wavelengths, making it nearly impossible to keep sound confined to a specific area. Certain audio technologies, such as parametric array loudspeakers, can create focused sound beams aimed in a specific direction. However, these technologies will still emit sound that is audible along its entire path as it travels through space. The science of audible enclaves We found a new way to send sound to one specific listener: through self-bending ultrasound beams and a concept called nonlinear acoustics. Ultrasound refers to sound waves with frequencies above the human hearing range, or above 20 kHz. These waves travel through the air like normal sound waves but are inaudible to people. Because ultrasound can penetrate through many materials and interact with objects in unique ways, it’s widely used for medical imaging and many industrial applications. In our work, we used ultrasound as a carrier for audible sound. It can transport sound through space silently – becoming audible only when desired. How did we do this? Normally, sound waves combine linearly, meaning they just proportionally add up into a bigger wave. However, when sound waves are intense enough, they can interact nonlinearly, generating new frequencies that were not present before. This is the key to our technique: We use two ultrasound beams at different frequencies that are completely silent on their own. But when they intersect in space, nonlinear effects cause them to generate a new sound wave at an audible frequency that would be heard only in that specific region. Crucially, we designed ultrasonic beams that can bend on their own. Normally, sound waves travel in straight lines unless something blocks or reflects them. However, by using acoustic metasurfaces – specialized materials that manipulate sound waves – we can shape ultrasound beams to bend as they travel. Similar to how an optical lens bends light, acoustic metasurfaces change the shape of the path of sound waves. By precisely controlling the phase of the ultrasound waves, we create curved sound paths that can navigate around obstacles and meet at a specific target location. The key phenomenon at play is what’s called difference frequency generation. When two ultrasonic beams of slightly different frequencies, such as 40 kHz and 39.5 kHz, overlap, they create a new sound wave at the difference between their frequencies – in this case 0.5 kHz, or 500 Hz, which is well within the human hearing range. Sound can be heard only where the beams cross. Outside of that intersection, the ultrasound waves remain silent. This means you can deliver audio to a specific location or person without disturbing other people as the sound travels. Advancing sound control The ability to create audio enclaves has many potential applications. Audio enclaves could enable personalized audio in public spaces. For example, museums could provide different audio guides to visitors without headphones, and libraries could allow students to study with audio lessons without disturbing others. In a car, passengers could listen to music without distracting the driver from hearing navigation instructions. Offices and military settings could also benefit from localized speech zones for confidential conversations. Audio enclaves could also be adapted to cancel out noise in designated areas, creating quiet zones to improve focus in workplaces or reduce noise pollution in cities. This isn’t something that’s going to be on the shelf in the immediate future. For instance, challenges remain for our technology. Nonlinear distortion can affect sound quality. And power efficiency is another issue – converting ultrasound to audible sound requires high-intensity fields that can be energy intensive to generate. Despite these hurdles, audio enclaves present a fundamental shift in sound control. By redefining how sound interacts with space, we open up new possibilities for immersive, efficient and personalized audio experiences.

Four species of iguana populate Fiji — including this crested iguana (Brachylophus vitiensis) — but all are thought to descend from ancient iguanas that made a very long journey across the ocean. Around 34 million years ago, iguanas undertook the longest-known transoceanic trip of any terrestrial species, sailing one-fifth of the way around the world from North America to set up home in Fiji, a new study suggests. Researchers believe the iguanas made the more than 5,000 mile (8,000 kilometer) journey on rafts made of vegetation, arriving in Fiji shortly after the islands formed. "You could imagine some kind of cyclone knocking over trees where there were a bunch of iguanas and maybe their eggs, and then they caught the ocean currents and rafted over," lead author Simon Scarpetta , lead author and assistant professor of environmental science at the University of San Francisco, said in a statement. Fiji's bright-green lizards are the only iguanas outside the Western Hemisphere, and how they got there has been a long-standing mystery. In a new genetic analysis published Monday (March 17) in the journal PNAS , researchers found Fiji's iguanas are much more closely related to their Western Hemisphere cousins than previously believed, making the journey directly from the West Coast of the United States to Fiji about 34 million years ago. "That they reached Fiji directly from North America seems crazy," study co-author Jimmy McGuire , professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. "But alternative models involving colonization from adjacent land areas don't really work for the time frame, since we know that they arrived in Fiji within the last 34 million years or so." Related: Labord's chameleon — the color-changing lizard that drops dead in 4 months Previously, some biologists posited the Fijian lizards — which comprise the genus Brachylophus — descended from a now-extinct family of iguanas that once populated the Pacific. Others have suggested the lizards could have floated shorter distances from South America and through Antarctica or Australia before finally ending up in the Pacific. But these ideas were based on past genetic analyses that did not conclusively show how closely Fiji iguanas were related to other iguanids. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors One of Fiji's reptiles — the Central Fijian banded iguana (Brachylophus bulabula) — clings to a tree. This might have been how his ancestors first made it to the remote islands. (Image credit: USGS) The new analysis relies on a genome-wide DNA sequence that Scarpetta collected from over 200 iguana specimens from museums around the world. The work revealed the Brachylophus genus in Fiji is most closely related to lizards in the Diposaurus genus, which are widespread in the deserts of North America. These desert iguanas are well adapted to searing heat, so potentially had adaptations to survive the long journey. "Iguanas and desert iguanas, in particular, are resistant to starvation and dehydration, so my thought process is, if there had to be any group of vertebrate or any group of lizard that really could make an 8,000 kilometer journey across the Pacific on a mass of vegetation, a desert iguana-like ancestor would be the one," Scarpetta said. The researchers estimate these lineages split approximately 34 million years ago — roughly aligning with geological history of the islands' formation. "This suggests that as soon as land appeared where Fiji now resides, these iguanas may have colonized it. Regardless of the actual timing of dispersal, the event itself was spectacular," Scarpetta said.

Volunteers and residents clear up wreckage after mobile home was hit by a tornado on March 16, 2025 in Calera, Alabama. A string of deadly tornadoes, violent dust storms and fast-moving wildfires ripped across several midwestern and southern U.S. states over the weekend, leaving at least 42 people dead, according to CNN . Many of the deaths have occurred outside Tornado Alley , with at least six fatalities reported in Mississippi and three reported in both Arkansas and Alabama. This follows a pattern previously predicted by long-range forecasters at AccuWeather, which warned of an eastward-shift in tornado risk this year. "Families and businesses across the Mississippi and Tennessee valleys need to prepare for a stormy spring. This forecast is concerning because more people are in harm's way, compared to Tornado Alley," AccuWeather lead long-range expert Paul Pastelok said in a statement . "More people live in the Mississippi and Tennessee valleys, and more of those families are in vulnerable buildings without basements like mobile homes." What is Tornado Alley? Tornado Alley is a nickname given to a region stretching across several South Central states where destructive tornadoes are most likely to occur, according to AccuWeather. "This area encompasses much of northern Texas northward through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and parts of Louisiana, Iowa, Nebraska and eastern Colorado," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dan Kottlowski said in a statement . Related: 'Winter is far from over': Polar vortex reversal could bring springtime snow to US However, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) this nickname can be misleading as tornadoes can occur anywhere in the U.S. — and tornado threat shifts at different times of the year and under different weather patterns. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors Tornadoes are violently rotating columns of air that stretch between the ground and the base of storm clouds. Their strength is measured using the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which estimates the tornado's strength based on the damage it causes. The highest ranking on the scale is EF5, indicating "incredible" damage. Why is tornado risk shifting eastward? In the U.S., tornado season usually begins in early March when cold air from Canada clashes with warm, moist air from the Gulf. Pastelok said that this year's eastward shift in tornado risk is due to a large and persistent area of high pressure that is expected to hover over the Southwest this spring, limiting the severity of thunderstorms, and thus tornado risk, in the Western Plains. Exceptionally warm sea water in the Gulf is also expected to significantly influence severe weather in Southeastern states. Cooler weather across much of the Great Lakes and Northeast is expected to limit the severity of thunderstorms and tornados in the Northern states through early spring. On Friday (March 14) and Saturday, a particularly powerful storm system tore through many Central and Southern states, with 52 confirmed tornadoes whipping up expansive dust storms and wildfires. Nearly 1,100 flights were canceled during the two day period and 150 million people were affected by the extreme weather, AccuWeather reports . According to the National Weather Service (NWS), two EF4-strength tornadoes — indicative of "devastating" damage — ripped through Arkansas on Friday. This was the first time in over 25 years that two EF4-strength tornadoes hit the state in a single day. One of these tornadoes, which devastated the town of Diaz, reached estimated wind speeds of 190 mph (306 kilometers per hour), NWS reports. Meanwhile, winds topping 80 mph (129 km/h) were reported across the Southern Plains on Friday, with three people killed in car crashes attributed to dust storms in Texas. Wind-driven wildfires have also caused extensive damage across Texas and Oklahoma, with the latter reporting more than 130 fires, according to state Governor Kevin Stitt. The storm system is expected to move offshore by the end of the day on Monday (March 17), according to CNN . However, extremely critical fire-weather conditions are likely to persist into Tuesday afternoon (March 18), according to the NWS Storm Prediction Center . Between 1,300 and 1,450 tornadoes are predicted to occur across the U.S. in total in 2025, according to AccuWeather. This is above the historical average of 1,225. Between 75 and 150 tornadoes have been forecast for March, 200 to 300 in April and 250 to 350 in May. As well as increasing the frequency of tornadoes, our warming atmosphere may also contribute to more impactful and dangerous thunderstorms, AccuWeather senior meteorologist and climate expert Brett Anderson said in the statement. "Our warming atmosphere can hold more moisture, unleashing intense rainfall rates that can trigger dangerous flash flooding," he said. "As water temperatures continue to increase in the Gulf, warmer air with more moisture can be forced northward into the Southern states ahead of a cold front, providing an extra boost of energy for severe thunderstorms that can produce tornadoes."

In a first-of-its-kind discovery, a death adder has been found with three super-sharp, venomous fangs, instead of the usual two. "This is something we've never seen before," Billy Collett, park manager at the Australian Reptile Park, where the snake lives, said in a statement emailed to Live Science. "We've had this death adder in the venom program for about seven years, but only recently did we notice the third fang. I thought it would just shed off over time, but one year later, and it's still there!" This third fang, located right next to one of the other fangs at the left side of the snake's mouth, also produces venom. This means it has a much larger venom output per bite than is usual for a death adder, making it even more deadly. The three-fanged snake being milked for its venom. This snake produces more venom than other death adders. (Image credit: Australian Reptile Park) This ultra-rare snake "might actually be the most dangerous death adder in the world," Collett said in a video interview. According to the statement, the extra fang is the result of a never-before-seen mutation. Related: 'Truly primal': Watch Burmese python swallow deer whole in Florida Everglades by stretching its mouth to the absolute limit Death adders (Acanthophis) are a group of venomous snakes native to Australia and New Guinea. They have one of the fastest strikes of any snake, with some species being capable of biting and injecting venom from their fangs in under 0.15 seconds. Their venom contains neurotoxins that can cause paralysis and even death if left untreated. Before the development of antivenom, around 50% of death adder bites were fatal. This snake is part of Australian Reptile Park's antivenom production program, and its extremely rare extra fang was discovered when it was being milked for its venom . This involves gently squeezing a snake's venom glands while it bites onto a collection container, causing the venom to pour into the vial. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors The snake's two fangs on the left side of its mouth. Three-fanged death adders are extremely rare. (Image credit: Australian Reptile Park) This three-fanged death adder was found to produce far more venom than usual, with "massive yields" coming out of all three fangs. It produces roughly double that of a two-fanged death adder — although it's unclear whether the higher yield is the result of the extra fang, or that this individual just produces high quantities of venom. This is the first three-fanged snake ever discovered at the Australian Reptile Park, which has been operating for 20 years and has milked hundreds of thousands of snakes, a spokesperson for the park told Live Science in an email. "There have been other 3 fanged snakes found in Australia, but from what we can find, there have been no 3 fanged death adders recorded," they said. Exactly why this snake has three fangs instead of two is unclear, but may be related to the process of fang replacement. Similar to human adult teeth, death adders have replacement fangs growing behind the active ones, so when a fang is lost, a new one moves forward to take its place. This ensures that their fangs remain sharp and functional for injecting venom. "It's normal for death adders to shed fangs over time and replace them with new ones every few months or so," the spokesperson said. "Unfortunately, we don't actually know what has caused the 3rd fang to develop and don't currently have the facilities to run any tests."

A pair of NASA astronauts stuck aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for more than nine months will return to Earth on Tuesday (March 18) at the earliest, NASA has said. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will depart the space station aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule on Tuesday morning and splash down near Florida by the evening, if the weather permits. Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June as part of Boeing's first Starliner Crew Test Flight. But a number of issues with Boeing's spacecraft — including five helium leaks and five failures of its reaction control system (RCS) thrusters — led to the mission being abandoned and the duo's time in space extended from eight days to nearly 300 . Their return, part of NASA's scheduled rotation between the ISS's Crew-9 and Crew-10 missions, was originally scheduled for Wednesday (March 19), but has been bumped forward to 5:57 pm ET on Tuesday (March 18) due to favorable weather conditions, according to NASA. "The updated return target continues to allow the space station crew members time to complete handover duties while providing operational flexibility ahead of less favorable weather conditions expected for later in the week," NASA wrote in an announcement on Sunday (March 16). Related: NASA offers SpaceX $843 million to destroy the International Space Station If everything goes according to plan, Wilmore and Williams will ride home on the Crew-9 Dragon capsule, called "Freedom", alongside fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — half of the usual Crew-9 crew to allow space for the Starliner duo. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors The Starliner astronauts' 300 consecutive days in space is nowhere near the current record of 437 days set by Russian Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov in 1995, but it's still a long, and completely unexpected extension of the astronauts' shift aboard the ISS. And it's also one that can have deleterious effects on the human body, causing the heart, bones and muscles to shrink over time under low gravity. These are well known side effects of long-term spaceflight that all astronauts must face, and not related to the extension of Wilmore and Williams' mission. To mitigate them, the astronauts have been doing two hours of resistance and endurance training every day. "Mission managers will continue monitoring weather conditions in the area, as Dragon's undocking depends on various factors, including spacecraft readiness, recovery team readiness, weather, sea states, and other factors," NASA wrote in its update. "NASA and SpaceX will confirm the specific splashdown location closer to the Crew-9 return."

Les scientifiques constatent que le vivant, à l’échelle de l’arbre, de la forêt ou de l’essence d’arbre, est capable d’étonnants processus d’adaptation. Mais ces derniers suffiront-ils face au changement climatique en cours ? Adaptation. Le mot sonne comme une injonction. Il envahit peu à peu l’espace médiatique et politique pour évoquer notre positionnement vis-à-vis d’un environnement en proie à de nombreux fléaux. Le mot atténuation, lui, est beaucoup moins présent pour parler des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et des pressions que l’on fait peser sur les écosystèmes. Adaptation et atténuation sont deux actions dépendantes, l’une n’exclut pas l’autre, mais rappelons toutefois que le GIEC a estimé qu’il nous coûterait vingt fois plus cher de nous adapter sans atténuation que d’arriver à la neutralité carbone. Malgré cette réalité, l’idée de s’adapter a bien du succès, mais si on se place sur le temps long, elle peut sembler étonnante. En effet, être adapté à notre environnement, à notre climat, nous l’étions depuis l’apparition de notre civilisation, car le climat n’a subi que de faibles variations depuis cette époque, en comparaison de ce qui nous attend. Face au défi climatique, l’idée d’adaptation est devenue un processus qui s’incarne dans des trajectoires, des scénarios, des plans. La France s’est dotée d’un plan national d’adaptation au changement climatique et d’une trajectoire de référence pour l’élaborer. Cette trajectoire prévoit que d’ici 2100, le climat de Marseille sera celui de Séville et le climat de Paris celui de Montpellier. Tous les êtres vivants vont devoir s’adapter et sont déjà en train d’essayer de le faire, chacun à sa vitesse, grâce à la sélection naturelle et la diversité génétique dont celle-ci se nourrit. Les populations d’arbres elles aussi s’adaptent aux nouvelles conditions climatiques, mais réussiront-elles à le faire avant de disparaître ? Telle est la question. Certains répondront que c’est impossible et qu’il faut donc accélérer la récolte des forêts actuelles et la plantation d’un milliard de nouveaux arbres, espère-t-on mieux adaptés aux conditions futures. Ces nouveaux arbres, certains proposent d’aller les chercher chez d’autres espèces qui n’existent pas en France et qui vivent dans des climats plus chauds et plus secs tels que le chêne zéen, les sapins de Turquie, l’eucalyptus. Ces solutions posent aussi de nombreuses réserves soulevées par les scientifiques. D’autres options sont aussi envisageables visant à tirer parti des mécanismes naturels d’adaptation. Mais soyons clairs : il n’y aura pas de solution miracle universelle, il faudra diversifier les options comme les forêts elles-mêmes, indispensables de bien des façons à notre bien-être. Ce que nous devons aux forêts De fait, les forêts apportent de très nombreuses contributions à nos sociétés et à notre bien-être. Elles fournissent du bois pour la construction, la manufacture, la production d’énergie mais aussi des médicaments (même si certaines molécules sont par la suite parfois synthétisées en laboratoire) comme les extraits de saule (aspirine) ou d’if (anticancéreux), des aliments pour l’homme (baies, champignons) et le bétail (glands, feuillage). Elles captent le CO 2 atmosphérique et le stockent durablement dans le bois et le sol, purifient l’air et l’eau, atténuent les événements climatiques extrêmes, maintiennent et enrichissent les sols, abritent une très grande biodiversité, et sont une composante majeure du système climatique. Elles jouent enfin un grand rôle dans notre santé physique et mentale et notre identité culturelle. Le temps forestier face à la vitesse du changement climatique Mais aujourd’hui, les forêts doivent faire face à un bouleversement inédit, le réchauffement climatique, qui a connu une très nette accélération ces dix dernières années en France. La trajectoire de référence que la France a adoptée pour établir son plan d’adaptation prévoit +4 °C avant 2100. Les forêts doivent donc faire face à deux temporalités différentes, celle du changement climatique et celle de leur cycle de vie ou cycle d’exploitation qui varie de 40-50 ans pour certains résineux à croissance rapide comme le pin des Landes voire 20 ans pour les peupleraies, à plus de 180 ans pour le chêne. Un arbre peut-il s’adapter à des conditions changeantes au cours de sa vie ? Penser le futur des forêts nécessite donc d’anticiper l’évolution attendue du climat, en tenant compte des incertitudes, mais également de prendre en compte les capacités d’adaptation propres à chaque arbre au cours de sa vie. Le fonctionnement d’un arbre dépend des conditions dans lesquelles il se trouve, il peut s’ajuster en quelques minutes à un changement de luminosité par exemple. Cet ajustement constant lui permet d’endurer des conditions météorologiques très différentes au cours d’une année et d’une année sur l’autre. Cette plasticité permet notamment à des arbres exotiques introduits dans des parcs et jardins de croître, survivre et parfois se reproduire dans des conditions très différentes de celles où ils vivent normalement. Elle a aussi permis aux arbres de survivre avec un réchauffement global de +1,5 °C. Mais malheureusement, cette plasticité a des limites qui ont maintenant été atteintes dans de nombreuses régions. En effet, la vie, telle qu’elle existe sur Terre, ne peut persister sans eau liquide, et au-delà de 40 °C les protéines commencent à se dénaturer et la photosynthèse et autres processus physiologiques atteignent leur limite. L’accentuation des sécheresses et des canicules depuis 2003 a ainsi provoqué des dépérissements massifs en France, en particulier dans les forêts d’épicéas du Nord-Est qui sont passées de puits à source de carbone. Puisque les limites vitales sont atteintes, certains prônent par exemple de réduire la densité d’arbres afin de diminuer la compétition pour l’eau. Cependant, en deçà d’une certaine densité, ce n’est plus une forêt qu’on maintient mais une savane arborée. L’adaptation par la sélection naturelle peut-elle être rapide chez les arbres ? D’autres capacités d’adaptation se situent à l’échelle des populations d’arbres. Les arbres sont parmi les organismes vivants ayant la plus grande diversité génétique, non seulement à l’échelle de leurs aires naturelles (celle du Pin sylvestre s’étend de la Sibérie à l’Andalousie, sous des climats bien différents), mais aussi à l’intérieur de chaque peuplement. Grâce à cette diversité génétique, les forêts bénéficient d’un fort potentiel d’adaptation par l’action de la sélection naturelle. Le transfert de graines pour planter des arbres hors de leur aire d’origine est une pratique forestière ancienne. Les études rétrospectives de telles forêts révèlent une capacité d’adaptation à de nouvelles conditions après seulement une à quelques générations d’arbres. Ainsi chez le Pin maritime, espèce globalement sensible au froid, on a observé que les descendants d’arbres survivants de plantations artificielles faites dans le Nord-Est de la France étaient plus résistants au froid que les plants issus des forêts de l’aire naturelle. Cette capacité d’adaptation génétique rapide est aussi mise à profit dans les programmes de sélection : le Pin radiata, qui a une aire naturelle extrêmement réduite à quelques populations de la côte Californienne sous un climat doux et humide, est devenu en quelques décennies l’une des essences les plus largement plantées sur tous les continents y compris sous des climats plus secs ou continentaux. Dalvenjah/Flickr et Peter Turner Photography/Shutterstock L’adaptation par l’action de la sélection naturelle ne doit pas se raisonner seulement à l’échelle des générations (plusieurs décennies chez les arbres) car c’est aussi un processus continu. Des études génétiques menées sur différents arbres tempérés et tropicaux ont montré qu’au sein d’une forêt, chaque arbre est adapté à son micro-environnement. Ainsi, on a montré que les populations d’arbres situées à différentes altitudes d’une même montagne peuvent avoir des spécificités génétiques adaptatives : plus adaptées au froid en altitude et à des conditions chaudes et sèches en basse altitude. À l’échelle de la forêt, la compétition pour la lumière aboutit au fait que les arbres plus grands dits « dominants » ont un meilleur accès à la lumière. Ils survivent plus longtemps, produisent plus de pollen ou de graines et transmettent donc plus leurs gènes à la génération suivante. Ainsi toutes les caractéristiques qui contribuent à rendre un arbre dominant sur ses voisins sont sélectionnées : la sélection naturelle procède ainsi par écrémage continu dans la diversité génétique existante à tous les stades de la forêt. D’autres processus de sélection portent sur des caractéristiques liées à la résistance à des stress (froid, sécheresse, pathogènes). Par exemple, la réserve intégrale de la hêtraie de La Massane dans les Pyrénées Orientales montre des signes importants de dépérissement mais les facteurs de mortalité varient d’une année à l’autre : les arbres que l’on observe aujourd’hui sont les survivants de nombreux événements de sélection successifs. La forêt s’adapte en continu, pas à pas. Les diversités d’adaptation au sein d’une même forêt Une forêt naturelle n’est donc pas homogène. Coexistent souvent plusieurs types d’arbres ayant différentes stratégies d’adaptation. Dans la hêtraie du Mont Ventoux (Vaucluse) par exemple, on trouve des arbres qui démarrent leur croissance rapidement au printemps avant la sécheresse estivale mais courent le risque de subir les gels printaniers, et des arbres qui démarrent plus tardivement mais sont plus tolérants à la sécheresse. Au fil des générations, les mécanismes de la reproduction sexuée réorganisent en partie le patrimoine génétique transmis par chaque arbre à ses descendants en générant de nouvelles combinaisons génétiques originales qui seront soumises à leur tour aux processus de sélection : c’est l’un des mécanismes permettant le maintien d’une diversité génétique malgré la sélection naturelle. Chez les arbres, qui ont un cycle de vie long et dispersent loin leur pollen et leurs graines, les facteurs de sélection changent dans le temps et varient dans l’espace, ce qui contribue aussi au maintien d’une grande diversité génétique, et donc d’un potentiel d’adaptation, au sein de chaque population. Mais l’action de la sélection naturelle trouve ses limites dans les contraintes du fonctionnement physiologique des plantes et est parfois entravée par un manque d’arbres reproducteurs, un manque de diversité génétique, des événements catastrophiques de grande ampleur, des parasites émergents, etc. Il est donc bien difficile et hasardeux de prédire la capacité d’adaptation future d’une forêt particulière et de se reposer simplement là-dessus. On peut néanmoins raisonner l’impact des pratiques de gestion sur les mécanismes d’adaptation. Du lundi au vendredi + le dimanche, recevez gratuitement les analyses et décryptages de nos experts pour un autre regard sur l’actualité. Abonnez-vous dès aujourd’hui ! Piloter la sélection naturelle par la gestion forestière La sylviculture peut en effet piloter les mécanismes de sélection naturelle eux-mêmes. Par exemple, les coupes d’éclaircies successives qui ont pour but de supprimer les arbres les moins intéressants pour laisser plus de place aux autres, diminuent l’intensité de la compétition pour l’eau qui est aussi un des mécanismes de la sélection naturelle. Cependant, le choix des arbres conservés lors de ces éclaircies se fait sur la base d’objectifs de gestion (on garde les plus beaux arbres, qui ne sont pas toujours les plus résistants à la sécheresse notamment si le peuplement a été peu soumis au stress). Selon la fréquence des éclaircies, leur intensité et les critères de choix des arbres retenus à chaque étape, la gestion peut au final accélérer ou freiner la sélection naturelle. On comprend bien alors qu’il y a un compromis à trouver entre réduire le stress subi par une forêt et favoriser son adaptation génétique par sélection naturelle (une option peut être de laisser agir la sélection au stade jeune avant de réduire le stress dans les stades plus avancés). Un autre levier d’action sur l’adaptation des forêts est le contrôle de la diversité génétique lors du renouvellement des peuplements : cette diversité doit être suffisante pour permettre aux multiples processus de sélection naturelle de faire leur tri au fil des années, y compris les sélections que nous sommes incapables de prédire à l’avance comme la résistance à des parasites émergents ou des conditions climatiques exceptionnelles. Le forestier peut agir sur cette diversité en maintenant un nombre suffisant d’arbres semenciers, et en les laissant se reproduire sur plusieurs années pour compenser les aléas qu’il peut y avoir dans sa production de fruits. Il crée ainsi les conditions d’installation et de survie de nombreux semis. Dans des situations de forêts en fort déclin, des renforcements de diversité génétique peuvent être envisagés : ainsi, certains pays d’Europe du Nord envisagent de renforcer la diversité génétique de forêts de frênes ravagées par une maladie récente, la chalarose, en plantant quelques frênes identifiés comme porteurs de caractéristiques de tolérance à la maladie pour qu’ils s’hybrident avec les frênes locaux et contribuent ainsi à améliorer la résistance du peuplement. Vers des pratiques de gestion adaptative Chercheurs et gestionnaires forestiers utilisent des outils de simulation pour explorer des stratégies de gestion forestière innovantes combinant processus naturels et processus dirigés d’adaptation, et prédire leurs effets à court et long terme. Des interventions bien raisonnées peuvent accélérer les processus d’adaptation sans nuire aux fonctions attendues de la forêt (production, protection, récréation, etc.), tandis que des interventions mal raisonnées peuvent au contraire freiner ces processus, voire prendre la direction d’une maladaptation. Laisser de la place aux processus naturels garantit une adaptation flexible face à des pressions imprévues (par ex. parasites émergents) et des risques multiples difficiles à anticiper. Une stratégie de pilotage des processus naturels d’adaptation, éventuellement complétée par des apports de diversité génétique nouvelle dans certains cas mais pas systématiquement, rentrerait parfaitement dans le cadre des « stratégies de gestion adaptative » : un terme, parfois mal compris, qui signifie que la stratégie elle-même est continûment évaluée et au besoin réajustée. Dans un cadre élargi considérant les forêts comme des socio-écosystèmes, les stratégies de gestion adaptative se raisonnent en fonction du contexte local, à l’échelle de territoires (par exemple dans les Chartes Forestières de Territoires), mais le pilotage dynamique des processus d’adaptation n’est pas encore bien intégré dans ces stratégies. Le colloque « Nos forêts demain - Comprendre, transmettre, agir » est organisé les 21 et 22 mars 2025 par l'Institut de France, l'Académie des sciences et le Château de Chantilly en partenariat avec The Conversation. Inscription gratuite en ligne.

On Saturday, March 29, two weeks after a total lunar eclipse was visible to all of North America, skywatchers will be treated to a spectacular event that has not been seen from anywhere since last October: a solar eclipse. During this eclipse, which is expected to be one of the best skywatching events in 2025 , observers in eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S. will be able to witness a partially eclipsed sunrise. It will be the first solar eclipse in North America since the "Great American Eclipse" on April 8, 2024 . A 'deep' partial eclipse This event will be a deep partial solar eclipse; about 93% of the sun's disk will be blocked by the new moon. As such, it will be a near — but not quite — total solar eclipse . The event will be visible at sunrise and shortly after from parts of North America, and then from Greenland, Iceland, Europe and northwest Africa, where it will be a smaller eclipse as the sun climbs higher in the sky throughout the morning. People in northwestern Russia can watch the eclipse late in the day, with a partially eclipsed sunset occurring over remote areas of Siberia. Where and when will the solar eclipse be visible? The partial solar eclipse will take place for about two hours across the planet, between 4:50 a.m. and 8:43 a.m. ET (8:50 UTC and 12:43 UTC). The best places to view the eclipse will be northern Quebec, where a maximum of 93.1% of the sun will be obscured by the moon. The closer any location is to Akulivik in northern Quebec, the deeper the eclipse will be there. However, this region also sees the eclipse at sunrise. Choice locations for viewing the spectacle include northeast of Quebec City and along the border between Maine and New Brunswick. Will the U.S. see the eclipse? From the eastern contiguous U.S., the sun will be eclipsed to a maximum of 85%, according to In The Sky . However, that will only occur in northern Maine; most population centers on the East Coast will miss out on the most dramatic spectacle. For instance, Philadelphia will see only 11% coverage, while Washington, D.C., will experience just 1%. An eclipsed sunrise will be visible from the U.S. East Coast, from the Canadian border down to Virginia Beach, Virginia. Reykjavik, Iceland, will see 67% of the sun blocked by the moon, with less coverage in Dublin (41%), London (30%), Paris (23%) and Berlin (15%). Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors Because there will be no totality, all observers of this partial solar eclipse will need proper eye protection at all times — including eclipse glasses and solar filters for all cameras and binoculars . Repeat: It is NEVER safe to look at a partial solar eclipse without eye protection, even during 93% coverage of the sun. Please observe safely. Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?

When teachers have the feeling of undergoing their environment without being able to control it, the risk of exhaustion increases. How to rethink school spaces taking into account their point of view? As of today, and even more in the school of tomorrow, the school is "a place of life for students and staff". Adapted architecture can thus become a lever to improve the quality of life at school for all (including teachers), while promoting better learning conditions for students. Education sciences have long focused on teaching methods and programs, by neglecting the physical dimension of the school environment. However, the layout of the rooms, the arrangement of the furniture or the pause spaces influence the work of the teachers on a daily basis. Their well-being is not a secondary luxury: it constitutes a fundamental factor for themselves, but also for the quality of teaching and the success of students. Why then do not (re) think about the school by integrating the teachers' point of view more? Spatial constraints weighing on teachers In many establishments, the classroom remains a rigid space, inherited from a traditional model. Rows of tables facing the table, a masterful office for the teacher: this standard configuration has changed little for decades, despite the emergence of new more "active" pedagogies. This spatial formalism, designed above all for discipline and masterful transmission, reduces the teaching autonomy of the teacher. Difficult, for example, to organize workshops in a class equipped with fixed desks. A CNESCO survey stresses that furniture is often unsuitable for differentiated practices required by modern education. From Monday to Friday + Sunday, receive the analyzes and decrypts from our experts for free for another look at the news. Subscribe today! Many studies alert to the risks of professional exhaustion (burn-out) in the teaching staff. This syndrome, conceptualized by Christina Maslach and her colleagues, manifests itself by deep emotional fatigue, cynicism or detachment from work, and a feeling of personal ineffectiveness. The causes of burnout are multifactorial (overload, lack of support, conflicts of values, etc.), but organizational and environmental factors play a key role, in particular, the lack of control over his work maintains exhaustion. When teachers have the feeling of undergoing their environment without being able to control it, the risk of exhaustion increases. Conversely, when professionals have the capacity to exercise professional autonomy, their commitment increases. In other words, a space suffered is a stress factor, while an appropriate space can become a factor of satisfaction. In open spaces as in classes, a lack of control of professionals on their environment The issues encountered by teachers in the face of their work environment are reminiscent of those of employees in business, especially in offices in Open Space. Admittedly, the latter facilitate informal exchanges-as are the Open-Plan Schools encourage interactions-but they also present well-documented pitfalls in work ergonomics. One of the first grievances formulated by employees working in Open Space concerns the lack of control of their professional space. However, human beings experience the need to appropriate their work environment. The surveys carried out by the French Ministry of Labor (Dares) show that work in an open set is perceived as more intense and more controlled, leaving less autonomy to the employees concerned. The latter point out more difficulty in concentrating. These observations echo teachers' experience: they too evolve in a space that they do little. Read More: The class: an outdated school form? Faced with the limits of open space, companies have started to react by rethinking the development of their premises. We see hybrid offices emerging, combining open areas for collaboration and closed or isolated spaces for concentration and rest. The goal is to restore workers to choose from their way of occupying space. What about the teaching world? If the analogies with the tertiary sector have their limits - a teacher cannot "teleworked" his class from home or arrange his school as he pleases, for example - few similar initiatives have emerged in education. Consider space as a factor of academic success Education research has long favored the social, cognitive and organizational aspects of schooling, relegating the material environment to the background. It is only recently that the situation begins to change. For example, a British study in 2015 has shown that certain characteristics of the building (light, acoustics, arrangement, etc.) could explain up to 16 % of students' academic performance variations. Such data have prompted decision -makers to consider school either only as a place of teaching, but also as a global environment where students and teachers interact with space. Read More: Too much noise in schools? Thinking acoustics in the service of learning The Ministry of National Education has launched reflections on school architecture in recent years. The CNESCO, in its 2017 report, insists on the need for modularity and modernization of establishments. In short, we discover that space is not just an empty box, but indeed a silent actor of academic success and well-being at work. Replacing teachers at the heart of the design of school spaces is necessary. If school has to prepare students for the world of tomorrow, it must also offer those who make it live - teachers - an environment that meets their missions. This involves versatile classrooms, equipped with modular furniture that can be recomposed according to the activity (lectures, group work, learning by workshops, etc.). Some establishments experience the flexible class, by allowing the teacher to vary the educational formats and by restoring control over space. The feedback indicates that this flexibility benefits students and teachers. School architecture should fulfill a double mission: to serve pedagogy and support those who implement it on a daily basis. Rethinking school so that it is really designed also for those who work there is not a vow pile, but a realistic objective of progress. A school thought with its teachers will undoubtedly be more welcoming, more efficient and more sustainable. And ultimately, the whole educational community will benefit from it, students in mind.

By moving the costs of large generative AI models on users, large tech companies seek to find a viable business model. Beyond that, a strategy will consist in bringing calculations not by their data centers, as is currently the case, but by computers, smartphones and other user connected watches. A change of operation that would not be without consequences. After spending a year integrating generative AI into its flagship products, Microsoft tries to enter its costs by increasing prices, inserting advertisements in products and canceling leases from data centers. Google takes similar measures, adding essential AI features to its workspace service while increasing prices. Is the trend in the process of reverse? Will massive investments in recent years in the generative AI get upset? The situation is actually not so simple. Technological companies are fully engaged in the deployment of generative AI tools, but they are still looking for a viable business model - in this case, how to charge users for these services. Cost evolution Last week, Microsoft canceled certain data centers leases without notice. This decision follows the increase in subscription prices after its flagship software suite, 365 - up to 45 % increase. Microsoft has also launched versions of certain products now funded by advertising. The CEO of the technology giant, Satya Nadella, has also recently suggested that AI has so far not produced a lot of value. These actions may seem strange in the current context of media threshing around AI, which is accompanied by resounding announcements such as the OPENAI Stargate data center project, worth $ 500 billion. To look more closely, however, nothing in Microsoft's decisions indicates a decline towards technology in itself. Rather, it would be a change of strategy aimed at making the development of AI systems profitable by repercussions discreetly on consumers. From Monday to Friday + Sunday, receive the analyzes and decrypts from our experts for free for another look at the news. Subscribe today! The cost of generative AI The generative AI is expensive. OPENAI, the market leader with 400 million active monthly users, spends without counting. Last year, Openai achieved a turnover of $ 3.7 billion, but spent nearly $ 9 billion, a net loss of about $ 5 billion. Aurelien Morissard/EPA Microsoft is the main OPENAI investor, and is currently providing the company with cloud computing services, so OPENAI expenses are also costing money in Microsoft. So why is generative AI so expensive? In addition to human workforce, two types of cost are associated with these AI models: the learning phase (model construction) and that of inference (use of the model). If learning represents an initial expenditure often high, the costs of inference increase with the number of users. In addition, the greater the generative AI model, the more expensive its execution is expensive. Smaller and cheaper alternatives Thus, a single request on the most advanced models of Openai can cost up to $ 1,000 US, just in calculation. In January, OPENAI CEO Sam Altman said that even the company's 200 -dollars' subscription was not profitable. In other words, the company loses money with its free models, but also with its paid models. Aerovista Luchtfotografie/Shutterstock In practice, learning and inference generally take place in data centers. The costs are raised because the chips necessary for their operation are expensive, but this is also the case for electricity, cooling systems and the depreciation of equipment. To date, a large part of the progress in terms of generative AI has been obtained by always aiming for greater. Openai describes its latest update as a "gigantic and expensive model". Nevertheless, many signs indicate today that this approach - which consists in making increasingly large models at all costs - may not even be necessary. For example, the Chinese company Deepseek made waves at the start of the year by revealing that it had built models comparable to the flagship products of Openai for a tiny part of the learning cost. Likewise, researchers from the Allen Institute for AI (AI2), in Seattle, and the University of Stanford claim to have caused a model for only $ 50. To summarize, it may well be that the AI ​​systems developed and provided by the tech giants are not profitable. Significant costs related to the construction and operation of data centers are one of the main reasons. What does Microsoft do? After having invested billions in the generative AI, Microsoft tries to find the economic model that will make this technology profitable. During the past year, the technology giant joined the Copilot generative AI chatbot in its products for consumers and businesses. And it is no longer possible to buy a Microsoft 365 subscription without Copilot. Consequently, subscribers note significant price increases. As we have seen, execute the calculations necessary for the operation of generative AI models in data centers is expensive. It is likely that Microsoft is therefore looking for means to do this work more directly on user devices - which moves the cost of the equipment and its operation. A strong index of this strategy is the small button that Microsoft began to put on its keyboards last year, where a button dedicated to Copilot appeared. Apple is pursuing a similar strategy: most Apple AI services are not available on the cloud. Instead, only the new aircraft of the brand offer AI capabilities. The fact that the calculations are carried out directly on the marketed device is sold as a function aimed at preserving the confidentiality of data, which do not need to leave the local user environment. Push costs to the end user There are advantages to push the generative AI inference work on computers, smartphones and other smart watches. This technique is called "Edge Computing" because the calculations are made on the edges, at the end of the network. It can reduce energy and calculation resources used in data centers and reduce waste of data centers. This has the effect of reducing the carbon, thermal and water imprint of the generative AI; And could also reduce bandwidth needs and increase user confidentiality. But there are also drawbacks. EDGE Computing transfers calculation costs to consumers, which stimulates the demand for new devices - despite the economic and environmental concerns that aim to discourage the renewal of our devices. With the appearance of more recent and more substantial generative AI models, this trend could intensify. And the problems do not stop there. When electronic waste is distributed throughout the territory, rather than concentrated in a data center, recycling is even more difficult. We can also question equitable access to artificial intelligence tools, in particular in the field of education, if the quality of the calculations depends on the price of your smartphone. Finally, if Edge Computing may seem "decentralized", it can also lead to commercial monopolies on computer equipment. In the event that a handful of companies only control this transition to "relocated" generative AI on our individual electronic devices, decentralization may not be as open as it seems. As the IA infrastructure costs increase and the development of large models is evolving, an attractive strategy for AI companies is to reflect costs on consumers. But if major users, such as ministries and universities, could face these costs, many small businesses and individual consumers could have difficulties.

Everyone agrees that the current context forces Europeans to mobilize in the face of what is akin to the end of the transatlantic alliance. But concretely, what measures should be taken, and who exactly? Is it possible to act jointly as part of an EU at 27 whose leaders do not necessarily agree on everything? Everyone expected a harder Donald Trump in his second term than in the first one, but no one had anticipated such a alignment on Vladimir Putin. The President of the United States has indeed gave in to his Russian counterpart the essentials of what he could hope-the conservation of the territories conquered by Russia and the assurance of the non-entry of Ukraine in NATO-even before the opening of negotiations, while publicly humiliating Volodymyr Zelensky and by suspending military aid to Kiev (before restoring it when Ukraine Advanced by Washington in Djeddah on March 11). In such a context, what can Ukrainian and Europeans do? In the immediate future, not much. They are indeed very dependent on the US military equipment, whether it be Patriot soil-to-air missiles or ammunition for anti-aircraft defense, F16 or even space intelligence. This explains the low profile maintained with regard to the United States both by Zelensky, despite the humiliations he has suffered, and by Europeans who seek to avoid breaking with the American president. Everyone still hopes to avoid the total capitulation of Ukraine by changing the position of the United States, which seems to have started in Djeddah. NATO is no longer de facto From Monday to Friday + Sunday, receive the analyzes and decrypts from our experts for free for another look at the news. Subscribe today! If it remains difficult to anticipate the evolution of war in Ukraine precisely, the lessons to be learned from the beginning of the second president Trump are already very clear. The security guarantee offered to Europe by the United States as part of NATO is no longer de facto. Everyone now knows that the purchase of military equipment from the latter represents a potential threat to the security of the countries that use it because the United States continues to control their employment. And everyone understood that Donald Trump intends to dismantle multilateralism and international law built after the Second World War. Most European officials have taken the measure of this change of era. Including the most fervent Atlantists as the high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and the Kaja Kallas security policy, who estimated on February 28 that "it has become clear that the free world needs a new leader", or Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, always very attentive to never getting angry. This is also the case of the future German Chancellor Friedrich Merz who said that its "top priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible to gradually obtain real independence from the United States". This is the case, finally, of Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, who is also looking for an alternative to the missing American nuclear umbrella. Can the European Union do what it takes? There is reason to doubt it What should Europeans do? Reconstructing a defense industry that would allow European armies to do without American equipment; rebuild a security architecture that no longer calls in the United States; And, finally, find new allies to preserve multilateralism and international law. But can the EU carry out such colossal sites? There are many reasons to doubt it. It will probably be necessary to go especially through ad hoc formats outside the institutions of the Union. A priori, the task is nothing insurmountable. In 2023, EU GDP was eight times more important than that of Russia. Cumulative military spending in EU countries, 326 billion euros in 2024, are 2.5 times higher than Russian military spending, despite the country's total mobilization for the war against Ukraine. But the rule of unanimity, still in place in this area, makes the framework of the Union largely unusable in terms of security and defense. The European Union has certainly just adopted, on March 6, the Rearm Europe plan, proposed by Ursula von der Leyen. The overall amount announced-800 billion euros-is impressive, higher than 750 billion euros mobilized in 2020 with Next Generation in the face of the Cavid-19 pandemic. But when we look more closely, we realize that no additional new money is actually put on the table on the scale of the Union. The exclusion of military expenditure from the stability pact of stability of course marks a positive development in European policies. But the increase in military budgets that this reform should facilitate will remain managed at a purely national level and will continue to influence the public finances of the States. The change in rules to allow the European Investment Bank (EIB) to finance defense projects was certainly expected, but it is not accompanied by an increase in the capital of the bank. This effort will therefore remain limited. The reorientation of 150 billion euros in loans planned within the framework of Next Generation to the financing of joint defense projects will be at the expense of energy and digital transitions. As for the reorientation of cohesion funds, it will be made at the expense of the fight against territorial inequalities. There is a new common debt and the seizure of Russian assets This plan is missing from two components which would have marked a real European start: a new common debt and the seizure of some 235 billion euros in frozen Russian assets in Europe, and no longer only the interests they give off. But for the moment, the divisions have prevented the EU from embarking on this path. The Hungary of Viktor Orban is this time not the only time to oppose such a seizure; This is also the case, for the moment, French and German governments, which fear that Europe will lose its ability to accommodate foreign capital. We will see if things are moving in the coming months on this level as Europeans take the full measure of the severity of the situation. Where the EU can nevertheless already play a role, it is in terms of strengthening the defense industry, the area in which it has significant tools and means. The task is enormous because this industry was very weakened after the fall of the Berlin Wall in all traditional areas. In addition, while Europeans had a solid position in space, they have lost foot in recent years. European military aviation remains extremely dependent on the United States and if Rafale sales have increased in recent years, it is mainly outside the Union. The European drones industry remains in a stormy ... The task is also very delicate politically. Most of the European projects of military equipment, and in particular Franco-German projects, have been fiacos so far, each of the armies seeking to preserve its specificities and to promote its own suppliers. The project of chariot of the future Franco-German does not stop late while the development of the A400 M military transport Airbus was a real ordeal. Encourage manufacturers to cooperate and merge Will the new geopolitical context allow us to finally overcome these blockages? In order for the EU to effectively encourage arms manufacturers to collaborate much more or even merge, it will have to have enough money to put on the table, which joins the point mentioned above. In addition, in the short term, the European armament industry will not have the sufficient capacity to provide the armies of the material and ammunition continent at the level now implies the threat. If you want to be able to do without American equipment, you will have to buy other non -European, Turkish or Korean equipment in particular. And accept that European funds can help the States of the Union to acquire them. In the military field in the strict sense as well as that of intelligence, it remains unlikely that we manage to progress significantly at 27. It will be necessary to rely above all on coalitions of voluntary countries outside the formal framework of the EU, especially as it will necessarily be necessary to associate them with non-member countries such as the United Kingdom, Norway, Turkey and even Canada or Australia. This is already the case, for example, for the project consisting in ensuring air protection in Ukraine, for the deployment of a possible interposition force in the event of a ceasefire or even to build a European anti-missile shield. Beyond that, should quickly ask the question of a sustainable security alliance capable of replacing a NATO now exceeded. This will be necessary in particular to formalize the possible extension of French and British nuclear protection to other European countries, as wished by Poland and Germany. Again, this new collective European security architecture, which will have to take over from NATO by preserving its know-how, will probably have to start outside the formal EU framework. Get closer to other allies in the United States and turn south overall Finally, the EU and other European states must urgently act to protect multilateralism and international law against Donald Trump. To do this, they must first tighten their links with the G6 countries (the G7 less the United States, namely Japan and Canada), but also with South Korea or Australia-to coordinate their responses to the attacks by the President of the United States. At the same time, the EU must turn (finally) much more towards the countries of the "global south" - Indonesia, India, Brazil, South Africa ... - to modernize with them the existing multilateral framework, by giving them more space, which will help to block the will of Donald Trump to destroy international law. It will be essential, in particular, to save the Paris Agreement and the fight against climate change, by cooperating closely on this issue with China to counter the United States. In short, Europeans a priori have the means to counter Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin; But their main difficulty is to manage to mobilize these means effectively. It will undoubtedly remain difficult to achieve this in the EU and it will probably be necessary to use, in many files, to other formats.

Scaly sailors may have made a record-setting oceanic voyage. Tens of millions of years ago, iguanas in North America floated across the Pacific Ocean. Clinging to vegetation washed into the sea, they traveled one-fifth of the way around the world, eventually disembarking and settling in the islands of the South Pacific, researchers report March 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The seafaring lizards’ trip may be the longest known transocean emigration among land vertebrates. “It’s just a truly incredible example of long-distance dispersal,” says Ethan Gyllenhaal, an evolutionary biologist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock who was not involved with the research. All members of the iguana evolutionary family are found in the Americas, with one glaring exception: the Fijian iguanas (Brachylophus). The origins of the four living iguana species in Fiji have been a mystery for researchers, considering all the reptiles’ closest relatives are an ocean away. There were two main hypotheses, says Simon Scarpetta, an evolutionary biologist at the University of San Francisco: Researchers thought the iguanas either drifted on vegetation rafts to Fiji from the Americas, or extinct ancestors migrated a shorter distance from Asia or Australia. Scarpetta and his colleagues got some clues when studying the evolutionary relationships of over 200 species of iguanas and related lizards, comparing thousands of points in their genetic instruction books. Fijian iguanas are most closely related to desert iguanas (Dipsosaurus dorsalis), which live in Mexico and the American Southwest, the team found. These genetic results, combined with the geography of where iguana fossils have previously been found, point to ancestral iguanas rafting across the ocean from the shores of North America. The team thinks the lizards set sail between 31 million and 34 million years ago, possibly causing the evolutionary split between Brachylophus and Dipsosaurus. That cruise across the Pacific would have been over 8,000 kilometers, the longest move among landlubber vertebrates. The closest contenders appear to be other lizard groups. Other animals, such as trapdoor spiders, have also been known to have made epic voyages. Rayna Bell, an evolutionary biologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, points out that it’s difficult to know the precise distance traveled, partially because other islands may have served as stepping-stones but since disappeared “The deeper we go [back] in evolutionary time, we’re more limited in terms of what evidence is available to us, because the planet has changed so much,” she says. Iguanas may be particularly well-suited for long trips at sea. Herbivorous iguanas may eat part of their raft while traveling or — like some species do today — go into a state of sluggishness and forgo eating altogether. They may also be resistant to heat and dehydration. Most iguana species alive today are also found on islands, and have been directly observed colonizing new islands via vegetation rafts in recent decades. “If you had to pick a vertebrate group that could survive a rafting event across thousands of kilometers of open ocean, iguanas are a great choice,” says Scarpetta. For Gyllenhaal, the findings illustrate how an incredibly rare, chance event — like iguanas successfully floating across an ocean — are more likely to play out as long as millions of years of time are available. “When you’re dealing with evolutionary time, you’ve got a lot of opportunity for these very small probability things to occur.”

The phrase “international rules-based order” has long been a fixture in global politics. Western leaders often use it to describe a framework of rules, norms and institutions designed to guide state behavior. Advocates argue that this framework has provided the foundation for decades of stability and prosperity, while critics question its fairness and relevance in today’s multipolar world. But what exactly is the international rules-based order, when did it come about, and why do people increasingly hear about challenges to it today? The birth of a universal vision The rules-based international order, initially known as the “liberal international order,” emerged from the devastation of World War II. The vision was ambitious and universal: to create a global system based on liberal democratic values, market capitalism and multilateral cooperation. At its core, however, this project was driven by the United States, which saw itself as the unmatched leader of the new order. The idea was to replace the chaos of great power politics and shifting alliances with a predictable world governed by shared rules and norms. Central to this vision was the establishment of institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These institutions, alongside widely accepted norms and formalized rules, aimed to promote political cooperation, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and economic recovery for countries damaged by war. However, the vision of a truly universal liberal international order quickly unraveled. As the Cold War set in, the world split into two competing blocs. The Western bloc, led by the United States, adhered to the principles of the liberal international order. Meanwhile, the Soviet-led communist bloc established a parallel system with its own norms, rules and institutions. The Warsaw Pact provided military alignment, while the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance managed economic cooperation. The communist bloc emphasized state-led economic planning and single-party rule, rejecting the liberal order’s emphasis on democracy and free markets. Emerging cracks When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the liberal international order appeared to have triumphed. The United States became the world’s sole superpower, and many former communist states integrated into Western institutions. For a brief period, the order’s universal vision seemed within reach. By the 1990s and early 2000s, however, new cracks began to appear. NATO expansion, the creation of the World Trade Organization and greater emphasis on human rights through institutions such as the International Criminal Court all closely aligned with Western liberal values. The spread of these norms and the institutions enforcing them appeared, to many outside the West, as Western ideology dressed up as universal principles. In response to mounting criticism, Western leaders began using the term rules-based international order instead of liberal international order. This shift aimed to emphasize procedural fairness – rules that all states, in theory, had agreed upon – rather than a system explicitly rooted in liberal ideological commitments. The focus moved from promoting specific liberal norms to maintaining stability and predictability. New challenges to the status quo China’s rise has brought these tensions into sharp relief. While China participates in many institutions underpinning the rules-based international order, it also seeks to reshape them. The Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank illustrate Beijing’s efforts to establish alternative frameworks more aligned with its interests. These initiatives challenge existing rules and norms by offering new institutional pathways for economic and political influence. Meanwhile, Russia’s actions in Ukraine – especially the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the 2022 invasion – challenge the order’s core principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Western inconsistencies have long undermined the credibility of the rules-based order. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, widely criticized for bypassing international norms and institutions, exemplified a selective application of the rules. This double standard extends toward Washington’s selective engagement with international legal bodies and its inconsistent approach to sovereignty and intervention. An uncertain future Supporters argue that the rules-based order remains vital for addressing global challenges such as climate change, pandemics and nuclear proliferation. However, ambiguity surrounds what these “rules” actually entail, which norms are genuinely universal, and who enforces them. This lack of clarity, coupled with shifting global power dynamics, complicates efforts to sustain the system. The future of the rules-based international order is uncertain. The shift from “liberal” to “rules-based” reflected an ongoing struggle to adapt a complex web of rules, norms and institutions to a rapidly changing international environment. Whether it evolves further, splinters or endures as is will depend on how well it balances fairness, inclusivity and stability in an increasingly multipolar world.

Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person and owner of The Washington Post, announced in February 2025 significant changes to the editorial pages of his Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper. The editorial section, also called the opinion section, is where editors and contributors with a deep and broad understanding of the latest news offer their analysis of the day’s issues. This content is distinct from the fact-based news reporting of the outlet’s everyday journalists. Both kinds of content serve the public interest. Journalists report news to inform the public, while editors and opinion writers analyze and explain news, putting facts into a larger context to aid understanding. At the Post, instead of news editors making independent decisions on what to write and the perspectives they should take, Bezos tweeted, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” Opinion and analysis in the Post was thus going to limit itself to one particular viewpoint. As a journalism historian, I analyze how journalism has changed over time. Over the years, the purpose, practices and forms of journalism have evolved. Bezos’ decision harks back to an earlier time when editors and owners were the same person, and newspapers offered a specific interpretation of the world, not just a neutral report. Informed opinions and analysis While editorial writers and opinion columnists offer their opinions, these views are still expected to be grounded in journalistic principles, building from verifiable facts and comprehensively considering context to offer well-reasoned analysis. Many of today’s news editors and journalists stake their professional reputations on their obligation to truth, independent of special interests or particular ideologies. They pride themselves on reporting and explaining the news without fear or favor. After Bezos’ announcement, editorial page editor and veteran journalist David Shipley resigned from his position. Shipley told his staff he was stepping down “after reflection on how I can best move forward in the profession that I love.” Journalists and media critics from across the political spectrum read Bezos’ editorial policy change as going against the tradition of a paper that long prided itself on editorial independence in the name of public service. Historically, the newspaper’s opinion section offered a range of views on a variety of issues. Limiting the newspaper’s opinion section to a single viewpoint, critics argue, doesn’t seem to align with the Post’s slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as it stifles public discussion and purposefully turns off some of the lights. Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron told the Guardian, “If you’re trying to advance the cause of democracy, then you allow for public debate, which is what democracy is all about.” Putting all of this in historical context can help illuminate Bezos’ decision as well as the current state of American media. Opinionated early American journalism At the nation’s founding, the very first newspapers were highly partisan, supporting and receiving much of their funding from particular political parties and government subsidies. Newspapers were small operations where editors, owners, writers and typesetters were usually all the same person. As the country and its political direction were just forming, these editor-owners felt a public obligation and duty to stake out a clear political position. There were no standards of journalistic neutrality; editor-owners framed news reports, wrote columns and published other people’s opinions based on their own particular viewpoints. Editors wrote passionately, using language that suggested the fate of the nation was at stake. They were also principled and willing to criticize their own parties if they thought it warranted. And because they were transparent about their views, readers responded by gravitating to their preferred newspapers. Consequently, the number of newspapers in the U.S. increased from 35 in 1783 to 1,200 by 1833. Historians have thus argued that the early United States was a “nation of newspaper readers.” Unlike modern notions of journalistic impartiality, if a newspaper didn’t support a political party or remained neutral, it was dismissed by readers as either lacking morals or being too stupid to form an opinion. As newspapers of the early republic developed from reporting recycled news from other sources to guiding public discussion, the editorial thus emerged as a short opinion essay separate from reports on local speeches or foreign news. Fact-based journalism and informed analysis For various reasons, the partisan press gave way to a journalism that attempted wider appeal. By 1900, many news outlets aimed for impartiality and neutrality. By the 1920s, most journalists embraced the ideals of objectivity, the notion that journalists should only report facts. Interestingly, this led to a growth in editorials, opinion columns and news analysis. Opinion columns written by journalists provided interpretive frameworks for readers to understand the meaning of news events. One such journalist-commentator was Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), a political analyst who wrote a number of influential columns, including a piece infamously viewed as a catalyst for Japanese internment during World War II. Such content provided journalists a means to show their independence from the powerful. Journalists could commit themselves to truth and verifiable facts while still asserting their independent role to contextualize news, explain its implications and guide the conversations necessary for democracy. Research has shown that such opinion-based news content can influence what citizens and media outlets prioritize as important, as well as how policymakers approach certain issues. Today, especially with the increase in partisan television, radio and internet outlets, there is no shortage of opinion-based news and analysis. As long as people stay empathetic and open to others with different experiences, this is not inherently bad for democracy. Problems arise, however, when opinionated news outweighs fact-based reporting and people begin to mistrust all reporting they do not agree with, a psychological phenomenon known as confirmation bias. In today’s digital world, everyone can broadcast or publish their opinion, whereas fact-based reporting takes time and resources. While news analysis and thoughtful opinion can generate important social conversations and help citizens understand news, too much opinion that isn’t grounded in facts can also lead to a general atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. This spells trouble for the good-faith understanding, open dialogue and mutual trust so vital to democracy. Profiting from polarization Polling data suggests Americans are more divided than ever. Perhaps Washington Post owner Bezos is simply responding to the public’s documented preference for partisanship over truth or to the profitability of partisan news. But as a matter of context, there is a difference between the principled partisans of the early republic, the professional analysts of the 20th century, and an owner who demands his media outlet’s opinions should be limited to his preferences. When he purchased The Washington Post in 2013, Bezos said the newspaper would not change and that “the paper’s duty will remain to its reader and not to the private interests of its owners.” In this latest move, he has signaled that his private interest is a priority, at least for the editorial section. This limits the perspectives the Post-reading public can encounter and restricts the free marketplace of ideas. So when a Post journalist of 40 years wrote a column opposing Bezos’ editorial decision, her bosses refused to publish it. Apparently, light criticism was not a “personal liberty” afforded a longtime employee. With her beloved employer not even willing to discuss the column – discussion being the cornerstone of deliberative democracy – the veteran journalist resigned. In the current media environment, organizations and people who don’t participate in news production or share its values can purchase journalistic outlets and alter their standards and practices. As a result, principled journalists may decide to leave rather than compromise their mission of public service. Ultimately, Bezos is being transparent. It is thus up to the American people to decide on the kind of journalism and pursuit of truth they desire. It’s worth noting that tens of thousands of canceled subscriptions have already begun to make that decision clear.

In sixth-century China, a woman known to history as Empress Dowager Ling ruled over an empire called the Northern Wei. Historians do not know her birth name or in what year she was born, but they do know that she served as empress dowager between 515 and 528. As the spouse of a ruling emperor prior to his death, she retained the title of empress dowager in her widowhood. She ruled on behalf of her young son, the heir to the throne; however, her regency was interrupted by a coup d'etat from 520 to 525. Although the empress dowager was expected to rule only as a regent, historical records indicate that she administered court in her own name. These same records also reveal that she adopted a personal pronoun – “zhen 朕,” otherwise known as the Chinese “royal we” – that was reserved for the exclusive use of the emperor. In my recent book, “The Women Who Ruled China,” I offer an overview of these historical sources and records that document her life, including a translation of her biography retained in the official chronicle of the Northern Wei. Using these sources, I argue that even though the Empress Dowager’s rule was problematic and short – resulting in her assassination – she laid the foundation for other, more successful female rulers across medieval East Asia. Capitalizing on different cultural traditions In the late fifth century, the capital city of the Northern Wei was moved from its northern location in modern-day Datong, China, to its southern location in Luoyang, a city at the very heart of Han Chinese culture and history; however, the people who ruled the empire were not ethnically Han Chinese. Known as the Taghbach, this group migrated south from the Mongolian steppe and ruled a multiethnic and multicultural empire from Luoyang, the world’s largest city and the former capital of the Eastern Han dynasty. The Northern Wei empire adopted laws, institutions and policies from both Taghbach and Han Chinese traditions. This cultural hybridity enabled the empress dowager to rule directly: On one hand, the Chinese court system rooted in the Han dynasty had long included the position of empress dowager, even though none of the women who held it had ruled directly. On the other, Taghbach culture had no formal position of empress dowager prior to its adoption of court ranks in the Northern Wei, but it did have a long tradition of women in public life. These women served in the military and advised on political matters. Multiple sources of evidence indicate that Taghbach women had a high degree of personal autonomy and political power, with no source suggesting otherwise. A well-known story about Taghbach woman appears in the legend of Mulan, who is said to have dressed as a man so that she could serve in the military in place of her father. The Mulan legend is widely recounted in Chinese literature and inspired a fictional character in two Walt Disney movies based on the Chinese fable. As a historian of gender in this period, I believe that the Mulan legend does not accurately depict Taghbach women. Instead, it is a Chinese story that emphasizes a form of gender transgression that makes sense only within Chinese and Confucian culture. Unlike Chinese culture, Taghbach culture had long known women warriors who could ride horses and shoot arrows without concealing their gender. Empress Dowager Ling was not a warrior, but she embraced martial symbols of her own power that were available to women in Taghbach culture but not in Chinese culture. For example, she was an accomplished archer and famously drove her own horse cart, which was just as splendid and imposing as was the emperor’s cart. In the Confucian culture of Han China, such actions were considered highly inappropriate for women, but Empress Dowager Ling carried them out while holding the Chinese title of empress dowager. Her rule, like her empire, was culturally hybrid. That blend of cultural traditions enabled her to take power in a way that neither Chinese nor Taghbach women had done before. A Buddhist ruler By the time of the reign of the Northern Wei empire, both Taghbah and Chinese cultures had become deeply familiar with Buddhism, a religion that they had inherited from India in a long process of cultural exchange along the Silk Road. The empire had integrated methods of Buddhist statecraft into its own forms of governance. Simply put, what this meant was that the ruler of the empire legitimized his reign through Buddhism, portraying himself either as a Buddha or as a patron of Buddhists – their texts and institutions. This was a type of governance that was widely practiced in premodern East Asia. Even though Buddhist statecraft was widespread in the empress dowager’s time, she was the first woman to directly legitimate her independent rule through Buddhism. As a patron of Buddhism, she commissioned majestic Buddhist architecture. Perhaps seen by her populace as a Buddhist figure herself, she symbolized her co-rule with her son by using a Buddhist visual motif of two Buddhas sitting side by side, a representation that came to be known as the rule by “Two Sages,” meaning tandem rulers depicted in the guise of buddhas. The source for the image was the popular Buddhist text, the “Lotus Sūtra.” She also attempted to put her own granddaughter on the throne after the death of her son. As I argue in my book, she did so by capitalizing on the idea that first her son, and then her granddaughter, were thought of as the bodhisattva Maitreya, a being of infinite compassion who is believed to be the future Buddha. The empress dowager’s legacy Empress Dowager Ling was largely unsuccessful in her bid for power. Her rule was short and contested. She was murdered, and her empire was toppled within 13 years of her rule. For five of those years, she was not in power because of a coup d'etat. However, about 150 years after the assassination of the empress dowager, another woman would rise to rule China independently, this time taking the title of “emperor.” That woman is known as Empress Wu, or Emperor Wu Zhao, and she is undoubtedly the most famous woman in all of Chinese history. Numerous historical sources attest to her life, work and rule. What those sources tell us, however, is that she ruled using the very same strategies as Empress Dowager Ling. Investing her own family heritage in distant links to the Taghbach, she also positioned herself as a “Two Sage” ruler alongside the emperor in precisely the same way that Empress Dowager Ling did. She was also able to successfully establish herself as the bodhisattva Maitreya by using Buddhist texts known to Empress Dowager Ling and her court. She patronized the very same Buddhist structures as did Empress Dowager Ling, including the Buddhist caves at Longmen, just outside of Luoyang. However, she accomplished what Empress Dowager Ling could not – holding onto power successfully. I argue her success was possible because Empress Dowager Ling had paved the way.

Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons March 17, 2025 Remembering China’s Empress Dowager Ling, a Buddhist who paved the way for future female rulers The empress, like many other rulers at the time, legitimized her reign through Buddhism, portraying herself either as a Buddha or as a patron of Buddhists. AP Photo/Evan Vucci March 17, 2025 Trump’s first term polarized teens’ views on racism and inequality A social scientist tracking adolescents’ beliefs and behaviors over time was uniquely positioned to document changes in teens’ worldviews after Trump’s 2016 election. C.P. George/ClassicStock via Getty Images March 10, 2025 America is becoming a nation of homebodies Even after the pandemic lockdowns were lifted, out-of-home activities and travel remained substantially depressed, far below 2019 levels. Fat Camera/E+ via Getty Images February 28, 2025 As flu cases break records this year, vaccine rates are declining, particularly for children and 65+ adults So far, fewer than half of US children and older adults have been vaccinated during this year’s high-severity flu season. AP Photo/Ben Curtis January 30, 2025 A federal policy expert weighs in on Trump’s efforts to stifle gender-affirming care for Americans under 19 While it doesn’t constitute a national ban on gender-affirming care for minors, the executive order contains provisions that could have a chilling effect on health care providers around the country. Darya Komarova/Getty Images January 30, 2025 Gen Z seeks safety above all else as the generation grows up amid constant crisis and existential threat Recent generations may have taken safety for granted, but today’s youth are growing up in an era of compounded crises – and being safe is their priority. arturbo/E+ via Getty Images January 22, 2025 “Olho por olho”: estudo analisa o valor de partes do corpo ao longo da história e entre culturas Pessoas de muitas culturas diferentes em todo o mundo e ao longo de milênios concordam amplamente sobre quais partes do corpo são mais valiosas e quanto de compensação elas merecem quando feridas. arturbo/E+ via Getty Images January 10, 2025 An eye for an eye: People agree about the values of body parts across cultures and eras People from many different cultures across the globe and across millennia largely agree about which body parts are most valuable – and how much compensation they warrant when injured. Reprodução de Instagram / Stuart Palley January 9, 2025 Ecologista americano explica o que são e como os ‘Ventos de Santa Ana’ alimentaram os incêndios mortais em Los Angeles Os ventos secos e fortes que descem as montanhas em direção à costa do sul da Califórnia em janeiro este ano foram muito mais violentos, alimentando e espalhando incêndios florestais que atingiram a área urbana de diversos bairros da cidade Ethan Swope/AP January 9, 2025 Comment les vents du désert alimentent les incendies qui ravagent la Californie du Sud La gravité des feux de Los Angeles de ce début janvier s'explique par les vents violents, la sécheresse exceptionnelle de la saison, et l'urbanisation de zones autrefois végétalisées. AP Photo/Ethan Swope January 9, 2025 Cómo los vientos de Santa Ana han provocado incendios mortales en el sur de California Los vientos secos y potentes que soplan desde las montañas hacia la costa del sur de California se combinan con el crecimiento de la población y de los tendidos eléctricos. AP Photo/Ethan Swope January 29, 2025 How Santa Ana winds fueled the deadly fires in Southern California Where people live today also makes a difference when it comes to fire risk. Charles A. Smith/Jackson State University/Historically Black Colleges & Universities via Getty Images December 17, 2024 More than 60 years later, Langston Hughes’ ‘Black Nativity’ is still a pillar of African American theater ‘Black Nativity’ may be different each time you see it − and that’s exactly what the playwright had in mind. rob dobi/Moment via Getty Images November 20, 2024 Legal complications await if OpenAI tries to shake off control by the nonprofit that owns the rapidly growing tech company When for-profit companies are spun out of nonprofits, there is no easy way out of the legal consequences. Santi Visalli, Inc./Archive Photos via Getty Images November 6, 2024 Legado científico de Carl Sagan vai muito além da série de TV “Cosmos” Naquela que teria sido a 90ª viagem do astrônomo ao redor do Sol, aqui está uma visão do seu legado como cientista, defensor e comunicador. Santi Visalli, Inc./Archive Photos via Getty Images November 5, 2024 Carl Sagan’s scientific legacy extends far beyond ‘Cosmos’ On what would’ve been the astronomer’s 90th trip around the Sun, here’s a look at his legacy as a scientist, advocate and communicator. Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post via Getty Images October 29, 2024 For an estimated 4 million people with felony convictions, restoring their right to vote is complicated – and varies state by state Community organizations across the US have launched grassroots operations to inform people with convictions of their voting rights.

In Philadelphia, fatal overdoses are the No. 3 cause of death after heart disease and cancer. That’s been the case each year since 2016, except in 2020 and 2021 when COVID-19 deaths outpaced overdose deaths. The vast majority of fatal overdoses in Philly involve the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Data on overdose deaths in Philly in 2024 is not yet available. However, new research shows that drug deaths are dropping in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Still, opioid overdose deaths in Philadelphia remain what public health researchers call a “wicked problem.” These are complex, multifaceted challenges that are constantly changing and have no clear solution. The Conversation U.S. published several articles over the past year that sought to untangle various threads of this wicked problem in Philadelphia. Here are four essential reads. 1. Overdose deaths down – but still high Philadelphia’s 7% drop in fatal overdoses in 2023 is notable. Still, opioid use disorder claimed the lives of over 1,100 residents that year – more than three times as many lives as 10 years earlier. Ben Cocchiaro, assistant clinical professor of family medicine and community health at Drexel University, explains one likely reason why overdoses in Philly spiked in the first place: the unpredictable potency of the city’s street fentanyl supply. “Local drug-testing efforts found as much as a fiftyfold difference in potency between bags of fentanyl that appear identical,” Cocchiaro writes. “It’s like cracking a beer and not knowing whether drinking it will get you mildly buzzed or send you to the graveyard. Read more: How opioid deaths tripled in Philly over a decade − and what may be behind a recent downturn 2. ‘Tranq’ wounds proliferate Forensic testing has revealed that over 90% of street heroin and fentanyl samples in Philly now contain xylazine, an animal tranquilizer with no FDA-approved use in humans. Rachel McFadden is an emergency room nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and also works at a walk-in clinic in North Philadelphia that serves people who use drugs. Before xylazine, she says, most of the wounds she saw were minor skin infections that she treated with antibiotics. But that changed in late 2019. "Participants at the wound care clinic started to come in with a different kind of wound. They were filled with black and yellow dead tissue and tunneled deep into the skin. They were not wounds from infection but rather from tissue death or necrosis,” McFadden writes. McFadden explains the protocol for treating these serious wounds, which involves removing the dead tissue, administering antimicrobials and antibiotics for the inflammation and infection, and keeping the wound moist and dressed. She says it’s also important that people’s other basic needs, including food, shelter and a place to shower, are met so they can properly heal. Read more: How opioid deaths tripled in Philly over a decade − and what may be behind a recent downturn 3. A new treatment for withdrawal The combination of fentanyl and xylazine in Philly street opioids has made withdrawal symptoms far more excruciating than those experienced by heroin users in the past. That’s according to Kory London, an emergency room doctor and associate professor of emergency medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. London says these withdrawal symptoms lead many patients who are addicted to opioids to discharge themselves from the hospital before their treatment is complete. “Patients with opioid use disorder will often do whatever they can to stay out of the hospital due to fear of withdrawal,” he writes. “Asking how withdrawal symptoms are managed, therefore, is often their first priority when hospitalized. We see this even when they have conditions that require complicated and time-sensitive treatments. Beginning in 2022, London and colleagues began experimenting with new approaches to treating "tranq” dope withdrawal in Philly. The new protocols reduced the likelihood of these patients leaving early by more than half – from 10% to just under 4%. Read more: Philly hospitals test new strategy for 'tranq dope' withdrawal – and it keeps patients from walking out before their treatment is done 4. Industrial chemical BTMPS has unknown risks Philadelpha’s public health department has issued health alerts about xylazine and medetomidine becoming more prevalent in the city’s street opioid supply. Researchers Karli Hochstatter and Fernando Montero at Columbia University are part of a team that tests fentanyl samples collected in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia each month. Those tests have turned up a new adulterant: an industrial chemical known as BTMPS that is used in making plastics. “We first detected BTMPS in Philadelphia in June 2024. We found it in two of the eight samples – 25% – that we collected that month. By November 2024, 12 of 22 samples – or 55% – contained BTMPS,” Hochstatter and Montero write. “What’s more, the amount, or concentration, of this industrial chemical in the drug samples often exceeded the amount of fentanyl.” BTMPS has not been studied in humans, but rat studies reveal exposure – at far lower levels than what is found in the Philly fentanyl samples – can cause heart defects, serious eye damage and death. Read more: Philly's street fentanyl contains an industrial chemical called BTMPS that's an ingredient in plastic This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives. Read more of our stories about Philadelphia.

Natalie Behring/Stringer/GettyImages March 17, 2025 Colorado and other states have expanded access to abortion, but not for adolescents Colorado enshrined the right to abortion in its Constitution, but it still requires minors to seek consent from a parent. MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News/GettyImages March 4, 2025 Many more Denver teens have experienced homelessness than official counts show Youth who are homeless are often missed by official counts, but new methods may lead to improved counts. Tech. Sgt. Darius Sostre-Miroir/920th Rescue Wing February 19, 2025 How medical treatments devised for war can quickly be implemented in US hospitals to save lives How much oxygen does the military need for wounded soldiers? Turns out not much. Military-civilian research is paving the way for new developments. Mizina/iStock via Getty Images Plus January 29, 2025 Nutrição e saúde: como diferenciar informações válidas de pseudociência É fácil se deixar levar pela promessa de soluções rápidas para a saúde, mas elas geralmente são boas demais para serem verdadeiras. Mizina/iStock via Getty Images Plus January 28, 2025 Nutrition advice is rife with misinformation − a medical education specialist explains how to tell valid health information from pseudoscience It’s easy to get caught up in the promise of quick health fixes, but they are generally too good to be true. Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images January 17, 2025 Acute stress and early signs of PTSD are common in firefighters and other first responders − here’s what to watch out for Feelings of sadness or irritability that last a month or more after a life-threatening event could be signs of acute stress or PTSD. Steve Prezant/Getty Images November 21, 2024 Red flag laws are still used in Colorado’s Second Amendment sanctuaries, just less frequently Colorado’s red flag law allows judges to order the temporary seizure of guns from someone they think is a significant risk to themselves or others, even in Second Amendment sanctuary counties. The Good Brigade/DigitalVision via Getty Images August 30, 2024 Is ‘coaching’ a shortcut to mental health care? Not so fast − here are key differences A professor of psychiatry unpacks what to consider if you’re looking for help with physical or mental health and are considering using coaching services. Peter Cade/Stone via Getty Images August 28, 2024 Avian flu has infected dairy cows in more than a dozen states – a microbiologist explains how the virus is spreading The H5N1 virus has infected about 900 people since 2003, and more than half of them died. But so far there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. LaylaBird/E+ via Getty Images August 28, 2024 Creative arts therapy programs can help health care workers dance, write and draw their way through burnout and on-the -job stress Long before the pandemic, health care workers were experiencing high levels of stress, burnout and compassion fatigue, all of which contribute to reduced quality of care for patients. Laurence soulez/iStock via Getty Images Plus August 16, 2024 Hard-to -treat traumas and painful memories may be treatable with EMDR – a trauma therapist explains why it is gaining popularity Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, or EMDR, can help patients process painful memories and reduce anxiety and depression stemming from those events. Paul Starosta/Stone via Getty Images August 16, 2024 West Nile virus season returns − a medical epidemiologist explains how it’s transmitted and how you can avoid it Most people who get infected with West Nile virus have mild symptoms, but in certain cases the illness can become serious or even deadly. Klebercordeiro/Getty Images August 15, 2024 Hispanic women are less likely to get PrEP treatment − new intervention could change that Despite higher than average rates of HIV infection, Hispanic women have relatively low awareness of PrEP, an effective HIV-prevention medication. Archibald Church, Diseases of the nervous system (1908)/Internet Archive via Flickr August 14, 2024 Fluid keeps your brain from crushing itself and shields your spine from shock – a neurologist explains what happens when it stops working Cerebrospinal fluid can sometimes leak or collect in the brain without an identifiable cause, leading to symptoms that can be difficult to diagnose. Olga Rolenko/Moment via Getty Images August 12, 2024 Novos tratamentos oferecem esperança para pacientes que sofrem de dor crônica Uma especialista em gestão da dor explica alguns dos novos avanços no tratamento da dor e por que razão há esperança para os doentes com dor crônica.

Since 2022, Colorado and 10 other states have passed voter initiatives to protect or expand abortion access. Yet, seven of these states, including Colorado, require people under the age of 18 to get consent from or notify a parent prior to receiving abortion services. In January 2025, my colleagues and I published research using in-depth interviews with 33 people ages 15 to 22 in Colorado who considered or obtained abortion care between 2020 and 2023. Our study suggests that Colorado’s parental notification law delays young people’s access to abortion, complicates already complex family relationships, and forces unwanted disclosure of the pregnancy and abortion. As a nurse, I have provided health care to young people and their families for more than two decades, and as a researcher, I have spent the past 10 years studying young people’s experiences with parental involvement laws. Tens of thousands of young people are affected by parental involvement laws each year. By design, these laws threaten their ability to make their own pregnancy decisions. Expanding abortion access, but not for adolescents In the U.S., 38 states allow abortion services at some point in pregnancy. Of those,24 states have parental involvement laws. And of those, 12 states require young people to obtain consent from a parent or guardian; seven require young people to notify a parent or guardian; and five require both notification and consent. Three states – Kansas, Missouri and North Dakota – require involvement of both parents. In 2024, Colorado passed a constitutional amendment that protects the right to abortion and allows funding through Medicaid. Yet, Colorado still requires parental notification for people under 18 to obtain abortion services. There have been no recent state-led efforts to remove this law. Proponents of parental involvement laws believe that the laws will foster parent-child communication and improve pregnancy decision-making. Research shows this is wishful thinking: These laws do not improve communication or decision-making, and instead harm adolescents. We found that even in a state like Colorado that has expanded abortion access, the law creates barriers to services. It takes time for young people to learn the law exists and figure out how to comply with it. That’s true for both young people who can tell their parents and those who cannot. Delays due to parental involvement laws can increase the cost of abortion services, restrict adolescents’ choice of abortion methods and push adolescents past the gestational limit of the clinic or state. For some Colorado young people, following the law resulted in unwanted disclosure of their pregnancy and abortion to parents and others, which is associated with negative mental health outcomes and exposes some young people to emotional or physical abuse. Judicial bypass In states that mandate parental involvement, young people who feel they cannot involve a parent can try to obtain a judicial bypass. The young person must go to court to prove to a judge that they are mature and well informed or that abortion without parental involvement is in their best interest. Data from Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas and Florida suggests that between 6% and 23% of young people who had an abortion relied on judicial bypass. In some states, such as Florida, up to 13% of young people who requested a bypass were denied. In our prior research, Texas young people described the judicial bypass process as burdensome, humiliating and traumatizing. In our new research, young people in Colorado described the judicial bypass process as burdensome. They said it disrupted school, was “embarrassing,” “anxiety” provoking and “nerve wrecking.” Judicial bypass also delays access to abortion. For one participant in our Colorado study, the two- to three-week delay contributed to her inability to obtain her wanted abortion because it pushed her past the gestational limit of her chosen clinic. Another participant thought the judicial bypass process would take too long, so she instead tried to end the pregnancy herself. She took vitamin C, which is not effective, and considered but did not take large doses of over-the-counter medications such as ibuprofen, which could have caused organ damage. The delays and burdens of the judicial bypass process led some study participants’ parents to find out about the pregnancy. This unwanted disclosure breached the privacy that judicial bypass is meant to protect. Future of abortion restrictions States such as Colorado, Maryland and Montana provide access for people seeking abortion services who live in the 18 states with bans early in pregnancy. For example, Colorado had a 110% increase in the number of abortions among adolescents from out of state between 2020 and 2022. However, these states’ parental involvement laws may compound barriers people face when traveling out of state. Parental involvement laws were the first state-level abortion restriction allowed by the Supreme Court after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, which was overturned in 2022. There is a similar pattern today. Policymakers in some states with abortion bans, such as Idaho, Tennessee and Mississippi, are trying to stop people from traveling out of state for services by targeting young people. These proposed laws would make it a crime to help a young person under 18 leave the state for abortion services without parental consent. Some state policymakers are also trying to make it harder to get contraception by targeting young people. For example, federal courts upheld Texas’ refusal to allow minors to confidentially obtain contraception at federally funded clinics. Young people know who to trust Our research found that Colorado young people want their parents’ or guardians’ support when considering abortion, yet some felt it was not safe for them to ask for it. Confirming prior research, we found a number of reasons young people felt unable to disclose their pregnancies to a parent. Those include fearing a parent’s reaction, feeling a parent would not respect their pregnancy decision, and not living with or not having a supportive relationship with a parent. In addition to those reasons, young people also accurately predicted their parents’ reactions. Young people recounted emotional abuse and abandonment or feeling coerced into either continuing the pregnancy or having an abortion when a parent they did not feel they could tell found out about the pregnancy. Research, including our new study in Colorado, shows we can trust young people to decide who to involve in their pregnancy decision. Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Punishing artificial intelligence for deceptive or harmful actions doesn't stop it from misbehaving; it just makes it hide its deviousness, a new study by ChatGPT creator OpenAI has revealed. Since arriving in public in late 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) have repeatedly revealed their deceptive and outright sinister capabilities. These include actions ranging from run-of-the-mill lying , cheating and hiding their own manipulative behavior to threatening to kill a philosophy professor , steal nuclear codes and engineer a deadly pandemic . Now, a new experiment has shown that weeding out this bad behavior during the training process may be even tougher than first thought. Researchers at OpenAI tasked an unreleased model with goals that could be completed by cheating, lying or taking shortcuts. The team found the AI engaged in "reward hacking" — maximizing its rewards by cheating. Yet punishing the model didn’t make it fix its behavior, it only made it more deceptive. The company outlined its research in a blog post , so it has not yet been peer-reviewed. "It's common for frontier reasoning models to very clearly state their intent within their chain-of-thought [CoT]. For example, they are often so forthright about their plan to subvert a task they think "Let's hack," the researchers wrote in the blog post. While developers can monitor and flag misbehavior, the models' "natural monitorability is very fragile," they added. "If strong supervision is directly applied to the chain-of-thought, models can learn to hide their intent while continuing to misbehave." Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors Navigating AI lies Reasoning models, such as ChatGPT's o1 and o3-mini, are an upgraded version of standard LLMs that use a method called "chain-of-thought" to backtrack and reevaluate their logic , which enables them to tackle more complex tasks with greater accuracy. During the chain-of-thought process, models spell out their logic in plain language with every step they take, thus enabling their actions to be easily observed. Related: Scientists design new 'AGI benchmark' that indicates whether any future AI model could cause 'catastrophic harm' By using a standard LLM, GPT-4o, to oversee an unreleased frontier reasoning model during training, the researchers watched as the model completed a number of coding tasks. But in some of these cases, the reasoning model found it easier and more desirable to reward hack, explicitly stating it was doing so in its chain-of-thought. In one instance, it bypassed its assigned task by terminating programs prematurely and reporting success. In another, it mimicked the expected files to be output by a task in name alone, leaving them empty and nonfunctional. When the researchers attempted to penalize the system, it did somewhat improve its results. Yet significant instances of reward hacking and faulty outputs remained; the reasoning model simply found ways to hide the cheating in its chain of thought from the monitoring AI. "The agent trained with CoT pressure still learns to reward hack; only now its cheating is undetectable by the monitor because it has learned to hide its intent in the chain-of-thought," the researchers wrote. Because it's hard to tell if a chain of thought has been tampered with, the researchers recommend that others working with reasoning models avoid applying strong supervision to chain-of-thought processes. This advice is even more crucial if AI, in its current form or another, can ever match or exceed the intelligence of the humans monitoring it. "Sacrificing an effective method for monitoring reasoning models may not be worth the small improvement to capabilities, and we therefore recommend to avoid such strong CoT optimization pressures until they are better understood," the researchers wrote.

When asked about reactions to Donald Trump being president, a 16-year-old Black girl said, “I feel unsafe and not protected. The United States is supposed to be the land of the free but is really the land of racism.” In contrast, a 16-year-old white girl said, “I think it’s OK … I do feel bad for minorities … I’m white however and come from a somewhat similar background so I will be alright.” These two teenagers responded very differently to the racial climate created by Trump – during his first presidency. Research on adolescents during Trump’s first term takes on new relevance now that he is back in office. As a scholar of adolescent development, I have studied U.S. teenagers for over two decades. When Trump took office in 2016, I was in the midst of leading a five-year study to understand how young people become civically engaged. My colleagues and I were tracking adolescents’ beliefs and behaviors over time, which gave us a unique opportunity to document changes after Trump was elected. Focusing on 1,400 ninth through 12th graders, I hypothesized that adolescents would become more divided during Trump’s presidency, given the political divisions evident among adults in 2016. And, like other social scientists, my team and I did identify diverging worldviews about racism and inequalities among teenagers and increased discrimination. Decades of research shows that adolescents are influenced in lasting ways by societal events and political shifts, such as the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and changing presidential administrations. Likewise, the short-term impacts of Trump’s presidency identified by research may portend long-lasting effects for this generation of young people. Diverging worldviews In our study, young Trump supporters were more likely to be white and male and to have politically conservative parents, and less likely to be immigrants. Teenagers in our study who disapproved of Trump were more likely to be female and Latino, Black or Asian, to have politically liberal parents, and to have parents or grandparents who were immigrants. These groups were not just different demographically; they diverged in their worldviews about race and inequality over time. Across Trump’s first year in office, young Trump supporters decreased their race consciousness – that is, their support for racial equity and inclusion declined. We measured race consciousness by whether high schoolers agreed with statements like “I show support for equal rights for people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds” and “I express concern about discrimination faced by racial and ethnic groups.” Young Trump supporters also grew less aware of inequalities in society during this time frame, becoming less likely to endorse statements like “In America, certain groups have fewer chances to get ahead.” Conversely, young Trump detractors increased their race consciousness and awareness of societal inequalities during this time. Another study that interviewed youth of color during Trump’s first presidency similarly found that adolescents critical of Trump developed deeper capacities to understand societal inequalities in response to Trump’s policies. Did these divergent beliefs translate into different behaviors? Interestingly, only young Trump supporters in our study became more likely to vote after Trump’s first election. This heightened interest in voting among young Trump supporters aligns with 2024’s election results. Although people ages 18-29 were more likely to support Kamala Harris than Donald Trump, the majority of white youth (54%) and young men (56%) who voted turned out to support Trump. The adolescents we surveyed in 2016 and 2017 are among this cohort of young voters in 2024. Increased discrimination The divergent beliefs of Trump supporters and detractors may have implications for other behaviors in addition to voting. After Trump’s first election, 28% of K-12 teachers reported witnessing increases in students’ derogatory remarks toward minority groups, especially in predominantly white schools. Students were emboldened to make bigoted statements about immigrants, Muslims and other groups. Researchers documented incidents of anti-Black racism and anti-transgender discrimination in schools. Our study found that Latino youth experienced more discrimination after Trump was elected. Latino adolescents also expressed fears and anxieties due to Trump’s hostile immigration policies and rhetoric, and they attributed Trump’s stance to racism. Four psychologists who systematically reviewed the available research concluded that the first Trump presidency harmed Latino adolescents’ mental health. These studies did not definitively attribute increased discrimination to actions of young Trump supporters. But young Trump supporters did become less concerned about discrimination and racial equity. And adult Trump supporters did endorse more racist and anti-immigrant attitudes and the use of political violence compared with other adults. What about now? Trump’s executive orders in 2025 have expanded the detention and deportation of immigrants, declared that gender is binary, and that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are illegal. Based on how people responded in the early days of Trump’s first term, these orders may directly harm adolescents and embolden discrimination again. For example, immediately after the 2024 election, crisis calls from LGBTQ+ youth increased by 200%, and harassing texts were sent to Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ adolescents across 20 states. The executive order to eliminate teaching on racial and gender equity from schools, if upheld, would limit adolescents’ opportunities to learn about racism, sexism and inequalities faced by different groups. Adolescents’ awareness of and concerns about inequalities diverged during Trump’s first presidency based on their political views. Given the policy focus of Trump’s second term, I anticipate similar or greater divisions in young people’s racial attitudes and actions than my research revealed over the course of his first term.

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. What was the first thing scientists discovered? – Jacob, age 9, Santiago, Panama All societies have had ways of understanding nature based on their experiences of it. For example, farmers need to understand the seasons and weather to know when to plant and harvest their crops. Hunters need to understand the lives of animals to know how to hunt them. This kind of understanding of the natural world isn’t quite the same as science though. Science typically refers to knowledge that’s more organized and formal than that. It’s not just an explanation, but a system that uses observations and experiments to build theories that are recorded, passed on to others and built on. With that idea in mind, as a historian of science, my best answer to the question of what the first scientists discovered is Babylonian astronomy. The Babylonians lived from about 2,500 to 4,000 years ago in the area that’s now Iraq. What makes Babylonian astronomy stand out as being especially scientific is the careful, organized way in which Babylonian scribes – their keepers of knowledge – observed, recorded and eventually mathematically predicted the ways that the Sun, Moon, stars and planets move in the skies. Babylonian astronomy was uniquely scientific Before clocks, observing the sky was how people knew the time. During the day you can see the Sun, and at night you can see the stars. Many calendars are based on the skies too. A month is about how long it takes the Moon to go through its phases. A year is one full revolution of the Earth around the Sun. But keeping track of time wasn’t the only way the Babylonians used astronomy. Like today’s world, Babylonia could be both predictable and chaotic. The weather changed with the seasons; crops were planted and harvested; festivals were celebrated; people were born, aged and died, all predictably. But a bad harvest might cause high prices for grains and starvation; a king might die young, causing political upheaval; a disease might kill thousands, all unpredictably. The stars and planets can seem like that, too. The stars are always in the same places in relation to one another, so you can identify constellations, and those constellations rise and set at regular times over the course of a year. But the planets move around – they’re not always in the same places, and sometimes they even seem to stop and move backward in their paths. Sometimes even more spectacular events occur, such as eclipses. For the Babylonians, those ideas were linked. They saw changes in the motions of the planets or rare events such as eclipses as signs – omens – about what was going to happen on Earth. For example, they might think the shadow of the Earth moving over the Moon in a certain way during a lunar eclipse meant that a flood would also happen. The scribes kept a book called Enūma Anu Enlil listing omens and their meanings. So if the seemingly changing motions of the heavens could be predicted, maybe earthly events could be, too. This led the scribes to study astronomy. How Babylonian astronomy worked The foundation of Babylonian astronomy was kept in a book called MUL.APIN, meaning “The Plough Star,” the name of a constellation. It recorded the positions of the stars, when in the year they would first be visible, the paths of the Sun and Moon, the periods when the planets would be visible in the night sky, and other fundamental astronomical knowledge. Later, Babylonian scribes began to keep their Astronomical Diaries, which contained detailed records of the positions of the Moon and planets along with events on Earth such as the weather and the price of grain. In other words, they recorded their observations of both astronomical omens and the events they might have predicted. This kind of careful observation and record-keeping is a major part of science. The Astronomical Diaries were kept for over 700 years, making them maybe the longest-running scientific project ever. The records in the Astronomical Diaries helped Babylonian scribes take another scientific step: predicting astronomical events. One part of this was computing what the Babylonians called goal-years: the number of years it took for a planet to return to the same place on the same day. For example, they computed that the period for Venus was eight Babylonian years. So if Venus was somewhere on a particular day, it would be in the same place on the same day eight years later. By around the fourth century B.C.E., the scribes developed this knowledge into a system of mathematically predicting astronomical events. They made tables called ephemerides that showed when these events would happen in the future. So Babylonian scribes succeeded in their project: They made the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets predictable. Babylonian astronomy and you MUL.APIN, the Astronomical Diaries, the ephemerides and all of Babylonian astronomy had a major impact on later astronomers, one that continues to today. Greek astronomers used Babylonian observations to make geometric models of planetary motions, part of the long path toward modern astronomy. The ephemerides were the ancestors of astronomical tables, which still exist. For example, NASA has a table of eclipses online that goes to the year 3000. But the most familiar thing that comes from Babylonian astronomy is how we tell time. The Babylonians didn’t use a decimal system with units of 10 like we do. Instead, they used a sexagesimal system, with units of 60. Babylonian observations were so important that later people kept Babylonian units for astronomy, even though they used a base 10 system for other things. So if you’ve ever wondered why an hour has 60 minutes, and a minute has 60 seconds, it’s because we’ve kept that way of measuring from Babylonian astronomy. Whenever you tell the time, you’re using some of the very oldest science. 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.

Ice cores in freezers, dinosaurs on display, fish in jars, birds in boxes, human remains and ancient artifacts from long gone civilizations that few people ever see – museum collections are filled with all this and more. These collections are treasure troves that recount the planet’s natural and human history, and they help scientists in a variety of different fields such as geology, paleontology, anthropology and more. What you see on a trip to a museum is only a sliver of the wonders held in their collection. Museums generally want to make the contents of their collections available for teachers and researchers, either physically or digitally. However, each collection’s staff has its own way of organizing data, so navigating these collections can prove challenging. Creating, organizing and distributing the digital copies of museum samples or the information about physical items in a collection requires incredible amounts of data. And this data can feed into machine learning models or other artificial intelligence to answer big questions. Currently, even within a single research domain, finding the right data requires navigating different repositories. AI can help organize large amounts of data from different collections and pull out information to answer specific questions. But using AI isn’t a perfect solution. A set of shared practices and systems for data management between museums could improve the data curation and sharing necessary for AI to do its job. These practices could help both humans and machines make new discoveries from these valuable collections. As an information scientist who studies scientists’ approaches to and opinions on research data management, I’ve seen how the world’s physical collection infrastructure is a patchwork quilt of objects and their associated metadata. AI tools can do amazing things, such as make 3D models of digitized versions of the items in museum collections, but only if there’s enough well-organized data about that item available. To see how AI can help museum collections, my team of researchers started by conducting focus groups with the people who managed museum collections. We asked what they are doing to get their collections used by both humans and AI. Collection managers When an item comes into a museum collection, the collection managers are the people who describe that item’s features and generate data about it. That data, called metadata, allows others to use it and might include things like the collector’s name, geographic location, the time it was collected, and in the case of geological samples, the epoch it’s from. For samples from an animal or plant, it might include its taxonomy, which is the set of Latin names that classify it. All together, that information adds up to a mind-boggling amount of data. But combining data across domains with different standards is really tricky. Fortunately, collection managers have been working to standardize their processes across disciplines and for many types of samples. Grants have helped science communities build tools for standardization. In biological collections, the tool Specify allows managers to quickly classify specimens with drop-down menus prepopulated with standards for taxonomy and other parameters to consistently describe the incoming specimens. A common metadata standard in biology is Darwin Core. Similar well-established metadata and tools exist across all the sciences to make the workflow of taking real items and putting them into a machine as easy as possible. Special tools like these and metadata help collection managers make data from their objects reusable for research and educational purposes. All the small things My team and I conducted 10 focus groups, with a total of 32 participants from several physical sample communities. These included collection managers across disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, botany, geology, ichthyology, entomology, herpetology and paleontology. Each participant answered questions about how they accessed, organized, stored and used data from their collections in an effort to make their materials ready for AI to use. While human subjects need to provide consent to be studied, most species do not. So, an AI can collect and analyze the data from nonhuman physical collections without privacy or consent concerns. We found that collection managers from different fields and institutions have lots of different practices when it comes to getting their physical collections ready for AI. Our results suggest that standardizing the types of metadata managers record and the ways they store it across collections could make the items in these samples more accessible and usable. Additional research projects like our study can help collection managers build up the infrastructure they’ll need to make their data machine-ready. Human expertise can help inform AI tools that make new discoveries based on the old treasures in museum collections.

In 1957, Hollywood released “The Deadly Mantis,” a B-grade monster movie starring a praying mantis of nightmare proportions. Its premise: Melting Arctic ice has released a very hungry, million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the U.S. military will have to stop it. The rampaging insect menaces America’s Arctic military outposts, part of a critical line of national defense, before heading south and meeting its end in New York City. Yes, it’s over-the-top fiction, but the movie holds some truth about the U.S. military’s concerns then and now about the Arctic’s stability and its role in national security. In the late 1940s, Arctic temperatures were warming and the Cold War was heating up. The U.S. military had grown increasingly nervous about a Soviet invasion across the Arctic. It built bases and a line of radar stations. The movie used actual military footage of these polar outposts. But officials wondered: What if sodden snow and vanishing ice stalled American men and machines and weakened these northern defenses? In response to those concerns, the military created the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment, a research center dedicated to the science and engineering of all things frozen: glacier runways, the behavior of ice, the physics of snow and the climates of the past. It was the beginning of the military’s understanding that climate change couldn’t be ignored. U.S. Army As I was writing “When the Ice is Gone,” my recent book about Greenland, climate science and the U.S. military, I read government documents from the 1950s and 1960s showing how the Pentagon poured support into climate and cold-region research to boost the national defense. Initially, military planners recognized threats to their own ability to protect the nation. Over time, the U.S. military would come to see climate change as both a threat in itself and a threat multiplier for national security. Ice roads, ice cores and bases inside the ice sheet The military’s snow and ice engineering in the 1950s made it possible for convoys of tracked vehicles to routinely cross Greenland’s ice sheet, while planes landed and took off from ice and snow runways. In 1953, the Army even built a pair of secret surveillance sites inside the ice sheet, both equipped with Air Force radar units looking 24/7 for Soviet missiles and aircraft, but also with weather stations to understand the Arctic climate system. Paul Bierman collection. The Army drilled the world’s first deep ice core from a base it built within the Greenland ice sheet, Camp Century. Its goal: to understand how climate had changed in the past so they would know how it might change in the future. The military wasn’t shy about its climate change research successes. The Army’s chief ice scientist, Dr. Henri Bader, spoke on the Voice of America. He promoted ice coring as a way to investigate climates of the past, provide a new understanding of weather, and understand past climatic patterns to gauge and predict the one we are living in today – all strategically important. In the 1970s, painstaking laboratory work on the Camp Century ice core extracted minuscule amounts of ancient air trapped in tiny bubbles in the ice. Analyses of that gas revealed that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were lower for tens of thousands of years before the industrial revolution. After 1850, carbon dioxide levels crept up slowly at first and then rapidly accelerated. It was direct evidence that people’s actions, including burning coal and oil, were changing the composition of the atmosphere. Since 1850, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have spiked and global temperatures have warmed by more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 Celsius). The past 10 years have been the hottest since recordkeeping began, with 2024 now holding the record. Climate change is now affecting the entire Earth – but most especially the Arctic, which is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet. Seeing climate change as a threat multiplier For decades, military leaders have been discussing climate change as a threat and a threat multiplier that could worsen instability and mass migration in already fragile regions of the world. Climate change can fuel storms, wildfires and rising seas that threaten important military bases. It puts personnel at risk in rising heat and melts sea ice, creating new national security concerns in the Arctic. Climate change can also contribute to instability and conflict when water and food shortages trigger increasing competition for resources, internal and cross-border tensions, or mass migrations. The military understands that these threats can’t be ignored. As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told a conference in September 2024: “Climate resilience is force resilience.” Consider Naval Station Norfolk. It’s the largest military port facility in the world and sits just above sea level on Virginia’s Atlantic coast. Sea level there rose more than 1.5 feet in the last century, and it’s on track to rise that much again by 2050 as glaciers around the world melt and warming ocean water expands. High tides already cause delays in repair work, and major storms and their storm surges have damaged expensive equipment. The Navy has built sea walls and worked to restore coastal dunes and marshlands to protect its Virginia properties, but the risks continue to increase. Planning for the future, the Navy incorporates scientists’ projections of sea level rise and increasing hurricane strength to design more resilient facilities. By adapting to climate change, the U.S. Navy will avoid the fate of another famous marine power: the Norse, forced to abandon their flooded Greenland settlements when sea level there rose about 600 years ago. Climate change is costly to ignore As the impacts of climate change grow in both frequency and magnitude, the costs of inaction are increasing. Most economists agree that it’s cheaper to act now than deal with the consequences. Yet, in the past 20 years, the political discourse around addressing the cause and effects of climate change has become increasingly politicized and partisan, stymieing effective action. In my view, the military’s approach to problem-solving and threat reduction provides a model for civil society to address climate change in two ways: reducing carbon emissions and adapting to inevitable climate change impacts. The U.S. military emits more planet warming carbon than Sweden and spent more than US$2 billion on energy in 2021. It accounts for more than 70% of energy used by the federal government. In that context, its embrace of alternative energy, including solar generation, microgrids and wind power, makes economic and environmental sense. The U.S. military is moving away from fossil fuels, not because of any political agenda, but because of the cost-savings, increased reliability and energy independence the alternatives provide. As sea ice melts and Arctic temperatures rise, the polar region has again become a strategic priority. Russia and China are expanding Arctic shipping routes and eyeing critical mineral deposits as they become accessible. The military knows climate change affects national security, which is why it continues to take steps to address the threats a changing climate presents.

Suzy Hazelwood/Pexels March 17, 2025 From pulpits to protest, the surprising history of the phrase ‘pride and prejudice’ The phrase appeared on thousands of pages unrelated to Jane Austen before and during her life – and was a favorite phrase of the abolitionists. SheilaFitzgerald/Shutterstock March 6, 2025 Chicago, Houston, San Francisco… un krach budgétaire se profile pour les villes américaines Des coûts en hausse et des recettes qui baissent, c’est le cocktail rencontré par de nombreuses villes des États-Unis. Et l’administration Trump pourrait les abandonner à leur sort. Jusqu’au krach ? wildpixel/iStock via Getty Images February 26, 2025 How ticket-splitting voters could shape the 2026 midterms Democrats are desperate to retake control of Congress; Republicans want to keep it. To win, it helps to know what kind of voter is willing to cross party lines. Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images February 20, 2025 A fiscal crisis is looming for many US cities A perfect storm of rising costs and declining revenues is stressing many US city budgets – and the Trump administration isn’t likely to send much help. Giorgio Veira/AFP via Getty Images February 10, 2025 If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone? FEMA pools national resources to help states quickly manage disasters. Without that federal support, each state would be left to build its own expensive response capabilities. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana February 6, 2025 Is DOGE a cybersecurity threat? A security expert explains the dangers of violating protocols and regulations that protect government computer systems News reports paint a frightening picture of DOGE staff trampling time-tested – and in many cases legally required – management and security practices. Anton Petrus/Moment via Getty Images December 6, 2024 What is Salt Typhoon? A security expert explains the Chinese hackers and their attack on US telecommunications networks Chinese hackers are alleged to have broken into US phone networks, giving Chinese intelligence services a window onto specific Americans’ phone and messaging activity. Estailove St-Val/AFP via Getty Images October 22, 2024 Colonialism’s legacy has left Caribbean nations much more vulnerable to hurricanes The islands’ vulnerability has roots deep in the exploitative systems forced on them by colonialism, from slave-based land policies to ill-suited development that put lives in harm’s way. AP Photo/Hussein Malla September 18, 2024 Pagers and walkie-talkies over cellphones – a security expert explains why Hezbollah went low-tech for communications Smartphones may be indispensable to modern life, but they’re also perfect tools for spying on their owners. Anyone looking to avoid being tracked – like, say, militant groups – tends to ditch them. Sergei Bobylev/TASS News Agency September 2, 2024 Putin’s visit to Mongolia defies ICC warrant and tests neutral nation’s ‘third neighbor’ diplomacy Mongolia has worked hard to craft friendly relations across the globe. But geography means that Russia and China still retain a strong influence. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images August 29, 2024 The specter of China has edged into US presidential election rhetoric − for Republicans much more than Democrats Of the four presidential and vice presidential candidates, only Tim Walz did not mention China in his convention speech − and he is the only one with personal knowledge of the country. AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura July 19, 2024 Massive IT outage spotlights major vulnerabilities in the global information ecosystem A faulty software update crippled airlines, hospitals and government services. A security researcher explains why it’s likely to happen again and what needs to be done to lower the odds of a repeat. Gajus/iStock/Getty Images Plus July 16, 2024 Social media and political violence – how to break the cycle When political discourse is devoid of facts and high on demonization, it’s no surprise that political violence is the result. There is a way out, but it’s slow and will take effort. Lhote/Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images June 4, 2024 Sargassum is choking the Caribbean’s white sand beaches, fueling an economic and public health crisis A leading driver of this seaweed invasion is pollution, carried down rivers and into the Atlantic Ocean from the continents. Bill Hinton Photography via Getty Images May 31, 2024 China turns to private hackers as it cracks down on online activists on Tiananmen Square anniversary Beijing’s cyber operations are largely conducted in the shadows. But a recent leak has shed light on how the state is working with private companies to target online activism. AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool May 27, 2024 Comment Bollywood influence les élections indiennes À l’approche des élections en Inde, une série de films promouvant l’idéologie de droite du parti au pouvoir cherche à influencer les électeurs. Retour aux origines de cette tendance. Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images May 26, 2024 Sed en el paraíso: la crisis del agua en las islas del Caribe El agua está en todas partes, pero las reservas son muy limitadas en muchas islas del Caribe. El aumento de la demanda y el cambio climático agravan la escasez de agua para sus habitantes. Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images May 13, 2024 Thirsty in paradise: Water crises are a growing problem across the Caribbean islands Water is everywhere, but freshwater supplies are limited on many Caribbean islands. Rising demand and climate change are worsening water shortages for the people who live here.

Most readers hear “pride and prejudice” and immediately think of Jane Austen’s most famous novel, that salty-sweet confection of romance and irony with a fairy-tale ending. Few people, however, know the history of the phrase “pride and prejudice,” which I explore in my new book, “Jane Austen, Abolitionist: The Loaded History of the Phrase ‘Pride and Prejudice.’” Like most Austen fans and scholars, I had read and loved her novels for years without learning much about the history of the title, which Austen chose after scrapping the original one, “First Impressions.” By the 20th century, “pride and prejudice” became solely associated with Austen’s 1813 novel. The phrase, which has religious origins, appeared in hundreds of works before Austen was born. From Britain it traveled to America, and from religious tomes it expanded to secular works. It even became a hallmark of abolitionist writing. Fighting words for religious factions While 2025 marks Austen’s 250th birthday, the phrase “pride and prejudice” first appeared more than 400 years ago, in religious writings by English Protestants. As the daughter, sister, cousin and granddaughter of Church of England ministers, Austen was certainly aware of the tradition. If ministers wanted to reproach their parishioners or their opponents, they attributed criticism of their sermons to “pride and prejudice” – as coming from people too arrogant and narrow-minded to entertain their words in good faith. While the usage began in the Church of England, other denominations, even radical ones, soon adopted it: “Pride and prejudice” appears in the writings of Nonconformists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Dissenters and other representatives of “Schism, Faction and Sedition,” as one anonymous writer called them. One early takeaway is that, amid fervent religious conflicts, various denominations similarly used “pride and prejudice” as a criticism. The unnamed minister himself complained that, owing to “the Pride and Prejudice of mens Spirits, the prevailing Interests of some Factions and Parties, the greatest part of the Nation are miserably wanting in their Duty.” At the same time, the phrase could be invoked to support religious toleration and in pleas for inclusiveness. “When all Pride and Prejudice, all Interests and Designs, being submitted to the Honour of God, and the Discharge of our Duty,” an anonymous clergyman wrote in 1734, “the Holy Scriptures shall again triumph over the vain Traditions of Men; and Religion no longer take its Denomination from little Sects and Factions.” From politics to prose In the 18th century, advances in publishing led to an explosion of secular writing. For the first time, regular people could buy books about history, politics and philosophy. These popular texts spread the phrase “pride and prejudice” to even more distant shores. One fan was American founding father Thomas Paine. In his 47-page pamphlet “Common Sense,” Paine argued that kings could not be trusted to protect democracy: “laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes and forms, the plain truth is, that it is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government[,] that the crown is not as repressive in England as in Turkey.” Others included Daniel Defoe, author of “Robinson Crusoe.” In his 1708 essay “Review of the State of the British Nation,” Defoe satirically exhorted the public to vote Tory rather than electing men of sense, to “dispell the Poisons” that “Sloth, Envy, Pride and Prejudice may have contracted, and bring the Blood of the Party into a true circulation.” After the philosophers, the historians and the political commentators came the novelists. And among the novelists, female writers were especially important. My annotated list in “Jane Austen, Abolitionist” includes more than a dozen female writers using the phrase between 1758 and 1812, the year Austen finished revising “Pride and Prejudice.” Among them was Frances Burney. Scholars have often attributed Austen’s famous title to Burney, who used the phrase “pride and prejudice” in her novel “Cecilia.” But Burney was not alone. Female novelists who used the expression before Austen included Charlotte Lennox, sisters Harriet and Sophia Lee, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mrs. Colpoys, Anne Seymour Damer and mother and daughter Susannah and Elizabeth Gunning, who jointly authored their novel “The Heir Apparent.” An abolitionist rallying cry As the critique embodied in the phrase progressed beyond religious and partisan conflict, it became increasingly used in the context of ethics and social reform. My most striking discovery in this research is the long-standing association of the phrase “pride and prejudice” with abolitionism, the movement to eradicate enslavement and the slave trade. The leaders of transnational antislavery organizations used it at their conventions and in the books and periodicals they published. In 1843, 30 years after the publication of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” British Quaker Thomas Clarkson wrote to the General Antislavery Convention, which was meeting in London. He exhorted the faithful to repudiate slavery “at once and forever” if there were any among them “whose eyes may be so far blinded, or their consciences so far seared by interest or ignorance, pride or prejudice, as still to sanction or uphold this unjust and sinful system.” He even used the phrase twice. Acknowledging that some violent abolitionists had aroused reaction, he warned his audience that “this state of feeling arises as much from pride and prejudice on the one hand, as from indiscretion or impropriety on the other.” At the funeral for abolitionist John Brown, the minister prayed over his body, “Oh, God, cause the oppressed to go free; break any yoke, and prostrate the pride and prejudice that dare to lift themselves up.” Use of the phrase did not end with Emancipation or the end of the U.S. Civil War. In fact, it was one of Frederick Douglass’ favorite phrases. On Oct. 22, 1883, in his “Address at Lincoln Hall,” Douglass excoriated the Supreme Court’s decision rendering the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. As was typical of Douglass, the speech ranged beyond racial inequities: “Color prejudice is not the only prejudice against which a Republic like ours should guard. The spirit of caste is malignant and dangerous everywhere. There is the prejudice of the rich against the poor, the pride and prejudice of the idle dandy against the hard-handed workingman.” Austen’s independent women Early on in “Pride and Prejudice,” the conceited Caroline Bingley snipes that Elizabeth Bennet shows “an abominable sort of conceited independence.” Later, the snobbish Lady Catherine accuses Bennet of being “headstrong.” But near the ending, Mr. Darcy tells Bennet that he loves her for “the liveliness” of her “mind.” In this respect, Bennet reflects a quality that all of Austen’s heroines possess. While they try to adhere to standards of courtesy and respect, none are guilty of saying only what the leading man wants to hear. Given that Austen chose her title to honor the phrase and its history, it is ironic that her own fame ended up drowning out the abolitionist associations of “pride and prejudice” after the Civil War. If there is any work of fiction that successfully makes self-sufficiency, independent thinking and open-mindedness look good – and makes sycophants, rigidity and hysterical devotion to rank and status look bad – it is “Pride and Prejudice.” Yet the lasting popularity of Austen’s novel demonstrates that the ethics contained in the phrase continue to resonate today, even if its context has been lost.

Are the times change: are benevolence and empathy about to be forgotten? Will these cardinal values ​​of a "good" leadership disappear as the international context evolves? The question deserves all the more to be asked than leadership models that overplay strength seem to be in tune with the times, as Donald Trump, Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Cyril Hanouna illustrate. Donald Trump or Jean-Luc Mélenchon for politics, Elon Musk for the company, Cyril Hanouna for the media ... The success and influence of these closing and controversial personalities, who do not hesitate to use aggressiveness to assert their authority and their power, seem to testify to the growing influence of an authoritarian leadership based on the balance of power and intimidation. Benevolence, respect and listening in leadership have been encouraged for many years in organizations. These characteristics are often presented as the essential qualities of the modern and efficient leader. How to explain the return of autocratic leadership generally associated with over -time? Does this renewal mark the end of benevolent leaders and the start of a new era in management? Or does it illustrate a punctual phenomenon linked to a specific context? Leader and leadership referenced in 120,500 scientific documents Leadership is a theme studied and taught for many years in disciplines as diverse as management, political science, history or psychology. Web of science, the most famous multidisciplinary scientific bibliographic database in the world, has been counting, since 1985, more than 120,500 scientific documents with a summary ("abstract") highlighting the terms of leader or leadership. For a long time, authority and force were the main qualities put forward to define the characteristics of the leader. For Kurt Lewin, one of the first contemporary thinkers to be interested in the concepts of leader and leadership with the German sociologist Max Weber, the authoritarian leadership is characterized by a "clear demarcation between the leader and the subordinates, with few contributions or returns of the latter". Embodied in the corporate world by figures like Henry Ford, or more recently Steve Jobs, the authoritarian leader exercises absolute control over the decisions and actions of his teams which he puts at the exclusive service of the efficiency of his organization. Read More: To restore power to employees, it will be necessary to review the leadership "French" Shared leadership and liberated company After the Second World War, this trend will gradually give way to more human and participatory forms of leadership. Popularized by James Burns' work in the 1980s, transactional leadership and transformational leadership are two examples of theories that will emerge during this period. The transactional leader is distinguished by the implementation of objectives which allow employees to obtain awards related to their performance and the achievement of the set objectives. The transformational leader strives to inspire and motivate his teams, he establishes a bond of trust with his collaborators by encouraging them to take initiatives. The influence of theories advocating more democratic, more empathetic and more human leadership will still be accentuated in the 2000s. This is the case with authentic leadership theorized by Bill Georges which advocates the highlighting of the notions of values ​​and ethics in the leader. This is still the case with the leadership shared between managers and collaborators that are found in particular within the framework of the liberated company formalized by Isaac Getz in a 2009 university article entitled "Liberating leadership: How The Initiative-Freeing Radical Organizational has been successful". Feeling of safety and performance Despite distinct characteristics and own perspectives, theories on leadership that emerged after the Second World War are generally in common to call into question the figure of the authoritarian leader and to recommend the use of a certain form of kindness by managers. For Swiss researcher Raphael H. Cohen, benevolent leaders are interested in "interests of their collaborators [...] as opposed to leadership which favors the interests of the manager and/or the company". Leaderships imbued with benevolence and compassion is thus characterized by six large key dimensions: empathy, opening and communication, mental physical health and well-being, inclusion, integrity, respect and dignity. Subscribe today! Every Monday, receive useful information for your career for your career and everything related to the life of the company (strategy, marketing, finance, etc. Monday, etc.). Above all, the virtues of the benevolent leader promote "a feeling of security and confidence conducive to increased performance". But if listening, benevolence, sharing and cooperation are a source of performance, how to explain the renewal of authority and the balance of power in matters of leadership? A response to the permanent crisis Until the beginning of the 20th century, research on leadership highlighted the central importance of the individual's personality to explain the ability of some to effectively take on the role of the leader. Then appeared behavioral theories centered on the tasks to be accomplished and the people to manage. These theories have shown that leadership was not innate, but could also be taught. Finally, other advances fueled the debates on leadership, showing that it also depended on the context and was therefore situational. In this order of idea, one can therefore wonder if the current influence of authoritarian leaders is not linked to repeated crises (environmental, health, geopolitical, economic, etc.) that have been going through our societies in recent years. For researchers Aurélien Acquire, Julie Mayer and Bertrand Valiorgue, the environmental situation marks a switch to a sort of permanent state of crisis of our societies and our economies which now makes the concept of normality obsolete. Such an evolution could explain the renewal and success of a management based on the balance of power while some researchers highlight the effectiveness of authoritarian leadership, considered better suited and more efficient in times of turbulence, uncertainties and dangers. A false remedy for anxiety? COVID-19 also profoundly changed the relationship of individuals to organizations and authority, especially among young generations. Several research has highlighted the growing lack of employees for managerial positions. Many companies also point out their difficulties in retaining their employees and stimulating their commitment. Coupled with a particularly unstable and anxiety -provoking economic situation, this growing tendency to reject and refuse posts of authority and leadership mechanically gives way to the most ambitious and determined individuals and is therefore favorable to the establishment of more direct and less participative leadership. In a sense, this trend echoes the remark of Mark Zuckerberg, the pattern of Meta, advocating more male energy and less diversity in businesses. If the return of authoritarian leadership therefore threatens the place currently granted to benevolence and listening, it is also indirectly carrying a male, uniform and elitist vision of leaders. A vision that constitutes a danger to more feminine and more inclusive leadership. And which highlights the path remaining to go in this area so that a representative leadership of the place of women and people from diversity in society can finally emerge.

Galaxies observed by the JWST with those rotating one way circled in red, those rotating the other way circled in blue. Without a doubt, since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revolutionized our view of the early universe, but its new findings could put astronomers in a spin. In fact, it could tell us something profound about the birth of the universe by possibly hinting that everything we see around us is sealed within a black hole. The $10 billion telescope, which began observing the cosmos in the Summer of 2022, has found that the vast majority of deep space and, thus the early galaxies it has so far observed, are rotating in the same direction. While around two-thirds of galaxies spin clockwise, the other third rotates counter-clockwise. In a random universe, scientists would expect to find 50% of galaxies rotating one way, while the other 50% rotate the other way. This new research suggests there is a preferred direction for galactic rotation . The observations of 263 galaxies that revealed this strangely coordinated cosmic dance was collected as part of the James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or "JADES." "It is still not clear what causes this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations," team leader Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering, said in a statement. "One explanation is that the universe was born rotating. That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology , which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole. "But if the universe was indeed born rotating, it means that the existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete." Born in a black hole? Black hole cosmology, also known as "Schwarzschild cosmology," suggests that our observable universe might be the interior of a black hole itself within a larger parent universe. The idea was first introduced by theoretical physicist Raj Kumar Pathria and by mathematician I. J. Good. It presents the idea that the "Schwarzchild radius," better known as the " event horizon ," (the boundary from within which nothing can escape a black hole, not even light) is also the horizon of the visible universe. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors This has another implication; each and every black hole in our universe could be the doorway to another "baby universe." These universes would be unobservable to us because they are also behind an event horizon, a one-way light-trapping point of no return from which light cannot escape, meaning information can never travel from the interior of a black hole to an external observer. This is a theory that has been championed by Polish theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven. An illustration shows baby universe's sealed within the event horizons of black holes (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva)) Black holes are born when the core of a massive star collapses. At its heart is matter with a density that far exceeds anything in the known universe. In Poplawski's theory, eventually, the coupling between torsion, the twisting and turning of matter, and spin becomes very strong and prevents the matter from compressing indefinitely to a singularity. "The matter instead reaches a state of finite, extremely large density, stops collapsing, undergoes a bounce like a compressed spring, and starts rapidly expanding," Poplawski explained to Space.com. "Extremely strong gravitational forces near this state cause an intense particle production, increasing the mass inside a black hole by many orders of magnitude and strengthening gravitational repulsion that powers the bounce." The scientist continued by adding that rapid recoil after such a big bounce could be what has led to our expanding universe, an event we now refer to as the Big Bang . "It produces a finite period of cosmic inflation, which explains why the universe that we observe today appears at largest scales flat, homogeneous, and isotropic," Poplawski said. "Torsion in the gravity of an extended theory of Einstein's general relativity therefore provides a plausible theoretical explanation of a scenario, according to which every black hole produces a new, baby universe inside and becomes an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or a ' wormhole ' that connects this universe to the parent universe in which the black hole exists." An illustration of a wormhole leading to a new universe. (Image credit: Ask a Spaceman) In the new universe, according to this theory, the parent universe appears as the other side of the new universe's only white hole , a region of space that cannot be entered from the outside and which can be thought of as the reverse of a black hole. "Accordingly, our own universe could be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe," Poplawski continued. "The motion of matter through the black hole's boundary, called an event horizon, can only happen in one direction, providing a past-future asymmetry at the horizon and, thus, everywhere in the baby universe. "The arrow of time in such a universe would, therefore, be inherited, through torsion, from the parent universe." Spiral galaxies as seen by the JWST. The galaxies circled in blue rotate in the opposite direction of the Milky Way, the ones in red rotate the same way as the Milky Way (Image credit: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2025)) As for these new JWST findings. Poplawski told Space.com: "It would be fascinating if our universe had a preferred axis. Such an axis could be naturally explained by the theory that our universe was born on the other side of the event horizon of a black hole existing in some parent universe." He added that black holes form from stars or at the centers of galaxies, and most likely globular clusters, which all rotate. That means black holes also rotate, and the axis of rotation of a black hole would influence a universe created by the black hole, manifesting itself as a preferred axis. "I think that the simplest explanation of the rotating universe is the universe was born in a rotating black hole. Spacetime torsion provides the most natural mechanism that avoids a singularity in a black hole and instead creates a new, closed universe," Poplawski continued. "A preferred axis in our universe, inherited by the axis of rotation of its parent black hole, might have influenced the rotation dynamics of galaxies, creating the observed clockwise-counterclockwise asymmetry. "The discovery by the JWST that galaxies rotate in a preferred direction would support the theory of black holes creating new universes, and I would be extremely excited if these findings are confirmed. Another explanation for why the JWST may have seen an overrepresentation of galaxies rotating in one direction is that the Milky Way's own rotation could have caused it. Previously, scientists had considered the speed of our galaxy's rotation to be too slow to have a non-negligible impact on observations made by the JWST. “If that is indeed the case, we will need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe," Shamir concluded. "The re-calibration of distance measurements can also explain several other unsolved questions in cosmology such as the differences in the expansion rates of the universe and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself." The team's research was published this month in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Name: Mechanical Dog What it is: A moving dog sculpture carved from ivory Where it is from: Egypt When it was made: Around 1390 to 1352 B.C. Related: Onfim's doodle: A 13th-century kid's self-portrait on horseback, slaying an enemy What it tells us about the past: Posed as if leaping through the air, this carved ivory dog opens its mouth as a lever is pushed up and down, revealing two lower teeth and a red tongue. The dog, which was discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb, is a reminder that these domesticated canines have been beloved pets for at least 3,400 years. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors The small dog sculpture, now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, is made from elephant ivory. It is 7.2 inches (18.2 centimeters) long from nose to toes and shows the very good boy in a flying gallop, legs extended in the air. According to The Met, the lever that works the dog's lower jaw, making it appear to bark, was originally held on by a piece of leather cord looped through small holes. At some point, the cord was replaced with a metal dowel secured in the dog's shoulder. The Met obtained the dog sculpture from the personal collection of Howard Carter, the Egyptologist who famously discovered King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. It is unclear exactly where the dog was found, but The Met suggests it may have been placed in an elite tomb sometime during the reign of Amenhotep III, King Tut 's grandfather, in the 14th century B.C. But its purpose is unclear; it may have been a toy or a magical ceremonial object. Ancient Egyptians were quite fond of their dogs. While some were used for hunting, shepherding or as watchdogs, many were pets. This sculpture definitely represents a domesticated dog because the incised lines around its neck form a collar, Met curator emerita Catharine Roehrig wrote in a publication of the artifact . During Egypt's New Kingdom (1550 to 1070 B.C.), dog collars became increasingly ornate, often inscribed with the dog's name, such as those found in the Tomb of Maiherpri . This dog sculpture does not have a name attached to its collar, but The Met notes that some common Egyptian dog names translate to Blackie, Son of the Moon and Good-for-Nothing. The breed of this sculpted dog is also unclear. Ancient Egyptians tended to prefer energetic dog breeds , and the ones often represented in their art include the ancestors of the hunting dog basenji, the Ibizan hound and the pharaoh hound.

In the sixth episode of The Deep End, we’ll look to the future for Jon and his family and for DBS research. The research is pushing ahead, with a clinical trial of DBS for treatment-resistant depression that’s just begun. The first volunteer for that study had DBS surgery in early February. You’ll also hear about a before-and-after situation for Jon and Barbara, one that involves the evolving meaning of a beloved song. Transcript Laura Sanders: Previously on The Deep End. Amanda: Like, I don’t feel like it’s, nothing I’ve done has ever changed who I am or my personality. Like, I’m still the same person. I’m just suffering more or less. Jon: And so irritability for me was at like a six or a seven or an eight. Guess what? It’s still at a six or a seven or an eight. And so, like, my perspective to them on that is it’s not that the surgery didn’t work. I guess I’m just like a cranky middle-aged dude now, right? Like, that just is what it is. Barbara: Yeah, like you can’t say his old self. There’s, he never, he never like wasn’t himself through this whole process, right? So it’s just, he is more comfortable and happy and relaxed and productive and present and engaged. So the things that the disease was trying to steal from him, he’s getting back. There isn’t that cloud hanging over us. Sanders: So now, several years out from their surgeries, the volunteers I talked with are back to their lives. In today’s episode, we’re looking ahead too, to what’s next for Jon and his family, and what’s next for DBS. I’m Laura Sanders, and this is The Deep End. These days, the Nelson house is bright, full of light and laughter and kindness. When I visited, they kept offering me way too much coffee and they insisted on putting their cool lizard Lizzie on my arm. Jon also insisted on taking pictures of it so I could show my kids later. The Nelsons are having a good time. Barbara: You have to laugh. You can’t, you can’t not laugh at this and or anything in my opinion. But my son, my middle son said to me after, right after, said, “You know, mom, if you’re mad at dad, you can always hide the charger.” I was like, “Oh dude. That’s too far. That is too far.” So yeah, we, we have a healthy sense of humor in our household, for sure. Like, we’ll even joke, like, you know, we’ll say something like, “Oh my God, you’re crazy. I’m like, no, you’re, like, really crazy.” But like, you know, so we like to joke about it. Jon Nelson talks about life with DBS, and how the treatment brought him relief from his severe depression. Sanders: This family jokes about hiding Jon’s charger and changing his settings. It’s all part of their routine busting on each other for all sorts of things. When I was there, their middle son rated Jon a 10 out of 10 on the embarrassment scale. I won’t even tell you what he rated his mom. They joked about how us old people don’t understand slang like rizz, and no cap and stuff that slaps. Their youngest son stumped everyone with a riddle: What’s the only state that ends with a K? He didn’t say and neither will I. So for now, the Nelsons aren’t just looking ahead to better days. They’re having them. As I reflect on all the people who have talked with me for this story, I keep asking myself why. Why were they so generous with their time? Why did they choose to tell me, and now all of you, about some of the hardest moments in their lives? Barbara Nelson is a private person, but even so, she’s been incredibly open about her family’s struggles. Sponsor Message Barbara: It never occurred to me not to. It never occurred to me not to share our story. And I’m not like a super out-there person. Like, I’m like, I’m very open about things, but I’m sort of private too. But I feel like because we know that so many people are struggling, that the more we talk about it, the better our society is. A hundred percent, this is a shift in the right direction. And I just think it’s really helpful to hear as either a caregiver or if sharing my story helps a partner be more empathetic or stronger or more resilient when trying to help, then that’s really good. Because if you can let go of all the armor and the importance of the appearance that everything’s great and perfect and actually take those steps, you can get better. And your life doesn’t fall apart. We don’t have less friends because we told people the truth. We have more friends probably. So I think that is, I never thought about why I might be willing to share our story. So off the cuff, I think that that’s why. Because your life can get better. I remember hearing somebody say once, “Your secrets make you sick,” and I never forgot that. And I think it’s true. Sanders: Patient 001 has the same desire to let people know about his experiences, to demystify depression, to let people know that even in the bleakest times, there’s hope. Patient 001: You’re so frustrated because you’re screaming out for help, and they just don’t understand. I feel that’s probably one of the reasons I’m talking to you, even though I want to do it anonymously. I really, I hope one day one kid reads what you’re writing and then he finds DBS and he’s cured because that’s what I did. Sanders: Amanda shared a similar perspective. Amanda: I think sharing my story is important, because it helps other people see the way. It’s kind of like a flashlight for people who are still in the dark. Like, “Here it is. I found it. Here’s the way out.” Sanders: Playing a role in this research was something that resonated with Amanda, too. Amanda: It’s really meaningful to me. I feel like I’m participating in something, that I’m contributing to something that really matters. That someday, because of this study and because of other studies, is going to change the lives of other people in an incredibly profound way. Sanders: Amanda’s life has changed. That’s clear when she tells me about one of her drawings that she did after DBS. Amanda: But you know the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?” It always irritated me because I’m like, “There is no “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” It’s a pipe dream, okay? Pretty song, but a pipe dream. And I was like, “I found somewhere over the rainbow.” And I was like, “You know what? I’m going to build a house here.” So I drew a picture of a rainbow and there’s Cartoon Amanda and she has built a house on the rainbow. She’s like peeking out the door. Sanders: What’s it, what’s that place like, you know, if you could describe it, if you’re, if so, okay, pretend you’re showing me the picture and like, here’s your house and what is that, what’s that place? Like, what are the, what are the things about that place that make it over the rainbow? Amanda: It’s sunshine. So there’s lightness and warmth and, and, and like literal lightness, like you’re on a cloud. It sort of feels a little bit like that. Sanders: These outlooks make clear the importance of hope. Of a belief that things can get better. A hope that the science will get better too, that our understanding of depression will get better, that it won’t be like this forever. Neurologist Helen Mayberg’s first paper describing DBS for depression appeared in the journal Neuron in 2005. We’re 20 years out from that. DBS is still in the research phase. It is not an FDA-approved treatment available to people who might benefit. A loved one’s depression affects their whole family. Barbara Nelson talks about how her husband’s illness and recovery changed their family. Mayberg: It’s that resignation of sorts that it isn’t enough to do it, repeat it, follow people. It hasn’t scaled. Sanders: In its current form, DBS is not simple or easy, or even something that would be a good medical choice for a lot of people. That’s what Mayberg means when she says it hasn’t scaled. But science is often slow, and it almost never happens alone. Mayberg: As a scientist, as a doctor, it’s not my job to save the world. It’s my job to save the people that I can save. And if I can only do so much, to know what I can do and know what I can’t do, but I can’t do everything, and I can’t take on that responsibility. That’s hubris and narcissism that I’d like to not claim. Sanders: As advanced as the science is, there are still big questions to answer. Like why does DBS seem to work for some people and not others? How specifically does it change the brain? A new clinical trial announced in September of last year may help answer some of these questions. The medical technology company Abbott is funding a study that will include a hundred people with treatment-resistant depression. They’ll be recruited from all around the United States. All of these volunteers will get DBS. For the first year, half of these volunteers will have electricity flowing, and the other half won’t. And at the end of the trial, all of these volunteers will have the option of turning it on. The study has already started. On February 6th, a brain surgeon at Mount Sinai implanted a DBS device into the brain of the very first volunteer. This new clinical trial will hopefully clarify more about DBS and who it might work for. That’s the question that Mayberg wants answered. Mayberg: The variance is in human beings. The variance is who the person is that develops the depression. And everyone is different. Sanders: One of the things scientists are looking for are markers, ways to tell when someone is having a bad day or actually relapsing. Jon and Amanda are participating in follow-up studies, searching for signs of recovery in their brains. Scientists are looking for these signals in their body language and facial expressions, and even in their voices. In one part of the experiment, Jon spent eight minutes twice a day recording his brainwaves, along with video journals and daily, weekly, and monthly surveys. From data like Jon’s, Mayberg and her colleagues just described one such hallmark in the brains of six people who underwent DBS for depression. A collection of changes in brain behavior can indicate when a person has recovered. It’s a small study, but it’s progress, and here’s the thing, a deeper understanding of what’s going on in DBS could also point to the next kind of treatment. And that next, better thing might not even be DBS. Mayberg: I’d like to spend my time trying to understand the biology of what we did, because it’d be a whole lot better if you didn’t need brain surgery and an implant. And I’m not the one to build a new contraption or miniaturize it or make it Bluetooth compatible. That’s for engineers and you have to have users to build more elaborate machines. Sanders: Changing the behavior of neurons deep down in the brain from outside of the skull, it’s a very, very hard thing to do. Scientists are trying to figure out how to do this without brain surgery. They’re using electricity, light, ultrasounds, and magnets to get signals into the brain from outside of the head. Other approaches are miniaturizing the parts that do go inside the brain and coming up with easier ways to get them in there. One method, for instance, relies on these collapsible electrode grids that can be threaded up into the brain through the jugular vein in the neck. It’s wild. These approaches all have their drawbacks, but technology is always getting better. Just think about the first heart pacemaker. It was an incredible piece of technology, but it was giant and clunky. Today, the powerful device can be smaller than a matchbook, and it sits near millions of people’s hearts, keeping them beating as they live their lives. The goal with DBS is similar: small, simple, seamless. For now, Mayberg says she’s in “realistic” mode, trying to find out what’s going to work for the most people. And getting there is a group effort. Mayberg: And patients like Jon and Amanda and Emily, they’re our teachers. They’re our mentors. They’re our collaborators. The most fun part of this as a clinician is to have the patients focus my attention, to figure out what they’re saying. And then to actually get their feedback afterwards, there’s not even words to describe that gift. Sanders: As Mayberg reflects on her career, she’s philosophical about what she and her colleagues have done and what’s left to do. Mayberg: This, this is never where I expected to be. But you’re here, so step up. Why wouldn’t you step up? This is the experiment of a lifetime, you know? It’s even, if you, if right the second after this call I had to stop, I wouldn’t trade it for one second, but I’d sure like to see the last inning, right? And we’re all in, I’m all in. Amanda’s treatment-resistant form of depression left her unable to experience simple pleasures. After DBS, she began to enjoy the smell of candles. Sanders: The Nelsons are in a better place now. Their place is full of laughter, jokes, teasing, but in a nice way. There’s a lightness to them, like Amanda’s house over the rainbow. When I was visiting, their youngest son was twirling and gliding through the kitchen on inline skates, going around the loop. He made it two full loops before Barbara kicked him out. The Nelson house is full of hope for a future that’s better than the past. Here’s Barbara. Barbara: It just feels good to just be now. I’m really happy at the job I’m in. I’m excited about traveling and spending more time with family and friends. And that’s really what my focus is right now, and not trying to, like, advance in my career or have more. I just actually want less and just to like, there’s just this like sense of, like I say a lot, like, nothing really bothers me anymore. Like, there’s really very little that will, like, get under my skin, because I’m just so grateful for every moment. And when he had this surgery, I felt like, over those first few months was like, I don’t know how this is going to end up, but we got this. Like, we got this happy time. And even if that’s all we get, even if it was three months or six months of relief, that’s good. That’s cool. I’ll take that. Sanders: After his surgery, Jon sent Helen Mayberg an email that he shared with me. It was mostly a note to thank her for her work, for saving his life. But he told her about a before-and-after situation. Years ago, he was away at an inpatient treatment facility. And he and Barbara would both listen to this one song, “Amsterdam” by Coldplay. He read me the email. Jon: I could relate to it well to my situation, pre-surgery, about fading away, losing my mojo and just overall sadness, debilitating sadness. The sadness was warming and relatable to me, though. It wasn’t a negative thing when I was sick. Sanders: He could feel the pain and the rawness in the song, and it made him feel his feelings. Not in a bad way, but in a meaningful way. Now, after the surgery, after DBS, the song has changed for him. Jon: I now still listen to it a bunch and it’s changed into being about the joy of fighting through it all and coming out truly alive on the other side. It still captivates me, but with a new meaning and focus. Give it a listen. It’s a beautiful song. Much love to all. Thank you for caring. Jon. Sanders: That change, that shift in perspective, that shift in his life, didn’t just happen to Jon. It happened to his whole family. With three kids and a packed schedule, Jon spends a lot of time in the car, shuttling kids to and from softball and field hockey, golf, basketball, ice hockey. On one of these drives, Jon and his youngest son were talking. He is still the emotional one. The kid who would crawl back up into Barbara’s womb if he could. Jon’s joke, not mine. He’s the one who gets deep. Jon: My son, you know, driving home the other day from hockey, I always, I always call it car talk with my, my families that I coach. I’m like, “Guys, when car talk with the kids, emphasize these points for the game or this or that.” And he just gets, I mean, we’re in the car all the time because of hockey. But he was just like, “Dad, you know, like I, I’m so happy you just kept fighting for us.” Like, just these little comments that come out of nowhere. Like, oh my God, like, obviously they get it. They understand it. And it’s just a trip. Sanders: We’re considering a bonus episode that addresses your questions, comments, and thoughts. Please send them to us at podcasts@sciencenews.org. If you or someone you know is facing a suicidal crisis or emotional distress, call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. As we wrap up, I want to say a giant thank you to Jon, Barbara, Amanda, Emily and Patient 001. Thank you for talking with me and thank you for sharing your stories. Your perspectives opened a window into a world that a lot of us just look right past. Also, thank you for being so funny. I can honestly say that I didn’t expect to laugh so much reporting a story about depression. We’re also grateful to the talented people behind the scenes that made this podcast possible. Beth Quill helped get this project off the ground. Luke Groskin made some amazing videos with Jon, Amanda and Barbara that you can watch on our YouTube channel. You can also find transcripts and photos at our website sciencenews.org. We’ll put the links in show notes. Our colleague Nikk Ogasa lent his voice to Patient 001. Abby Wallace and Mandana Tadayon ran our social media. Stephanie Kuo and Mike Russo from PRX guided us at every step along the way. Many scientists and clinicians, including Helen Mayberg and Shannon O’Neill, generously lent their expertise. We couldn’t have done it without you all. And finally, thank you for listening. This is The Deep End. I’m Laura Sanders. If you liked this podcast, tell your friends or leave us a review. It helps the show a lot. Send us your questions and comments at podcasts @sciencenews.org. The Deep End is a production of Science News. It’s based on original reporting by me, Laura Sanders. This episode was produced by Helen Thompson and mixed by Ella Rowen. Our project manager is Ashley Yeager. Nancy Shute is our editor in chief. Our music is by Blue Dot Sessions. The podcast is made possible in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John S. James L. Knight Foundation, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, with support from PRX. Episode 6 credits Host, reporter and writer: Laura Sanders Producer: Helen Thompson Mixer: Ella Rowen Sound design: Ella Rowen and Helen Thompson Project manager: Ashley Yeager Show art: Neil Webb Music: Blue Dot Sessions, “Amsterdam” by Coldplay, “Over the Rainbow” by Instrumental City Sound effects: Epidemic Sound, Mayfield Brain & Spine Additional audio: Luke Groskin Voice of Patient 001: Nikk Ogasa This podcast was produced with support from PRX, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

Just like the mountains, lakes on Earth can be ancient, or more than 1 million years old. There are only 20 ancient lakes on the planet, but which is the oldest? Earth's oldest lake has a clear winner: Lake Baikal in southeast Siberia. Scientists estimate that this enormous freshwater body is 25 million years old, according to Ted Ozersky , an associate professor of biological limnology (the study of inland bodies of water) at the University of Minnesota. By contrast, the Great Lakes formed less than 20,000 years ago. The second oldest lake on Earth is Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan, which formed about 20 million years ago . Lake Baikal measures 12,239 square miles (31,700 square kilometers), making it Earth's seventh-largest lake . It is not only the world's oldest lake but also the deepest one, at about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers). But that's just the water depth. "The actual basin is much more than a mile deep," Ozersky told Live Science, including between 3.1 and 4.3 miles (5 to 7 km) of sediment at the bottom. In the case of Lake Baikal, where there are miles of sediment, researchers use seismic surveys to estimate the average rate of sediment formation, Ozersky said. This sediment is key to dating the lake. Researchers measure a lake's age through isotopic dating. This technique involves measuring the ratios of radioactive isotopes. In this case, limnologists analyze lake sediments for radioactive versions of cesium, lead and carbon. This analysis tells them how old the different layers of sediment are and how fast that sediment accumulates, Ozersky explained Related: How much water is in Earth's crust? By understanding lake formation — and Lake Baikal's formation, in particular — researchers can get a better idea of how it has persisted for millions of years. Many lakes form as glacial features, Mark Edlund , a senior scientist and the director of aquatic research and collections at the Science Museum of Minnesota, told Live Science. Glaciers score a pocket in the landscape and deposit chunks of ice that eventually melt and fill the depression. "But in the grand scheme, they're very short-lived systems," Edlund said. On the other hand, Lake Baikal is a rift lake. Rift lakes form when two continental plates start moving away from each other, creating a chasm. This chasm is called a graben. As these plates continue to drift apart, the graben continues to deepen. "As a result, that site never fills in," Edlund said, which is why rift lakes can last so long. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors In fact, Ozersky said Lake Baikal gets an inch (2.5 centimeters) wider every year. Some of the world's other oldest lakes, like Lake Malawi (up to 5 million years old) and Lake Tanganyika (up to 12 million years old) — both in Southeast Africa — also come from rifts. Lake Baikal also claims the title of Earth's most biologically diverse lake, according to Ozersky. The Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica) is the only freshwater seal species on Earth. (Image credit: Alexey Kharitonov via Shutterstock) "Evolution has had so much time to work in that system without being interrupted," he said. It also has the highest rate of flora and fauna endemic to its ecosystem, meaning those plants and animals aren't found anywhere else on Earth. Perhaps the best and most beloved example is the Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica), the only freshwater seal species. (Although other seal species may inhabit lakes, those seals have "invaded" them through streams, Ozersky noted.) This ancient lake also hosts hundreds of species of freshwater shrimp, which gives researchers the opportunity to study speciation and diversification. "Trying to understand how evolution works is one thing that is really interesting about Baikal," Ozersky said. Edlund also studies diatoms, which are a unicellular type of algae. These organisms pull dissolved silica from the water and turn it into biologically produced glass, which encases them. Diatoms are typically between 10 and 50 microns (about half the width of a human hair) in diameter, but Baikal's diatoms are unusually large at about 50 to 150 microns. "When we look at the diatoms in Lake Baikal, they just blow your mind," Edlund said. The lake is also open to human visitors. But because it's covered with ice five months out of the year, it's not a great swimming destination. Its average surface temperature is 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). "It's a bitterly cold lake," Edlund said. "If you want to swim in it, you've got to gird your loins." What's inside Earth quiz: Test your knowledge of our planet's hidden layers

How to Play Click the timer at the top of the game page to pause and see a clue to the science-related word in this puzzle! The objective of the game is to find words that can be made with the given letters such that all the words include the letter in the center. You can enter letters by clicking on them or typing them in. Press Enter to submit a word. Letters can be used multiple times in a single word, and words must contain three letters or more for this size layout. Select the Play Together icon in the navigation bar to invite a friend to work together on this puzzle. Pangrams, words which incorporate all the letters available, appear in bold and receive bonus points. One such word is always drawn from a recent Scientific American article—look out for a popup when you find it! You can view hints for words in the puzzle by hitting the life preserver icon in the game display. The dictionary we use for this game misses a lot of science words, such as apatite and coati. Let us know at games@sciam.com any extra science terms you found, along with your name and place of residence, and we might give you a shout out in our daily newsletter!

Solve the grid in this easy sudoku puzzle! The Objective of Sudoku is to Fill Each Row, Column and Sub-Grid with Exactly One of Each Number from 1-9. A conflict arises if you repeat any entry in the same row, column or sub-grid. For more, select "how to play" in the game's dropdown menu. Use the "Play Together" Option in the Navigation Bar to Invite A Friend to Play This Puzzle With You and Enter Numbers At the Sam Time. We'd Love to Hear From You! E-mail us at games@sciam.com to share your experience.

How to Play Click the timer at the top of the game page to pause and see a clue to the science-related word in this puzzle! The objective of the game is to find words that can be made with the given letters such that all the words include the letter in the center. You can enter letters by clicking on them or typing them in. Press Enter to submit a word. Letters can be used multiple times in a single word, and words must contain three letters or more for this size layout. Select the Play Together icon in the navigation bar to invite a friend to work together on this puzzle. Pangrams, words which incorporate all the letters available, appear in bold and receive bonus points. One such word is always drawn from a recent Scientific American article—look out for a popup when you find it! You can view hints for words in the puzzle by hitting the life preserver icon in the game display. The dictionary we use for this game misses a lot of science words, such as apatite and coati. Let us know at games@sciam.com any extra science terms you found, along with your name and place of residence, and we might give you a shout out in our daily newsletter!

Solve the grid in this easy sudoku puzzle! The Objective of Sudoku is to Fill Each Row, Column and Sub-Grid with Exactly One of Each Number from 1-9. A conflict arises if you repeat any entry in the same row, column or sub-grid. For more, select "how to play" in the game's dropdown menu. Use the "Play Together" Option in the Navigation Bar to Invite A Friend to Play This Puzzle With You and Enter Numbers At the Sam Time. We'd Love to Hear From You! E-mail us at games@sciam.com to share your experience.

For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve — akin to identifying a peak to climb — and then they must develop a strategy to solve it. Classical and quantum researchers compete using different strategies, with a healthy rivalry between the two. Quantum researchers report a fast way to solve a problem — often by scaling a peak that no one thought worth climbing — then classical teams race to see if they can find a better way. This contest almost always ends as a virtual tie: When researchers think they’ve devised a quantum algorithm that works faster or better than anything else, classical researchers usually come up with one that equals it. Just last week, a purported quantum speedup, published in the journal Science, was met with immediate skepticism from two separate groups who showed how to perform similar calculations on classical machines. But in a paper posted on the scientific preprint site arxiv.org last year, researchers described what looks like a quantum speedup that is both convincing and useful. The researchers described a new quantum algorithm that works faster than all known classical ones at finding good solutions to a wide class of optimization problems (which look for the best possible solution among an enormous number of choices). So far, no classical algorithm has dethroned the new algorithm, known as decoded quantum interferometry (DQI). It’s “a breakthrough in quantum algorithms,” said Gil Kalai, a mathematician at Reichman University and a prominent skeptic of quantum computing. Reports of quantum algorithms get researchers excited, partly because they can illuminate new ideas about difficult problems, and partly because, for all the buzz around quantum machines, it’s not clear which problems will actually benefit from them. A quantum algorithm that outperforms all known classical ones on optimization tasks would represent a major step forward in harnessing the potential of quantum computers. “I’m enthusiastic about it,” said Ronald de Wolf, a theoretical computer scientist at CWI, the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands, who was not involved with the new algorithm. But at the same time, he cautioned that it’s still quite possible researchers will eventually find a classical algorithm that does just as well. And due to the lack of quantum hardware, it’ll still be a while before they can test the new algorithm empirically. The algorithm might inspire new work on the classical side, according to Ewin Tang, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who came to prominence as a teenager by creating classical algorithms that match quantum ones. The new claims “are interesting enough that I would tell classical-algorithms people, ‘Hey, you should look at this paper and work on this problem,’” she said. The Best Way Forward? When classical and quantum algorithms compete, they often do so on the battlefield of optimization, a field focused on finding the best options for solving a thorny problem. Researchers typically focus on problems in which the number of possible solutions explodes as the problem gets bigger. What’s the best way for a delivery truck to visit 10 cities in three days? How should you pack the parcels in the back? Classical methods of solving these problems, which often involve churning through possible solutions in clever ways, quickly become untenable. The specific optimization problem that DQI tackles is roughly this: You’re given a collection of points on a sheet of paper. You need to come up with a mathematical function that passes through these points. Specifically, your function has to be a polynomial — a combination of variables raised to whole-number exponents and multiplied by coefficients. But it can’t be too complicated, meaning the powers can’t get too high. This gives you a curved line that wiggles up and down as it moves across the page. Your job is to find the wiggly line that touches the most points. Variations of this problem show up in various forms across computer science, especially in error coding and cryptography — fields focused on securely and accurately encoding data as it’s transmitted. The DQI researchers recognized, basically, that plotting a better line is akin to shifting a noisy encoded message closer to its accurate meaning. But all that came later. When the researchers behind DQI started working on their algorithm, they didn’t even have this problem in mind. A Problem Decoded Stephen Jordan helped come up with a quantum approach to certain problems that works better than any classical approach — so far. Courtesy of Stephen Jordan “It would have been entirely plausible for a goal-oriented researcher to start by stating the problem and then investigating whether quantum algorithms could solve it faster than classical algorithms,” said Stephen Jordan, a physicist at Google Quantum AI and one of the main architects of DQI. “Of course, for us, that’s not how it happened. We came upon it by a backward and circuitous route.” Jordan embarked on that route in 2023, when he joined Google and found out he’d be working with Eddie Farhi, a physicist at Google whose work has long focused on quantum algorithms that outperform classical ones. (Farhi was once Jordan’s doctoral adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.) Jordan knew that in 2014, Farhi had made a quantum attack on an optimization problem by thinking of energy, with lower energies corresponding to better solutions. For Farhi, energy connected optimization to quantum physics. But Jordan wanted to do something different. He turned to another concept built into quantum physics — recognizing everything as waves. Using a mathematical tool called a quantum Fourier transform, Jordan found a way to translate all the potential answers to a well-known class of optimization problems into quantum waves. In doing so, he could manipulate the quantum system so that bigger waves (in the form of higher quantum amplitudes) corresponded to better solutions. But there was still a huge challenge that had to be overcome. In a quantum system, asking “What’s the biggest amplitude?” is not as simple as recognizing the biggest wave at the beach. The quantum landscape is incredibly complex, and it was unclear how to identify the quantum amplitudes that would correspond to the best solutions. After many false starts, Jordan made a breakthrough: The process of selecting the best solutions turned out to be similar to the process of weeding out errors in coded messages, which is known as decoding. This is a well-studied area of computer science, full of techniques that Jordan could explore. By translating an optimization problem into a quantum one, and then applying the decoding lens to it, he had stumbled into a new way to develop quantum algorithms. Together with Noah Shutty, also at Google, Jordan began testing decoding schemes, seeing how they fared against classical algorithms on various optimization problems. They needed both the right approach and a problem where it worked. “It turns out classical algorithms are hard to beat,” Jordan said. “After a few months of trying, we still had not notched up any wins for quantum.” But eventually, the pair landed on a decoding algorithm first introduced in the 1960s to find and fix individual errors in an encoded message. Finding that problem was the key. “When we investigated, we seemed to hit success almost immediately,” Jordan said. Finally, they had found a problem and an approach that, together, looked like a quantum speedup. Of course, that didn’t mean it was bulletproof. “Maybe there is some classical method that can efficiently replicate your entire approach,” Jordan said. “Such dequantizations are not always obvious.” Gaining Confidence To assuage those fears, they consulted with Mary Wootters, a coding theory expert (and Shutty’s former doctoral adviser at Stanford University). She carefully searched for any known classical algorithm that might match their quantum speedup. The advantage held. The team’s checks likewise suggest that it will continue to hold. “They did due diligence,” Tang said. Bolstered by this analysis, they looked more carefully at the optimization problem they were solving. Jordan had worried that it might be too niche, with no wider applications, but Shutty recognized that this decoding problem was a variation of well-known and useful problems in encryption and other fields. Jordan acknowledges that without a large enough quantum machine, DQI will remain a theoretical breakthrough. “DQI cannot run on present-day quantum computers,” he said. But they’re still moving forward. Since the group posted their work last August, they have extended the application of DQI beyond the original problem to a broader class of optimization problems, which includes more cases of these “best path” problems. So far, Jordan said, he expects that DQI can beat classical algorithms in those problems, too. For the moment, the quantum community remains elated. “Finding quantum algorithms that show an advantage over classical algorithms is a very exciting endeavor of the last three decades, and the number of definite algorithms that show such an advantage is not large,” Kalai said. “Therefore, every new algorithm is a reason for celebration.”

In July 2012, a renegade American businessman, Russ George, took a ship off the coast of British Columbia and dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate dust into the Pacific Ocean. He had unilaterally, and some suggest illegally, decided to trigger an algae bloom to absorb some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — an attempt at geoengineering, a tech-based approach to combating climate change. It was a one-off, the largest known geoengineering experiment at the time, and a harbinger for more to come. Now a startup called Stardust seeks something more ambitious: developing proprietary geoengineering technology that would help block sun rays from reaching the planet. Stardust formed in 2023 and is based in Israel, but incorporated in the United States. Related Geoengineering Could Alter Global Climate Its approach is novel: Most geoengineering research today is led by scientists in the U.S. at universities and federal agencies, and the work they are doing is more or less accessible to public scrutiny. Stardust is at the forefront of an alternative path: One in which private companies drive the development, and perhaps deployment, of technologies that experts say could have profound consequences for the planet. Geoengineering projects, even those led by climate scientists at major universities, have previously drawn the ire of environmentalists and other groups. Such a deliberate transformation of the atmosphere has never been done, and many uncertainties remain. If a geoengineering project went awry, for example, it could contribute to air pollution and ozone loss, or have dramatic effects on weather patterns, such as disrupting monsoons in populous South and East Asia. But as global temperatures rise, public and scientific sentiments are shifting. If those temperature trends continue, governments or private entities may ultimately use geoengineering to alleviate or avoid the worst impacts of extreme weather, including deadly heat waves, firestorms, and hurricanes. And whoever deploys the technology will need to keep it up for decades while pent-up greenhouse gases gradually dissipate or are removed. Few outsiders have gotten a glimpse of Stardust’s plans, and the company has not publicly released details about its technology, its business model, or exactly who works at its company. But the company appears to be positioning itself to develop and sell a proprietary geoengineering technology to governments that are considering making modifications to the global climate — acting like a kind of defense contractor for climate alteration. Stardust is moving ahead amid few national and international rules and oversight, and a recent report by the company’s former climate governance consultant, Janos Pasztor, called for the company to increase its transparency, engagement, and communication with outsiders. The report provides rare insight into the so-far reticent company. But, so far, Pasztor told Undark, the company has not met all of his requests. Stardust still needs to implement his recommendations, and “be as transparent as possible, be available proactively to respond to questions people may have, and also to engage with other actors,” he said, because they do not, or not yet, have a “social license” for geoengineering activities. Such a deliberate transformation of the atmosphere has never been done, and many uncertainties remain. The company is led by CEO and cofounder Yanai Yedvab, a former deputy chief scientist at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, which oversees the country’s clandestine nuclear program. Through Eli Zupnick, a communications officer hired by the company , Yedvab never accepted Undark’s many requests for an interview. But in an emailed statement to Undark sent via Zupnick, Yedvab wrote: “Stardust is a startup focused on researching and developing technologies that may potentially stop global warming in the short term.” The company, he continued, is “studying and developing a safe, responsible, and controllable solar radiation modification” and “our goal is to enable informed and responsible decision making of the international community and governments.” Despite Stardust’s low profile, the company rejects being referred to as “secretive.” “Publishing all the products of our research without any exception is critical,” Yedvab wrote, adding that the company is “unwaveringly committed” to publishing results “as one of the measures to gain public trust.” Stardust has not published any of its research at this time, but Yedvab stressed they will do so once “scientific validation is concluded” on all of their results. For decades, researchers have explored a variety of approaches to hacking the climate. Today, the most common approach is a type of solar geoengineering that involves flying high-altitude aircraft or balloons to release reflective particles in the high atmosphere, well above the flight paths of commercial planes. The technique, known as stratospheric aerosol injection, requires deploying tiny, carefully- chosen particles in precise amounts. In order to work well, the particles need to be periodically replenished. Scientists have accumulated evidence for this approach by studying natural events that have flung small particles into the atmosphere. For instance, after an eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide hung in the atmosphere and measurably cooled the planet for more than a year. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, seen from Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide emitted during the eruption measurably cooled the planet for more than a year. Visual: Richard P. Hoblitt/USGS Thanks to studies of that volcanic activity, some scientists argue that the environmental risks of deliberately strewing sulfates in the atmosphere are well understood. Although there are potential health risks from the approach, they say, they are small in comparison to the health risks from climate change. “We know that sulfuric acid air pollution causes mortality, and we roughly know how much. There’s more than a century of studies. We’re very unlikely to be wrong about that,” said David Keith, head of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative at the University of Chicago and an advocate of geoengineering research. In a new study, Keith and his colleagues argue that the health risks of sulfate particulates in the atmosphere are heavily outweighed by the potential impacts of not deploying geoengineering technologies. Stardust plans a similar approach, but with a proprietary aerosol particle that’s less well understood, in Keith’s view. The company plans to distribute the particles through a machine mounted on an aircraft, according to Pasztor, a veteran climate diplomat and policy expert at the United Nations and elsewhere. According to Pasztor’s report, which he published on LinkedIn in September 2024, the company is engineering the particle and a prototype of the aircraft mount, as well as developing a system for modeling and monitoring the climatic effects. Over the coming year, Pasztor wrote, the company is planning on advancing those technologies and testing those particles in the stratosphere. Yedvab confirmed that they are working on the technologies, saying in a statement to Undark that any such experiment would be done in a “contained, non-dispersive manner,” meaning that its particles would not be strewn over a wide area. It also committed to publishing information about any such outdoor geoengineering tests. Yedvab said that the company has not performed any such outdoor experiments yet, but it has done “a few outdoor aerial checks.” That meant that they have tested their dispersal system “under flight conditions,” but they haven’t yet scattered their aerosols in the atmosphere. Get Our Newsletter Sent Weekly Email * Δ Those experimental particles do not appear to involve sulfates, meaning there is little data showing how well they might work. “It might be better in some respects, but on the other hand it’s going to be much harder to be confident about knowing what its risks are,” Keith said. In his emailed statement, Yedvab confirmed the company is testing non-sulfate particles: “The ability to tailor particle properties to meet a broad set of requirements — safety, effectiveness, cost, and dispersibility — is a key advantage of our approach, giving it a distinct edge over sulfates and other candidate particles.” As Stardust continues its research and development, it has drawn scrutiny, including from Pasztor. After retiring as a veteran climate diplomat, Pasztor agreed to work with Stardust in 2024 as an independent consultant. Rather than keep the remuneration for his work, he instead donated the entirety of it to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, he told Undark. The aim of Pasztor’s project was to highlight the need for clear international rules and oversight for geoengineering. He also wanted to make recommendations for Stardust — and for any other such geoengineering company — about how to ethically develop and deploy its technology. Right now, there are no international rules or treaties that put obvious limits on this kind of work. As a result, an individual company or government can take dramatic gambles with the climate, in ways that could affect billions of lives, and it doesn’t have to get permission from anyone to do it. According to Pasztor’s report, there should be rules that allow more people to be involved in that decision before it happens. Failing that, he said, Stardust should voluntarily tell the public what it’s doing and make sure it’s getting input from lots of different groups of people before it tinkers with the planetary thermostat. “There’s one big area, transparency and outreach, to engage with the rest of the world, to the extent that the IP process allows,” he told Undark. Building trust through “a strategy of maximum transparency” should become a priority for them, he recommended in the report. In September 2024, Stardust’s former climate governance consultant, Janos Pasztor, published his report on the company via LinkedIn. Pasztor’s report, which includes several recommendation sections like the one shown here, calls for the company to increase its transparency, engagement, and communication with outsiders. Stardust agreed to publish a public website, including providing a copy of Pasztor’s report, and to develop a voluntary code of conduct, he said. That would publicly lay out how they intend to conduct their research and development, including agreeing not to be involved in large-scale implementation, which would instead be under the purview of government agencies. Pasztor expected Stardust to publish this information last September or soon afterward . For a while, though, no website appeared. “They were going to publish all of that on their website. Now they are delayed,” he said during a conversation in January. “Come on guys, this is getting embarrassing.” In early February, while Undark was reporting this article, Stardust published a bare-bones website. The site links to Pasztor’s report and lists seven principles, including “prioritizing safety and scientific integrity,” publishing “unfavorable results as well as favorable ones,” and “supporting comprehensive regulation of this emerging field.” “Come on guys, this is getting embarrassing.” The site doesn’t describe who works for the company, but a statement provided to Undark by Zupnick noted that Stardust has 25 physicists, chemists, and engineers on the team and listed some of the company’s leadership: Yedvab, the CEO; chief product officer Amyad Spector, a physicist and a former employee of the Israeli government’s nuclear research program; and lead scientist Eli Waxman, an astrophysicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science who formerly served as Spector’s academic supervisor. Stardust has not yet released a code of conduct, which the company described to Undark as “guiding principles” that “represent a set of voluntary commitments we have adopted in the absence of a dedicated regulatory framework.” In an email sent to Undark by Zupnick, Yedvab stressed that the company complies with all applicable governmental and international regulations. Some groups, however, like the Center for International Environmental Law, say that Stardust’s efforts could violate the Convention on Biological Diversity’s de facto moratorium on geoengineering activities. “By developing and planning to commercialize solar geoengineering technology, Stardust is accelerating a reckless race and potentially violating agreements of the Convention on Biological Diversity,” said CIEL’s geoengineering campaign manager, Mary Church, in a statement in February. Any deployment of the technology, Church wrote, would likely “be controlled by a handful of major powers and corporations.” Stardust’s prospective clients seem to be governments: As countries consider geoengineering, Stardust could be poised to sell them tools to meet those goals, several experts said. In an emailed answer to questions about its business model, Yedvab described the company’s approach as “founded on the premise” that solar geoengineering “will play a critical role in addressing global warming in the coming decades.” The company’s portfolio of technologies, Yedvab added, “could be deployed following decisions by the U.S. government and international community.” The company is attempting to patent its geoengineering technology. “We anticipate that as U.S.-led [geoengineering] research and development programs advance, the value of Stardust’s technological portfolio will grow accordingly,” Yedvab wrote. Pasztor’s report adds that if governments decide not to pursue geoengineering, investors “risk not ​​receiving a return on their investment.” SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER JOURNEYS: Dive deeper into pressing issues with Undark’s limited run newsletters. Each week for four weeks, you’ll receive a hand-picked excerpt from our archive related to your subject area of interest. Pick your journeys here. The prospect of proprietary, privately held geoengineering technology worries some experts. Pasztor recommends that Stardust work with its investors to explore ways to give away their intellectual property, akin to how Volvo made its patented three-point seatbelt design freely available to other manufacturers 60 years ago. Alternatively, Stardust could work with governments to purchase the full rights to the IP, who can then make the technology freely available themselves. In any case, Pasztor argues, Stardust can only proceed in an ethical manner if they do so with full transparency and independent oversight: “They are operating in a vacuum, in the sense that there is no social license to do what they are trying to do.” Other experts have also questioned Stardust’s conduct so far. When it comes to principles of governance, like transparency and public engagement, “they’re not adhering to any of them,” said Shuchi Talati, founder of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. “Pasztor’s report is the only public thing we know about them,” she added. Stardust did not do any public consultation for its outdoor field tests, nor has it released any data or other information about them, Talati said. And that lack of transparency could come with consequences for the company, she argued, as Stardust’s approach may spark conspiracy theories about what a “secret Israeli company” is doing, and down the road, it will be much harder for people to trust Stardust. “They are operating in a vacuum, in the sense that there is no social license to do what they are trying to do.” A better approach, Talati argued in a paper published in January, is for Stardust to be communicative and build trust as early as possible, disclosing what it’s doing and with whom it’s engaging. The company’s funders, she argued, should disclose the scope of the work they’re funding as well. People at Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that has long dismissed geoengineering as a “dangerous distraction,” echo Talati’s concerns and go further with their critiques of Stardust. “I don’t think it’s compatible to have venture capital funding and to be committed to scientific ideals,” said Benjamin Day, FOE’s senior campaigner on geoengineering. The problem, in his view, is that Stardust’s engineers have a vested interest in finding that stratospheric geoengineering can and should be done. If governments choose to use geoengineering, they may become heavily dependent on Stardust if they’re ahead of the competition — of which there currently is none, Day said. “There’s no private market for geoengineering technologies. They’re only going to make money if it’s deployed by governments, and at that point they’re kind of trying to hold governments hostage with technology patents.” If any geoengineering technology goes live, it will affect the whole world. The U.S. federal government is even developing an early warning system that could detect geoengineering in the stratosphere. Furthermore, deploying geoengineering means using and monitoring it for as long as a century, while any abrupt adjustment or end of that deployment could be disruptive, with “termination shock” triggering dangerous global warming within months. Geoengineering research has long been entangled with national defense, said Kevin Surprise, a professor of environmental studies at Mount Holyoke College who studies the economics and geopolitics of geoengineering. Some of the first geoengineering papers in the late 1990s came from institutions with Pentagon ties, like Lawrence Livermore National Lab and the Hoover Institution. High-profile geoengineering meetings with the George W. Bush administration and the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a mention in a Department of Defense report soon followed, and the CIA reportedly funded the first geoengineering report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Because of the longstanding connections between geoengineering research and development, the military, and Silicon Valley, Surprise argues, Stardust shouldn’t be viewed as a rogue actor. “This isn’t out of the blue,” he said. Researcher Duncan McLaren suspects the company is following a standard procurement model of the defense industry, where governments get technology from a few companies that develop it mostly in secret. In Stardust’s case, they’ve received an estimated $15 million in venture capital funding, primarily from Awz Ventures, Canadian-Israeli VC firm, in addition to a small investment from SolarEdge, an Israeli energy company. Neither company responded to Undark’s requests for comment. Stardust said that it receives no funding from the Israeli Defense Ministry, and made clear to Pasztor that it has no connection to the Israeli government. Awz’s partners and strategic advisers have strong ties to Israeli military and intelligence agencies, including former senior directors of agencies like the Mossad, Shin Bet, and Unit 8200, as well as of the CIA and FBI, according to its website. Awz also invests in AI-based surveillance and security tech in Israel, such as through the company Corsight, which has provided facial recognition tech for Israel’s war in Gaza. Defense scholars and security experts don’t see geoengineering technology as a potential weapon, but they do view it as something a government might use for its advantage, and as something that would disrupt international relations, said Duncan McLaren, a researcher with the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University. McLaren suspects the company is following a standard procurement model of the defense industry, where governments get military technology from a few monopolistic companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that develop it mostly in secret. “That tends to be a space in which public involvement in decisions is utterly sidelined,” McLaren said, and there is “the potential for this to be a highly undemocratic process of moving us down a slippery slope to solar geoengineering.” If humanity needed this technology, he added, “I definitely want it to be controlled democratically.”