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It’s no secret that smartphones and other digital devices control and consume our attention, both among adults and young people. This can be illustrated with three different, but very common scenarios:
A group of teenagers are sat beside one another. Each of them is staring down into a screen.
Commuters on public transport are hunched over their phones, scrolling infinitely through social media or playing an addictive game. Very few people are reading a book, or even looking out of the window.
You are finishing a presentation for work on the computer. An email notification comes in from a colleague with a link to a short, amusing video. The link takes you to social media site which then offers you another video, followed by another. Before you know it, an hour has gone by and the presentation remains unfinished.
The three examples above demonstrate how mobile applications are designed to trap our attention. Most apps work like this because because they are free. Instead of charging the user, they make money by harvesting data and advertising. The more time we spend looking at the screen, the more data and advertising we consume.
According to data from 2022 published by the Spanish National Statistics Institute, 40% of children aged 11 have a phone. This number jumps up to 75% at 12 years old and then to 90% at age 14. The apps that they use on these phones are the same as those used by adults, and they respond to the industrial logic of the internet: they provide things quickly, efficiently, and with minimum effort for the user.
Children today are digital natives, meaning they have never known life without internet access. They have been raised on clicks, jumping from content to content without a second thought. In the words of the philosopher Byung-Chul Han in his 2021 book Non-things, this kind of constant stimulation means that “we quickly come to need new stimuli. We get used to seeing reality as a source of stimuli and surprises.” We struggle to focus our attention on any one thing and this “tsunami of information agitates our cognitive system.”
In this sense, loss of attention is related to a decline in our ability to concentrate. As Nicholas Carr pointed out in his 2010 book The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains, the brain changes according to our experiences. Books, for example, can train the brain to deeply focus its attention on one task, while mobile devices encourage us to peck and hover over the surface of things without fully grasping them.
When we receive information in large quantities, it stops being meaningful. When faced with an overwhelming amount of it, our brains react by blocking the information, but the discarded content does not simply evaporate from our minds. Instead it lingers, preventing us from figuring out what we are interested in, and limiting our attention span.
Mobile phone addiction and the way young people learn are both directly connected to the concept of [mind wandering](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360131522001877). An excess of information inputs makes us switch off and lose attention, and this can be damaging in the long term.
In order to recover attention, the brain needs to take a break and find time and space where it can be free from constant noise. Adults – who generally have better willpower, critical thinking skills, perception of time and organisation – can make the effort to find these much needed spaces to focus attention.
Children, on the other hand, have not yet acquired these behaviour strategies, and run the risk of never recovering their attention spans. If we give children and teenagers access to digital devices before they have developed these skills, we give their attention free rein to wander. It will then become harder and harder for them to focus on a task for the necessary amount of time.
Las personas firmantes no son asalariadas, ni consultoras, ni poseen acciones, ni reciben financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y han declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado anteriormente.
Choosing to be child-free is more common than ever before in some countries, including the US. Many people see not having children an ethical and ecological choice, made to protect the environment, people and other species. Being child-free is about being “green”. Consequently, more positive discourses around childlessness are emerging.
But this was not always the case. In societies that encourage an increased birthrate, motherhood is often presented as natural and caring. Meanwhile, women without children are often described as biological failures, or as deviant. For example, when visible in popular culture – they are often not represented at all – women without children are either presented as animal-lovers like the “crazy cat lady” or animal-killers, like Cruella de Vil. In these examples, the focus on animal represents their supposed inability to care for humans (their species), their “unnaturalness”.
In the 19th century, women without children were already being described as selfish and unnatural. The natural world was conversely used to describe fertile women, who were often compared to flowers in bloom in literature.
Should I have children? The pieces in this series will help you answer this tough question – exploring fertility, climate change, the cost of living and social pressure. We’ll keep the discussion going at a live event in London on November 30. Click here for more information and tickets.
The association of women with plants and fertility is an ancient one, found particularly in agricultural pagan figures. Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of the harvest, for example, was the goddess of grains, but also of marriage and fertility.
Many expressions still link women’s reproductive systems and flowers. In French, the flower is a metaphor for a virgin sexual organ. To avoir ses fleurs (have your flowers) is an expression for having periods, and being une jeune fille en fleur (a young woman in flower) means that the young woman is ready for marriage – and therefore reproduction.
Women themselves are also compared to flowers: in English, both “pretty flower” and “English rose” describe attractive young women. Reducing women to flowers, through these comparisons, is not only misogynistic, but reinforces the social pressure to produce children “on time”. Timing is important in these comparisons, as flowers fade quickly.
But what about women without children, those flowers that will not produce seeds? My research into literature and paintings from the second half of the 19th century has shown that they were often represented as monstrous horticultural hybrids.
At the time, “hybrid flowers” – which were often sterile – became the preferred metaphor to describe sexually active women who were either unable or refused to bear children. In France, having and raising children was seen as a woman’s natural and civic duty for the nation. Conversely, women who were sexually active but without children were often seen as unnatural and dangerous.
Comparisons that described women as flowers were historically about fertility. How was it then that flowers became a metaphor for sterility at the end of the 19th century?
The emphasis on flowers as sexual organs and as a metaphor for women’s sexuality appears to have been used more often after the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus openly discussed the sexuality of plants with anthropomorphic language at the end of the 18th century.
It is important to note that, for a long time, if men knew at all that flowers were sexual organs, they believed they were unisexual and feminine. They did not believe that both male and female organs were involved in the production of fruits.
Once the sexual nature of plants had been established, the nature of the floral metaphor changed and the innocence of the flower was lost. Flowers progressively became the symbol of a young lady with an emerging sexuality or who was waiting to “bear fruit”.
During the second empire in France (1852-1870) and the beginning of the Third Republic (1870-1840), horticultural hybrids were extremely popular.
Horticulturists developed large plants and flowers such as cattleya, hibiscus, nidularium which often looked like enlarged genitals (natural plants are often a lot smaller and less colourful). These hybrids made the sexual analogy even more obvious.
By the end of the 19th century, the artificial hybrids became used for describing, indirectly, near-pornographic scenes. Here is an example from The Kill (1895), a famous novel by Émile Zola. Instead of describing the characters making love, he describes the plants:
As their glances penetrated into the corners of the hothouse, the darkness became filled with a more furious debauch of leaves and stalks; they could not distinguish on the terraces between the marantas, soft as velvet, the gloxinias, purple-belled, the dracoenas, like blades of old lacquer; it was a great dance of living plants pursuing one another with unsatisfied fervour.
Many of the hybrids being created at this time were sterile. They therefore became a metaphor for “unproductive” sexuality. Because they were man-made, they could be seen as a perversion of the laws of nature. Comparing women to those hybrids was a way to criticise what was deemed the artificiality of their infertility, or decision not to have children.
Fertile, childbearing women were frequently compared to natural, more classic flowers such as roses or lilies.
At the time, France was obsessed with its low birth rate. Many politicians believed it explained why France had lost the war against Prussia (1870-1871). Childless women were therefore also seen as bad citizens.
Through their comparisons with hybrid, infertile flowers, women who could not or choose not to reproduce were deemed un-French, undesirable and, in some ways, monstruous.
Understanding how women are associated with nature and very often compared to flowers is essential to understanding how being childless continues to be demonised in contemporary society. As contemporary art, culture and the very language we use demonstrates, child-free women are still often described as “unnatural” or biologically deviant.
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Aude Campmas is affiliated with: I am a volunteer for Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Counselling Service.
Some commentators have criticized Israel for causing what is claimed to be disproportionate harm to civilians in its military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Others have defended Israel’s actions, claiming that such force – and the risk to civilians involved – is necessary to eliminate Hamas, which some Israelis believe poses an existential threat to Israel.
As of Nov. 25, according to health officials in the Gaza Strip, more than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of whom are women and children.
But one of the arguments given by defenders of Israel’s actions is that, tragic though these deaths are, the harm inflicted on civilians is proportionate because it is outweighed by the importance of destroying Hamas.
But what does “proportionate” mean in the context of civilian deaths? And how should we assess Israel’s claims of proportionality against critics who argue that Israel’s actions have caused disproportionate harm to civilians? As a scholar of war crimes and military ethics, I argue that to assess these claims requires careful thought about what it really means to value civilian lives. If all civilian lives are morally equal, as international law holds, then the lives of civilians on both sides of a conflict should be treated with the same degree of respect.
International humanitarian law, or IHL, prohibits direct attacks on noncombatants – a category that includes civilians as well as wounded and surrendered soldiers. IHL also prohibits direct attacks on civilian objects such as schools, religious centers and hospitals and other civilian infrastructure.
However, because it is impossible to avoid all harm to civilians in a war zone, IHL permits attacks on military targets that are likely to cause harm to civilians if two conditions are met: First, the foreseeable harm to civilians must be proportionate to the military advantage sought by the attack. And second, the choice of tactics and weapons – what is referred to in IHL as the “means and methods” – must also aim to minimize risk to civilians, even if it means putting more soldiers in harm’s way.
The prohibitions on directly targeting civilians and exposing civilians to disproportionate risk of harm exist because, under IHL, civilians have protected status as long as they take “no active part in the hostilities.” This means that, as stated in the Geneva Conventions – the set of international treaties governing the conduct of armed conflict – all civilians must be “treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.”
Directly targeting civilians or exposing them to disproportionate harm is therefore wrong for the same reasons that it is wrong to kill or harm innocent people in peacetime. People who pose no threat to others deserve respect and protection from violence regardless of their nationality or group identity. To violate that respect in war is not only a war crime but a moral crime, which is why Hamas’ massacre of at least 1,200 Israeli citizens and the taking of 240 hostages is rightly condemned as an atrocity.
How should the lives of innocent people be weighed against important military objectives?
The condemnation of Hamas’ crimes is based on the same moral principle as the laws that protect noncombatants in war: All innocent people deserve protection.
However, scholars and legal experts disagree about how the legal framework laid out in the Geneva Conventions should be applied in war zones.
For example, in 1987 the International Committee of the Red Cross argued that the definition of “military advantage” – the advantage against which potential civilian harm must be weighed – should only include “ground gained” and “annihilating or weakening the enemy armed forces.”
But the 2016 U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual claimed that “military advantage” should also include other goals such as “diverting enemy forces’ resources and attention.”
There is also disagreement about what counts as “civilian harm.” For example, scholar Emanuela-Chiara Gillard argues that “civilian harm” should include psychological and physical harms; legal expert Dr. Beth Van Schaack argues that long-term harms should also be considered.
In short, there are no easy answers to questions about how to weigh harms against civilians against the value of military objectives. But while answers are difficult, there is a different way to frame this question: What does it mean – not just legally, but morally – to treat all civilian lives as equal, as the law requires?
As scholar Matthew Talbert and I argue, the first step in answering this question is to ask what a military force would accept if it were “their” civilians who were at risk of harm from military action.
That is the standard we should apply when assessing potential military actions that threaten harm to enemy civilians. We call this standard the “principle of the moral equality of noncombatants.” For example, Israel argued that its attack on Shifa hospital was justified because, it claimed, Hamas was hiding a command base and weapons under the hospital.
The hospital, which was running low on fuel, food and water, housed patients, including premature babies, and civilians seeking refuge from the conflict. According to footage shown in news reports, the attack left the hospital seriously damaged, filled with debris and lacking essential supplies for the remaining patients, who include the elderly and infirm.
Israel has released footage supporting its claim that there was a Hamas command center under the hospital. Does that mean Israel’s attack on the hospital meets the requirements of proportionality? In other words, was the harm to civilians caused by the attack – including the ongoing harm resulting from the loss of a major hospital – proportionate to the military value of destroying a Hamas command base?
In applying the principle Talbert and I proposed in our paper, the question would be phrased as follows: If Hamas was hiding a control base under an Israeli hospital and it was Israeli civilians at risk, would Israel think that attacking the hospital would be justified? If the answer is “no,” then the attack against Shifa hospital is also not justified.
This is because if the risk to Israeli lives outweighs the benefits of capturing a Hamas command base, then the risk to Palestinian lives should be given the same weight and lead to the same conclusion. Under IHL, all civilians are legally entitled to the same protection, regardless of their nationality.
Unfortunately, the debate about proportionality in the conflict between Israel and Palestine is only the latest of many debates about proportionality and civilian deaths in war zones.
For example, since 2001, the United States’ drone program has killed at least 22,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere. A New York Times report on these deaths found multiple instances of “flawed intelligence,” cover-ups and cases of mistaken identity. Despite this record, civilians deaths still occur.
Using the principle of the moral equality of noncombatants to assess this track record would reveal whether the U.S. military is taking sufficient care to avoid harm to civilians. If the U.S. military would not accept these deaths – and the policies and practices that contribute to them – if U.S. civilians were at risk, then these deaths are unjustified.
This would mean that the drone program must change in order to treat civilians in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere with the respect to which they are legally and morally entitled. This example illustrates that to meet the standards of IHL and the moral principles that underlie those standards, military forces must apply the principle of the moral equality of noncombatants. There is no legal or moral justification, I argue, for treating some civilians lives as less important than others.
This is a demanding principle. Applying it would be difficult - military and political leaders would have to accept that there might be military objectives that are not important enough to justify risk to civilian lives. And it would require acknowledging that some military objectives might be so important that even harm to “their” civilians might be justified.
But one of the functions of IHL is to “limit the suffering and damage caused by armed conflict.” This principle reflects the moral and legal status of civilians in IHL and could lead to greater respect for and protection of all civilians during conflict.
Jessica Wolfendale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
PFAS chemicals (per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances), also known as forever chemicals, are rarely out of the news at the moment. The latest concern about this chemical group is their presence in drinking water in England.
The Royal Society of Chemistry found that the UK’s drinking water standard is not stringent enough to protect us against the dangerous health effects of PFAS. The health risks include links to cancer and fertility problems.
But PFAS are a problem that is not going away anytime soon. Even if we stopped using them in products today, there are already huge amounts of them in the environment and some types of PFAS simply do not degrade. Our research has even found growing evidence of these chemicals in some of the most remote places on Earth, including the Antarctic.
To make matters worse, the PFAS chemicals that do degrade often break down into the more recalcitrant PFAS types, which then cycle around the environment endlessly.
Media coverage of the problem can be hard to follow because the PFAS group includes more than 5,000 different chemical substances.
It used to be common to read stories about poly- /perfluoro compounds (PFCs) and poly- /perfluoro alkyl acids (PFAs) rather than PFAS. Even now it is not uncommon to see products like outdoor clothing labelled as PFC free.
But a lot of PFCs are non-toxic and include a lot of widely used medical drugs. PFCs mean drugs with a carbon-fluorine bond, which is not a problem in itself. PFAS are a sub group of PFCs and they are toxic and extremely difficult to break down.
PFAs are a sub-group of PFAS chemicals. Over the last few years research has increasingly highlighted problems with the wider PFAS group than just PFAs. PFAS can be broadly split into two groups: fluoropolymers and non-polymers.
The most well-known fluoropolymer is polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) with its trademark name Teflon, first produced by Dupont in the 1940s. PTFE is the non-stick coating to cookware. Its stability to high temperatures, non-reactivity and low friction properties makes it ideal for this application. We can ingest flakes of the polymer, but it is not absorbed by the body so just passes through us.
PTFE film is also used in some types of waterproof, breathable outdoor clothing. The micropores allow the passage of water vapour (from sweat for example) but prevent water droplets seeping through, keeping the wearer dry.
Other fluoropolymers include polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) used in sensors and batteries because of its ability to hold an electrical charge. While fluoropolymers are not considered toxic, their production relies on large quantities of other toxic chemicals, like non-polymers. They are better for us because the end product doesn’t bring us into direct contact with non-polymers, but bad news for the environment as that is where the non-polymers will probably end up.
The non-polymer group has by far the biggest number of substances and their use is myriad – including in food packaging, cosmetics, medical applications, fabric coatings and electronics.
This group also includes refrigerant and cleaning solvents (replacement chemicals to the infamous CFCs banned to protect the ozone). They have high water and oil repellency and chemical stability. For industrial uses chemicals must be stable so that they do their job without reacting or breaking down. If you bought a cosmetic and it lost its colour or wouldn’t spread after a few days, for example, that wouldn’t be good.
Non-polymers also have good thermal stability. This makes it very useful for making food packaging such as pizza boxes and popcorn wrapping.
They are used in a lot of cosmetic products and toiletries because they make the product smoother, water resistant and easier to apply.
They have an eight-carbon chain (C8) with acidic heads. The longer chain length provides better stability and less friction which means they are useful as processing aids in polymer manufacture.
Since 2000, industry has moved away from C8 chemistry and shifted towards shorter chain length chemicals because of concerns over toxicity of the longer-chain compounds and their harm to the environment.
The shorter chain length does help them break down faster and makes them less toxic. However they don’t perform as well as the longer chain chemicals. So manufacturers use more of them in products and more of them get into the environment.
The widespread of these chemical groups comes at a cost. PFAS enter the environment through the everyday use and disposal of products that contain them. Emissions from fluoropolymer manufacturing sites is another source.
Domestic and commercial wastewater contains PFAS, which is released into rivers and ocean currents and into remote parts of the planet as evidenced by my team’s recent work investigating high levels of PFAS in Arctic sea ice.
Humans are typically exposed to these chemicals through drinking water, food and household dust. They are a problem for our health because these chemicals have an acid head which tends to interact with and bind to protein molecules in blood. This has knock-on effects on health.
There is strong evidence to demonstrate that exposure to specific PFAS is linked with liver disease, cancer and damages people’s reproductive systems and children’s development. Another area of concern is repression of the immune system and lowered response to vaccines.
Many other countries such as the US and Denmark have revised their drinking water standards. It’s time UK drinking water standards caught up.
Crispin Halsall is a Professor of Environmental Organic Chemistry and receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for his work on PFAS
When Merriam-Webster announced that its word of the year for 2023 was “authentic,” it did so with over a month to go in the calendar year.
Even then, the dictionary publisher was late to the game.
In a lexicographic form of Christmas creep, Collins English Dictionary announced its 2023 word of the year, “AI,” on Oct. 31. Cambridge University Press followed suit on Nov. 15 with “hallucinate,” a word used to refer to incorrect or misleading information provided by generative AI programs.
At any rate, terms related to artificial intelligence appear to rule the roost, with “authentic” also falling under that umbrella.
For the past 20 years, Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the U.S., has chosen a word of the year – a term that encapsulates, in one form or another, the zeitgeist of that past year. In 2020, the word was “pandemic.” The next year’s winner? “Vaccine.”
“Authentic” is, at first glance, a little less obvious.
According to the publisher’s editor-at-large, Peter Sokolowski, 2023 represented “a kind of crisis of authenticity.” He added that the choice was also informed by the number of online users who looked up the word’s meaning throughout the year.
The word “authentic,” in the sense of something that is accurate or authoritative, has its roots in French and Latin. The Oxford English Dictionary has identified its usage in English as early as the late 14th century.
And yet the concept – particularly as it applies to human creations and human behavior – is slippery.
Is a photograph made from film more authentic than one made from a digital camera? Does an authentic scotch have to be made at a small-batch distillery in Scotland? When socializing, are you being authentic – or just plain rude – when you skirt niceties and small talk? Does being your authentic self mean pursuing something that feels natural, even at the expense of cultural or legal constraints?
The more you think about it, the more it seems like an ever-elusive ideal – one further complicated by advances in artificial intelligence.
Intelligence of the artificial variety – as in nonhuman, inauthentic, computer-generated intelligence – was the technology story of the past year.
At the end of 2022, OpenAI publicly released ChatGPT 3.5, a chatbot derived from so-called large language models. It was widely seen as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, but its rapid adoption led to questions about the accuracy of its answers.
The chatbot also became popular among students, which compelled teachers to grapple with how to ensure their assignments weren’t being completed by ChatGPT.
Issues of authenticity have arisen in other areas as well. In November 2023, a track described as the “last Beatles song” was released. “Now and Then” is a compilation of music originally written and performed by John Lennon in the 1970s, with additional music recorded by the other band members in the 1990s. A machine learning algorithm was recently employed to separate Lennon’s vocals from his piano accompaniment, and this allowed a final version to be released.
But is it an authentic “Beatles” song? Not everyone is convinced.
Advances in technology have also allowed the manipulation of audio and video recordings. Referred to as “deepfakes,” such transformations can make it appear that a celebrity or a politician said something that they did not – a troubling prospect as the U.S. heads into what is sure to be a contentious 2024 election season.
Writing for The Conversation in May 2023, education scholar Victor R. Lee explored the AI-fueled authenticity crisis.
Our judgments of authenticity are knee-jerk, he explained, honed over years of experience. Sure, occasionally we’re fooled, but our antennae are generally reliable. Generative AI short-circuits this cognitive framework.
“That’s because back when it took a lot of time to produce original new content, there was a general assumption … that it only could have been made by skilled individuals putting in a lot of effort and acting with the best of intentions,” he wrote.
“These are not safe assumptions anymore,” he added. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, everyone will need to consider that it may not have actually hatched from an egg.”
Though there seems to be a general understanding that human minds and human hands must play some role in creating something authentic or being authentic, authenticity has always been a difficult concept to define.
So it’s somewhat fitting that as our collective handle on reality has become ever more tenuous, an elusive word for an abstract ideal is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.
Roger J. Kreuz ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
With anti-2SLGBTQ+ protests and hate and violence against 2SLGBTQ+ communities on the rise, it’s a tough time to be queer or trans in Canada.
2SLGBTQ+ people and organizations have a long history of resisting efforts to harm or erase us, and much of that history is preserved in community-based archives.
The Canadian Gay Liberation Movement Archives was founded in 1973 and still exists today as The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. There are also a growing number of smaller 2SLGBTQ+ archives across the country.
Since 2020, I have been helping to build a 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archive in Hamilton, Ont. My students and I are often amazed at just how long 2SLGBTQ+ communities have been resisting very similar kinds of backlash, hate and violence to what we’re seeing today.
Anyone concerned about 2SLGBTQ+ struggles today can learn from the history of resistance and activism preserved in these archives.
In the 1970s, gay and lesbian groups successfully fought back against conservative U.S.-based celebrity Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign. Today, Bryant’s anti-gay sentiments are amplified by campaigns like the “1 Million March 4 Children.”
Read more: How the 'parental rights' movement gave rise to the 1 Million March 4 Children
But we can learn from the successful tactics of 2SLGBTQ+ organizers who fought against those campaigns. By building alliances with labour groups, progressive churches and more, these activists held successful counter demonstrations across Canada, from Toronto to Winnipeg to Edmonton to places as small as Moose Jaw, Sask.
More than a decade after these events, organizations like the Hamilton United Gay Societies (HUGS) and the Gay and Lesbian Association of McMaster refused to forget the hate-filled vitriol of Bryant’s campaign. They exposed her tactics in their monthly newsletter and reminded readers about the power of the counter-demonstrations that took place.
My students and I noticed right away that the gay and lesbian people and histories documented in 2SLGBTQ+ archives were mostly white. There is very little representation of Black, Indigenous or other racialized groups, and also very little representation of trans lives and histories.
Many 2SLGBTQ+ archives are now working to remedy these gaps in their collections by actively seeking to collect materials from racialized queer and trans community members.
From these gaps we can learn about the ongoing effects of racism and transphobia within 2SLGBTQ+ communities. While building the Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archives, we began with a series of critical conversations intended to get us thinking about how to move beyond centering whiteness in our collections. We learned about how essential it is to have the diversity of 2SLGBTQ+ communities represented from the outset.
Today, there are also stand-alone archives in Canada for two-spirit and trans communities, while projects like Marvellous Grounds in Toronto produce alternative archives of racialized queer and trans people.
The long history of struggle to address racism within 2SLGBTQ+ communities prompts us to be mindful of where and how racism shows up in our present-day organizing. For example, a lot of concern has recently been expressed about the number of Muslim participants in the “1 Million March.”
While we do need to keep talking about the role of religious groups and leaders in these movements, we can also learn from the struggles queer Muslim groups face to address Islamophobia, racism and homo/transphobia all at once. In the ArQuives, we can learn about groups like Min-Alaq, one of the first organizations for gay, lesbian and bisexual Muslims in Canada.
Today, queer Muslims are speaking out about anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from some Muslim organizations, and calling on all of us to prioritize the needs and well-being of queer Muslim youth. If we want to meaningfully redress those gaps in queer archives, we have to begin by learning from the organizing efforts of racialized queer and trans communities, historically and today.
My students sometimes start out thinking their generation is the first to push back against police discrimination, harassment and violence.
However, these archives show us that 2SLGBTQ+ communities have been resisting unjust police practices for a long time. We can learn from the strategies and tactics of the organizing done in previous generations, if we know where to look for them.
For example, in the organizational records of HUGS we found one document from 1981 that lays out several concerns the community brought to the Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police following increased police harassment of people presumed to be gay.
Community members wanted to know how decisions were made to target the gay community — and who was making these decisions.
They also wanted to know how to lay a complaint against a police officer for harassment or verbal abuse.
This approach demonstrates a clear opposition to police interaction with 2SLGBTQ+ communities.
It can be understood as an early precursor to later actions that have challenged police involvement with the community, including restricting their participation in Pride.
In a 1973 pamphlet calling for donations to the Canadian Gay Liberation Movement Archives, the collective noted that building an archive is “painstaking and timeconsuming work.” Now that I have a bit of first-hand experience with building an archive, I couldn’t agree more.
Most 2SLGBTQ+ archives survive on the labour of volunteers and on donations from members of our communities. Queer archives, according to archivist Rebecka Taves Sheffield, need at least three things to survive: space, money and expertise. To that list I would add that they need visitors, and not just students or academics like me, but anyone interested in learning from past social movement struggles.
In a time when anti-2SLGBTQ+ movements are becoming more vocal, and trying to push 2SLGBTQ+ communities out of public spaces, these archives are an essential resource for preserving histories and providing strategies for resistance.
Amber Dean does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This is how carbon farming works. Farmers plant trees on abandoned farmland. The trees take in carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, acting as a natural sink to offset some emissions. For farmers, these carbon-storing plants pay off with carbon credits.
It sounds simple. But in recent years, the technique has come under fire over claims the approach is not delivering the carbon credits required to offset Australia’s carbon emissions.
This comes amid a broader crisis of confidence in carbon offsets and credits.
As a restoration scientist, I believe it’s good the industry gets more scrutiny. But we should not write off carbon farming. If done properly, carbon farming can also restore lost habitat and help tackle the global biodiversity crisis. As Earth loses more and more species, large-scale restoration is now essential.
We know keeping existing habitat and restoring degraded land to habitat will benefit 86% of the over 1,300 threatened species in Australia. At one well-run carbon farming initiative in southwestern Australia, for instance, we saw a rare malleefowl – a bird that is exceptionally fussy about where it lives.
There are good and bad ways to do carbon farming. It’s wrong to claim credits for the growth of native remnant vegetation caused by rainfall, for instance, rather than regrowth after ending livestock grazing or other deliberate human intervention. It’s also wrong to claim credits for “avoided deforestation” – leaving vegetation intact when it was never intended to be cleared. We should also avoid planting trees in grasslands, which have their own set of species and should not be replaced.
Some carbon farming efforts have been run like plantations, where you plant a single fast-growing species such as blue mallee. The assumption here is monocultures like this store more carbon than a mix of species.
But we and other researchers have found this isn’t the case. Planting a diverse range of trees – like in a real forest – can store just as much carbon as monocultures.
Shrubs store less carbon than trees but play an important role in restoration. Their tangle of branches and leaves can offer safe harbour for smaller birds, for instance. Shrubs also boost projects’ resilience to drought and fire as they respond differently, which helps in recovery.
There would be no penalty to farmers for planting shrubs if the government’s planned nature repair market comes into force. Biodiverse projects could earn both carbon and biodiversity credits.
This would open the door to a win-win. Carbon-farming efforts could double as nature restoration projects, if we avoid tree monocultures and focus on restoring biodiversity while storing carbon. Australia has 13 million hectares of degraded land, meaning there’s plenty of room for restoration without taking farmland or compromising agricultural production.
As critics of carbon farming have pointed out, carbon credits from tree planting can be rubbery. But we shouldn’t tar all projects with the same brush.
In Australia, a number of companies are offering high-integrity carbon credits from biodiverse native tree planting projects, such as Carbon Positive Australia and Greening Australia.
Nature restoration is likely to become more attractive to investors because of the potential for growth in natural capital and employment.
As much as restoration is needed, so too is ongoing care such as feral animal control and leaving remnant vegetation intact.
Climate change is, unfortunately, threatening the environmental restoration which can help reduce its effects. In dryland Australia, drought makes it harder for seedlings to survive and for trees or shrubs to grow well even once established.
While many of Australia’s native plants are tough enough to weather fires, more frequent fires make it harder to bounce back. Plants need time between fires to grow rootstock and develop seed banks.
When we talk about biodiversity, we’re talking about the richness of life.
To date, Australia’s carbon farming efforts vary a great deal in how they protect biodiversity. Think of the difference in walking through a blue mallee or sugar gum plantation – where there are few birds or other species – compared to walking through a patch of native forest. Some carbon farms can be diverse.
Restoration efforts which attract more species will come to function more like a true native ecosystem typical of their region.
This is not to say restoration work is easy. Turning a weed-filled paddock worn down by decades of agricultural use is tough. Even native species such as kangaroos and emus can become challenges by eating seedlings.
Treating experimentation as part of practice and publicly reporting successes and failures can help the industry progress. For instance, our restoration research has found native shrubs return if given the chance – but not understorey species.
Carbon farming is new. While some efforts may well be aimed at gaming the system, there are many others genuinely seeking ways of using nature to store the carbon we’ve released into the atmosphere. As this new approach progresses, there will be failures. But a failure is not necessarily greenwashing.
And as Australia, like many other nations, sets ambitious restoration targets to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, we will need to experiment, innovate, work alongside Traditional Owners and plan to be there for the long term.
We are already seeing hopeful signs restoration work does yield benefits for at least some species, such as ants and woodland birds.
Restoration can work: for us, for climate and for our species. Let’s make sure it does work.
Rachel Standish receives funding from the ARC and the Transformation in Mining Economies CRC. She has worked on Greening Australia properties but has not received funding for this work.
Have you ever encountered a subpar hotel breakfast while on holiday? You don’t really like the food choices on offer, but since you already paid for the meal as part of your booking, you force yourself to eat something anyway rather than go down the road to a cafe.
Economists and social scientists argue that such behaviour can happen due to the “sunk cost fallacy” – an inability to ignore costs that have already been spent and can’t be recovered. In the hotel breakfast example, the sunk cost is the price you paid for the hotel package: at the time of deciding where to eat breakfast, such costs are unrecoverable and should therefore be ignored.
Similar examples range from justifying finishing a banal, half-read book (or half-watched TV series) based on prior time already “invested” in the activity, to being less likely to quit exclusive groups such as sororities and sporting clubs the more effort it took to complete the initiation ritual.
While these behaviours are not rational, they’re all too common, so it helps to be aware of this tendency. In some circumstances, you might even use it for your benefit.
While the examples above may seem relatively trivial, they show how common the sunk cost fallacy is. And it can affect decisions with much higher stakes in our lives.
Imagine that Bob previously bought a house for $1 million. Subsequently, there’s a nationwide housing market crash. All houses are now cheaper by 20% and Bob can only sell his house for $800,000. Bob’s been thinking of upgrading to a bigger house (and they are now cheaper!), but will need to sell his existing house to have funds for a downpayment.
However, he refuses to upgrade because he perceives a loss of $200,000 relative to the original price he paid of $1 million. Bob is committing the sunk cost fallacy by letting the original price influence his decision making – only the house’s current and projected price should matter.
Bob might be acting irrationally, but he’s only human. Part of the reason we may find it difficult to ignore such losses is because losses are psychologically more salient relative to gains – this is known as loss aversion.
While most of the evidence for the sunk cost fallacy comes from individual decisions, it may also influence the decisions of groups. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as the Concord fallacy, because the French and British governments continued funding the doomed supersonic airliner long after it was likely it would not be commercially viable.
Another example is drawn-out armed conflict that involves a large loss of lives for the losing side. Some may think it impossible to capitulate because the casualties will have “died in vain”.
À lire aussi : Supersonic flights are set to return – here's how they can succeed where Concorde failed
If you find yourself justifying behaviour due to costs you’ve paid in the past rather than circumstances of the present, or predictions of the future, it’s worth checking yourself.
Identifying sunk costs allows you to cut your losses early and move on, rather than perpetuating larger losses. This is apparent in the housing example: the larger the crash, the cheaper the bigger house; and yet the larger the crash, the greater the perceived loss from selling the existing house. Hence, the greater the loss in opportunity inflicted by the sunk cost fallacy.
If you find it difficult to overcome the sunk cost fallacy, it may help to delegate such decisions to others. This may include the decision of whether to go to a buffet or subscribe to Netflix, with the latter potentially being a double whammy: one may feel compelled to binge-watch due to the flat fee structure and, as mentioned earlier, to finish mediocre series once halfway through.
A second, less obvious benefit is actively using the fallacy to your advantage. For example, many gym memberships require upfront payments regardless of how much you use the facilities. If you find it hard to ignore sunk costs, choosing gym memberships that have large upfront fees and minimal pay-per-usage fees may be a way to commit yourself to a regular gym habit.
This can also apply to other activities that involve short-term pain for long-term gain – for example, paying for an online course will make you more likely to stick with it than if you found a free course.
But be warned, this doesn’t work for everything: it seems that spending wildly on a wedding ceremony or engagement ring doesn’t have a “sunk cost” effect – it fails to increase the likelihood of staying married.
À lire aussi : Gym membership: how to get the most out of it, according to a sports scientist
Aaron Nicholas ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Around 46 million people across the UK are expected to have visited their local high street to go shopping over the last weekend in November, encouraged by so-called Black Friday sales. The projected spend in-store and online is forecast to reach close to £9 billion.
How much of a saving there is to be made on Black Friday is debated. But even if they are a way to get a head start on your Christmas shopping – and important for retail businesses – by encouraging people to buy things they don’t necessarily need Black Friday sales can have a detrimental impact on the environment.
In 2022, research estimated that 400,000 tons of CO₂ would be released into the atmosphere due to transportation associated with Black Friday in the UK that year. When considering the waste from packaging and the fact that up to 80% of Black Friday purchases end up in landfill after only one use, the damaging consequences of these mass sales become clear.
Clothes are, unsurprisingly, among the most popular items purchased during this period. Fashion is already the world’s second most polluting industry, accounting for up to 8% of global carbon emissions. On Black Friday, the carbon footprint of clothing sales is reportedly 72% higher than on any other day.
These statistics show that we need to consume more sustainably. The practices employed by the Victorians to mend, sell and reuse old clothing might offer us some valuable lessons this Black Friday.
For the Victorians, clothes were much more economically and emotionally valuable than they are today. Before the introduction of the sewing machine in 1851 and the rise of the ready-to-wear industry, clothes were made by hand, often at home.
A basic knowledge of fabrics and textiles was therefore commonplace, especially among women, who would have undertaken the majority of the household work. Making and repairing clothing were important practices that women devoted much of their time to, and sewing was a valuable domestic skill.
In contrast to today’s “throwaway culture”, where clothes are produced cheaply and quickly before being bought and disposed of after only a few uses, the Victorians carefully extended the life cycles of their garments. Employers even often handed lightly used articles of clothing down to members of their household staff.
The trade in second-hand clothes also became increasingly widespread from the late 18th century. Except for the very wealthy, the majority of people living in the UK would have worn at least some second-hand clothing.
During this period, old clothes were routinely collected by itinerant hawkers whose job it was to exchange flowers, china or money for cast-off clothes. They would then deposit old clothes in second-hand markets in major cities, where they would be repaired and sold on again.
Even when clothes were seemingly beyond repair, they were rarely thrown away. In 1865, an article that was published in The Leisure Hour, a Victorian era magazine, explained that “old clothes, after they have served their purposes of two or three classes of society, are yet far from closing their career.”
Rags could be collected and taken to papermills to be recycled into paper, while woollen textile waste was ground in mills to produce “shoddy” – a type of recycled cloth.
Beyond that, rags were even used as manure for growing Hops, or as English poet and philosopher Edward Carpenter claimed in 1887, for growing his potatoes:
“When my coat has worn … and got weather-stained out in the fields with sun and rain — then, faithful, it does not part from me, but getting itself cut up into shreds and patches descends to form a hearthrug for my feet. …when worn through, it goes into the kennel and keeps my dog warm, and so after lapse of years, retiring to the manure-heaps and passing out on to the land, returns to me in the form of potatoes for my dinner.”
The Victorians were not always motivated by environmental concerns in quite the same way that we are today. Nevertheless, they were driven to care for their clothes for reasons of thrift, economy and to prevent waste.
The European Commission announced in 2020 that it aims to achieve a circular economy by 2050. The initiative includes a vision to minimise textile waste and increase the recycling of garments. To bring this vision to fruition, there could be valuable lessons gleaned from the Victorians and their approach to handling old clothing.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Danielle Mariann Dove does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
For senior marine biology major Jessica Mills, the proposed Florida regulation banning social activism and funding for diversity programs on college campuses is unrealistic. She said it is a pipeline into “complete control” over college students.
“It will absolutely infringe on our ability to have free speech,” Mills said. “It is going against our constitutional right, and I don’t think that will be a very productive rule for anyone’s advancement.”
The Florida Board of Governors (BOG) advanced a rule on Nov. 9 based on Senate Bill 266 that would prohibit funding for social issues and diversity initiatives on public Florida college and university campuses.
The regulation bans university spending on “any activity organized with a purpose of effecting or preventing change to a government policy, action, or function, or any activity intended to achieve a desired result related to social issues, where the university endorses or promotes a position in communications, advertisements, programs, or campus activities.”
The public can comment on the regulation through the board’s website. The rule is expected to come before the board for final approval in January.
Director of Media Relations Althea Johnson said in a statement that USF continues to monitor the progress of the regulation proposed by the BOG.
If the regulation is approved, USF will work with its partners across the State University System and the BOG to analyze how the university will be impacted, according to Johnson.
Senior economics major William Mleczko, the President of Students for Socialism (SFS) at USF, said a possible lack of funding from USF could limit the organization’s on-campus events as they’d have less money available to spend on them.
“Everything can be politicized, and that is dangerous,” Mleczko said. “I feel like this regulation will probably lead to a lack of an on-campus scene for many groups and organizations”
If the organization’s funding is affected by the regulation, Mleczko said SFS will have fundraisers in order to keep up with the events they have planned for next semester.
Mleczko said he believes the state created the proposed regulation to prevent progressive and multicultural student groups from sharing their thoughts.
“This definitely wasn’t a rule to prohibit conservative free speech. It was to prohibit talking about class, race, and all aspects of daily life that are really important,” Mleczko said.
The regulation described “social issues” as “topics that polarize or divide society among political, ideological, moral, or religious beliefs, positions, or norms.”
Senior ASL interpreting major Emma Heard said she thinks the regulation’s definition of social issues is too broad.
“How is the regulation going to define what polarizing is?” Heard said. “It is confusing because social issues are just human topics.”
Heard said she is concerned some classes are not going to be allowed anymore if the regulation prevents universities from spending money to promote social issues.
“If the regulation stops funding diversity, what happens to classes where diversity is the main topic?” Heard said.
The proposed regulation could halt students’ personal learning by dwindling the number of diversity-focused classes, according to Mills.
“I have taken classes in Ethics and Humanities, where we talked about social issues,” Mills said. “The new regulation would basically shut down most of those classes and all of the discussion within them.”
Mills said she is concerned about how the regulation could affect the way professors teach their classes at USF.
“It could affect how vulnerable they’re able to be with their students and how they can share opinions with them,” Mills said. “I think it would severely limit the amount of growth that could be done within college classes.”
Faculty will also be affected if the regulation is approved because they will have to be careful with the topics they teach, according to Mleczko.
“They didn’t study for years to become professors just to teach some sort of alternate history where everybody in society has gotten along this whole time,” Mleczko said.
Professor Kiersten Jensen said she assured her students that the new regulation won’t affect discussion in her classes. She said she doesn’t think people should be afraid of any ideas.
“If there’s something within the topic that is in the coursebook and students want to talk about, then we will talk about it,” Jensen said.
Jensen said college campuses should support young people’s right to express themselves while being confronted with other opinions to enhance the learning experience.
It is important to share beliefs, experiences and observations to help other people understand different perspectives, according to Jensen.
“University isn’t supposed to be a K-12,” Jensen said. “It’s supposed to provide opportunities for young people to mature and hopefully become global thinkers.”
Mills said it is important that students can share their opinions to learn how to grow together. College is one of the most important facilitators of that, and a huge part of the college experience is erased if that is taken away from students, according to Mills.
Mleczko said that as students graduate and start picking up responsibilities, they need to know how to communicate with people and understand that not everybody thinks like them.
Jensen said she will always make sure the classroom is a space where everybody feels comfortable sharing their opinions.
“I’m certainly not going to be bullied into suppressing ideas, suppressing speech, or doing self-censorship,” Jensen said.
When foraging, it’s said that you should be as confident identifying edible plants in the wild as you are in a grocery store. Foragers also say that the best way to learn is to have an experienced person to guide you. Not everyone has access to someone like that, though. Enter: Books about foraging.
Now, gathering and eating wild plants based entirely on the photos and descriptions in a book can be a bit intimidating. For some plants, this isn’t a big deal — wineberries, for example, are an invasive edible that’s really easy to pick out. Garlic mustard and wild onions, too. Some plants don’t really have poisonous lookalikes, so the odds of making a dangerous mistake are pretty slim. Others, not so much.
All of this is to say that books about foraging aren’t all bad. At least, they weren’t.
Here’s where shit gets weird.
People looking to make a quick buck have turned to artificial intelligence and Amazon’s publishing platform to pump out a lot of barely-concealed drivel. A lot of this is in the form of children’s books, I guess because they seem easier to make than a full-length novel. This is far from harmless, because children’s books play a role in the development of literacy and empathy that you don’t really want to hand off to a computer.
This attempt to cash out isn’t limited to children’s books, either. Amazon and other online book sellers have become the proud purveyors of foraging books written by AI. This isn’t really a new phenomenon, but, on the off chance any of you out there’re in the market for foraging guides, I figured I’d give you a heads up.
To be fair, a lot of these are simply useless and the worst they’ll do is waste your money. The books in this category claim to be foraging guides, but end up being about why foraging is good, listicles on the benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables, and recipe ideas. Pretty harmless overall.
On the other hand, there are books offering actual descriptions of “edible” plants and mushrooms(!). Some of them even list “taste” as an identifying feature of plants and fungi, which could encourage inexperienced foragers to taste things they haven’t positively identified. Since many extremely poisonous mushrooms are visually similar to harmless ones, this could get someone killed. Hell, plenty of people already mistake poisonous mushrooms for edible ones even without books encouraging them to taste them.
It’s not always easy to pick out which books are written by actual human people, and which aren’t. There are a couple of things that you can look for:
Again, if you’re able to, connect with an experienced foraging expert before going out in the field on your own. Your local university may be able to help you. You might even be able to find a group of foraging enthusiasts on sites like Meetup. Even if you can’t go out with a foraging expert, they may be able to recommend actual, useful guides, videos, and other resources for you.
Major changes might be in store for the area around MOSI — the Museum of Science and Industry. On November 1, Hillsborough County Commissioners unanimously approved a request for proposal asking developers to submit their plans for the redevelopment of the 67-acre site surrounding the MOSI. This area is located along E. Fowler Avenue south of the University of South Florida (USF).
Hillsborough County is seeking creative and competitive proposals from experienced and qualified master developers with a track record of mixed urban projects.
As part of the Uptown Innovation District, proposers are asked to submit innovative and inclusive development plans with a mix of uses including, but not limited to:
They also want to see plans that embrace transit and sustainable mobility. The County also hopes to see developers include economic drivers to the mix such as biosciences, life sciences, cybersecurity, and other advanced industries while capitalizing on the synergy and proximity to the County’s institutional partners such as USF, Moffit Cancer Center, James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital, and Yuengling Center.
Related: 39-story Pendry Tower Breaks Ground on Tampa Riverwalk
The County intends for MOSI to remain in its current 7-acre lease site. With MOSI’s plans for a future planetarium and learning labs, there is an opportunity for developers to add to this creative digital space with a commercial A/V or film studio, black box theater, or other performing arts platforms.
RFP submissions will be due in late February 2024. The Board plans to select the top-ranked master developer in summer 2024. Click here for additional information.
The post Big Changes Coming to Area Around MOSI appeared first on ModernGlobe.
State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues announced Florida universities have not deactivated chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), despite a recent order to do so.
Related: Florida orders pro-Palestinian USF group to disband
Rodrigues made the announcement at Thursday’s Board of Governors (BOG) meeting. He said the universities consulted with the different SJP chapters, who showed administration they were not under the “headship” of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP).
The constitutions of the campus organizations, which were submitted at the beginning of the school year, state that their organization “is not subservient, or under the National Students for Justice in Palestine,” he said.
The announcement came shortly after an Oct. 24 letter from Rodrigues ordered university presidents to terminate the pro-Palestinian student groups. This would affect USF’s own SJP chapter, which is currently active.
The universities are working with the SJP chapters on an “affirmation,” according to Rodrigues.
Rodrigues said the affirmation will confirm that the chapters “reject violence, that they reject that they are part of the Hamas movement, and that they will follow the law.”
In the letter released last month, Rodrigues wrote that NSJP made statements classified as “harmful support for terrorist groups.”
Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The Israeli cabinet declared war against Hamas one day later, according to the Council of Foreign Relations.
Rodrigues wrote that Hamas called the attack “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” He said NSJP released a toolkit which promoted the terrorist organization.
The toolkit stated that “We as Palestinian students in exile are part of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.” Rodrigues said this was a felony under Florida Statute 775.33 (3), which refers to “providing material support or resources for terrorism or to terrorist organizations.”
The order was met with protests on campus in solidarity with the USF SJP chapter and Palestine.
Related: USF’s response to letter disbanding pro-Palestinian student groups still unclear
Rodrigues said the universities obtained legal opinions after the order.
The institutions raised concerns about “personal liability for university actors who deactivate the student registered organization,” according to Rodrigues. The BOG is seeking its own legal counsel on the matter, he said.
The Oracle has reached out to university officials for comment.
This is a developing story. Stay with The Oracle for updates.
Between increased housing costs, an on-campus mental health crisis and a class divided by socio-political conflict, USF students have faced unprecedented challenges this semester on top of pursuing their degrees. Thanksgiving break is a well-earned pause in some of this semester’s chaos.
While it may be a holiday cliche, giving thanks is an effective way to steel yourself against the stress and struggle of modern life.
Practicing gratitude is a mindfulness exercise that has gained real traction in mental health circles in recent years. It involves small tasks like journaling what you’re grateful for that day, following a guided meditation or repeating daily affirmations.
It may sound reductive when compared to the grandiose issues students are grappling with. And it’s true – you cannot “Thank-you” your way into cheaper rent or a more peaceful political world. But the first step to cultivating a better life is to tend to the garden you can touch. Whether you’re advocating for change or just attempting to cope with the world around you, clear-headedness and peace is the first step.
Related: As USF implements suicide prevention measures, do students and faculty think it’s enough?
Much like the rest of the world, the USF community was rocked by the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel triggered a series of on-campus protests and demonstrations.
The rights of on-campus pro-Palestinian groups were then challenged statewide on Oct. 25 when Chancellor of the State University System Raymond Rodrigues issued an order to disband them. While the order was halted, the pressure remains.
Jewish student groups like USF Hillel are concerned for their safety due to “increased antisemitism” on campus. For students on both sides, the tension is reaching a fever pitch.
While grappling with world conflict, USF students have also experienced a struggle more universal: crippling housing costs. The cheapest dorms cost $6,410 annually, and are set to increase by 4.5% annually for the next five years. Off-campus housing doesn’t offer a cheaper alternative.
“It’s stressful, and I don’t have a lot of spending money outside of school stuff, because I’m shelling out all this money into a meal plan and stuff. So I can’t really eat anywhere else besides the Hub,” junior studio art major Anna Waite said in an Oct. 17 Oracle article.
These are daunting stressors for students that can lead to depression and feelings of hopelessness. While practicing gratitude won’t solve the world’s issues, it’s a practical coping skill that can be a boon for preserving both your mental health and energy to make positive change.
Thankfulness exercises like helping strangers in small ways or telling a loved one that you appreciate them have conclusive mental effects. A series of studies by UC Davis Medical Center showed that gratitude practice diminishes stress hormones, reduces the risk of depression by 41% and decreases hopelessness in suicidal patients by 88%.
For students motivated to enact positive change, mental self-care and outlook management is one of the most effective forms of activism.
Advocating for change or even just keeping up-to-date on social issues can be exhausting, especially for students who compound global issues with everyday stressors. This exhaustion can lead to “activist burnout,” which creates long-term cynicism and feelings of inefficacy that stifle one’s ability to advocate effectively and have a lasting impact on self image.
That’s why, in times of conflict, socio-political injustice and economic struggle, it’s crucial to maintain a positive outlook on life. While thankfulness cannot end wars or repair the economy, appreciating life’s small joys wards off pessimism. Gratitude is remembering what makes the struggle worth it.
As artificial intelligence (AI) reaches the peak of its popularity, researchers have warned the industry might be running out of training data – the fuel that runs powerful AI systems. This could slow down the growth of AI models, especially large language models, and may even alter the trajectory of the AI revolution.
But why is a potential lack of data an issue, considering how much there are on the web? And is there a way to address the risk?
Read more: AI to Z: all the terms you need to know to keep up in the AI hype age
We need a lot of data to train powerful, accurate and high-quality AI algorithms. For instance, ChatGPT was trained on 570 gigabytes of text data, or about 300 billion words.
Similarly, the stable diffusion algorithm (which is behind many AI image-generating apps such as DALL-E, Lensa and Midjourney) was trained on the LIAON-5B dataset comprising of 5.8 billion image-text pairs. If an algorithm is trained on an insufficient amount of data, it will produce inaccurate or low-quality outputs.
The quality of the training data is also important. Low-quality data such as social media posts or blurry photographs are easy to source, but aren’t sufficient to train high-performing AI models.
Text taken from social media platforms might be biased or prejudiced, or may include disinformation or illegal content which could be replicated by the model. For example, when Microsoft tried to train its AI bot using Twitter content, it learned to produce racist and misogynistic outputs.
This is why AI developers seek out high-quality content such as text from books, online articles, scientific papers, Wikipedia, and certain filtered web content. The Google Assistant was trained on 11,000 romance novels taken from self-publishing site Smashwords to make it more conversational.
The AI industry has been training AI systems on ever-larger datasets, which is why we now have high-performing models such as ChatGPT or DALL-E 3. At the same time, research shows online data stocks are growing much slower than datasets used to train AI.
In a paper published last year, a group of researchers predicted we will run out of high-quality text data before 2026 if the current AI training trends continue. They also estimated low-quality language data will be exhausted sometime between 2030 and 2050, and low-quality image data between 2030 and 2060.
AI could contribute up to US$15.7 trillion (A$24.1 trillion) to the world economy by 2030, according to accounting and consulting group PwC. But running out of usable data could slow down its development.
While the above points might alarm some AI fans, the situation may not be as bad as it seems. There are many unknowns about how AI models will develop in the future, as well as a few ways to address the risk of data shortages.
One opportunity is for AI developers to improve algorithms so they use the data they already have more efficiently.
It’s likely in the coming years they will be able to train high-performing AI systems using less data, and possibly less computational power. This would also help reduce AI’s carbon footprint.
Another option is to use AI to create synthetic data to train systems. In other words, developers can simply generate the data they need, curated to suit their particular AI model.
Several projects are already using synthetic content, often sourced from data-generating services such as Mostly AI. This will become more common in the future.
Developers are also searching for content outside the free online space, such as that held by large publishers and offline repositories. Think about the millions of texts published before the internet. Made available digitally, they could provide a new source of data for AI projects.
News Corp, one of the world’s largest news content owners (which has much of its content behind a paywall) recently said it was negotiating content deals with AI developers. Such deals would force AI companies to pay for training data – whereas they have mostly scraped it off the internet for free so far.
Content creators have protested against the unauthorised use of their content to train AI models, with some suing companies such as Microsoft, OpenAI and Stability AI. Being remunerated for their work may help restore some of the power imbalance that exists between creatives and AI companies.
Rita Matulionyte is a member of Standards Australia, IT-043 working group.
Autumn is the season to gaze at gorgeous leaves of gold, yellow and orange as they flutter from the trees and fall on our yards – but then, of course, comes the tedious task of raking them up and trying to decide what to do with them. SciLine interviewed Susan Barton, a professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Delaware, who says taking a lazy approach is actually a win for your garden and the critters that live there.
Below are some highlights from the interview. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Can leaves on a landscaped property ever be left as they are, or should they always be mulched?
Susan Barton: A layer of leaves on the lawn will exclude light, which would be detrimental to the lawn. So when the leaves fall, either rake them up or chop them up with a lawn mower so they are finer and can sift down in through the grass blades. But if they fall in a landscape bed, or under trees, shrubs and larger plants, it’s fine to just leave the leaves without mulching them.
What are the benefits of mulching leaves rather than removing them?
Susan Barton: The leaves contain nutrients, and they also are a source of organic matter. So if you allow the leaves to go back into the landscape, you are providing nutrients for the plants to take up, and you are providing organic matter that will improve the soil structure.
If you think about forest, where leaves just naturally return to the soil and decompose every year, it’s some of the richest soil we have. By allowing that to happen in your landscape beds, you’re getting the same benefits.
What can keep leaves from blowing from one property to another?
Susan Barton: Chopping them up will dramatically reduce the blowing of the leaves. Make them smaller by either mowing over the leaves where they fall in the lawn, or raking them into piles and then mowing them.
There are also leaf vacuums that vacuum, chop up and put the leaves in a bag. Then you spread the leaves on your landscape beds.
What are the environmental benefits of not removing the leaves?
Susan Barton: If you rake up your leaves, put them in a black plastic bag and have them taken off to a landfill, then they never get to decompose and return those nutrients and organic matter back to the soil. Instead, you’re taking what could be a resource and making it a problem.
Also, many insects spend the winter in leaf litter. And a lot of people might not want insects in their landscape, but only about 2% of all the insects in the world are considered pests. Most of them are either beneficial or of no consequence to humans, and they are very important food sources for birds and other animals. Birds feed the insects, especially caterpillars, to their hatchlings.
So by allowing the insects to overwinter in the leaf litter, you’re supporting bird populations and, of course, pollinators, which help plants produce seeds that can develop into new plants.
When should people fertilize lawns?
Susan Barton: In the fall, because that is when turf grass is primarily growing roots and you’re promoting the kind of grass growth that makes a healthy, dense lawn. When you fertilize in the spring, your grass is growing leaves at that point, so you’re really just causing the grass to grow more and grow faster, and you will need to mow more often. So it really doesn’t make sense to fertilize in the spring.
Also, when you chop up the leaves in the fall, you are actually also fertilizing in the fall because you’re putting those chopped up leaves back into the soil. But it’s a good idea to add some additional fertilizer besides just the leaf litter.
How can people get the most out of their lawns and make their landscaping more environmentally friendly?
Susan Barton: The suburban norm is to have a lawn with some decorative plants around the house, or at the end of the driveway. But I think it’s a good idea to sort of flip that paradigm and design areas of the lawn that provide for play and gathering spaces, and then figure out what everything else can be.
It’s just a different way of thinking about the landscape, and much more environmentally sensitive. It will provide all kinds of ecosystem services, whether it’s better water infiltration or better air quality. If we think about pulling carbon dioxide out of the air, we’re doing it a lot more if we’ve got a ground cover, a shrub layer, a small tree layer and a large tree layer than we are if we have just a lawn.
Watch the full interview to hear more.
SciLine is a free service based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.
Susan Barton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
People fact-checked social media posts more carefully and were more willing to revise their initial beliefs when they were paired with someone from a different cultural background than their own, according to a study my collaborators Michael Baker and Françoise Détienne and I recently published in Frontiers in Psychology.
If you’re French, you’re less likely than an English person to believe a tweet that claims Britain produces more varieties of cheese than France. And if you’re English, you’re more likely than a French person to believe a tweet that claims only 43% of French people shower daily.
More intriguingly, when pairs of English and French people fact-checked such tweets together, how they did so and the extent to which they revised their initial beliefs depended on whether they were “matched” or “mismatched” for cultural identity. We found French-French and English-English pairs focused on confirming evidence and stuck to their initial beliefs, whereas English-French pairs engaged in deeper searches and revised their beliefs in line with evidence.
Misinformation on social media is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It contributes to political polarization, affects people’s voting, vaccination and recycling behavior, and is often believed long after it’s been corrected.
In recent weeks, misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war has reached unprecedented levels and is fanning ethnic, religious and political tensions worldwide – including on U.S. campuses.
To address the misinformation challenge, researchers need to understand better how people process online information. In addition to contributing to such understanding, our findings suggest that bringing together people from opposing sides to fact-check contentious social media posts might improve their media literacy and their ability to engage in civil discourse.
Bringing together people from opposing sides of a conflict to jointly fact-check social media posts isn’t likely to be easy. In times like these, it’s hard even to get them into the same room to speak directly to each other rather than hurling slogans – and worse – at each other. Nevertheless, because publicly funded educational institutions are committed to promoting informed debate and preparing the nation’s future citizens, my colleagues and I believe they remain some of the most promising places to try this approach.
In future studies, we plan to focus on topics that are more controversial than cheese or personal hygiene to see whether the moderating effect of mismatched pairs still applies.
For example, we could present Israeli and Palestinian pairs with social media posts about the explosion at the al-Ahli hospital on Oct. 27, 2023 - an event so contentious that The New York Times is still struggling to explain its initial attribution of the explosion to an Israeli bomb rather than an Islamic Jihad missile.
Observing how matched and mismatched pairs fact-check such posts would shed light on how a tweet’s contentiousness affects people’s ability to fact-check it effectively. In particular, when the stakes are higher with regard to people’s identities, do mismatched pairs still outperform matched pairs, or does the content’s contentiousness obstruct effective collaboration?
Much misinformation research has focused on who believes it and how it spreads. Few studies have examined the actual processes by which people assess what they read online.
Our approach to studying people’s deliberations about online information is to create experimental situations in which such deliberations are natural and observable. In this study, we designed a novel research setup based on the fact that sharing and discussing social media posts with others is an everyday activity.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Eli Gottlieb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Students gathered at USF Hillel – the Jewish Campus Life Center – for a vigil three days after the Hamas attack on Israel.
While lighting candles and singing in honor of lives lost in the conflict, health sciences major Alexa Greenstein said that hers and other Jewish students’ grieving time was interrupted by protesters driving by the Hillel building on Sycamore Drive.
“There were people driving by honking their horns and blasting Arabic music,” she said. “It wasn’t in the middle of the day, it wasn’t in front of the MSC or the library. It was just for us.”
Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to an AP News article. The attack prompted the Israeli cabinet to declare war against Hamas, according to the Council of Foreign Relations.
Senior environmental science and policy major Rebecca Alexander said the passing cars that showed support for Palestine at the vigil were unwarranted since the Jewish students weren’t protesting.
“It wasn’t political,” she said. “It was literally just lighting candles in memory of all the people that have been killed, on either side.”
One day after the vigil, University Police (UP) was notified of a “non-specific” bomb threat at the Hillel building, according to an Oct. 11 Oracle article.
UP stated in a later update that the situation was caused by a dispute between two individuals online, and the bomb threat was “never legitimate,” according to the article.
Related: University Police investigates bomb threat to USF Hillel
Jewish students and their families are still concerned with safety on campus due to increased anti-semitism at universities, according to Greenstein.
“We are scared,” she said. “We don’t want to go to class. We don’t want to go to the library by ourselves. My mom won’t even let me stay at the library past midnight.”
President Rhea Law sent a universitywide email on Oct. 11 that condemned Hamas’ attacks on Israel, stating that USF stands with people affected by the conflicts.
“Everyone deserves to feel welcome and safe on our campuses,” Law wrote. “Violence, discrimination or harassment against any member of our community – regardless of their backgrounds of beliefs – will not be tolerated.”
Senior psychology major Rayna Hoffman said the university’s statements regarding its position on the conflict were vague, and did not promptly address students’ safety concerns.
“USF had a very surface level response,” she said. “It felt like they didn’t even mean what they were saying. I know I didn’t feel any more secure [and I] wasn’t like ‘My school has my back.’”
University of Florida’s President Ben Sasse issued a letter on Oct.12 after an on-campus Jewish vigil ended in a stampede. The letter stated that if protests were anything but peaceful, UF would be ready to act on it, according to the Independent Florida Alligator.
“Speech is protected – violence and vandalism are not,” Sasse wrote.
Hoffman is currently studying abroad in Florence, but she said she is still apprehensive about attending Chabad – an on-campus Jewish organization – events in the future.
“I am very proud of being Jewish and try to be vocal about that,” Hoffman said. “I never want to feel ashamed or have to hide who I am to protect my safety. But it’s really scary.”
USF increased police presence on campus due to “conflicts in the Middle East,” as stated in a universitywide email. Alexander said it has been comforting to see officers at Hillel.
“USF has police outside Hillel 24/7, and all the officers have been really kind and supportive,” she said. “It is a nice relationship that I never expected to have.”
The Biden administration has issued a warning to universities to manage the “alarming rise of anti-semitism and Islamophobia” on campuses, according to a Tuesday AP News article.
Classes at Cornell University were canceled last Friday after a student was charged with “posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications.” The student made antisemitic threats against Jewish people on campus on an online Greek life forum.
Greenstein said the rise in anti-semitic behavior is noticeable on social media, such as hateful comments under Jewish students’ social media accounts. She said these comments and posts are no longer focused on the conflict in Gaza.
“It is just blunt anti-semitism. So I don’t feel comfortable walking on campus, I know my friends don’t either,” Greenstein said.
Alexander said the posters and pro-Palestinian rallies at USF have prompted her to avoid being on campus as much as she can. Alexander said she’s received threats on her social media posts.
“People have commented on my Instagram like ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘We are finishing Hitler’s job,’” she said. “It is scary, these people are my peers.”
Even if she believes people should have conversations about the history of the conflict, Hoffman said most people are not very open to talk about it.
“When I feel strongly about something, it is not easy for me to change my positioning,” she said. “I think most of our generation is like that. People want to hear what they want to hear.”
Related: USF’s response to letter disbanding pro-Palestinian student groups still unclear
Hoffman said she urges people to educate themselves and remember to be compassionate.
“I feel for my Palestinian brothers and sisters, and I wish there was no blood shed. I would hope they feel the same for Jewish people,” Hoffman said.
Fluoride is one of the more abundant elements naturally found in drinking water, and levels around 0.7mg per litre have been proven to reduce tooth decay. This is why some countries add fluoride to drinking water.
However, fluoride in drinking water is a controversial topic. There is concern about the potentially harmful effects of adding fluoride to our water and food. Scientists debate the pros and cons of fluoridation, and for many of us it may be hard to decide what conflicting scientific results mean for our health and that of our families.
When scientists reviewed all the evidence on the links between high fluoride and neurological problems, they found that damage to mental ability might exist for communities that use water with fluoride above recommended values. But it was not possible to show that it directly caused neurological disorder.
A new study from Tulane University in America adds to the debate. It suggests a link between high fluoride levels in water and cognitive impairment in children.
The study, published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology, was based on 74 children in Ethiopia who were exposed to high fluoride in drinking water – averaging 7.6 milligrams per litre. This is well above the World Health Organization’s recommended limit of 1.5mg per litre.
In England, some local authorities adjust the level of fluoride to 1mg of fluoride per litre of water. And in the US, the maximum permitted amount in tap water is 4g per litre of water.
Higher levels of fluoride are already known to stain people’s teeth and cause brittle bones (called fluorosis). This latest study found that children drinking water with high levels of fluoride performed worse in tests designed to evaluate new learning and memory.
Rural communities in this part of Ethiopia, as well as in other developing countries, mostly rely on groundwater from a hand-pumped supply. Most families in this study have similar living conditions and culture. This offered the researchers a setting with restricted socioeconomic differences between children, but with a range of water supply fluoride between 0.4 and 15.5mg per litre.
The researchers tested memory and new learning in two ways. Children were asked to make three drawings from memory and worked with programs on tablet computers that test the way the brain manages learning and memory. The results of the tests were then compared with fluoride levels and other potential contaminants that influence the brain such as arsenic and lead. Only fluoride was substantially above existing recommended levels.
The graphs in the paper show data is scattered and does not follow an obvious straight line relationship between fluoride in drinking water and children’s abilities.
After detailed statistical analysis and adjustments of the data for demographics, health status and other likely influences, there were some tests where lower scores could be due to fluoride effects on cognitive abilities. But overall, most of the tests did not have consistent, statistically significant results.
Many studies that explore the health effects of natural or artificial environmental contaminants also find these relationships are not straightforward as there are so many differences between people.
The recent paper did not find a strong association between high fluoride in drinking water and the mental abilities of children aged five to 14 years. They found that high fluoride concentrations could account for around 5% of the variability in the children’s abilities, but the majority of the difference is due to other factors.
They advise that new advanced studies are urgently needed to better understand the links between mental development and fluoride exposure from the womb to adulthood.
Given that nearly 180 million people worldwide may be exposed to naturally elevated fluoride (many in Asia and Africa), more science is needed to establish if there are threshold levels where fluoride negatively affects health.
Robert.Kalin@strath.ac.uk has received funding from the NSF (USA), EPSRC (UK), NERC (UK), BBSRC (UK), Scottish Government, USAID, and UNICEF
Electric cars are getting bigger and heavier. In 2019, 30% of the electric vehicle (EV) models available worldwide were sports utility vehicles (SUVs).
Fast forward to 2022 and that figure stood at 40% – equivalent to the share of small and medium car options combined. Other large models accounted for more than 15%.
There’s an issue with this. Larger and heavier EVs require bigger batteries to power them. In fact, the battery of an SUV can be double the size of that in a smaller vehicle.
As with many other batteries, the lithium-ion cells that power the majority of electric vehicles rely on raw materials such as cobalt, lithium and nickel. In a standard 60 kWh lithium-ion battery pack designed for smaller EVs, there can be as much as 170kg of minerals, including 39kg of nickel and 5kg of lithium.
Batteries for electric SUVs demand that up to 75% more raw materials are extracted from the environment than this.
However, research suggests that there could be shortages in the supply of battery materials in the future. By 2030, there could be a 55% less lithium and 8% less nickel and manganese than is needed to meet the demand for EV batteries.
If the demand for electric SUVs continues to increase over the coming decade, this could severely escalate the pressure on the already tight supply of critical raw materials.
The production of batteries is also a highly carbon-intensive process, with emissions increasing as batteries grow in size. For example, the CO₂ emissions resulting from materials processing and battery manufacturing can soar to levels 70% higher for electric SUVs compared to smaller EVs.
Mining activities have been linked with several negative environmental effects too. For instance, one study found that lithium mining activities in the Salar de Atacama – Chile’s largest salt flat – have disturbed flamingo breeding sites and reduced the birds’ access to food and water.
Expanding mining operations to support the growing SUV market could lead to further habitat destruction, excessive water consumption, increased mining waste and heightened risks to local biodiversity.
Adding to the complexity is the EU’s recent decision to mandate a minimum proportion of recycled material in new EV batteries. As of 2021, regulations have required that 6% of the nickel and lithium, and 14% of the cobalt in EV batteries must be sourced from recycled materials.
Given the sharp upswing in battery demand, coupled with the need for more recycled materials, we could once again encounter a strained supply chain, with particular implications for larger batteries.
To charge larger batteries in an environmentally friendly manner will require an increased supply of low-carbon electricity. But, as the energy sources used to generate electricity are influenced by factors including availability and the dynamics of the energy market, the carbon intensity of the electricity supply can often vary.
Even if electricity grids do become cleaner, the increasing demand generated by the need to charge these larger batteries could put pressure on power grids.
Transmission and distribution systems were designed at a time when power plants were large and centralised, and electricity demand was relatively low. However, the energy landscape has evolved.
We are now moving towards decentralised energy sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels. These energy sources are often smaller and located in areas where electricity generation was previously absent.
As a result, the grid infrastructure in these locations is less developed. Electricity demand is also growing, as more people buy electric vehicles and install heat pumps.
The overall grid capacity might be sufficient to accommodate these changes. But there could still be periods, especially during specific times of the day or year, when the grid experiences bottlenecks.
For example, there may be a surplus of renewable energy generation in one location and significant demand in a distant area, but the electrical infrastructure might be insufficient to transfer power from one end to the other.
This exact situation often occurs in the UK. In 2022, bottlenecks in the transmission system meant Scottish wind farms were paid to stop generating power on 200 separate occasions and gas power stations in England were paid to increase output to compensate for this.
Utilities companies are working to reinforce electricity grids worldwide by, for example, building more lines to transfer the additional power.
Motorists are increasingly opting for large electric SUVs. But the environmental impact of these vehicles should not be underestimated. The relentless demand for battery materials and electricity raises the question of whether SUVs will continue to be a viable green option.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In 1976, beloved chef, cookbook author and television personality Julia Child returned to WGBH-TV’s studios in Boston for a new cooking show, “Julia Child & Company,” following her hit series “The French Chef.” Viewers probably didn’t know that Child’s new and improved kitchen studio, outfitted with gas stoves, was paid for by the American Gas Association.
While this may seem like any corporate sponsorship, we now know it was a part of a calculated campaign by gas industry executives to increase use of gas stoves across the United States. And stoves weren’t the only objective. The gas industry wanted to grow its residential market, and homes that used gas for cooking were likely also to use it for heat and hot water.
The industry’s efforts went well beyond careful product placement, according to new research from the nonprofit Climate Investigations Center, which analyzes corporate efforts to undermine climate science and slow the ongoing transition away from fossil fuels. As the center’s study and a National Public Radio investigation show, when evidence emerged in the early 1970s about the health effects of indoor nitrogen dioxide exposure from gas stove use, the American Gas Association launched a campaign designed to manufacture doubt about the existing science.
As a researcher who has studied air pollution for many years – including gas stoves’ contribution to indoor air pollution and health effects – I am not naïve about the strategies that some industries use to avoid or delay regulations. But I was surprised to learn that the multipronged strategy related to gas stoves directly mirrored tactics that the tobacco industry used to undermine and distort scientific evidence of health risks associated with smoking starting in the 1950s.
The gas industry relied on Hill & Knowlton, the same public relations company that masterminded the tobacco industry’s playbook for responding to research linking smoking to lung cancer. Hill & Knowlton’s tactics included sponsoring research that would counter findings about gas stoves published in the scientific literature, emphasizing uncertainty in these findings to construct artificial controversy and engaging in aggressive public relations efforts.
For example, the gas industry obtained and reanalyzed the data from an EPA study on Long Island that showed more respiratory problems in homes with gas stoves. Their reanalysis concluded that there were no significant differences in respiratory outcomes.
The industry also funded its own health studies in the early 1970s, which confirmed large differences in nitrogen dioxide exposures but did not show significant differences in respiratory outcomes. These findings were documented in publications where industry funding was not disclosed. These conclusions were amplified in numerous meetings and conferences and ultimately influenced major governmental reports summarizing the state of the literature.
This campaign was remarkable, since the basics of how gas stoves affected indoor air pollution and respiratory health were straightforward and well established at the time. Burning fuel, including natural gas, generates nitrogen oxides: The air in Earth’s atmosphere is about 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, and these gases react at high temperatures.
Nitrogen dioxide is known to adversely affect respiratory health. Inhaling it causes respiratory irritation and can worsen diseases such as asthma. This is a key reason why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established an outdoor air quality standard for nitrogen dioxide in 1971.
No such standards exist for indoor air, but as the EPA now acknowledges, nitrogen dioxide exposure indoors also is harmful.
The key question is whether nitrogen dioxide exposure related to gas stoves is large enough to lead to health concerns. While levels vary across homes, scientific research shows that the simple answer is yes – especially in smaller homes and when ventilation is inadequate.
This has been known for a long time. For example, a 1998 study that I co-authored showed that the presence of gas stoves was the strongest predictor of personal exposure to nitrogen dioxide. And work dating back to the 1970s showed that indoor nitrogen dioxide levels in the presence of gas stoves could be far higher than outdoor levels. Depending on ventilation levels, concentrations could reach levels known to contribute to health risks.
Despite this evidence, the gas industry’s campaign was largely successful. Industry-funded studies successfully muddied the waters, as I have seen over the course of my research career, and stalled further federal investigations or regulations addressing gas stove safety.
This issue took on new life at the end of 2022, when researchers published a new study estimating that 12.7% of U.S. cases of childhood asthma – about one case in eight – were attributable to gas stoves. The industry continues to cast doubt on gas stoves’ contribution to health effects and fund pro-gas stove media campaigns.
Residential gas use is also controversial today because it slows the ongoing shift toward renewable energy, at a time when the impacts of climate change are becoming alarmingly clear. Some cities have already moved or are considering steps to ban gas stoves in new construction and shift toward electrifying buildings.
As communities wrestle with these questions, regulators, politicians and consumers need accurate information about the risks of gas stoves and other products in homes. There is room for vigorous debate that considers a range of evidence, but I believe that everyone has a right to know where that evidence comes from.
The commercial interests of many industries, including alcohol, tobacco and fossil fuels, aren’t always compatible with the public interest or human health. In my view, exposing the tactics that vested interests use to manipulate the public can make consumers and regulators savvier and help deter other industries from using their playbook.
Jonathan Levy has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Health Effects Institute for studies on the contribution of outdoor and indoor sources to air pollution levels in homes.
