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In the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections, Republican candidates across the nation are blaming Democrats for an increase in crime.
But as a scholar of criminology and criminal justice, I believe itās important to note that, despite the apparently confident assertions of politicians, itās not so easy to make sense of fluctuations in the crime rate. And whether itās going up or down depends on a few key questions:
What you mean by ācrime,ā
What the āupā or ādownā comparisons are in reference to, and
The location or area being examined.
Hereās an explanation of those elements ā and why there is no one answer to whether crime has increased in the past year, or over the past decade.
What is ācrime,ā anyway?
Cicely Davis campaign email
Usually when politicians, public officials and scholars talk about crime statistics, theyāre referring to the most serious crimes, which the FBI officially calls āindexā or āPart 1ā offenses: criminal homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson.
Because these crimes vary a great deal in terms of seriousness, experts break this list up into āviolentā and āpropertyā offenses, so as not to confuse a surge in thefts with an increase in killings.
Each month, state and local police departments tally up the crimes they have handled and send the data to the FBI for inclusion in the nationās annual Uniform Crime Report.
But that system has limitations. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, fewer than half of all events that could count as crimes actually get reported to police in the first place. And police departments are not required to send information about known crimes to the FBI. So each year what are presented as national crime statistics are derived from whichever of the roughly 17,000 police departments across the country decide to send in their data.
In 2021, the optional nature of reporting crime statistics was a particular problem, because the FBI asked for more detailed information than it had in the past. Historically, the bureau received data from police departments covering about 90% of the U.S. population. But fewer agencies supplied the more detailed data requested in 2021. That data covered only 66% of the nationās population. And the patchwork wasnāt even: In some states, such as Texas, Ohio and South Carolina, nearly all agencies reported. But in other states, such as Florida, California and New York, participation was abysmal.
With those caveats in mind, the 2021 data estimates that criminal homicide rose about 4% nationally from 2020 levels. Robberies were down 9%, and aggravated assaults remained relatively unchanged.
Rapes are notoriously underreported to police, but the 2021 National Crime Victimization Survey suggests there was no significant change from 2020.
Whatās the benchmark?
Those comparisons look at the prior year to assess whether certain types of crime are up or down. Such comparisons may seem straightforward, but violent crime, particularly homicide, is statistically rare enough that a rise or fall from one year to the next doesnāt necessarily mean there is reason to panic or celebrate.
Another way to assess trends is to look at as much data as possible. Over the past 36 years, clear trends have emerged. The national homicide rate in 2021 wasnāt as high as it was in the early 1990s, but 2021ās figure is the highest in nearly 25 years.
Meanwhile, robberies have been trending steadily downward for the better part of 30 years. And though the aggravated assault rate didnāt change much from 2020 to 2021, it is clearly higher now than at any time during the 2010s.
Crime is highly localized
These figures are imperfect in other ways, too. The data being used in todayās assertions about crime rates is more than 10 months old and presents national figures that mask a substantial amount of local variation. The FBI wonāt release 2022 crime data until the fall of 2023.
But there is more current data available: The consulting firm AH Datalytics has a free dashboard that compiles more up-to-date murder data from 99 big cities.
As of October 2022, it indicates that murder in big cities is down about 5% in 2022 when compared with the first 10 months of 2021. But this aggregate change masks the fact that murder is up 85% in Colorado Springs, Colo.; 33% in Birmingham, Ala.; 28% in New Orleans; and 27% in Charlotte, N.C. Meanwhile, murder is down 38% in Columbus, Ohio; 29% in Richmond, Va.; and 18% in Chicago.
Even these city-level statistics donāt tell the whole story. It is now well established that crime is not randomly distributed across communities. Instead, it clusters in small areas that criminologists and police departments often refer to as āhot spots.ā What this means is that regardless of whether crime is up or down in cities, a handful of neighborhoods in those cities are likely still significantly and disproportionately affected by violence.
Justin Nix 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.
What’s a cold war? A historian explains how rivals US and Soviet Union competed off the battlefield
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question youād like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected].
In the Cold War, was there any actual war going on? Like, with armies? Or was it mostly about space? ā Leia K., age 10, Redmond, Washington
āI am getting confused about all these wars we are studying,ā one of my college students confessed to me years ago. After we discussed the various nations who fought in World Wars I and II, she asked: āNow, who fought in the Cold War?ā
I told her the Cold War was not an actual war. Unlike the two world wars, there were no physical battles between the major adversaries. It was, instead, an extended competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. In 1991, the Soviet Union split up into 15 countries, the largest of which is Russia.
But back then, both of these two so-called superpowers wanted to be the most powerful nation in the world, building themselves up while simultaneously trying to reduce the power and influence of the other. Washington and Moscow competed in numerous ways: over money and natural resources like oil, over allies, over weapons technology, over influence and prestige, over space exploration, over ideas.
The Cold War relationship between the two rival nations was often tense. Once, it led to the threat of nuclear war breaking out because Russia wanted to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, very close to the U.S. That brought the world to the brink of what would have been a catastrophic conflict.
But through skill, prudence or luck ā or all three ā American and Soviet leaders managed to avoid direct combat with each other from 1945 to 1989, the basic period of the Cold War.
A war without fighting?
My student could be forgiven for her confusion. The very term āCold Warā is contradictory and confusing. It was first used in 1947. By using the word āwar,ā it captured the seemingly life-or-death struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union and between capitalism and communism. But by describing this war as ācold,ā it indicates the struggle did not involve weapons and did not result in rival armies seeking to destroy each other.
How could a war be cold? Essentially, by being fought not in the traditional manner of clashing armies, but by all other means short of actual combat.
The Cold War stayed cold for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, the advent of nuclear weapons meant that any conflict between the superpowers risked a nuclear exchange that could have claimed tens of millions of lives and left a swath of destruction in both the Soviet and American homelands.
To avoid such a cataclysmic outcome, policymakers in Moscow and Washington were highly sensitive to the risks of any conflict. They worked hard to find peaceful resolutions to the multiple confrontations and crises they faced between the end of World War II in 1945 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Each superpower also believed that it was engaged in a long-term struggle. Each was convinced that the superiority of its social, political and economic systems would ultimately bring victory in the competition, through peaceful means.
Think about it: Why resort to war, with all the death, devastation and uncertainty it would bring, if you sincerely believe that time ā and history ā is on your side?
Not a time of peace
Yet the Cold War era was hardly peaceful.
U.S. and Soviet troops never fought each other directly during those years. But numerous Cold War-related conflicts raged across the globe from the 1940s to the 1980s.
The vast bulk of those conflicts occurred in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and the Middle East ā the so-called Third World or Global South. In fact, as many as 20 million people died in wars fought between 1945 and 1989. Only 1% of those lost their lives in Europe, the original area of Cold War confrontation. The other 99% died on battlefields of developing nations.
Those conflicts took many forms, including rebellions against colonial powers, civil wars, invasions and revolutions. They also had many different causes. Yet nearly all were affected by the wider Soviet-American struggle for power and influence. And nearly all were intensified and made bloodier and more costly by it.
The eraās most deadly conflicts were the Korean War, from 1950 to 1953, and the Vietnam War, from 1961 to 1975, each of which claimed millions of lives. The United States deployed troops to both of those conflicts, largely because it was determined to contain the expansion of communism.
For its part, the Soviet Union did not participate directly in either war. But it provided aid and support to its communist allies in North Korea and North Vietnam. The Soviet Unionās major ally during the first half of the Cold War, the communist-led Peopleās Republic of China, contributed massive numbers of troops to the conflict in Korea and provided hundreds of thousands of support troops to the conflict in Vietnam.
In sum, āCold Warā remains a somewhat contradictory term for, and description of, the period from 1945 to 1989. It correctly reflects the crucial fact that the struggle for global supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union never involved direct combat between the two nationās military forces. But it minimizes the extensive and bloody litany of conflicts that raged throughout those years, nearly all of which were caused by or affected by their rivalry.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question youād like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to [email protected]. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit ā adults, let us know what youāre wondering, too. We wonāt be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
Robert J. McMahon 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.
Mark Felix/AFP/AFP via Getty Images
Nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States today are Latino, and āthe Latino voteā has attracted significant news coverage as their political voice grows stronger. Yet considering all 62 million Latinos as a group isnāt necessarily all that helpful in understanding attitudes or voting patterns, as some scholars and journalists have pointed out.
The U.S. Latino population is extremely diverse. As scholars who study immigration in the fields of sociology and religious ethics, we are especially interested in the growing religious diversity and often overlooked geographical diversity among Latino populations.
These aspects of Latino identity are just beginning to be recognized more clearly in media reports. Yet they are as informative as gender, race and other characteristics for understanding Latino voters ā and will likely come into play when Americans go to the polls in November.
Religious diversity
Historically, Latinos in the U.S. have mostly been Catholic, but the numbers have recently changed. In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute reported that 50% of Latinos say they are Catholic, 14% are evangelical Protestant, 10% non-evangelical Protestant and 19% religiously unaffiliated. Some researchers have estimated that by 2030, fully half of U.S. Latinos will identify as Protestant.
This diversity has implications for political ideology and affiliation. Latino Protestants, particularly evangelicals, are generally more likely to identify as politically conservative and to support Republican candidates than Latino Catholics are, according to the Public Religion Research Instituteās 2020 Census of American Religion. Religiously unaffiliated Latinos, on the other hand, are generally more likely to identify as politically liberal and to support Democratic candidates.
These trends are similar to those among non-Latino white Americans. Political ideology by age also looks similar: Whether Latino or not, younger groups are more likely to identify as politically liberal, whereas older groups are more likely to identify as politically conservative.
Mark Felix/AFP/AFP via Getty Images
Indeed, Latino groupsā voting preferences may be better understood by looking at religious affiliation, not ethnicity. Sociologist Gerardo Marti, for example, has shown that Latinos who identify as evangelical Protestants are more likely than other Latinos to embrace Christian nationalist ideas. This ideology promotes the view that the U.S. has a special relationship with God and that it should be governed by Christian principles. Marti also shows that evangelical Latinos are more likely to align with white evangelicals in favoring policies that maintain the political dominance of white Americans.
Protestant Latinos are also more likely than other Latinos to hold anti-immigrant sentiments, which track with attitudes among non-Latino white evangelicals. This may seem counterintuitive, since Latinos have been subject to racist stereotyping and often have connections to immigrant communities. However, immigrant groupsā attitudes toward newcomers do change over time, especially if those groups begin to gain access to privileges associated with whiteness.
Geographic diversity
The media has begun to pay more attention to Latino diversity, especially in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, but tends to focus on states like Florida, California and Texas. Regions where Latino communities are smaller but growing are understudied, particularly in the Midwest ā home to five of the 13 battleground states in 2020.
Comparing by Census regions, the Latino population of the Midwest grew 28% between 2010 and 2020: the second-largest rate of all regions, only 2 percentage points less than in the South. The Midwest also has the youngest Latino population, with a median age of 26.7 years. Because there is a significant association between age and political opinion, and because younger Latinos are more likely to be U.S. citizens and therefore able to vote, this could become a factor in the future.
Taken together
The intersection of religious and political affiliation among Latinos in the United States also seems to vary by geography. Considering geography and religion together helps highlight diversity among Latino voters.
Based on our analysis of polling data from the Pew Research Centerās American Trends Panel Wave 86, Latino Protestants in the Midwest are more likely to identify as Democrat or Democrat-leaning than in other regions: about 74%, compared with approximately 63% in the Northeast and 52% in the West and South. Meanwhile, 86% of Latino Catholics in the Northeast identify with the Democratic Party ā but only 66% in the South.
Among religiously unaffiliated Latinos, meanwhile, 65% in the Midwest identify with the Democrats, lower than in any other region. These differences are intriguing, but since Pew only surveyed 207 Latinos in this region, representing just 6.1% of the total sample, it is difficult to reach statistically well-grounded conclusions ā another reason for more research in the Midwest.
The problem with understanding āthe Latino voteā is that there really is no such thing. Latino communities have always been diverse, and are growing even more so.
Laura E. Alexander receives funding as a 2021-23 Public Fellow of the Public Religion Research Institute.
Cristian DoƱa-Reveco 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.
Using the ocean to fight climate change raises serious environmental justice and technical questions
Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
Heat waves, droughts and extreme weather are endangering people and ecosystems somewhere in the world almost every day. These extremes are exacerbated by climate change, driven primarily by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases that build up in the atmosphere and trap heat at the Earthās surface.
With that in mind, researchers are exploring ways to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it away ā including using the ocean. But while these techniques might work, they raise serious technical, social and ethical questions, many of which have no clear answers yet.
We study climate change policy, sustainability and environmental justice. Before people start experimenting with the health of the ocean, there are several key questions to consider.
Ocean carbon dioxide removal 101
The ocean covers about 70% of the planet, and it naturally takes up carbon dioxide. In fact, about a quarter of human-produced carbon dioxide ends up in the ocean.
Ocean carbon dioxide removal is any action designed to use the ocean to remove even more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it already does and store it.
It spans a wide range of techniques ā from increasing the amount and vitality of carbon dioxide-absorbing mangrove forests to using ocean fertilization to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton that absorb carbon dioxide to building pipelines that pump liquid carbon dioxide into formations under the seabed, where it can eventually solidify as carbonate rock.
2021 Boettcher, Brent, Buck, Low, McLaren and Mengis, Frontiers, 2021, CC BY
There are other forms of carbon dioxide removal ā planting trees, for example. But they require large amounts of land that is needed for other essential uses, such as agriculture.
Thatās why interest in using the vast ocean is growing.
Would these methods store enough carbon?
The first crucial question is whether ocean carbon dioxide removal techniques could significantly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and store it long term, beyond what the ocean already does. Greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing globally, which means that ocean carbon dioxide removal would need to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for a long time, at least until greenhouse gas emissions have fallen.
Initial evidence suggests that some forms of ocean carbon dioxide removal, such as those that rely on short-lived biomass like kelp forests or phytoplankton, may not keep captured carbon stored for more than a few decades. Thatās because most plant tissues are quickly recycled by decay or by sea creatures grazing on them.
In contrast, mechanisms that form minerals, like the interaction when carbon dioxide is pumped into basalt formations, or that alter the way seawater retains carbon dioxide, such as increasing its alkalinity, prevent carbon from escaping and are much more likely to keep it out of the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years.
Ecological risks and benefits
Another key question is what ecological benefits or risks accompany different ocean carbon dioxide removal approaches.
Research shows that some options, such as supporting mangrove forests, may promote biodiversity and benefit nearby human communities.
However, other options could introduce novel risks. For example, growing and then sinking large amounts of kelp or algae could bring in invasive species. Dissolving certain types of rock in the ocean could reduce ocean acidity. This would enhance the oceanās ability to store carbon dioxide, but these rocks could also contain trace amounts of metals that could harm marine life, and these risks are not well understood.
Robert Simmon and Jesse Allen/NOAA/MODIS
Each process could also release some greenhouse gases, reducing its overall effectiveness.
Interfering with nature is a social question
The ocean affects everyone on the planet, but not everyone will have the same relationship to it or the same opportunities to have their opinions heard.
Much of the global population lives near the ocean, and some interventions might impinge on places that support jobs and communities. For example, boosting algae growth could affect nearby wild fisheries or interfere with recreation. People and communities are going to evaluate these risks differently depending on how they are personally affected.
In addition, peopleās trust in decision-makers often shapes their views of technologies. Some ways of using the ocean to remove carbon, such as those close to the shore, could be governed locally. Itās less clear how decisions about the high seas or deep ocean would be made, since these areas are not under the jurisdiction of any one country or global governing body.
Peopleās perceptions will likely also be shaped by such factors as whether or not they see ocean carbon dioxide removal as interfering with nature or protecting it. However, views of what is acceptable or not can change. As the impacts of climate change increase, tolerance for some unconventional interventions seems to be growing.
Itās also an ethical question
Ocean carbon dioxide removal also raises a variety of ethical questions that do not have straightforward answers.
For example, it forces people to consider the relationship between humans and nonhumans. Are humans obliged to intervene to reduce the impact on the climate, or ought we avoid ocean interventions? Do people have the right to purposefully intervene in the ocean or not? Are there specific obligations that humans ought to recognize when considering such options?
Romeo Gacad/AFP via Getty Images
Other ethical questions revolve around who makes decisions about ocean carbon dioxide removal and the consequences. For example, who should be involved in decision-making about the ocean? Could relying on ocean carbon dioxide removal reduce societiesā commitment to reducing emissions through other means, such as by reducing consumption, increasing efficiency and transforming energy systems?
Who pays?
Finally, ocean carbon dioxide removal could be very expensive.
For example, mining and then adding rocks to reduce the oceanās acidity has been estimated to cost between US$60 and $200 per ton of carbon dioxide removed. To put that into context, the world produced more than 36 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from energy alone in 2021.
Even macroalgae cultivation could be in the tens of billions of dollars if done at the scale likely necessary to have an impact.
These methods are more expensive than many actions that reduce emissions right now. For instance, using solar panels to avoid carbon emissions can range from saving money to a cost of $50 per ton of carbon dioxide, while actions like reducing methane emissions are even less expensive. But the harm from continued climate change has been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions annually in the United States alone.
These costs raise more questions. For example, how much debt is fair for future generations to carry, and how should the costs be distributed globally to fix a global problem?
Ocean carbon dioxide removal could become a useful method for keeping global warming in check, but it should not be seen as a silver bullet, especially since there isnāt an effective global system for making decisions about the ocean.
Sarah Cooley, a former research scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and science outreach manager at the Ocean Conservancy, contributed to this article.
Terre Satterfield receives funding from Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions
(F20-00333) to explore public attitudes toward OCDR
Sonja Klinsky 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.
nojustice via iStock / Getty Images Plus
Have you visited Yew Nork? Does your stummy ache? What dog of bag food will we get?
In case youāve wondered what causes such speech errors or slips of the tongue, you might like to know that all speakers ā of all ages and abilities ā make them sometimes. Even people who use a sign language produce what some call āslips of the hand.ā Slips are a common feature of language.
As a developmental psycholinguist who studies how people use language, I am interested in what speech errors tell us about the human mind. Research shows that language users store and retrieve different units of language. These include small ones like single consonants, and big ones like phrases made of several words.
Exchanges and blends of sounds and words
One way to think about speech errors is in terms of the linguistic units that each involves. Another way to think about them is in terms of the actions affecting these units.
The āYew Norkā slip shows consonant sounds switching places ā a sound exchange. Notice that each of the consonants is first in its own syllable. The ādog of bag foodā slip shows a word exchange. Notice that both words are nouns. Vowel sounds can also switch places, as when a speaker who meant āfeed the poochā said, āfood the peach.ā
The āstummyā slip blends the synonyms āstomachā and ātummy.ā Phrases can also blend, as in āIt depends on the day of the mood Iām in.ā The speaker who said this had in mind both āthe day of the weekā and āthe mood Iām in,ā but with only one mouth for the two messages to pass through, he blended the phrases.
Substitutions by meaning
Another way to think about speech errors is in terms of what influences them. Substitutions of one word for another can illustrate.
Someone who meant to refer to fingers said instead, āDonāt burn your toes.ā The words ātoeā and āfingerā donāt sound alike, but they name similar body parts. In fact, Latin used the same word, ādigitus,ā to refer to digits of the hands and digits of the feet.
This word substitution ā and thousands like it ā suggests that our mental dictionaries link words with related meanings. In other words, semantic connections can influence speech errors. The speaker here was trying to get the word āfingerā from the body-part section of his mental dictionary and slipped over to its semantic neighbor ātoe.ā
Substitutions by sound
Another type of word substitution reveals something else about our mental dictionaries. Someone who meant to refer to his mustache said instead, āI got whipped cream on my mushroom.ā The words āmustacheā and āmushroomā sound similar. Each word starts with the same consonant and vowel, denoted as ā[mŹ]ā in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Each word is two syllables long with stress on the first syllable. But the meanings of these two words are not similar.
This word substitution ā and thousands like it ā suggests that our mental dictionaries also link words with similar sounds. In other words, phonological connections can influence speech errors. The speaker here was trying to get the word āmustacheā from the ā[mŹ]ā section of his mental dictionary and slipped over to its phonological neighbor āmushroom.ā
Insights from variety
Psycholinguists who collect and analyze speech errors find many ways to categorize them and to explain how and why people make them.
I like to compare that effort with how Charles Darwin studied GalƔpagos finches. Studying speech errors and finches in detail reveals how tiny variations distinguish them.
Theories of how people talk seek to explain those details. Psycholinguists distinguish slips by the linguistic units that they involve, such as consonants, vowels, words and phrases. They describe how and when speakers use such information. This can help us understand how language develops in children and how it breaks down in people with certain impairments.
These theories also describe different stages for planning and producing sentences. For example, psycholinguists hypothesize that speakers start with what they want to convey. Then they retrieve word meanings from a mental dictionary. They arrange the words according to the grammar of the language theyāre speaking. How words sound and the rhythm of whole sentences are later stages. If this is right, the āfinger-toeā substitution reflects an earlier stage than the āmustache-mushroomā substitution.
The study of speech errors reminds us that glitches happen now and then in every complex behavior. When you walk, you sometimes trip. When you talk, you sometimes slip.
Cecile McKee has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Her research on language production is in collaboration with Merrill F. Garrett (University of Arizona) and Dana McDaniel (University of Southern Maine).
The state officials who administer fair, accessible and secure elections have historically operated quietly without garnering much public attention. Elections happen, votes are counted, the winners are declared and democracy moves on.
But since 2020, secretaries of state and other state officials who oversee elections have come under increasing scrutiny and been exposed to increasing abuse.
Studies have shown both state Democratic and Republican chief election officials oversee elections with similar partisan outcomes, turnout rates and administrative policies. And despite the fact that most of these officers are selected through explicitly partisan processes, the majority of them behaved in a nonpartisan manner to ensure fair and secure elections.
But given the increasingly polarized and hostile political environment in the U.S., is the country about to experience an Election Day filled with conflict, contested election results and chief election officials who are no longer trusted?
What they do
The decentralized U.S. election system is run by state and local officials. State chief election officials, the title most often given to the top official in the system, have ultimate authority over elections in the state and oversee voting processes before, during and after an election.
There is a good deal of variation on how chief election officers are selected in each of the states. Most are selected through explicitly partisan processes, such as partisan elections or political appointment by a legislature or governor.
The responsibilities of these election officials include ensuring state and federal election laws are followed by local officials, implementing state plans to register eligible people to vote and maintaining the state voter registration database.
Additionally, they are responsible for training local officials to run elections and providing a process for testing and certifying voting equipment in the state.
Most of these chief election officers also have other important roles in state government. They may be responsible for administering business filings and licensing in a state and enforcing campaign finance regulations. They may also occupy a highly political role, as a successor to the governor.
How the system works
Election certification, the official tallied results of in-person and absentee votes, has many steps and includes a number of post-election activities.
The first steps of election certification take place on the local level, and then the state level. The U.S. has over 10,000 local election administration jurisdictions. It is the officials in these local jurisdictions who handle the day-to-day operations of elections where votes are initially counted.
After the polls close, local election officials are responsible for counting ballots. This includes mail-in and absentee ballots, which in some states can be accepted days after Election Day if postmarked beforehand.
Officials then process provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are those cast by voters who arrive at the polls on Election Day and whose eligibility to vote is uncertain.
Next, officials conduct whatās called a canvass. Thatās the tabulating, double-checking and transmitting of the results from the local jurisdiction to the state.
The certification finalizes the results based on the canvass.
While the exact procedures vary by state, a state canvassing board, chief election official or a small group that might include the governor and other state officials signs a certificate of election for all the candidates and ballot measures.
Undermining a trusted process
Iām a scholar of public-sector governance and a former local government official. I believe there are some disturbing signs emerging related to our highly partisan election administration system that could erode the publicās confidence in the neutrality of elections.
In our new book, āThe Independent Voter,ā my co-authors Jacqueline Salit and Omar Ali and I identify a series of vulnerabilities in this partisan system.
Overall mistrust in the neutrality of the election process is high, and voters are losing trust in U.S. elections. Claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent have been repeatedly disproved through exhaustive audits, recounts, reports and reviews. Yet despite this fact, consistently about 70% of Republican voters suspect election fraud.
This has led some states to alter the role of the chief election official. Some states have passed legislation that has shifted aspects of election administration to partisan bodies such as state legislatures or partisan-dominated election boards. When responsibility for an aspect of an election is changed in this way, it can intensify partisan gamesmanship, which in turn further erodes public trust.
Further affecting their reputation for neutrality, from 2000 to 2020 almost 30% of state chief election officers publicly endorsed a candidate running in a race under their supervision.
Additionally, in the upcoming 2022 midterms, chief election officer candidates in three swing states ā Arizona, Michigan and Nevada ā are running as election deniers.
Their platforms include eliminating mail voting, ballot drop boxes and even the use of electronic voting machines while giving power to partisan election observers and expanding their roles. Voting by mail makes voting more accessible to large groups of individuals and reduces the cost of elections. Eliminating the practice can make it harder for certain groups of people to vote. Expanding the role of partisan election observers can lead to voting intimidation.
Secretaries of state or chief election officers canāt single-handedly change an electionās results, but they can certainly undermine this system on a number of fronts.
They can refuse to certify the results of an election, triggering involvement of the governor or courts. They can also allow multiple audits by internal and external entities of election results and foster overall distrust in the election process and its outcomes by making public comments about the electionās results that signal the public shouldnāt trust the outcome of the election.
Disruption from the outside
Chief election officers are also being confronted with extreme partisan groups seeking to disrupt and exploit the system of election administration before, during and after election. This includes endless post-election challenges to the veracity of election results.
During elections, problems can be expected as extreme partisan groups have moved to assign supporters, poll workers and observers to disrupt voting centers, tamper with equipment or call voting procedures into question, as Trump loyalist Steve Bannon has encouraged. And even before Election Day, chief election officials are seeing a coordinated campaign of requests for 2020 voting records, in some cases paralyzing preparations for the midterm election season.
The changing nature, role and perception of state chief election officials is damaging their ability to administer fair elections. The end result: Democracy is weakened in the U.S.
Thom Reilly 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.
Pit bulls went from America’s best friend to public enemy ā now they’re slowly coming full circle
As recently as 50 years ago, the pit bull was Americaās favorite dog. Pit bulls were everywhere. They were popular in advertising and used to promote the joys of pet-and-human friendship. Nipper on the RCA Victor label, Pete the Pup in the āOur Gangā comedy short films, and the flag-wrapped dog on a classic World War I poster all were pit bulls.
With National Pit Bull Awareness Day celebrated on Oct. 26, itās a fitting time to ask how these dogs came to be seen as a dangerous threat.
Starting around 1990, multiple features of American life converged to inspire widespread bans that made pit bulls outlaws, called āfour-legged gunsā or ālethal weapons.ā The drivers included some dog attacks, excessive parental caution, fearful insurance companies and a tie to the sport of dog fighting.
As a professor of humanities and law, I have studied the legal history of slaves, vagrants, criminals, terror suspects and others deemed threats to civilized society. For my books āThe Law is a White Dogā and āWith Dogs at the Edge of Life,ā I explored human-dog relationships and how laws and regulations can deny equal protection to entire classes of beings.
Colin Dayan, CC BY-ND
In my experience with these dogs ā including nearly 12 years living with Stella, the daughter of champion fighting dogs ā I have learned that pit bulls are not inherently dangerous. Like other dogs, they can become dangerous in certain situations, and at the hands of certain owners. But in my view, there is no defensible rationale for condemning not only all pit bulls, but any dog with a single pit bull gene, as some laws do.
I see such action as canine profiling, which recalls another legal fiction: the taint or stain of blood that ordained human degradation and race hatred in the United States.
Bred to fight
The pit bull is strong. Its jaw grip is almost impossible to break. Bred over centuries to bite and hold large animals like bears and bulls around the face and head, itās known as a āgame dog.ā Its bravery and strength wonāt allow it to give up, no matter how long the struggle. It loves with the same strength; its loyalty remains the stuff of legend.
For decades pit bullsā tenacity encouraged the sport of dogfighting, with the dogs āpittedā against each other. Fights often went to the death, and winning animals earned huge sums for those who bet on them.
But betting on dogs is not a high-class sport. Dogs are not horses; they cost little to acquire and maintain. Pit bulls easily and quickly became associated with the poor, and especially with Black men, in a narrative that connected pit bulls with gang violence and crime.
Thatās how prejudice works: The one-on-one lamination of the pit bull onto the African American male reduced people to their accessories.
Owen Humphreys ā PA Images via Getty Images
Dogfighting was outlawed in all 50 states by 1976, although illegal businesses persisted. Coverage of the practice spawned broad assertions about the dogs that did the fighting. As breed bans proliferated, legal rulings proclaimed these dogs ādangerous to the safety or health of the communityā and judged that āpublic interests demand that the worthless shall be exterminated.ā
In 1987 Sports Illustrated put a pit bull, teeth bared, on its cover, with the headline āBeware of this Dog,ā which it characterized as born with āa will to kill.ā Time magazine published āTime Bombs on Legsā featuring this āvicious hound of the Baskervillesā that āseized small children like rag dolls and mauled them to death in a frenzy of bloodletting.ā
Presumed vicious
If a dog has āvicious propensities,ā the owner is assumed to share in this projected violence, both legally and generally in public perception. And once deemed ācontraband,ā both property and people are at risk.
This was evident in the much-publicized 2007 indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick for running a dogfighting business called Bad Newz Kennels in Virginia. Even the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ā two of the nationās leading animal welfare advocacy groups ā argued that the 47 pit bulls recovered from the facility should be killed because they posed a threat to people and other animals.
If not for the intervention of Best Friends Animal Society, Vickās dogs would have been euthanized. As the film āChampionsā recounts, a court-appointed special master determined each dogās fate. Ultimately, nearly all of the dogs were successfully placed in sanctuaries or adoptive homes.
Debating breed bans
Pit bulls still suffer more than any other dogs from the fact that they are a type of dog, not a distinct breed. Once recognized by the American Kennel Club as an American Staffordshire terrier, popularly known as an Amstaff, and registered with the United Kennel Club and the American Dog Breeders Association as an American pit bull terrier, now any dog characterized as a āpit bull typeā can be considered an outlaw in many communities.
For example, in its 2012 Tracey v. Solesky ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals modified the stateās common law in cases involving dog injuries. Any dog containing pit bull genes was āinherently dangerousā as a matter of law.
This subjected owners and landlords to what the courts call āstrict liability.ā As the court declared: āWhen an attack involves pit bulls, it is no longer necessary to prove that the particular pit bull or pit bulls are dangerous.ā
Dissenting from the ruling, Judge Clayton Greene recognized the absurdity of the majority opinionās āunworkable ruleā: āHow much āpit bull,āā he asked, āmust there be in a dog to bring it within the strict liability edict?ā
Itās equally unanswerable how to tell when a dog is a pit bull mix. From the shape of its head? Its stance? The way it looks at you?
Conundrums like these call into question statistics that show pit bulls to be more dangerous than other breeds. These figures vary a great deal depending on their sources.
Any statistics about pit bull attacks depend on the definition of a pit bull ā yet itās really hard to get good dog bite data that accurately IDs the breed.
Over the past decade, awareness has grown that breed-specific legislation does not make the public safer but does penalize responsible owners and their dogs. Currently 21 states prohibit local government from enforcing breed-specific legislation or naming specific breeds in dangerous dog laws. Maryland passed a law reversing the Tracey ruling in 2014. Yet 15 states still allow local communities to enact breed-specific bans.
Pit bulls demand a great deal more from humans than some dogs, but alongside their bracing way of being in the world, we humans learn another way of thinking and loving. Compared with many other breeds, they offer a more demanding but always affecting communion.
Colin Dayan 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.
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āThou shalt not killā may be the most recognizable moral prohibition in societies around the world.
But where does your sense of justice come from?
Throughout history, justice and laws about wrongdoing have been attributed to one god or another. More recently, justice has been traced to moral truths that can be discovered by judges and other legal experts, and to social norms that vary across cultures.
However, our research instead suggests that the human sense of justice, and criminal laws, is generated by the human brain.
Put simply: Being human makes you a decent lawmaker even if youāve never stepped foot in law school. To an important extent, criminal laws appear to be the end products of gut feelings about justice that are a part of human nature.
Hereās how we investigated just how universal these intuitions are:
Testing the human brainās sense of justice
Human conflict ranges from the mild, as when neighbors disagree about the appropriate loudness of music, to the serious, including cases of fraud, robbery, rape, homicide ā the stuff of criminal law.
Laws and litigation come in handy when youāre butting heads with someone. But your brain automatically generates intuitions about justice when there is even the potential for conflict, long before you set foot in court. People, even young children, have strong feelings about what counts as a wrongful action and how much punishment a wrongdoer deserves.
These justice intuitions come naturally to everyone. Theyāre like human lungs or human retinas ā part of being human.
So maybe the standard-issue human brain forms the basis of formal and informal justice. If so, a distinctive prediction follows: Laypeople will make decent lawmakers using their sense of justice even when they have no training in law. Further, laypeople will be able to intuitively recreate core features of actual criminal laws from cultures they are totally unfamiliar with.
We devised a study to test those predictions. We showed participants various offenses drawn from actual criminal codes but not the punishments that the law establishes for those offenses.
Some of the offenses we presented came from a modern and culturally familiar society, drawn from Title 18 of the Consolidated Pennsylvania Statutes. But other offenses were truly ancient and culturally foreign. Some participants evaluated offenses from the Laws of Eshnunna, a 3,800-year-old Mesopotamian legal code ā one of humanityās most ancient legal codes. Other participants saw offenses from the Tang Code, a 1,400-year-old legal code from China.
These archaic laws are the next best thing to time travel. They are like fossils that preserve the legal thinking of ancient lawmakers.
To give some examples, some of the Eshnunna offenses shown to participants included: biting out the eye of another man, seizing a boat fraudulently and failing to keep oneās aggressive ox in check, resulting in a slave being killed by the ox. Such were the offenses of an ancient Mesopotamian society.
Despite the massive cultural differences between the ancient city-state of Eshnunna and modern societies, if the sense of justice, and laws, originates in the human brain, then the king who decreed the Laws of Eshnunna and the participants in the study may be of one mind.
So next we asked participants to rate each of the offenses they saw. Some participants were asked to imagine they were lawmakers; they were asked to mock-legislate the fines each offense would deserve by law. Other participants mock-legislated prison sentences for each offense. To make sure participants were giving their untrained intuitions, we excluded from analyses participants who attended law school.
Indeed, the Eshnunna king and the participants in our study did display a shared sense of justice. The more study participants judged an ancient offense as serious, the higher the actual punishment provided by law for that offense.
This match between participantsā intuitions and ancient laws wasnāt perfect, but it was substantial. It suggests that human beings share a sense of justice and that people today can recreate the core of criminal laws from faraway societies that are thousands of years in the past.
Cultural effects on the sense of justice
A shared sense of justice that is part of human nature does not deny cultural differences.
Consider this Tang offense: āAll cases of a master who kills a slave who has not committed an offense are punished by one year of penal servitude (NB: redeemable by paying a fine of 20 copper chin).ā The Tang Code considers this offense to be relatively mild ā consider, for example, that ābeating and killing a person in an affrayā was punished by the Tang Code with strangulation or a fine of 120 copper chin. In contrast, study participants judged ākilling a slave who has not committed an offenseā a very serious transgression.
And yet, participantsā intuitive responses generally matched the responses called for in the ancient criminal codes. For instance, participants agreed with the Tang lawmakers that beating and killing a person in a fight is a worse offense than betting goods and articles in games of chance.
To us, this mix of cross-cultural differences and similarities suggests that the brain machinery that generates the sense of justice combines universal principles with open parameters that are filled in with local information. The universal principles may explain why participants generally saw eye to eye with the Eshnunna king and the Tang lawmakers. The open parameters may explain cultural variation.
Stan Tekiela Author/Naturalist/Wildlife Photographer/Moment via Getty Images
Evolutionary roots of a sense of justice
Conflict is evolutionarily ancient. Organisms, including nonhuman animals, can offend against others ā for example, by preying on them. And so natural selection would have endowed organisms with means that help them solve conflicts in their favor: fangs, antlers, neurotoxic venoms. These defenses and weapons are useful. Our ancestors lived in a world without police, and so they had to be their own police if they were to survive and thrive.
But human conflict is special. With their ingenuity and knack for cooperation, people can produce a huge array of goods and services that other people can swindle, rob, adulterate, counterfeit, embezzle and destroy. So the scope of human conflict is vast.
Brawn may help in human conflict, but brain is key. Humans live in an information-dense world, where itās important to know precisely how much harm is being done to you when someone offends against you. Accurately appraising wrongs allows victims to demand or deliver an amount of punishment that is, as in the story of Goldilocks, just right: neither too small that an undeterred offender will re-offend, nor too great that the offender will counter-punish the original victim. Our human ancestors didnāt have price tags or written laws to appraise wrongful actions, so they needed to appraise wrongful actions with their brains.
The brain mechanisms for appraising wrongdoing appear to be part of human nature ā the same in all times and places humans have lived in. Of course, justice intuitions and criminal laws vary across cultures. Grand theft auto wasnāt appraised in Sparta because there were no cars 2,500 years ago. Written criminal laws are absent in societies without writing systems.
Nevertheless, the human sense of justice seems to be fundamentally similar across space and time. And criminal laws everywhere may be shaped by a sense of justice and offense-appraising mechanisms that are universal ā akin to how universal mechanisms of taste perception give rise to the worldās diverse cuisines.
Daniel Sznycer received funding from Fonds de recherche du QuƩbec and Quebec Bio-Imaging Network
Carlton Patrick 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.
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If an alien were to look at Earth, many human technologies ā from cell towers to fluorescent light bulbs ā could be a beacon signifying the presence of life.
We are two astronomers who work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence ā or SETI. In our research, we try to characterize and detect signs of technology originating from beyond Earth. These are called technosignatures. While scanning the sky for a TV broadcast of some extraterrestrial Olympics may sound straightforward, searching for signs of distant, advanced civilizations is a much more nuanced and difficult task than it might seem.
Saying āhelloā with radios and lasers
The modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence began in 1959 when astronomers Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison showed that radio transmissions from Earth could be detected by radio telescopes at interstellar distances. The same year, Frank Drake, launched the first SETI search, Project Ozma, by pointing a large radio telescope a two nearby Sun-like stars to see if he could detect any radio signals coming from them. Following the invention of the laser in 1960, astronomers showed that visible light could also be detected from distant planets.
These first, foundational attempts to detect radio or laser signals from another civilization were all looking for focused, powerful signals that would have been intentionally sent to the solar system and meant to be found.
Given the technological limitations of the 1960s, astronomers did not give serious thought to searching for broadcast signals ā like television and radio broadcasts on Earth ā that would leak into space. But a beam of a radio signal, with all of its power focused towards Earth, could be detectable from much farther away ā just picture the difference between a laser and a weak light bulb.
The search for intentional radio and laser signals is still one of the most popular SETI strategies today. However, this approach assumes that extraterrestrial civilizations want to communicate with other technologically advanced life. Humans very rarely send targeted signals into space, and some scholars argue that intelligent species may purposefully avoid broadcasting out their locations. This search for signals that no one may be sending is called the SETI Paradox.
SPDO/TDP/DRAO/Swinburne Astronomy Productions/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Leaking radio waves
Though humans donāt transmit many intentional signals out to the cosmos, many technologies people use today produce a lot of radio transmissions that leak into space. Some of these signals would be detectable if they came from a nearby star.
The worldwide network of television towers constantly emits signals in many directions that leak into space and can accumulate into a detectable, though relatively faint, radio signal. Research is ongoing as to whether current emissions from cell towers in the radio frequency on Earth would be detectable using todayās telescopes, but the upcoming Square Kilometer Array radio telescope will be able to detect even fainter radio signals with 50 times the sensitivity of current radio telescope arrays.
Not all human-made signals are so unfocused, though. Astronomers and space agencies use beams of radio waves to communicate with satellites and space craft in the solar system. Some researchers also use radio waves for radar to study asteroids. In both of these cases, the radio signals are more focused and pointed out into space. Any extraterrestrial civilization that happened to be in the line of sight of these beams could likely detect these unambiguously artificial signals.
Finding megastructures
Aside from finding an actual alien spacecraft, radio waves are the most common technosignatures featured in sci-fi movies and books. But they are not the only signals that could be out there.
In 1960, astronomer Freeman Dyson theorized that, since stars are by far the most powerful energy source in any planetary system, a technologically advanced civilization might collect a significant portion of the starās light as energy with what would essentially be a massive solar panel. Many astronomers call these megastructures, and there are a few ways to detect them.
After using the energy in the captured light, the technology of an advanced society would re-emit some of the energy as heat. Astronomers have shown that this heat could be detectable as extra infrared radiation coming from a star system.
Another possible way to find a megastructure would be to measure its dimming effect on a star. Specifically, large artificial satellites orbiting a star would periodically block some of its light. This would appear as dips in the starās apparent brightness over time. Astronomers could detect this effect similarly to how distant planets are discovered today.
A whole lot of pollution
Another technosignature that astronomers have thought about is pollution.
Chemical pollutants ā like nitrogen dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons on Earth are almost exclusively produced by human industry. It is possible to detect these molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets with the same method the James Webb Space Telescope is using to search distant planets for signs of biology. If astronomers find a planet with an atmosphere filled with chemicals that can only be produced by technology, it may be a sign of life.
Finally, artificial light or heat from cities and industry could also be detectable with large optical and infrared telescopes, as would a large number of satellites orbiting a planet. But a civilization would need to produce far more heat, light and satellites than Earth does to be detectable across the vastness of space using technology humans currently possess.
Which signal is best?
No astronomer has ever found a confirmed technosignature, so itās hard to say what will be the first sign of alien civilizations. While many astronomers have thought a lot about what might make for a good signal,
ultimately, nobody knows what extraterrestrial technology might look like and what signals are out there in the Universe.
Some astronomers support a generalized SETI approach which searches for anything in space that current scientific knowledge cannot naturally explain. Some, like us, continue to search for both intentional and unintentional technosignatures. The bottom line is that there are many avenues for detecting distant life. Since no one knows what approach is likely to succeed first, there is still a lot of exciting work left to do.
Jason Wright does research supported by the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. He also does SETI research and runs conferences dedicated to SETI with funds from NASA and the NSF.
Macy Huston 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.
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U.S. retailers began selling over-the-counter hearing aids on Oct. 17, 2022, a long-awaited move that some experts predict could be a game-changer in making these devices accessible and affordable. A prescription is no longer needed, nor is a visit to a doctor or even a fitting appointment with a hearing specialist.
Instead, Americans can purchase hearing aids by going online or with a single trip to the nearest pharmacy or big-box store. These aids are only for those with mild to moderate hearing loss. For these consumers, over-the-counter hearing aids clearly offer an appealing alternative.
As an otologist/neurotologist ā thatās someone who specializes in the diseases of the ear ā I like to say that while vision binds us to the world, hearing binds us to each other. In my practice, I see firsthand how patients with hearing loss often withdraw socially and become isolated. They donāt want to put themselves in situations where they may mishear or seem disengaged, disinterested or unintelligent. This may be why studies show hearing loss is associated with depression and cognitive impairment.
So it seems the over-the-counter hearing aids would be a great solution for patients with hearing loss, right? Less hassle and less cost ā in many cases, thousands of dollars less ā and more people than ever getting the help they need. But itās not that simple. Occurring just two months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationās final ruling on the matter, over-the-counter sales of hearing aids come with caveats and even some risks.
How hearing loss happens
Hearing specialists divide hearing loss into two main categories: conductive and sensorineural hearing loss. Conductive loss is caused by any number of things, including ear wax obstruction, a perforation in the ear drum or fluid in the middle ear. Children are more likely than adults to have conductive hearing loss, and most of the time, many of these problems are relatively easy to correct.
But sensorineural hearing loss is caused by a problem occurring in the inner ear, auditory nerve and brain. Most commonly, there is a loss of the tiny cochlear hair cells that convert sounds into an electrical signal. The brain interprets that signal as a bird singing or a child laughing. Hair cell injury is generally permanent and irreversible; those cells do not regenerate in humans, or for that matter, in any mammal.
Whether conductive or sensorineural, hearing aids have proved to be a tremendous boon for patients with hearing loss. One national survey found that in 2019, 7.1% of adults aged 45 and over used a hearing aid.
Problems with over-the-counter hearing aids
Before over-the-counter hearing aids became available, patients needed a formal hearing test and assessment. This is critical because not all hearing loss is the same; hearing specialists ā both otolaryngologists and audiologists ā are trained to decipher the type of hearing loss that a patient is experiencing. From that, they make recommendations on hearing treatment. If a patient needs a hearing aid, a health care professional will fit them with one.
But purchasing an over-the-counter hearing aid requires none of those things ā not an ear exam, not a hearing test and not a fitting session. There are many reasons why this shortcut approach, while certainly less expensive and offering easier access, may not be ideal for someone experiencing hearing loss.
First, patients may have a chronic infection or condition that requires medical or surgical management, rather than a hearing aid. Second, some patients may be a candidate for surgical correction of their hearing loss. Third, patients with hearing loss in one ear or a large difference in hearing between the two ears may have a benign growth on the hearing and balance nerve. This often requires surgery or radiation treatment. Again, a hearing aid would not help with this condition.
Additionally, for those who would benefit from an over-the-counter product, not every hearing aid fits every ear ā one size most certainly does not fit all. And one more caveat: Over-the-counter hearing aids are not recommended for people under 18.
Finally, some patients may have too much hearing loss for these devices to provide any benefit. Instead, many patients with more advanced hearing loss have the option of a cochlear implant, which is essentially a wire with an electrode array surgically placed into the cochlea, the bony āhouseā of the hair cells situated deep in the skull. The electrodes stimulate the auditory nerve directly, bypassing the damaged hair cells. For these patients, cochlear implants offer an exceptional opportunity to hear again. As the technology improves, more people will become candidates for this medical miracle.
About 80% of adults aged 55 to 74 who would benefit from a hearing aid do not use them. The new over-the-counter hearing aids hold great promise for the right patients. But buyer beware: They are not panaceas. Not all customers will be satisfied with over-the-counter hearing aids ā and a visit to the doctor or audiologist is still critical.
Bradley Kesser 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.