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Mention the word “fossils” to people and most will probably think of bones. Of course, body fossils make up a large part of the global fossil record. But humans and other species leave their mark in other ways too – for instance, their tracks. The study of these fossil tracks and traces is called ichnology.

I am an ichnologist. In 2008 my colleagues and I launched the Cape South Coast Ichnology Project to study a 350km stretch of South Africa’s coastline. We’ve since identified more than 350 vertebrate tracksites, most of them in cemented dunes called aeolianites that date back to the Pleistocene Epoch (also known as the Ice Age), which began about 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago.

At a global level it is rare to find fossilised hominin tracks. There is something very special about them: a fossil trackway looks as if it could have been created yesterday, and the fact that our own ancestors would have created such tracks fills them with extra meaning. It’s always a thrill for researchers to find them.

We knew from the region’s extensive archaeological record that ancestral humans inhabited the region during the Pleistocene. And Homo sapiens tracks had been identified elsewhere in South Africa, on the Cape east coast in the 1960s and the Cape west coast in the 1990s. But, given their rarity, we weren’t banking on hominin tracks being among our finds.

We were fortunate. In 2016 we found 40 hominin tracks on the ceiling and side walls of a cave at Brenton-on-Sea, near the town of Knysna on the Cape south coast. In subsequent years we have been privileged to find more hominin tracksites, all on aeolianite surfaces on the Cape coast. One discovery, in the Garden Route National Park, even included the oldest Homo sapiens footprint identified anywhere in the world – it dates back about 153,000 years.

Read more:
World’s oldest _Homo sapiens_ footprint identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast

Now we’ve documented a cluster of nine hominin trace fossil sites at Brenton-on-Sea: seven tracksites, and two open-air archaeological sites containing tools, shells and bone (which help us understand the diet of our ancestors). One of the tracksites is the original site found in 2016. Our analysis shows that it contains the oldest known evidence of a human running. Another site shows evidence of toddler tracks alongside those of adults.

A cluster of nine sites

Each site within this 1,200 metre stretch of coastline is from a different rock unit and they appear to span a considerable time interval. Adjacent rocks have been dated using a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence to a range of between 113,000 and 76,000 years (that is a measure of how long ago grains deep within the rocks were exposed to light).

The nine sites are not easy to find: some were only briefly exposed following storm surges, and are now again covered by metres of sand, while others can only be safely accessed using ladders. At one site, the space between the track-bearing layer on the ceiling and the surface below it was so tiny that we had to bring in our caving colleagues – who love working in confined spaces – to properly document it. The rest of us struggled to fit into the narrow gap.

This cave, in rocks that are hundreds of millions of years old, is situated close to the cluster of tracksites, and may have been habitable at the time the tracks were made.
Charles Helm, Author provided (no reuse)

The Cape south coast hominin tracks are unusual at a global level. With most hominin tracksites across the world, it is usually the layer in which the tracks were made that is preserved. However, on the Cape south coast the tracks are mostly preserved as natural casts, formed by sediment that filled the tracks. This is why our team often finds tracks on the undersides of overhangs and cave ceilings: show us an overhang from the right age and type of rock and within a few seconds we will have crawled under it and started looking up at the ceiling.

In two cases, we have found both the infill layer on the ceiling, and a fallen slab beneath it containing the track-bearing layer, a phenomenon that as far as we know has not been described from anywhere else in the world. And globally, hominin tracks found in aeolianites (made on sandy dune surfaces) are exceedingly rare.

Close to the cluster of nine sites are caves containing unexcavated archaeological material beside much older Paleozoic rocks. These caves might well have been exposed and habitable at the time that all these tracks were registered. In addition, for most of this time period, the shoreline would have been not too distant, about 2km-3km seaward of the modern coastline, which would have allowed for coastal foraging. These factors may help to explain why there are so many tracks in one relatively small area.

Unfortunately, one site could not be interpreted because it was defaced by graffiti before we could get to it.

Read more:
Graffiti threatens precious evidence of ancient life on South Africa’s coast

The oldest evidence of humans using sticks

Three of the Brenton-on-Sea sites also contain some of the oldest known evidence of humans using sticks. The organic matter from which such sticks were composed would long since have decayed, and the ichnology (trace fossil) record therefore provides what is probably the only viable means of identifying such stick use.

Sticks could potentially have been used as walking or running aids, to cope with ambulating with an injury, in foraging techniques, for messaging, or for what might be aesthetic purposes, such as inscribing patterns in the sand.

An ancestral ‘home base’

Together, the sites containing these hominin tracks and traces provide complementary evidence not just of a human presence through footprints, but also of the behaviour of our ancestors, providing details of their activities, their tools and their diet.

They confirm the importance of the Cape coast as a region of great importance in the evolution of Homo sapiens prior to the subsequent diaspora out of Africa. The great preponderance of hominin tracksites older than 50,000 years has now been documented from South Africa’s Cape coast, and a cluster of seven tracksites, like the one we have described, is extremely unusual globally.

We now know where and how to look for such tracks and traces, and our eyes are trained on finding further evidence that tells us more about one of humanity’s ancestral “home bases” and the activities of those who inhabited it. Läs mer…

Ghanaian elections have become much more challenging for politicians. In the past they have often been characterised as nothing more than an ethnic headcount. But since the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections, there’s been a growing share of swing voters.

We discovered this trend in a study, which corroborates others.

We define a swing voter as someone who has voted for a different party in the previous four presidential elections or one who has cast a split-ticket ballot during that period.

As researchers of democratic developments on the African continent, we were interested in the increasing power swings on the continent, especially Ghana.

Ghana, which held its last elections in 2020, is scheduled to go to the polls in December 2024.

We surveyed over 3,000 voters randomly selected from 33 of Ghana’s 275 constituencies. We also sampled different regions. We included the Greater Accra region for its demographic diversity and status as the national capital.

From our data, 29.69% of respondents reported they had voted across party lines before in presidential or parliamentary elections since the 2008 elections. That is, almost three in 10 of the Ghanaians in our study had cast a swing vote before. In 2000, only 13% of Ghanaian voters were swing voters.

The data showed that clientelism (the practice of distributing material benefits in return for political allegiance) fails to explain this change. Perceptions of party performance have become more important.

We found that those most likely to change support between elections were men, older voters and people with more schooling. The least likely swing voters according to ethnic group were Ashantis and Ewes. However, Ewes were more likely than other groups to cast a split-ticket vote.

The rising share of swing voters in the country’s elections may be good for the country. It creates uncertainty in electoral outcomes, which should encourage more political accountability and responsiveness to voters’ needs. It also creates more competitive and issue-focused electoral environments.

Clientelism’s role

Clientelism is publicly frowned upon in Ghana, but it has been widespread in the past. Even in the Fourth Republic, which began in 1992, major political parties like the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party continue to engage in patronage, often using state resources to win voter support. This practice has contributed to socio-economic inequalities. It has enabled the political elite to reinforce power structures by focusing limited resources on voters whose loyalties are most easily swayed by modest material inducements.

There are two forms of clientelism: positive and negative. Positive clientelism is the use of gifts or promises of gifts to buy electoral support. Negative clientelism refers to threats of violence or losing gifts if voters fail to vote as expected.

In our study, core voters (individuals who have voted for the same party in the last four presidential and parliamentary elections) were more likely to report that they received gifts or promises of favours from their party. They also reported that those gifts were important to their vote choices. Specifically, voters who reported receiving gifts from a political party before elections were 23% less likely to vote for the other party.

However, for voters who reported experiencing threats of violence or forfeiture of benefits, the likelihood of swing voting was higher. That is, when voters are threatened, they were found to be 24% more likely to revolt by casting swing votes.

This implies that positive clientelism might still help maintain party loyalties, but negative clientelism might turn people into swing voters. This dynamic might also imply a backlash against coercive tactics, a trend that fuels the growing tendency for voters to take political parties’ gifts but vote against them anyway.

Read more:
Why members of parliament in Ghana can get away with ignoring voters

Political party performance

One of the strongest determinants of swing voting was found to be voters’ perceptions of party performance. Voters who prioritised the performance records of political parties, particularly in terms of public goods provision and governance, were 48% more likely to report having cast a swing vote before.

This suggests that a growing number of voters in Ghana are moving away from clientelist-driven voting and are instead evaluating political parties based on their ability to deliver on campaign promises and improve national welfare.

Demographic factors

The analysis also highlighted certain demographic factors that influence swing voting. For instance, older voters, urban residents, and those with higher levels of education were more likely to be swing voters. These groups of voters are more likely to have greater access to political information and a higher political awareness, allowing them to focus more on policies than on partisan ideologies.

Gender differences were also noted, with females being less likely to swing their vote compared to males. Ethnic factors were significant as well, with certain ethnic groups, such as the Ashanti and the Ewe, being less likely to swing their vote. The Ashanti have historically rallied around the New Patriotic Party while the Ewe rallied around the National Democratic Congress because these parties were seen as representing the interests of their ethnic groups.

The Ewe were one of the leading split-ticket voting groups in the country, however – mainly in regions outside of their home Volta Region.

The findings of our study suggest that the traditional models of Ghanaian electoral behaviour, which emphasise clientelism and ethnic loyalty, don’t explain the dynamics of contemporary elections.

The shift towards performance-based voting could have significant implications for political parties. Those that fail to deliver on their promises or that rely too heavily on clientelist strategies may find it difficult to maintain their electoral base. Läs mer…

Zimbabwe’s government undertook a survey in 2023 to ascertain how many children were living on the streets of the country’s second biggest city, Bulawayo. The most recent numbers were from a similar 2015 survey, the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Welfare told reporters – and, in the intervening eight years, it was clear that many more children had ended up on Bulawayo’s streets. The situation is similar in the capital city, Harare; in July 2024 it was reported that some “rowdy street kids” were robbing people in the city centre.

The phenomenon of children living and working on the streets is not a uniquely Zimbabwean problem.

Accurate figures are hard to come by: in 1989 Unicef put the estimated global population of street children at 100 million; it gave the same estimate in 2002 and 2005. More recent figures suggest that as many as one in five of the world’s children are living or working on the streets. (There are about 2 billion children aged between 0 and 14 in the world.) The lack of reliable figures shows that this is a hidden population. They are mobile and often unnoticed by others.

There are many reasons that children choose to leave their homes and attempt to eke out a living on the streets. These include their basic needs, like adequate food and shelter, not being met, neglect by their families and a desire to support themselves or their families.

But the situation has been made worse in Zimbabwe by several factors. The country’s decades-long economic crisis saw the national poverty rate hit 72% in 2019. Millions of Zimbabweans go hungry each day, a situation worsened by climate-induced shocks.

Read more:
Zimbabwe: El Niño drought causes major drop in Lake Kariba levels – a disaster for people and wildlife

Life on the streets leaves children vulnerable to extreme weather, like cold spells and heat waves, as well as violence and diseases. Since most children drop out of school either before or when they leave home, they also lose out on opportunities to learn, develop and ultimately better their circumstances. Schooling is a sort of social vaccine against a number of ills.

Many scholars consider family reunification the best way to help vulnerable children such as those living on the streets. Researchers argue that it’s necessary to identify and solve the problems that lead to separation, and provide proper support to the family. Studies have shown that children are more likely to return to the streets if the family hasn’t been supported.

However, many governments across Africa take the view that family reunification involves nothing more than returning children to their homes.

I am a psychology scholar with a focus on child development. With several colleagues, NGOs and government representatives, I set out to test a different approach to family reunification. We worked with children, parents and guardians who were going through a reunification process to help them build resilience. The process strengthened family bonds, provided children with both livelihood and schooling opportunities – and, ultimately, means there’s less chance that they’ll return to life on the streets.

Giving children agency

The study, which took place over a period of two years (2022 to 2024) in Harare, involved 24 children (aged between 9 and 18) and their families. Some children had spent as few as two days on the streets; others had been living on the streets for months. The longer a child has lived on the streets, the lower the chances of a successful reunification as they may have adapted or feel there’s no need to return home.

Officials from the Department of Social Development and Volunteers for Vulnerable Children, an organisation that provides reunification support in Harare, helped me to identify participants.

Many of the children cited parental neglect and abuse, poverty, peer pressure, and divorce as reasons for leaving their homes and staying on the streets. A few had been orphaned. Some of them left their homes looking for employment in the city and ended up on the streets having failed to secure jobs.

One of the most important aspects of this study was that it centred the children and their voices. Children are often considered too vulnerable and immature to have the agency to suggest solutions to the problems they face at home. This view neglects the fact that these children leave their homes to stay on the streets and then voluntarily decide to return – a solid sign of their agency.

Once the children had outlined the challenges they experienced at home, we brought them together with their families and community leaders, such as village heads and community care workers, to talk about strategies to strengthen their family bonds, build their collective resilience and keep the children at home.

The project provided livelihood support and parental training and linked the children with government support for education and communities for food support. One family that that had become homeless was helped by their community to find a shelter while two homeless children were reintegrated with foster parents.

All 24 of the children, in consultation with their guardians and community participants, decided that they wanted to return to school. They also wanted the chance to run their own small businesses, such as buying and selling goats or chickens, or buying and reselling other goods.

There was a clear commitment from all parties to making the reunification process work. One of the children’s fathers said:

I thank you for this initiative, I hope that my daughter passes her school and reaches her full potential. I promise to do anything in my power to do my best in supporting her education beyond what you have done.

And one of the children told us: “I am very thankful for this project, I am now back in school and have my goats for use in the future.”

We followed up by visiting the children and their families at their homes together with officials from our partner NGOs, social development officials from government, community care workers or a combination of these groups. As of August 2024 all 24 children were still living at home with their families and 22 were back at school.

Looking forward

This initiative is similar to a model that’s been successfully tested in many Latin American countries, combining therapeutic approaches, livelihood support and educational support to ensure that family reunification is sustainable.

Our results suggest that this kind of intervention can work in Zimbabwe. We hope that the method can be scaled up and used elsewhere in the country to help children get off the streets, back to their families and education – and to ensure that their best interests are kept at the heart of all reunification programmes. Läs mer…

Home insurance rates are rising in the United States, not only in Florida, which saw tens of billions of dollars in losses from hurricanes Helene and Milton, but across the country.

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, homeowners insurance increased an average of 11.3% nationwide in 2023, with some states, including Texas, Arizona and Utah, seeing nearly double that increase. Some analysts predict an average increase of about 6% in 2024.

These increases are driven by a potent mix of rising insurance payouts coupled with rising costs of construction as people build increasingly expensive homes and other assets in harm’s way.

When home insurance averages $2,377 a year nationally, and $11,000 per year in Florida, this is a blow to many people. Despite these rising rates, Jacques de Vaucleroy, chairman of the board of reinsurance giant Swiss Re, believes U.S. insurance is still priced too low to fully cover the risks.

It isn’t just that premiums are changing. Insurers now often reduce coverage limits, cap payouts, increase deductibles and impose new conditions or even exclusions on some common perils, such as protection for wind, hail or water damage. Some require certain preventive measures or apply risk-based pricing – charging more for homes in flood plains, wildfire-prone zones, or coastal areas at risk of hurricanes.

Homeowners watching their prices rise faster than inflation might think something sinister is at play. Insurance companies are facing rapidly evolving risks, however, and trying to price their policies low enough to remain competitive but high enough to cover future payouts and remain solvent in a stormier climate. This is not an easy task. In 2021 and 2022, seven property insurers filed for bankruptcy in Florida alone. In 2023, insurers lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states.

But these changes are raising alarm bells. Some industry insiders worry that insurance may be losing its relevance and value – real or perceived – for policyholders as coverage shrinks, premiums rise and exclusions increase.

How insurers assess risk

Insurance companies use complex models to estimate the likelihood of current risks based on past events. They aggregate historical data – such as event frequency, scale, losses and contributing factors – to calculate price and coverage.

However, the increase in disasters makes the past an unreliable measure. What was once considered a 100-year event may now be better understood as a 30- or 50-year event in some locations.

What many people do not realize is that the rise of so-called “secondary perils” – an insurance industry term for floods, hailstorms, strong winds, lightning strikes, tornadoes and wildfires that generate small to mid-size damage – is becoming the main driver of the insurability challenge, particularly as these events become more intense, frequent and cumulative, eroding insurers’ profitability over time.

A tornado tore the roof off a home in Madison, Tenn., in 2023. The 2024 tornado season was one of the busiest on record.
Jon Cherry/Getty Images

Climate change plays a role in these rising risks. As the climate warms, air can hold more moisture – about 7% more with every degree Celsius of warming. That leads to stronger downpours, more thunderstorms, larger hail events and a higher risk of flooding in some regions. The U.S. was on average 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer in 2022 than in 1970.

Insurance companies are revising their models to keep up with these changes, much as they did when smoking-related illnesses became a significant cost burden in life and health insurance. Some companies use climate modeling to augment their standard actuarial risk modeling. But some states have been hesitant to allow climate modeling, which can leave companies systematically underrepresenting the risks they face.

Each company develops its own assessment and geographic strategy to reach a different conclusion. For example, Progressive Insurance has raised its homeowner rates by 55% between 2018 and 2023, while State Farm has raised them only 13.7%.

While a homeowner who chooses to make home improvements, such as installing a luxury kitchen, can expect an increase in premiums to account for the added replacement value, this effect is typically small and predictable. Generally, the more substantial premium hikes are due to the ever-increasing risk of severe weather and natural disasters.

Insurance for insurers

When risks become too unpredictable or volatile, insurers can turn to reinsurance for help.

Reinsurance companies are essentially insurance companies that insure insurance companies. But in recent years, reinsurers have recognized that their risk models are also no longer accurate and have raised their rates accordingly. Property reinsurance alone increased by 35% in 2023.

Reinsurance is also not very well suited to covering secondary perils. The traditional reinsurance model is focused on large, rare catastrophes, such as devastating hurricanes and earthquakes.

Maps illustrate the average loss from flooding alone and expected increases by mid-century. About 90% of catastrophes in the U.S. involve flooding, but just 6% of U.S. homeowners have flood insurance.
Fifth National Climate Assessment

As an alternative, some insurers are moving toward parametric insurance, which provides a predefined payment if an event meets or exceeds a predefined intensity threshold. These policies are less expensive for consumers because the payouts are capped and cover events such as a magnitude 7 earthquake, excessive rain within a 24-hour period or a Category 3 hurricane in a defined geographical area. The limits allow insurers to provide a less expensive form of insurance that is less likely to severely disrupt their finances.

Protecting the consumer

Of course, insurers don’t operate in an entirely free market. State insurance regulators evaluate insurance companies’ proposals to raise rates and either approve or deny them.

The insurance industry in North Carolina, for example, where Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage, is arguing for a homeowner premium increase of more than 42% on average, ranging from 4% in parts of the mountains to 99% in some waterfront areas.

If a rate increase is denied, it could force an insurer to simply withdraw from certain market sectors, cancel existing policies or refuse to write new ones when their “loss ratio” – the ratio of claims paid to premiums collected – becomes too high for too long.

Since 2022, seven of the top 12 insurance carriers have either cut existing homeowners policies or stopped selling new ones in the wildfire-prone California homeowner market, and an equal number have pulled back from the Florida market due to the increasing cost of hurricanes.

To stem this tide, California is reforming its regulations to speed up the rate increase approval process and allow insurers to make their case using climate models to judge wildfire risk more accurately.

Florida has instituted regulatory reforms that have reduced litigation and associated costs and has removed 400,000 policies from the state-run insurance program. As a result, eight insurance carriers have entered the market there since 2022.

Looking ahead

Solutions to the mounting insurance crisis also involve how and where people build. Building codes can require more resilient homes, akin to how fire safety standards increased the effectiveness of insurance many decades ago.

By one estimate, investing $3.5 billion in making the two-thirds of U.S. homes not currently up to code more resilient to storms could save insurers as much as $37 billion by 2030.

In the end, if affordability and relevance of insurance continue to degrade, real estate prices will start to decline in exposed locations. This will be the most tangible sign that climate change is driving an insurability crisis that disrupts wider financial stability.

Justin D’Atri, Climate Coach at the education platform Adaptify U and Sustainability Transformation Lead at Zurich Insurance Group, contributed to this article. Läs mer…

Imagine – it’s the mid-1800s, and you’re riding your high-wheeled, penny-farthing bicycle down a dusty road. Sure, it may have some bumps, but if you lose your balance, you’re landing on a relatively soft dirt road. But as the years go by, these roads are replaced with pavement, cobblestones, bricks or wooden slats. All these materials are much harder and still quite bumpy.

As paved roads grew more common across the U.S. and Europe, bicyclists started to suffer gruesome skull fractures and other serious head injuries during falls.

As head injuries became more common, people started seeking out head protection. But the first bike helmets were very different than helmets of today.

I’m a materials engineer who teaches a course at Georgia Tech about materials science and engineering in sports. The class covers many topics, but particularly helmets, as they’re used in many different sports, including cycling, and the materials they’re made of play an important role in how they work. Over the decades, people have used a wide variety of materials to protect their heads while biking, and companies continue to develop new and innovative materials.

In the beginning, there was the pith helmet.

Pith helmets

The first head protection concept introduced to the biking world was a hat made from pith, which is the spongy rind found in the stem of sola plants, aeschynomene aspera. Pith helmet craftsmen would press the pith into sheets and laminate it across dome-shaped molds to form a helmet shape. Then, they’d cover the hats in canvas as a form of weatherproofing.

Hats made out of pith were used by militaries as well as for head protection while biking.
Auckland Museum, CC BY-SA

Pith helmets were far from what we would consider a helmet today, but they persisted until the early 20th century, when bicycle-racing clubs emerged. Since pith helmets offered little to no ventilation, the racers began to use halo-shaped leather helmets. These had better airflow and were more comfortable, although they weren’t much better at protecting the head.

Leather strip bike helmets were made in the 1930s.
Museums Victoria, CC BY-SA

Leather halo helmets

The initial concept for the halo helmet used a simple leather strip wrapped around the forehead. But these halo helmets quickly evolved, as riders arranged additional strips longitudinally from front to back. They wrapped the leather bands in wool.

For better head protection, the helmet makers then started adding more layers of leather strips to increase the helmet’s thickness. Eventually, they added different materials such as cotton, foam and other textiles into these leather layers for better protection.

While these had better airflow than the pith hats, the leather “hairnet” helmets continued to offer very little protection during a fall on a paved surface. And, like pith, the leather helmets degraded when exposed to sweat and rain.

Despite these drawbacks, leather strip helmets dominated the market for several decades as cycling continued to evolve throughout the 20th century.

Then, in the 1970s, a nonprofit dedicated to testing motorcycle helmets called the Snell Foundation released new standards for bike helmets. They set their standards so high that only lightweight motorcycle helmets could pass, which most bicyclists refused to wear.

New materials and new helmets

The motorcycle equipment manufacturing company Bell Motorsports responded to the new standards by releasing the Bell Biker in 1975. This helmet used expanded polystyrene, or EPS. EPS is the same foam used to manufacture styrofoam coolers. It’s lightweight and absorbs energy well.

Constructing the Bell Biker involved spraying EPS into a dome shaped mold. The manufacturers used small pellets of a very hard plastic – polycarbonate, or PC – to mold an outer shell and then adhere it to the outside of the EPS.

Expanded polystyrene, or EPS, is a foam used in styrofoam coolers as well as the core of bike helmets.
Tiia Monto/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Unlike the pith and leather helmets, this design was lightweight, load bearing, impact absorbing and well ventilated. The PC shell provided a smooth surface so that during a fall, the helmet would skid along the pavement instead of getting jerked around and caught, which could cause abrupt head rotation and lead to concussions and other head and neck injuries.

Over the next two decades, as cycling became more popular, helmet manufacturers tried to strike the perfect balance between lightweight and ventilated helmets, while simultaneously providing impact protection.

In order to decrease weight, a company called Giro Sport Design created an all-EPS helmet covered by a thin lycra fabric cover instead of a hard PC shell. This design eliminated the weight of the PC shell and improved ventilation.

In 1989, a company called Pro Tec introduced a helmet with a nylon mesh infused in the EPS foam core. The nylon mesh dramatically increased the helmet’s structural support without the added weight of the PC shell.

Many racing cyclists found teardrop-style helmets to be more aerodynamic.
Bongarts/Getty Images, CC BY-NC-ND

Meanwhile, as cycling became more competitive, many riders and manufacturers started designing more aerodynamic helmets using the existing materials. A revolutionary teardrop style helmet debuted in the 1984 Olympics.

Now, even casual biking enthusiasts will don teardrop helmets.

Helmets on the market today

Helmet makers continue to innovate. Today, many commercial brands use a hard polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, shell around the EPS foam in place of a PC shell to increase the helmet’s protection and lifespan, while decreasing cost.

Meanwhile, some brands still use PC shells. Instead of gluing them to the EPS foam, the shell serves as the mold itself, with the EPS expanding to fit inside it. Manufacturing helmets this way eliminates several process steps, as well as any gaps between the foam and shell. This process makes the helmet both stronger and cheaper to manufacture.

As helmets evolve to provide more protection with still lighter weight, materials called copolymers, such as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, are replacing PC and PET shell materials.

Materials that are easier and cheaper to manufacture, such as expanded polyurethane and expanded polypropylene, are also starting to replace the ubiquitous EPS core.

Just as the leather and pith helmets would look strange to a cyclist today, a century from now, bike helmets could be made with entirely new and innovative materials. Läs mer…

Of all the reasons it could be hard to pay rent each month, did you have an algorithm-powered illegal cartel on your list?

Millions of people across the United States are paying far more rent than they can reasonably afford, with rental housing prices rising far quicker than household income. In 2022, 22.4 million U.S. households were spending more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities, up from 20.4 million in 2019.

Many of these households faced severe cost burdens, with an all-time high of 11.6 million struggling with housing costs that consume more than half of their income. In Chicago, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Virginia Beach and Washington, year-over-year rental prices are climbing at double-digit rates.

Several factors drive the high cost of rentals, including increasing demand, a dwindling supply of low-rent units, the rising cost of capital to build new rentals, and regulatory barriers restricting the construction of multifamily units.

But there’s another surprising factor driving up rental prices: landlords colluding with the help of technology. The U.S. Justice Department is suing the company RealPage, Inc., accusing it of selling software to landlords that allows them to collectively set prices – the illegal practice of price-fixing. As a former official in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and a law professor, I’ve been following the case closely.

The perils of price-fixing

The Federal Trade Commission defines price-fixing as an agreement, conspiracy or combination among competitors to raise, fix or otherwise maintain the price at which their goods or services are sold.

Any agreement that restricts price competition violates the antitrust laws. Examples of price-fixing agreements include commitments among competitors to hold prices firm, adopt a standard formula for computing prices, or adhere to a minimum fee or price schedule.

So when competitors share proprietary, confidential current price information – directly or indirectly through an intermediary – to stabilize or control industry pricing, they have crossed the line into illegal collusion, according to the FTC. That is the case in major portions of the U.S. rental market, the Justice Department argues.

One algorithm for all

In August 2024, the Justice Department and eight states filed a lawsuit in a federal court in North Carolina against RealPage. The Justice Department accused the company of selling software to landlords that collects nonpublic information from competing landlords and uses that combined information to make pricing recommendations.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer at a news conference about the Justice Department suing RealPage on Aug. 23, 2024.
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Landlords who use the software input the rental prices they charge, and the software aggregates all the data from the company’s customers. The software’s algorithm then makes recommendations for what to charge. The recommendations are generally higher than the current market rate, and most customers take the recommendations, which push prices in a market higher.

Even if landlords retain some authority to deviate from the algorithm’s recommendations, it is illegal for competing landlords to jointly delegate key aspects of their pricing to a common algorithm, according to the Justice Department suit. The Justice Department declared that “RealPage replaces competition with coordination. It substitutes unity for rivalry. It subverts competition and the competitive process. It does so openly and directly – and American renters are left paying the price.”

The case is unusual in that, unlike a typical price-fixing cartel, the landlords used RealPage’s algorithms to dramatically improve their ability to engage in price-fixing. Algorithmic price-fixing is typically easier and more effective than other types of cartel behavior. The software can easily aggregate massive amounts of proprietary data, optimize cartel gains, monitor real-time deviations from cartel pricing and minimize incentives to cheat.

“It’s much easier to price-fix when you’re outsourcing it to an algorithm versus when you’re sharing manila envelopes in a smoke-filled room,” Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter told The New York Times.

Since 2022, RealPage and various property managers have been named as defendants in more than 30 class action lawsuits alleging the RealPage software is used to unlawfully fix rental prices. Federal courts tend to be sympathetic to such arguments, as shown in the denial of a motion to dismiss the case in one of the private lawsuits filed against RealPage.

In that case, the court held that a price-fixing agreement could exist as a matter of law. Landlords provided RealPage’s algorithmic system with their proprietary commercial data, knowing that RealPage would require the same from their competitors and would use all of that data to recommend rental prices to all of the company’s clients.

A news report summarizes the government’s case against RealPage.

Classic price-fixing or data-driven decisions?

Some landlords seem to be aware that in sharing confidential price information to RealPage’s software, they were facilitating the unlawful monitoring and raising of rental prices. The Justice Department complaint quoted a landlord commenting on RealPage’s software, “I always liked this product because your algorithm uses proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and term. That’s classic price-fixing.”

Even RealPage’s own executives have boasted that when landlords collectively use their software, they can use “every possible opportunity to increase price,” according to the complaint.

RealPage argued that its software “simply helps landlords make data-driven decisions” in a competitive market. The company claims its tools are designed to reflect market conditions and optimize occupancy rates, not to engage in price-fixing.

The company describes the impact of its alleged collusion with landlords as “a rising tide [that] raises all ships.” Perhaps a better description for their service is a rising tide that raises all ships for those who have one.

The Justice Department’s case and the private cases are in the early stages of litigation. If the department is successful, RealPage will be barred from engaging in the anticompetitive practices related to helping landlords share proprietary pricing information. Läs mer…

Donor-advised funds, or DAFs, are financial accounts funded by donors to support future charitable work. This kind of giving differs greatly from charitable giving as a whole because it’s much more likely to involve donations of assets like stock, real estate or cryptocurrencies that have gained in value.

That’s what my co-author, Helen Flannery and I, found in our new study that will soon be published in “Nonprofit Operations and Supply Chain Management” as part of an academic book series.

We examined the IRS filings of all charities from 2020 to 2022, including organizations that administer DAFs. Such DAF sponsors include charities affiliated with large financial companies like Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity. By looking at the types of gifts received by these charities, we found that noncash giving represents more than 16% of the average DAF’s revenue versus only about 3% on average for overall charitable giving, which covers everything from animal shelters to orchestras.

This difference is even more pronounced for the largest national DAF operations, which on average had 46% of their incoming assets in noncash form.

These noncash gifts were primarily investment assets like stocks, bonds and real estate. We find that while the average conventional charity gets around 33% of its noncash contributions as investments, the average DAF sponsor gets more than 90% of its noncash donations that way.

This share is even higher, at over 97%, for the typical national DAF organization.

Why it matters

DAFs, first launched in the 1930s, have become much more widespread over the past three decades.

The total value of assets they hold is rising fast: It grew from US$70 billion in 2014 to more than $251 billion in 2023.

In some ways, DAFs operate like small foundations, since donors can get a tax break when they put money into a DAF, even if that money isn’t put into use by a charity for years. Donors also retain advisory control over the money they’ve reserved for future charitable giving.

But unlike foundations, there’s very little paperwork required, and there’s no requirement that a DAF disburse at least 5% of its assets annually – like foundations have to do.

Using investment assets as charitable donations is more advantageous to donors than just putting money in a DAF. One reason is that most large donors are eligible for a tax deduction equal to the full value of the asset that was donated at the time of the gift. That holds true, even if the value has risen significantly from what it initially was worth when the donor acquired it. The second reason is that donors don’t need to pay taxes on their capital gains as they would have had they sold it and obtained money in exchange.

Likewise, this boom in gifting investment assets can cut into government tax revenue more than typical cash gifts because it more effectively reduces an investor’s tax obligations.

Policymakers, lawmakers and regulators are currently considering whether to establish new rules for DAFs.

What’s next

We are now researching how the charities that administer DAFs differ from one another. We’re finding that some primarily market themselves as a way for donors to reduce their tax payments, while others put more emphasis on helping donors better manage their charitable giving.

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. Läs mer…

Philadelphia’s K-8 public school students are being taught a new literacy curriculum starting in the 2024-2025 school year. It’s called Expeditionary Learning, and it conforms with what literacy experts call the science of reading, which are research-based skills needed to become a strong reader.

Mary Jean Tecce DeCarlo is a clinical professor of literacy studies at Drexel University and previously worked as an elementary school teacher for 18 years, teaching kids to read and write. She talked to The Conversation U.S. about the strengths and challenges of Philly’s new curriculum.

How is the new literacy curriculum different?

For the past few years, the Philadelphia School District has used a homegrown curriculum created by Philadelphia teachers. This curriculum, shared with teachers in Google Drive, focused on using state standards to organize and teach reading, writing and speaking.

The district believes the new and more structured curriculum is better aligned with the science of reading and will help standardize instruction across classrooms and schools.

The new curriculum combines what it calls “word knowledge” and “world knowledge.”

Word knowledge refers to structured, synthetic phonics. This is a way of teaching the letter-sound relationships used in spelling and decoding new words. Readers start by learning letter sounds and then put the sounds together to form a word. Structured phonics follows a specific sequence and is different from analytic phonics, in which the letter-sound relationships are taught by first looking at a word and then breaking down the word into its parts. For example, if you know how to read “bat” you can then read other words that end in “-at.”

World knowledge refers to building strong background knowledge using nonfiction texts that students might traditionally read in a science or social studies class. These texts also cover social justice and environmental themes.

The lessons in this program are organized in a specific sequence. This is different from the prior curriculum, which gave teachers specific standards to teach, along with texts and supporting materials, but did not have a specific sequence of lessons. The new curriculum also provides scripts for what to say to students, as well as supplemental activities for English Language Learners, students with learning disabilities and students who are above grade level in some skills.

The curriculum is organized into modules that generally last six weeks and have a theme such as What’s Up in the Sky: A Study of the Sun, Moon and Stars or Stories of Human Rights. Each module covers a specific set of literacy skills. These include, for example, reading comprehension of narrative poems or revision and editing of a nonfiction piece.

This theme-based instruction is designed to last one hour per school day.

In grades K-2, there is a second hour called Foundations dedicated to the phonics curriculum. In the upper grades there is a second hour called ALL that reviews basic reading and writing skills and includes practice with reading and writing fluency, grammar and vocabulary development.

Will it help students become better readers?

Parents and teachers won’t know whether it is helping students for several years. That’s how long researchers believe it takes for standardized tests and their assessments to show the impact of a curriculum on student achievement.

As do students throughout the United States, students in Philadelphia struggle to meet grade-level expectations on state literacy assessments. The district has made gains addressing some of the learning loss from the COVID-19 pandemic, but many of its students still have a long way to go toward proficient reading and writing.

Are there any drawbacks?

In articles published by Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The Philadelphia Inquirer, several Philadelphia teachers expressed confidence in the intended Expeditionary Learning curriculum and believe it does follow the science of reading. However, they admit they are struggling with the steep learning curve and intense preparation required to put the curriculum into practice in their classrooms.

I heard similar experiences firsthand from Philadelphia teachers who attended Drexel University’s Science of Reading Day.

With any new curriculum, teachers need to learn how the lessons are organized. They also have to master new texts and other learning materials – like videos, games and handouts – that form the heart of instruction. And they must discover which of the suggested activities meet the needs of the actual learners in their class.

The only way to do this is to use as many activities as possible and over time figure out which are best for their students. This can cause issues with pacing when teachers do not move through the lessons as quickly as the intended curriculum would suggest.

Also, the world knowledge component of the new literacy curriculum includes – I believe appropriately – many hands-on activities. But teachers need time to gather, sort and distribute the required materials, and this can be a source of stress, particularly in the first year. Teachers often have to buy new materials or bring in items from home. Over time, many teachers will likely have plastic containers with all of the spatulas, eyedroppers, tweezers or other tools needed for each module, which will lower their workload.

The new curriculum also presents challenges for some students who will need to develop the attention and stamina to stay engaged during the one-hour to two-hour learning blocks.

How were teachers trained on the new curriculum?

Teachers were offered optional, paid professional development on Expeditionary Learning over the summer of 2024.

When implementing a new curriculum, however, teachers need ongoing support from peers and from experienced users of the curriculum. Experts suggest school-based collaborative learning led by teacher experts and focused on daily classroom instruction, as well as individual teacher coaching and feedback.

Using a more traditional model of professional development, the district is offering large-group training on in-service days throughout the academic year. The district also says there is some coaching available from the Expeditionary Learning company.

What else is there to consider?

New learning hooks into older learning. Students build from the known to the new. Education writer Natalie Wexler calls this background knowledge “the other half of the Velcro.”

Research shows that when learners have some background knowledge about a topic, the new knowledge they learn in class sticks much more easily.

Traditionally, a lot of background knowledge was taught in social studies and science classes, and Philadelphia public schools taught these subjects daily, even in the primary grades.

But after the No Child Left Behind law was passed in 2002, schools needed to meet high-stakes reading and math testing standards. Districts like Philadelphia tried to address this by replacing time spent on these subjects with more time on reading and math instruction.

This had the unintended consequence of limiting the world knowledge built from weekslong lessons on topics like dinosaurs or photosynthesis. Läs mer…

In 1975, only 1% of public schools had their own police officers. Today, 44% do. A large reason for the increase is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which led to the creation of the federal Community Oriented Policing Services to oversee funds for the hiring of police in schools. Another reason is the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. From the federal government down to individual districts, the idea that schools need police officers to keep kids safe is prevalent.

However, research shows that police officers in schools don’t always prevent violence, including school shootings. In fact, their presence can harm students.

Here are five reasons police in schools, also known as school resource officers, actually make students less safe in school:

1. They don’t address the root problems

State legislators that advocate for police in schools believe that by hardening schools – increasing police presence, adding metal detectors, requiring clear backpacks and mandating active-shooter safety drills – students will be safer from school shootings.

Academic research supports a different strategy. Most school shooters are known to administrators prior to committing assault. Many of these students struggle to make friends, experience challenges in their home lives and have multiple behavioral and mental health needs that haven’t been addressed.

School police officers cannot fix societal problems. Instead, researchers and policy advocates recommend that districts invest in the people who are better equipped to address these issues, like social workers and therapists.

2. Their role is not well defined

The role of school police officers, as well as their training, varies from school to school. This means that some may have a more positive impact on students than others.

Research shows that school resource officers are effective at detecting drug-related activity on campus and addressing violent crime related to gang activity in schools. But officers do not lower instances of bullying and low-level crime like vandalism and schoolyard fights.

School police officers play various roles on campus, but research shows that they are most effective at helping students when they focus on specific types of crime occurring in the school or building relationships with the students who are known to commit them. When they focus on punishment and discipline, their effectiveness decreases.

Students kneel in front of a makeshift memorial at Apalachee High School on Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga., where two students and two teachers were shot and killed the day before.
Jessica McGowan via Getty Images

3. They do not increase students’ feelings of safety

Most students either do not realize that their school has a school resource officer or don’t mind that one is present. In fact, most students report liking the officer at their school.

However, students report that the presence of school resource officers does not make them feel more positive about school safety and climate. Students report feeling safe in the beginning of the year with officers in the building but feel less safe as the year goes on. The more contact students have with an officer, for any reason, the more disconnected they begin to feel. Researchers suggest a possible reason why is because they start to worry that their own behavior can result in harsh punishment.

This can lead to other negative consequences, like increased absenteeism, failure to graduate and delinquency outside of school.

Students who frequently encounter school police officers can begin to develop subconscious feelings that their school is unsafe, particularly if their encounters were related to discipline. Even students who don’t directly interact with the officers, but witness other students get arrested, can begin to feel afraid that they will be arrested for minor disturbances, too.

4. They contribute to the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’

Research shows that the presence of school police officers increases the likelihood that a school will report common forms of student misbehavior, like cafeteria fights and vandalism, to law enforcement agencies – contributing to what is known as the “school-to-prison pipeline” by criminalizing such conduct.

For example, schools that use on-campus police for law enforcement and other duties, like mentoring, are 118% more likely to record property crimes than schools without police. Schools that use officers primarily for student discipline and crime response report 91% more nonserious crimes, property crimes and instances of disorderly conduct to police than similar schools that don’t use school police.

Supporters of school police officers may argue that reporting crimes keeps students safer. However, for some students, the consequences can be devastating and lifelong. For example, in one study, North Carolina middle schools with on-campus police officers recorded 38% fewer violent offenses than schools without police. But they were also more likely to respond to student misconduct with harsher disciplinary practices such as school suspension, transfers to alternative learning environments, expulsions and referrals to police. Studies often find that these exclusionary responses are mostly experienced by Black and Hispanic students.

5. They sometimes infringe on students’ rights

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

However, research is clear about the threats to students’ rights that school police officers can pose. These include invasion of privacy, unlawful searches and seizures and violations of rights of students with disabilities and special education students.

Schools that plan to keep their police officers can follow these guidelines to ensure they are more effective in actually helping students:

As the nation’s schools continue to grapple with how to keep students safe, a careful review of the research shows that school police officers may not be the answer. Läs mer…

Dorothy Allison, who died on Nov. 5, 2024, published her first novel, “Bastard Out of Carolina,” in 1992, when she was 42 years old.

She mined her own life to craft the semi-autobiographical work, which became a finalist for the National Book Award.

Growing up poor in Greenville, South Carolina, Allison endured abuse of all kinds before becoming the first in her family to finish high school and college. As a lesbian, she faced additional challenges and hurdles. Before she achieved literary fame with her first novel, Allison ran a feminist bookstore and a women’s center. She was broke when she finally sold “Bastard Out of Carolina.”

To me, Allison is a shining exception in a long line of authors who have attempted to write about poverty but fail to accurately capture it.

In my book “Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those without It,” I detail the genre of what I call “poornography” – stories written about poor people by people who don’t have firsthand experience being poor themselves.

Most readers are probably familiar with the standard tropes in these works: violence, sexual abuse, addiction, filth and degradation. Allison was decidedly not in that camp.

She broke that mold by finding beauty in her impoverished surroundings and focusing on love, humor and family bonds.

Beauty in a hopeless place

Even though “Bastard out of Carolina” ultimately deals with physical and sexual abuse – which, of course, is not confined to poor people – this merely constitutes one element of a broader emotional and physical landscape.

Allison’s hometown of Greenville is also the setting of the novel – and it’s a place that the novel’s young narrator, Bone, describes as “the most beautiful place in the world.” She adds:

“Black walnut trees dropped their green-black fuzzy bulbs on Aunt Ruth’s matted lawn, past where their knotty roots rose up out of the ground like the elbows and knees of dirty children suntanned dark and covered with scars. Weeping willows marched across the yard, following every wandering stream and ditch, their long whiplike fronds making rents that sheltered sweet-smelling beds of clover.”

Extreme hunger, however, is unique to poverty, and something that poor writers often recall with a kind of vividness that can escape middle-class or wealthy writers.

“Hunger makes you restless,” Allison writes. “You dream about food, magical meals, famous and awe-inspiring, the one piece of meat, the exact taste of buttery corn, tomatoes so ripe they split and sweeten the air, beans so crisp they snap between the teeth, gravy like mother’s milk singing to your bloodstream.”

In “Bastard out of Carolina,” Allison doesn’t celebrate hunger. But she is able to find humor in it and show how laughter can be used as a coping mechanism.

In the novel, when Bone complains about being hungry, her mother recounts her own childhood: Back then, there was “real hunger, hunger of days with no expectation that there would ever be biscuits again.” And during those times she and her siblings would concoct fantastical stories of strange dishes: “Your aunt Ruth always talked about frogs’ tongues with dew berries. … But Raylene won the prize with her recipe for sugar-glazed turtle meat with poison greens and hot piss dressing.”

Humor isn’t used to gloss over the seriousness of poverty. Yet Allison is keen to point out that both can exist: They are all wrapped up in a life lived.

Greenville, S.C., where Dorothy Allison spent the first 11 years of her life, was the setting for ‘Bastard out of Carolina.’
Library of Congress

American delusion

I can’t help but compare Allison’s work with that of an author like JD Vance. In his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance revels in his grandmother’s anger and violence as a sign of her vibrant hillbilly-ness.

On the other hand, in “Bastard out of Carolina,” Bone recalls her mother saying flatly, “Nothing to be proud of in shooting at people for looking at you wrong.”

So many other writers about poverty have characters who pine for the material comforts promised by the American Dream, whether it’s Clyde Griffiths in Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” or George and Lennie in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

Dorothy Allison worked on ‘Bastard out of Carolina’ for nearly a decade before finding a publisher.
Amazon

Allison’s characters, on the other hand, learn to see through this false promise. In one scene, Bone and her cousin break into the local Woolworth’s.

Previously, she had longingly eyed a brimming glass case of nuts. But once she shatters the display case, she realizes “that the case was a sham. There hadn’t been more than two inches of nuts pressed against the glass front, propped up with cardboard.” Her reaction: “Cheap sons of bitches.”

In a display of class consciousness, Bone eventually detects the false allure of cheap commodities. “I looked … at all the things on display. Junk everywhere: shoes that went to pieces in the rain, clothes that separated at the seams, stale candy, makeup that made your skin break out.”

In contrast, she thinks of the value of the home-canned goods made by her aunt. “That was worth something. All this stuff seemed tawdry and useless.”

‘Jealous of you for what you got’

At one point, Bone articulates the concept of poornography without using that term. She talks about “the mythology” that plagues poor people:

“People from families like mine – southern working poor with high rates of illegitimacy and all too many relatives who have spent time in jail – we are the people who are seen as the class that does not care for their children, for whom rape and abuse and violence are the norm. That such assumptions are false, that the rich are just as likely to abuse their children as the poor, and that southerners do not have a monopoly on either violence or illegitimacy are realities that are difficult to get people to recognize.”

In “Bastard out of Carolina,” Bone resents the rich rather than admiring them. In a conversation with one of her aunts, she says she “hates” them. Interestingly, her aunt provides the poor person’s counterpoint to hate.

“Could be they’re looking at you sitting up here eating blackberries … could be they’re jealous of you for what you got, afraid of what you would do if they stepped in the yard.”

Allison shows readers how class resentment can go both ways, and how for all of the contempt directed at poor people from the rich and powerful, there may also be an element of envy and fear at play. Läs mer…