Science – Page 10

Scientists catch a shark threesome on camera

animal behavior, aquatic animals, Biology, marine biology, mating, Science, sharks / Rejus Almole / September 23, 2025

Three sharks, two cameras

Three leopard sharks mating - near surface — Moving the action closer to the surface. Credit: Hugo Lassauce/UniSC-Aquarium des Lagons

Lassauce had two GoPro Hero 5 cameras ready at hand, albeit with questionable battery life. That’s why the video footage has two interruptions to the action: once when he had to switch cameras after getting a “low battery” signal, and a second time when he voluntarily stopped filming to conserve the second camera’s battery. Not much happened for 55 minutes, after all, and he wanted to be sure to capture the pivotal moments in the sequence. Lassauce succeeded and was rewarded with triumphant cheers from his fellow marine biologists on the boat, who knew full well the rarity of what had just been documented for posterity.

The lengthy pre-copulation stage involved all three sharks motionless on the seafloor for nearly an hour, after which the female started swimming with one male shark biting onto each of her pectoral fins. A few minutes later, the first male made his move, “penetrating the female’s cloaca with his left clasper.” Claspers are modified pelvic fins capable of transferring sperm. After the first male shark finished, he lay motionless while the second male held onto the female’s other fin. Then the other shark moved in, did his business, went motionless, and the female shark swam away. The males also swam away soon afterward.

Apart from the scientific first, documenting the sequence is a good indicator that this particular area is a critical mating habitat for leopard sharks, and could lead to better conservation strategies, as well as artificial insemination efforts to “rewild” leopard sharks in Australia and several other countries. “It’s surprising and fascinating that two males were involved sequentially on this occasion,” said co-author Christine Dudgeon, also of UniSC, adding, “From a genetic diversity perspective, we want to find out how many fathers contribute to the batches of eggs laid each year by females.”

Journal of Ethology, 2025. DOI: 10.1007/s10164-025-00866-4 (About DOIs).

Scientists catch a shark threesome on camera Read More »

Judge lets construction on an offshore wind farm resume

injunction, lawsuit, offshore wind, renewable energy, Science, trump administration, wind power / Rejus Almole / September 23, 2025

That did not, however, stop the administration from trying again, this time targeting a development called Revolution Wind, located a bit further north along the Atlantic coast. This time, however, the developer quickly sued, leading to Monday’s ruling. According to Reuters, after a two-hour court hearing at the District Court of DC, Judge Royce Lamberth termed the administration’s actions “the height of arbitrary and capricious” and issued a preliminary injunction against the hold on Revolution Wind’s construction. As a result, Orsted can restart work immediately.

The decision provides a strong indication of how Lamberth is likely to rule if the government pursues a full trial on the case. And while the Trump administration could appeal, it’s unlikely to see this injunction lifted unless it takes the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Given that Revolution Wind was already 80 percent complete, the case may become moot before it gets that far.

Judge lets construction on an offshore wind farm resume Read More »

What climate targets? Top fossil fuel producing nations keep boosting output

climate change, fossil fuels, paris agreement, Science, syndication / Kris Guyer / September 22, 2025

Top producers are planning to mine and drill even more of the fuels in 2030.

Machinery transfers coal at a port in China’s Chongqing municipality on April 20. Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images

The last two years have witnessed the hottest one in history, some of the worst wildfire seasons across Canada, Europe and South America and deadly flooding and heat waves throughout the globe. Over that same period, the world’s largest fossil fuel producers have expanded their planned output for the future, setting humanity on an even more dangerous path into a warmer climate.

Governments now expect to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas in 2030 as would be consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a report released Monday. That level is slightly higher than what it was in 2023, the last time the biennial Production Gap report was published.

The increase is driven by a slower projected phaseout of coal and higher outlook for gas production by some of the top producers, including China and the United States.

“The Production Gap Report has long served as a mirror held up to the world, revealing the stark gap between fossil fuel production plans and international climate goals,” said Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in a foreword to the report. “This year’s findings are especially alarming. Despite record climate impacts, a winning economic case for renewables, and strong societal appetite for action, governments continue to expand fossil fuel production beyond what the climate can withstand.”

The peer-reviewed report, written by researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute, Climate Analytics and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, aims to focus attention on the supply side of the climate equation and the government policies that encourage or steer fossil fuel production.

“Governments have such a significant role in setting up the rules of the game,” said Neil Grant, a senior expert at Climate Analytics and one of the authors, in a briefing for reporters. “What this report shows is most governments are not using that influence for good.”

Chart showing growth in fossil fuel production — Credit: Inside Climate News

The report’s blaring message is that these subsidies, tax incentives, permitting and other policies have largely failed to adapt to the climate targets nations have adopted. The result is a split screen. Governments say they will cut their own climate-warming pollution, yet they plan to continue producing the fossil fuels that are driving that pollution far beyond what their climate targets would allow.

The report singles out the United States as “the starkest case of a country recommitting to fossil fuels.” The data for the United States, which draws on the latest projections of the US Energy Information Administration, does not reflect most of the policies the Trump administration and Congress have put in place this year to promote fossil fuels.

Since January, Congress has enacted billions of dollars in new subsidies to oil and gas companies while the Trump administration has forced retiring coal plants to continue operating, expanded mining and drilling access on public lands, delayed deadlines for drillers to comply with limits on methane pollution and fast-tracked fossil fuel permitting while setting roadblocks for building wind and solar energy projects.

In response to the report, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email, “As promised, President Trump ended Joe Biden’s war on American energy and unleashed American energy on day one in the best interest of our country’s economic and national security. He will continue to restore American’s energy dominance.”

Chart showing planned fuel production — Credit: Inside Climate News

The Production Gap report assessed the government plans or projections of 20 of the world’s top producers. Some have state-owned enterprises while others are dominated by publicly listed companies. The countries, which were chosen for their production levels, availability of data and presence of clear climate targets, account for more than 80 percent of fossil fuel output. The report models total global production by scaling the data up to account for the rest.

All but three of the 20 nations are planning or projecting increased production in 2030 of at least one fossil fuel. Eleven now project higher production of at least one fuel in 2030 than they did two years ago.

Expected global output of coal, oil, and gas for 2030 is now 120 percent more than what would be consistent with pathways to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and 77 percent higher than scenarios to keep warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The greater the warming, the more severe the consequences will be on extreme weather, rising seas and other impacts.

While previous installments of the report were published under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, this year’s version was issued independently.

In a sign of the world’s continuing failure to limit fossil fuel use, the modeling scenarios the report uses are becoming obsolete. Because nations have continued to burn more coal, gas and oil every year, future cuts would now need to be even steeper than what is reflected in the report to keep climate targets within reach.

“We’re already going into sort of the red and burning up our debt,” Grant said.

Three nations alone—China, the United States and Russia—were responsible for more than half of “extraction-based” emissions in 2022, or the pollution that comes when the fossil fuels are burned.

Ira Joseph, a senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, who was not involved in the report, said its focus on supply highlights an important part of understanding global energy markets.

“Any type of tax breaks or subsidies or however you want to call them lowers the break-even cost for producing oil and gas,” Joseph said. Lower costs mean more supply, which in turn lowers prices and spurs more demand. The projections and plans the report is based on, Joseph said, reflect this global give and take.

Chart showing fossil fuel increase by country — Credit: Inside Climate News

The biggest changes since the last report come from a slower projected decline in China’s coal mining and faster expected growth in gas production in the United States. Smaller producers are also expecting sharper increases in gas output.

The report did highlight some bright spots. Two additional governments—Brazil and Colombia—are developing plans that would align fossil fuel production with climate goals, bringing the total to six out of the 20. Germany now expects a more accelerated phase-out of coal production. China is speeding its deployment of wind and solar energy. Some countries have also reduced subsidies for fossil fuels.

Yet these measures clearly fall far short, the report said.

The authors called on governments to coordinate their policies and plan for how they can collectively lower production in a way that keeps climate targets within reach without shocking the economies that depend on the jobs and revenue provided by mining, drilling, and processing the fuels. They pointed to a handful of efforts—called Just Energy Transition Partnerships—to provide financing from wealthy countries to support phasing out coal in developing or emerging economies. These programs have struggled to mobilize much money, however, and the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from them.

Grant said the policies indicate that government officials are failing to adapt to a more uncertain future.

“Change doesn’t happen in straight lines, but I think if you look at the Production Gap report this year, what you see is that many governments are still thinking in straight lines,” Grant said.

The policies the team examined foresee fossil fuel use remaining steady or declining gradually. The result, Grant argued, could be one of two scenarios: Either fossil fuel use remains high for years, in line with these production plans, or it declines more quickly and governments are unprepared for the sudden drop in sales.

“Those would lead to either climate chaos or significant negative economic impacts on countries,” Grant said. “So we need to try to avoid both of those. And the way to do that is to try to align our fossil fuel production plans with our climate goals.”

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

What climate targets? Top fossil fuel producing nations keep boosting output Read More »

Despite congressional threat, National Academies releases new climate report

climate change, doe, EPA, greenhouse gasses, National Academies, Science / Paul Patrick / September 21, 2025

The National Academies responded to the EPA’s actions by saying it would prepare a report of its own, which it did despite the threat of a congressional investigation into its work. And the result undercuts the EPA’s claims even further.

Blunt and to the point

The NAS report does not mess around with subtleties, going straight to the main point: Everything we’ve learned since the endangerment finding confirms that it was on target. “EPA’s 2009 finding that the human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare was accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence,” its authors conclude.

That evidence includes a better understanding of the climate itself, with the report citing “Longer records, improved and more robust observational networks, and analytical and methodological advances” that have both allowed us to better detect the changes in the climate, and more reliably assign them to the effects of greenhouse gases. The events attributed to climate change are also clearly harming the welfare of the US public through things like limiting agricultural productivity gains, damage from wildfires, losses due to water scarcity, and general stresses on our infrastructure.

But it’s not just the indirect effects we have to worry about. The changing climate is harming us more directly as well:

Climate change intensifies risks to humans from exposures to extreme heat, ground-level ozone, airborne particulate matter, extreme weather events, and airborne allergens, affecting incidence of cardiovascular, respiratory, and other diseases. Climate change has increased exposure to pollutants from wildfire smoke and dust, which has been linked to adverse health effects. The increasing severity of some extreme events has contributed to injury, illness, and death in affected communities. Health impacts related to climate-sensitive infectious diseases—such as those carried by insects and contaminated water—have increased.

Moreover, it notes that one of the government’s arguments—that US emissions are too small to be meaningful—doesn’t hold water. Even small increments of change will increase the risk of damaging events for decades to come, and push the world closer to hitting potential tipping points in the climate system. Therefore, cutting US emissions will directly reduce those risks.

Despite congressional threat, National Academies releases new climate report Read More »

In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms

budget, NASA, Science, Space / Kris Guyer / September 20, 2025

The situation with the fiscal year 2026 budget for the United States is, to put it politely, kind of a mess.

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely.

Science saved, sort of

In the event of a shutdown, there has been much uncertainty about what would happen to NASA’s budget and the agency’s science missions. Earlier this summer, for example, the White House directed science mission leaders to prepare “closeout plans” for about two dozen spacecraft.

These science missions were targeted for cancellation under the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, and the development of these closeout plans indicated that, in the absence of a final budget from Congress, the White House could seek to end these (and other) programs beginning October 1.

However, two sources confirmed to Ars on Friday afternoon that interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has now directed the agency to work toward the budget level established in the House Appropriations Committee’s budget bill for the coming fiscal year. This does not support full funding for NASA’s science portfolio, but it is far more beneficial than the cuts sought by the White House.

In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms Read More »

Chimps consume alcohol equivalent of nearly 2 drinks a day

animal behavior, Biology, Science / Tim Belzer / September 20, 2025

Nearly two drinks a day

This latest study involved chimp populations at the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project (Uganda) and a second site at Tai (Ivory Coast), where scientists have estimated the animals consume between 5 to 10 percent of their body weight (about 40 kilos) in fruit each day—around 45 kilograms. The authors collected fallen fruit pulp samples from both sites, packed them in airtight containers, and froze them back at base camp to keep the fruit from ripening further.

Then they quantified the ethanol concentrations using a breathalyzer, a portable gas chromatograph, and chemical testing. The Uganda fruit contained 0.32 percent ethanol, while the Ivory Coast fruit contained 0.31 percent ethanol, which might not sound like much until you consider just how much fruit they eat. And the most frequently consumed fruit at both sites had the highest ethanol content.

If anything, this is a conservative estimate, per Dudley. “If the chimps are randomly sampling ripe fruit, then that’s going to be their average consumption rate, independent of any preference for ethanol,” he said. “But if they are preferring riper and/or more sugar-rich fruits, then this is a conservative lower limit for the likely rate of ethanol ingestion.” That’s in keeping with a 2016 report that captive aye-ayes and slow lorises prefer nectar with the highest alcohol content.

“Our findings imply that our ancestors were similarly chronically exposed to dietary alcohol,” co-author Aleksey Maro, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, told New Scientist. “The drunken monkey hypothesis suggests that this exposure caused our species to evolve an association between alcohol consumption and the reward of finding fruit sugars, and explains human attraction to alcohol today.” One caveat is that apes ingest ethanol accidentally, while humans drink it deliberately.

“What we’re realizing from this work is that our relationship with alcohol goes deep back into evolutionary time, probably about 30 million years,” University of St. Andrews primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, who was not involved with the study, told BBC News. “Maybe for chimpanzees, this is a great way to create social bonds, to hang out together on the forest floor, eating those fallen fruits.”

The next step is to sample the chimps’ urine to see if it contains any alcohol metabolites, as was found in a 2022 study on spider monkeys. This will further refine estimates for how much ethanol-laden fruit the chimps eat every day. Maro spent this summer in Ngogo, sleeping in trees—protected from the constant streams by an umbrella—to collect urine samples.

Science Advances, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw1665 (About DOIs).

Chimps consume alcohol equivalent of nearly 2 drinks a day Read More »

Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papers

AI, journalism, Science, summaries / Mike M. / September 19, 2025

No, I don’t think this machine summary can replace my human summary, now that you ask… Credit: AAAS

Still, the quantitative survey results among those journalists were pretty one-sided. On the question of whether the ChatGPT summaries “could feasibly blend into the rest of your summary lineups, the average summary rated a score of just 2.26 on a scale of 1 (“no, not at all”) to 5 (“absolutely”). On the question of whether the summaries were “compelling,” the LLM summaries averaged just 2.14 on the same scale. Across both questions, only a single summary earned a “5” from the human evaluator on either question, compared to 30 ratings of “1.”

Not up to standards

Writers were also asked to write out more qualitative assessments of the individual summaries they evaluated. In these, the writers complained that ChatGPT often conflated correlation and causation, failed to provide context (e.g., that soft actuators tend to be very slow), and tended to overhype results by overusing words like “groundbreaking” and “novel” (though this last behavior went away when the prompts specifically addressed it).

Overall, the researchers found that ChatGPT was usually good at “transcribing” what was written in a scientific paper, especially if that paper didn’t have much nuance to it. But the LLM was weak at “translating” those findings by diving into methodologies, limitations, or big picture implications. Those weaknesses were especially true for papers that offered multiple differing results, or when the LLM was asked to summarize two related papers into one brief.

This AI summary just isn’t compelling enough for me. Credit: AAAS

While the tone and style of ChatGPT summaries were often a good match for human-authored content, “concerns about the factual accuracy in LLM-authored content” were prevalent, the journalists wrote. Even using ChatGPT summaries as a “starting point” for human editing “would require just as much, if not more, effort as drafting summaries themselves from scratch” due to the need for “extensive fact-checking,” they added.

These results might not be too surprising given previous studies that have shown AI search engines citing incorrect news sources a full 60 percent of the time. Still, the specific weaknesses are all the more glaring when discussing scientific papers, where accuracy and clarity of communication are paramount.

In the end, the AAAS journalists concluded that ChatGPT “does not meet the style and standards for briefs in the SciPak press package.” But the white paper did allow that it might be worth running the experiment again if ChatGPT “experiences a major update.” For what it’s worth, GPT-5 was introduced to the public in August.

Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papers Read More »

Trump’s Golden Dome will cost 10 to 100 times more than the Manhattan Project

american enterprise institute, Department of Defense, golden dome, military space, missile defense, Science, Space, US Space Force / Mike M. / September 18, 2025

Instead, the $252 billion option would include additional Patriot missile batteries and air-control squadrons, dozens of new aircraft, and next-generation systems to defend against drone and cruise missile attacks on major population centers, military bases, and other key areas.

At the other end of the spectrum, Harrison writes that the “most robust air and missile defense shield possible” will cost some $3.6 trillion through 2045, nearly double the life cycle cost of the F-35 fighter jet, the most expensive weapons program in history.

“In his Oval Office announcement, President Trump set a high bar for Golden Dome, declaring that it would complete ‘the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland and the success rate is very close to 100 percent,'” Harrison writes.

The numbers necessary to achieve this kind of muscular defense are staggering: 85,400 space-based interceptors, 14,510 new air-launched interceptors, 46,904 more surface-launched interceptors, hundreds of new sensors on land, in the air, at sea, and in space to detect incoming threats, and more than 20,000 additional military personnel.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket could offer a much cheaper ride to orbit for thousands of space-based missile interceptors. Credit: SpaceX

No one has placed missile interceptors in space before, and it will require thousands of them to meet even the most basic goals for Golden Dome. Another option Harrison presents in his paper would emphasize fast-tracking a limited number of space-based interceptors that could defend against a smaller attack of up to five ballistic missiles, plus new missile warning and tracking satellites, ground- and sea-based interceptors, and other augmentations of existing missile-defense forces.

That would cost an estimated $471 billion over the next 20 years.

Supporters of the Golden Dome project say it’s much more feasible today to field space-based interceptors than it was in the Reagan era. Commercial assembly lines are now churning out thousands of satellites per year, and it’s cheaper to launch them today than it was 40 years ago.

A report released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in May examined the effect of reduced launch prices on potential Golden Dome architectures. The CBO estimated that the cost of deploying between 1,000 and 2,000 space-based interceptors would be between 30 and 40 percent cheaper today than the CBO found in a previous study in 2004.

But the costs just for deploying up to 2,000 space-based interceptors remain astounding, ranging from $161 billion to $542 billion over 20 years, even with today’s reduced launch prices, according to the CBO. The overwhelming share of the cost today would be developing and building the interceptors themselves, not launching them.

Trump’s Golden Dome will cost 10 to 100 times more than the Manhattan Project Read More »

Some dogs can classify their toys by function

animal behavior, animal cognition, Biology, Dogs, Science / Kris Guyer / September 18, 2025

Certain dogs can not only memorize the names of objects like their favorite toys, but they can also extend those labels to entirely new objects with a similar function, regardless of whether or not they are similar in appearance, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. It’s a cognitively advanced ability known as “label extension,” and for animals to acquire it usually involves years of intensive training in captivity. But the dogs in this new study developed the ability to classify their toys by function with no formal training, merely by playing naturally with their owners.

Co-author Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, likens this ability to a person calling a hammer and a rock by the same name, or a child understanding that “cup” can describe a mug, a glass, or a tumbler, because they serve the same function. “The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function,” she said. “So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”

Fugazza and her Hungarian colleagues have been studying canine behavior and cognition for several years. For instance, in 2023, we reported on the group’s experiments on how dogs interpret gestures, such as pointing at a specific object. A dog will interpret the gesture as a directional cue, unlike a human toddler, who will more likely focus on the object itself. It’s called spatial bias, and the team concluded that the phenomenon arises from a combination of how dogs see (visual acuity) and how they think, with “smarter” dog breeds prioritizing an object’s appearance as much as its location. This suggests the smarter dogs’ information processing is more similar to that of humans.

Another aspect of the study involved measuring the length of a dog’s head, which prior research has shown is correlated with visual acuity. The shorter a dog’s head, the more similar their visual acuity is to human vision. That’s because there is a higher concentration of retinal ganglion cells in the center of their field of vision, making vision sharper and giving such dogs binocular depth vision. The testing showed that dogs with better visual acuity, and who also scored higher on the series of cognitive tests, also exhibited less spatial bias. This suggests that canine spatial bias is not simply a sensory matter but is also influenced by how they think. “Smarter” dogs have less spatial bias.

Some dogs can classify their toys by function Read More »

Right-wing political violence is more frequent, deadly than left-wing violence

hate speech, right-wing extremism, Science, Social science, syndication / Mike M. / September 18, 2025

President Trump’s assertions about political violence ignore the facts.

After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the US, and “they should be put in jail.”

“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in after Kirk’s killing, saying that left-wing political organizations constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”

“We are going to use every resource we have… throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller said.

But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on actual facts.

Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the US are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.

Political violence rising

The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and the recent Department of Justice removal of an important government-sponsored study of domestic terrorists.

Political violence in the US has risen in recent months and takes forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation, and doxing.

Kirk’s assassination illustrates the growing threat. The man charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack in writing and online.

This follows other politically motivated killings, including the June assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.

These incidents reflect a normalization of political violence. Threats and violence are increasingly treated as acceptable for achieving political goals, posing serious risks to democracy and society.

Defining “political violence”

This article relies on some of our research on extremism, other academic research, federal reports, academic datasets, and other monitoring to assess what is known about political violence.

Support for political violence in the US is spreading from extremist fringes into the mainstream, making violent actions seem normal. Threats can move from online rhetoric to actual violence, posing serious risks to democratic practices.

But different agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comparisons difficult.

Domestic violent extremism is defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This general framing, which includes diverse activities under a single category, guides investigations and prosecutions. The FBI and DHS do not investigate people in the US for constitutionally protected speech, activism, or ideological beliefs.

Datasets compiled by academic researchers use narrower and more operational definitions. The Global Terrorism Database counts incidents that involve intentional violence with political, social, or religious motivation.

These differences mean that the same incident may or may not appear in a dataset, depending on the rules applied.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security emphasize that these distinctions are not merely academic. Labeling an event “terrorism” rather than a “hate crime” can change who is responsible for investigating an incident and how many resources they have to investigate it.

For example, a politically motivated shooting might be coded as terrorism in federal reporting, cataloged as political violence by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and prosecuted as a homicide or a hate crime at the state level.

Patterns in incidents and fatalities

Despite differences in definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence.

Politically motivated violence is a small fraction of total violent crime, but its impact is magnified by symbolic targets, timing, and media coverage.

In the first half of 2025, 35 percent of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted US government personnel or facilities—more than twice the rate in 2024.

Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years.

Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75 to 80 percent of US domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.

Illustrative cases include the 2015 Charleston church shooting, when white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners; the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue attack in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were murdered; the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre, in which an anti-immigrant gunman killed 23 people. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in US history.

By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10 to 15 percent of incidents and less than 5 percent of fatalities.

Examples include the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, which were more likely to target property rather than people.

Violence occurred during Seattle May Day protests in 2016, with anarchist groups and other demonstrators clashing with police. The clashes resulted in multiple injuries and arrests. In 2016, five Dallas police officers were murdered by a heavily armed sniper who was targeting white police officers.

Hard to count

There’s another reason it’s hard to account for and characterize certain kinds of political violence and those who perpetrate it.

The US focuses on prosecuting criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist, relying on existing statutes such as conspiracy, weapons violations, RICO provisions, and hate crime laws to pursue individuals for specific acts of violence.

Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with domestic terrorism. That makes it difficult to characterize someone as a domestic terrorist.

The State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list applies only to groups outside of the United States. By contrast, US law bars the government from labeling domestic political organizations as terrorist entities because of First Amendment free speech protections.

Rhetoric is not evidence

Without harmonized reporting and uniform definitions, the data will not provide an accurate overview of political violence in the US.

But we can make some important conclusions.

Politically motivated violence in the US is rare compared with overall violent crime. Political violence has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy, and deepen societal polarization.

Right-wing extremist violence has been more frequent and more lethal than left-wing violence. The number of extremist groups is substantial and skewed toward the right, although a count of organizations does not necessarily reflect incidents of violence.

High-profile political violence often brings heightened rhetoric and pressure for sweeping responses. Yet the empirical record shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum. Distinguishing between rhetoric and evidence is essential for democracy.

Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures—to jail them or scrutinize their favorable tax status. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies.

Art Jipson is associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton, and Paul J. Becker is associate professor of sociology at University of Dayton.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community. Our team of editors work with these experts to share their knowledge with the wider public. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues, and hopefully improve the quality of public discourse on them.

Right-wing political violence is more frequent, deadly than left-wing violence Read More »

A record supply load won’t reach the International Space Station as scheduled

Commercial space, Cygnus, human spaceflight, international space station, ng-23, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space / Tim Belzer / September 17, 2025

The damage occurred during the shipment of the spacecraft’s pressurized cargo module from its manufacturer in Italy. While Northrop Grumman hopes to repair the module and launch it on a future flight, officials decided it would be quicker to move forward with the next spacecraft in line for launch this month.

This is the first flight of a larger model of the Cygnus spacecraft known as the Cygnus XL, measuring 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer, with the ability to carry 33 percent more cargo than the previous Cygnus spacecraft design. With this upgrade, this mission is carrying the heaviest load of supplies ever delivered to the ISS by a commercial cargo vehicle.

The main engine on the Cygnus spacecraft burns a mixture of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants. This mixture is hypergolic, meaning the propellants ignite upon contact with one another, a design heralded for its reliability. The spacecraft has a separate set of less powerful reaction control system thrusters normally used for small maneuvers, and for pointing the ship in the right direction as it makes its way to the ISS.

If the main engine is declared unusable, one possible option for getting around the main engine problem might be using these smaller thrusters to more gradually adjust the Cygnus spacecraft’s orbit to line up for the final approach with the ISS. However, it wasn’t immediately clear if this was a viable option.

Unlike SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon spacecraft, the Cygnus is not designed to return to Earth intact. Astronauts fill it with trash before departure from the ISS, and then the spacecraft heads for a destructive reentry over the remote Pacific Ocean. Therefore, a problem preventing the spacecraft from reaching the ISS would result in the loss of all of the cargo onboard.

The supplies on this mission, designated NG-23, include fresh food, hardware for numerous biological and tech demo experiments, and spare parts for things like the space station’s urine processor and toilet to replenish the space station’s dwindling stocks of those items.

A record supply load won’t reach the International Space Station as scheduled Read More »

Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker

commercial resupply services, Commercial space, falcon 9, international space station, launch, NASA, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space, spacex, thales alenia space / Kris Guyer / September 16, 2025

What happens when you use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply ship? A record-setting resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The first flight of Northrop’s upgraded Cygnus spacecraft, called Cygnus XL, is on its way to the international research lab after launching Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This mission, known as NG-23, is set to arrive at the ISS early Wednesday with 10,827 pounds (4,911 kilograms) of cargo to sustain the lab and its seven-person crew.

By a sizable margin, this is the heaviest cargo load transported to the ISS by a commercial resupply mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will use the space station’s Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the cargo ship on Wednesday, then place it on an attachment port for crew members to open hatches and start unpacking the goodies inside.

A bigger keg

The Cygnus XL spacecraft looks a lot like Northrop’s previous missions to the station. It has a service module manufactured at the company’s factory in Northern Virginia. This segment of the spacecraft provides power, propulsion, and other necessities to keep Cygnus operating in orbit.

The most prominent features of the Cygnus cargo freighter are its circular, fan-like solar arrays and an aluminum cylinder called the pressurized cargo module that bears some resemblance to a keg of beer. This is the element that distinguishes the Cygnus XL from earlier versions of the Cygnus supply ship.

The cargo module is 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer on the Cygnus XL. The full spacecraft is roughly the size of two Apollo command modules, according to Ryan Tintner, vice president of civil space systems at Northrop Grumman. Put another way, the volume of the cargo section is equivalent to two-and-a-half minivans.

“The most notable thing on this mission is we are debuting the Cygnus XL configuration of the spacecraft,” Tintner said. “It’s got 33 percent more capacity than the prior Cygnus spacecraft had. Obviously, more may sound like better, but it’s really critical because we can deliver significantly more science, as well as we’re able to deliver a lot more cargo per launch, really trying to drive down the cost per kilogram to NASA.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ascends to orbit Sunday after launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, carrying Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft toward the International Space Station. Credit: Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Cargo modules for Northrop’s Cygnus spacecraft are built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, employing a similar design to the one Thales used for several of the space station’s permanent modules. Officials moved forward with the first Cygnus XL mission after the preceding cargo module was damaged during shipment from Italy to the United States earlier this year.

Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker Read More »