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A growing number of people are waiting longer to have kids. While there are many reasons people may want to hold back on that decision, about one-third of couples will have difficulties getting pregnant if the female partner is over 35. This is because women’s fertility begins declining around that age.

But the researchers of an ongoing clinical trial claim rapamycin, a drug commonly used to prevent organ transplants from failing, may be able to extend a woman’s fertile years by up to five years. This is based on the early communication of results from the small pilot study they conducted, which has not yet been peer reviewed.

While it’s still too early to say whether rapamycin could be the future of fertility treatments – we’ll need to wait two years now for the clinical trial to finish – there is some reason to be optimistic about the findings they’ve reported. Numerous studies in mice have shown rapamycin is beneficial for many aspects of ageing – including fertility.

Future fertility can originate before birth. While in the mother’s womb, female gametes (eggs) surrounded by specialised cells in the ovaries form “primordial follicles”. Each follicle contains a single egg which enters into a dormant state until it’s recruited for use at puberty.

Numerous follicles die even before birth. This means that every women is born with all the follicles she will ever have. This is known as the “ovarian reserve”. This early-established ovarian reserve can affect a person’s ability to become pregnant throughout their reproductive years.

During each menstrual cycle, several dozens of follicles will be recruited (selected) – but only a single dominant follicle will release its egg to be fertilised. The other recruited follicles will be degraded by the ovary. As a woman ages, her ovarian reserve diminishes until she has only a limited number of good-quality follicles remaining. At this point, some ovarian hormones circulating in her body decrease, initiating menopause.

The average age of menopause is 51 years – though this can vary broadly between women depending on their ovarian reserve. Some women experience early menopause (which happens before the age of 45). Around 1% of women may even experience premature menopause, which happens before 40. Since menopause directly affects fertility, early menopause could seriously affect a woman’s parenting plans.

But if it were possible to delay ovarian ageing, this could extend a woman’s fertility. This is something rapamycin may be able to do.

Re-purposing rapamycin

Rapamycin is a bacterial compound that allows cells to survive longer in lab settings.

It’s commonly used in organ transplant patients to dampen their immune system so that the body doesn’t reject the new organ. It’s also used to treat certain vascular conditions by slowing down cell growth (such as tumour).

A growing body of evidence shows rapamycin may also have benefits when it comes to ageing.

Research in mice shows it can counteract age-related muscle loss. A daily dose of rapamycin has also been shown to improve the lifespan of older mice by 10%.

When it comes to fertility, studies have demonstrated that a daily dose of rapamycin delays ovarian ageing and menopause in mice. Older female mice who were given a diet containing rapamycin had an increase in their pool of primordial follicles – the ovarian reserve. Moreover, these mice also had successful litters later in life. This suggested that rapamycin could have the potential to delay premature menopause in women.

Research in mice has shown the drug is beneficial to ovarian ageing.
unoL/ Shutterstock

But can the drug do the same in humans? This is what a research team has set out to investigate. The team recruited 50 women aged 35-45 years, who were perimenopausal, to their pilot study.

For three months, women either received a weekly dose of rapamycin or a placebo. The ovarian reserve was monitored by transvaginal ultrasound and several blood tests to detect various ovarian hormones.

The researchers claim the initial results were very encouraging – suggesting that the drug might decrease ovarian ageing by 20% in women without any side-effects from the drug. The researchers hope that this could mean an additional five years of fertility.

Rapamycin might trigger this positive effect by restricting the number of primordial follicles being recruited and activated per menstrual cycle. In women who received rapamycin, only 15 follicles were recruited per menstrual cycle – compared to 50 in women at similar age. With less follicle recruitment, the ovarian reserve seems to be prolonged.

Previous research in mice has shown that rapamycin recruits fewer follicles, which may preserve ovarian reserve.

Maintaining fertility

The cohort size of the initial study was rather small. But given the promising results the researcher claim to have had, this means they will now be able to move into the next phase of their experiment – recruiting 1,000 women.

Hopefully the initial results will be confirmed again and show that rapamycin is a useful treatment for ovarian ageing in a peer-reviewed study. Additional studies will then be needed to investigate whether this fertility is prolonged.

But if the clinical trial shows rapamycin is beneficial, this could help women with low ovarian reserve and those hoping to prolong their fertility.

Moreover, this study highlights the potential of re-purposing existing drugs to treat other conditions for women’s health and wellbeing. This is something my team members and I are doing at the University of Central Lancashire, as well. We’re currently investigating in cells whether re-purposing commonly used diabetes drugs can improve the uterus and make it easier for an embryo to implant itself. We’re also investigating these targets to treat ovarian cancer. Läs mer…

Tesco, Boots and Barclays have joined the growing number of companies trying to force employees back to the office after several years of remote working that began with the pandemic. They’re likely to be in for a battle.

While some bosses have argued remote work is responsible for reduced innovation, productivity issues and lack of creativity, many employees believe it is good for their wellbeing and work-life balance.

Some organisations have already found that simply mandating workers show up full time or for a set number of days a week isn’t enough, and have introduced policies to discourage and even punish remote working, such as excluding people from promotion.

The problem is that there’s limited evidence demonstrating that mandated in-office working is significantly better for an organisation than remote working, and plenty showing that forcing employees into the office can have a detrimental effect. But many bosses retain a presumption that working from home is worse.

Research has found mandates don’t improve company or employee performance. And other work has shown that back to the office mandates can make it much harder to retain staff, with women and millennials identified as being more likely to quit. This doesn’t just apply to rank and file workers, either. Other evidence suggests it can lead to a loss of senior talent as well.

These studies, which include surveys on employee “stay” intentions as well as company financial performance assessments and employee job satisfaction data, suggest that forcing employees back to the office may result in a commercial risk.

The evidence on the effectiveness or otherwise of hybrid work is still emerging. Despite concerns about productivity, employees generally rate themselves as at least, if not more, productive when working from home compared to the office. And early research indicates that two days a week working from home does not impact performance.

There is no clear evidence to suggest how many days in the office are the “right” number, however. One study found that around two days a week in the office was the sweet spot for hybrid work. But the authors stressed the need for organisations to do their own data analysis, noting the likelihood of differences depending on each situation.

There is evidence emerging about when in-person time really does count. Microsoft has identified three critical points where this brings benefits. These are when new starters begin work, kicking off projects and strengthening team cohesion.

However, while in-person work is good for building and maintaining relationships, it isn’t essential for effective collaboration as long as organisations put effort into promoting communication networks between employees.

Productivity paranoia

If all this conflicts with what bosses think, it may be because of a lack of a consistent definition of productivity. Many organisations don’t have effective systems for assessing and measuring it. Instead, managers may rely on faux productivity measures such as time spent at a desk or in meetings.

Manchester United’s return to office mandate was accompanied by a justification that email traffic was lower on a Friday when people were working from home. But this assumes that emails are a good measure of productivity, and many would probably argue they are not.

Arguments for returning to the office also often appear driven by manager preference and experience. Seb James, the UK managing director of Boots, said, “I know this has been true for me” when arguing informal meetings in person were more effective than formal remote meetings.

This has long been the case. Jack Nilles, the academic who first identified the potential for “telecommuting”, argued in the 1990s that the biggest barrier to adoption of remote work would not be technology, but management attitudes and beliefs. Social psychologist Douglas McGregor called this Theory X – the idea that employees will, if given the opportunity, do as little as they can get away with, hence the need for supervision and penalties.

Today, Microsoft calls this productivity paranoia, finding that 85% of leaders say that hybrid work makes it difficult to have confidence that employees are being productive. To address these concerns managers need to rethink what they mean by productivity – and how they can measure it through meaningful objectives. Läs mer…

Nearly half of people born in Wales in 2002-2003 were classed as having special educational needs (SEN), our new research has indicated, raising questions about the system used to diagnose a generation of Welsh children.

Our report for the Nuffield Foundation found that 48% of this group, who are now aged 20 to 22, were identified as having SEN at some point before they turned 17. In some cases, this may have negatively affected their educational outcomes.

Pandemic disruptions meant complete data was only available for this year group. However, we also identified several factors that made some children born in Wales between 2002 and 2008 more likely to receive an SEN diagnosis – including being a boy, being born in summer, and being on free school meals.

Our findings suggest children from these groups may have been over-identified (and those not in these groups potentially under-identified). A new system for identifying educational needs was introduced in Wales in 2020, and the number of children being diagnosed has since fallen significantly – it was 20% lower in the year after the new system began.

Our findings suggest the previous system was not effectively supporting learners with SEN to achieve academically. We found the more time a child spent with an SEN diagnosis during their education, the less likely they were to to meet nationally expected levels of attainment.

SEN are identified when a child has much greater difficulty learning than most of their peers, or a disability that limits their use of typical educational facilities. This may include autism, dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and moderate learning difficulties.

Our research, funded and reviewed by the Nuffield Foundation and scrutinised by our research advisory group (including academics, policy-makers and practitioners), analysed education data from over 200,000 children in Wales born between 2002 and 2008. We wanted to understand who was being identified as having special educational needs, and the impact this had on their academic achievement.

We found some key common factors that increase the likelihood of children being identified as having additional learning needs for all the children in the study, born between 2002 and 2008.

Boys were 5.5 times more likely to be identified with SEN than girls. While it’s possible boys may be more likely to have learning needs, there may be gender bias at play too, meaning boys’ behaviour gets more attention. Girls may also be better at masking their special educational needs.

Boys were much more likely than girls to be identified as having special educational needs.
DGLimages/Shutterstock

Poverty also played a large role. We found that children who had free school meals throughout their education were four times more likely to be identified with educational needs, compared with those not receiving free meals. Alongside this, children born in the most deprived neighbourhoods were shown to be even more likely (4.6 times) to be identified with learning needs.

What’s more, learners born in the summer (so younger in their year group) were three times more likely to be identified with SEN than those born in the autumn.

These findings highlight how a child’s environment can contribute to the identification of educational needs. They also raise concerns about the effectiveness of identification processes, particularly given the unexpectedly high number of learners identified with SEN.

It suggests a potential issue of over- or under-identification of certain children. Younger children may not actually be more likely to have additional learning needs – they might just be behind due to their age. It is crucial to understand a child’s environment and their individual situation to effectively support their learning needs.

We also found the earlier that special educational needs were recognised, and hence the longer a child’s education was spent with these known needs, the less likely children were to meet nationally expected levels of attainment. This shows that whatever additional support children identified as having educational needs were receiving, it was not effective in mitigating the impact of their learning needs on achieve their learning goals.

Our research mirrors similar national findings. Evidence from the Education Policy Institute in England also found a high number of children – 39% – in the cohort taking their GCSEs in 2016 had been identified with special educational needs and disability (SEND) at some point in their schooling. Other research has shown that children with SEND in England are far less likely to meet expected learning standards than their peers at Key Stage One.

Recognise diverse learning needs

However, our research also raises questions about the current identification system being used in Wales. While some children in the 2002-03 cohort may have been over-identified, the fact these children were identified as having additional needs means their schools felt they required extra help. These children may go under the radar in the new system.

We believe a more inclusive model for supporting children’s learning is required, which takes their individual circumstances into account when providing help.

An effective system should give support that allows children with additional learning needs to meet the national expectations, at a minimum. To improve academic attainment levels in Wales, it is crucial to prioritise effective support for this potentially very large group of learners.

Inclusive educational initiatives that recognise and support children’s diverse learning needs are necessary. By acknowledging that children can have different learning needs at different times, schools can consider how they can support all learners – not just those who are identified with additional learning needs.

The reforms introduced by the Welsh government are changing the way children are identified and supported. We believe the methods used to identify learning needs should be rigorously reviewed, with a new focus on ensuring accuracy, fairness and inclusivity. Environmental factors such as the child’s age in a year group should be taken into consideration when identifying their learning needs. Läs mer…

Let’s start with the good stuff. Deadpool & Wolverine is a fun, irreverent and blood-soaked summer blockbuster that fans of the Deadpool franchise are going to love.

Ryan Reynolds returns as Wade Wilson (Deadpool), and Hugh Jackman is resurrected as Wolverine, after his character was killed off in Logan in 2017. Packed full of cheesy music and meta-comedy, the movie delivers fan service in spades, finally bringing the bromance between Reynolds and Jackman to the big screen.

Meta-comedy and fan service are the things that make this film work. But they also serve as stark reminders of what’s not been working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) these past few years.

Meta-comedy is a form of self-aware humour that playfully breaks the fourth wall, winks at the audience, and pokes fun at its own conventions. In Deadpool & Wolverine’s case, that’s the MCU and the superhero movie genre in general.

Fanservice is the inclusion of content that specifically caters to the desires and expectations of existing fans. It’s often risqué or sexual in nature, but can also be about bringing back iconic characters, one liners and familiar moments from previous instalments in a franchise – Deadpool & Wolverine does both.

The trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine.

The problem is Deadpool & Wolverine is so meta and packed full of fan service that to fully appreciate the film, viewers must understand the context of its production.

If you didn’t know that prior to 2019, when the Walt Disney Company purchased 21st Century Fox, the characters of Deadpool and Wolverine were not part of the MCU, then many of Reynold’s snarky asides about the acquisition will slide right over your head.

Similarly, if you’ve not seen the full slate of Marvel movies produced by Fox, such as the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Blade franchises, to name but a few, then you’ll be wondering what the myriad of cameos is all about. To be honest, you might still be trying to remember just who these characters are even if you have seen them all.

If you’ve not been keeping up with the Loki series over on Disney+, then the Time Variance Authority sub plot, which allows Wolverine to be resurrected, might have you scratching your head. This all results in Deadpool & Wolverine having lots of stuff going on, but not much story.

There are plenty of high-octane action sequences in the film.
Disney

Drunken eulogy

So, will it save the MCU? The short answer is no. Deadpool & Wolverine is most fun when looking back rather than forward. Underneath the over-the-top slapstick and super-violent comedy, there’s a sad air of nostalgia to the movie. At times, Deadpool & Wolverine feels like a drunken eulogy for the Marvel content produced by 20th Century Fox.

The elements that work in the film, like the bromance between Reynolds and Jackman, the cheeky self-referential comedy and the slapstick set pieces, are the things that separate it from the rest of the MCU.

The elements that don’t work in the film, like the intrusion of over-complicated multiverse plot strands and the need to be in the know about the plots of other Marvel films and shows to fully understand the plot of the film you’re watching, highlight some of the reasons fans have been abandoning the MCU in recent years.

Perhaps in the end though, Deadpool & Wolverine is a hopeful metaphor. If you’re willing to navigate the jumble of added MCU content, you’ll find the good stuff– the bromance between Deadpool and Wolverine.

Perhaps then, for Marvel fans who’ve weathered the post-Avengers: Endgame MCU disappointments, there’s a glimmer of something brighter on the horizon – but of course, that’s probably, to quote Wade Wilson, an “educated wish”.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. Läs mer…

Venezuela is poised for a historic vote on Sunday, July 28 that could bring the 11-year reign of the country’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, to an end – and with it, the widespread sense of hopelessness that has sparked a mass exodus from the country.

Of all the elections taking place around the world in 2024, the outcome of Venezuela’s is one of the hardest to predict. This is not because an opposition win is in question – they are ahead in the polls by a significant margin. Rather, it is because dictators do not relinquish power without a fight.

Maduro has strongly signalled his determination to retain the top job. In a campaign event on July 17, he warned that Venezuela would fall “into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war” if he didn’t win the election.

This election has only come about following a tortuous process that culminated in an agreement signed in Barbados in October 2023, which committed Maduro to holding “free and fair” elections in return for a partial lifting of US sanctions on his government for human rights abuses and corruption.

But many people have questioned Maduro’s commitment to the agreement, pointing to his crackdown on human rights in the run-up to the election and the rigged process used to select opposition candidates.

Read more:
Venezuela: why Maduro is ramping up his attack on free speech

President Maduro at a rally in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on July 18.
Miguel Gutierrez / EPA

The immensely popular leader of the Venezuelan opposition, María Corina Machado, will not appear on the ballot paper despite her winning more than 90% of the vote in the opposition’s informal primaries in October 2023.

Machado, a hardline far-right politician and longtime foe of Maduro’s government, has been disqualified from holding public office on several instances. In 2017, she was barred after expressing support for US sanctions. Then, in June 2023, she was banned again for a period of 15 years.

However, with the backing of the US, she has convinced a moderate and relatively unknown former diplomat, Edmundo González Urrutia, to stand in her place. González, who had previously never sought elected office, has campaigned on a platform for freedom, peace and reconciliation. Despite diverging political views, the desire to unseat Maduro is such that unity behind the candidacy of González has prevailed.

Demanding change

Under Maduro’s leadership, Venezuela has been thrown into a deep recession. High oil prices in the 2000s had allowed his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, to fund a socialist economic programme underpinned by high levels of social spending.

But the wave turned in 2013 when Chávez died and, shortly after Maduro’s election, global oil prices plummeted. The resulting drop in oil revenues – on which Venezuela is highly reliant – combined with US sanctions resulted in a 75% decline in the country’s GDP over Maduro’s first eight years in power.

Millions fled the country, and 90% of the population that remains now live below the poverty line (with 70% in extreme poverty). In rallies and pre-election polls, Venezuelans are overwhelmingly demanding change and see Sunday’s election as the best opportunity to turn the page.

The (official) size of the opposition’s win, and the response of the regime to it, are the big unknowns. Maduro’s regime controls the electoral process and has reduced the number of Venezuelans who are eligible to vote.

The opposition has been critical of the deliberate confusion that has surrounded the organisation of this election. Maduro’s name and face will appear 13 times on the top row of Sunday’s ballot paper – once for each political party he represents. His face will be the most recognisable on the ballot, in a country where the opposition has no access to official media.

Intimidation tactics are also being used by the regime. A report by the Venezuelan NGO Laboratorio de Paz said 71 “arbitrary detentions” had taken place involving opposition campaign workers, journalists, activists and members of civil society between July 4 and 14. On July 18, Machado posted a video on X claiming her campaign vehicle had been vandalised and her brakes cut.

Edmundo González Urrutia attends a prayer event with María Corina Machado in Caracas ahead of the presidential election.
Miguel Gutierrez / EPA

It appears that Maduro is still hoping to suppress enough votes to secure a “clean win”. Only 69,000 of the 4 million Venezuelans who live abroad and are registered to vote met the government’s requirements to cast ballots overseas. Having fled the country, their votes would almost certainly have been cast for the opposition.

Political repression is also expected on and around polling day. However, despite being far from “free and fair”, the electoral conditions are better this time round than they were the last time Venezuelans voted for a new president in 2018. In that year, the contest was so rigged that neighbouring countries and the US declared the results illegitimate.

On July 24 2024, González announced that accreditation had finally been secured from Venezuela’s electoral council for 30,000 observers of polling stations, which should ensure greater transparency this time around.

What to watch for

For decades, voter participation in Venezuela has been in decline. But consulting firm Datanálisis estimates that more than 70% of Venezuelans will cast their vote in this election – a signal of people’s desire for change.

It is possible that Maduro will try to steal the election, particularly given the disincentives to stepping down – the US Drug Enforcement Agency has offered a US$15 million (£11.7 million) reward for information leading to Maduro’s capture. However, stealing the election will be more difficult this time, given the weight of international pressure and the strength of support for the opposition.

Those currently in power need incentives to engage in a peaceful transition to democratic rule. This could potentially take the form of an amnesty for human rights and drug trafficking charges against members of the regime, including Maduro.

The upcoming election could yet prove a starting point, rather than the endgame, for Venezuela. But those in power will only relinquish it if they know they won’t face prosecution. Läs mer…

A new study from the National Institutes of Health shows a jump in both hospital-acquired infections and resistance to the antibiotics used to treat them. The findings are based on data gathered at 120 U.S. hospitals from January 2018 to December 2022, a five-year period that included the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Nasia Safdar, a professor of infectious medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses why infection rates have gone up and how you can protect yourself as a hospital patient or visiting family member.

Nasia Safdar discusses the dangers of hospital-acquired infections.

The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion that have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What are health care-associated infections?

Nasia Safdar: These are infections that occur as a result of exposure to the health care system. People coming in for care are typically quite sick, so they’re at risk of acquiring bacteria that can then cause an infection while they’re in the hospital, or shortly after they’re discharged from the hospital.

Why do infections, particularly antibiotic-resistant ones, spread so easily in hospitals and other health care settings?

Nasia Safdar: There is a certain profile of bacteria and germs that develop in health care facilities. And that profile is typically bacteria that are resistant to many commonly used antibiotics.

Patients are already vulnerable and may have compromised immune systems. On top of that, add the risks associated with heavy-duty antibiotic usage, surgeries, procedures and medical devices like urinary catheters and intravascular catheters, which go into the bloodstream. The result is a population at risk for acquiring these bacteria circulating in the environment.

What does it mean for an infection to be antibiotic-resistant?

Nasia Safdar: For any typical infection, there might be a range of choices for treatment. There is what’s called first-line treatment, which is the first antibiotic you would go to. These are typically antibiotics that can treat the infections really well, but without harming the good bacteria that live in your intestine.

But when bacteria get resistant to antibiotics, we have to go to more broad-spectrum antibiotics, which might still be effective for treatment but also might have more side effects or destroy some of the good bacteria in the intestine.

What can hospitals and clinics do to prevent or reduce the spread of infections?

Nasia Safdar: One is infection prevention, and the other is antibiotic stewardship, or the judicious use of antibiotics. Both work synergistically with each other.

Within the infection prevention category, you have hand hygiene, which is critical not just for health care personnel but also for patients themselves.

There is also the use of gowns and gloves, when necessary, to make sure that if one patient has a transmittable condition, that pathway is interrupted by health care workers wearing the right PPE, or personal protective equipment. I also think only using devices such as urinary catheters or intravascular catheters when they’re truly needed is another way to prevent patients from becoming infected.

And then, within the antibiotic stewardship category, there’s a need to prevent the overuse of antibiotics.

What has happened in recent years regarding the rates of health care-associated infections?

Nasia Safdar: Before the pandemic, I think the field was quite optimistic because we were seeing reduced rates of antibiotic-resistant, device-related infections.

A lot of those gains were reversed after the arrival of the pandemic. There was a lot of unnecessary use of antibiotics during that time. And so now we see sharp increases in many of those antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This has led to concern that whatever success we had was fragile and short-lived. We now want to make sure we’re not as vulnerable as we became during the pandemic.

Can you give us some background on Candida auris?

Nasia Safdar: Candida auris is an emerging pathogen. Unlike some other antibiotic-resistant germs in health care systems, this one is a fungus – or a yeast, which is the other terminology for it.
And it spreads quite quickly in health care systems.

Candida auris persists in the environment and on the skin and can cause severe bloodstream infections in vulnerable patients. It has been responsible for a number of outbreaks, and the treatment options are much more limited when compared with other infectious germs.

With the arrival of the pandemic, there was a sharp increase in Candida auris infections. They rose by several hundred percent nationwide after smoldering for a while. That sharp spike concerns us.

Can the spread of these infections be reduced by manipulating the gut microbiome?

Nasia Safdar: Many of these germs live in the intestine. They are generally kept at bay by the good bacteria that we all have in our intestines. But sometimes, when we use antibiotics, or use devices or do surgery, those good bacteria are destroyed. And then these germs can find a hospitable niche and grow and cause infections.

Diet plays an important role in keeping our gut microbiome healthy. Most Americans don’t get enough fiber. But a high-fiber diet keeps your gut bacteria healthy and helps you put up more of a resistance to germs when they try to invade.

What can patients or their families do to reduce the odds of getting an infection in a health care setting?

Nasia Safdar: Make sure that both patient and health care workers observe hand hygiene. Use hand sanitizer. It works. It’s convenient. It’s readily available. It’s a great way to prevent infections in health care systems.

But there are some instances where you would want to use soap and water instead. Soap and water is a better option when hands are soiled with blood, stool, diarrhea or other body secretions.

Also ask about the health care system’s rates of infections. Those are things typically tracked closely by health care systems, and the information is often publicly available. Ask your health care team about the medication you’re getting for treatments, particularly if they’re antibiotics. Then ask how long you should take them, what side effects to anticipate, and the effect they’ll have on your gut bacteria.

Watch the full interview to hear more.

SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories. Läs mer…

Long before the advent of reality television, the popular game show “Queen for a Day” thrilled American audiences by giving women who told heartbreaking tales of financial struggles a chance at winning expensive items that could help solve their problems.

Throughout its 1956-1964 run, each episode featured contestants describing a misfortune that had struck them or their families, such as polio, rheumatic fever or hunting accidents. They asked for everything from bunk beds to beauty school tuition to improve their lot.

Eventually, a clap-o-meter would appear, superimposed over each woman’s face. The winner would be chosen based on the volume of the audience’s applause. She was crowned Queen for a Day and lavished with dishwashers, sewing machines and sofas, while the losers – and the millions of Americans who had tuned in on their TV sets – watched.

Today, something like that black-and-white TV show plays out nonstop, but on different devices. It’s the plot of GoFundMe, the world’s largest crowdfunding website for personal causes.

The privately owned company says it helped people raise over US$30 billion in donations between 2010 and early 2024. While that total sounds impressive, GoFundMe’s success leaves behind a trail of failed campaigns and disappointed users – a reality that the platform is designed to hide.

The ‘Queen for a Day’ show obliged contestants to air their needs publicly.

Behind the success stories

If you open GoFundMe’s Discover page, you’ll find a cascade of misfortunes.

People from many walks of life use the platform to tell the public about the cancers and diabetes cases, house fires and other tragedies that have beset them or their loved ones. They ask for help paying for everything from medical treatment to college textbooks.

A fundraising meter appears, usually next to a photo of the person seeking help, and gauges how the appeal has resonated with website visitors. Winners go viral, blow through their goals and raise tens of thousands of dollars.

Others hope the crowd will choose them next.

We are political sociologists interested in how people across North America use digital technologies to cope with the high cost of health care and higher education. As part of our research, we conducted 50 in-depth interviews and surveyed over 600 crowdfunding users between 2018 and 2021. We also analyzed data from nearly 2 million GoFundMe campaigns.

In “GoFailMe: The Unfulfilled Promise of Digital Crowdfunding,” our book based on this research, we explain that behind GoFundMe’s winners, whose stories are paraded on the site’s front page and its podcast – “True Stories of Good People” – stands a long line of also-rans.

They raise almost no money this way but are put through an emotional roller coaster and give up a considerable amount of their privacy and personal data.

Digital hurdles

When these platforms emerged in the 2000s, crowdfunding companies promised to use the internet’s networking capabilities to remove gatekeepers and democratize fundraising, so that anyone with a worthy cause could access the money they needed.

Far from this techno-optimistic vision, we find striking inequalities throughout GoFundMe’s fundraising process.

First, there’s the digital divide. Many low-income people simply don’t ask for help using crowdfunding because they don’t know about it, can’t reliably access the internet, or are too intimidated by technology.

For those who can get in the virtual door, crowdfunding rewards users who already have many economic advantages in the offline world. Wealthier people are more likely to be able to use online services, while poorer and less-educated users have a harder time marketing their misfortunes with compelling narratives, eye-catching photos and engaging videos.

And crowdfunding works best when there’s a crowd willing and able to help, which usually begins with family, friends and acquaintances. But if your family and friends are broke, like you, then there’s little help to be had, no matter how good your campaign is or how deftly you promote it.

GoFundMe’s invisible majority

We estimate that only about 17% of U.S. GoFundMe campaigns for health care and emergency costs meet their goal. We’ve also found that most of the funds raised are concentrated among a very small group of campaigns.

We saw in the data we analyzed that the top 5% of highest-earning campaigns claimed about half of all dollars raised on GoFundMe. Because relatively well-off users tend to be more successful at crowdfunding, such a disparity is likely to only worsen already high levels of economic inequality in the U.S.

Despite the company’s assurances that every worthy cause has a place on GoFundMe, most of its users simply don’t get the funds they need when they use the platform.

But you wouldn’t know this from browsing GoFundMe.

Failure doesn’t sell.

The droves of campaigns that never get off the ground are largely hidden by an algorithmic recommendation system that promotes the most successful cases to prominence while sweeping the rest into the platform’s search results. This appears to be highly profitable for GoFundMe, which earns revenue from fees and tips added to donations but leaves many users feeling disappointed and some even duped.

One user we interviewed, whose campaign for help with medical costs ended up not receiving a single donation, likened the experience to “shouting into that well of sadness, hoping people will see and hear you.”

Asked for comment, the company said our book was “rife with misconceptions,” but GoFundMe didn’t provide any details about what the people who don’t meet their stated fundraising goals get from the platform. “We are constantly innovating our product to ensure more organizers achieve greater success,” GoFundMe added.

‘Queen for a Day’ 2.0?

People have always asked for help, and every era has its way of deciding who gets it.

In the 1950s, media companies experimented with new combinations of charity and entertainment and invented the TV game show. We agree with critics who consider “Queen for a Day” to be among the genre’s worst exploiters of hardship for profit.

The possibilities for companies like GoFundMe to use technology in new ways to improve people’s lives have never been greater. At the same time, the opportunities to profit from a crisis are also growing.

To fulfill crowdfunding’s democratic promise, we believe that GoFundMe should be far more open about the success of all its campaigns, including those that flounder. It could also do much more to make the platform more accessible to the people who are experiencing the most economic distress.

Until it takes those steps, its users would be wise to proceed with caution – recognizing that behind every viral success lie countless untold stories of unmet needs. Läs mer…

Since Donald Trump chose Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, it’s been widely noted that Vance once described Trump as “reprehensible” and “cultural heroin.” However, the day after Vance won his own Senate race in 2022, he reportedly made it known that he would support Trump for president in 2024.

Given this dramatic change, what does Vance’s selection mean for the Republican Party and conservatism, the political philosophy that the GOP once claimed to embrace?

I am a political scientist whose research and political analysis focuses on the relationship between Trump, the Republican Party and conservatism. Everyday citizens define conservatism in different ways, but at its root it is a philosophy that supports smaller and less-centralized government because consolidated power could be used to silence political competition and deny citizens their liberties.

Since 2015, Trump has tightened his grip on the Republican Party, moving it further away from its professed conservative ideology. The choice of Vance as Trump’s running mate – and the competition that preceded it – are the latest steps in this process.

Political columnist George Will describes how Trumpism has steered the Republican Party away from traditional conservative views.

Vance came from a small pool of contenders that included other noteworthy politicians who likewise once vehemently opposed Trump. By examining their trajectories, we can see how the Republican Party has abandoned conservative values to serve a single man.

Elise Stefanik

Elise Stefanik ran for Congress in 2014 from a district in upstate New York as a mainstream Republican who admired Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Ryan was a traditional conservative who had run for vice president alongside former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012. Romney endorsed Stefanik for Congress, saying that she was “a person of integrity. Every campaign is different, but values don’t change.”

But Stefanik’s values did change. When forced to share the ballot with Trump in 2016, she couldn’t even “spit his name out,” according to Republican consultant Tim Miller. But early in Trump’s presidency, she became a vocal ally, eventually replacing Rep. Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference in 2021.

House Republicans ousted Cheney from that position after she criticized Trump’s refusal to support the 2020 election results and his actions during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Cheney justified her opposition to Trump by highlighting her respect for the rule of law and support for limited government – even when those positions meant opposing her own party leader. These are foundational conservative principles, centered in aversion to consolidated government power.

This switch was a significant moment in the party’s ideological transformation. Stefanik’s rising star subsequently landed her in the mix for vice president, which she called “An honor. A humbling honor.”

Marco Rubio

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. During that race, Rubio issued a news release calling Trump a “serious threat to the future of our party and our country,” and blamed him for ushering in a climate of violence.

Statements like these made sense coming from a serious conservative whose worldview was defined by his family’s Cuban heritage and who opposed communism, tyranny and excessive government power.

Eventually, though, Rubio became a Trump ally. He voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021, which centered on charges that Trump had incited an insurrection. In line with Trump’s wishes, Rubio opposed establishing an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 events.

In early 2024, Rubio was asked in an ABC interview if he really wanted to be vice president even though Trump had defended calls by Jan. 6 insurrectionists to hang former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 election results.

“When Donald Trump was president of the United States, this country was safer, it was more prosperous,” Rubio responded. “I think this country and the world was a better place.”

This refusal to acknowledge and challenge Trump’s apparent support of lawlessness by his followers was an abdication of fundamental conservative values.

Sen. Marco Rubio called Donald Trump ‘a con artist’ and a threat to conservatism in 2016, but sought to be his running mate in 2024.

Tim Scott

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has touted his conservative values and principles throughout his political life. It was logical for him to endorse Rubio as Trump gained momentum in the 2016 Republican primaries.

In 2017, Scott insisted that Trump’s failure to condemn white nationalists after violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, compromised his moral authority. Not long after, however, Scott met with Trump about his comments and was convinced that Trump had “obviously reflected” on what he said.

When Trump refused to flatly condemn white supremacists a few years later in a 2020 presidential debate, Scott suggested that Trump “misspoke” and should correct the comments, but added, “If he doesn’t correct it, I guess he didn’t misspeak.” After dropping out of the Republican primaries in 2024, Scott endorsed Trump as someone who could “unite the country.”

Why Vance?

These converted Trump allies still hold modern conservative stances on issues such as abortion and health care. But in seeking to become Trump’s running mate, they tacitly endorsed an executive’s attempt to overturn a democratic election and subvert the liberties of U.S. citizens. Such a shift violates the spirit of conservatism.

These politicians have also moved away from conservative principles in areas including U.S. foreign policy and immigration. But the fundamental shift that is most profound is in their attitudes toward abuse of government power.

What should we make of Trump choosing Vance, who once privately compared Trump to Hitler but now says that he would not have readily certified the 2020 election if he had been in Pence’s shoes?

Many considerations affect the choice of a running mate. But Vance doesn’t represent a swing state. He probably won’t appeal to MAGA-skeptical independent voters who have yet to make up their minds about who to vote for.

Instead, people close to Trump call the 39-year-old Vance the new heir to Trump’s MAGA movement. Vance is more than a protegé, though; he embodies Trump’s influence on the Republican Party’s evolving relationship with government power and insists his political conversion is genuine.

If there was any speculation that Republicans would revert to some form of traditional conservatism after Trump leaves politics, the prospect of a JD Vance presidency makes clear that the answer is no. Läs mer…

Staring straight at the camera, with a grave expression on his face, the president uttered these famous words: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Lyndon Johnson made that announcement at the end of his nationally televised address on the Vietnam War on March 31, 1968. Those words now echo loudly, as pundits recall them in the wake of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election.

Like Biden, Johnson was a sitting Democratic president who was eligible for another term. Both men understood the odds against reelection, and both opted out. Their decisions shape their legacies as presidents who compiled impressive records yet failed to sustain their power across a longer span.

As the author of “The Men and the Moment,” a short narrative history of the presidential election of 1968, I have reflected on these parallels, too. But I think we can learn more from the differences in the circumstances of Biden’s and Johnson’s withdrawals. They illustrate the high hurdles that the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, now must clear, while also sounding a note of hope for the Democratic Party.

President Lyndon Johnson announces on March 31, 1968, that he will not seek reelection.

When they did it

One important distinction between Johnson and Biden was the nature and timing of their decisions.

Johnson arrived at his decision not to run for a second full term on his own, five months before the Democratic National Convention. It surprised everyone. No one expected this larger-than-life president – the force behind a massive slate of liberal government programs known as the Great Society, as well as the escalation of the Vietnam War – to voluntarily give up power.

But Johnson suffered as communist forces launched the Tet Offensive against U.S. troops in Vietnam. At home, critics on both the right and left blasted him. He realized that he could no longer forge a consensus in Congress. He rationalized that he could serve his final year in office by crafting peace in Vietnam.

That choice allowed other candidates to compete for delegates, from his loyal vice president, Hubert Humphrey, to anti-war senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy.

Biden, by contrast, renounced his nomination well after the primaries and just one month before the convention. Moreover, he succumbed to external pressure from donors and party leaders to leave the race, stemming from his disastrous performance in the June 27, 2024, debate.

Biden’s prolonged candidacy appears to have dictated that the party anoint Harris as his successor. Can she craft a message that resonates with voters? Can she win their trust and respect?

Running in the primaries would have provided answers. Instead, for now, those questions linger.

Delegate selection differences

Another divergence between 1968 and 2024 was the process of delegate selection.

In 1968, only a handful of states had binding primaries, where all delegates pledged their vote to the election’s winner. It was more common for party insiders to choose delegates through state conventions and other bureaucratic means.

Humphrey campaigned through the spring and summer of 1968, but he avoided primary elections. McCarthy and Kennedy battled in those primaries, each trying to claim the mantle of the popular anti-war challenger. Then Kennedy was assassinated in June, and McCarthy failed to rally a viable coalition. Humphrey captured the nomination by winning the support of most Democratic officials.

By the next election cycle, the party had enacted reforms for choosing delegates, including open primaries and caucuses. That system remains in place now.

Yet this year’s extraordinary turn of events means that Harris has bypassed that system. Unlike Humphrey, she has to overcome voters’ doubts about whether she is the genuine preferred candidate of the Democratic Party.

Party unity not the same

If these distinctions from 1968 illustrate the obstacles before Harris, a final difference suggests one of her greatest assets: She has the support of almost the entire Democratic Party, including the sitting president.

Humphrey could not say the same. His own president kept hanging him out to dry.

To attract voters seeking change, Humphrey needed to articulate his own position on the Vietnam War, but Johnson was unwilling to make concessions as a prelude to peace. He bullied Humphrey into supporting his tough stance, which included a reluctance to halt bombings in North Vietnam.

Johnson didn’t respect Humphrey. Early in the race, LBJ privately beseeched Republican Nelson Rockefeller to run. By the general election, Johnson seemed more politically aligned with Republican nominee Richard Nixon than with his own vice president.

President Lyndon Johnson, left, bullied and disrespected his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, right, who was the 1968 Democratic presidential nominee.
Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

Vietnam was cleaving the party, and Humphrey could not heal the wounds. Finally, at the very end of September, Humphrey cast his independent stance on the war, pledging to halt the bombing of North Vietnam “as an acceptable risk for peace.” But it was too little, too late.

McCarthy, his fellow Minnesotan, offered the limpest of endorsements, and not until one week before Election Day. In the end, Humphrey could not unite Democratic voters, and Nixon triumphed.

Now, for all the ideological differences among prominent Democrats, the party looks unified in its ambition to negate the threat they see in Donald Trump. Biden will almost certainly exhibit more political generosity than Johnson.

In addressing the monumental task of a late presidential run against the polarizing figure of Trump, Harris faces challenges that are unique in American political history. If she can overcome them, she might avoid the fate of Humphrey. Läs mer…

Chances of a rapprochement between regional rivals Turkey and Syria were raised momentarily on July 22, 2024, with news that the leaders of both countries were set for a much-anticipated meeting aimed at resolving long-standing differences. Within hours, Turkish sources dismissed the rumors of an imminent sit-down between the two leaders as false.

Delicacy over the matter is understandable. A recent surge in anti-Syrian violence in Turkey has highlighted the fragility of efforts to restore diplomatic ties with Syria, which were severed at the onset of the Syrian civil war.

That conflict affected Turkey in a number of ways. Ankara sided with opposition forces in Syria and eventually intervened militarily, occupying parts of the country’s north. Meanwhile, fighting led to an influx of millions of refugees into Turkey, provoking anti-Syrian sentiment and, more recently, violence.

On June 30, 2024, Syrian-owned properties, vehicles and businesses in the central Turkish city of Kayseri were vandalized and set on fire following allegations of sexual abuse against a Syrian man. Fueled by social media, attacks soon spread and sparked the most violent anti-Syrian riots to date in Turkish areas with large Syrian refugee populations.

It also prompted or inflamed violence in opposition-held northwest Syria against Turkish military positions. The region was already on edge following comments from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that signaled his desire to restore relations with the Syrian government – something that would have profound consequences for opposition-held areas.

Detente with Damascus?

Erdogan has recently called for a “new era with Syria” following years of antagonism between the Turkish leader and his Syrian counterpart.

Since popular uprisings escalated into a full-blown civil war in 2012, Erdogan has viewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as responsible for persecuting and displacing Syrians, making negotiations between the neighboring countries difficult.

But now Erdogan has suggested he is willing to meet with Assad. His hope is that a return to normalized relations would help facilitate the return of 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and address the shared concern of a potential Kurdish state in northeastern Syria.

As a political scientist focusing on security in the Middle East, I can see how a diplomatic breakthrough could benefit both leaders. For Erdogan, it would alleviate tensions over Syrian refugees; for Assad it represents a further sign that his regional isolation has come to an end. But elsewhere, it complicates the already complex and volatile nature of Turkey’s engagement in Syria, notably regarding its relationship with Syrian refugees and opposition groups in northwest Syria.

Anti-Syrian riots and social media

The outburst of anti-Syrian violence in Turkey came just days after Erdogan first signaled the possibility of meeting with Assad. The Turkish president accused opposition parties of stoking racism and fueling tensions. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya pointed to online campaigns stirring up violence, noting that 38% of the “provocative and negative” posts on the evening of the rioting was produced by bot accounts.

Syrians cross into their country from the Turkish crossing point of Cilvegozu, in Reyhanli, southeastern Turkey.
AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File

Whoever was behind the campaign to stoke animosity, it fed into existing tensions in opposition-held northwest Syria. Hundreds of angry Syrians took to the streets in several towns, attacking Turkish trucks and removing Turkish flags, while demanding the withdrawal of Turkish forces. In response, Turkey closed its borders with northwest Syria.

The growing anti-Turkish sentiment in opposition-held areas of Syria highlight the complicated nature of Turkey’s attempt at rapprochement with the regime in Damascus. Having established Turkey as an ardent supporter of anti-Assad forces, Erdogan now stands accused of turning his back on his erstwhile allies. Furthermore, to the refugees in Turkey who fled Assad’s crackdown, a deal that would see them returned would amount to a betrayal.

After Erdogan’s intention to meet with Assad started to circulate in the media, some factions of the Syrian opposition dubbed it “Turkey’s sellout of the opposition.”

Some Syrian pundits claimed that normalization with Assad was a step toward the massive forced return of refugees to Syria in the face of growing public demands and electoral pressures. As was evident during the 2023 elections in Turkey, the return of refugees has become a politicized issue in the country.

All of this puts Erdogan in a bind. While he wants to placate the Turkish public, he doesn’t wish to anger or cut ties with the Syrian opposition, a group that he had previously cultivated ties with as a potential ally against Kurdish independence.

Negotiating with Assad

For some time, negotiating with the Syrian regime was considered a red line by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym AKP. The party viewed Assad as the main actor responsible for the persecution and forced displacement of Syrians.

And until recently, Assad showed no interest in meeting with Erdogan, as he blamed him for violence in Syria through the support of rebel groups fighting the regime. However, he recently signaled that “he could meet with President Erdogan as long as the sovereignty of the Syrian state over all its territory is respected and all forms of terrorism are fought.”

So why the diplomatic push for rapprochement now? Part of the answer lies in Erdogan’s desire to return Syrian refugees living in Turkey for domestic popularity reasons. Even if he fails to reach an agreement, he would be in a position to tell a public increasingly critical of the “open doors” policy to Syrian refugees that engagement with Damascus has been tried but failed to produce any concrete results.

And then there is the concern shared by Turkey and Syria over the materialization of a de facto Kurdish state, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, in northeast Syria. Rojava is supported by the U.S., yet recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey.

A protester throws a rock toward a Turkish truck during protests against Turkey in al-Bab, in the northern Syrian opposition-held region of Aleppo, on July 1, 2024.
Photo by Bakr Alkasem/AFP via Getty Images

If the U.S. withdraws troops from the region, Erdogan would need to negotiate Turkey’s policy toward northeast Syria with Assad.

Yet, both leaders are currently in a weak position to dictate the terms of the new order in northeast Syria. Restoring diplomatic ties would enable both countries to coordinate efforts against a shared goal of preventing an autonomous Kurdish state.

Foreseeing the impacts of a possible rapprochement on their political interests, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria calls the diplomatic efforts a “conspiracy against the Syrian people” and a “clear legitimization of the Turkish occupation” of previously Kurdish-majority areas. The U.S. also opposes normalization of relations with Syria absent “authentic progress” toward a political solution to the conflict.

Middle East’s new realities

Erdogan’s attempt to restore relations with Syria might also be viewed as an adjustment to the new political realities in the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates restored diplomatic relations with Syria in 2018. The Arab League also normalized relations with Syria and readmitted it in 2023. Saudi Arabia also reopened its embassy in Damascus in 2024.

In other words, Syria’s isolation in the region has effectively come to an end. In this regard, Ankara may have concluded that it is in its best interest to have diplomatic relations with a country that it needs to negotiate and coordinate with on a series of military, political and migration-related issues. Läs mer…