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Guanacaste Housing Crisis Deepens Amid Costa Rica’s Luxury Boom

Guanacaste continues to solidify its reputation as one of Costa Rica’s most dynamic real estate hubs, with construction activity showing steady growth in 2024, according to the latest data from the Association of Engineers and Architects (CFIA). The province recorded a 3.2% increase in construction compared to the previous year, driven largely by urban infrastructure […] The post Guanacaste Housing Crisis Deepens Amid Costa Rica’s Luxury Boom appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

Guanacaste continues to solidify its reputation as one of Costa Rica’s most dynamic real estate hubs, with construction activity showing steady growth in 2024, according to the latest data from the Association of Engineers and Architects (CFIA). The province recorded a 3.2% increase in construction compared to the previous year, driven largely by urban infrastructure and housing projects. Yet, as development accelerates, outdated regulatory plans, environmental degradation, and a widening housing gap threaten the region’s sustainability. The CFIA reports that urban infrastructure led the construction surge in 2024, comprising 44% of the total square meters built. Housing projects followed closely at 35%, with coastal areas like Nosara, Tamarindo, and Sámara seeing a proliferation of residential condominiums catering to tourists and foreign investors. Commercial developments, while growing steadily, accounted for just 9% of the built-up area, with industrial projects at 5% and miscellaneous construction at 7%. Notably, 79% of these efforts involve new developments, compared to 14% for remodeling, highlighting Guanacaste’s rapid expansion and high demand. In key areas like Nicoya, Liberia, and Santa Cruz, real estate development is advancing at a brisk pace. However, the Association of Topographical Engineers warns that outdated urban planning regulations are stifling sustainable growth. Nicoya’s regulatory plan, unchanged for 42 years, is the oldest in the province, followed by Santa Cruz’s 31-year-old framework and Liberia’s 19-year-old guidelines—among the most antiquated in Costa Rica. These plans, meant to govern land use, protect water resources, and mitigate risks like flooding and sewer failures, are ill-equipped for the region’s modern demands. Nicoya’s municipality is tackling this issue head-on, drafting a new regulatory plan that will extend construction guidelines to coastal hotspots like Nosara and Sámara. Currently in the study phase, the project—backed by local authorities and urban planning experts—aims to address unchecked growth and environmental strain. However, completion is projected to take four years, leaving a window for unregulated development to persist. “We’re racing against time,” said Josué Ruiz, head of Nicoya’s Public Works and Construction Control Department, in a recent interview with Voz de Guanacaste. “The longer we delay, the harder it becomes to balance progress with preservation.” The stakes are high. Guanacaste’s luxury real estate boom, fueled by a 400% surge in coastal property prices between 2020 and 2023 (per the Observatory of Tourism, Migrations, and Sustainable Development), has transformed the province into a magnet for wealthy expatriates and retirees. High-end developments—such as the Waldorf Astoria and Ritz-Carlton projects slated for 2025—dominate the market, yet affordable housing remains elusive. A 2023 study by the CFIA and the University of Costa Rica found that while 26% of homes built in Guanacaste over the past decade exceed 150 square meters, the province faces a qualitative housing deficit of over 750,000 units, leaving most locals priced out. This disparity is driving displacement. In districts like Cuajiniquil, vacancy rates have soared from 32.1% in 2011 to 66.4% in 2022, as homes sit empty for seasonal use by tourists rather than serving residents, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). “Housing has become a privilege, not a right,” said Franklin Solano, an urban planning researcher at UCR, in a Voz de Guanacaste report. “The boom satisfies economic needs for some, but the social impacts are mounting.” Environmental concerns compound the crisis. Deforestation, loss of green spaces, and damage to protected areas are escalating as construction outpaces oversight. We reported in March 2024 that unchecked development in Guanacaste’s coastal zones has led to aquifer salinization and biodiversity loss, echoing local protests against mega-projects documented in a 2024 ResearchGate study. In Nosara, for instance, luxury developments have sparked outrage over water access, with communities reliant on overexploited wells. Meanwhile, the CFIA notes that only nine of Guanacaste’s 11 municipalities use its online permitting platform, leaving gaps in enforcement—Santa Cruz and La Cruz lag behind due to inadequate technology and training. Despite these challenges, optimism persists. The Latinvestor forecasted in January 2024 that infrastructure upgrades—like the expansion of Liberia’s Daniel Oduber Quirós International Airport—could bolster Guanacaste’s appeal, potentially stabilizing the market. Legislative efforts, such as the Water for Guanacaste Law signed in 2022, aim to address resource scarcity, though implementation remains slow. Nicoya’s forthcoming regulatory plan, expected by 2029, promises stricter environmental and zoning controls, but experts warn that bureaucratic delays could undermine its impact. For now, Guanacaste stands at a crossroads. As construction topped 2 million square meters in 2024—a milestone hailed by Revista Viajes—the province’s leaders face a stark choice: harness this growth for equitable, sustainable development or risk a future defined by inequality and ecological collapse The post Guanacaste Housing Crisis Deepens Amid Costa Rica’s Luxury Boom appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

Trump administration considers rolling back chemical plant safeguards

The Trump administration will consider rolling back Biden-era regulations that increased safeguards for workers at chemical plants, it announced in a legal filing on Thursday.  The Trump administration asked a court to pause legal challenges to the 2024 safety rules while it “undertakes a new rulemaking.” It said that as part of this rulemaking it...

The Trump administration will consider rolling back Biden-era regulations that increased safeguards for workers at chemical plants, it announced in a legal filing on Thursday.  The Trump administration asked a court to pause legal challenges to the 2024 safety rules while it “undertakes a new rulemaking.” It said that as part of this rulemaking it will “reassess elements of the underlying rule challenged here.” It’s not entirely clear what exactly the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would rewrite — if anything. The agency declined to comment further.  However, the last Trump administration significantly weakened safety standards at chemical plants.  The standards in question apply to 12,000 industrial facilities, including chemical manufacturers and distributors, oil refineries, food and beverage manufacturers and agricultural supply distributors. Rules were initially tightened under the Obama administration after a 2013 fertilizer plant explosion in Texas killed 15 people When it rolled back the rule the first time, the Trump administration argued that there was “little data supporting the claimed benefits” of the safety regulation. However, in restoring the protections and adding new ones, the Biden administration said that it was implementing the “strongest safety requirements ever for industrial facilities.” And the latest news received pushback from environmental advocates, who argue that making changes could result in more chemical disasters.  “It would mean a real disservice to communities, first responders and workers,” said Adam Kron, an attorney with Earthjustice. “It would put them in greater harm’s way from these chemical disasters.” Earthjustice is part of a coalition of environmental groups that tracks chemical disasters. This coalition has found that since January 2021, there have been more than 1,100 chemical incidents.  The news of a potential rewrite comes days after Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, in which he vowed to take on toxic chemicals, saying, “our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply and keep our children healthy and strong.” He has also repeatedly hammered the Biden administration for its response to a 2023 train derailment that released toxic substances into East Palestine, Ohio. Yet that rhetoric also comes as Trump has pledged broad deregulatory action, which could clash with upholding chemical safeguards.  While the East Palestine disaster was related to a moving train rather than a chemical plant, Kron said there is “a hypocrisy in really acting concerned around the East Palestine disaster” while scaling back chemical safety rules. 

US lost a fifth of its butterflies within two decades

However the researchers say butterflies may be able to recover if urgent conservation measures are taken.

US lost a fifth of its butterflies within two decades Maddie MolloyBBC Climate & ScienceJack CochranThe Danaus eresimus, commonly known as the soldier butterfly, is among the 20 butterfly species experiencing the steepest declineButterfly populations in the US shrank by more than a fifth within the space of two decades, according to a new study.Numbers fell by 22% between 2000 and 2020, according to research by Binghamton University in New York.A third of species saw serious decline, with some, like Julia's Skipper, losing more than 90% of their populations.However, the researchers say butterflies may be able to recover if urgent conservation measures are taken.The study published in the journal Science measured butterfly "abundance" - the number of individuals of a species within a specific area. It analysed 12.6 million butterfly sightings from 76,000 surveys across 35 monitoring programmes.This included data from citizen science programmes like the North American Butterfly Association's Fourth of July counts.Using statistical models, they estimated population trends for 342 species.The results showed that 33% were in significant decline, with many exhibiting extreme losses - 107 species declined by more than 50%."While the results aligned with global trends, seeing the extent of the decline at such a large spatial scale was sobering," said Prof Eliza Grames, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University.Randy BodkinsThe West Virginia White (Pieris virginiensis) - a woodland butterfly - has declined in abundance by more than 98%Some of the most affected species include the Florida white, Hermes copper, tailed orange, Mitchell's satyr, and West Virginia white, all of which have declined in abundance by more than 98% within the US.The West Coast lady, once a common backyard butterfly, has declined by 80%, raising alarm as even this highly adaptable species struggled."That's alarming because it suggests even common butterflies aren't safe," Prof Grames said.Habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change are key causes of this decline, according to the researchers.Butterflies are crucial pollinators, supporting plants and crops. Experts say their decline could disrupt food production and entire ecosystems.They also serve as indicators of environmental health - when butterfly numbers fall, it signals trouble for other species.Southwest US most affectedSpecies are declining most severely in the US Southwest, one of the hottest and driest regions, researchers say. They believe drought may be a major contributor to these losses."Drought is a double threat - it harms butterflies directly and also affects their food and host plants," Prof Grames explained.The results could help drive important conservation efforts, such as prioritising species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species and Endangered Species Act protection.Despite the decline, there is hope for recovery."Butterflies can recover quickly because they have short generation times. Small actions like planting wildflowers, reducing pesticide use, or even leaving part of a backyard unmowed can significantly improve their chances," Prof Grames said.She also stressed the need for government action."Insects are fundamental to life on earth, and we need conservation actions and policies that support insects."

South Dakota Action Threatens Massive Carbon Dioxide Pipeline Proposed for Midwest

South Dakota's governor signed a bill into law Thursday that bans the taking of private property for building carbon dioxide pipelines

South Dakota's governor signed a bill into law Thursday that bans the taking of private property for building carbon dioxide pipelines, a blow to a sprawling Midwest pipeline network that ethanol producers see as key for their future.The new law muddies the waters for Summit Carbon Solutions and the planned $8.9 billion, 2,500-mile (4,023-kilometer) pipeline that already has approvals in three other states.Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden said the measure restricting eminent domain “does not kill” Summit's proposed project, and he encouraged the company to view the bill as “an opportunity to reset.”“I made my decision based on my own consideration of the facts, the policy arguments, legislative history, my own opinions and experience and my judgment about what is best for South Dakota,” Rhoden said.In a statement, Summit lamented the bill signing as changing the rules in the middle of the game. The company is seeking approval from South Dakota regulators for its proposed route in the state.“This kind of regulatory uncertainty creates real challenges — not just for our project, but for the ethanol plants in South Dakota that now face a competitive disadvantage compared to their counterparts in neighboring states," the company said. “While this presents obstacles, our project moves forward in states that support investment and innovation, and we will have more news on that soon.”The company's proposed pipeline system would transport planet-warming emissions from dozens of ethanol plants in five states for burial deep underground in North Dakota.Property rights have been a passionate issue in South Dakota, where voters last year rejected a suite of regulations that opponents said would deny local control over such projects and consolidate authority with state regulators. Supporters called it a “landowner bill of rights.”The bill states: “Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, a person may not exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire right-of-way for, construct, or operate a pipeline for the preponderant purpose of transporting carbon oxide.”Eminent domain is the taking of private property with compensation to the owner.Summit has approvals for its routes in Iowa and North Dakota, a leg in Minnesota and underground storage in North Dakota. In 2023, South Dakota regulators rejected Summit's permit application. New proceedings are underway.It isn't clear how Summit would move forward with its project if it could not build in South Dakota.Supporters see carbon capture projects such as Summit's pipeline as a way to fight climate change and to help the ethanol industry. Opponents question carbon capture's effectiveness at large scale and say it allows the fossil fuels industry to continue with little meaningful change.Some opponents argue the amount of greenhouse gases sequestered through the process would make little difference and could lead farmers to grow more corn despite environmental concerns about the crop.Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

SMART researchers pioneer nanosensor for real-time iron detection in plants

The innovation enables nondestructive iron tracking within plant tissues, helping to optimize plant nutrient management, reduce fertilizer waste, and improve crop health.

Researchers from the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, in collaboration with Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) and MIT, have developed a groundbreaking near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent nanosensor capable of simultaneously detecting and differentiating between iron forms — Fe(II) and Fe(III) — in living plants. Iron is crucial for plant health, supporting photosynthesis, respiration, and enzyme function. It primarily exists in two forms: Fe(II), which is readily available for plants to absorb and use, and Fe(III), which must first be converted into Fe(II) before plants can utilize it effectively. Traditional methods only measure total iron, missing the distinction between these forms — a key factor in plant nutrition. Distinguishing between Fe(II) and Fe(III) provides insights into iron uptake efficiency, helps diagnose deficiencies or toxicities, and enables precise fertilization strategies in agriculture, reducing waste and environmental impact while improving crop productivity.The first-of-its-kind nanosensor developed by SMART researchers enables real-time, nondestructive monitoring of iron uptake, transport, and changes between its different forms — providing precise and detailed observations of iron dynamics. Its high spatial resolution allows precise localization of iron in plant tissues or subcellular compartments, enabling the measurement of even minute changes in iron levels within plants — changes that can inform how a plant handles stress and uses nutrients. Traditional detection methods are destructive, or limited to a single form of iron. This new technology enables the diagnosis of deficiencies and optimization of fertilization strategies. By identifying insufficient or excessive iron intake, adjustments can be made to enhance plant health, reduce waste, and support more sustainable agriculture. While the nanosensor was tested on spinach and bok choy, it is species-agnostic, allowing it to be applied across a diverse range of plant species without genetic modification. This capability enhances our understanding of iron dynamics in various ecological settings, providing comprehensive insights into plant health and nutrient management. As a result, it serves as a valuable tool for both fundamental plant research and agricultural applications, supporting precision nutrient management, reducing fertilizer waste, and improving crop health.“Iron is essential for plant growth and development, but monitoring its levels in plants has been a challenge. This breakthrough sensor is the first of its kind to detect both Fe(II) and Fe(III) in living plants with real-time, high-resolution imaging. With this technology, we can ensure plants receive the right amount of iron, improving crop health and agricultural sustainability,” says Duc Thinh Khong, DiSTAP research scientist and co-lead author of the paper.“In enabling non-destructive real-time tracking of iron speciation in plants, this sensor opens new avenues for understanding plant iron metabolism and the implications of different iron variations for plants. Such knowledge will help guide the development of tailored management approaches to improve crop yield and more cost-effective soil fertilization strategies,” says Grace Tan, TLL research scientist and co-lead author of the paper.The research, recently published in Nano Letters and titled, “Nanosensor for Fe(II) and Fe(III) Allowing Spatiotemporal Sensing in Planta,” builds upon SMART DiSTAP’s established expertise in plant nanobionics, leveraging the Corona Phase Molecular Recognition (CoPhMoRe) platform pioneered by the Strano Lab at SMART DiSTAP and MIT. The new nanosensor features single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) wrapped in a negatively charged fluorescent polymer, forming a helical corona phase structure that interacts differently with Fe(II) and Fe(III). Upon introduction into plant tissues and interaction with iron, the sensor emits distinct NIR fluorescence signals based on the iron type, enabling real-time tracking of iron movement and chemical changes.The CoPhMoRe technique was used to develop highly selective fluorescent responses, allowing precise detection of iron oxidation states. The NIR fluorescence of SWNTs offers superior sensitivity, selectivity, and tissue transparency while minimizing interference, making it more effective than conventional fluorescent sensors. This capability allows researchers to track iron movement and chemical changes in real time using NIR imaging. “This sensor provides a powerful tool to study plant metabolism, nutrient transport, and stress responses. It supports optimized fertilizer use, reduces costs and environmental impact, and contributes to more nutritious crops, better food security, and sustainable farming practices,” says Professor Daisuke Urano, TLL senior principal investigator, DiSTAP principal investigator, National University of Singapore adjunct assistant professor, and co-corresponding author of the paper.“This set of sensors gives us access to an important type of signalling in plants, and a critical nutrient necessary for plants to make chlorophyll. This new tool will not just help farmers to detect nutrient deficiency, but also give access to certain messages within the plant. It expands our ability to understand the plant response to its growth environment,” says Professor Michael Strano, DiSTAP co-lead principal investigator, Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, and co-corresponding author of the paper.Beyond agriculture, this nanosensor holds promise for environmental monitoring, food safety, and health sciences, particularly in studying iron metabolism, iron deficiency, and iron-related diseases in humans and animals. Future research will focus on leveraging this nanosensor to advance fundamental plant studies on iron homeostasis, nutrient signaling, and redox dynamics. Efforts are also underway to integrate the nanosensor into automated nutrient management systems for hydroponic and soil-based farming and expand its functionality to detect other essential micronutrients. These advancements aim to enhance sustainability, precision, and efficiency in agriculture.The research is carried out by SMART, and supported by the National Research Foundation under its Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise program.

A leg up for STEM majors

MIT undergraduates broaden their perspectives and prospects through political science.

Senior Kevin Guo, a computer science major, and junior Erin Hovendon, studying mechanical engineering, are on widely divergent paths at MIT. But their lives do intersect in one dimension: They share an understanding that their political science and public policy minors provide crucial perspectives on their research and future careers.For Guo, the connection between computer science and policy emerged through his work at MIT's Election Data and Science Lab. “When I started, I was just looking for a place to learn how to code and do data science,” he reflects. “But what I found was this fascinating intersection where technical skills could directly shape democratic processes.”Hovendon is focused on sustainable methods for addressing climate change. She is currently participating in a multisemester research project at MIT's Environmental Dynamics Lab (ENDLab) developing monitoring technology for marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR).She believes the success of her research today and in the future depends on understanding its impact on society. Her academic track in policy provides that grounding. “When you’re developing a new technology, you need to focus as well on how it will be applied,” she says. “This means learning about the policies required to scale it up, and about the best ways to convey the value of what you’re working on to the public.”Bridging STEM and policyFor both Hovendon and Guo, interdisciplinary study is proving to be a valuable platform for tangibly addressing real-world challenges.Guo came to MIT from Andover, Massachusetts, the son of parents who specialize in semiconductors and computer science. While math and computer science were a natural track for him, Guo was also keenly interested in geopolitics. He enrolled in class 17.40 (American Foreign Policy). “It was my first engagement with MIT political science and I liked it a lot, because it dealt with historical episodes I wanted to learn more about, like World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam,” says Guo.He followed up with a class on American Military History and on the Rise of Asia, where he found himself enrolled with graduate students and active duty U.S. military officers. “I liked attending a course with people who had unusual insights,” Guo remarks. “I also liked that these humanities classes were small seminars, and focused a lot on individual students.”From coding to electionsIt was in class 17.835 (Machine Learning and Data Science in Politics) that Guo first realized he could directly connect his computer science and math expertise to the humanities. “They gave us big political science datasets to analyze, which was a pretty cool application of the skills I learned in my major,” he says.Guo springboarded from this class to a three-year, undergraduate research project in the Election Data and Science Lab. “The hardest part is data collection, which I worked on for an election audit project that looked at whether there were significant differences between original vote counts and audit counts in all the states, at the precinct level,” says Guo. “We had to scrape data, raw PDFs, and create a unified dataset, standardized to our format, that we could publish.”The data analysis skills he acquired in the lab have come in handy in the professional sphere in which he has begun training: investment finance.“The workflow is very similar: clean the data to see what you want, analyze it to see if I can find an edge, and then write some code to implement it,” he says. “The biggest difference between finance and the lab research is that the development cycle is a lot faster, where you want to act on a dataset in a few days, rather than weeks or months.”Engineering environmental solutionsHovendon, a native of North Carolina with a deep love for the outdoors, arrived at MIT committed “to doing something related to sustainability and having a direct application in the world around me,” she says.Initially, she headed toward environmental engineering, “but then I realized that pretty much every major can take a different approach to that topic,” she says. “So I ended up switching to mechanical engineering because I really enjoy the hands-on aspects of the field.”In parallel to her design and manufacturing, and mechanics and materials courses, Hovendon also immersed herself in energy and environmental policy classes. One memorable anthropology class, 21A.404 (Living through Climate Change), asked students to consider whether technological or policy solutions could be fully effective on their own for combating climate change. “It was useful to apply holistic ways of exploring human relations to the environment,” says Hovendon.Hovendon brings this well-rounded perspective to her research at ENDLab in marine carbon capture and fluid dynamics. She is helping to develop verification methods for mCDR at a pilot treatment plant in California. The facility aims to remove 100 tons of carbon dioxide directly from the ocean by enhancing natural processes. Hovendon hopes to design cost-efficient monitoring systems to demonstrate the efficacy of this new technology. If scaled up, mCDR could enable oceans to store significantly more atmospheric carbon, helping cool the planet.But Hovendon is well aware that innovation with a major impact cannot emerge on the basis of technical efficacy alone.“You're going to have people who think that you shouldn't be trying to replicate or interfere with a natural system, and if you're putting one of these facilities somewhere in water, then you're using public spaces and resources,” she says. “It's impossible to come up with any kind of technology, but especially any kind of climate-related technology, without first getting the public to buy into it.”She recalls class 17.30J (Making Public Policy), which emphasized the importance of both economic and social analysis to the successful passage of highly impactful legislation, such as the Affordable Care Act.“I think that breakthroughs in science and engineering should be evaluated not just through their technological prowess, but through the success of their implementation for general societal benefit,” she says. “Understanding the policy aspects is vital for improving accessibility for scientific advancements.”Beyond the domeGuo will soon set out for a career as a quantitative financial trader, and he views his political science background as essential to his success. While his expertise in data cleaning and analysis will come into play, he believes other skills will as well: “Understanding foreign policy, considering how U.S. policy impacts other places, that's actually very important in finance,” he explains. “Macroeconomic changes and politics affect trading volatility and markets in general, so it's very important to understand what's going on.”With one year to go, Hovendon is contemplating graduate school in mechanical engineering, perhaps designing renewable energy technologies. “I just really hope that I'm working on something I'm genuinely passionate about, something that has a broader purpose,” she says. “In terms of politics and technology, I also hope that at least some government research and development will still go to climate work, because I'm sure there will be an urgent need for it.”

Even Ground Squirrels Got In on the Vole Feast Last Summer

For the first time, scientists documented concerted carnivory by California ground squirrels. But why were there so many voles? The post Even Ground Squirrels Got In on the Vole Feast Last Summer appeared first on Bay Nature.

By last summer, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire professor Jennifer Elaine Smith had been studying California ground squirrels at Briones Regional Park for twelve years. There wasn’t much these rodents could do that could surprise her.  Then her team saw a ground squirrel stalk, hunt, and eat a California vole. It wasn’t a fluke, like some weirdly motivated or superintelligent squirrel. Because, as the researchers found, the squirrels kept doing it. Again and again. They weren’t sit-and-wait-type predators, but instead chased down the voles over short stretches of dirt. The research team documented 27 individual squirrels hunting voles that summer. “I could barely believe my eyes,” says Sonja Wild, a postdoctoral research fellow in the UC Davis Environmental Science and Policy department who co-authored a paper in the Journal of Ethology on the unusual phenomenon. “From then, we saw that behavior almost every day. Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.” A California ground squirrel on the move with its unusual prey: a California vole. Normally, ground squirrels eat a mostly plant-forward diet. (Sonja Wild/UC Davis)It was easy to see what was triggering it: there were just so many voles around. “This was shocking,” says Smith, a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor who studies social mammals and lead-authored the paper, which was published in December last year. “We had never seen this behavior before.”  California ground squirrels (Otospermophilus beecheyi), on most days, have a plant-forward diet. They have also been known to eat meat such as bird eggs, hatchlings, insects, or each other on occasion—but this is the first time in nature that they had ever been documented hunting and eating California voles. “The widespread nature of vole hunting in our population fundamentally changes our understanding of this primarily granivorous species, suggesting that they are considerably more flexible in their diet than previously assumed,” the researchers wrote. California voles (Microtus californicus) are a burrowing rodent species that range from southern Oregon down to Baja California—sometimes living (dangerously?) in ground squirrel burrows. They are ubiquitous, but since they live underground, I usually only see a handful of these rodents every year.  That all changed last year. Female voles can have back-to-back litters—every 21 days—if conditions are right. Just imagine. (Vishal Subramanyan)A heck of a lot of voles In May, I was hiking in Sycamore Grove Park, a regional preserve in Livermore that I’ve been visiting for over seven years. As a wildlife photographer, I spend a lot of time in nature: being still and quiet, watching for animals. This time, from the start, I saw dozens of these tiny rodents running all over the trails. I’d only seen a couple of voles in this park over the years. I saw more of them in a few minutes than I had over the past several years. Throughout the course of my hike, I counted over 100 voles. It was a photographer’s dream. I hunched down and took dozens of photos as the voles scurried through fields, climbed on stalks, and ran in and out of their burrows. It appeared Northern California was in the midst of a vole population boom. Reports emerged of huge surges in their numbers, from San Francisco to Pleasanton to the El Dorado Hills, east of Sacramento. Smith’s team, crunching numbers from the community science platform iNaturalist, reported people logged seven times as many vole sightings in California as the average over the past decade. Livermore, like Briones Regional Park, was crawling with California voles last summer. (Vishal Subramanyan)Booms like this have occurred in the past. Just like their more famous cousins the lemmings, vole populations sometimes just go through the roof—reaching densities of up to 5,000 animals per acre. To humans, these booms may seem random. Vole populations typically cycle up and down over periods of three or four years, Smith says, but this was the biggest boom she saw over twelve years of study.  One thing that’s clear: Peak Vole is achieved by female voles reproducing at much higher rates than usual, according to Phoebe Edwards. She studied meadow vole population cycles for her Ph.D. thesis and is now an assistant professor of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology at Iowa State University. “As they’re increasing from a low population density, the females that are sexually mature are having lots of litters rapidly, back to back,” Edwards says. “They can even become pregnant once they’ve just given birth, and not all mammals can do that.” Voles can give birth to new litters every 21 days, she says. At the boom’s peak, birth rates slow. What sets off such industrious behavior? Generally, Edwards says, it’s because an opportunity has arisen: there’s more food around (possibly because of the climate changing), or fewer predators, or “changes to landscape use where voles are colonizing new kinds of habitats that weren’t really suited to them before,” said Dr. Edwards. Everybody likes eating voles The ground squirrels, like many, took advantage of the situation. Over the summer of 2024, researchers observed them hunting voles on 74 occasions over just 18 days of fieldwork. Of these, 31 involved active hunting, with squirrels stalking through tall grass or chasing voles across open dirt. And the hunters were quite successful—17 of the 31 documented attempts (55 percent) resulted in a kill.  Sometimes, squirrels tolerated other squirrels grabbing their killed voles. But occasionally the researchers saw squirrels fighting over their prizes. That made sense, they wrote, because “the energy contained in a single vole far outweighs that of more common food items, such as seeds or grasses.”  Population booms of small mammals like voles impact whole ecosystems, affecting predators and other animals. A slew of animals prey on voles, as Smith and team noted in their paper—“hawks, owls, egrets, long-tailed weasels, coyotes, skunks, mountain lions, and garter snakes”—all of which likely had more to eat. Burrowing rodents like voles are often ecosystem engineers, too, creating tunnels that other animals use. So more voles could also mean more habitat for those species. But these booms don’t last forever—so as vole populations crash, predators may be once again forced to turn to other prey, and small animals will have fewer places to live.  While the vole boom was a boon for animals with a taste for rodents, it touched human lives a bit differently. Grape grower Dane Stark, who runs Page Mill Winery in Livermore, noticed one summer day that some unknown vandal had nibbled a ring out of the bark on many of his youngest vines. He waited and watched, and quickly learned that the culprits were voles. They got to nearly all his vines. “I’ve been growing grapes for twenty years, and this is the first time I’ve ever noticed something like this,” Stark says. He hoped that the surge in vole numbers would bring in more predators to help control their exploding populations. Researchers documented last summer’s sharp spike in iNaturalist observations of California voles in their paper in the Journal of Ethology. (Courtesy of the authors)Have we passed Peak Vole?  It’s hard to know when or if the vole population boom is over. It would likely require an intensive field survey to get an accurate idea of their numbers. However, on my recent hikes this winter, I’ve observed far fewer voles compared to last summer. Community science reports on platforms like iNaturalist, which were essential in recording the vole boom last year, may also help understand the timing of the boom’s end.  Bobcats were among those that likely cashed in on a surfeit of voles last summer, along with “hawks, owls, egrets, long-tailed weasels, coyotes, skunks, mountain lions, and garter snakes,” according to researchers. (Vishal Subramanyan)The boom also raises other ecological questions, such as whether California ground squirrels learn hunting strategies socially or if it is a genetic predisposition. Wild and Smith are also interested in disease implications of the novel squirrel–vole interaction. “Parasites might be shared between voles and squirrels,” says Smith. “Future research will reveal the extent to which these interactions have positive or potentially negative consequences for ground squirrel populations.”  I’ll remember it fondly, as a wildlife photographer, given the abundance of photo opportunities the voles gave me. One evening, at a local park in Fremont. Down on the ground, voles were scampering across the fields. I watched as a bobcat quietly stalked prey alongside the trail. After patiently waiting for a few minutes, the bobcat pounced, grabbing one of the many voles that scattered these fields. It immediately took the vole and started trotting towards the cover, disappearing over the ridge as the sun set. In a prey boom, the mandate is the same for photographers as for bobcats: strike while it’s hot.  VIDEO A video compilation of ground squirrels hunting. Note: this contains some graphic imagery. (Sonja Wild, UC Davis)

Are we living through a ‘polycrisis’ or is it ‘just history happening’?

The term ‘polycrisis’ has gained traction as we face one disaster after another. It’s overwhelming – but diagnosing the catastrophe is the first step to addressing itTwo months into 2025, the sense of dread is palpable. In the US, the year began with a terrorist attack; then came the fires that ravaged a city, destroying lives, homes and livelihoods. An extremist billionaire came to power and began proudly dismantling the government with a chainsaw. Once-in-a-century disasters are happening more like once a month, all amid devastating wars and on the heels of a pandemic.The word “unprecedented” has become ironically routine. It feels like we’re stuck in a relentless cycle of calamity, with no time to recover from one before the next begins. Continue reading...

Two months into 2025, the sense of dread is palpable. In the US, the year began with a terrorist attack; then came the fires that ravaged a city, destroying lives, homes and livelihoods. An extremist billionaire came to power and began proudly dismantling the government with a chainsaw. Once-in-a-century disasters are happening more like once a month, all amid devastating wars and on the heels of a pandemic.The word “unprecedented” has become ironically routine. It feels like we’re stuck in a relentless cycle of calamity, with no time to recover from one before the next begins.How do we make sense of any of this – let alone all of it, all at once?A number of terms have cropped up in the past decade to help us describe our moment. We’re living in the anthropocene – the era in which humanity’s impact is comparable to that of geology itself. Or we’re in the “post-truth” era, in which we no longer share the same sense of reality. We’re facing a permacrisis, an endless state of catastrophe.But perhaps the word that best describes this moment is one that emerged at the turn of the millennium, picked up steam in the 2010s and has recently been making the global rounds again: polycrisis.Not to be confused with a “perfect storm” or the perhaps less scientific “clusterfuck”, “polycrisis” – a term coined by the authors Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern – refers to the idea that not only are we facing one disaster after another, but those messes are all linked, making things even worse. Or, as Adam Tooze, a Columbia University history professor and public intellectual who has championed the term, put it: “In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts.”Our globalized world is built on interconnecting systems, and when one gets rattled, the others do too – a heating climate, for instance, increases the risk of pandemics, pandemics undermine economies, shaky economies fuel political upheaval. “There’s a kind of larger instability, or a larger system disequilibrium,” the researcher Thomas Homer-Dixon says. To illustrate the situation, Homer-Dixon uses a video of metronomes on a soft surface. Though they’re all started at different times, they end up synchronized, as each device’s beat subtly affects the rest. When people see it for the first time, “they don’t actually see what’s happening properly. They don’t realize the forces that are operating to cause the metronomes to actually synchronize with each other,” Homer-Dixon says.In much the same way, it’s often unclear even to experts how global systems interact because they are siloed in their disciplines. That limits our ability to confront intersecting problems: the climate crisis forces migration; xenophobia fuels the rise of the far right in receiving countries; far-right governments undermine environmental protections; natural disasters are more destructive. Yet migration experts may not be experts on the climate crisis, and climate experts may have limited knowledge of geopolitics.That’s why Homer-Dixon thinks better communication is essential – not just to create consensus around what we call our current predicament but also how to address it. He runs the Cascade Institute, which is fostering “a community of scholars and experts and scientists and policy makers around the world who are using this concept [of polycrisis] in constructive ways”.“Constructive” is a key word here. “You’ve got to get the diagnosis right before you can go to the prescription,” he says. Finding that diagnosis means looking at how stresses on various systems – climate, geopolitics, transportation, information, etc – intersect and identifying what his team calls “high leverage intervention points”: “places where you can go in and have a really big impact for a relatively low investment”. The Cascade Institute’s proposals target what they have identified as key drivers of the polycrisis, such as polarization and climate change, by, for instance, improving school curricula to bolster students’ understanding of disinformation and expanding the use of deep geothermal power.In addition to bringing people with disparate expertise together, the Cascade Institute, part of Royal Roads University in British Columbia, has developed an analytical framework for understanding the polycrisis, and it operates a website, polycrisis.org, which serves as a hub for the latest thinking on the issue – including critiques of the concept, Homer-Dixon says. The site contains a compendium of resources from academia to blogposts that explore the polycrisis, reflecting, for instance, on what’s already happened in 2025 (a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza, California wildfires, Trump upending the global order, an AI-bubble selloff, and the outbreak of bird flu).A burning house during the Eaton fire in Altadena on 8 January. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty ImagesThere has been some backlash to the idea of the polycrisis. The historian Niall Ferguson has described it as “just history happening”. The political scientist Daniel Drezner says its proponents “assume the existence of powerful negative feedback effects that may not actually exist” – in other words, when crises overlap, the outcome might not always be bad (for instance, the pandemic lockdowns might have had some short-lived environmental benefits). Some point to past crises as evidence that what we’re experiencing isn’t new.Homer-Dixon disagrees. “We’ve moved so far and so fast outside our species’ previous experience that many elites don’t have the cognitive frame to grasp our situation, even were they inclined to do so,” he wrote in 2023, when the term was the talk of Davos.It’s all a bit overwhelming, as Homer-Dixon acknowledges. “If you’re not really scared by what’s going on in the world, you’re braindead,” he says.On the other hand, “t​​he crisis can actually be a moment for really significant change,” he says, “because it kind of delegitimizes the existing way of doing stuff, the existing vested-interest stakeholders who are who are hunkered down and don’t want anything to change”. For instance, while Homer-Dixon sees Trump as an “abominable” figure, he also notes that, “like an acid”, the president dissolves norms around him. That creates the risk of disaster but also offers opportunities to change the world for the better.“This really is a critical moment in human history and things can be done,” Homer-Dixon says. “We don’t know enough about how these systems are operating to know that it’s game over.”And the term itself, as terrifying as it is, can also be a strange comfort. “I think that’s useful, giving the sense a name. It’s therapeutic,” Tooze told Radio Davos. When the world feels like a nightmare, identifying the condition gives us something to hold on to – a kind of understanding amid the chaos.

College athletes can now make millions off sponsorship deals. Here’s the first look at California’s numbers

In 2021, California allowed college athletes to earn money, profiting off their name, image and likeness. University records show which student athletes are benefitting and how.

In summary In 2021, California allowed college athletes to earn money, profiting off their name, image and likeness. University records show which student athletes are benefitting and how. $390,000 to Jaylon Tyson, a former basketball guard at UC Berkeley, from a group of private donors. $3,000 to Jordan Chiles, a UCLA gymnast and Olympic gold-medal winner, from Grammarly, an AI writing company.  $390 to Mekhi Mays, a former Cal State Long Beach sprinter, from a local barbecue joint.  These payments — derived from data that public universities provided to CalMatters — were part of “name, image and likeness deals” requiring students to create favorable posts on social media.  Such sponsorship deals were unheard of just four years ago. In 2021, California enacted a law allowing athletes to make these kinds of brand deals. It was the first state to pass such a law, prompting similar changes across the country.  This is the first-ever look at what many California athletes have actually made. University records show that money is flowing, but how much college athletes earn depends largely on the popularity of the sport, the gender and star power of its players and the fanbase of the university. While UCLA gymnasts earned over $2 million in the last three school years, university records show that players on the UCLA women’s water polo team earned just $152 during the same time frame, despite winning the national championship last year.  For companies, these name, image and likeness deals are akin to paying any other celebrity or professional athlete to promote a product. University alumni and sports fans can’t give money directly to a student athlete — at least not yet — but they are allowed to make name, image and likeness deals. Many universities have private donor groups, known as collectives or booster clubs, that offer athletes money, sometimes more than $400,000 in a single transaction, in exchange for an autograph or participation in a brief charity event. Often, those deals are a pretext to send money to top-tier players and discourage them from seeking better deals at other colleges. CalMatters reached out to every public and private university in the state with Division 1 teams, where the potential for profit is typically highest, and requested data that shows how much money each of its student athletes have made since 2021. State law requires all student athletes to report to their school any compensation they receive from their name, image and likeness, and public universities are required to disclose certain kinds of data upon request. Private universities, such as Stanford University and the University of Southern California, are not required to disclose any data about their students’ earnings.  All of the public Division 1 universities responded to CalMatters’ inquiry, though they did not all provide the same degree of transparency. San Jose State and Cal State Northridge said they had no records of any deals. There’s no consequence for students who fail to report what are known as NIL deals, so the data from public institutions may be incomplete. Still, certain trends emerge:  College athletes at the state’s public universities received millions of dollars from collectives or booster clubs. At four University of California schools, around 70% or more of all compensation came from these collectives, according to university records. That’s just below national trends, according to a report by Opendorse, a tech company that tracks students’ deals.  Male basketball players earned the most. While football is more popular and lucrative, nationally, many public Division 1 schools in California lack a football team. The football data may also be incomplete. For instance, all football players at UC Berkeley reported making a total of just over $113,000 since 2021 — less than what all San Diego State players made — even though Berkeley is in a more prominent conference.  For high-profile football or basketball players in particular, it’s becoming more common for students to transfer multiple times, often in search of better name, image and likeness deals. Some California institutions, such as UC Davis and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, have seen top athletes transfer colleges or threaten to transfer in order to attain better compensation elsewhere. Except for a few star players, such as Chiles, most female college athletes made very little, according to the data provided to CalMatters.  Collectively, athletes at UCLA and UC Berkeley earned more than double what those attending other UC and California State University campuses made. Some donors, such as those supporting Sacramento State and UC San Diego, have rapidly raised money to compete, while at other schools, athletic directors say they’ll never be able to guarantee such high-dollar deals.  Schools often removed any information that could identify an individual student. While UCLA generally did not provide the individual names of its athletes, the school was more transparent than most and shared the date of each transaction, the name of the brand or company, the amount of money it gave, and the sport. In February, a UCLA gymnast reported receiving $250,000 from the beverage company Bubbl’r. Since then, Chiles has promoted that brand, repeatedly. In May, a UCLA gymnast reported receiving $210,000 from the cosmetic brand Milani for “social media” — just a few months before Chiles posted a video on Instagram, promoting its makeup. One or more members of the UCLA gymnastics team have also reported deals with the food company Danone for $300,000 and with the health care company Sanofi for $285,000.  Fresno State shared less information. In the 2021-22 academic year, the Fresno State women’s basketball team raked in over $1.1 million from multiple name, image and likeness deals, but the university did not disclose which players were involved or how many were paid. After influencers and former basketball players Haley and Hanna Cavinder transferred to the University of Miami in April 2022, the number and dollar amount of deals for the Fresno team diminished. In the 2023-24 academic year, the team made just over $1,000 from 10 different deals. Fresno State Bulldogs forward Mia Jacobs #23 attempts to block the shot of an Arizona State Sun Devils forward during a game in Phoenix on Dec. 20, 2023. During their most lucrative year to date, Fresno women on the team collected over $1.1 million in NIL deals. Photo by Christopher Hook, Icon Sportswire via AP Images Money from boosters or collectives is the hardest to trace. In May, for example, a group of UCLA donors gave an undisclosed football player $450,000 for “social media.”  While private universities are not required to disclose students’ earnings, market estimates from On3, a media and technology company focused on college sports, say the highest-earning Stanford University athlete, basketball player Maxime Raynaud, could collect $1.5 million in the next 12 months. The top USC athlete, football player Jayden Maiava, could make $603,000 in the next year, according to the same estimates. These numbers are based on an algorithm that uses aggregate deals from college athletes across the country. Nationwide, the Opendorse report estimates that college athletes will earn $1.65 billion in the 2024-25 academic year.  Soon, college athletes may make even more. A high-profile class-action lawsuit will likely allow schools to pay athletes directly, while still classifying them as students, not employees. If the proposed settlement agreement goes into effect, students could see payouts as early as this fall.  If a school pays a student directly, the money should be divided roughly proportional to the number of male and female athletes, the Biden administration said in a U.S. Department of Education fact sheet issued in January. The page no longer exists.  In the last few months, attorneys have rescinded federal labor petitions asking that USC and Dartmouth College student athletes be reclassified as employees, but new cases are likely on the horizon, said Mit Winter, an attorney who specializes in name, image and likeness law: “I do think at some point — two years, five years, whatever it is — at least some college athletes will be employees.” A Times Square billboard reads: NIL has begun For decades, college sports have been a big business, though most of the money flowed to universities, not students. Nationally, Division 1 universities reported $17.5 billion in athletic revenue in 2022, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). That’s more than the gross domestic product of 83 countries. For schools with top-performing football programs, such as UCLA and Berkeley, broadcast deals and other kinds of marketing represent over a third of total revenue.  Before California’s law went into effect, college athletes weren’t allowed to profit off their sport, though they frequently received scholarships equal to the cost of college tuition. On July 1, 2021 the new law took effect, and Haley and Hanna Cavinder were the first to benefit, signing deals with Boost Mobile, a cell phone company, and Sixstar, a nutrition company, just after the stroke of midnight. A Times Square billboard proclaimed they were the first such deals in the country.  Over the past four years, other California college athletes have signed advertising deals with clothing brands such as Crocs, Heelys and Aeropostale and food brands such as Liquid I.V. and Jack in the Box. FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, signed contracts with at least six players on the UCLA women’s basketball team in 2021. In 2022, the Biden campaign gave a UCLA gymnast $7,000, but public records did not disclose the purpose of the transaction. No other politicians appeared in any university’s data. Last year, Visit Fresno County, a nonprofit that promotes tourism, paid former Fresno State football players Dean Clark and Kosi Agina just under $10,000 to post Instagram videos about a local farmer’s market and a minor league baseball team, according to President and CEO Lisa Oliveira. She said the posts were so successful that she asked Agina to make another video, promoting a hiking trail in the Sierra National Forest.  But much of the money for students’ name, image and likeness doesn’t come from brands at all — it’s from private donors. Philanthropist and entertainment lawyer Mark Kalmansohn has given nearly $150,000 in 12 different transactions to athletes on UCLA’s volleyball, softball and women’s basketball teams since 2022, according to the data, which runs through May of last year. In an interview with CalMatters, Kalmansohn said he’s given more than $175,000 since May. “Women’s sports were almost always treated in a second-hand nature and given inferior resources,” he said, adding that his philanthropy is about “women’s rights.” In exchange for money, he asks each recipient to issue a free license of their name, image and likeness to a nonprofit organization that’s relevant to the athlete’s sport. But he said that’s not the norm. “In men’s football and men’s basketball, it’s pretty obvious that money is not for an ‘appearance’.” Instead, he explained that it’s a way to support the player and keep the team competitive.  Most donors give money to specific athletes through a collective, where the donors’ identities are largely hidden. At UCLA, public data through the 2023-24 academic year shows that a collective known as the Men of Westwood channeled nearly $2 million in private donations to the football, basketball and baseball teams. At Berkeley, collectives gave over $1.3 million to athletes since the 2022-23 academic year — the vast majority of which went to the men’s basketball team.  Supporting ‘elite talent’ at UC and Cal State For years, NCAA rules made it difficult for college athletes to transfer schools, but in 2021, right around the time that California started to allow name, image and likeness deals, the NCAA eased those rules. The number of students who transfer suddenly jumped in 2021 and has ticked up each year since, according to NCAA data. In practice, the new rules means that a well-endowed collective can lure athletes who want to make more money.  This year, over 11% of all Division 1 football players have tried to transfer colleges, an increase from the previous year, said Matt Kraemer, whose organization, The Portal Report, uses social media posts and tips from insiders to gauge college athletes’ transfer activity. Quarterbacks are even more likely to try to transfer, Kraemer said. For institutions like UC Davis, the threat of losing a top athlete can be costly. Late in the 2023-24 academic year, donors from other universities promised top athletes lucrative deals if they agreed to transfer, so UC Davis formed a collective, Aggie Edge, to make counter-offers, said Athletic Director Rocko DeLuca. “It’s a means to retain elite talent here at Davis.” DeLuca said the collective gave men’s basketball guard TY Johnson $50,000 and UC Davis running back Lan Larison $25,000. Those transactions were for “social media, appearances, autographs,” according to the university’s data.  UC Davis Aggies guard TY Johnson dribbles up the court during a game against Cal State Bakersfield in Bakersfield on Jan. 26, 2023. The UC Davis athletic director said a collective gave Johnson $50,000 for what university records describe as “social media, appearances, autographs.” Photo by David Dennis, Icon Sportswire via AP Images So far, all other UC Davis athletes — more than 700 students over 25 sports — have reported just under $19,000 in deals since 2021. A few other athletes received products, such as a free cryotherapy session or a commission based on sales. In December, former UC Berkeley quarterback Fernando Mendoza transferred to Indiana University, where he later signed a name, image and likeness deal with a collective for an undisclosed amount. UC Berkeley then recruited former Ohio State quarterback Devin Brown the day after he won a national championship. It’s not clear if the Berkeley collective offered Brown a deal, since the university’s data doesn’t name Brown.  Justin DiTolla, Berkeley’s associate athletic director, said the university is “not affiliated with the collective” and that the university provides “equal support to all student athletes.” “We recognize that there is a difference in NIL support,” he said, “But it isn’t under our scope or umbrella.” The Berkeley collective, California Legends, declined to comment. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, some football players sought more money through a name, image and likeness deal by transferring to another school, but they didn’t all succeed, said Don Oberhelman, the university’s athletic director. “That’s the dirty little secret of all of this: the number of kids who blow an opportunity.” This fall, nine football players at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo announced their intention to transfer, he said. Six of them found a new university, he said, including University of Texas El Paso, San Diego State, Stanford, and Washington State — but three of them never received an offer from another school.  Oberhelman said that his football coach begins recruiting a replacement the moment a player announces his intention to transfer. If that student doesn’t end up transferring, he may lose his spot on the football team and the entirety of his athletic scholarship, which can be up to $30,000 a year.  “There’s raw emotion involved in these kinds of decisions,” he said. “I don’t think that’s how we would operate, but I can see a lot of people say, ‘You broke up with us.’”  Oberhelman said he doesn’t know what happened to the three players from the football team who failed to transfer. “For me, it would boil down to: Did we promise that money to someone else? Did we find another transfer or a high school person to replace you? If we did, that would put your future financial aid with us in jeopardy.” Small-town name, image and likeness deals  Outside of top football and men’s basketball programs, many of California’s college athletes vie for smaller name, image and likeness deals, often with local businesses, lesser-known clothing or athletic brands, or anything else they can find. Former Berkeley softball player Randi Roelling got $50 from one woman to give a pitching lesson to her daughter. In July 2023, chiropractor Lance Casazza started giving out free sessions to at least one Sacramento State football player in exchange for social media posts. Annika Shah, a basketball player at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, got her first deal through a local restaurant, Jewel of India, which occasionally has a pop-up tent outside the college gym. “I just said, ‘Hey I can market you. Let’s think of a cool slogan to put out.’” Customers who ask to “swish with Shah” at the checkout counter get a discount on their meal, she said. Shah doesn’t get any money, she said, but she does get free food whenever she visits.  “It was just a cool relationship and connection that I made with this family and the owners of Jewel of India, where they just want to help me out and I want to help them.”  Annika Shah, a senior business administration student and basketball player, at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo on Feb. 3, 2025. Photo by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters Walking around campus, friends jokingly refer to Shah as their own “Jewel of India” and she likes it. “It’s such a marketable slogan now, and it kind of identifies who I am.” Many Division 1 schools have their own websites where customers can buy gear with an athlete’s name on it, but last fall, no such platform existed at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said Shah, so she created her own. She partnered with a company, Cloud 9 Sports, and launched her own apparel brand. It’s brought in about $2,000 in sales so far, but after the university and Cloud 9 Sports take a cut, Shah said she’s left with about $800.  Shah said she was never told to report any of her monetary or in-kind contributions. After CalMatters asked, Oberhelman, the athletic director, said the school is now requiring it. “We haven’t done a great job following up because we’re just not going to have student athletes that are getting even five-figure deals,” he said.  Oberhelman said he only knew of eight deals, each for $2,000, all to the men’s football team from a group of private donors. Fresno State provided more data than Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, but it did not designate which deals came from its collective, known as Bulldog Bread. On its website the collective says it has raised more than $690,000 in corporate donations for Fresno State. At the top tier, that includes money from former Fresno State quarterbacks David and Derek Carr, property developer Lance Kashian, and construction company Tarlton and Son, Inc. The collective recently launched a vodka brand in partnership with a distillery, where a portion of all proceeds support students’ name, image and likeness deals. Athletes at UC Santa Barbara have reported $1,800 from their collective, Gold & Blue, but many other transactions reported by the school provide few details. According to the school’s data, an unnamed person or group made 15 deals with one or more members of the UC Santa Barbara men’s basketball team, totaling over $50,000 in “appearance fees” for an event last August associated with Heal the Ocean, a local environmental nonprofit.  The organization’s executive director, Hillary Hauser, said the nonprofit made no such contribution and had no events in August. University spokesperson Kiki Reyes said it’s “possible” that a collective made those payments, but she refused to respond to CalMatters’ questions regarding Hauser’s statement the event never occurred.  From August 2023 to August 2024, male basketball and baseball athletes at UC Santa Barbara reported roughly $500,000 in compensation for appearance fees related to various charities. Over the same time frame, all other athletes reported receiving free products, sales referrals, and cash payments totaling about $1,000. At UCLA, the CEO of the Men of Westwood collective, Ken Graiwer, is listed in university records as the “point of contact” for a $450,000 contribution, distributed over six transactions in the 2023-24 academic year, to the men’s basketball team for “public appearances.” For each of those transactions, the university’s data lists the Team First Foundation, a sports nonprofit, as the vendor. Neither UCLA nor the Team First Foundation responded to questions about who made the payment.  A few months before those transactions, the Men of Westwood posted a few photos on its Instagram account, showing UCLA men’s basketball players on the court with smiling children from the Team First Foundation programs. In the post, the Men of Westwood said it was “NIL outreach.”  California universities try to ‘stay competitive’ Since becoming legal in 2021, the market for name, image and likeness compensation has exploded. Sports commentators, attorneys, and athletic directors say the landscape is a kind of “wild West” or “gold rush”: The money is pouring in, but the regulations are sparse or evolving. CalMatters has partial data from the 2024-25 academic year, but early indicators suggest that even more cash will soon flow to players. In September, a group of Sacramento State alumni, including some state lawmakers, said they raised over $35 million in one day for name, image and likeness deals. Cal State Bakersfield and UC San Diego recently formed their own collectives too. Last year, former Democratic Sen. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley — one of the co-authors of the watershed name, image and likeness law — proposed a new bill to gather more data about spending by collectives and its impact on women’s sports. Newsom vetoed the bill, saying “Further changes to this dynamic should be done nationally.”  Initially, the NCAA tried to prevent colleges from directly assisting athletes with deals, but the association has eased those regulations recently, blurring the lines between universities and the private collectives that support them. Many states have passed laws explicitly allowing universities to make deals directly with students. In October, Skinner and former Democratic Sen. Steven Bradford wrote a letter to California universities, encouraging them to do the same.  “I strongly urge California schools to make full use of (the watershed law) to stay competitive in college sports, especially now that other states are copying California and allowing their schools to make direct NIL deals with their student athletes,” said Skinner in a press release about the letter. This spring, California District Judge Claudia Wilken is expected to approve a settlement between athletes and the NCAA that would further expand the ways universities can pay their players. In the proposed settlement, a college could directly spend up to a combined $20.5 million per year on payments to all of its athletes. The spending limit would grow over time. Regardless of the settlement, athletic directors at many of California’s public institutions, such as Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal State Bakersfield, said they don’t plan on giving any more money directly to students because their athletic programs lack the cash. “They’re already on full scholarship, so there aren’t any more existing dollars we can really offer that person,” said Oberhelman, with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Even if the university did have the money, he said he’s concerned about the legal implications of paying students directly. “Are they going to get a W-2 now? Are we paying workers comp? Nobody seems to have answered a lot of these questions.” Mott Athletics Center at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo on Feb. 3, 2025. Photo by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters DiTolla, at Berkeley, said the university will start paying its athletes once the settlement is finalized. UC San Diego joined Division 1 sports last year, and Athletic Director Earl Edwards said it is “seriously considering” paying its athletes too “if that’s what we need to do to be competitive.” UCLA refused to comment on the proposed settlement. USC Senior Associate Athletic Director Cody Worsham said the university will “invest the full permissible $20.5 million in 2025-26.” Stanford refused to answer any questions. While no Division 1 school in California has shared details about how it plans to pay its athletes, experts, such as attorney Mit Winter, say the proposed settlement is unlikely to change the current disparities in college sports, especially within the four most lucrative and dominant athletic conferences, known as the Power Four. Stanford, USC, UC Berkeley and UCLA are all in the Power Four.  For female rowers like Anaiya Singer, a freshman at UCLA, the disparities among men’s and women’s sports — and between football, basketball and everyone else — are no surprise. “Those big sports do bring in the most revenue, and they’re the most watched,” she said, while acknowledging that other athletes, such as fellow rowers, “deserve much more than we’re getting.”  Singer said she’s been working on building her social media brand and has nearly 3,000 followers on TikTok and just over 1,300 on Instagram. A few “very small companies” reached out to her through TikTok about promoting beauty products, but none of the brands felt like a good fit, she said. She has yet to agree to any deals or receive any funding from a collective. Neither have most of her peers. The UCLA women’s rowing team has reported less than $500 in name, image and likeness compensation since 2021. In the proposed settlement, each school will each be able to independently determine how to distribute their funds, but Winter said universities will likely follow their peers. “If you’re in UCLA, Berkeley….you’re in the Power Four and you’re going to have to stay competitive in recruiting,” he said.  “Most of the Power Four schools have all sort of landed on a similar way they’re going to pay that money out,” he added: 75% to the football team, 15% to the basketball team, around 5% to women’s basketball, and 5% to all other sports. About the data CalMatters worked to standardize the name, image and likeness data we received for analysis, but ambiguities remain. Dozens of deals indicated compensation in product rather than or in addition to cash, the value of which was often not specified. Some vendors promised certain compensation per social media post or other activity, but it’s not clear how much the athlete actually received. Some indicated monthly compensation but not how many months the deal lasted. CalMatters is showing the minimum amount of compensation student athletes reported receiving.  CalMatters is providing the data as received from each school for download here with minor formatting changes and personal contact information removed. Read More College athletes are getting paid because of a California law. Will the state go even further? October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 The cost of private colleges is high, yet many low-income students still choose them January 29, 2025January 29, 2025

Trump’s Cuts to Federal Work Force Push Out Young Employees

The loss of early career workers has raised concerns about the impact on the next generation of civil servants.

About six months ago, Alex Brunet, a recent Northwestern University graduate, moved to Washington and started a new job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as an honors paralegal. It was fitting for Mr. Brunet, 23, who said he had wanted to work in public service for as long as he could remember and help “craft an economy that works better for everyone.”But about 15 minutes before he was going to head to dinner with his girlfriend on the night before Valentine’s Day, an email landed in his inbox informing him that he would be terminated by the end of the day — making him one of many young workers who have been caught up in the Trump administration’s rapid wave of firings.“It’s discouraging to all of us,” Mr. Brunet said. “We’ve lost, for now at least, the opportunity to do something that matters.”Among the federal workers whose careers and lives have been upended in recent weeks are those who represent the next generation of civil servants and are now wrestling with whether they can even consider a future in public service.The Trump administration’s moves to reduce the size of the bureaucracy have had an outsize impact on these early career workers. Many of them were probationary employees who were in their roles for less than one or two years, and were among the first to be targeted for termination. The administration also ended the Presidential Management Fellows Program, a prestigious two-year training program for recent graduates interested in civil service, and canceled entry-level job offers.The firings of young people across the government could have a long-term effect on the ability to replenish the bureaucracy with those who have cutting-edge skills and knowledge, experts warn. Donald F. Kettl, a former dean in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, says that young workers bring skills “the government needs” in fields like information technology, medicine and environmental protection.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

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