It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Caterpillar lifts 2025 tariff hit estimate to as much as $1.8 billion
(Reuters) -Caterpillar on Thursday raised its estimate of tariff-related costs for 2025, citing additional levies and clarifications, sending its shares down 3% in extended trading.
Sweeping tariffs have raised costs across Caterpillar's supply chain, as the company imports key components such as sensors, even as manufacturers race to localize production.
The Trump administration's latest tariffs, announced on July 31, target imports from dozens of countries, including major trading partners such as Canada, the European Union, Japan, India and several Southeast Asian nations.
"While the company continues to take initial mitigating actions to reduce this impact, trade and tariff negotiations continue to be fluid," Caterpillar said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
Caterpillar now expects a tariff hit of $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion this year, up from its prior forecast of up to $1.5 billion.
The company had issued its previous expectations along with its second-quarter earnings results earlier this month.
On Thursday, it said the higher costs will push its adjusted operating profit margin toward the bottom of its target range, though it left its full-year sales and revenue outlook unchanged.
Industrial machinery makers are grappling with higher costs from Trump's expansive tariffs on imports, while weak demand and elevated interest rates limit their ability to pass on the burden to customers.
The heavy equipment maker also raised its estimate for third-quarter tariff costs to as much as $600 million, from a prior forecast of up to $500 million.
(Reporting by Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Alan Barona)
We must develop thinkers, not crammers and fact experts
One teacher education researcher blows the whistle on the decline of geography as a subject in schools
Hilde Storrøsæter has analysed the national curricula for geography in upper secondary school across 9 different countries. They have examined what the plans say about what is taught and how it is to be taught.
Despite the fact that the concept of "geographical thinking" is the foundation of geography, none of the nine countries' curricula have described it clearly.
Hilde Storrøsæter is worried about the teaching of geography in schools.
Geography as a school subject is under pressure. There aren't enough qualified teachers and it loses out to other subjects in school. In many countries, important aspects are left out of the geography curricula.
"Alarm bells should be ringing, both in the field and among teachers in schools. The development we are seeing in geography as a subject is critical. This failure affects the students' ability to understand how things are connected in a troubled and confusing world," she said.
Storrøsæter is a geographer and assistant professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Department of Teacher Education. She works with teacher education, and addresses issues that are important for the justification and selection of subject matter, teaching and learning in the subject.
Thinking geographically
Along with colleagues in nine countries, Storrøsæter has analysed the national curricula for geography in upper secondary school. They have examined what the plans say about what is taught and how it is to be taught.
Despite the fact that the concept of "geographical thinking" is the foundation of geography, none of the nine countries' curricula have described it clearly.
"Geographical thinking is a way of understanding and interpreting the world through geographical knowledge," Storrøsæter said.
Thinking "geographically" means understanding challenges such as climate change, globalization and resource management. And about seeing connections between places, people, the environment and development.
Critical deficiencies found
Another important concept is place. Researchers call this a fundamental core concept in geographic thinking. Surprisingly; In the subject curricula, this is hardly emphasized.
"We see these as critical shortcomings," says Storrøsæter.
The nine countries studied are Australia, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Norway, Slovakia, South Africa and the United States.
Sustainability, nature loss and choice
"Geography is the only school subject that connects topics within nature and society. It builds a bridge between us humans and the world we have created and live in," Storrøsæter said.
The tension between nature and society is becoming more and more prevalent around us. It's particularly visible in issues of sustainability and development, the loss of nature in favour of roads, or choices that took everyone by surprise: the UK's Brexit from the EU, and Donald Trump's first victory in the US presidential election.
"People vote differently based on where they live. They may live in places that have exploited their environment and their resources. When society then develops in a different direction, many are filled with a great sense of loss. This, in turn, has an impact on how people vote in elections," she said.
Missing the big picture
The study also addresses ways of thinking, such as creative and future-oriented thinking, and about how we think. This is almost completely absent from several countries' curricula. The consequence of this may be that teaching geography only becomes relevant to the classroom and not to life outside school.
"If we remove the thinking, we are left with the facts. Then we lose the whole," she said.
Buying water in a plastic bottle
If students are to be able to assess the consequences of their own choices, such as what they eat, how they travel, or where they live, they need to master forward-looking and geographical thinking. Being able to analyse a world situation, or a local situation such as oil exploration off Lofoten, equips pupils for the world they are growing up in and will inherit.
"It's about connecting one's own actions to global contexts, and imagining different futures. Take plastic pollution. What do you actually pay for when you buy bottled water? After all, clean water is free, so what you're really paying for is the production of plastic bottles," Storrøsæter said.
The teachers' toolbox
The subject curricula constitute the somewhat slim toolbox that teachers bring with them into the classrooms. There, they are meant to ensure that the young people practice their ability to think, understand, interpret and cope with challenges in everyday life - now and in the future. Many of the tools to make this happen have to be created by the teachers themselves.
Teachers often talk about complicated relationships, such as climate change.
"To understand climate change, pupils must be able to see the connection between local floods and global emission patterns. This does not only require knowledge of weather and climate. It requires the ability to see the big picture and chains of causes that cut across countries and scales," Storrøsæter said. She herself has 9 years of experience as a teacher in Norwegian upper secondary schools.
Locked in France, wide open in Norway
The study is the first of its kind, and was put into practice because geography is under pressure in many countries.
The researchers hope to contribute to more precise curricula, better education policies, and better support for teachers. The analysis emphasizes whether learning objectives are mentioned in the subject curricula and does not say anything about the extent to which they are included.
Comparison was not a goal, but some differences became clear. France's curriculum is concrete and inflexible. There, the subject is composed of geography and history, with many more history teachers than geography teachers teaching the subject. Norway and Denmark have very open and interpretable goals.
Missing critical thinking
No country scores high on everything, but Norway generally comes out well. The important creative and future-oriented thinking and metacognitive thinking that is about how we think is completely absent in Denmark and France.
Some of this may be due to the fact that in Denmark, geography is a science subject, while in France it is taught together with history. Metacognitive thinking is also not mentioned in South Africa and the United States' curricula. Australia lacks clearly stated curriculum goals on 7 out of 8 points that deal with ways of thinking, China lacks 5 out of 8, and the Czech Republic 6 out of 8.
"The plan gives room, but not direction"
In Norway, the plan provides a lot of room, but little direction, Storrøsæter said. Geography is a social science in Norway, and the country lacsk teachers. Pupils can go through their entire school education without encountering a single teacher with special expertise in geography.
The subject has been cut down to 90 minutes a week in upper secondary school. New students present with increasingly weaker prior knowledge. Those who educate geography teachers see that the subject is becoming less and less important.
"When the teachers who are going to interpret the open Norwegian curriculum do not have enough academic ballast, the teaching is further weakened," Storrøsæter said.
Not just crammers
Are you worried on behalf of your own profession?
"Yes, but also hopeful. I'm concerned because teacher shortages, lack of requirements for the teacher's competence and weak subject curricula result in low quality of pupils' learning. Hopeful because the research and focus on geographical thinking is getting bigger, and I feel it can be used to improve students' learning, teacher education and curriculum development," she said.
"It is certainly not a goal that all countries should end up with the same curricula," Storrøsæter added.
"But we should have some common ambitions. Such as connecting geography to major topics such as sustainability, community development and citizenship. To develop thinkers, not just fact-checkers and crammers," she added.
The brains of politically extreme individuals, whether left- or right-leaning, appear to respond to and process political information in surprisingly similar ways, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
“Both extreme liberals and extreme conservatives consumed the same political content, and even though they held vastly different beliefs, their brains appeared to process the information in a very similar manner,” said Oriel FeldmanHall, PhD, a professor of cognitive and psychological sciences at Brown University and co-author of the study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “In contrast, moderates showed much more diverse brain responses, suggesting that extremity—above and beyond ideology—drives this shared way of processing political information.”
FeldmanHall and her co-author, Daantje de Bruin, MS, a doctoral student at Brown University, used a combination of fMRI brain scans, skin conductance measures, and eye-tracking on 44 participants with varying political ideologies and levels of extremism, while the participants watched a politically charged video.
Researchers found extreme individuals—even when they held opposing ideologies—exhibited similar patterns of brain activity when consuming political content that participants with moderate political views did not. This synchronicity was strongest during segments of the video that featured more extreme language.
Individuals with more extreme views were also more physiologically aroused—measured via galvanic skin response—when exposed to political content. These bodily responses appeared to amplify neural synchronization, further suggesting that emotion and arousal help bind people to their political beliefs.
“Regardless of whether someone identified as extremely liberal or extremely conservative, their brain responded to political stimuli in similar ways,” said de Bruin. “This suggests that it’s not just what you believe, but how strongly you believe it and how emotionally reactive you are that shapes your perception of political reality.”
The findings offer scientific support for the “horseshoe theory” of politics, which posits that extremists on both ends of the political spectrum may resemble each other more than they resemble moderates. “Our findings suggest that individuals with extreme opposing views may be more alike than they realize. Recognizing this shared experience could foster greater empathy and reduce dehumanization across the political divide,” said FeldmanHall.
The researchers caution that the study, which used U.S.-based political content and self-reported ideology measures, may not generalize globally. Future research should explore cross-cultural perspectives and other forms of extremism beyond political ideology, they said.
A recent bioinformatics-based study conducted by Goethe University Frankfurt has investigated which organisms possess the enzymatic tools necessary for degrading cellulose in dead wood and leaves.
Credit: Markus Bernards for Goethe University Frankfurt
FRANKFURT. When a tree dies, it forms the foundation for new life: In a slow, invisible process, leaves, wood and roots are gradually decomposed – not by wind or weather but by millions and millions of tiny organisms. Fungi thread their way through the dead wood and degrade cell walls. Tiny animals such as insect larvae and mites gnaw through the tissue. And something very important happens in the process: The carbon stored in the plant is released, ultimately placing it at the disposal of plants again for the purpose of photosynthesis. But what exactly is responsible for performing this task in the global carbon cycle? And which molecular tools do the organisms use for it? To answer these questions, the researchers have developed a new bioinformatics-based method, which they have now presented in Molecular Biology and Evolution.
18,000 species in the spotlight
This method, called fDOG (Feature architecture-aware directed ortholog search), makes it possible to search in the genetic material of various organisms for genes that have evolved from the same precursor gene. It is assumed that these genes, known as “orthologs”, encode proteins with similar functions. For the current study, the scientists searched for the genes of plant cell wall-degrading enzymes (PCDs). Unlike previous methods, fDOG not only searches through masses of genomic information but also analyzes the architecture of the proteins found – i.e. their structural composition, which reveals a lot about an enzyme’s function.
“We start with a gene from one species, referred to as the seed, and then trawl through tens of thousands of species in the search for orthologous genes,” explains Ingo Ebersberger, Professor for Applied Bioinformatics at Goethe University Frankfurt. “In the process, we constantly monitor whether the genes we find perhaps differ from the seed in terms of function and structure – for example, through the loss or gain of individual areas relevant for function.”
The research team used this method to search for more than 200 potential PCD candidates in over 18,000 species from all three domains of life – bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes (plants, animals, fungi). The result is a detailed global map – with unprecedented accuracy – of enzymes capable of degrading plant cell walls.
Surprising discoveries among fungi and animals
The researchers devised special visualization methods to analyze the vast amounts of data and detect patterns. This revealed characteristic changes in the enzyme repertoire of the fungi under study, indicating a change in lifestyle of certain fungal species: From a decomposing lifestyle – i.e. the degradation of dead plants – to a parasitic lifestyle in which they infest living animals. Such evolutionary transitions are mirrored in characteristic patterns of enzyme loss.
A special surprise in the animal kingdom was the discovery that some arthropods possess an unexpectedly wide range of plant cell wall-degrading enzymes. These enzymes presumably originated from fungi and bacteria and entered the genome of invertebrates via direct gene transfer between different organisms – i.e. horizontal gene transfer. This suggests that they might be able to degrade plant material independently and are not reliant on the bacteria in their intestines, as was previously assumed. In another case, however, it emerged that the potential PCD genes in the analyzed sequence could be ascribed to microbial contamination – an important sign that such data need to be checked very carefully.
New insights into the global carbon cycle
The study shows how fDOG can be used to systematically map biological capabilities across the entire tree of life – from broad-scale overviews to detailed investigations of individual species. With this method, it is possible both to track evolutionary trajectories and to identify players previously overlooked in the global carbon cycle. Since soils contain large amounts of dead plant material and therefore constitute the largest terrestrial carbon sink, the decomposition of plant material is an important driver of the global carbon cycle. “Our method gives us a fresh view of how metabolic capacities are distributed across the tree of life,” says Ebersberger. “We can now conduct multi-scale analyses and in the process detect both recent evolutionary changes and large patterns.”
New York City has the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, but Rutgers Health research indicates that many smokers illegally avoid them.
Most cigarette packs littered on city streets came from out-of-state sources or bore no tax stamps, according to a study that suggests widespread evasion of the city's steep tobacco taxes.
Researchers who collected 252 discarded cigarette packs from across the city's five boroughs found that only 16.6% bore the proper New York City tax stamp, down from 39.3% in 2011 and 23.7% in 2015 when other teams conducted the same experiment.
The findings, published in Tobacco Control, based on systematic collection from 30 census tracts in February 2024, offer a unique window into consumption patterns by using litter as a proxy for where smokers obtain cigarettes.
“It’s arbitrage,” said Kevin Schroth, a researcher at Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies and lead author of the study. “If something is cheaper in one place and more expensive in another, people will find ways to profit by purchasing in the cheap place and selling in the expensive one. And because we can compare our findings to prior work, we can see that it may be a growing problem for New York City’s tax collection. What’s interesting, though, is that despite this trend, New York City’s smoking rates are still declining. This might mean that part of a shrinking smoking population is very determined to get cheap, untaxed cigarettes.”
The research revealed a notable geographic shift in cigarette trafficking patterns. Georgia emerged as the primary source of illicit cigarettes, accounting for 27.8% of the littered packs and surpassing Virginia’s 20.6%. Packs with no tax stamps (which likely come from North Carolina or Indian reservations) comprised 20.2% of the sample, nearly doubling from 12.1% in 2015.
The study also highlighted the outsized role of Newport, a menthol brand that made up 43.3% of all collected packs. Some 89.9% of Newport packs lacked New York City tax stamps. This high percentage of menthol packs raises issues about smuggling’s impact on health equity, the researchers said. Menthol use is far higher among Black and Latino smokers than white smokers, and cheaper illicit menthols may make it more difficult for people to quit.
With state and city taxes totaling $6.85 per pack plus a $1.01 federal tax, cigarettes sold legally in New York City are among the highest taxes in the nation. By contrast, cigarettes face 37 cents in taxes in Georgia and 60 cents in Virginia, allowing smugglers and their customers to split more than $6 in tax savings on every pack. (New Jersey’s tax of $3 per pack might make it a destination for individual city smokers who want to save money without going far, but it appears to be too high for smugglers.) North Carolina imposes a 45-cent tax and does not require tax stamps. Indian reservations do not impose taxes or require stamps.
Schroth, who previously worked with the New York City Health Department on cigarette tax enforcement, described a retail system where legitimate and illicit cigarettes operate side by side. Some store owners hide untaxed cigarettes in secret compartments beneath counters or above drop ceilings, he said, while customers use code phrases like "special price" to signal their interest in tax-free products.
Local agencies conduct store sweeps, but cracking a supply chain that stretches down Interstate 95 is difficult.
Schroth said the most promising fix lies upstream. He pointed to a federal “track and trace” system Congress authorized in 2009 that would assign unique identifiers to packs and record transfers from manufacturer to distributor to retailer.
“With track and trace, you could pick up a littered pack in New York and see that it moved through a specific warehouse and into a specific store in Georgia,” Schroth said. “That lets you focus enforcement on the points feeding the illicit market. It could also reveal sources of unstamped packs. The FDA would have to follow its rule making process to execute this Congressional mandate.”
The persistence of illicit trade creates a paradox for public health officials: While cigarette taxes are designed both to generate revenue and discourage smoking, the study's findings suggest they are high enough that a significant portion of the city's estimated 565,000 adult smokers may be circumventing the price increases meant to push them toward quitting.
Still, smoking rates in New York City have continued to decline even as tax evasion appears to have increased. Adult smoking fell from 14.3% in 2015 to 9.7% in 2022, below both the national average of 11.6% and the rest of New York State at 12.3%.
The researchers acknowledged limitations in their methodology, noting uncertainty about whether people who litter cigarette packs are more likely to buy smuggled cigarettes than others. However, they argued that comparing litter samples over time using identical methods provides valuable insights into changing patterns of tax compliance.
