Expert Q&A from Louisiana State University

I would not say they are becoming more domesticated but instead that they are becoming more habituated, which reduces their fear level. Domestication requires a line of breeding that leads to the animals taking on certain characteristics. Raccoons are truly amazing animals that are highly adaptive and will take advantage of opportunities provided them. I have seen raccoons walk a suspended tight rope to get to food that was hung in a box 8 to 10 feet off the ground in a campground. They are truly masters at getting what they want.

This is where we start to see the effects of what some might call a “two-tier economy.” The higher spending might be driven by the more affluent consumers who are more financially sound, while other data suggest that as many as 1 in 4 households are living paycheck to paycheck, making increased spending for them unlikely.

We’re also seeing projections for certain demographic groups at much lower spend projections. Nearly 20% of the population intends to spend less, according to Visa. PWC is projecting spending declines of 5%, and GenZ responses indicate a 23% drop in planned spending.

But there are many ways you split segments. People who are concerned about tariffs are planning to spend 10% less, according to PWC. People with kids will tend to spend more than last year, while people without kids will spend less than last year, according to NRF projections. So, it really does come down to individual-level financial and other factors. This may very much be a situation where the affluent drive the average numbers.

Like most other years in recent history, most of the bodies forecasting holiday spending are predicting increases in total sales. The National Retail Federation (NRF) is predicting a growth rate of 4%, with sales totaling over $1 trillion. Other bodies like Simon Kucher, a pricing consultancy, project increases of over 7%, and Visa was projecting roughly 10% raises in gift spending. While these figures always vary between entities due to different specific formulas, it appears that some of the higher numbers were released earlier in the year, suggesting that later numbers may be reflecting a more up-to-date market forecast.

Interestingly, this projected increase is happening despite many bodies, including the NRF, suggesting a decrease in planned per person spending. This suggests that the population growth of consumers might explain the increase in total sales for retailers, even if there’s a true decrease per person.

We may also begin to see the impacts of tariffs on pricing in the holiday shopping season.

This is supported by the Visa report, which suggests real spending growth of 2.2%, indicating that fewer items are being purchased despite revenue increases.

One of the grandest questions is whether or not we are alone in the universe.

The ingredients for life appear to be ubiquitous, but how often that ultimately leads to life is unknown. Mars is one of the likeliest places for life to have existed, being the closest planet which was once habitable, including liquid water in the distant past. Further, if life existed then, its possible it still exists on Mars under the surface. Observations with past and current scientific experiments have hinted that life has or does exist on Mars. If the US decides to proceed with the Mars Sample Return mission, which will gather dust and rocks from Mars and bring them back to Earth for detailed study, we could prove life on Mars as early as 2040.

I am one of a dozen or so scientists external to NASA brought in to consult on the design of the Habitable Worlds Observatory. This successor to Hubble is designed to seek signatures of life beyond our own, with a planned launch around 2040. Thus, NASA is seeking to answer the grand question "are we alone?" with every viable avenue.

To protect cities and communities along the Mississippi River, large levees were built along the lower reaches following the historic 1927 flood. These levees prevent overbank flooding but also cut off freshwater and sediment delivery to adjacent wetlands and floodplains, and instead funnel water and sediment directly into the Gulf of Mexico (Kesel, 1988). Historically, most of the sediment reaching the mouth of the Mississippi River was sourced from the Missouri Watershed and tributaries draining from the Rocky Mountains (Meade & Moody, 2010). However, beginning in the 1950s, extensive dam construction on the Missouri River and its major tributaries have resulted in large volumes of sediment being trapped, reducing the total sediment load reaching Louisiana’s delta plain from ~390 Mt y-1 (pre-dam conditions) to ~100 Mt y-1 (Kemp et al., 2016).

The effects of substantially reduced sediment loads and restrictions to the exchange of freshwater and sediment between the river and deltaic wetlands have critically impacted Louisiana’s coast. Without the periodic input of river sediment to balance natural subsidence and sea-level rise, wetlands and barrier islands are rapidly eroding. Since the 1930s, nearly 5,000 km² of land has been lost, contributing to ecosystem degradation and greater vulnerability to hurricanes and storm surge (Couvillion et al., 2017).