A lot has been written about gratitude over the past two decades and how we ought to be feeling it. There is advice for journaling and a plethora of purchasing options for gratitude notebooks and diaries. And research has consistently pointed to the health and relationship benefits of the fairly simple and cost-effective practice of cultivating gratitude.

Yet, Americans are living in a very stressful time, worried about their financial situation and the current political upheaval.

How then do we practice gratitude during such times?

I am a social psychologist who runs the Positive Emotion and Social Behavior Lab at Gonzaga University. I teach courses focused on resilience and human flourishing. I have researched and taught about gratitude for 18 years.

At the best of times, awareness of the positive may require more effort than noticing the negative, let alone in times of heightened distress. There are, however, two simple ways to work on this.

Gratitude doesn’t always come easily

Generally, negative information captures attention more readily than the positive. This disparity is so potent that it’s called the negativity bias. Researchers argue that this is an evolutionary adaptation: Being vigilant for life’s harms was essential for survival.

Yet, this means that noticing the kindnesses of others or the beauty the world has to offer may go unnoticed or forgotten by the end of the day. That is to our detriment.

Gratitude is experienced as a positive emotion. It results from noticing that others − including friends and family certainly, but also strangers, a higher power or the planet − have provided assistance or given something of value such as friendship or financial support. By definition, gratitude is focused on others’ care or on entities outside of oneself. It is not about one’s own accomplishments or luck.

When we feel gratitude toward something or someone, it can increase well-being and happiness and relationship satisfaction, as well as lower depression.

Thus, it may assist in counteracting the negativity bias by helping us find and remember the good that others are doing for us every day − the good that we may lose sight of in the best of times, let alone in times when Americans are deeply stressed.

How to practice gratitude

Research has shown that some people are naturally more grateful than others.

But it’s also clear that gratitude can be cultivated through practice. People can improve their ability to notice and feel this positive emotion.

One way to do this is to try a gratitude journal. Or, if the idea of journaling is daunting or annoying, perhaps call it a daily list instead. If you have given this a try and dislike it, skip to the second method below.

Gratitude lists are designed to create a habit in which you scan your day looking for the positive outcomes that others have brought into your life, no matter how small. Writing down several experiences each day that went well because of others may make these positive events more visible to you and more memorable by the end of the day − thus, boosting gratitude and its accompanying benefits.

While the negative news − “The stock market is down again!” “How are tariffs going to affect my financial security?” − is clearly drawing attention, a gratitude list is meant to help highlight the positive so that it doesn’t go overlooked.

The negative doesn’t need help gaining attention, but the positive might.

A second method for practicing gratitude is expressing that gratitude to others. This can look like writing a letter of gratitude and delivering it to someone who has made a positive impact in your life.

When my students do this exercise, it often results in touching interactions. For instance, my college students often write to high school mentors, and those adults are regularly moved to tears to learn of the positive impact they had. Expressing gratitude in work settings can boost employees’ sense of social worth.

In a world that may currently feel bleak, a letter of gratitude may not only help the writer recognize the good of others but also let others know that they are making a beautiful difference in the world.

Monica Y. Bartlett, Professor of Psychology, Gonzaga University

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

China’s Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is set to launch this month, May 2025, en route to the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3). The country could join the United States and Japan, whose space agencies have both successfully retrieved a sample from an asteroid to study back on Earth.

Several space missions have flown by asteroids before and gotten a peek at their compositions, but bringing a sample back to Earth is even more helpful for scientists. The most informative analyses require having physical samples to poke and prod, shine light at, run through CT scanners and examine under electron microscopes.

These missions require detailed planning and specialized spacecraft, so to shed light on why agencies go through the trouble, we compiled four stories from The Conversation U.S.’s archive. These articles describe the ways asteroid sample return missions generate new scientific insights at every stage – from the collection process, to the container’s return to Earth, to laboratory analyses.

1. Ryugu’s colorful history

The asteroid Ryugu is made of carbon-rich rock. Japan targeted Ryugu for its sample return mission Hayabusa2 in 2020.

As planetary scientist Paul K. Byrne from Washington University in St. Louis described in his article, the Hayabusa2 team shot the asteroid with a metal projectile and collected the dusty debris that floated into space. This process allowed the Hayabusa2 craft to gather a sample to bring home and also get a close-up look at the asteroid’s surface.

One thing the collection team noticed: The material that flew off the asteroid was redder than the surface they shot at, which had a bluer tinge.

Some parts of Ryugu appear almost striped – the middle latitudes are redder, while the poles look more blue. The sample collection process gave researchers some hints about why that is.

“At some point the asteroid must have been closer to the Sun that it is now,” Byrne wrote. “That would explain the amount of reddening of the surface.”

2. Return capsules make shock waves

Similar to how researchers gained valuable data just from the Hayabusa2 collection process, atmospheric scientists didn’t even need to open the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule to learn something new.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission traveled to the carbon-rich asteroid Bennu and sent home a small capsule containing a sample in September 2023.

Released from the OSIRIS-REx craft, the sample return capsule hurtled down to Earth in a heavy box about the size of a microwave. Aside from the fact that it had been released from a spacecraft about 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) away, the return looked strikingly similar to that of a meteorite hitting Earth.

Scientists don’t often have the advance notice needed to study how real meteoroids – the term given to meteorites before they hit the ground – behave when they enter the atmosphere, so they jumped on the opportunity to study the capsule as it returned to Earth.

As physicists Brian Elbing from Oklahoma State University and Elizabeth A. Silber from Sandia National Laboratories discussed in their article, OSIRIS-REx’s reentry was the perfect opportunity to study what happens in the atmosphere when meteoroid-size objects fly through.

The teams set up networks of sensitive microphones and other instruments – both on the ground and attached to balloons – to log the sound wave frequencies that the capsule generated in the atmosphere. Understanding how waves travel through the atmosphere can help scientists figure out how to detect hazards such as natural disasters.

3. Building blocks of life on Bennu

Once the OSIRIS-REx return capsule was safely back on Earth, researchers across the world – including geologist Timothy J. McCoy from the Smithsonian Institution and planetary scientist Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum in the U.K. – got to work running tests on its contents, while handling the sample carefully to avoid contaminating it.

As they described in their article, McCoy and Russell found the sample was mostly water-rich clay, which they expected from a carbon-rich asteroid. But they also found a surprising amount of salty and brine-related minerals. These minerals form when water evaporates off a rock’s surface.

Because these minerals – aptly called evaporites – dissolve when they come into contact with moisture, scientists had never seen them in the meteorites that fly through Earth’s atmosphere, even ones with similar compositions to Bennu. The spacecraft’s sample container kept the Bennu sample airtight, so these evaporites stayed intact.

These results suggest that the asteroid used to be wet and muddy. And a salty, water-rich environment like Bennu may have once been a great place for organic molecules to form. Some scientists predict that Earth got its ingredients for life from a collision with an asteroid like Bennu.

4. Looking ahead: Asteroid mining

Asteroid sample return missions generate lots of scientific insights. They can also help space agencies and companies understand what exactly is out there, available to bring home from asteroids. While carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu aren’t flush with precious metals, other asteroids have more valuable contents.

Launched in 2023 and currently traveling through space, NASA’s Psyche mission will explore a metallic asteroid. The Psyche asteroid likely contains platinum, nickel, iron and possibly gold – all materials of commercial interest.

Scientists can learn about the formation and composition of Earth’s core from metallic asteroids like Psyche, which is the mission’s main goal. But as planetary scientist Valerie Payré from the University of Iowa wrote in her article, “The Psyche mission is a huge step in figuring out what sort of metals are out there.”

For now, commercial asteroid mining operations are science fiction – not to mention legally fraught. But some companies have started considering early-stage plans for how they one day might do it. Asteroid sample missions can lay some early groundwork.

This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Mary Magnuson, Associate Science Editor, The Conversation

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

It’s no secret that warming temperatures, wildfires and flash floods are increasingly affecting lives across the United States. With the U.S. government now planning to ramp up fossil fuel use, the risks of these events are likely to become even more pronounced.

That leaves a big question: Is the nation prepared to adapt to the consequences?

For many years, federally funded scientists have been developing solutions to help reduce the harm climate change is causing in people’s lives and livelihoods. Yet, as with many other science programs, the White House is proposing to eliminate funding for climate adaptation science in the next federal budget, and reports suggest that the firing of federal climate adaptation scientists may be imminent.

As researchers and directors of regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey since 2011, we have seen firsthand the work these programs do to protect the nation’s natural resources and their successes in helping states and tribes build resilience to climate risks.

Here are a few examples of the ways federally funded climate adaptation science conducted by university and federal researchers helps the nation weather the effects of climate change.

Protecting communities against wildfire risk

Wildfires have increasingly threatened communities and ecosystems across the U.S., exacerbated by worsening heat waves and drought.

In the Southwest, researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers are developing forecasting models to identify locations at greatest risk of wildfire at different times of year.

Knowing where and when fire risks are highest allows communities to take steps to protect themselves, whether by carrying out controlled burns to remove dry vegetation, creating fire breaks to protect homes, managing invasive species that can leave forests more prone to devastating fires, or other measures.

The solutions are created with forest and wildland managers to ensure projects are viable, effective and tailored to each area. The research is then integrated into best practices for managing wildfires. The researchers also help city planners find the most effective methods to reduce fire risks in wildlands near homes.

In Hawaii and the other Pacific islands, adaptation researchers have similarly worked to identify how drought, invasive species and land-use changes contribute to fire risk there. They use these results to create maps of high-risk fire zones to help communities take steps to reduce dry and dead undergrowth that could fuel fires and also plan for recovery after fires.

Protecting shorelines and fisheries

In the Northeast, salt marshes line large parts of the coast, providing natural buffers against storms by damping powerful ocean waves that would otherwise erode the shoreline. Their shallow, grassy waters also serve as important breeding grounds for valuable fish.

However, these marshes are at risk of drowning as sea level rises faster than the sediment can build up.

As greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and from other human activities accumulate in the atmosphere, they trap extra heat near Earth’s surface and in the oceans, raising temperatures. The rising temperatures melt glaciers and also cause thermal expansion of the oceans. Together, those processes are raising global sea level by about 1.3 inches per decade.

Adaptation researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been developing local flood projections for the regions’ unique oceanographic and geophysical conditions to help protect them. Those projections are essential to help natural resource managers and municipalities plan effectively for the future.

Researchers are also collaborating with local and regional organizations on salt marsh restoration, including assessing how sediment builds up each marsh and creating procedures for restoring and monitoring the marshes.

Saving salmon in Alaska and the Northwest

In the Northwest and Alaska, salmon are struggling as temperatures rise in the streams they return to for spawning each year. Warm water can make them sluggish, putting them at greater risk from predators. When temperatures get too high, they can’t survive. Even in large rivers such as the Columbia, salmon are becoming heat stressed more often.

Adaptation researchers in both regions have been evaluating the effectiveness of fish rescues – temporarily moving salmon into captivity as seasonal streams overheat or dry up due to drought.

In Alaska, adaptation scientists have built broad partnerships with tribes, nonprofit organizations and government agencies to improve temperature measurements of remote streams, creating an early warning system for fisheries so managers can take steps to help salmon survive.

Managing invasive species

Rising temperatures can also expand the range of invasive species, which cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year in crop and forest losses and threaten native plants and animals.

Researchers in the Northeast and Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been working to identify and prioritize the risks from invasive species that are expanding their ranges. That helps state managers eradicate these emerging threats before they become a problem. These regional invasive species networks have become the go-to source of climate-related scientific information for thousands of invasive species managers.

The Northeast is a hot spot for invasive species, particularly for plants that can outcompete native wetland and grassland species and host pathogens that can harm native species.

Without proactive assessments, invasive species management becomes more difficult. Once the damage has begun, managing invasive species becomes more expensive and less effective.

Losing the nation’s ability to adapt wisely

A key part of these projects is the strong working relationships built between scientists and the natural resource managers in state, community, tribal and government agencies who can put this knowledge into practice.

With climate extremes likely to increase in the coming years, losing adaptation science will leave the United States even more vulnerable to future climate hazards.

Bethany Bradley, Professor of Biogeography and Spatial Ecology, UMass Amherst; Jia Hu, Associate Professor of Natural Resources, University of Arizona, and Meade Krosby, Senior Scientist for the Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington

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