Trigger warnings fall flat, but safe spaces build trust in the classroom
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 1-Aug-2025 23:11 ET (2-Aug-2025 03:11 GMT/UTC)
A new study involving more than 700 university students found that trigger warnings do not make students feel more supported or positive toward instructors, despite being widely endorsed. Students who received trigger warnings before trauma-related lectures did not rate instructors as more trustworthy, caring, or open to controversial discussions.In contrast, 'in a safe space' messages had a clear positive impact.
Technicians have successfully installed two sunshields onto NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s inner segment. The panels (together called the Lower Instrument Sun Shade), will play a critical role in keeping Roman’s instruments cool and stable as the mission explores the infrared universe.
Ice crystals in Earth’s atmosphere sometimes align just right to create various striking visual effects, from a halo around the moon, to bright spots called sun dogs on either side of the sun in a winter sky, or a rainbowed pillar, called a crown flash, above a storm cloud. Similar phenomena can appear in the skies over some exoplanets of the “hot Jupiter” variety, a common type of gaseous giant that always orbits close to its host star, Cornell astronomers have found.
Kyoto, Japan -- Black holes embody the ultimate abyss. They are the most powerful sources of gravity in the universe, capable of dramatically distorting space and time around them. When disturbed, they begin to "ring" in a distinctive pattern known as quasinormal modes: ripples in space-time that produce detectable gravitational waves.
In events like black hole mergers, these waves can be strong enough to detect from Earth, offering a unique opportunity to measure a black hole's mass and shape. However, precise calculation of these vibrations through theoretical methods has proven a major challenge, particularly for vibrations that are rapidly weakening.
This inspired a team of researchers at Kyoto University to try a new method of calculating the vibrations of black holes. The scientists applied a mathematical technique called the exact Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin, or exact WKB analysis to carefully trace the behavior of waves from a black hole out into distant space. While this method has long been studied in mathematics, its application to physics -- especially to black holes -- is still a newly developing area.