When Russia invaded Ukraine, I responded like many Americans: by making charitable donations.

I was able to make my gift with confidence because I’m a scholar of nonprofits who has studied giving during disasters and other crises.

Mostly I’ve studied how charities help local communities after events like hurricanes and earthquakes, rather than war zones. But I’m also a human being, with friends and colleagues who are Ukrainian. Empathy and a personal connection to a cause are often what motivates donors to act.

You can wisely choose causes with the potential to do the most good in the middle of this humanitarian crisis by giving with your head as well as your heart. Here are the five guidelines I follow in my own giving decisions:

5 guidelines for donors

1) Send money to organizations, not strangers

Crowdfunding and social media fundraising campaigns have become so common that when I recently searched GoFundMe, it pointed me to 1,008 separate appeals for aid for individuals, families or causes related to Ukraine.

Most were posted by individuals, and I have no doubt that some will turn out to be fake.

2) Vet groups you’re unfamiliar with before donating to them

Verifying first that the cause is legitimate will make it easier to avoid funding scams.

A useful shortcut is to look for organizations that have been vetted by others. I tried a simple keyword search “Ukraine charities,” and that was enough to turn up some promising lists posted by media outlets.

A good place to start your sleuthing on U.S.-based registered charities is the Internal Revenue Service. It also ensures you’re giving to the right group, rather than another organization with a deceptively similar name. Many scammers abuse the name recognition of established nonprofits, hoping you won’t notice the difference.

3) Give to charities with a track record in Ukraine

Some examples include Razom for Ukraine, which leads a variety of cultural and democratization initiatives. Another is UNICEF, a United Nations agency that protects children worldwide and is in a good position not only to provide immediate relief but also to pressure Russia to allow unrestricted humanitarian access. Because these groups have already built local relationships, trust and infrastructure, they are likely to be more adept at operating in these dire circumstances than the charities popping up now or those that are still mobilizing from half a world away.

4) Dispatch cash, not goods

Don’t bundle up your spare clothing or other supplies and ship them to Eastern Europe, please. The fragile Ukrainian supply lines need to remain open for medicine and food. And while there is a time and place for restricting a gift to a specific purpose, a humanitarian crisis is not the right time. Trust the people that a charity has on the ground to know which needs are the highest priority.

5) Make gifts that reflect your values

Giving is a deeply psychological act. Effective – and satisfied – donors act on values important to them.

If helping refugees is your priority, consider organizations such as Fundacja Ocalenie, which means “the Rescue Fund” in Polish. About half a million Ukrainians had fled to Poland by March 3, 2022.

If a free press is what matters most to you, given the strength of the Russian disinformation machine, consider Zaborona or the Kyiv Independent, two Ukrainian media outlets.

Buck the overhead myth

A lot of guidance about what makes charities good or bad to support can be misleading.

One common piece of advice I recommend you ignore is that donors should always support charities that spend as little money as possible on their overhead costs – things like rent and administrative pay.

Even leading charity rating and assessment sites, such as Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, continue to rely in part on the outdated assumption that nonprofits with low overhead spending are automatically more efficient and let donors’ dollars stretch further.

Researchers have been disproving this assumption for years.

Not only can reasonable amounts of overhead help nonprofits build their capacity, but many studies have demonstrated that pinching pennies to satisfy misguided donor assumptions can weaken nonprofits, especially in the long run.

Some charity-evaluation websites do provide valuable information. Charity Navigator has a helpful “advisory” page that alerts donors about nonprofit misconduct. But to research U.S. charities supporting the Ukraine crisis, I recommend Candid, formerly known as Guidestar. It evaluates charities on the basis of broader performance metrics, such as transparency, good governance practices and outcomes.

A better signal of effectiveness than low overhead will be a responsive organization with real humans who are ready to answer your questions. It should also have a track record of working well with others and clearly communicates how it spends donors’ dollars.

Groups worth supporting are also likely to emphasize their results in their annual reports and other materials. Especially if you intend to make a big gift, you may find that the charity’s 990 forms – paperwork the IRS requires – contain a lot of useful information.

Making a choice

In the end, I supported the International Committee of the Red Cross, the winner of several Nobel Peace Prizes. Based in Switzerland, it’s already operating in Ukraine, and can help today.

I hope that you will consider giving as well, and – like me – you’ll stick with your support. The need is going to continue long after Ukraine is out of the headlines.

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Beth Gazley, Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, O'Neill School, Indiana University

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

On Feb. 4, 2022, SpaceX launched 49 satellites as part of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet project, most of which burned up in the atmosphere days later. The cause of this more than US$50 million failure was a geomagnetic storm caused by the Sun.

Geomagnetic storms occur when space weather hits and interacts with the Earth. Space weather is caused by fluctuations within the Sun that blast electrons, protons and other particles into space. I study the hazards space weather poses to space-based assets and how scientists can improve the models and prediction of space weather to protect against these hazards.

When space weather reaches Earth, it triggers many complicated processes that can cause a lot of trouble for anything in orbit. And engineers like me are working to better understand these risks and defend satellites against them.

What causes space weather?

The Sun is always releasing a steady amount of charged particles into space. This is called the solar wind. Solar wind also carries with it the solar magnetic field. Sometimes, localized fluctuations on the Sun will hurl unusually strong bursts of particles in a particular direction. If Earth happens to be in the path of the enhanced solar wind generated by one of these events and gets hit, you get a geomagnetic storm.

The two most common causes of geomagnetic storms are coronal mass ejections – explosions of plasma from the surface of the Sun – and solar wind that escapes through coronal holes – spots of low density in the Sun’s outer atmosphere.

The speed at which the ejected plasma or solar wind arrives at Earth is an important factor – the faster the speed, the stronger the geomagnetic storm. Normally, solar wind travels at roughly 900,000 mph (1.4 million kph). But strong solar events can release winds up to five times as fast.

The strongest geomagnetic storm on record was caused by a coronal mass ejection in September 1859. When the mass of particles hit Earth, they caused electrical surges in telegraph lines that shocked operators and, in some extreme cases, actually set telegraph instruments on fire. Research suggests that if a geomagnetic storm of this magnitude hit Earth today, it would cause roughly $2 trillion in damage.

A magnetic shield

Emissions from the Sun, including the solar wind, would be incredibly dangerous to any life form unlucky enough to be directly exposed to them. Thankfully, Earth’s magnetic field does a lot to protect humanity.

The first thing solar wind hits as it approaches Earth is the magnetosphere. This region surrounding the Earth’s atmosphere is filled with plasma made of electrons and ions. It’s dominated by the planet’s strong magnetic field. When solar wind hits the magnetosphere, it transfers mass, energy and momentum into this layer.

The magnetosphere can absorb most of the energy from the everyday level of solar wind. But during strong storms, it can get overloaded and transfer excess energy to the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere near the poles. This redirection of energy to the poles is what results in fantastic aurora events, but it also causes changes in the upper atmosphere that can harm space assets.

Dangers to what’s in orbit

There a few different ways geomagnetic storms threaten orbiting satellites that serve people on the ground daily.

When the atmosphere absorbs energy from magnetic storms, it heats up and expands upward. This expansion significantly increases the density of the thermosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that extends from about 50 miles (80 kilometers) to roughly 600 miles (1,000 km) above the surface of the Earth. Higher density means more drag, which can be a problem for satellites.

This situation is exactly what led to the demise of the the SpaceX Starlink satellites in February. Starlink satellites are dropped off by Falcon 9 rockets into a low-altitude orbit, typically somewhere between 60 and 120 miles (100 and 200 km) above the Earth’s surface. The satellites then use onboard engines to slowly overcome the force of drag and raise themselves to their final altitude of approximately 350 miles (550 km).

The latest batch of Starlink satellites encountered a geomagnetic storm while still in very low-Earth orbit. Their engines could not overcome the significantly increased drag, and the satellites began slowly falling toward Earth and eventually burned up in the atmosphere.

Drag is just one hazard that space weather poses to space-based assets. The significant increase in high-energy electrons within the magnetosphere during strong geomagnetic storms means more electrons will penetrate the shielding on a spacecraft and accumulate within its electronics. This buildup of electrons can discharge in what is basically a small lightning strike and damage electronics.

Penetrating radiation or charged particles in the magnetosphere – even during mild geomagnetic storms – can also alter the output signal from electronic devices. This phenomenon can cause errors in any part of a spacecraft’s electronics system, and if the error occurs in something critical, the entire satellite can fail. Small errors are common and usually fixable, but total failures, though rare, do happen.

Finally, geomagnetic storms can disrupt the ability of satellites to communicate with Earth using radio waves. Many communications technologies, like GPS, for example, rely on radio waves. The atmosphere always distorts radio waves by some amount , so engineers correct for this distortion when building communication systems. But during geomagnetic storms, changes in the ionosphere – the charged equivalent of the thermosphere that spans roughly the same altitude range – will change how radio waves travel through it. The calibrations in place for a quiet atmosphere become wrong during geomagnetic storms.

This, for example, makes it difficult to lock onto GPS signals and can throw off the positioning by a few meters. For many industries – aviation, maritime, robotics, transportation, farming, military and others – GPS positioning errors of a few meters are simply not tenable. Autonomous driving systems will require accurate positioning as well.

How to protect against space weather

Satellites are critically important for much of the modern world to function, and protecting space assets from space weather is an important area of research.

Some of the risks can be minimized by shielding electronics from radiation or developing materials that are more resistant to radiation. But there is only so much shielding that can be done in the face of a powerful geomagnetic storm.

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The ability to accurately forecast storms would make it possible to preemptively safeguard satellites and other assets to a certain extent by shutting down sensitive electronics or reorienting the satellites to be better protected. But while the modeling and forecasting of geomagnetic storms has significantly improved over the past few years, the projections are often wrong. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had warned that, following a coronal mass ejection, a geomagnetic storm was “likely” to occur the day before or the day of the February Starlink launch. The mission went ahead anyway.

The Sun is like a child that often throws tantrums. It’s essential for life to go on, but its ever-changing disposition make things challenging.

Piyush Mehta, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, West Virginia University

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

Behind some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries and innovations are women whose names might not be familiar but whose stories are worth knowing.

Of course, there are far too many to all fit on one list.

But here are five profiles from The Conversation’s archive that highlight the brilliance, grit and unique perspectives of five women who worked in geosciences, math, ornithology, pharmacology and physics during the 20th century.

1. Revealing and mapping the ocean floor

As late as the 1950s, wrote Wesleyan University geoscientist Suzanne OConnell, “many scientists assumed the seabed was featureless.”

Enter Marie Tharp. In 1957, she and her research partner started publishing detailed hand-drawn maps of the ocean floor, complete with rugged mountains, valleys and deep trenches.

Tharp was a geologist and oceanographer. Aboard research ships, she would carefully record the depth of the ocean, point by point, using sonar. One of her innovations was to translate this data into topographical sketches of what the seafloor looked like.

Her discovery of a rift valley in the North Atlantic shook the world of geology – her supervisor on the ship dismissed her idea as “girl talk,” and Jacques Cousteau was determined to prove her wrong. But she was right, and her insight was a key contribution to plate tectonic theory. That’s part of why, OConnell writes, “I believe Tharp should be as famous as Jane Goodall or Neil Armstrong.”

2. Sympathetic observation of bird behavior

Margaret Morse Nice was a field biologist who got into the minds of her study subjects to garner new insights into animal behavior. Most famously she observed song sparrows in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Rochester Institute of Technology professor of science, technology and society Kristoffer Whitney recounted what Nice called her “phenomenological method,” acknowledging the obvious “affection and anthropomorphism” you can see in her descriptions.

“When I first studied the Song Sparrows,” Nice wrote, “I had looked upon Song Sparrow 4M as a truculent, meddlesome neighbor; but … I discovered him to be a delightful bird, spirited, an accomplished songster and a devoted father.”

Despite earning no advanced degrees and being considered an amateur, Nice promoted innovations like the “use of colored leg bands to distinguish individual birds,” gained the respect of her better-known peers and enjoyed a long, successful career.

3. A medical researcher in Maoist China

At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, a young scientist named Tu Youyou headed a covert operation called Project 523 under military supervision. One of her team’s goals was to identify and systematically test substances used in traditional Chinese medicine in an effort to vanquish chloroquine-resistant malaria.

Historian Jia-Chen Fu described how “contrary to popular assumptions that Maoist China was summarily against science and scientists, the Communist party-state needed the scientific elite for certain political and practical purposes.”

Tu followed a hunch about how to extract an antimalarial compound from the qinghao or artemisia plant. By 1971, her team had successfully “obtained a nontoxic and neutral extract that was called qinghaosu or artemisinin.” In 2015, she was honored with a Nobel Prize.

4. A mathematician who wouldn’t be diverted

Not everyone gets called a “creative mathematical genius” by Albert Einstein. But Emmy Noether did.

Mathematician Tamar Lichter Blanks wrote about the roadblocks Noether faced as a Jewish woman who wanted to pursue a math career in early 1900s Germany. For a while, Noether supervised doctoral students without pay and taught university courses listed under the name of a male colleague.

All the while, she conducted her own research in theoretical physics, contributing to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Her most revolutionary work was in ring theory and is still pondered by mathematicians today.

Noether died less than two years after emigrating to the U.S. to escape the Nazis.

5. Testing nuclear theories one by one

While sometimes called the “Chinese Marie Curie” in her home country, nuclear physicist Chien-Shiung Wu is less well-known in the U.S., where she did the bulk of her work. Rutgers University-Newark physicist Xuejian Wu considered Chien-Shiung Wu (no relation) “an icon” who inspired his own career path.

As a grad student, Wu traveled by steamship to California in 1936, where she fell in love with atomic nuclei research at UC Berkeley, home of a brand new cyclotron. She worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II.

Among her many accomplishments, Wu’s careful experimental work discovered what’s called parity nonconservation – that is, that a physical process and its mirror reflection are not necessarily identical. Her colleagues who focused on the theoretical side of this breakthrough won the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics, but Wu was overlooked.

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

Maggie Villiger, Senior Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation

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