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Category: Academic Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century judge and ambassador, travelled further than Marco Polo. The Rihla records his adventures

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ismail Albayrak, Professor of Islam and Catholic Muslim Relations, Australian Catholic University

    In our guides to the classics, experts explain key literary works.

    Ibn Battuta, was born in Tangier, Morocco, on February 24, 1304. From a statement in his celebrated travel book the Rihla (“legal affairs are my ancestral profession,”) he evidently came from an intellectually distinguished family.

    According to the Rihla (travelogue), Ibn Battuta embarked on his travels from Tangier at the age of 22 with the intention of performing the Hajj (the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca) in 1325. Although he returned to Fez (his adopted home-town) around the end of 1349, he continued to visit various regions, including Granada and Sudan, in subsequent years.

    Over the course of his almost 30 years of travel, Ibn Battuta covered an astonishing distance of approximately 73,000 miles (117,000 kilometres), visiting a region that today encompasses more than 50 countries. His journeys covered much of the medieval Islamic world and beyond, excluding Northern Europe.

    In 1355, he returned to Morocco for the last time and remained there for the rest of his life. Upon his return he dictated his experiences, observations and anecdotes to the Andalusian scholar Ibn Juzayy, with a compilation of his travels completed in 1355 or 1356.

    The work, formally titled A Gift to Researchers on the Curiosities of Cities and the Marvels of Journeys, is more commonly referred to as Rihlat Ibn Battuta or simply Rihla.

    A painting of Ibn Battuta (on right) in Egypt by Leon Benett.
    Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    More than a travelogue or geographical record, this book provides rich insights into 14th-century social and political life, capturing cultural diversity across nations. Ibn Battuta details local lifestyles, linguistic traits, beliefs, clothing, cuisines, holidays, artistic traditions and gender relations, as well as commercial activities and currencies.

    His observations also include geographical features such as mountains, rivers and agricultural products. Notably, the work highlights his encounters with over 60 sultans and more than 2,000 prominent figures, making it a valuable historical resource.

    The travels

    His travels began after a dream. According to Ibn Battuta, one night, while in Fuwwa, a town near Alexandria in Egypt, he dreamed of flying on a massive bird across various lands, landing in a dark, greenish country.

    To test the local sheikh’s mystical knowledge, he decided if the sheikh knew of his dream, he was truly extraordinary. The next morning, after leading the dawn prayer, he saw the sheikh bid farewell to visitors. Later, the sheikh astonishingly revealed knowledge of Ibn Battuta’s dream and prophesied his pilgrimage through Yemen, Iraq, Turkey and India.

    At the time, the Middle East was under the rule of the Mamluk sultanate, Anatolia was divided among principalities and the Mongol Ilkhanate state controlled Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.

    Ibn Battuta initially travelled through North Africa, Egypt, Palestine and Syria, completing his first Hajj in 1326.

    He then visited Iraq and Iran, returning to Mecca. In 1328, he explored East Africa, reaching Mogadishu, Mombasa, Sudan and Kilwa (modern Tanzania), as well as Yemen, Oman and Anatolia, where he documented cities like Alanya, Konya, Erzurum, Nicaea and Bursa.

    His descriptions are vivid. Describing the city of Dimyat, on the bank of the Nile, he says:

    Many of the houses have steps leading down to the Nile. Banana trees are especially abundant there, and their fruit is carried to Cairo in boats. Its sheep and goats are allowed to pasture at liberty day and night, and for this reason the saying goes of Dimyat, ‘Its wall is a sweetmeat and its dogs are sheep’. No one who enters the city may afterwards leave it except by the governor’s seal […]

    Farmland on the banks of the Nile river today.
    Alice-D/shutterstock

    When it comes to Anatolia (in modern-day Turkey), he declares:

    This country, known as the Land of Rum, is the most beautiful in the world. While Allah Almighty has distributed beauty to other lands separately, He has gathered them all here. The most beautiful and well-dressed people live in this land, and the most delicious food is prepared here […] From the moment we arrived, our neighbors — both men and women — showed great concern for our wellbeing. Here, women do not shy away from men; when we departed, they bid us farewell as if we were family, expressing their sadness through tears.

    A judge and husband

    In 1332, Ibn Battutua met the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos.
    Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    Since Ibn Battuta dictated his work, it’s difficult to assess the extent of the scribe’s influence in recording his narratives. Despite being an educated man, he occasionally narrates like a commoner and sometimes exceeds the bounds of polite language. At times, he provides excessive detail, giving the impression he may be quoting from sources beyond his own observations.

    Nevertheless, the Rihla stands out for its engaging style and captivating anecdotes, drawing readers in.

    Ibn Battuta later journeyed through Crimea, Central Asia, Khwarezm (a large oasis region in the territories of present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), Bukhara (a city in Uzbekistan), and the Hindu Kush Mountains. In 1332, he met Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos and travelled to Istanbul with the caravan of Uzbek Khan’s third wife. He mentions a caravan that even has a market:

    Whenever the caravan halted, food was cooked in great brass cauldrons, called dasts, and supplied from them to the poorer pilgrims and those who had no provisions. […] This caravan contained also animated bazaars and great supplies of luxuries and all kinds of food and fruit. They used to march during the night and light torches in front of the file of camels and litters, so that you saw the countryside gleaming with light and the darkness turned into radiant day.

    Ibn Battuta arrived in Delhi in 1333, where he served as a judge under Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq for seven years. He married or was married to local women in many of the places he stayed. Among his wives were ordinary people as well as the daughters of the administrative class.

    Miniature painting in Mughal style depicting the court of Muhammad bin Tughluq.
    Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    The Sultan’s generosity, intelligence and unconventional ruling style both impressed and surprised Ibn Battuta. However, Muhammad bin Tughluq was known for making excessively harsh and abrupt decisions at times, which led Ibn Battuta to approach him with caution. Nevertheless, with the Sultan’s support, he remained in India for a long time and was eventually chosen as an ambassador to China in 1341.

    In 1345 his mission was disrupted when his ship capsized off the coast of Calcutta (then known as Sadqawan) in the Indian Ocean. Though he survived, he lost most of his possessions.

    After the incident, he remained in India for a while before continuing his journey by other means. During this period, he travelled through India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. He served as a judge in the latter for one and a half years. In 1345, he journeyed to China via Bengal, Burma and Sumatra, reaching the city of Guangzhou but limiting his exploration to the southern coast.

    He was among the first Arab travellers to record Islam’s spread in the Malay Archipelago, noting interactions between Muslims and Hindu-Buddhist communities. Visiting Java and Sumatra, he praised Sultan Malik al-Zahir of Sumatra as a generous, pious and scholarly ruler and highlighted his rare practice of walking to Friday prayers.

    On his return, Ibn Battuta explored regions such as Iran, Iraq, North Africa, Spain and the Kingdom of Mali, documenting the vast Islamic world.

    Back in his homeland, Ibn Battuta served as a judge in several locations. He died around 1368-9 while serving as a judge in Morocco and was buried in his birthplace, Tangier.

    Historic copy of selected parts of the Travel Report by Ibn Battuta, 1836 CE, Cairo.
    Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    The status of women

    Ibn Battuta’s travels revealed intriguing insights into the status of women across regions. In inner West Africa, he observed matriarchal practices where lineage and inheritance were determined by the mother’s family.

    Among Turks, women rode horses like raiders, traded actively and did not veil their faces.

    In the Maldives, husbands leaving the region had to abandon their wives. He noted that Muslim women there, including the ruling woman, did not cover their heads. Despite attempting to enforce the hijab as a judge, he failed.

    He offers fascinating insights into food cultures. In Siberia, sled dogs were fed before humans. He described 15-day wedding feasts in India.

    He tried local produce such as mango in the Indian subcontinent, which he compared to an apple, and sun-dried, sliced fish in Oman.

    Religious practices

    Ibn Battuta’s accounts of the Hajj (pilgrimage) rituals he performed six times provide a unique perspective. He references a fatwa by Ibn Taymiyyah, prominent Islamic scholar and theologian known for his opposition to theological innovations and critiques of Sufism and philosophy, advising against shortening prayers for those travelling to Medina.

    Ibn Battuta’s accounts, particularly regarding the Iranian region, offer important perspectives into religious sects during a period when Iran started shifting from Sunnism to Shiism. He describes societies with diverse demographics, including Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis. His observations on religious practices are especially significant.

    Inclined toward Sufism, Ibn Battuta often dressed like a dervish during his travels. He offers a compelling view of Islamic mysticism. He considered regions like Damascus as places of abundance and Anatolia as a land of compassion, interpreting them with a spiritual perspective.

    His accounts of Sufi education, dervish lodges, zawiyas (similar to monasteries), and tombs, along with the special invocations of Sufi masters, are important historical records. He also observed and documented unique practices, such as the followers of the Persian Sufi saint Sheikh Qutb al-Din Haydar wearing iron rings on their hands, necks, ears, and even private parts to avoid sexual intercourse.

    While Ibn Battuta primarily visited Muslim lands, he also travelled to non-Muslim territories, offering key understandings into different religious cultures, for instance interactions between Crimean Muslims and Christian Armenians in the Golden Horde region.

    He also documented churches, icons and monasteries, such as the tomb of the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem. His observation of Muslims openly reciting the call to prayer (adhan) in China is significant.

    Other anecdotes include the division of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus into a mosque and Christian church. Most importantly, his encounters with Hindus and Buddhists in the Indian subcontinent and Malay Islands provide rich historical context.

    Umayyad Mosque, Damascus.
    eyetravelphotos/shutterstock

    His accounts of death rituals reveal diverse practices. In Sinop (a city in Turkey), 40 days of mourning were declared for a ruler’s mother, while in Iran, a funeral resembled a wedding celebration. He observed similarities in cremation practices between India and China and described a chilling custom in some regions where slaves and concubines were buried alive with the deceased.

    Ibn Battuta’s Rihla, widely translated into Eastern and Western languages, has drawn some criticism for containing depictions that sometimes diverge from historical continuity or borrow from other works. Ibn Battuta himself admitted to using earlier travel books as references.

    Despite limited recognition in older sources, the Rihla gained prominence in the West in the 19th century. His legacy remains vibrant today. Morocco declared 1996–1997 the “Year of Ibn Battuta,” and established a museum in Tangier to honour him. In Dubai, a mall is named after him.

    Notably, Ibn Battuta travelled to more destinations than Marco Polo and shared a broader range of humane anecdotes, showcasing the depth and diversity of his experiences.

    Ismail Albayrak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century judge and ambassador, travelled further than Marco Polo. The Rihla records his adventures – https://theconversation.com/ibn-battuta-a-14th-century-judge-and-ambassador-travelled-further-than-marco-polo-the-rihla-records-his-adventures-246148

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why have athletes stopped ‘taking a knee’?

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ciprian N. Radavoi, Associate Professor in Law, University of Southern Queensland

    Eli Harold, Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid of the San Francisco 49ers kneel ahead of a game in 2016. Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images

    It’s almost a decade since San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started a worldwide trend and sparked fierce debate when he knelt during the US national anthem.

    In 2016, Kaepernick refused to follow the pre-game protocol related to the national anthem and knelt instead, saying:

    I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour.

    Soon, many athletes and teams began “taking a knee” at sports events to express their solidarity with victims of racial injustice.

    Now, they appear to have stopped, which prompted us to research the decline.

    Initial widespread support

    Following the intense public debate over the appropriateness of Kaepernick’s act, the ritual quickly spread worldwide, with athletes in major soccer leagues, cricket, rugby, Formula 1, top-tier tennis and the US’s Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association taking a knee.

    Athletes didn’t always kneel during national anthems, with the majority kneeling at certain points pre-game.

    Despite the occasional “defection” of a small number of players who would stand while their teammates knelt – such as Israel Folau in rugby league, Wilfried Zaha in soccer and Quinton de Kock in cricket – the ritual was widely embraced by teams and athletes and helped raise awareness of the issue.

    Even major sports organisations notorious for prohibiting any type of political activism generally accepted the kneeling ritual. For example, soccer’s International Football Federation (FIFA) showcased kneeling as a “stand against discrimination” and as human rights advocacy.

    The International Olympic Committee (IOC) initially stood firm by its Rule 50, which states “no kind of demonstration or political, religious, or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.

    But just three weeks before the 2021 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, the IOC relaxed its interpretation, and athletes were permitted to express their views in ways that included taking a knee.

    A surprising turn of events

    Despite permission and even encouragement from sports governing bodies, our research shows the practice is disappearing from major sports competitions.

    Take soccer, for example. At the FIFA World Cup 2022, England and Wales were the only national teams that knelt at their games in Qatar.

    At the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand, no teams or players knelt.

    The same happened at the 2024 Olympic soccer tournament in Paris.

    That only a handful of teams knelt in Tokyo at the 2021 Olympics, two at the FIFA Mens’ World Cup in Qatar in 2022, none at the FIFA Womens’ World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023, and again none at the Paris 2024 Olympics indicates a growing reluctance throughout the sports world.

    This surely cannot mean athletes have become indifferent to racial injustice or other forms of oppression in the interval between the late 2010s and the mid-2020s.

    The explanation must be sought elsewhere. A hint was provided when Crystal Palace soccer player Zaha, the first player of colour in the UK who refused to kneel, explained:

    I feel like taking the knee is degrading, because growing up my parents just let me know that I should be proud to be Black no matter what and I feel like we should just stand tall.

    The explanation may therefore be, at least in part, the players’ uncomfortable feelings related to the kneeling posture.

    In sociology, this bothersome state of mind is called “cognitive dissonance”: the mental conflict a person experiences in the presence of contrasting beliefs.

    A history of kneeling

    The body posture of kneeling is not deemed, in any culture, as expressing solidarity.

    Ancient Greek and the Roman societies, on whose values Western civilisation was built, rejected kneeling as improper, even when praying to gods.

    Then, with the spread of Christianity in the Western world, kneeling became widely used, but only as an act of worship, confessing guilt, or praying for mercy.

    When performed outside the church, kneeling meant submission to nobility or royalty.

    The significance of kneeling as humility is not limited to the Western world.

    In African tribal culture, the young kneel in front of elders, and everyone kneels before the king.

    In China in 1949, Chairman Mao famously proclaimed at the first plenary of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference:

    From now on our nation […] will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up.

    With this in mind, kneeling may be deemed unfit at sporting events, which often feature a powerful cocktail of emotions, values and social expectations.

    The inconsistency between the excitement of competition and the expectation to kneel — a gesture associated with submission and humility — likely creates a bothersome state of mind for athletes.

    This potentially motivates some players to reject one of the two – in this case, the kneeling – to restore cognitive harmony.

    What could replace the kneeling ritual?

    After refusing, by unanimous players’ vote, to take a knee before their October 2020 game against the All Blacks, the Australian rugby union team chose instead to wear a First Nations jersey.

    The same year, several teams in German soccer’s top league chose to show their support for Black Lives Matter by wearing distinctive armbands.

    So it appears wearing a distinctive jersey or at least an armband is more easily accepted by modern-day athletes. This may be challenging given the governing bodies of many sports, such as FIFA, ban athletes from wearing political symbols on their clothing.

    Depending on whether sports code accept this type of activism in the future, wearing suportive clothing could replace taking a knee as symbolic communication of solidarity with oppressed minorities.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Why have athletes stopped ‘taking a knee’? – https://theconversation.com/why-have-athletes-stopped-taking-a-knee-259047

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Bats get fat to survive hard times. But climate change is threatening their survival strategy

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Nicholas Wu, Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology, Murdoch University

    Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock

    Bats are often cast as the unseen night-time stewards of nature, flitting through the dark to control pest insects, pollinate plants and disperse seeds. But behind their silent contributions lies a remarkable and underappreciated survival strategy: seasonal fattening.

    Much like bears and squirrels, bats around the world bulk up to get through hard times – even in places where you might not expect it.

    In a paper published today in Ecology Letters, we analysed data from bat studies around the world to understand how bats use body fat to survive seasonal challenges, whether it’s a freezing winter or a dry spell.

    The surprising conclusion? Seasonal fattening is a global phenomenon in bats, not just limited to those in cold climates.

    Even bats in the tropics, where it’s warm all year, store fat in anticipation of dry seasons when food becomes scarce. That’s a survival strategy that’s been largely overlooked. But it may be faltering as the climate changes, putting entire food webs at risk.

    Climate shapes fattening strategies

    We found bats in colder regions predictably gain more weight before winter.

    But in warmer regions with highly seasonal rainfall, such as tropical savannas or monsoonal forests, bats also fatten up. In tropical areas, it’s not cold that’s the enemy, but the dry season, when flowers wither, insects vanish and energy is hard to come by.

    The extent of fattening is impressive. Some species increased their body weight by more than 50%, which is a huge burden for flying animals that already use a lot of energy to move around. This highlights the delicate balancing act bats perform between storing energy and staying nimble in the air.

    Sex matters, especially in the cold

    The results also support the “thrifty females, frisky males” hypothesis.

    In colder climates, female bats used their fat reserves more sparingly than males – a likely adaptation to ensure they have enough energy left to raise young when spring returns. Since females typically emerge from hibernation to raise their young, conserving fat through winter can directly benefit their reproductive success.

    Interestingly, this sex-based difference vanished in warmer climates, where fat use by males and females was more similar, likely because more food is available in warmer climates. It’s another clue that climate patterns intricately shape behaviour and physiology.

    Climate change is shifting the rules

    Beyond the biology, our study points to a more sobering trend. Bats in warm regions appear to be increasing their fat stores over time. This could be an early warning sign of how climate change is affecting their survival.

    Climate change isn’t just about rising temperatures. It’s also making seasons more unpredictable.

    Bats may be storing more energy in advance of dry seasons that are becoming longer or harder to predict. That’s risky, because it means more foraging, more exposure to predators and potentially greater mortality.

    The implications can ripple outward. Bats help regulate insect populations, fertilise crops and maintain healthy ecosystems. If their survival strategies falter, entire food webs could feel the effects.

    Fat bats, fragile futures

    Our study changes how we think about bats. They are not just passive victims of environmental change but active strategists, finely tuned to seasonal rhythms. Yet their ability to adapt has limits, and those limits are being tested by a rapidly changing world.

    By understanding how bats respond to climate, we gain insights into broader ecosystem resilience. We also gain a deeper appreciation for one of nature’s quiet heroes – fattening up, flying through the night and holding ecosystems together, one wingbeat at a time.

    Nicholas Wu was the lead author of a funded Australian Research Council Linkage Grant awarded to Christopher Turbill at Western Sydney University.

    – ref. Bats get fat to survive hard times. But climate change is threatening their survival strategy – https://theconversation.com/bats-get-fat-to-survive-hard-times-but-climate-change-is-threatening-their-survival-strategy-259560

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Work, wages and apprenticeships: sifting for clues about the lives of girls in ancient Egypt

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Julia Hamilton, Lecturer in History and Archaeology, Macquarie University

    Weavers in the Tomb of Khnumhotep II, Beni Hassan, Egypt. Painted by Norman de Garis Davies (MMA 33.8.16)

    We know surprisingly little about the lives of children in ancient Egypt.

    And what records we do have about them often concern the lives of the elite – the young king or the children of senior officials. They are more prominent in surviving material evidence, especially funerary art. Infant mortality rates were high in ancient Egypt.

    As a result, much of the work in Egyptology on representations of childhood in ancient Egypt is dominated by evidence for the lives of boys and young adult men.

    But what were the lives of ordinary girls like in ancient Egypt? And how did they make their way in a deeply patriarchal culture?

    Finding hieroglyphic words for girls

    An initial problem in studying girls’ lives in ancient Egypt is answering the question: who was a girl in ancient Egypt?

    Chronological age was not always recorded by ancient Egyptians in their letters or inscriptions.

    Instead, more general words and hieroglyphic signs tended to accompany images of men, women and children to indicate their social roles.

    A woman is shown nursing a child while another woman is dressing her hair.
    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (22.2.35)

    These words and signs were only loosely associated with biological development.

    Hieroglyphic words for infants and small children, for instance, could be marked with an image of a small, seated child – sometimes with a finger held to its mouth.

    Among the words used to describe young girls – talking, walking, and participating alongside adults in their work – was sheriyt.

    This is the word often found in ancient accounting documents recording payments of wages, indicating a girl-child worker. They are distinguished from older women in these documents, although it is difficult to know precisely how young they might have been.

    In this way, written administrative records and archaeological evidence reveals girls of many social classes were integrated into economic production from an early age.

    Payment for work

    Elephantine, a town at Egypt’s southern frontier near modern-day Aswan, provides a unique window into the urban life of some girls who worked in textile workshops during the ancient Egyptian Middle Kingdom, which dates approximately 2030–1650 BCE.

    First published in 1996, archaeologists found a ceramic bowl repurposed as a writing surface in a house in the densely packed urban settlement.

    The excavators initially dated the bowl to the reign of King Amenemhat III, who ruled almost 3,800 years ago. However, based on the style of writing and the types of names listed, some scholars have also dated it earlier. It contains lists of payments of provisions of grain for textile workers over the course of a month.

    What makes this document so important is that it names at least 18 child workers. Of these, 11 are girls, clearly marked with the Egyptian word sheriyt, working alongside 28 adult women.

    The list shows adult women in this workshop received between 50–57 heqat (around 240–274 litres) of grain – although it’s not entirely clear if this was a one-off payment, a payment per month, or something else. The girls earned smaller but still significant wages of 3–7 heqat (around 14–34 litres).

    Some other adult women seem to have also received comparable provisions to the girls, although without further information it is difficult know their social status or age.

    This document not only confirms that girls received payment for their labour. It also suggests a structured apprenticeship system where young girls (and boys) worked alongside experienced craftswomen.

    This corroborates evidence from visual art of textile workshops from the same period.

    Weavers in the Tomb of Khnumhotep II, Beni Hassan, Egypt. Painted at the tomb in 1931 by Norman de Garis Davies.
    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (33.8.16)

    Work life, home life

    Archaeological evidence suggests textile production occurred both within homes and in dedicated workshops.

    Evidence from the excavations at Elephantine suggests homes had several rooms with multiple purposes, including courtyards, entrance vestibules, kitchens with ovens (recognisable by blackened walls and ash deposits), and possible stairs leading to roof spaces.

    Privacy would have been limited. Daily life would have included close interaction with animals, as evidenced by attached animal pens.

    More recently, close to the house where the provision list was discovered, archaeologists found needles, spindles, shuttles, and remains of pegs for a large loom.

    These were found both inside houses and in the courtyards attached to them.

    It’s hard to know what exactly these buildings were for; they probably served multiple purposes.

    Lives shaped by class and legal status

    Not all girls at Elephantine had the same experience of life. The town’s position at Egypt’s southern frontier in this period meant it was home to diverse populations, which included migrants, enslaved people and transitory workers.

    A letter dating to the reign of King Amenemhat III documents some families, including women and children, arriving at Elephantine seeking work during a famine in their home region.

    This ancient letter mentions families, including women and children, looking for work.
    © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence, CC BY-NC-SA

    This evidence can be compared to a legal document from the same time period but from another Egyptian town, El Lahun. This document mentions the purchase and transfer of enslaved women and infants who are called Aamut, referring to a region in West Asia. The document shows they have been given new Egyptian names.

    These documents remind us factors such as class and legal status have always profoundly shaped girls’ lives.

    Valuing the work of girls

    Accessing the everyday thoughts, feelings, and perspectives of many ancient people, especially children, is challenging for historians. We don’t, for instance, have a wealth of personal diaries from ancient Egypt to learn about girls’ interior lives.

    But what’s clear is that girls were not merely passive participants in society. They were active economic contributors, who often received formal compensation for their work.

    Historians must always look beyond elite contexts to incorporate diverse evidence types – administrative documents, archaeological remains, and artistic representations – to construct a more complete picture of ancient lives.

    Julia Hamilton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Work, wages and apprenticeships: sifting for clues about the lives of girls in ancient Egypt – https://theconversation.com/work-wages-and-apprenticeships-sifting-for-clues-about-the-lives-of-girls-in-ancient-egypt-249581

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: MIT researchers say using ChatGPT can rot your brain. The truth is a little more complicated

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Vitomir Kovanovic, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L), Education Futures, University of South Australia

    Rroselavy / Shutterstock

    Since ChatGPT appeared almost three years ago, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on learning has been widely debated. Are they handy tools for personalised education, or gateways to academic dishonesty?

    Most importantly, there has been concern that using AI will lead to a widespread “dumbing down”, or decline in the ability to think critically. If students use AI tools too early, the argument goes, they may not develop basic skills for critical thinking and problem-solving.

    Is that really the case? According to a recent study by scientists from MIT, it appears so. Using ChatGPT to help write essays, the researchers say, can lead to “cognitive debt” and a “likely decrease in learning skills”.

    So what did the study find?

    The difference between using AI and the brain alone

    Over the course of four months, the MIT team asked 54 adults to write a series of three essays using either AI (ChatGPT), a search engine, or their own brains (“brain-only” group). The team measured cognitive engagement by examining electrical activity in the brain and through linguistic analysis of the essays.

    The cognitive engagement of those who used AI was significantly lower than the other two groups. This group also had a harder time recalling quotes from their essays and felt a lower sense of ownership over them.

    Interestingly, participants switched roles for a final, fourth essay (the brain-only group used AI and vice versa). The AI-to-brain group performed worse and had engagement that was only slightly better than the other group’s during their first session, far below the engagement of the brain-only group in their third session.

    The authors claim this demonstrates how prolonged use of AI led to participants accumulating “cognitive debt”. When they finally had the opportunity to use their brains, they were unable to replicate the engagement or perform as well as the other two groups.

    Cautiously, the authors note that only 18 participants (six per condition) completed the fourth, final session. Therefore, the findings are preliminary and require further testing.

    Does this really show AI makes us stupider?

    These results do not necessarily mean that students who used AI accumulated “cognitive debt”. In our view, the findings are due to the particular design of the study.

    The change in neural connectivity of the brain-only group over the first three sessions was likely the result of becoming more familiar with the study task, a phenomenon known as the familiarisation effect. As study participants repeat the task, they become more familiar and efficient, and their cognitive strategy adapts accordingly.

    When the AI group finally got to “use their brains”, they were only doing the task once. As a result, they were unable to match the other group’s experience. They achieved only slightly better engagement than the brain-only group during the first session.

    To fully justify the researchers’ claims, the AI-to-brain participants would also need to complete three writing sessions without AI.

    Similarly, the fact the brain-to-AI group used ChatGPT more productively and strategically is likely due to the nature of the fourth writing task, which required writing an essay on one of the previous three topics.

    As writing without AI required more substantial engagement, they had a far better recall of what they had written in the past. Hence, they primarily used AI to search for new information and refine what they had previously written.

    What are the implications of AI in assessment?

    To understand the current situation with AI, we can look back to what happened when calculators first became available.

    Back in the 1970s, their impact was regulated by making exams much harder. Instead of doing calculations by hand, students were expected to use calculators and spend their cognitive efforts on more complex tasks.

    Effectively, the bar was significantly raised, which made students work equally hard (if not harder) than before calculators were available.

    The challenge with AI is that, for the most part, educators have not raised the bar in a way that makes AI a necessary part of the process. Educators still require students to complete the same tasks and expect the same standard of work as they did five years ago.

    In such situations, AI can indeed be detrimental. Students can for the most part offload critical engagement with learning to AI, which results in “metacognitive laziness”.

    However, just like calculators, AI can and should help us accomplish tasks that were previously impossible – and still require significant engagement. For example, we might ask teaching students to use AI to produce a detailed lesson plan, which will then be evaluated for quality and pedagogical soundness in an oral examination.

    In the MIT study, participants who used AI were producing the “same old” essays. They adjusted their engagement to deliver the standard of work expected of them.

    The same would happen if students were asked to perform complex calculations with or without a calculator. The group doing calculations by hand would sweat, while those with calculators would barely blink an eye.

    Learning how to use AI

    Current and future generations need to be able to think critically and creatively and solve problems. However, AI is changing what these things mean.

    Producing essays with pen and paper is no longer a demonstration of critical thinking ability, just as doing long division is no longer a demonstration of numeracy.

    Knowing when, where and how to use AI is the key to long-term success and skill development. Prioritising which tasks can be offloaded to an AI to reduce cognitive debt is just as important as understanding which tasks require genuine creativity and critical thinking.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. MIT researchers say using ChatGPT can rot your brain. The truth is a little more complicated – https://theconversation.com/mit-researchers-say-using-chatgpt-can-rot-your-brain-the-truth-is-a-little-more-complicated-259450

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: It’s time to face an uncomfortable truth: maybe our pampered pets would be better off without us

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Nancy Cushing, Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle

    ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images

    Pet-keeping is often promoted for the benefits it brings humans. A close association with another animal can provide us with a sense of purpose and a daily dose of joy. It can aid our health, make us more conscientious and even help us form relationships with other humans.

    But the situation is perhaps not as rosy for the animal itself. Domesticated animals often live longer than their free-living counterparts, but the quality of those lives can be compromised. Pets can be fed processed foods that can lead to obesity. Many are denied a sexual life and experience of parenthood. Exercise can be limited, isolation is common and boredom must be endured.

    In the worst cases, pets suffer due to selective breeding practices, physical abuse and unethical commercial breeding.

    Is this the best life for the species we feel closest to? This question was raised for me when I heard the story of Valerie, the dachshund recaptured in April this year after almost 18 months living on her own on South Australia’s Karta Pintingga/Kangaroo Island.

    Is being a pet the best life for the species we feel closest to?
    Oleksandr Rupeta/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    Valerie: the story that captivated a nation

    Valerie, a miniature dachshund, escaped into the bush during a camping trip on Kangaroo Island in November 2023. After several days of searching, her bereft humans returned to their home in New South Wales. They assumed the tiny dog, who had lived her life as a “little princess”, was gone forever.

    Fast-forward a year, and sightings were reported on the island of a small dog wearing a pink collar. Word spread and volunteers renewed the search. A wildlife rescue group designed a purpose-built trap, fitting it out with items from Valerie’s former home.

    After several weeks, a remotely controlled gate clattered shut behind Valerie and she was caught.

    Cue great celebrations. The searchers were triumphant and the family was delighted. Social media lit up. It was a canine reenactment of one of settler Australia’s enduring narratives: the lost child rescued from the hostile bush.

    A dog’s-eye view

    But imagine if Valerie’s story was told from a more dog-centred perspective. Valerie found herself alone in a strange place and took the opportunity to run away. She embarked on a new life in which she was responsible for herself and could exercise the intelligence inherited from her boar-hunting ancestors.

    No longer required to be a good girl, Valerie applied her own judgement – that notorious dachshund “stubbornness” – to evade predators, fill her stomach and pass her days.

    Some commentators assumed Valerie must have been fed by anonymous benefactors – reflecting a widely held view that pets have limited abilities.

    Veterinary experts, however, said her diet likely consisted of small birds, mammals and reptiles she killed herself – as well as roadkill, other carrion and faeces.

    Valerie was clearly good at life on the lam. Unlike the human competitors in the series Alone Australia, she did not waste away when left in an island wilderness. Instead, she gained 1.8 kg of muscle – and was so stocky she no longer fit the old harness her humans brought to collect her. She had literally outgrown her former bonds.

    Valerie could have sought shelter with the island’s humans at any time, but chose not to. She had to be actively trapped. Once returned to her humans, she needed time to reacclimatise to life as a pet.

    Not all missing pets thrive in the wild. But all this raises the question of whether Valerie’s rescue would be better understood as a forced return from a full life of freedom, to a diminished existence in captivity?

    A long history of pets thriving in the wild

    Other examples exist which suggest an animal’s best life can take place outside the constraints of being a pet.

    Exotic parrots have fled lives in cages to form urban flocks. In the United States, 25 species initially imported as pets have set up self-sustaining, free-living populations across 23 states.

    Or take the red-eared slider turtle, which is native to parts of the US and Mexico. It’s illegal to keep the turtles as pets in Australia, but some of those smuggled in have later been released into urban wetlands where they have established large and widespread populations.

    Cats are perhaps the most notorious example of escaped pets thriving on their own in Australia. They numbers in the millions, in habitats from cities to the Simpson Desert to the Snowy Mountains, showing how little they need human assistance.

    One mark of their success is their prodigious size. At up to 7kg, free-living cats can be more than twice the weight of the average domestic cat.

    Around the world, exotic former companion mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and insects have all established populations large enough to pose problems for other species.

    Rethinking animals as pets

    Of course, I am not advocating that pets be released to the wild, creating new problems. But I do believe current pet-keeping practices are due for reconsideration.

    A dramatic solution would be to take the animal out of the pet relationship. Social robots that look like seals and teddy bears are already available to welcome you home, mirror your emotions and offer up cuddles without the cost to other animals.

    A less radical option is to rethink the idea of animals as “pets” and instead see them as equals.

    Some people already enjoy these unforced bonds. Magpies, for example, are known to have strong allegiances with each other and are sometimes willing to extend those connections to humans in multi-species friendships.

    As for Valerie, she did make “her little happy sounds” when reunited with her humans. But she might look back with nostalgia to her 529 days of freedom on Kangaroo Island.

    Nancy Cushing receives funding from the State Library of New South Wales as the Coral Thomas Fellow. She is a member of the executive committee of the Australian Historical Association.

    – ref. It’s time to face an uncomfortable truth: maybe our pampered pets would be better off without us – https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-face-an-uncomfortable-truth-maybe-our-pampered-pets-would-be-better-off-without-us-256903

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Inaccurate and misogynistic: why we need to make the term ‘hysterectomy’ history

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Theresa Larkin, Associate Professor of Medical Sciences, University of Wollongong

    Panuwat Dangsungnoen/Getty Images

    Have you had a tonsillectomy (your tonsils taken out), appendectomy (your appendix removed) or lumpectomy (removal of a lump from your breast)? The suffix “ectomy” denotes surgical removal of the named body part, so these terms give us a clear idea of what the procedure entails.

    So why is the removal of the uterus called a hysterectomy and not a uterectomy?

    The name hysterectomy is rooted in a mental health condition – “hysteria” – that was once believed to affect women. But we now know this condition doesn’t exist.

    Continuing to call this significant operation a hysterectomy both perpetuates misogyny and hampers people’s understanding of what it is.

    From the defunct condition ‘hysteria’

    Hysteria was a psychiatric condition first formally defined in the 5th century BCE. It had many symptoms, including excessive emotion, irritability, anxiety, breathlessness and fainting.

    But hysteria was only diagnosed in women. Male physicians at the time claimed these symptoms were caused by a “wandering womb”. They believed the womb (uterus) moved around the body looking for sperm and disrupted other organs.

    Because the uterus was blamed for hysteria, the treatment was to remove it. This procedure was called a hysterectomy. Sadly, many women had their healthy uterus unnecessarily removed and most died.

    The word “hysteria” did originally came from the ancient Greek word for uterus, “hystera”. But the modern Greek word for uterus is “mitra”, which is where words such as “endometrium” come from.

    Hysteria was only removed as an official medical diagnosis in 1980. It was finally recognised it does not exist and is sexist.

    “Hysterectomy” should also be removed from medical terminology because it continues to link the uterus to hysteria.

    Common but confusing

    About one in three Australian women will have their uterus removed. A hysterectomy is one of the most common surgeries worldwide. It’s used to treat conditions including:

    • abnormal uterine bleeding (heavy bleeding)
    • uterine fibroids (benign tumours)
    • uterine prolapse (when the uterus protrudes down into the vagina)
    • adenomyosis (when the inner layer of the uterus grows into the muscle layer)
    • cancer.

    However, in a survey colleagues and I did of almost 500 Australian adults, which is yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, one in five people thought hysterectomy meant removal of the ovaries, not the uterus.

    It’s true some hysterectomies for cancer do also remove the ovaries. A hysterectomy or partial hysterectomy is the removal of only the uterus, a total hysterectomy removes the uterus and cervix, while a radical hysterectomy usually removes the uterus, cervix, uterine tubes and ovaries.

    There are important differences between these hysterectomies, so they should be named to clearly indicate the nature of the surgery.

    Research has shown ambiguous terminology such as “hysterectomy” is associated with low patient understanding of the procedure and the female anatomy involved.

    There are different types of hysterectomies, and the label can be confusing.
    Olena Yakobchuk/Shutterstock

    Uterectomy should be used for removal of the uterus, in combination with the medical terms for removal of the cervix, uterine tubes and ovaries as needed. For example, a uterectomy plus cervicectomy would refer to the removal of the uterus and the cervix.

    This could help patients understand what is (and isn’t) being removed from their bodies and increase clarity for the wider public.

    Other female body parts and procedures have male names

    There are many eponyms (something named after a person) in anatomy and medicine, such as the Achilles tendon and Parkinson’s disease. They are almost exclusively the names of white men.

    Eponyms for female anatomy and procedures include the Fallopian tubes, Pouch of Douglas, and Pap smear.

    The anatomical term for Fallopian tubes is uterine tubes. “Uterine” indicates these are attached to the uterus, which reinforces their important role in fertility.

    The Pouch of Douglas is the space between the rectum and uterus. Using the anatomical name (rectouterine pouch) is important, because this a common site for endometriosis and can explain any associated bowel symptoms.

    Pap smear gives no indication of its location or function. The new cervical screening test is named exactly that, which clarifies it samples cells of the cervix. This helps people understand this tests for risk of cervical cancer.

    Language matters in medicine and health care

    Language in medicine impacts patient care and health. It needs to be accurate and clear, not include words associated with bias or discrimination, and not disempower a person.

    For these reasons, the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists recommends removing eponyms from scientific and medical communication.

    Meanwhile, experts have rightly argued it’s time to rename the hysterectomy to uterectomy.

    A hysterectomy is an emotional procedure with not only physical but also psychological effects. Not directly referring to the uterus perpetuates the historical disregard of female reproductive anatomy and functions. Removing the link to hysteria and renaming hysterectomy to uterectomy would be a simple but symbolic change.

    Educators, medical doctors and science communicators will play an important role in using the term uterectomy instead of hysterectomy. Ultimately, the World Health Organization should make official changes in the International Classification of Health Interventions.

    In line with increasing awareness and discussions around female reproductive health and medical misogyny, now is the time to improve terminology. We must ensure the names of body parts and medical procedures reflect the relevant anatomy.

    Theresa Larkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Inaccurate and misogynistic: why we need to make the term ‘hysterectomy’ history – https://theconversation.com/inaccurate-and-misogynistic-why-we-need-to-make-the-term-hysterectomy-history-257972

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How do sleep trackers work, and are they worth it? A sleep scientist breaks it down

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Dean J. Miller, Senior Lecturer, Appleton Institute, HealthWise Research Group, CQUniversity Australia

    Many smartwatches, fitness and wellness trackers now offer sleep tracking among their many functions.

    Wear your watch or ring to bed, and you’ll wake up to a detailed sleep report telling you not just how long you slept, but when each phase happened and whether you had a good night’s rest overall.

    Surfing is done in the ocean, planes fly in the sky, and sleep occurs in the brain. So how can we measure sleep from the wrist or finger?

    The gold standard of sleep measurement

    If you’ve ever had a sleep study or seen someone with dozens of wires attached to their head, body and face, you’ve encountered polysomnography or PSG.

    Eye movements, muscle tone, heart rate and brain activity are measured and assessed by experts to detect which stage of sleep or wakefulness a person is in.

    When we sleep, we cycle through different stages, generally classified as light sleep, slow-wave sleep (also known as deep sleep), and rapid eye movement or REM sleep.

    Each stage has an effect on brain activity, muscle tone and heart rate – which is why sleep scientists need so many wires.

    Accurate? Absolutely. Convenient? Like two left shoes.

    This is where the convenience of wearable at-home sleep trackers comes in.

    What sensors are in sleep trackers?

    Since the 1990s, sleep researchers have been using actigraphy to measure people’s sleep outside the laboratory.

    An actigraphy device is similar to a wristwatch and uses accelerometers to measure the person’s movement. Coupled with sleep diaries, actigraphy assumes a person is awake when they’re moving and asleep when still. Simple.

    While this is a scientifically accepted method of estimating sleep, it’s prone to mislabelling being awake but at rest (such as when reading a book) as sleep.

    There’s one key addition that makes wrist-worn sleep trackers more accurate – PPG or photoplethysmography.

    It’s hard to pronounce, but photoplethysmography is a key driver in the explosion of wearable health tracking.

    It uses those little green lights on the skin-side of the wearable to track the amount of blood passing through your wrist at any given time. Clip-on pulse oximeters used by doctors are the same type of tech.

    The addition of PPG to a wrist tracker allows for the measurement of raw data like heart rate and breathing rate. From this data, the wearable can estimate a number of physiological metrics, including sleep stages.

    Since fitness wearables already have accelerometers and PPG to track your physical activity and heart rate, it makes sense to use these sensors to track sleep too. But how accurate are they?

    Many fitness trackers leverage the sensors used to measure your fitness activities and heart rate for sleep tracking.
    The Conversation

    How do scientists test sleep trackers?

    Two main factors determine the accuracy of sleep trackers. How well does the device detect whether you’re asleep or awake? And how well can it distinguish the sleep stages?

    To answer these questions, sleep scientists conduct validation studies. Participants sleep overnight in a laboratory while wearing both a sleep tracker and undergoing PSG.

    Then, scientists compare the data from both methods in 30-second blocks called “epochs”. That means for a nine-hour sleep there will be 1,080 epochs to compare.

    If both the device and PSG indicate “sleep” for the same epoch, they’re in agreement. If the device indicates “wake” and PSG indicates “sleep” for the same epoch, that’s considered an error. The same is done for sleep stages.

    How accurate are sleep trackers?

    In a 2022 study of several popular trackers, most correctly identified more than 90% of sleep epochs. But because light sleep and restful wake are so similar, wearables struggle more to estimate wakefulness, correctly identifying between 26% and 73% of wake epochs.

    When it comes to sleep stages, wearables are less precise, correctly identifying between 53% and 60% of sleep stage epochs. However, for some devices and some sleep stages the precision can be greater. A recent validation study showed that a latest generation ring-shaped wearable didn’t differ from PSG for estimating light sleep and slow wave sleep.

    In short, most modern sleep trackers do a decent job of estimating your total sleep each night. Some are more accurate for sleep staging, but this level of detail isn’t essential for improving the basics of your sleep.

    Do I need a sleep tracker?

    If you’re struggling with sleep, you should speak to your doctor. A sleep tracker can be a useful tool to help track your sleep goals, but ultimately your behaviour is what will improve sleep.

    Keeping regular bedtimes and wake-up times, having a distraction-free sleep space, and keeping home lighting low in the evenings can all help to improve your sleep.

    If you love tracking your sleep, make sure your device has been independently validated. While sleep stage data may not be essential, devices that perform well in estimating sleep stage also tend to be more accurate at detecting when you’re asleep or awake. When reviewing your data, look at long term trends in sleep rather than day-to-day variability.

    If you don’t love your sleep tracker, you can take it off or ignore it. For some people, access to sleep data can negatively impact sleep by creating stress and anxiety for getting a perfect night’s sleep. Instead, focus on improving your healthy sleep strategies and pay attention to how you feel during the day.

    Dr Dean J. Miller is a member of a research group at Central Queensland University that receives support for research (i.e., funding, equipment) from WHOOP Inc, a smart device maker.

    – ref. How do sleep trackers work, and are they worth it? A sleep scientist breaks it down – https://theconversation.com/how-do-sleep-trackers-work-and-are-they-worth-it-a-sleep-scientist-breaks-it-down-258304

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is AI a con? A new book punctures the hype and proposes some ways to resist

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Luke Munn, Research Fellow, Digital Cultures & Societies, The University of Queensland

    AI Am Over It – Nadia Piet.
     Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN, CC BY

    Is AI going to take over the world? Have scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to replace all our jobs, even creative ones, like doctors, teachers and care workers? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

    The answers, as the authors of The AI Con stress, are “no”, “they wish”, “LOL” and “definitely not”.

    The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want – Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna (Bodley Head)

    Artificial intelligence is a marketing term as much as a distinct set of computational architectures and techniques. AI has become a magic word for entrepreneurs to attract startup capital for dubious schemes, an incantation deployed by managers to instantly achieve the status of future-forward leaders.

    In a mere two letters, it conjures a vision of automated factories and robotic overlords, a utopia of leisure or a dystopia of servitude, depending on your point of view. It is not just technology, but a powerful vision of how society should function and what our future should look like.

    In this sense, AI doesn’t need to work for it to work. The accuracy of a large language model may be doubtful, the productivity of an AI office assistant may be claimed rather than demonstrated, but this bundle of technologies, companies and claims can still alter the terrain of journalism, education, healthcare, service work and our broader sociocultural landscape.

    Pop goes the bubble

    For Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, the AI hype bubble needs to be popped.

    Bender is a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, who has become a prominent technology critic. Hanna is a sociologist and former employee of Google, who is now the director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. After teaming up to mock AI boosters in their popular podcast, Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, they have distilled their insights into a book written for a general audience. They meet the unstoppable force of AI hype with immovable scepticism.


    Step one in this program is grasping how AI models work. Bender and Hanna do an excellent job of decoding technical terms and unpacking the “black box” of machine learning for lay people.

    Driving this wedge between hype and reality, between assertions and operations, is a recurring theme across the pages of The AI Con, and one that should gradually erode readers’ trust in the tech industry. The book outlines the strategic deceptions employed by powerful corporations to reduce friction and accumulate capital. If the barrage of examples tends to blur together, the sense of technical bullshit lingers.

    What is intelligence? A famous and highly cited paper co-written by Bender asserts that large language models are simply “stochastic parrots”, drawing on training data to predict which set of tokens (i.e. words) is most likely to follow the prompt given by a user. Harvesting millions of crawled websites, the model can regurgitate “the moon” after “the cow jumped over”, albeit in much more sophisticated variants.

    Rather than actually understanding a concept in all its social, cultural and political contexts, large language models carry out pattern matching: an illusion of thinking.

    But I would suggest that, in many domains, a simulation of thinking is sufficient, as it is met halfway by those engaging with it. Users project agency onto models via the well-known Eliza effect, imparting intelligence to the simulation.

    Management are pinning their hopes on this simulation. They view automation as a way to streamline their organisations and not be “left behind”. This powerful vision of early adopters vs extinct dinosaurs is one we see repeatedly with the advent of new technologies – and one that benefits the tech industry.

    In this sense, poking holes in the “intelligence” of artificial intelligence is a losing move, missing the social and financial investment that wants this technology to work. “Start with AI for every task. No matter how small, try using an AI tool first,” commanded DuoLingo’s chief engineering officer in a recent message to all employees. Duolingo has joined Fiverr, Shopify, IBM and a slew of other companies proclaiming their “AI first” approach.

    ‘Large language models carry out pattern matching: an illusion of thinking.’ Image: Talking to AI 2.0 – Yutong Liu.
    Kingston School of Art/https://betterimagesofai.org, CC BY

    Shapeshifting technology

    The AI Con is strongest when it looks beyond or around the technologies to the ecosystem surrounding them, a perspective I have also argued is immensely helpful. By understanding the corporations, actors, business models and stakeholders involved in a model’s production, we can evaluate where it comes from, its purpose, its strengths and weaknesses, and what all this might mean downstream for its possible uses and implications. “Who benefits from this technology, who is harmed, and what recourse do they have?” is a solid starting point, Bender and Hanna suggest.

    These basic but important questions extract us from the weeds of technical debate – how does AI function, how accurate or “good” is it really, how can we possibly understand this complexity as non-engineers? – and give us a critical perspective. They place the onus on industry to explain, rather than users to adapt or be rendered superfluous.

    We don’t need to be able to explain technical concepts like backpropagation or diffusion to grasp that AI technologies can undermine fair work, perpetuate racial and gender stereotypes, and exacerbate environmental crises. The hype around AI means to distract us from these concrete effects, to trivialise them and thus encourage us to ignore them.

    Emily M. Bender.
    University of Washington

    As Bender and Hanna explain, AI boosters and AI doomers are really two sides of the same coin. Conjuring up nightmare scenarios of self-replicating AI terminating humanity or claiming sentient machines will usher us into a posthuman paradise are, in the end, the same thing. They place a religious-like faith in the capabilities of technology, which dominates debate, allowing tech companies to retain control of AI’s future development.

    The risk of AI is not potential doom in the future, à la the nuclear threat during the Cold War, but the quieter and more significant harm to real people in the present. The authors explain that AI is more like a panopticon “that allows a single prison warden to keep track of hundreds of prisoners at once”, or the “surveillance dragnets that track marginalised groups in the West”, or a “toxic waste, salting the earth of a Superfund site”, or a “scabbing worker, crossing the picket line at the behest of an employer who wants to signal to the picketers that they are disposable. The totality of systems sold as AI are these things, rolled into one.”

    A decade ago, with another “game-changing” technology, author Ian Bogost observed that

    rather than utopia or dystopia, we usually end up with something less dramatic yet more disappointing. Robots neither serve human masters nor destroy us in a dramatic genocide, but slowly dismantle our livelihoods while sparing our lives.

    The pattern repeats. As AI matures (to some degree) and is adopted by organisations, it moves from innovation to infrastructure, from magic to mechanism. Grand promises never materialise. Instead, society endures a tougher, bleaker future. Workers feel more pressure; surveillance is normalised; truth is muddied with post-truth; the marginal become more vulnerable; the planet gets hotter.

    Technology, in this sense, is a shapeshifter: the outward form constantly changes, yet the inner logic remains the same. It exploits labour and nature, extracts value, centralises wealth, and protects the power and status of the already-powerful.

    Co-opting critique

    In The New Spirit of Capitalism, sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello demonstrate how capitalism has mutated over time, folding critiques back into its DNA.

    After enduring a series of blows around alienation and automation in the 1960s, capitalism moved from a hierarchical Fordist mode of production to a more flexible form of self-management over the next two decades. It began to favour “just in time” production, done in smaller teams, that (ostensibly) embraced the creativity and ingenuity of each individual. Neoliberalism offered “freedom”, but at a price. Organisations adapted; concessions were made; critique was defused.


    Verso Books

    AI continues this form of co-option. Indeed, the current moment can be described as the end of the first wave of critical AI. In the last five years, tech titans have released a series of bigger and “better” models, with both the public and scholars focusing largely on generative and “foundation” models: ChatGPT, StableDiffusion, Midjourney, Gemini, DeepSeek, and so on.

    Scholars have heavily criticised aspects of these models – my own work has explored truth claims, generative hate, ethics washing and other issues. Much work focused on bias: the way in which training data reproduces gender stereotypes, racial inequality, religious bigotry, western epistemologies, and so on.

    Much of this work is excellent and seems to have filtered into the public consciousness, based on conversations I’ve had at workshops and events. However, its flagging of such issues allows tech companies to practise issue resolving. If the accuracy of a facial-recognition system is lower with Black faces, add more Black faces to the training set. If the model is accused of English dominance, fork out some money to produce data on “low-resource” languages.

    Companies like Anthropic now regularly carry out “red teaming” exercises designed to highlight hidden biases in models. Companies then “fix” or mitigate these issues. But due to the massive size of the data sets, these tend to be band-aid solutions, superficial rather than structural tweaks.

    For instance, soon after launching, AI image generators were under pressure for not being “diverse” enough. In response, OpenAI invented a technique to “more accurately reflect the diversity of the world’s population”. Researchers discovered this technique was simply tacking on additional hidden prompts (e.g. “Asian”, “Black”) to user prompts. Google’s Gemini model also seems to have adopted this, which resulted in a backlash when images of Vikings or Nazis had South Asian or Native American features.

    The point here is not whether AI models are racist or historically inaccurate or “woke”, but that models are political and never disinterested. Harder questions about how culture is made computational, or what kind of truths we want as society, are never broached and therefore never worked through systematically.

    Such questions are certainly broader and less “pointy” than bias, but also less amenable to being translated into a problem for a coder to resolve.

    What next?

    How, then, should those outside the academy respond to AI? The past few years have seen a flurry of workshops, seminars and professional development initiatives. These range from “gee whiz” tours of AI features for the workplace, to sober discussions of risks and ethics, to hastily organised all-hands meetings debating how to respond now, and next month, and the month after that.

    Alex Hanna.
    Will Toft/alex-hanna.com, CC BY

    Bender and Hanna wrap up their book with their own responses. Many of these, like their questions about how models work and who benefits, are simple but fundamental, offering a strong starting point for organisational engagement.

    For the technosceptical duo, refusal is also clearly an option, though individuals will obviously have vastly different degrees of agency when it comes to opting out of models and pushing back on adoption strategies. Refusal of AI, as with many technologies that have come before it, often relies to some extent on privilege. The six-figure consultant or coder will have discretion that the gig worker or service worker cannot exercise without penalties or punishments.

    If refusal is fraught at the individual level, it seems more viable and sustainable at a cultural level. Bender and Hanna suggest generative AI be responded to with mockery: companies who employ it should be derided as cheap or tacky.

    The cultural backlash against AI is already in full swing. Soundtracks on YouTube are increasingly labelled “No AI”. Artists have launched campaigns and hashtags, stressing their creations are “100% human-made”.

    These moves are attempts to establish a cultural consensus that AI-generated material is derivative and exploitative. And yet, if these moves offer some hope, they are swimming against the swift current of enshittification. AI slop means faster and cheaper content creation, and the technical and financial logic of online platforms – virality, engagement, monetisation – will always create a race to the bottom.

    The extent to which the vision offered by big tech will be accepted, how far AI technologies will be integrated or mandated, how much individuals and communities will push back against them – these are still open questions. In many ways, Bender and Hanna successfully demonstrate that AI is a con. It fails at productivity and intelligence, while the hype launders a series of transformations that harm workers, exacerbate inequality and damage the environment.

    Yet such consequences have accompanied previous technologies – fossil fuels, private cars, factory automation – and hardly dented their uptake and transformation of society. So while praise goes to Bender and Hanna for a book that shows “how to fight big tech’s hype and create the future we want”, the issue of AI resonates, for me, with Karl Marx’s observation that people “make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please”.

    Luke Munn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Is AI a con? A new book punctures the hype and proposes some ways to resist – https://theconversation.com/is-ai-a-con-a-new-book-punctures-the-hype-and-proposes-some-ways-to-resist-257015

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Archetyp was one of the dark web’s biggest drug markets. A global sting has shut it down

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Elena Morgenthaler, PhD Candidate, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University

    Operation Deep Sentinel

    Last week, one of the dark web’s most prominent drug marketplaces – Archetyp – was shut down in an international, multi-agency law enforcement operation following years of investigations. It was touted as a major policing win and was accompanied by a slick cyberpunk-themed video.

    But those of us who have studied this space for years weren’t surprised. Archetyp may have been the most secure dark web market. But shutdowns like this have become a recurring feature of the dark web. And they are usually not a significant turning point.

    The durability of these markets tells us that if policing responses keep following the same playbook, they will keep getting the same results. And by focusing so heavily on these hidden platforms, authorities are neglecting the growing digital harms in the spaces we all use.

    One of the most popular dark web markets

    Dark web markets mirror mainstream e-commerce platforms – think Amazon meets cybercrime. These are encrypted marketplaces accessed via the Tor Browser, a privacy-focused browser that hides users’ IP addresses. Buyers use cryptocurrency and escrow systems (third-party payment systems which hold funds until the transaction is complete) to anonymously purchase illicit drugs.

    Usually these products are sent to the buyer by post and money transferred to the seller through the escrow system.

    Archetyp launched in May 2020 and quickly grew to become one of the most popular dark web markets with an estimated total transaction volume of €250 million (A$446 million). It had more than 600,000 users worldwide and 17,000 listings consisting mainly of illicit drugs including MDMA, cocaine and methamphetamine.

    Compared to its predecessors, Archetyp enforced enhanced security expectations from its users. These included an advanced encryption program known as “Pretty Good Privacy” and a cryptocurrency called Monero. Unlike Bitcoin, which records every payment on a public ledger, Monero conceals all transaction details by default which makes them nearly impossible to trace.

    Despite the fact Archetyp had clearly raised the bar on security on the dark web, Operation Deep Sentinel – a collaborative effort between law enforcement agencies in six countries supported by Europol and Eurojust – took down the market. The front page has now been replaced by a banner.

    While these publicised take-downs feel effective, evidence has shown such interventions only have short-term impacts and the dark web ecosystem will quickly adapt.

    A persistent trade

    These shutdowns aren’t new. Silk Road, AlphaBay, WallStreet and Monopoly Market are all familiar names in the digital graveyard of the dark web. Before these dark web marketplaces were shutdown, they sold a range of illegal products, from drugs to firearms.

    Yet still, the trade persists. New markets emerge and old users return. In some cases, established sellers on closed-down markets are welcomed onto new markets as digital “refugees” and have joining fees waived.

    What current policing strategies neglect is that dark web markets are not isolated to the storefronts that are the popular target of crackdowns. These are communities stretched across dark and surface web forums which develop shared tutorials and help one another adapt to any new changes. These closures bind users together and foster a shared resilience and collective experience in navigating these environments.

    Law enforcement shutdowns are also only one type of disruption that dark web communities face. Dark web market users routinely face voluntary closures (the gradual retirement of a market), exit scams (sudden closures of markets where any money in escrow is taken), or even scheduled maintenance of these markets.

    Ultimately, this disruption to accessibility is not a unique event. In fact, it is routine for individual’s participating in these dark web communities, par for the course of engaging in the markets.

    This ability of dark web communities to thrive in disruptions reflects how dark web market users have become experts at adapting to risks, managing disruptions and rebuilding quickly.

    Dark web markets are accessed via the highly private and secure Tor Browser.
    Daniel Constante/Shutterstock

    Missing the wider landscape of digital harms

    The other emerging issue is that current policing efforts treat dark web markets as the core threat, which might miss the wider landscape of digital harms. Illicit drug sales, for example, are promoted on social media, where platform features such as recommendation systems are affording new means of illicit drug supply.

    Beyond drugs, there are now ever-growing examples of generative AI being used for sexual deepfakes across schools and even of public figures, including the recent case of NRL presenter Tiffany Salmond.

    This is all alongside the countless cases of celebrities and social media influencers caught up in crypto pump-and-dump schemes, where hype is used to artificially inflate the price of a token before the creators sell off their holdings and leave investors with worthless tokens.

    This shows that while the dark web gets all the attention, it’s far from the internet’s biggest problem.

    Archetyp’s takedown might make headlines, but it won’t stop the trade of illicit drugs on the dark web. It should force us to think about where harm is really happening online and whether current strategies are looking in the wrong direction.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Archetyp was one of the dark web’s biggest drug markets. A global sting has shut it down – https://theconversation.com/archetyp-was-one-of-the-dark-webs-biggest-drug-markets-a-global-sting-has-shut-it-down-259441

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why have athletes stopped ‘taking a knee’?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ciprian N. Radavoi, Associate Professor in Law, University of Southern Queensland

    Eli Harold, Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid of the San Francisco 49ers kneel ahead of a game in 2016. Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images

    It’s almost a decade since San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started a worldwide trend and sparked fierce debate when he knelt during the US national anthem.

    In 2016, Kaepernick refused to follow the pre-game protocol related to the national anthem and knelt instead, saying:

    I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour.

    Soon, many athletes and teams began “taking a knee” at sports events to express their solidarity with victims of racial injustice.

    Now, they appear to have stopped, which prompted us to research the decline.

    Initial widespread support

    Following the intense public debate over the appropriateness of Kaepernick’s act, the ritual quickly spread worldwide, with athletes in major soccer leagues, cricket, rugby, Formula 1, top-tier tennis and the US’s Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association taking a knee.

    Athletes didn’t always kneel during national anthems, with the majority kneeling at certain points pre-game.

    Despite the occasional “defection” of a small number of players who would stand while their teammates knelt – such as Israel Folau in rugby league, Wilfried Zaha in soccer and Quinton de Kock in cricket – the ritual was widely embraced by teams and athletes and helped raise awareness of the issue.

    Even major sports organisations notorious for prohibiting any type of political activism generally accepted the kneeling ritual. For example, soccer’s International Football Federation (FIFA) showcased kneeling as a “stand against discrimination” and as human rights advocacy.

    The International Olympic Committee (IOC) initially stood firm by its Rule 50, which states “no kind of demonstration or political, religious, or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.

    But just three weeks before the 2021 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, the IOC relaxed its interpretation, and athletes were permitted to express their views in ways that included taking a knee.

    A surprising turn of events

    Despite permission and even encouragement from sports governing bodies, our research shows the practice is disappearing from major sports competitions.

    Take soccer, for example. At the FIFA World Cup 2022, England and Wales were the only national teams that knelt at their games in Qatar.

    At the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand, no teams or players knelt.

    The same happened at the 2024 Olympic soccer tournament in Paris.

    That only a handful of teams knelt in Tokyo at the 2021 Olympics, two at the FIFA Mens’ World Cup in Qatar in 2022, none at the FIFA Womens’ World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023, and again none at the Paris 2024 Olympics indicates a growing reluctance throughout the sports world.

    This surely cannot mean athletes have become indifferent to racial injustice or other forms of oppression in the interval between the late 2010s and the mid-2020s.

    The explanation must be sought elsewhere. A hint was provided when Crystal Palace soccer player Zaha, the first player of colour in the UK who refused to kneel, explained:

    I feel like taking the knee is degrading, because growing up my parents just let me know that I should be proud to be Black no matter what and I feel like we should just stand tall.

    The explanation may therefore be, at least in part, the players’ uncomfortable feelings related to the kneeling posture.

    In sociology, this bothersome state of mind is called “cognitive dissonance”: the mental conflict a person experiences in the presence of contrasting beliefs.

    A history of kneeling

    The body posture of kneeling is not deemed, in any culture, as expressing solidarity.

    Ancient Greek and the Roman societies, on whose values Western civilisation was built, rejected kneeling as improper, even when praying to gods.

    Then, with the spread of Christianity in the Western world, kneeling became widely used, but only as an act of worship, confessing guilt, or praying for mercy.

    When performed outside the church, kneeling meant submission to nobility or royalty.

    The significance of kneeling as humility is not limited to the Western world.

    In African tribal culture, the young kneel in front of elders, and everyone kneels before the king.

    In China in 1949, Chairman Mao famously proclaimed at the first plenary of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference:

    From now on our nation […] will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up.

    With this in mind, kneeling may be deemed unfit at sporting events, which often feature a powerful cocktail of emotions, values and social expectations.

    The inconsistency between the excitement of competition and the expectation to kneel — a gesture associated with submission and humility — likely creates a bothersome state of mind for athletes.

    This potentially motivates some players to reject one of the two – in this case, the kneeling – to restore cognitive harmony.

    What could replace the kneeling ritual?

    After refusing, by unanimous players’ vote, to take a knee before their October 2020 game against the All Blacks, the Australian rugby union team chose instead to wear a First Nations jersey.

    The same year, several teams in German soccer’s top league chose to show their support for Black Lives Matter by wearing distinctive armbands.

    So it appears wearing a distinctive jersey or at least an armband is more easily accepted by modern-day athletes. This may be challenging given the governing bodies of many sports, such as FIFA, ban athletes from wearing political symbols on their clothing.

    Depending on whether sports code accept this type of activism in the future, wearing suportive clothing could replace taking a knee as symbolic communication of solidarity with oppressed minorities.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Why have athletes stopped ‘taking a knee’? – https://theconversation.com/why-have-athletes-stopped-taking-a-knee-259047

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Japanese prime minister’s abrupt no-show at NATO summit reveals a strained alliance with the US

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Mark, Adjunct Lecturer, Faculty of Economics, Hosei University

    Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has sent a clear signal to the Trump administration: the Japan–US relationship is in a dire state.

    After saying just days ago he would be attending this week’s NATO summit at The Hague, Ishiba abruptly pulled out at the last minute.

    He joins two other leaders from the Indo-Pacific region, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, in skipping the summit.

    The Japanese media reported Ishiba cancelled the trip because a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump was unlikely, as was a meeting of the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) NATO partners (Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan).

    Japan will still be represented by Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, showing its desire to strengthen its security relationship with NATO.

    However, Ishiba’s no-show reveals how Japan views its relationship with the Trump administration, following the severe tariffs Washington imposed on Japan and Trump’s mixed messages on the countries’ decades-long military alliance.

    Tariffs and diplomatic disagreements

    Trump’s tariff policy is at the core of the divide between the US and Japan.

    Ishiba attempted to get relations with the Trump administration off to a good start. He was the second world leader to visit Trump at the White House, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    However, Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs imposed a punitive rate of 25% on Japanese cars and 24% on all other Japanese imports. They are already having an adverse impact on Japan’s economy: exports of automobiles to the US dropped in May by 25% compared to a year ago.

    Six rounds of negotiations have made little progress, as Ishiba’s government insists on full tariff exemptions.

    Japan has been under pressure from the Trump administration to increase its defence spending, as well. According to the Financial Times, Tokyo cancelled a summit between US and Japanese defence and foreign ministers over the demand. (A Japanese official denied the report.)

    Japan also did not offer its full support to the US bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this week. The foreign minister instead said Japan “understands” the US’s determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

    Japan has traditionally had fairly good relations with Iran, often acting as an indirect bridge with the West. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe even made a visit there in 2019.

    Japan also remains heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East. It would have been adversely affected if the Strait of Hormuz had been blocked, as Iran was threatening to do.

    Unlike the response from the UK and Australia, which both supported the strikes, the Ishiba government prioritised its commitment to upholding international law and the rules-based global order. In doing so, Japan seeks to deny China, Russia and North Korea any leeway to similarly erode global norms on the use of force and territorial aggression.

    Strategic dilemma of the Japan–US military alliance

    In addition, Japan is facing the same dilemma as other American allies – how to manage relations with the “America first” Trump administration, which has made the US an unreliable ally.

    Earlier this year, Trump criticised the decades-old security alliance between the US and Japan, calling it “one-sided”.

    “If we’re ever attacked, they don’t have to do a thing to protect us,” he said of Japan.

    Lower-level security cooperation is ongoing between the two allies and their regional partners. The US, Japanese and Philippine Coast Guards conducted drills in Japanese waters this week. The US military may also assist with upgrading Japan’s counterstrike missile capabilities.

    But Japan is still likely to continue expanding its security ties with partners beyond the US, such as NATO, the European Union, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and other ASEAN members, while maintaining its fragile rapprochement with South Korea.

    Australia is now arguably Japan’s most reliable security partner. Canberra is considering buying Japan’s Mogami-class frigates for the Royal Australian Navy. And if the AUKUS agreement with the US and UK collapses, Japanese submarines could be a replacement.

    Ishiba under domestic political pressure

    There are also intensifying domestic political pressures on Ishiba to hold firm against Trump, who is deeply unpopular among the Japanese public.

    After replacing former prime minister Fumio Kishida as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last September, the party lost its majority in the lower house of parliament in snap elections. This made it dependent on minor parties for legislative support.

    Ishiba’s minority government has struggled ever since with poor opinion polling. There has been widespread discontent with inflation, the high cost of living and stagnant wages, the legacy of LDP political scandals, and ever-worsening geopolitical uncertainty.

    On Sunday, the party suffered its worst-ever result in elections for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, winning its lowest number of seats.

    The party could face a similar drubbing in the election for half of the upper house of the Diet (Japan’s parliament) on July 20. Ishiba has pledged to maintain the LDP’s majority in the house with its junior coalition partner Komeito. But if the government falls into minority status in both houses, Ishiba will face heavy pressure to step down.

    Craig Mark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Japanese prime minister’s abrupt no-show at NATO summit reveals a strained alliance with the US – https://theconversation.com/japanese-prime-ministers-abrupt-no-show-at-nato-summit-reveals-a-strained-alliance-with-the-us-259694

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Bats get fat to survive hard times. But climate change is threatening their survival strategy

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Wu, Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology, Murdoch University

    Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock

    Bats are often cast as the unseen night-time stewards of nature, flitting through the dark to control pest insects, pollinate plants and disperse seeds. But behind their silent contributions lies a remarkable and underappreciated survival strategy: seasonal fattening.

    Much like bears and squirrels, bats around the world bulk up to get through hard times – even in places where you might not expect it.

    In a paper published today in Ecology Letters, we analysed data from bat studies around the world to understand how bats use body fat to survive seasonal challenges, whether it’s a freezing winter or a dry spell.

    The surprising conclusion? Seasonal fattening is a global phenomenon in bats, not just limited to those in cold climates.

    Even bats in the tropics, where it’s warm all year, store fat in anticipation of dry seasons when food becomes scarce. That’s a survival strategy that’s been largely overlooked. But it may be faltering as the climate changes, putting entire food webs at risk.

    Climate shapes fattening strategies

    We found bats in colder regions predictably gain more weight before winter.

    But in warmer regions with highly seasonal rainfall, such as tropical savannas or monsoonal forests, bats also fatten up. In tropical areas, it’s not cold that’s the enemy, but the dry season, when flowers wither, insects vanish and energy is hard to come by.

    The extent of fattening is impressive. Some species increased their body weight by more than 50%, which is a huge burden for flying animals that already use a lot of energy to move around. This highlights the delicate balancing act bats perform between storing energy and staying nimble in the air.

    Sex matters, especially in the cold

    The results also support the “thrifty females, frisky males” hypothesis.

    In colder climates, female bats used their fat reserves more sparingly than males – a likely adaptation to ensure they have enough energy left to raise young when spring returns. Since females typically emerge from hibernation to raise their young, conserving fat through winter can directly benefit their reproductive success.

    Interestingly, this sex-based difference vanished in warmer climates, where fat use by males and females was more similar, likely because more food is available in warmer climates. It’s another clue that climate patterns intricately shape behaviour and physiology.

    Climate change is shifting the rules

    Beyond the biology, our study points to a more sobering trend. Bats in warm regions appear to be increasing their fat stores over time. This could be an early warning sign of how climate change is affecting their survival.

    Climate change isn’t just about rising temperatures. It’s also making seasons more unpredictable.

    Bats may be storing more energy in advance of dry seasons that are becoming longer or harder to predict. That’s risky, because it means more foraging, more exposure to predators and potentially greater mortality.

    The implications can ripple outward. Bats help regulate insect populations, fertilise crops and maintain healthy ecosystems. If their survival strategies falter, entire food webs could feel the effects.

    Fat bats, fragile futures

    Our study changes how we think about bats. They are not just passive victims of environmental change but active strategists, finely tuned to seasonal rhythms. Yet their ability to adapt has limits, and those limits are being tested by a rapidly changing world.

    By understanding how bats respond to climate, we gain insights into broader ecosystem resilience. We also gain a deeper appreciation for one of nature’s quiet heroes – fattening up, flying through the night and holding ecosystems together, one wingbeat at a time.

    Nicholas Wu was the lead author of a funded Australian Research Council Linkage Grant awarded to Christopher Turbill at Western Sydney University.

    – ref. Bats get fat to survive hard times. But climate change is threatening their survival strategy – https://theconversation.com/bats-get-fat-to-survive-hard-times-but-climate-change-is-threatening-their-survival-strategy-259560

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: A chance discovery of a 350 million-year-old fossil reveals a new type of ray-finned fish

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Conrad Daniel Mackenzie Wilson, PhD candidate in Earth Sciences, Carleton University

    An artist’s rendition of the newly discovered fish, _Sphyragnathus tyche_. (C. Wilson), CC BY

    In 2015, two members of the Blue Beach Fossil Museum in Nova Scotia found a long, curved fossil jaw, bristling with teeth. Sonja Wood, the museum’s owner, and Chris Mansky, the museum’s curator, found the fossil in a creek after Wood had a hunch.

    The fossil they found belonged to a fish that had died 350 million years ago, its bony husk spanning nearly a metre on the lake bed. The large fish had lived in waters thick with rival fish, including giants several times its size. It had hooked teeth at the tip of its long jaw that it would use to trap elusive prey and fangs at the back to pierce it and break it down to eat.

    For the last eight years, I have been part of a team under the lead of paleontologist Jason Anderson, who has spent decades researching the Blue Beach area of Nova Scotia, northwest of Halifax, in collaboration with Mansky and other colleagues. Much of this work has been on the tetrapods — the group that includes the first vertebrates to move to land and all their descendants — but my research focuses on what Blue Beach fossils can tell us about how the modern vertebrate world formed.

    Blue Beach Fossil Museum curator Chris Mansky below the fossil cliffs.
    (C. Wilson), CC BY

    Birth of the modern vertebrate world

    The modern vertebrate world is defined by the dominance of three groups: the cartilaginous fishes or chondrichthyans (including sharks, rays and chimaeras), the lobe-finned fishes or sarcopterygians (including tetrapods and rare lungfishes and coelacanths), and the ray-finned fishes or actinopterygians (including everything from sturgeon to tuna). Only a few jawless fishes round out the picture.

    This basic grouping has remained remarkably consistent — at least for the last 350 million years.

    Before then, the vertebrate world was a lot more crowded. In the ancient vertebrate world, during the Silurian Period (443.7-419.2 MA) for example, the ancestors of modern vertebrates swam alongside spiny pseudo-sharks (acanthodians), fishy sarcopterygians, placoderms and jawless fishes with bony shells.

    Armoured jawless fishes had dwindled by the Late Devonian Period (419.2-358.9 MA), but the rest were still diverse. Actinopterygians were still restricted to a few species with similar body shapes.

    By the immediately succeeding early Carboniferous times, everything had changed. The placoderms were gone, the number of species of fishy sarcopterygians and acanthodians had cratered, and actinopterygians and chondrichthyans were flourishing in their place.

    The modern vertebrate world was born.

    A shortnose chimaera, belonging to the chondrichthyan group of vertebrates.
    (Shutterstock)

    A sea change

    Blue Beach has helped build our understanding of how this happened. Studies describing its tetrapods and actinopterygians have showed the persistence of Devonian-style forms in the Carboniferous Period.

    Whereas the abrupt end-Devonian decline of the placoderms, acanthodians and fishy sarcopterygians can be explained by a mass extinction, it now appears that multiple types of actinopterygians and tetrapods survived to be preserved at Blue Beach. This makes a big difference to the overall story: Devonian-style tetrapods and actinopterygians survive and contribute to the evolution of these groups into the Carboniferous Period.

    But significant questions remain for paleontologists. One point of debate revolves around how actinopterygians diversified as the modern vertebrate world was born — whether they explored new ways of feeding or swimming first.

    Comparing the jawbones of Sphyragnathus, Austelliscus and Tegeolepis.
    (C. Wilson), CC BY

    The Blue Beach fossil was actinopterygian, and we wondered what it could tell us about this issue. Comparison was difficult. Two actinopterygians with long jaws and large fangs were known from the preceding Devonian Period (Austelliscus ferox and Tegeolepis clarki), but the newly found jaw had more extreme curvature and the arrangement of its teeth. Its largest fangs are at the back of its jaw, but the largest fangs of Austelliscus and Tegeolepis are at the front.

    These differences were significant enough that we created a new genus and species: Sphyragnathus tyche. And, in view of the debate on actinopterygian diversification, we made a prediction: that the differences in anatomy between Sphyragnathus and Devonian actinopterygians represented different adaptations for feeding.

    Front fangs

    To test this prediction, we compared Sphyragnathus, Austelliscus and Tegeolepis to living actinopterygians. In modern actinopterygians, the difference in anatomy reflects a difference in function: front-fangs capture prey with their front teeth and grip it with their back teeth, but back-fangs use their back teeth.

    Since we couldn’t observe the fossil fish in action, we analyzed the stress their teeth would experience if we applied force. The back teeth of Sphyragnathus handled force with low stress, making them suited for a role in piercing prey, but the back teeth of Austelliscus and Tegeolepis turned low forces into significantly higher stress, making them best suited for gripping.

    We concluded that Sphyragnathus was the earliest actinopterygian adapted for breaking down prey by piercing, which also matches the broader predictions of the feeding-first hypothesis.

    Substantial work remains — only the jaw of Sphyragnathus is preserved, so the “locomotion-first” hypothesis was untested. But this represents the challenge and promise of paleontology: get enough tantalizing glimpses into the past and you can begin to unfold a history.

    As for the actinopterygians, research indicates they survived and diversified during Devonian times and had shifting roles during the birth of the modern vertebrate world — at least until more fossils are found that could determine whether that’s the case.

    Conrad Daniel Mackenzie Wilson receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Student Assistance Program, and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

    – ref. A chance discovery of a 350 million-year-old fossil reveals a new type of ray-finned fish – https://theconversation.com/a-chance-discovery-of-a-350-million-year-old-fossil-reveals-a-new-type-of-ray-finned-fish-254246

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ceasefires like the one between Iran and Israel often fail – but an agreement with specific conditions is more likely to hold

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

    President Donald Trump speaks to reporters outside the White House on June 24, 2025, in Washington, less than 12 hours after announcing a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    Within hours of President Donald Trump unexpectedly announcing an upcoming ceasefire between Israel and Iran on June 23, 2025, both countries launched airstrikes against the other.

    “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f–k they’re doing,” an angry and frustrated Trump told reporters outside the White House on June 24.

    While Iran and Israel have tentatively agreed to the truce – and Trump reiterated on June 24 that the “ceasefire is in effect” – it is not clear whether this deal can hold. Some research shows that an estimated 80% of ceasefire deals worldwide fail.

    Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with former Ambassador Donald Heflin, an American career diplomat who serves as the executive director of the Edward R. Murrow Center at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, to understand how ceasefires typically work – and how the Israel-Iran deal stacks up against other agreements to end wars.

    An excavator removes debris from a residential building that was destroyed in Israel’s June 13, 2025, airstrike on Tehran, Iran.
    Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

    How do ceasefire deals typically happen?

    There are classes taught on how to negotiate ceasefires, but it is ad hoc with each situation.

    For example, in one scenario, one of the warring parties wants a ceasefire and has decided that the conflict isn’t going well. The second party might not want a ceasefire, but could agree that it is getting tired or the risks are too high, and agrees to work something out.

    The next scenario, which leads to more success, is when both parties want a ceasefire. They decide that the loss of life and money has gone too far for both sides. One of the parties approaches the other through intermediaries to say it wants a ceasefire, and the other warring party agrees.

    In a third situation – which is what we are seeing with the Iran-Israel deal – the outside world imposes a ceasefire. Trump likely told both Israel and Iran: Look, it’s enough. This is too dangerous for the rest of the world. We don’t care what you think. Time for a ceasefire.“

    The U.S. has done this in the Middle East before, like after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab countries led by Egypt and Syria. Israel was achieving big military victories, but the risk was pretty great for the world. The U.S. came in and said, “That’s enough, stop it now.” And it worked.

    Does the US bring the warring parties to a table in this kind of situation, or simply pressure the countries to stop fighting?

    It is more of the U.S. saying, “We are done.” When the U.S. does something like this, it is often going to have backup from the European Union and other countries like Qatar, saying, “The Americans are right. It is time for a ceasefire.”

    It appears that this Israel-Iran deal does not have specific conditions attached to it. Is that typical of a ceasefire deal?

    This deal doesn’t seem to have any specific details attached to it. Ceasefires work better when they have that. Lasting ceasefires need to address the concerns of the warring parties and give each side some of what it wants.

    For instance, in the Ukraine and Russia war, we have not seen either one of those countries push for a ceasefire. Part of the problem is Crimea and eastern Ukraine, sections of land in Ukraine that Russia has annexed and claims as its own. Russia would be happy with a deal that puts it in charge of Crimea and Ukraine, but Ukraine won’t agree to that. The question of who controls specific areas of land has to be addressed in this conflict; otherwise, the ceasefire isn’t going to last.

    Search and rescue efforts continue in a building in Beersheba, Israel, hit by a ballistic missile fired from Iran shortly before the ceasefire announced by U.S. President Donald Trump came into effect on June 24, 2025.
    Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    Who is responsible for ensuring that both sides uphold a ceasefire?

    Security guarantees are an important part of negotiating and maintaining long-term ceasefires. Big countries like the U.S. could say that if a warring party violates a ceasefire agreement, they are going to punish them.

    In the 1990s, the U.S. and Europe assured Ukraine that if it gave up its nuclear arsenal, the U.S. would defend Ukraine if Russia ever invaded it. Russia has invaded Ukraine twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The U.S. gave a more substantial response in the form of sending weapons and other war materials to Ukraine after the 2022 invasion, but there have been no real consequences for Russia.

    That has created a problem for ceasefires in the future, because the U.S. didn’t deliver on its past security guarantees.

    The further away you get from Europe, the less interested the West is in wars. But in those kinds of disputes, United Nations and other international peacekeeping troops can be sent in. Sometimes, that can work brilliantly in one place, like with the example of international peacekeeping troops called the multilateral Observer Mission stationed between Israel and Egypt helping maintain peace between those countries. But you can copy it to another place and it just doesn’t work as well.

    How does this ceasefire fit within the history of other ceasefires?

    It’s too early to tell. What matters is how the details get fleshed out.

    Ideally, you can get representatives of the Israeli and Iranian governments to sit around a conference table to reach a detailed agreement. The Israelis might say, “We have got to have some kind of assurances that Iran is not going to use a nuclear weapon.” And the Iranians could say, “Assassinations of our military generals and scientists has got to stop.” That kind of conversation and agreement is what is missing, thus far, in this process.

    Why is it so common for ceasefire deals to fail?

    Some ceasefire deals don’t get to the underlying conditions of what really caused the problem and what made people start shooting this time around. If you don’t get to the core issues of a conflict, you are putting a Band-Aid on the situation. Putting a Band-Aid on someone when they are bleeding is a good move, but you ultimately might need more than that to stop the bleeding.

    The outside world might be pretty happy with a ceasefire deal that seems to stop the fighting, but if the details are not ironed out, the experts would say, “This isn’t going to last.”

    Donald Heflin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Ceasefires like the one between Iran and Israel often fail – but an agreement with specific conditions is more likely to hold – https://theconversation.com/ceasefires-like-the-one-between-iran-and-israel-often-fail-but-an-agreement-with-specific-conditions-is-more-likely-to-hold-259739

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ceasefires like the one between Iran and Israel often fail – but an agreement with specific conditions is more likely to hold

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

    President Donald Trump speaks to reporters outside the White House on June 24, 2025, in Washington, less than 12 hours after announcing a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    Within hours of President Donald Trump unexpectedly announcing an upcoming ceasefire between Israel and Iran on June 23, 2025, both countries launched airstrikes against the other.

    “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f–k they’re doing,” an angry and frustrated Trump told reporters outside the White House on June 24.

    While Iran and Israel have tentatively agreed to the truce – and Trump reiterated on June 24 that the “ceasefire is in effect” – it is not clear whether this deal can hold. Some research shows that an estimated 80% of ceasefire deals worldwide fail.

    Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with former Ambassador Donald Heflin, an American career diplomat who serves as the executive director of the Edward R. Murrow Center at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, to understand how ceasefires typically work – and how the Israel-Iran deal stacks up against other agreements to end wars.

    An excavator removes debris from a residential building that was destroyed in Israel’s June 13, 2025, airstrike on Tehran, Iran.
    Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

    How do ceasefire deals typically happen?

    There are classes taught on how to negotiate ceasefires, but it is ad hoc with each situation.

    For example, in one scenario, one of the warring parties wants a ceasefire and has decided that the conflict isn’t going well. The second party might not want a ceasefire, but could agree that it is getting tired or the risks are too high, and agrees to work something out.

    The next scenario, which leads to more success, is when both parties want a ceasefire. They decide that the loss of life and money has gone too far for both sides. One of the parties approaches the other through intermediaries to say it wants a ceasefire, and the other warring party agrees.

    In a third situation – which is what we are seeing with the Iran-Israel deal – the outside world imposes a ceasefire. Trump likely told both Israel and Iran: Look, it’s enough. This is too dangerous for the rest of the world. We don’t care what you think. Time for a ceasefire.“

    The U.S. has done this in the Middle East before, like after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab countries led by Egypt and Syria. Israel was achieving big military victories, but the risk was pretty great for the world. The U.S. came in and said, “That’s enough, stop it now.” And it worked.

    Does the US bring the warring parties to a table in this kind of situation, or simply pressure the countries to stop fighting?

    It is more of the U.S. saying, “We are done.” When the U.S. does something like this, it is often going to have backup from the European Union and other countries like Qatar, saying, “The Americans are right. It is time for a ceasefire.”

    It appears that this Israel-Iran deal does not have specific conditions attached to it. Is that typical of a ceasefire deal?

    This deal doesn’t seem to have any specific details attached to it. Ceasefires work better when they have that. Lasting ceasefires need to address the concerns of the warring parties and give each side some of what it wants.

    For instance, in the Ukraine and Russia war, we have not seen either one of those countries push for a ceasefire. Part of the problem is Crimea and eastern Ukraine, sections of land in Ukraine that Russia has annexed and claims as its own. Russia would be happy with a deal that puts it in charge of Crimea and Ukraine, but Ukraine won’t agree to that. The question of who controls specific areas of land has to be addressed in this conflict; otherwise, the ceasefire isn’t going to last.

    Search and rescue efforts continue in a building in Beersheba, Israel, hit by a ballistic missile fired from Iran shortly before the ceasefire announced by U.S. President Donald Trump came into effect on June 24, 2025.
    Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    Who is responsible for ensuring that both sides uphold a ceasefire?

    Security guarantees are an important part of negotiating and maintaining long-term ceasefires. Big countries like the U.S. could say that if a warring party violates a ceasefire agreement, they are going to punish them.

    In the 1990s, the U.S. and Europe assured Ukraine that if it gave up its nuclear arsenal, the U.S. would defend Ukraine if Russia ever invaded it. Russia has invaded Ukraine twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The U.S. gave a more substantial response in the form of sending weapons and other war materials to Ukraine after the 2022 invasion, but there have been no real consequences for Russia.

    That has created a problem for ceasefires in the future, because the U.S. didn’t deliver on its past security guarantees.

    The further away you get from Europe, the less interested the West is in wars. But in those kinds of disputes, United Nations and other international peacekeeping troops can be sent in. Sometimes, that can work brilliantly in one place, like with the example of international peacekeeping troops called the multilateral Observer Mission stationed between Israel and Egypt helping maintain peace between those countries. But you can copy it to another place and it just doesn’t work as well.

    How does this ceasefire fit within the history of other ceasefires?

    It’s too early to tell. What matters is how the details get fleshed out.

    Ideally, you can get representatives of the Israeli and Iranian governments to sit around a conference table to reach a detailed agreement. The Israelis might say, “We have got to have some kind of assurances that Iran is not going to use a nuclear weapon.” And the Iranians could say, “Assassinations of our military generals and scientists has got to stop.” That kind of conversation and agreement is what is missing, thus far, in this process.

    Why is it so common for ceasefire deals to fail?

    Some ceasefire deals don’t get to the underlying conditions of what really caused the problem and what made people start shooting this time around. If you don’t get to the core issues of a conflict, you are putting a Band-Aid on the situation. Putting a Band-Aid on someone when they are bleeding is a good move, but you ultimately might need more than that to stop the bleeding.

    The outside world might be pretty happy with a ceasefire deal that seems to stop the fighting, but if the details are not ironed out, the experts would say, “This isn’t going to last.”

    Donald Heflin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Ceasefires like the one between Iran and Israel often fail – but an agreement with specific conditions is more likely to hold – https://theconversation.com/ceasefires-like-the-one-between-iran-and-israel-often-fail-but-an-agreement-with-specific-conditions-is-more-likely-to-hold-259739

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Video games can help trans players feel seen and safe. It all starts with design

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phoebe Toups Dugas, Associate Professor of Human-Centred Computing, Monash University

    Shano Liang

    There is a comfort in finding and being yourself. Video games offer opportunities for this comfort. They allow people to exist in safe spaces, to develop community, and to explore the self – as well as the potential self.

    Our recently published study explores how video games can elicit feelings of gender euphoria for transgender people. This could be a result of a player developing a connection with a character they feel represented by. Or, they may simply appreciate the experience of a world in which they exist as their actual gender.

    Far from just providing an escape, our research shows video games can play a major role in fostering inclusion for trans people, and in promoting the joy of being trans.

    Why gender euphoria matters

    Much of the discourse around transgender and gender diverse identities is damage-centred. People have come to understand transness through a medicalised lens that emphasises gender dysphoria.

    Gender “dysphoria” refers to a person’s feelings of disconnection and dissatisfaction with their experience of gender, whether it’s their body, how others treat them, or how they present themselves to the world. For further reading, we recommend The Gender Dysphoria Bible (an online community resource), or Susan Stryker’s book Transgender History.

    Gender “euphoria” refers to feelings of excitement, completeness and affirmation that come when someone truly experiences their gender identity. For cisgender people, gender euphoria is often unremarkable. But for transgender people, discovering this feeling – especially in a hostile world – can be profound and lifesaving.

    In Cyberpunk 2077, Claire’s car interior displays the trans pride flag, signalling to the player that her identity is not a secret, nor a source of shame.
    Michelle Cormier/Monash University, CC BY-SA

    While gender “euphoria” is an old term used by the trans community to understand the potential for happiness, researchers have only recently begun studying it.

    As a group of longtime gamers and trans people, we knew of many games that offered this experience to us. And as researchers and game designers, we had the tools to tease apart these games to understand what makes them meaningful.

    Our study contributes language and a framework for analysing gender euphoria in video games. We hope it will help with developing games that are more inclusive and meaningful for trans players.

    A reflexive thematic analysis

    We used a qualitative research method called reflexive thematic analysis, which involves drawing from one’s own experiences as a source of data that frames the analysis.

    We developed a list of games that were known for trans themes, and/or authored by trans designers, and/or which we had personally found comfort in playing. The list included both indie and mainstream games, such as Cyberpunk 2077, Anna Anthropy’s dys4ia, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Celeste.

    While analysing the games, we looked at the art, narratives, choices offered to players, and how characters were represented.

    We also identified various “themes” relating to trans experiences which were common among the games. We organised these themes into the categories of design, dynamics and experiences, building on prior design theory.

    A three-pronged framework

    Design elements are what the game maker creates, such as the main story, or how you can manipulate a character. Certain games can be designed in a way that normalises transgender people, such as by offering a range of gender expressions for players, or by allowing trans identity disclosure during play.

    In the game Celeste, the trans pride flag behind Madeline’s computer, and the pill bottle beside her bed, are intentional design choices that help the player understand Madeline’s identity.
    Michelle Cormier/Monash University, CC BY-SA

    The dynamics of a game refer to how it unfolds as a result of the design and players’ decisions. Dynamics, for instance, might address how players come to discover a trans character, or how they might encounter pain and healing through the story.

    And experiences are the emotions players feel as a result of playing, such as the excitement of finishing a level, or sadness over the loss of a beloved character. For trans players, gender euphoric experiences centre on the self and how it relates to the broader world.

    Although it has some issues with trans representation, the game Cyberpunk 2077 is a good example for understanding how we sorted our themes into these three categories.

    The character Claire Russel is designed as a woman street racer, whose trans identity is not made explicit. The player’s interactions with Claire create certain dynamics, after which her character confides she is transgender. This offers the player the experience of having comfortable interactions with a transgender character, and of understanding how the character relates to the larger game world.

    During an emotionally charged scene, Claire speaks candidly to the player about her past.
    Michelle Cormier/Monash University, CC BY-SA

    Unexpectedly, we found expressions of pain (including gender dysphoria) were an important aspect of some of the trans-inclusive games we analysed.

    The games created gender euphoric experiences for players by acknowledging the painful parts of the transgender experience, and then providing opportunities to resolve or live through them.

    Moving towards trans-inclusivity

    Of course, there is more to do. While our reflexive analysis centred trans-femme experiences, there is a range of gender identities out there. More work is needed to see what other designs, dynamics and experiences should be on offer for trans players.

    Gender euphoria is a salve to the unnecessary pain the world brings to trans people. It is therefore a worthy design goal – not just in video games, but in all kinds of interactive systems.

    If we want trans joy in the world, we will have to design for it.

    Phoebe Toups Dugas is affiliated with Monash University and is undertaking volunteer work with Transgender Victoria.

    Michelle Cormier is affiliated with Monash University and is managing a community project for Transgender Victoria as a volunteer.

    – ref. Video games can help trans players feel seen and safe. It all starts with design – https://theconversation.com/video-games-can-help-trans-players-feel-seen-and-safe-it-all-starts-with-design-257901

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The ancients also had to deal with a cost-of-living crisis. Here’s how they managed

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

    Louis Le Brun, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    Talk to anyone today, and they will probably have something to say about how expensive life has become. While the rate of inflation has slowed, prices for many goods and services are still much higher than pre-pandemic.

    Cost-of-living crises are not new. They have occurred at various times and places throughout the millennia.

    If we look at cost-of-living pressures in ancient Greek and Roman times and how people back then dealt with them, we can learn something about how to face our own issues.

    ‘The price of land has gone up’

    The cost of living was a conversation topic in antiquity, especially the price of land and food.

    The Roman writer Pliny the Younger (circa 61–113 CE) in one of his letters remarked to his friend about the rising cost of real estate:

    Have you heard that the price of land has gone up, particularly in the neighbourhood of Rome? The reason for the sudden increase in price has given rise to a good deal of discussion.

    The ancient Greek scholar Athenaeus, who lived in Naukratis, in Egypt, around 200 CE, wrote a long book called The Learned Banqueters, depicting a dinner party.

    The characters at this dinner party often complain about the price of food and goods. For example, one character complains about the price of fish:

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen fish more expensive. Poseidon, if you got 10% of what’s spent on them every day, you’d be far away the richest god there is!

    People often said that fish was exorbitantly expensive and thought fish sellers were trying to rip them off.

    In fact, the poet Antiphanes (circa 408–330 BCE) complained “there’s no group more abominable” than fish sellers and money lenders.

    How to lower costs?

    Ancient people were well aware that a cost-of-living crisis can cause political disturbances.

    As the Roman poet Lucan (39–65 CE) wrote:

    the causes of hatred and mainsprings of political popularity are determined by the price of food.

    So, how did ancient leaders deal with this sort of problem?

    One solution was for the ruler to cover the cost of inflation.

    For example, the Athenian statesman Demosthenes (384–322 BCE) mentions a problem with the price of grain that was solved by boosting imports:

    When grain earlier advanced in price and reached sixteen drachmae per medimnus, we imported more than ten thousand medimni of wheat, and measured it out at the normal price of five drachmae a medimnus.

    Alexander Severus helped trim the cost of meat.
    Creative commons, CC BY

    Another solution was to put extreme regulations on the market.

    For example, the Roman emperor Alexander Severus (ruled 222–235 CE) was once faced by a group of angry citizens.

    They demanded a reduction in the price of beef and pork, which had become unaffordable.

    Alexander Severus “did not proclaim a general reduction in prices”, says the anonymous biographer who recounts this anecdote. Instead, the emperor

    ordered that no one should slaughter a sow or a suckling pig, a cow, or a calf. In two years or even in little more than one year, there was such an abundance of pork and beef that while a pound previously cost eight minutili, the price of both these meats was reduced to two and even one per pound.

    The city is so expensive

    The Greek writer Plutarch of Chaeronea (46–119 CE) records a story about the famous philosopher Socrates (circa 470–399 BCE), who lived in Athens.

    One day, according to Plutarch, a friend of Socrates complained to him about “how expensive the city was”:

    Chian wine costs a mina, a purple robe three minae, a half-pint of honey five drachmas!

    In response, Socrates took his friend by the hand and told him to search for bargains or for cheaper items, saying:

    A sleeveless vest for ten drachmas! The city is cheap!

    Socrates’ point was that even in expensive times it’s still possible to find bargains to save money. You just have to look harder for them and lower your standard of living. It can be difficult to do that, but it’s necessary.

    Socrates also gave out employment advice for people who were struggling.

    According to Socrates’ friend, the historian Xenophon of Athens (430–350 BCE), when a poor veteran came to Socrates complaining about lack of money and asking how to cope with expenses, Socrates told him to

    take up some kind of work at once that will assure you a living when you get old.

    Socrates thought making sure you still have money when you
    are old is more important than fully enjoying your current job. You will likely have to put up with things you don’t like to achieve security.

    From ancient to modern

    Most ancient people would probably have said that during a cost-of-living crisis it’s best to be patient, live simply, and wait for better times to come.

    As Pliny the Younger (circa 61–113 CE) once wrote in one of his letters, “my income is small or precarious, but its deficiencies can be made up by simple living”.

    If politicians cannot solve the problems, then it is up to us to cope with them as best as we can.

    Konstantine Panegyres does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The ancients also had to deal with a cost-of-living crisis. Here’s how they managed – https://theconversation.com/the-ancients-also-had-to-deal-with-a-cost-of-living-crisis-heres-how-they-managed-257896

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Global rankings fuel hype, but students have more to consider when choosing a uni

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Message, Professor of Public Humanities and Director of the ANU Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University

    At this time of year, many year 12 students are seriously turning their minds to the future. Should they go to university next year? If so, which one?

    June is also the start of the global ranking season. Last week saw the release of the QS Quacquarelli Symonds 2026 world university rankings, amid reports of a “wake-up call” for Australian universities. About 70% of Australian universities fell in the rankings albeit only by small margins.

    Should students be worried about this? What should they – and the rest of us – understand about global rankings?

    What are rankings?

    Global university rankings aim to evaluate all universities in the world through a a single comparative framework.

    Apart from QS, other high-profile global rankings include those by Shanghai Ranking and the Times Higher Education.

    Each ranking system has a slightly different focus and methodology.

    QS looks at student-to-staff ratios, student employability, the reputation of the university as an employer, sustainability, global engagement and academic citations. It also ranks specific subjects across universities, which can be helpful if you want to know about the quality of teaching in a particular discipline or field.

    It is comprehensive. QS included 36 of Australia’s 43 universities in their latest assessment. These universities were also compared to more than 1,400 other institutions across 105 other countries.

    What impact do rankings have?

    These rankings are promoted as objective indicators and markers of prestige. They can be very influential in terms of attracting potential donors and students.

    One analysis suggests academic rankings are more influential than are research results for attracting philanthropic investment in Australian universities.

    The rankings can also directly affect the resources available for students.

    We know rankings can influence where international students (and the resources that accompany them) go. Australian universities have long relied on fees from international students to support funding shortfalls.

    Rankings are not everything

    But global rankings have many critics. They may include a lot of information but this is not necessarily what students in diverse situations and locations need.

    The rankings also do not reflect how much time and how many resources some universities put into the information that goes back to the ranking process.

    In November 2023, an independent expert group, convened by the United Nations issued a statement criticising the rankings system.

    It said “the very idea of global university rankings is fundamentally flawed”.

    It is simply not possible to produce a fair and credible global league table of universities given their multiple missions and their diverse social, economic and political contexts around the world.

    It also noted the rankings advantaged “historically privileged institutions”.

    The statement also said there was a bias towards the English language, certain types of research, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. “This undermines the importance of teaching and of the humanities and social sciences,” it said.

    A bias against regional unis?

    The rankings also do not favour regional universities, which is particularly relevant for Australian students.

    The QS 2026 survey shows four regional Australian universities slipped in rank and all are positioned outside the global top 400.

    This shows how global rankings are a blunt instrument and don’t account for the broader place of universities in regional areas. Here they play a vital role in their communities, driving economic growth and providing essential services.

    What should prospective students consider?

    Although universities within countries are ranked as better or worse than each other in a global league table, it is important to recognise specific national factors are not considered in the rankings. And individual student experience is rarely taken into account.

    Student experience includes the quality of teaching and the types of support individuals have access to, as well as the facilities and the culture on and around campus. We also know student experience continues to be affected by loneliness in the post-Covid era.

    So prospective students should be careful when it comes to making a decision about where to go to university. Rankings are a useful tool but so is talking to friends and family and going to open days.

    More than anything else, Year 12 students should know this is not the most important decision of their lives. They can take a gap year or change degrees. In fact many students do one or both of these things.

    Kylie Message does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Global rankings fuel hype, but students have more to consider when choosing a uni – https://theconversation.com/global-rankings-fuel-hype-but-students-have-more-to-consider-when-choosing-a-uni-259443

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How old are you really? Are the latest ‘biological age’ tests all they’re cracked up to be?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

    We all like to imagine we’re ageing well. Now a simple blood or saliva test promises to tell us by measuring our “biological age”. And then, as many have done, we can share how “young” we really are on social media, along with our secrets to success.

    While chronological age is how long you have been alive, measures of biological age aim to indicate how old your body actually is, purporting to measure “wear and tear” at a molecular level.

    The appeal of these tests is undeniable. Health-conscious consumers may see their results as reinforcing their anti-ageing efforts, or a way to show their journey to better health is paying off.

    But how good are these tests? Do they actually offer useful insights? Or are they just clever marketing dressed up to look like science?

    How do these tests work?

    Over time, the chemical processes that allow our body to function, known as our “metabolic activity”, lead to damage and a decline in the activity of our cells, tissues and organs.

    Biological age tests aim to capture some of these changes, offering a snapshot of how well, or how poorly, we are ageing on a cellular level.

    Our DNA is also affected by the ageing process. In particular, chemical tags (methyl groups) attach to our DNA and affect gene expression. These changes occur in predictable ways with age and environmental exposures, in a process called methylation.

    Research studies have used “epigenetic clocks”, which measure the methylation of our genes, to estimate biological age. By analysing methylation levels at specific sites in the genome from participant samples, researchers apply predictive models to estimate the cumulative wear and tear on the body.

    What does the research say about their use?

    Although the science is rapidly evolving, the evidence underpinning the use of epigenetic clocks to measure biological ageing in research studies is strong.

    Studies have shown epigenetic biological age estimation is a better predictor of the risk of death and ageing-related diseases than chronological age.

    Epigenetic clocks also have been found to correlate strongly with lifestyle and environmental exposures, such as smoking status and diet quality.

    In addition, they have been found to be able to predict the risk of conditions such as cardiovascular disease, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

    Taken together, a growing body of research indicates that at a population level, epigenetic clocks are robust measures of biological ageing and are strongly linked to the risk of disease and death

    But how good are these tests for individuals?

    While these tests are valuable when studying populations in research settings, using epigenetic clocks to measure the biological age of individuals is a different matter and requires scrutiny.

    For testing at an individual level, perhaps the most important consideration is the “signal to noise ratio” (or precision) of these tests. This is the question of whether a single sample from an individual may yield widely differing results.

    A study from 2022 found samples deviated by up to nine years. So an identical sample from a 40-year-old may indicate a biological age of as low as 35 years (a cause for celebration) or as high as 44 years (a cause of anxiety).

    While there have been significant improvements in these tests over the years, there is considerable variability in the precision of these tests between commercial providers. So depending on who you send your sample to, your estimated biological age may vary considerably.

    Another limitation is there is currently no standardisation of methods for this testing. Commercial providers perform these tests in different ways and have different algorithms for estimating biological age from the data.

    As you would expect for commercial operators, providers don’t disclose their methods. So it’s difficult to compare companies and determine who provides the most accurate results – and what you’re getting for your money.

    A third limitation is that while epigenetic clocks correlate well with ageing, they are simply a “proxy” and are not a diagnostic tool.

    In other words, they may provide a general indication of ageing at a cellular level. But they don’t offer any specific insights about what the issue may be if someone is found to be “ageing faster” than they would like, or what they’re doing right if they are “ageing well”.

    So regardless of the result of your test, all you’re likely to get from the commercial provider of an epigenetic test is generic advice about what the science says is healthy behaviour.

    Are they worth it? Or what should I do instead?

    While companies offering these tests may have good intentions, remember their ultimate goal is to sell you these tests and make a profit. And at a cost of around A$500, they’re not cheap.

    While the idea of using these tests as a personalised health tool has potential, it is clear that we are not there yet.

    For this to become a reality, tests will need to become more reproducible, standardised across providers, and validated through long-term studies that link changes in biological age to specific behaviours.

    So while one-off tests of biological age make for impressive social media posts, for most people they represent a significant cost and offer limited real value.

    The good news is we already know what we need to do to increase our chances of living longer and healthier lives. These include:

    • improving our diet
    • increasing physical activity
    • getting enough sleep
    • quitting smoking
    • reducing stress
    • prioritising social connection.

    We don’t need to know our biological age in order to implement changes in our lives right now to improve our health.

    Hassan Vally does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. How old are you really? Are the latest ‘biological age’ tests all they’re cracked up to be? – https://theconversation.com/how-old-are-you-really-are-the-latest-biological-age-tests-all-theyre-cracked-up-to-be-257710

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Playful or harmful? David Seymour’s posts raise questions about what’s OK to say online

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Veale, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, part of the Digital Cultures Laboratory in the School of Humanities, Media, and Creative Communication, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

    Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

    Deputy Prime Minister and ACT Party leader David Seymour says he is being “playful” and having “fun” with his “Victim of the Day” social media posts, targeting opponents of his Regulatory Standards Bill.

    But the posts – which have singled out academics and MPs who have criticised or made select committee submissions against the bill, accusing them of suffering from “Regulatory Standards Derangement Syndrome” – have now led to at least two official complaints to Cabinet.

    Wellington City mayor Tory Whanau has alleged they amounted to “online harassment and intimidation” against academics and were in breach of the Cabinet Manual rules for ministers. According to the manual, ministers should

    behave in a way that upholds, and is seen to uphold, the highest ethical and behavioural standards. This includes exercising a professional approach and good judgement in their interactions with the public, staff, and officials, and in all their communications, personal and professional.

    Academic Anne Salmond, one of those targeted by the posts, has also alleged Seymour breached the behaviour standards set out by the manual. According to Salmond:

    This “Victim of the Day” campaign does not match this description. It is unethical, unprofessional and potentially dangerous to those targeted. Debate is fine, online incitements are not.

    When is a joke not a joke?

    Seymour’s claim he was being “playful” while using his platform to criticise individuals follows a pattern of targeting critics while deflecting criticism of his own behaviour.

    For example, in 2022 Seymour demanded an apology from Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi, after Waititi earlier joked about poisoning Seymour with karaka berries. At the time, Seymour said:

    I’m genuinely concerned that the next step is that some slightly more radical person doesn’t think it’s a joke.

    But the same year, Seymour defended Tauranga by-election candidate Cameron Luxton’s joke that the city’s commission chair Anne Tolley was like Marie Antoinette and should be beheaded.

    In 2023, Seymour joked about abolishing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples:

    In my fantasy, we’d send a guy called Guy Fawkes in there and it’d be all over, but we’ll probably have to have a more formal approach than that.

    Māori researcher and advocate Tina Ngata criticised Seymour’s argument that he was joking:

    Calling it a joke does not make it any less white-supremacist. What it does is point to the fact that in David Seymour’s mind, violence against Pacific peoples is so normalised, that he can make a joke out of it […] but he’s not any person is he? He is a politician, a leader of a political party, with a significant platform and the means and opportunities to advance that normalised violence into policy and legislation.

    Designed to silence

    An analysis of Seymour’s recent social media posts by researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa at the Disinformation Project has argued they have the potential to lead to online harassment, saying they are:

    designed to silence opposition to the controversial Regulatory Standards Bill whilst maintaining plausible deniability about the resulting harassment, harms and hate.

    The “Victims of the Day” posts about Anne Salmond and former Green leader Metiria Turei were textbook examples of “technology-facilitated gender-based violence and online misogyny”, Hattotuwa argued. And the use of the term “derangement” framed academic criticism as a mental disorder – undermining expertise.

    As my own research shows, online harassment and violent rhetoric can raise the chances of real-world violence.

    Since the early 2000s, researchers have used the term “stochastic terrorism” to describe a way of indirectly threatening people. Nobody is specifically told “harm these people”, so the person putting them at risk has plausible deniability.

    Seymour is already aware of these dynamics, as shown by his demand for an apology from Waititi over the karaka berry poisoning “joke”.

    Free speech for who?

    Seymour and ACT have long presented themselves as champions of free speech:

    Freedom of expression is one of the most important values our society has. We can only solve our most pressing problems in an open society in which free thought and open enquiry are encouraged.

    By going after critics of the Regulatory Standards Bill, Seymour may only be ridiculing speech he does not like. But he has taken things further in the past.

    In 2023, he criticised poet Tusiata Avia for her poem “Savage Coloniser Pantoum”, which Seymour said was racist and would incite racially motivated violence. He made demands that the government withdraw NZ$107,280 in taxpayer money from the 2023 Auckland Arts Festival in response.

    ACT list MP Todd Stephenson also threatened to remove Creative NZ funding after Avia received a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. Avia said she received death threats after ACT’s criticism of her work.

    The more serious purpose of saying something contentious is “just a joke” is to portray those who disagree as humourless and not deserving to be taken seriously.

    ACT’s “Victim of the Day” campaign does something similar in attempting to discredit serious critics of the Regulatory Standards Bill by mocking them.

    But in the end, we have to be alert to the potential political double standard: harmless jokes for me, but not for you. Dangerous threats from you, but not from me.

    Kevin Veale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Playful or harmful? David Seymour’s posts raise questions about what’s OK to say online – https://theconversation.com/playful-or-harmful-david-seymours-posts-raise-questions-about-whats-ok-to-say-online-259658

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: To make buy-now-pay-later fair for consumers, regulators need to understand why shoppers use it

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anita Lifen Zhao, Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of Management, Swansea University

    fornStudio/Shutterstock

    Many consumers – especially gen Z and millennials – use buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) to split or defer payments. The types of purchases made with BNPL can range from groceries and takeaway deliveries to luxury items.

    Nearly 40% of regular BNPL users consider shopping a leisure activity. Easily accessing such credit could increase consumption in this group. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the UK BNPL market is projected to triple from 2021 levels by 2030.

    With timely repayments, this short-term credit option is free from interest and fees. As an unregulated service, BNPL requires minimal financial checks, ensuring that most purchases will be swiftly approved.

    A buyer can acquire items quickly without paying the full amount upfront – the BNPL provider pays the retailer for the goods and recoups the amount from the buyer through instalments.

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    So how do BNPL providers make their money? While they may charge customers late fees and account costs, their primary revenue comes from taking a percentage of each BNPL transaction from the retailer and a service fee. This business model is standard for payment services.

    But retailers often pay much more for BNPL transactions – sometimes three times more than traditional credit card processing. So to ensure they make a profit, BNPL providers deftly encourage consumers to shop with retailers that use their services.

    BNPL is a form of embedded finance – meaning that it seamlessly integrates payments into retailer sites. More than half of retailers are seeing better conversion (more people going on to buy after browsing) when they offer BNPL. This also allows many retailers to expand their market, as BNPL makes products accessible to more consumers.

    But there’s a catch. With higher BNPL fees, nearly one in three retailers pass these costs on to customers through higher product prices at the checkout. Consumers face higher prices, and yet BNPL promotes affordability.

    A marriage made in heaven?

    In this scenario, BNPL acts only as a credit product. But in reality it is more than that. Several providers have created shopping platforms promoting retailers and offering easy repayment management.

    This combination of easy funds, appealing shopping experiences and technology-enabled repayment distinguishes BNPL. Our research indicates that BNPL could reshape retail landscapes by weakening competition.

    Many BNPL providers offer user-friendly websites and apps, exceeding traditional financial service expectations and influencing key psychological determinants of BNPL use, such as viewing it as a way to save money or being psychologically distanced from the act of borrowing.

    As revealed in our most recent study, these platforms are visually appealing, highlight various brands and offer targeted discounts. BNPL is easy to navigate, expands budgets and provides access to credit to those who might otherwise struggle. While BNPL appears to democratise credit, its opaque nature can also present pitfalls.

    The package can promote consumer spending, debt and over-consumption. Consequently, there has been a rise in late fees. More than half of BNPL users have incurred a fee, one in three have missed a payment and three in four are at risk of needing debt advice. Others have borrowed to repay BNPL debt.

    BNPL options can make the buying process seamless.
    Tada Images/Shutterstock

    This escalates when consumers have multiple agreements across providers, complicating debt management. Many BNPL users feel vulnerable, weighing long-term savings against marketing that encourages spending. Their ability to manage this vulnerability affects their financial health, wellbeing and self-image.

    As concerns about BNPL debt rise, regulators in countries such as the UK are addressing its financial service aspects. However, they often overlook providers’ techniques for targeting consumers and supporting their shopping habits.

    Potential regulation focuses on financial attributes, including affordability checks, but neglects the technological mechanisms that keep customers using BNPL.

    Our research suggests that BNPL’s success rests on its effective use of technology, particularly artificial intelligence and its algorithms. They streamline the loan process, enable repayments to be tailored to each consumer, help shoppers find what they’re looking for and identify retailers, brands and products that a user might like. BNPL providers are technology-based retail platforms as much as financial institutions.

    BNPL in numbers

    To protect consumers, legislation like that proposed in the UK must address the technological heart of BNPL and the risks of algorithmic marketing when designing retail sites. These risks could include targeted retailer and product promotions that nudge buying behaviour, or building a customer’s reliance on delaying payments.

    Proposed regulation focuses on the individual credit agreement between a user and provider. This overlooks cumulative BNPL spending and its persistence. What’s needed is a holistic approach considering that consumers often enter multiple agreements at once. This affects shopping habits, budgeting and repayment behaviour.

    Only by addressing this will consumers be appropriately protected. But rethinking BNPL will also mean thinking again about who might be a vulnerable consumer. Traditional demographic factors fail to capture BNPL users’ psycho-social characteristics – things like materialism, impulsiveness and financial literacy. These are more influential than demographic markers on their usage and repayment behaviour.

    Regulators need to understand who is using BNPL and why. Only then will they appreciate BNPL’s full scope and market impact and be able to enable consumers to have a healthy relationship with credit.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. To make buy-now-pay-later fair for consumers, regulators need to understand why shoppers use it – https://theconversation.com/to-make-buy-now-pay-later-fair-for-consumers-regulators-need-to-understand-why-shoppers-use-it-259487

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How restoring river catchments can minimise drought and flood risks

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil Entwistle, Professor of River Science and Climate Resilience, University of Salford

    Elenitsa/Shutterstock

    As Britain’s first heatwave of 2025 hits with temperatures climbing above 30°C, Yorkshire has joined the northwest in official drought status.

    This spring has been the driest in the UK since 1893. May’s rainfall was 43% lower than the long-term average. Fish rescues have already taken place in Shropshire as rivers dried up. Low water levels have made it difficult for boats to navigate along some canals.

    Water companies in regions such as Hampshire, Yorkshire and Cumbria are encouraging residents to conserve water.

    Years of drainage, overgrazing and peatland degradation have turned much of the UK’s uplands into fast-draining systems. Rainfall that once infiltrated slowly now rushes off hillsides, filling rivers quickly, before vanishing just as fast.

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    Even after a year of exceptional rain and flooding, the soils and ecosystems that should be buffering us against drought are depleted. This recent spell of dry weather has exposed just how fragile the system has become.

    The UK government reconvened the national drought group – a coalition of its most senior decision-makers, Environment Agency, water companies, plus key farming and environmental groups – on June 5 to address growing concerns as reservoir levels which are at 77% of capacity nationally.

    Water availability remains under pressure across much of England. Sources in the northwest Pennines, Haweswater and Thirlmere in the Lake District, which supply much of the northwest, are currently at around 50% of capacity. Normally, they would be around 75% full. In Yorkshire, these water levels are currently around 60%.

    The reservoir at Anglezarke in Lancashire is drying out.
    Neil Entwistle, CC BY-NC-ND

    But landscapes can be restored in ways that reduce both flood risk and the effects of drought. At Smithills Estate near Bolton, the Mersey Forest (Cheshire and Merseyside’s community forest), conservation charity Woodland Trust and the Environment Agency have spent the last decade restoring 1,700 hectares of upland.

    They have blocked old drainage channels, rewetted peat bogs, planted trees, improved soil structure and adapted farming. These changes (often referred to as natural flood management) allow the land to hold water longer, slow its release, and sustain the flow of water in rivers during dry periods that can help water conservation and reduce the risk of floods.

    Restoring rivers

    We both grew up in the shadow of the moorlands around Rivington and Smithills in Bolton. We built our careers restoring rivers and their catchments and want to prevent “water-stressed” situations where water demand exceeds the available supply. We continue to study the implications and resilience of natural flood management here in the UK and overseas.

    At Smithills, restored bogs act like sponges, soaking up rain and releasing it gradually. Newly planted woodland supports biodiversity, encourages water infiltration and provides shade, which reduces evaporation. Natural flood management has slowed water down across the catchment, helping to reduce peak flows during storms by 27.3% and has boosted river flows during dry spells by storing and slowly releasing water by 27.1%.

    Tree trunks slow down the flow of water.
    Neil Entwistle, CC BY-NC-ND

    Tree trunks laid across the gullies have kept areas of Smithills wet throughout spring, creating valuable habitat and supporting water resilience in the landscape. We’re working with partners to monitor natural flood management benefits and expand restoration, while also exploring new questions.

    These include how the structures influence greenhouse gas emissions through wetting and drying cycles, affect sediment capture and storage, and how their function changes over time. This research is helping to shape how nature-based solutions are understood, valued and adopted more widely.

    Mitigation (tackling the root causes) and adaptation (adjusting systems and behaviours) to water stresses require landowners, water companies, local authorities, regulators, environmental groups and communities to work together to deliver shared outcomes.

    But this effort needs to be matched by an understanding that changes in how land is managed too. If the landscape continues to shed water rapidly, reservoirs will struggle to recover even when rain does arrive. We need to slow the flow of water and rejuvenate the lost natural processes at large scales through restoration.

    Farmers are grazing cattle on the heath.
    Neil Entwistle, CC BY-NC-ND

    The UK will face water shortages within the next decade unless urgent action is taken. The recent Independent Water Commission, set up by the UK government to recommend a major overhaul of the water sector’s planning, regulation and infrastructure, highlights the importance of nature-based solutions, such as restoring natural processes like river flow and wetland function, alongside natural capital investment.

    This involves putting money and resources into the protection, restoration or enhancement of nature, to secure long-term benefits such as clean air, water purification or flood protection.

    Nature-based solutions can be scaled up quickly, plus they benefit people and the environment. Local communities can also get involved in meaningful restoration work. At Smithills, volunteers plant trees and help monitor the benefits of natural flood management, including changes in water quality, water levels and biodiversity. Farmers are exploring regenerative grazing.

    Schools use the estate for environmental learning. This is not only about resilience – it is about reconnecting people with the natural landscapes that surround them.

    To avoid routine hosepipe bans, protect biodiversity and secure food and water supply into the future, land needs to be at the centre of the UK’s drought strategy. Restoring bogs, woodlands and soils is not a luxury. It is essential infrastructure in a changing climate.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Neil Entwistle has received previous funding from British Council, Universities UK, NERC for work related to river restoration and climate resilience. He also works for a boutique fund manager, to fund and deploy solutions to some of the most pressing Nature-related challenges our economy faces today.

    Neil Macdonald receives funding from DEFRA through the Natural Flood Management Programme (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/natural-flood-management-programme).

    – ref. How restoring river catchments can minimise drought and flood risks – https://theconversation.com/how-restoring-river-catchments-can-minimise-drought-and-flood-risks-258840

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: UK plan to cut energy bills for industrial firms threatens to leave small businesses out in the cold

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sam Hampton, Researcher, Environmental Geography, University of Oxford

    The UK government aims to cut energy bills for large businesses by up to a quarter over four years, thanks to a £2 billion investment within its new industrial strategy. The aim is to make British manufacturers of steel, cars, chemicals, glass and other industrial sectors more competitive with foreign firms.

    UK businesses pay some of the highest energy prices in Europe. Under the new scheme, roughly 7,000 energy-intensive businesses will be exempt from paying green levies on their electricity bills. These levies raise funds to support the deployment of renewable energy and to enact energy-efficiency measures like the insulation of low-income households.

    The exemption should make it a bit easier for British companies to switch from fossil fuels to electricity by making the latter cheaper – an important step in the decarbonisation of the economy to tackle climate change. And it may lower costs enough to bring them within orbit of prices paid elsewhere in Europe.

    However, heavy industry in the UK is already largely shielded from many of the levies applied to the average energy bill. The British Industry Supercharger scheme, which since April 2024 has exempted energy-intensive industries from renewable energy policy costs and provided discounted network charges, is set to save British manufacturers between £320 million and £410 million in 2025 alone.

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    The supercharger scheme fully exempts eligible firms from paying several costs linked to encouraging renewable energy investment and production. Industrial energy users covered under this scheme also enjoy a 60% reduction in network charges, compared with businesses outside the scheme.

    The government’s new “modern industrial strategy” sets out plans to raise this discount to 90% from 2026.

    Modelling conducted before the government’s announcement suggested that, if the major green levies on electricity were removed, average non-domestic electricity bills could fall by around 15%.

    While significant, this reduction is unlikely to fully resolve the competitiveness challenges facing most businesses, as even discounted energy prices would remain high by international standards.

    There are other limitations with the strategy. To start, more could be done to encourage firms to switch from fossil fuels to electricity by not just cutting electricity levies but shifting some onto gas bills.

    The cost of expanding and upgrading the grid to support more electrification and renewables is another concern. These investments in power lines and wind farms will be essential, but they won’t come cheap. Reducing the contribution made by big businesses to these costs means the burden for these essential upgrades will fall on smaller businesses and households.

    There are several options for addressing these challenges, however. One is to make energy demand more flexible, by financially incentivising businesses to use electricity when its supply from renewable sources is generally greater.

    Another way to cut network costs for businesses is to offer grid connection arrangements with a less secure electricity supply. These arrangements include allowing the network operator to reduce maximum capacity during times of grid congestion, and sharing a connection with several other businesses.

    Most importantly, the UK needs to move away from a system where the cost of gas sets the price of electricity most of the time, even though less than half of the country’s electricity now comes from gas. This can be achieved by expanding renewable energy storage (in the form of grid-scale batteries for example), so that grid operators are less reliant on gas power plants to fill gaps in electricity supply from wind and solar.

    Reform to Britain’s energy market and its pricing structure would make a real difference too, though this will also require significant investment in grid infrastructure and careful regulatory change.



    Read more:
    How gas keeps the UK’s electricity bills so high – despite lots of cheap wind power

    No relief for smaller businesses

    While the government’s priority is energy savings for larger businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) typically pay the highest rates for their energy. This is even despite most smaller firms being exempt from green levies.

    Energy-intensive sectors, such as hospitality and retail, remain highly vulnerable to energy costs. Average non-domestic electricity prices increased by over 75% between 2021 and 2024, while gas prices more than doubled. This has contributed to a surge in business failures: in June 2024, company insolvencies were 17% higher than a year earlier, reaching the third highest monthly total since 2000.

    Unfortunately, support for SMEs is heading in the wrong direction. Having funded a pilot energy advice service in the West Midlands, the government’s June spending review did not include funding to expand support for energy efficiency or renewable installations to SMEs nationwide. This leaves millions of smaller businesses exposed to high energy prices, without help to cut costs or emissions.

    The government’s new strategy may help some of the UK’s largest manufacturers compete internationally. But without targeted support for smaller firms, the benefits could be unevenly shared. The UK’s wider economy will continue to struggle with high energy costs and business failures as a result.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Sam Hampton receives funding from the Economics and Social Research Council.

    Jan Rosenow is affiliated with the Regulatory Assistance Project.

    – ref. UK plan to cut energy bills for industrial firms threatens to leave small businesses out in the cold – https://theconversation.com/uk-plan-to-cut-energy-bills-for-industrial-firms-threatens-to-leave-small-businesses-out-in-the-cold-259707

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Brazil’s dangerous flirtation with counterterrorism

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Fitzgerald, Associate Professor of Terrorism Studies, Dublin City University

    American pop star Lady Gaga delivered a free concert to over 2.1 million revellers on Copacabana beach in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in May. Those attuned to security concerns saw a policing and public safety nightmare.

    And shortly after the concert, Rio de Janeiro’s civil police secretary, Felipe Curi, announced that the worst realisation of this nightmare had almost come to pass. An improvised bomb attack targeting fans had been thwarted thanks to police intelligence.

    A loose group of conspirators from across Brazil, gelled across chat apps and other social media by anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments, planned to murder civilians. The intention was to send a political message about resisting what they see as “indecency” and “social decadence”.

    Given the setting, volume of media coverage and possibility of a panicked stampede, Brazil had surely avoided the worst terrorist attack in its history.

    For an attack to qualify as “terrorism”, it must be carried out for explicitly political purposes – motives akin to reshaping society violently or agitating for self-determination through force.

    Yet, a month after the thwarted Copacabana attack, the main conversation about terrorism in Brazil is focused on mistaken efforts to label criminal groups as terrorists.

    In late May, Brazil’s Congress fast tracked a bill that would broaden the definition of terrorism to include the actions of criminal organisations and militias. This is on the basis that their routine practices of “imposing territorial control” are designed to spread “social or widespread terror”. The bill is overly vague and extremely dangerous.

    Brazilian organised crime

    Equating organised crime and the violence it produces with “terrorism” is somewhat understandable. Organised gangs in Brazil, such as Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), control vast expanses of territory, and civilians ultimately pay the price.

    However, as endemic as organised crime is in Brazil, these groups strive for self-enrichment. Their violence is used solely to either protect or enhance this goal. Neither CV nor PCC have any political motive that would qualify their actions as terrorism.

    The government already has legal ways to deal with criminal groups, but it has been hard to achieve lasting, positive results using these methods.

    Should the actions of criminal organisations be reclassified as terrorism, a new suite of measures will become available to the state’s repressive apparatus. This will be true for the current government and future administrations.

    New measures to fight terrorism are practically guaranteed to erode democratic and procedural norms. Armed with a remit to eradicate terrorism, states have repeatedly shown that they exacerbate the very cycles of violence they aim to erase.

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    French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida identified the essence of this dilemma in 2003. In an interview reflecting on the 9/11 attacks on the US, Derrida said that the primary threat of terrorism was not just in the violence itself, but in how societies respond to it.

    The US’s disastrous “war on terror”, for example, led to a consequential wave of violence worldwide. It is estimated to have killed over 500,000 civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And western countries that joined the fray have suffered jihadist attacks in return.

    Governments also adopted new measures to deal with security issues inside their own countries. Potential terrorists were apprehended through surveillance, with the new goal of counterterrorism being to intervene before violence is able to occur.

    States of emergency, which significantly curtail civil liberties, were routinely imposed in the aftermath of high-profile terrorist attacks. This included a state of emergency after the November 2015 attacks in Paris that gave the authorities power to search any premises without judicial oversight.

    The implementation of this logic continues today. At the time of writing, denunciations of Israel’s assault on Gaza continue to be spuriously tied to support for “terrorism”.

    Hamas is a terrorist organisation. But that should not see Palestinian civilians – nor supporters of their rights – labelled as potential terrorists. Yet student protesters in the US have been threatened with deportation, financial ruin and even imprisonment.

    The term “terrorism” contains within it a power to dress state repression as a proportionate response to emergency. In El Salvador, we have seen how counterterrorism is being applied as an emergency means to solve the country’s organised crime problem.

    Nayib Bukele’s government has sent countless criminals to the Terrorism Confinement Centre mega-prison in Tecoluca. It has also condemned many innocent civilians to a parallel fate, with little-to-no chance of redress or due process.

    The tragic consequences of state crackdowns against those spuriously labelled as “terrorists” lingers in the historical memory of Brazil. This new bill moves to the Senate at a time of renewed culturing reckoning with the consequences of Brazil’s repressive campaigns under the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985.

    Brazil should recognise its fortune in never having truly adopted the discourse of the war on terror. Now, it should not adopt an evolved discourse of counterterrorism to address the very serious – but very separate – problem of organised crime.

    In the name of order and progress, and with an eye towards civilians who would ultimately pay the price, this bill cannot be allowed to become law.

    James Fitzgerald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Brazil’s dangerous flirtation with counterterrorism – https://theconversation.com/brazils-dangerous-flirtation-with-counterterrorism-258347

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: New industrial strategy brings Rachel Reeves’ securonomics to life – but will it protect Britain from more supply chain shocks?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Phil Tomlinson, Professor of Industrial Strategy, Co-Director Centre for Governance, Regulation and Industrial Strategy (CGR&IS), University of Bath

    Peter Titmuss/Shutterstock

    Brexit, COVID, the war in Ukraine and now Trump’s tariffs have all highlighted how vulnerable life in the UK is to disruptions in trade. Everyday items that people rely on can be subject to major shortages, delays and price rises, due to something as simple as a ship getting stuck in a canal.

    This is because the UK is hugely reliant on other countries to provide much of what it needs. Medical supplies, cars, electronics and fruit are just a few of Britain’s favourite things that it tends to buy in from elsewhere.

    Global supply chains deliver lower prices and wider choice to consumers but they are also often highly complex. In the car industry for example, components may move within and between companies and cross national boundaries many times, before ending up in the final assembled vehicle. This can make them vulnerable.

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    In response to the disruption of recent years, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has long been arguing for what she calls “securonomics” – investing in domestic energy sources and resilient networks. So perhaps it was no surprise that the British government’s new industrial strategy plans emphasise the importance of supply chain security.

    A new industrial competitiveness scheme for example, is designed to cut energy costs for the UK’s most energy intensive firms, which manufacture things like steel, ceramics and glass. This should help domestic supply capacity.



    Read more:
    UK plan to cut energy bills for industrial firms threatens to leave small businesses out in the cold

    A reported £600 million has also been allocated to develop the UK’s logistics industry. And there is a proposal for a “national supply chain centre” to identify weaknesses, enhance domestic capability and build strategic international partnerships. Vulnerabilities and dependencies will also be more closely monitored.

    Another focus will be to diversify critical supply chains by reducing the UK’s dependence on single supplier nations (such as China for rare earth elements or semiconductors). One option should be strengthening alliances with friendly nations (known as “friendshoring”) with the aim of embedding supply chains in places that can be relied upon.

    The recently announced trade deals with the US and India, and signs of greater cooperation with the EU do offer some promise in this area. Trade deals help with supply chain cooperation, but could go further and include resilience initiatives (such as creating joint stockpiles of things like critical minerals) to reduce disruption in the future.

    An increased supply of cyber security.
    metamorworks/Shutterstock

    Manufacturing from home

    On the domestic front, the UK could still do more to incentivise “reshoring” (bringing some manufacturing or production of goods back to the UK). Reversing decades of decline in these sectors would be challenging, and require a long-term investment in domestic capacity and skills. But it could also deliver a boost to jobs and growth, potentially in parts of the UK which need it most.

    Given recent geopolitics, the government has also prioritised strengthening the defence supply chain, allocating £173 million of new funding on defence infrastructure and skills. Developments are are at an early stage, but the recent UK-EU security and defence partnership is a welcome start. And more work will be needed to make UK-EU collaboration on building a resilient defence industry across Europe a reality.

    Supply chains within that industry (and others, such as healthcare) can be vulnerable to cyberattacks and economic coercion from malicious groups and hostile foreign states. So enhancing cybersecurity in logistics and infrastructure will also be critical.

    This will mean better protection for ports, customs systems and logistics software. There is some limited additional funding on offer for this, but more will be required, which in turn will open up new opportunities for firms in the cyber industry. Indeed, a “cyber cluster” of businesses is already emerging in central England from the government defence and technology campus at Porton Down in Wiltshire across to GCHQ – the national centre for intelligence and security – in Gloucestershire.

    But with still much to do, overall Reeves has been right to stress the importance of supply chains. They are crucial to people’s jobs and homes, the medicines they need and the food they eat. And supply chain security is not just an economic issue. It is a strategic imperative for safeguarding the UK, its businesses and the welfare of its citizens.

    The tone of the new industrial strategy reflects Reeves’s “securonomics” rhetoric. But how far this goes in actually strengthening supply chains and boosting their resilience remains open to question, especially in the context of limited resources and a chancellor keen to build a reputation for fiscal prudence.

    Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Innovation and Research Caucus (IRC).

    David Bailey receives funding from the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe programme.

    Paddy Bradley is affiliated with the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise based at Newcastle University.
    He is Chair of TransWilts Community Interest Company which aims to increase public use of trains and buses in the Wiltshire area.
    He is Chair of Governors of Wiltshire College and University Centre.

    – ref. New industrial strategy brings Rachel Reeves’ securonomics to life – but will it protect Britain from more supply chain shocks? – https://theconversation.com/new-industrial-strategy-brings-rachel-reeves-securonomics-to-life-but-will-it-protect-britain-from-more-supply-chain-shocks-258410

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US attack on Iran lacks legal justification and could lead to more nuclear proliferation

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Hastings Dunn, Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

    After a stern warning from Donald Trump, Israel and Iran appear finally to be observing a US-brokered ceasefire announced by Donald Trump overnight on June 23. But just as it remains unclear what the state of the conflict is, many other uncertainties remain when it comes to the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

    We still don’t know the extent to which Iran’s stock of enriched uranium and the capability to use it have been destroyed. But leaving aside such practical considerations, the US bombing raid also constituted an attack on the prevailing international legal order.

    In some ways, the US actions echo the 1981 Israeli strike on Osirak when the Israeli Air Force attacked and partially destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, killing ten Iraqi soldiers and one French technician.

    However, the US attack can be seen as more serious because it has been launched in a far more fragile and geopolitical environment. Moreover, the state violating the legal rules is the erstwhile guardian of the legal order –– the USA.

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    The attacks appear to be the logical follow through of Trump’s withdrawal from the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) in 2018. This was the Obama-era agreement that significantly limited Iran’s enrichment of nuclear material. For Trump, that negotiated deal was imperfect, as it relied on ongoing Iranian restraint. His decision to unleash US bombers was designed to end the nascent Iranian nuclear threat once and for all.

    But such unilateral actions rarely result in such black and white results. And this situation shows every indication of being no different. It is for this reason that negotiated solutions and agreed legal frameworks are generally regarded as better long-term solutions than military force.

    A significant inhibition on the use of force to remove nuclear threats has been its lack of justification under international law. When the administration of George W Bush decided to launch its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US, UK and Australian governments that spearheaded the invasion relied on the express legal justification that Iraq was already in breach of existing UN security council resolutions that required it to be disarmed of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

    For his part, Trump relied on the argument that Iran’s nuclear facilities already posed an imminent threat to US security. This argument had been undermined by none other than Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, just weeks previously.

    Gabbard testified before Congress in March that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003”.

    Tulsi Gabbard delivers the annual threat assessment in March 2025.

    Trump, who has a habit of ignoring his intelligence community, dismissed Gabbard’s assessment saying, “I don’t care what she said. I think they’re very close to having it”.

    No legal justification

    One thing that is striking about the June 22 US bombing campaign is the cursory attention given to any substantive legal justification. It’s a distinct contrast to Bush’s attempts – however much this strained the law to breaking point – to justify his 2003 use of force.

    The US ambassador to the United Nations, Dorothy Camille Shea, made only the most limited of references to the legality of the action in her speech to the UN security council a day after the US strikes.

    George W Bush’s ‘Mission accomplished’ speech.

    In our book Drones, Force, and Law we demonstrate how the defining mark of an international society is that states recognise the need to give an account of their behaviour in terms of the accepted legal rules.

    Even when policymakers know that they are breaking established interpretations of the law, they rarely admit this publicly. They seek to offer a legal justification – however strained and implausible – that is in conformity with the rules.

    If a state openly admitted that it was violating the law, giving a justification for its conduct only in terms of that state’s values and beliefs, then it would be treating others with contempt. It would, to quote the respected Australian international relations theorist, Hedley Bull, “place in jeopardy all the settled expectations that states have about one another’s behaviour”.

    This is exactly what Trump is doing by not seeking to expressly justify the US’ use of force in legal terms. This invites others to mount a broader assault on international law itself as something that is both fragile and hypocritical in the hands of the powerful.

    Unintended consequences

    The US has justified its attack as aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. But a perverse consequence of the attack is that it is likely to further erode the norm against proliferation. There are two key arguments here.

    The first is that all three Iranian facilities attacked were, before Israel initially attacked Iran on June 12, under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. So, by attacking these installations, the US – like Israel four decades ago with its attack against Osirak – was signalling that it had no confidence in the multilateral mechanisms of non-proliferation. It was essentially saying that it has to rely on unilateral action.

    The second consequence is that a strike aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may instead push it – and others – to accelerate weaponisation efforts. These US attacks may confirm for many the earlier lessons from Iraq, as well as subsequently in Libya and Ukraine. States without nuclear weapons are vulnerable to regime change or military action.

    If this is the lesson that is drawn by those who live in dangerous neighbourhoods and who are increasingly worried about their security, then the US action could serve as a further spur to nuclear proliferation.

    Trump has shown a worrying propensity to ignore legal constraints on his power both domestically and internationally. This action, less than six months into his administration, is an alarming harbinger of his contempt for the internationally agreed legal rules restricting the use of force.

    David Hastings Dunn has previously received funding from the ESRC, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Open Democracy Foundation and has previously been both a NATO and a Fulbright Fellow.

    Nicholas Wheeler has formally received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Open Society Foundations.

    – ref. US attack on Iran lacks legal justification and could lead to more nuclear proliferation – https://theconversation.com/us-attack-on-iran-lacks-legal-justification-and-could-lead-to-more-nuclear-proliferation-259638

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is your cat vocal or quiet? The explanation could be in their genes

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Grace Carroll, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour and Welfare, School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast

    savitskaya iryna/Shutterstock

    If you’ve ever shared your home with more than one cat, you’ll know how different their personalities can be. One might chirp for food, purr loudly on your lap and greet visitors at the door. Another might prefer quiet observation from a distance.

    So why do some cats become chatty companions while others seem more reserved?

    A recent study led by wildlife researcher Yume Okamoto and their colleagues at Kyoto University suggests that part of the answer may lie in cat genes.

    Cat owners from across Japan were asked to complete a questionnaire about their cat (the Feline Behavioural Assessment and Research Questionnaire), and to take a cheek swab from their pet to provide a DNA sample. The survey included questions about a range of cat behaviour, including purring and vocalisations directed at people.

    The researchers in the recent Japanese study focused on the cats’ androgen receptor (AR) gene, located on the X chromosome. This gene helps regulate the body’s response to hormones such as testosterone and contains a section where a DNA sequence is repeated. AR is an essential part of vertebrate biology.

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    The most ancient form of AR appeared in the common ancestor of all jawed vertebrates, over 450 million years ago. AR controls the formation of male reproductive organs, secondary sexual characteristics and reproductive behaviour. The number of these sequences alters how responsive the gene is. Shorter repeats make the receptor more sensitive to androgens. In other species, including humans and dogs, shorter repeats in the AR gene have been linked with increased aggression and extraversion.

    Among 280 spayed or neutered cats, those with the short AR gene variant purred more often. Males with the variant also scored higher for directed vocalisations such as meowing to be fed or let out. Females with the same genotype, however, were more aggressive towards strangers. Meanwhile, cats with the longer, less active version of the gene tended to be quieter. This variant was more common in pedigree breeds, which are typically bred for docility.

    Could you resist this kitten’s meowing?
    digidreamgrafix/Shutterstock

    Domestication is generally thought to have increased vocal behaviour in cats, so it may seem odd that the version of the gene linked to increased communication and assertiveness is the one also found in wild species such as lynx.

    But this study doesn’t tell a straightforward narrative about how cat domestication selects for sociable traits. Instead, it points to a more complex picture. One where certain ancestral traits like aggression may still be useful, especially in high-stress or resource-scarce domestic environments.

    Some animals spend a lot of time around humans because they are attracted by our resources rather than bred as companion animals or farmed. Urban gulls offer an interesting example of how close proximity to humans doesn’t always make animals more docile. In cities, herring and lesser black-backed gulls (both often referred to as seagulls) have become bolder and more aggressive.

    Researchers at Liverpool John Moores University found that urban gulls were less fearful of humans and more prone to squabbling compared to their rural counterparts. In urban areas, where food is highly contested, being assertive gets results. Gulls are often vilified in the UK press during breeding season as urban villains, swooping down to snatch your lunch or chase pedestrians. This suggests that life alongside humans can sometimes favour more confrontational behaviour.

    The parallels with cats raise broader questions about how environment and genes shape behaviour. Okamoto and colleagues’ findings may reflect a trade-off. Traits linked to the short AR variant, such as greater vocalisation or assertiveness, might offer advantages in gaining human attention in uncertain or competitive settings. But these same traits may also manifest as aggression, suggesting that domestication can produce a mix of desirable and challenging traits.

    It’s worth bearing in mind that this kind of variation between individuals is fundamental to the evolution of species. Without variation in behaviour, species would struggle to adapt to changing environments. For cats, this means there may be no single ideal temperament, but rather a range of traits that prove useful under different domestic conditions.

    From cats to gulls, life alongside humans doesn’t always produce gentler animals. Sometimes, a little pushiness pays off.

    Grace Carroll does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Is your cat vocal or quiet? The explanation could be in their genes – https://theconversation.com/is-your-cat-vocal-or-quiet-the-explanation-could-be-in-their-genes-259402

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: A border conflict may cost the Thai prime minister her job

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Petra Alderman, Manager of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science

    The fate of Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, is hanging in the balance after only ten months in office. A recent flare-up in a historical border conflict between Cambodia and Thailand could become her ultimate undoing.

    Paetongtarn has been criticised for her handling of the conflict after tensions escalated in May when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a fire exchange with Thai troops.

    One of Paetongtarn’s sore points is the longstanding close relationship between her father Thaksin Shinawatra and the former Cambodian prime minister and current president of the Senate, Hun Sen.

    Thaksin spent 15 years in self-imposed exile after he was ousted as Thailand’s prime minister in a 2006 military coup. Hun Sen enabled Thaksin to use Cambodia as a frequent base for meeting political allies during his exile. He even named Thaksin his special advisor.

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    Following Thaksin’s return to Thailand in August 2023, after which he spent six months in detention, Hun Sen visited Thaksin within days of his release on parole. This further buttressed the relationship between the two.

    Conservative Thais have used this closeness to criticise Paetongtarn and her government for being “too soft” in their dealings with Cambodia. But things turned particularly ugly on June 18 when an audio recording of Paetongtarn’s 17-minute phone call with Hun Sen was leaked via his official Facebook page.

    In the recording, Paetongtarn refers to Hun Sen in familial terms as “uncle” and offers to “take care of” anything he might want in exchange for a peaceful resolution to the border conflict.

    She also disparages a senior Thai army general, Lt Gen Boonsin Padklang, who oversees the border region. This is a dangerous move in a country where the military has considerable political clout and a history of successful military interventions against the Shinawatras.

    The leak has had a chilling effect on the close personal relations between the Shinawatras and Hun Sen. Its domestic effects have also been nothing short of disastrous for Paetongtarn.

    It came at a time of deteriorating relations between Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai party and Bhumjaithai, its largest coalition partner. Bhumjaithai used the leaked audio recording to exit the ruling coalition on June 18, leaving Paetongtarn with a slim governing majority amid a major political crisis.

    She is now facing a string of popular protests from across the political spectrum and mounting calls by the opposition to resign.

    Paetongtarn has issued a public apology and arranged a call with Boonsin to explain her conversation with Hun Sen. On June 20, she also made a hasty trip to the border area to appear alongside Boonsin in a show of unity.

    But none of these actions are likely to repair the damage. Paetongtarn now has three options.

    Paetongtarn’s three options

    Her first option is to dig in and continue as prime minister, a path she seems to have settled on for now. This won’t guarantee her long-term survival. Her coalition, which has been cobbled together on the back of political necessity and controversial dealmaking rather than loyalty and shared policy agendas, is still fragile.

    In the wake of Bhumjaithai’s exit, other coalition partners held internal party meetings to discuss whether to follow suit or continue to stick with the embattled prime minister. For now, all remaining coalition partners have pledged their support, probably in exchange for some of the cabinet positions left vacant by Bhumjaithai.

    The current cabinet reshuffle, due to be unveiled by June 27, might paper over the coalition cracks. But it won’t resolve all problems. At least three MPs from the Democrat party, Pheu Thai’s third-largest coalition partner, have signalled they would resign should their party stick with Paentongtarn.

    Pheu Thai’s new largest coalition partner, the ultra-conservative United Thai Nation (UTN) party, might also cause further trouble.

    The party was initially set to push for Paentongtarn’s resignation in exchange for preserving the coalition arrangements. This ultimately did not happen, but Paetongtarn cannot rest on her laurels. UTN is internally fractured, and one faction’s exit could destabilise the entire government.

    Even if Paetongtarn manages to keep the coalition together, she could still be brought down by legal means. Several Bhumjaithai-aligned senators have lodged respective petitions with the Constitutional Court and the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate Paetongtarn for ethical misconduct.

    This could lead to her impeachment and eventual dismissal, as in the case of her predecessor, Srettha Thavisin. Other legal challenges are also mounting.

    And then there is always the possibility of another coup. The military brought down the governments of Paetongtarn’s father and later her aunt Yingluck in 2014.

    Paetongtarn’s second option is to resign, making way for parliament to select a new prime minister. The selection would have to be made from a list of prime ministerial candidates submitted to the Election Commission before the 2023 election.

    Pheu Thai originally fielded three prime ministerial candidates, the maximum number permitted by law. With Srettha and Paetongtarn out of the game, Chaikasem Nitisiri would be Pheu Thai’s only prime ministerial option.

    However, Chaikasem is rumoured to suffer from a long-term ill health, and Pheu Thai would still need to muster sufficient support from its coalition partners. This could prove difficult as UTN is one of the only coalition parties left that still has a viable prime ministerial candidate. It could use this situation to try and take over the premiership.

    Under the third option, Paetongtarn could dissolve parliament and call a snap election. This is perhaps her least attractive option.

    The People’s party, the progressive successor of the Move Forward party that beat Pheu Thai to first place in the 2023 election, is enjoying a considerable surge in popularity. Going to the polls could prove too risky, not only for Pheu Thai but also for the entire conservative establishment.



    Read more:
    Thailand’s conservative elites oust prime minister and ban opposition

    None of these options are particularly promising, but they carry an important lesson about the volatility of political dealmaking. Whether Paetongtarn and – more crucially – her father will learn this lesson remains to be seen. In the meantime, all eyes will be on Thailand and the country’s military.

    Petra Alderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. A border conflict may cost the Thai prime minister her job – https://theconversation.com/a-border-conflict-may-cost-the-thai-prime-minister-her-job-259532

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Dementia: are younger generations really less likely to develop the disorder, as a recent study has claimed?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Clarissa Giebel, Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Population Health, NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast, University of Liverpool

    The study revealed that dementia cases decreased for each subsequent generation. AtlasStudio/ Shutterstock

    Dementia affects over 57 million people worldwide – and this number is only projected to grow. By 2030, 78 million people are estimated to have dementia. By 2050, it’s projected that number will reach 139 million people.

    Despite this, a surprising new study has suggested that dementia risk has actually declined with each generation. However, there are good reasons to be sceptical of this finding.

    The researchers analysed data from 62,437 people aged 70 and over. Data was collected from three longitudinal cohort studies on ageing, including one conducted in the US, one in Europe and one from England.

    To conduct their analysis, the researchers compared probable dementia diagnoses from people born in eight different generation cohorts. The people in the first cohort were born in 1890-1913, while those in the most recent cohort were born in 1944-48.

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    The researchers employed an algorithm that suggested probable dementia diagnosis. This was based on participants’ demographic characteristics, as well as their cognitive performance and everyday functioning skills (including how well they were able to perform daily functions, such as washing and feeding, and how well they could remember things). These are standard assessment tools used in clinical practice to diagnose dementia.

    To then validate the algorithm’s projections on probable dementia cases, the predictions were compared against a sub-sample of participants from the US Aging, Demographics and Memory study who had a clinical diagnosis of dementia.

    The participants in this study had undergone a rigorous three- to four-hour cognitive assessment. The algorithm used to create dementia projections showed an over 85% agreement with clinical diagnosis data from that sub-sample data.

    Once dementia status was calculated, the authors computed two models to ascertain the relationship between age, cohort and dementia onset. They also included gross domestic product (GDP) in their analyses, as there’s a correlation between GDP and health – with research showing that people in higher-income nations tend to be healthier than those living in lower-income nations.

    Dementia cases fell across the generations – with those born between 1944and 1948 having the lowest risk.
    Halfpoint/ Shutterstock

    Their findings revealed that dementia cases decreased for each subsequent generation. For instance, in the US, the algorithm indicated that 25% of people born between 1890-1912 developed dementia, while only 15% of those born in the most recent cohort (1939-1943) developed dementia.

    In England, almost 16% of people born between 1924-28 were indicated to have developed dementia, compared with around 15% in those born between 1934-38. This effect was also apparently more pronounced for women than for men.

    It remains unclear why dementia cases fell across the generations, with more recent cohorts having reduced dementia cases.

    Projected diagnoses

    What does this mean? And how does this compare against existing projections?

    While the authors used a large sample from three established ageing research cohorts, the findings are based on data from high-income countries only.

    It’s well known that dementia can be better diagnosed and cared for in high-income countries, where there are more and better healthcare services and professionals. Dementia is hugely stigmatised in low- and middle-income countries as well. As a result, many people are not as aware of dementia as people living in high-income societies.

    This means people in lower-income countries may know less about the associated risk factors for dementia and are less likely to receive a diagnosis and support. This is particularly relevant given the fact that most people with dementia reside in low- and middle-income countries.

    With a lack of cohort data on older adults and dementia cases in low- and middle-income countries, the findings from this study do not provide representative projections on dementia diagnoses globally.

    It’s also important to consider the methods the authors used in their study. The authors used a prediction model. Although this model had high agreement with clinical diagnosis, there are still cases of dementia that will have been missed out as a result.

    Similarly, the authors did not distinguish between dementia subtypes in their modelling. Dementia is just an umbrella term. About 60-70% of dementia cases are actually Alzheimer’s disease.

    But there are also many rarer subtypes – such as Lewy Body dementia or semantic dementia. Each subtype brings with it different symptoms. A generic model is unlikely to pick up each subtype dementia case correctly.

    All these factors may possibly explain how the study came to their conclusions.

    Dementia cases worldwide are actually predicted to increase. As such, the findings from this study should be considered with caution. It may not be the case that dementia prevalence continues to fall for more recently born generations.

    Part of the reason for these projections is due to the fact that people are living longer and growing older. Dementia primarily affects people aged over 65, so with more people living to be over 65 this means that more people will be at risk of developing the disorder.

    The world population is growing, too. So naturally we’re going to see more people living with dementia – particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where people may have less knowledge of dementia symptoms and may be less able to address the modifiable risk factors linked to greater risk, due to poor healthcare infrastructure.

    We know that overall, people from more socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds experience greater health inequalities – and these health inequalities may contribute to increased risk of dementia. But as this factor was not taken into account in the study, it’s difficult to know whether there really will be any differences in the projected number of dementia cases in younger generations.

    Clarissa Giebel receives funding from the ESRC and the NIHR. She sits on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Lewy Body Society.

    – ref. Dementia: are younger generations really less likely to develop the disorder, as a recent study has claimed? – https://theconversation.com/dementia-are-younger-generations-really-less-likely-to-develop-the-disorder-as-a-recent-study-has-claimed-258429

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –