NewzIntel.com

Category: Analysis Assessment

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Sudan’s war is an economic disaster: here’s how bad it could get

    Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Khalid Siddig, Senior Research Fellow and Program Leader for the Sudan Strategy Support Program, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

    Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a devastating war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. What began as a struggle for power has turned into a national catastrophe. More than 14 million people have been displaced. Health and education systems have collapsed and food insecurity threatens over half the population of about 50 million.

    The war has disrupted key sectors, triggering severe economic contractions, and worsening poverty and unemployment levels.

    Sudan’s finance minister reported in November 2023 that the war had resulted in economic losses exceeding US$26 billion – or more than half the value of the country’s economy a year earlier. The industrial sector, which includes manufacturing and oil refining, has lost over 50% of its value. Employment has fallen by 4.6 million jobs over the period of the conflict. More than 7 million more people have been pushed into poverty. The agrifood system alone has shrunk by 33.6%. These estimates exclude informal economy losses.

    My research applies economy-wide models to understand how conflict affects national development. In a recent study, my colleagues and I used this approach to answer the question: what will happen to Sudan’s economy and poverty levels if the war continues through 2025?

    To assess the economic impact of the conflict, we used a Social Accounting Matrix multiplier model. This is a tool that captures how shocks affect different sectors and other agents of the economy, such as firms, government and households.

    Based on our modelling, the answer is devastating: the conflict could shrink the size of Sudan’s economy by over 40% from 2022 levels, plunging millions more into poverty.

    We modelled two scenarios to capture the potential trajectories of Sudan’s economy.

    The extreme scenario assumes a sharp initial collapse, with a 29.5% contraction in the size of the economy in 2023 and 12.2% in 2024, followed by a 7% decline in 2025, reflecting some stabilisation over time.

    The moderate scenario, based on World Bank projections, applies a 20.1% contraction in 2023 and a 15.1% drop in 2024, also followed by a 7% reduction in 2025, indicating a slower but more prolonged deterioration.

    We estimated the annual figures and report only the aggregate impacts through 2025 for clarity.

    We found that if the conflict endures, the value of Sudan’s economy will contract by up to 42% from US$56.3 billion in 2022 (pre-conflict) to US$32.4 billion by the end of 2025. The backbone of livelihoods – agriculture – will be crippled. And the social fabric of the country will continue to fray.

    How we did it

    Our Social Accounting Matrix multiplier model used data from various national and international sources to show the impact of conflict on the value of the economy, its sectors and household welfare.

    We connected this to government and World Bank data to reflect Sudan’s current conditions.

    This allowed us to simulate how conflict-driven disruptions affect the value of the economy, its sectors and household welfare.

    What we found

    Under the extreme scenario, we found:

    • Gross domestic product collapse: Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the total value of all goods and services produced in a country within a year. It’s a key indicator of economic health. We found that the value of Sudan’s economy could contract by up to 42%. This means the country would be producing less than 60% of what it did before the conflict. This would affect incomes, jobs, government revenues and public services. The industrial sector – heavily concentrated in Khartoum – would be hardest hit, with output shrinking by over 50%. The value of services like education, health, transport and trade would fall by 40%, and agriculture by more than 35%.

    • Job losses: nearly 4.6 million jobs – about half of all employment – could disappear. Urban areas and non-farm sectors would be worst affected, with over 700,000 farming jobs at risk.

    • Incomes plummet: household incomes would decline across all groups – rich and poor, rural and urban – by up to 42%. Rural and less-educated households suffer the most.

    • Poverty spikes: up to 7.5 million more people could fall into poverty, adding to the 61.1% poverty level in 2022. In rural areas, the poverty rate could jump by 32.5 percentage points from the already high rural poverty rate pre-conflict (67.6% of the rural population). Women, especially in rural communities, are hit particularly hard. Urban poverty, which was at 48.8% pre-conflict, increases by 11.6 percentage points.

    • The agrifood system – which includes farming, food processing, trade and food services – would lose a third of its value under the extreme scenario.

    Why these findings matter

    Sudan was already in a fragile state before the war. It was reeling from decades of underinvestment, international sanctions and institutional breakdown.

    The war has reversed hard-won gains in poverty reduction. It is also dismantling key productive sectors – from agriculture to manufacturing – which will be essential for recovery once the conflict ends. Every month of continued fighting adds to the damage and raises the cost of rebuilding.

    Our projections already show major economic collapse, yet they don’t include the full extent of the damage. This includes losses in the informal economy or the strain on household coping strategies. The real situation could be even worse than what the data suggests.

    What needs to be done

    First and foremost, peace is essential. Without an end to the fighting, recovery will be impossible.

    Second, even as conflict continues, urgent action is needed to stabilise livelihoods. This means:

    • supporting agriculture in areas that remain relatively safe. Food production must be sustained to prevent famine.

    • restoring critical services where possible – particularly transport, trade and retail – to keep local economies functioning

    • protecting the most vulnerable, such as women in rural areas and the elderly, through expanded social protection and targeted cash assistance.

    Third, prepare for recovery. The international community – donors, development banks and NGOs – must begin laying the groundwork for post-conflict reconstruction now. This includes investment in public infrastructure, rebuilding institutions and re-integrating displaced populations.

    The bottom line

    Sudan’s war is more than a political crisis. It is an economic catastrophe unfolding in real time. One that is deepening poverty, destroying livelihoods and erasing years of progress.

    Our research provides hard numbers to describe what Sudanese families are already experiencing every day.

    The country’s economy is bleeding. Without a shift in the trajectory of the conflict, recovery could take decades – if it happens at all.

    Khalid Siddig 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. Sudan’s war is an economic disaster: here’s how bad it could get – https://theconversation.com/sudans-war-is-an-economic-disaster-heres-how-bad-it-could-get-260609

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: How rising living costs are changing the way we date, live and love

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Melise Panetta, Lecturer of Marketing in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University

    Young adults in their 20s and 30s face an altered social landscape where financial realities influence their relationships. (Rene Ranisch/Unsplash)

    If it feels like rising prices are affecting your dating life or friendships, you’re not imagining it. Around the world, economic pressures are taking a significant toll on personal relationships.

    From strained romantic partnerships to postponed life milestones, financial uncertainty is changing the way people connect and relate to with one another.

    Young adults in their 20s and 30s, in particular, are facing an altered social landscape where even the most fundamental aspects of relationships are being influenced by financial realities.

    Dating today can feel like a mix of endless swipes, red flags and shifting expectations. From decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy, relationships in your 20s and 30s come with unique challenges. Love IRL is the latest series from Quarter Life that explores it all.

    These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love to help you build meaningful connections, no matter your relationship status.

    Financial stress and relationship strain

    Money has long been one of the biggest sources of conflict in relationships, but today’s economic landscape has made financial stress an even greater burden.

    In Canada, a staggering 77 per cent of couples report financial strain, and 62 per cent say they argue over money. The rising cost of rent, food and everyday expenses has forced many couples to make difficult financial decisions, sometimes at the expense of their relationship.

    These concerns are not unique to Canadian couples. A study in the United Kingdom found that 38 per cent of people in a relationship admit to having a secret account or “money stashed away” that their partner doesn’t know about. And in the United States, couples surveyed reported having 58 money-related arguments per year.

    Money has long been one of the biggest sources of conflict in relationships.
    (Shutterstock)

    Even more concerning, financial instability is affecting how long relationships last. A recent RBC poll found 55 per cent of Canadians feel they need to be in a relationship to afford their lifestyle.

    The economic barriers to independence are particularly pronounced for those contemplating separation or divorce. Traditionally, a breakup meant one partner moving out, but now more divorced and separated couples are finding themselves cohabitating simply because they can’t afford to live alone.

    Understanding how to maintain a healthy relationship when facing financial troubles is essential for couples to navigate these difficult times.

    Postponing major life decisions

    The cost-of-living crisis is also delaying key life milestones for young adults worldwide. A Statistics Canada survey found that 38 per cent of young adults have postponed moving out due to economic uncertainty, an increase from 32 per cent in 2018.

    This issue is not only delaying the journey to independent adulthood, it is also reversing it. For example, in the United Kingdom, one in five young adults who moved out have had to move back into their family home due to the cost of living crisis.

    Housing affordability plays a major role in these delays. With housing prices soaring in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere, home ownership feels out of reach for many. For instance, 55 per cent of young Canadians report the housing crisis is fuelling their decision to delay starting a family.

    The cost-of-living crisis is also delaying key life milestones for young adults worldwide. Real estate signs seen in Calgary in May 2023.
    (Shutterstock)

    These delays have cascading effects on individuals and on broader societal trends, including lower fertility rates and shifts toward smaller families.

    Dating in a cost-conscious era

    One side effect of the rising cost of living is that couples are moving in together sooner than they might have otherwise in order to split living expenses. Others are adopting a more pragmatic approach to dating and bringing up topics like financial stability, job security and housing much earlier in their relationships.

    A dating trend known as “future-proofing” is also spreading. According to Bumble’s annual trend report, 95 per cent of singles say their worries about the future are impacting who they date and how they approach relationships. Top concerns include finances, job security, housing and climate change.



    Read more:
    The price of love: Why millennials and Gen Zs are running up major dating debt

    At the same time, financial strain is leading to simpler and cheaper date nights. More than half of Canadians say the rising cost of living is affecting dating. Many people are opting for budget-friendly activities like coffee dates, picnics or home-cooked meals instead of expensive dinners or weekend getaways.

    In the U.K., inflation and other day-to-day expenses have also made 33 per cent of the nation’s young singles less likely to go on dates. Around one-quarter of them say it has made them less likely to seek out a romantic partner altogether.

    Financial strain is leading fewer people to go on expensive, extravagent date nights.
    (Shutterstock)

    These costs are forcing single Americans to adjust their dating plans. With 44 per cent of single Americans reporting adjusting a date for financial reasons, and 27 per cent outright cancelling plans due to financial pressures, it is clear that the cost of living is fundamentally changing how Americans date.

    Also, with 38 per cent of dating Canadians saying the costs associated with dating have negatively impacted their ability to reach their financial goals, some are even skipping dating altogether.

    The cost of friendship

    Friendships, too, are feeling the pinch. Gone are the days of casually grabbing dinner or catching a concert on the weekend. Nearly 40 per cent of Canadians, 42 per cent of Britons and 37 per cent of Americans have cut back on social outings due to financial constraints.

    While this may seem like a small sacrifice, the decline in social interactions carries serious consequences. Regular social engagement is critical for mental health, resilience and career development. The more social activities are reduced, the greater the risk of loneliness and isolation — two factors that can significantly impact emotional well-being.

    For many, socializing now means opting for budget-friendly alternatives. However, even with creative adjustments, financial pressures are making it harder to maintain strong social ties.

    The changing landscape of connection

    If you’re in your 20s or 30s, you’ve probably felt the way the economic realities of today are reshaping what relationships look like. Rising costs are influencing everything, from who you live with, how you date and when — or if — you take major life steps.

    Maybe you’ve moved in with a partner sooner than planned to split rent, swapped nights out for budget-friendly hangs or put off milestones like starting a family. You’re not alone. Financial pressures are redefining how we connect with each other.

    Finding ways to maintain strong relationships under economic stress is essential. Research shows providing emotional support to your partner, employing positive problem-solving skills and engaging in open communication are key maintaining high-quality relationships.

    Melise Panetta 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 rising living costs are changing the way we date, live and love – https://theconversation.com/how-rising-living-costs-are-changing-the-way-we-date-live-and-love-252709

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ showcases Donald Trump’s penchant for visual cruelty

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Marycarmen Lara Villanueva, PhD Candidate, Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

    The United States government recently announced the opening of a massive immigrant detention facility built deep within the Florida Everglades that’s been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a media briefing that “there is only one road leading in … and the only way out is a one-way flight.”

    For some taking in her remarks, the moment felt dystopian. According to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the facility is surrounded by swamps and alligators and is equipped with more than 200 security cameras, 8,500 metres of barbed wire and a security force of 400 personnel.

    Accounts from some of the first detainees at the facility have shed light on the inhumane conditions. They’ve described limited access to water and fresh air, saying they received only one meal a day and that the lights are on 24/7.

    Apparently designed to be an immigration deterrence and a display of cruelty, Alligator Alcatraz is much more than infrastructure. It is visual policy aimed to stage terror as a message while making Trump’s authoritarian and fascist politics a material reality.

    Contributing to this fascist visual apparatus, AI-generated images of alligators wearing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hats have circulated widely on social media. Some have questioned whether these images were satire or state propaganda.

    A screenshot of a June 2025 Homeland Security post on X, formerly Twitter.

    Surveillance, migration, debilitation

    In a moment of growing right-wing rhetoric and support for anti-immigrant violence, understanding how visual regimes operate, and what they attempt to normalize, is important.



    Read more:
    Nearly 54% of extreme conservatives say the federal government should use violence to stop illegal immigration

    Surveillance and deterrence technologies used along the U.S.–Mexico border for decades were intentionally designed to restrict the movement of undocumented migrants. According to Human Rights Watch, this has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths.

    Since 1994, U.S. Border Patrol has been accused of directing migrants away from urban crossings along the southern border, intentionally funnelling them into harsh and inhospitable terrain like the Sonora Desert.

    The desert serves as a deterrent to prevent immigrants from reaching their destiny. American theorist Jasbir Puar’s concept of debility is useful in making sense of the strategic process whereby the state works not to kill, but to weaken, as a form of slow violence that wears people down over time. The desired outcome is deterrence.

    On the southern U.S. border, severe dehydration and kidney failure can be outcomes of this debilitating process, potentially resulting in disability or death.

    Infrastructures of violence

    Sarah Lopez, a built environment historian and migration scholar in the U.S., describes the architecture of migrant immobilization as existing on a continuum with prison design. She’s highlighted the increasingly punitive conditions of immigration detention facilities, such as small dark cells or the absence of natural light.

    French architect and writer Léopold Lambert explains that architecture isn’t just about buildings, but about how space is used to organize and control people. He coined and developed the term weaponized architecture to describe how spaces are designed to serve the political goals of those in power.

    Colonialism, capitalism and modernity are closely connected, and architecture has played a key role in making them possible. Alligator Alcatraz sits at the intersection of all three, intentionally created to invoke danger and isolation. In other words, it’s cruel by design.

    As Leavitt put it, the facility is “isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain.” The Trump administration has essentially transformed land into infrastructure and migrants into disposable threats.

    Terrorizing the marginalized

    State-sanctioned “unforgiving terrains” are not new, and the use of alligators to terrorize people of colour isn’t new either.

    The grotesque history of Black children being used as “alligator bait” in Jim Crow-era imagery is well-documented.

    So when Trump publicly fantasized about alligators eating immigrants trying to escape the new detention centre, it came as no surprise to those familiar with the long racist visual history linking alligators to representations of Black people.

    This logic is redeployed in the form of a racial terror that is made visible, marketable and even humorous in mainstream political discourse.

    Visuality and migration

    “Visuality” is a key term in the field of visual and cultural studies, originally coined by Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle and reintroduced in the early 2000s by American cultural theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff. It can be understood as the socially, historically and culturally constructed ways of seeing and understanding the visual world.

    Visual systems have historically been used to justify western imperial and colonial rule by controlling how people see and understand the world.

    While Alligator Alcatraz is a brand-new detention facility, it draws from a longer visual and spatial history of domination.

    The AI-generated images of alligators wearing ICE hats can be seen as part of a broader visual system that makes racialized violence seem normal, justified and even funny. In this absurd transformation, the alligator is reimagined as a legitimate symbol of border enforcement.

    Migrant death by water

    The spectacle of Alligator Alcatraz, with its swampy inhospitable landscape, cannot be divorced from the long visual history of migrant death by water that’s relied on the circulation of images to provoke outrage — and sometimes state action.

    Examples include the iconic image of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian child whose lifeless body washed ashore in Turkey in 2015, and the devastating photo of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his two-year-old daughter who both drowned crossing the Rio Grande in 2019.

    These images sparked global concern, but they also reinforced the idea that migrant lives only matter when they end in death — as if borders only become visible when they cause deaths.

    Alligator Alcatraz was built in eight days. The fact that a detention camp — or what some have called a concentration camp — can be assembled almost overnight, while basic human needs like clean drinking water or emergency warning systems go unmet for years, speaks volumes about where political will and government priorities lie.

    Marycarmen Lara Villanueva 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. ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ showcases Donald Trump’s penchant for visual cruelty – https://theconversation.com/alligator-alcatraz-showcases-donald-trumps-penchant-for-visual-cruelty-260566

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Biology is complex and diverse, so scientific research approaches need to be too

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Thomas Merritt, Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Laurentian University

    The beautiful, fascinating and often perplexing world around us grows from intricate and convoluted interactions of millions of pieces. As scientists, we work to understand and describe the parts and interactions of these systems.

    Scientific understanding is only as good as the questions we ask. Observing the world from a variety of viewpoints and asking questions from a diversity of perspectives helps us recognize and understand biological complexity. Science, and our own experience, tells us that diverse collaborations lead to better questions and more innovative solutions — but diversity in research is under threat.

    A major advancement in modern biology, specifically in the world of modern genetics that our research team works in, has been the realization that genes are far more complicated than we thought 20 years ago. When the human genome was first sequenced in 2001, scientists realized that each person’s DNA contained around 20,000 genes. Earlier estimates had been between 80,000 and 100,000.

    This drastic downsize may seem like a step back in complexity, but the reduced number means genes must be more complex in order to fulfil multiple roles and functions. There are fewer genes, but each gene has a complicated set of multiple functions modulated through intricate, interconnected and interactive gene-regulation mechanisms.

    Model species, surprising discoveries

    Our research group studies gene regulation using the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model species — a non-human species studied extensively to reveal more about other organisms. Flies, like humans, have two copies of each chromosome, each copy with a full set of genes. Typically, regulation of each copy has been assumed to be independent.

    Flies, like humans, have two copies of each chromosome.
    (Mr.checker/Wikimedia)

    Unexpectedly, our research has found that in fruit flies, the copies on separate chromosomes physically interact to modulate each other’s regulation. This means that the chromosomes aren’t independent: they co-regulate in a way that depends on genome structure, or what we call chromosome architecture.

    This form of inter-chromosomal gene regulation, called transvection, was originally described in the 1950s, but is largely unknown. Its potential role to drive biological complexity is underappreciated because its effects are often (but not always) subtle and generally overshadowed by “typical” mechanisms of gene regulation along a single chromosome, cis-regulation.



    Read more:
    How to kill fruit flies, according to a scientist

    Complex genetic interactions

    Our transvection research focuses on subtle differences between individuals and environments. Too often, biology assumes that phenomena are simple, uniform and discreet.

    A classic example, taught in high school biology classes, demonstrates this thinking. Austrian biologist Gregor Mendel studied genetics in pea plants to propose dominant and recessive hereditary traits. His data was a little too clean, too good to be true: Mendel’s peas were either wrinkled or round, yellow or green.

    Genetics is works in more complex ways: think of eye colour. Our eyes are not a dichotomous brown or blue. Colour varies in a spectrum of shades of blues, greens, grays, hazels and browns.

    Similarly, we have shown that transvection, itself an unexpected twist, varies subtly and substantially, in unexpected ways. Recognizing that inter-chomosomal regulation was even possible, let alone could itself be modulated and variable, meant looking at our results from a non-typical view point, a different perspective.

    Our research into stress biology has drawn similar conclusions; diverse responses are the norm and appreciating this variability is absolutely fundamental to understanding the system.

    Differences between male and female biologies

    In our research into metabolism, we have repeatedly found significant and substantial differences between male and females. For example, in recent unpublished data, we find that differences between male and female fruit fly responses to metal toxicity were as large as we would have expected to occur between different species.

    Past conventional wisdom in the field assumed that the biology in the two sexes was interchangeable, with females essentially being just hypervariable males, although recent research in our lab and others is broadly pushing back against this misconception.



    Read more:
    Sex matters: Male bias in the lab is bad science

    The male and female responses are similar but distinct, and this is an important point. To understand biology, our research indicates, we need to identify, appreciate and study these subtle differences in order to produce more thorough scientific investigations.

    Unexpected complexity

    Our research regularly reveals unexpected biological complexity and, not coincidentally, the studies listed above were all collaborations. The technical complexity of research often requires involving experts in multiple disciplines.

    A typical project can involve half a dozen or more experiments and methods, ranging from biochemistry to genetics to life history, and techniques from enzyme kinetic assays to mass spectrometry and DNA sequencing.

    We are part of a genetics research group at Laurentian University whose diversity has greatly strengthened the quality and originality of contributions we have made to the field. In our experience, diverse collaborations combining different perspectives and viewpoints lead to innovative conclusions.

    The literature bears this out: a series of large-scale studies involving millions of researchers and publications repeatedly show that diverse groups of scientists ask more interesting, perceptive and innovative questions and pose more interesting solutions.

    Diversity and innovation

    But this diversity-innovation connection is under attack in the current social and political climate. This has been most visible under the current political regime in the United States, but is also present here in Canada.

    If successful, these attacks will narrow the perspective of scientific research and cripple scientific advances. Current diversity is the result of decades of programs fighting generations of systematic discrimination. Many researchers have been making research a more diverse and inclusive place.



    Read more:
    Want to reach out to an Indigenous scholar? Awesome! But first, here are 10 things to consider

    Sustainability is essential to the long-term health of scientific research. The research, and our own experiences, clearly shows that diverse groups of researchers conduct more creative, innovative and impactful science. Visibility in scientific research is important to ensure its sustainability. More young students will pursue careers in research if they can see themselves in that role.

    Our hope is that a broader appreciation of the importance of diversity in research, will lead to greater community and political, support for research programs that recognize the fundamental importance of diversity, equity and inclusion.

    The biological world is a beautifully diverse and complex place. To truly understand that world, the research laboratory must to be, too.

    Thomas Merritt receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

    Allie Hutchings 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. Biology is complex and diverse, so scientific research approaches need to be too – https://theconversation.com/biology-is-complex-and-diverse-so-scientific-research-approaches-need-to-be-too-260696

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: What is peer review? The role anonymous experts play in scrutinizing research before it gets published

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joshua Winowiecki, Assistant Professor of Nursing, Michigan State University

    Reviewer 1: “This manuscript is a timely and important contribution to the field, with clear methodology and compelling results. I recommend publication with only minor revisions.”

    Reviewer 2: “This manuscript is deeply flawed. The authors’ conclusions are not supported by data, and key literature is ignored. Major revisions are required before it can be considered.”

    These lines could be pulled from almost any editorial decision letter in the world of academic publishing, sent from a journal to a researcher. One review praises the work, while another sees nothing but problems. For scholars, this kind of contradiction is common. Reviewer 2, in particular, has become something of a meme: an anonymous figure often blamed for delays, rejections or cryptic critiques that seem to miss the point.

    But those disagreements are part of the peer-review process.

    A world of memes – like this one shared on Reddit – has sprung up about the ridiculous feedback provided by a mythical Reviewer #2.
    Reddit/r/medicalschool

    As a clinical nurse specialist, educator and scholar who reviews studies in nursing and health care and teaches others to do so critically as well, I’ve seen how peer review shapes not just what gets published, but what ultimately influences practice.

    Peer review is the checkpoint where scientific claims are validated before they are shared with the world. Researchers and scholars submit their findings to academic journals, which invite other scholars with similar expertise – those are the peers – to assess the work. Reviewers look at the way the scholar designed the project, the methods they used and whether their conclusions stand up.

    The point of peer review

    This process isn’t new. Versions of peer review have been around for centuries. But the modern form – anonymous, structured and managed by journal editors – took hold after World War II. Today, it is central to how scientific publishing works, and nowhere more so than health, nursing and medicine. Research that survives review is more likely to be trusted and acted upon by health care practitioners and their patients.

    Millions of research papers move through this process annually, and the number grows every year. The sheer volume means that peer review isn’t just quality control, it’s become a bottleneck, a filter of sorts, and a kind of collective judgment about what counts as credible.

    In clinical fields, peer review also has a protective role. Before a study about a new medication, procedure or care model gains traction, it is typically evaluated by others in the field. The point isn’t to punish the authors – it’s to slow things down just enough to critically evaluate the work, catch mistakes, question assumptions and raise red flags. The reviewer’s work doesn’t always get credit, but it often changes what ends up in print.

    So, even if you’ve never submitted a paper or read a scientific journal, peer-reviewed science still shows up in your life. It helps shape what treatments are available, what protocols and guidelines your nurse practitioner or physician uses, and what public health advice gets passed along on the news.

    This doesn’t mean peer review always works. Plenty of papers get published despite serious limitations. And some of these flawed studies do real harm. But even scholars who complain about the system often still believe in it. In one international survey of medical researchers, a clear majority said they trusted peer-reviewed science, despite frustrations with how slow or inconsistent the process can be.

    What actually happens when a paper is reviewed?

    Before a manuscript lands in the hands of reviewers, it begins with the researchers themselves. Scientists investigate a question, gather and analyze their data and write up their findings, often with a particular journal in mind that publishes new work in their discipline. Once they submit their paper to the journal, the editorial process begins.

    At this point, journal editors send it out to two or three reviewers who have relevant expertise. Reviewers read for clarity, accuracy, originality and usefulness. They offer comments about what’s missing, what needs to be explained more carefully, and whether the findings seem valid. Sometimes the feedback is collegial and helpful. Sometimes it’s not.

    Peer reviewers’ comments can help researchers revise and strengthen their work.
    AJ_Watt/E+ via Getty Images

    Here is where Reviewer 2 enters the lore of academic life. This is the critic who seems especially hard to please, who misreads the argument, or demands rewrites that would reshape the entire project. But even these kinds of reviews serve a purpose. They show how work might be received more broadly. And many times they flag weaknesses the author hadn’t seen.

    Review is slow. Most reviewers aren’t paid, with nearly 75% reporting they receive no compensation or formal recognition for their efforts. They do this work on top of their regular clinical, teaching or research responsibilities. And not every editor has the time or capacity to sort through conflicting feedback or to moderate tone. The result is a process that can feel uneven, opaque, and, at times, unfair.

    It doesn’t always catch what it is supposed to. Peer review is better at catching sloppy thinking than it is at detecting fraud. If data is fabricated or manipulated, a reviewer may not have the tools, or the time, to figure that out. In recent years, a growing number of published papers have been retracted after concerns about plagiarism or faked results. That trend has shaken confidence in the system and raised questions about what more journals should be doing before publication.

    Imperfect but indispensable

    Even though the current peer-review system has its shortcomings, most researchers would argue that science is better off than it would be without the level of scrutiny peer review provides. The challenge now is how to make peer review better.

    Some journals are experimenting with publishing reviewer comments alongside articles. Other are trying systems where feedback continues after publication. There are also proposals to use artificial intelligence to help flag inconsistencies or potential errors before human reviewers even begin.

    These efforts are promising but still in the early stages of development and adoption. For most fields, peer review remains a basic requirement for legitimacy, while some, such as law and high-energy physics, have alternate methods of communicating their findings. Peer review assures a reader that a journal article’s claim has been tested, scrutinized and revised.

    Peer review doesn’t guarantee truth. But it does invite challenge, foster transparency, offer reflection and force revision. That’s often where the real work of science begins.

    Even if Reviewer 2 still has notes.

    Joshua Winowiecki 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. What is peer review? The role anonymous experts play in scrutinizing research before it gets published – https://theconversation.com/what-is-peer-review-the-role-anonymous-experts-play-in-scrutinizing-research-before-it-gets-published-258255

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Examining mushrooms under microscopes can help engineers design stronger materials

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mohamed Khalil Elhachimi, PhD Student in Mechanical Engineering, Binghamton University, State University of New York

    White button mushrooms are one of the types studied to inform stronger materials. DigiPub/Moment via Getty Images

    Pick up a button mushroom from the supermarket and it squishes easily between your fingers. Snap a woody bracket mushroom off a tree trunk and you’ll struggle to break it. Both extremes grow from the same microscopic building blocks: hyphae – hair-thin tubes made mostly of the natural polymer chitin, a tough compound also found in crab shells.

    As those tubes branch and weave, they form a lightweight but surprisingly strong network called mycelium. Engineers are beginning to investigate this network for use in eco-friendly materials.

    Filaments called hyphae are a mushroom’s support structures both above and below ground, and the mycelium network links multiple mushrooms together.
    Milkwood.net/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

    Yet even within a single mushroom family, the strength of a mycelium network can vary widely. Scientists have long suspected that how the hyphae are arranged – not just what they’re made of – holds the key to understanding, and ultimately controlling, their strength. But until recently, measurements that directly link microscopic arrangement to macroscopic strength have been scarce.

    I’m a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student at Binghamton University who studies bio-inspired structures. In our latest research, my colleagues and I asked a simple question: Can we tune the strength of a mushroomlike material just by changing the angle of its filaments, without adding any tougher ingredients? The answer, it turns out, is yes.

    2 edible species, many tiny tests

    In our study, my team compared two familiar fungi. The first was the white button mushroom, whose tissue uses only thin filaments called generative filaments. The second was the maitake, also called hen-of-the-woods, whose tissue mixes in a second, thicker type of hyphae called skeletal filaments. These skeletal filaments are arranged roughly in parallel, like bundles of cables.

    The two types of mushrooms used in the study: The white button mushroom is monomitic, shown on the left, meaning it has only one type of hyphae. The maitake is shown on the right, and is dimitic, meaning it has two types of hyphae.
    Mohamed Khalil Elhachimi

    After gently drying the caps and stems to remove any water, which can soften the material and skew the results, we zoomed in with scanning electron microscopes and tested the samples at two very different scales.

    First, we tested macro-scale compression. A motor-driven piston slowly squashed each mushroom while sensors recorded how hard the sample pushed back – the same way you might squeeze a marshmallow, only with laboratory precision.

    Then we pressed a diamond tip thinner than a human hair into individual filaments to measure their stiffness.

    The white mushroom filaments behaved like rubber bands, averaging about 18 megapascals in stiffness – similar to natural rubber. The thicker skeletal filaments in maitake measured around 560 megapascals, more than 30 times stiffer and approaching the stiffness of high-density polyethylene – the rigid plastic used in cutting boards and some water pipes.

    The two mushrooms tested include the maitake, left, and the button mushroom.
    Lance Cheung/USDA and edenpictures/Flickr, CC BY

    But chemistry is only half the story. When we squeezed entire chunks, the direction we squeezed in mattered even more for the maitake. Pressing in line with its parallel skeletal filaments made the block 30 times stiffer than pressing across the grain. By contrast, the tangled filaments in white mushrooms felt equally soft from every angle.

    A digital mushroom and twisting the threads

    To separate geometry from chemistry, we converted snapshots from the microscope into a computer model using a 3D Voronoi network – a pattern that mimics the walls between bubbles in a foam. Think of ping-pong balls crammed in a box: Each ball is a cell, and the walls between cells become our simulated filaments.

    We assigned those filaments by the stiffness values measured in the lab, then virtually rotated the whole network to angles of 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees and completely random.

    Horizontal (0 degrees) filaments flexed like a spring mattress. Vertical (90 degrees) filaments supported weight almost as firmly as dense wood. Simply tilting the network to 60 degrees nearly doubled its stiffness compared with 0 degrees – all without changing a single chemical ingredient.

    The researchers modeled structures with different fiber orientations to see which are the strongest: (a) represents a horizontal fiber orientation, (b) a 30-degree fiber orientation, (c) a 60-degree fiber orientation, (d) a vertical fiber orientation, and (e) a random fiber orientation.
    Mohamed Khalil Elhachimi

    Basically, we found that orientation alone could turn a mushy sponge into something that stands up to serious pressure. That suggests manufacturers could make strong, lightweight, biodegradable parts – such as shoe insoles, protective packaging and even interior panels for cars – simply by guiding how a fungus grows rather than by mixing in harder additives.

    Greener materials – and beyond

    Startups already grow “leather” made from mycelium – the threadlike fungal network – for handbags, and mycelium foam as a Styrofoam replacement.

    Guiding fungi to lay their filaments in strategic directions could push performance much higher, opening doors in sectors where strength-to-weight ratio is king: think sporting goods cores, building-insulation panels or lightweight fillers inside aircraft panels.

    The same digital tool kit also works for metal or polymer lattices printed layer by layer. Swap the filament properties in the model, let the algorithm pick the best angles, and then feed that layout into a 3D printer.

    One day, engineers might dial up an app that says something like, “I need a panel that’s stiff north-south but flexible east-west,” and the program could spit out a filament map inspired by the humble maitake.

    Our next step is to feed thousands of these virtual networks into a machine learning model so it can predict – or even invent – filament layouts that hit a targeted stiffness in any direction.

    Meanwhile, biologists are exploring low-energy ways to coax real fungi to grow in neat rows, from steering nutrients toward one side of a petri dish to applying gentle electric fields that encourage filaments to align.

    This study taught us that you don’t always need exotic chemistry to make a better material. Sometimes it’s all about how you line up the same old threads – just ask a mushroom.

    Mohamed Khalil Elhachimi 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. Examining mushrooms under microscopes can help engineers design stronger materials – https://theconversation.com/examining-mushrooms-under-microscopes-can-help-engineers-design-stronger-materials-260477

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Small penises are still the butt of the joke in film and TV

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil Cocks, Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, University of Reading

    Gen V (2023-present), the recent iteration of the wildly successful superhero satire The Boys (2019), thrives on scenes of bodily outrage. One such episode concerns a young woman who is able to shrink – an ability triggered by self-induced vomiting.

    Her boyfriend persuades her to use her powers during sex and we see her touching his penis, which is now taller than she is. We also understand why the boyfriend is so insistent about her transformation: relatively speaking, he has a small penis.

    In Companion (2025), a film about a young man who has an abusive sexual relationship with a self-conscious robot, a small penis is also mocked. When the robot gains autonomy, and has an intelligence boost, she confronts and shames the abusive man, claiming that he is motivated in his violent and controlling behaviour by “a below average-sized penis”.

    What interests me about these works, as a researcher of sexuality and film, is that they are otherwise committed to questioning reductive ideas about the body. Yes, in the universe of The Boys there is undoubted glee at all the exploding heads and superpowered, murderous buttocks, but the keynote is pathos.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    The girl who changes her shape through vomiting is arguably representing bulimic experience and there are characters whose superpowers can be understood to negotiate, for example, self-harm and dysmorphia. But when it comes to a man with a small penis, it’s a different story. His body is understood to directly influence both his actions and sense of morality.

    Likewise, in Companion, which is in so many senses a meditation on the fraught relationship between mind and body, the small penis of the young man is understood to be the obvious source of his repressive actions.

    In both cases, the audience is expected to laugh at the abuser because of his small penis. The small penis is framed as both a signifier and cause of abusiveness.

    ‘We are still so medieval about penis size’

    It could be argued that in Companion and Gen V, the small penis itself is not what is being mocked. The men involved in both are young, white and heterosexual. The idea is, perhaps, that mocking those with small penises is acceptable, because in this the creators are really questioning white, heterosexual and male power structures, and that the inadequacy of that power, its mythic nature, is exposed.

    One difficulty in this is that as only power held by men with small penises is mocked, the power of the well endowed, regardless of racial or sexual identity, is naturalised.

    Equally, those people of colour or queer people who have small penises might implicitly be included in the mockery, with the implication that they are somehow the beneficiaries of power structures, misuse this power, and have obvious, biologically rooted motivations in so doing.

    The trailer for Gen V.

    Gen V qualifies the laughter – the girl , talking later to a friend, makes clear that there is nothing wrong in having a small penis, just “don’t be a dick about it”. But the only small-penised character we see is, of course, being “a dick”.

    There have been a number of television shows that focus on penis size, but each explores the pathos of having a large penis: Hung (2009), The Hard Times of RJ Berger (2010), Sex Education (2019). Imagine an equivalent concerning a character with a small – or even simply not large – penis.

    As journalist Caitlin Moran wrote in a 2023 Guardian article introducing her book, What About Men:

    We are still so medieval about penis size that we see male genitalia as being inimical to a man’s soul. Remember when Stormy Daniels told the world that Donald Trump’s penis was ‘smaller than average – a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart’. And we were all like: ‘Yes, it makes sense the horrible man has a small, weird mushroom penis.’ The whole world joined in on that one.

    Let us instead question the relationship between biology and destiny. And let this action be taken not to frame heterosexual white men as a disadvantaged group, but for the good of us all. Our bodies are ours to negotiate, with ourselves, and with our significant others, as well as those others that find in them indifference, or more troubling affects.

    As Gen V and Companion suggest, in recent science fiction stories that otherwise reimagine the body, the small penis can only be imagined as shameful. It is taken to be an obvious motivation for abusive behaviour. Such an understanding helps no one. As the science fiction genre is especially well placed to question common-sense ideas about the human and its form, it would be a good place to begin.

    Neil Cocks 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. Small penises are still the butt of the joke in film and TV – https://theconversation.com/small-penises-are-still-the-butt-of-the-joke-in-film-and-tv-256748

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alpha males are surprisingly rare among primates – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Gentle, Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University

    Female lemurs are often dominant. Miroslav Halama/Shutterstock

    Is it true that male animals are dominant over females? Previous studies have often found male-biased power in primates and other mammals.

    A new study, investigating physical encounters between members of the same species in 121 primates (around a quarter of all primate species) found that half of all aggressive contests were between males and females. But males won these contests in only 17% of primate populations, with females dominating in 13% – making it almost as likely for females to dominate males.

    The remaining 70% of primate populations showed no clear-cut dominance of one sex over the other. This study may have shown different results to previous research because it assessed individual contests rather than categorising species based on their social structure and physical attributes.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    The new study found male dominance, where males have a greater ability to influence the behaviour of the opposite sex, to be prevalent in primate species where the males are much larger than the females. This enables males to gain dominance through physical force or coercion. It was also widespread in species where males have weapons and mate with lots of females.

    This is typical of African and Asian monkeys and the great apes, such as gorillas. Weighing in at around 200kg, a silverback male can be twice the size of the females within his troop. Male gorillas also have large canine teeth that can seriously injure or even kill other gorillas.

    Male dominance often twins with weapons throughout the animal kingdom, – horns, antlers, claws or tusks. The largest antlers ever known were those of the now extinct Irish elk, spanning lengths up to 3.5m.

    The Irish elk is extinct but once had huge antlers.
    Fotokon/Shutterstock

    Female dominance

    Female power was seen in primate species that had a scarcity of females, one exclusive sexual partner, similar sized males and females but did not have bodily weapons, according to the new study. These are all factors that give females more choice over who to mate with.

    Female dominance was also seen in species where fighting with a male was less risky for the dependent offspring of females. For example, some primates “park” their young on their own in nests while foraging, rather than carrying them around. If a mother is holding her baby when she’s attacked, she may submit to protect her young.

    Finally, matriarchal societies were common in species that live primarily in trees, which makes it easier to flee an attacker.

    Female-dominated species were more likely in lorises, galagos and lemurs. So, contrary to the film Madagascar where King Julien is the king of the lemurs, females are, in fact, in charge. In the ring-tailed lemurs, females control access to food and mates, and maintain the dominance hierarchy where males are often at the bottom.

    This is also true of bonobos, the closest relatives of humans. Although male bonobos are larger, females form coalitions to overcome the physical power of the males and force them into submission. This show of solidarity has also been shown in humans.

    Think of how the suffragettes campaigned for women’s rights to vote in the UK. Or more recently, how women demanded new safety measures after Sarah Everard was murdered by Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens in 2021.

    Galagos, also known as bushbabies, tend to live in female dominant societies.
    Jurgens Potgieter/Shutterstock

    Although female dominance has been documented less often in the wider animal kingdom, there are some examples that defy expectations. Spotted hyenas have a matriarchal society where females dominate the clans. They even have a pseudo-penis that they erect to indicate submission to more dominant individuals.



    Read more:
    Sex and power in the animal kingdom: seven animals that will make you reconsider what you think you know

    Naked mole rats have a queen that gives birth to all of the young while her offspring find food and defend the nest. The males are subordinate to the queen, but so too are the other females. In fact, the queen bullies the other members of her colony so much that the females are all rendered sterile through stress.

    But what about the 70% of primate species that were found to show no dominant sex bias in the new study? These were largely the South American monkeys such as marmosets, tamarins and capuchins, that are generally small, live in trees, are social and omnivorous.

    They also tended to have a prehensile tail that helps them grasp things. The ecology of these species fall in the middle of the male and female dominated species, with size difference and weapons being neither extreme nor absent, mating systems being neither polygamous nor monogamous, and the frequency of females being nether abundant nor rare.

    The absence of a definitive sex-bias in dominance found in the majority of primate species may be a result of the rarity of contests between males and females, or because males and females were both equally likely to win. Nevertheless, dominance varied within species. For example the percentage of intersexual contests won by female patas monkeys ranged from 0% to 61%, depending on the population studied.

    What does this mean for humans?

    Human traits are not skewed towards those of male-dominated societies in other primates. We may not live in trees but males do not have natural weapons. Males are not always bigger than females, females do not tend to outnumber males and our sexual habits are varied.

    Humans are actually more aligned to the 70% of species that show no clear distinction in sex biases, where species of either sex can become dominant. Let’s see which way evolution takes us.

    Louise Gentle works for Nottingham Trent University.

    – ref. Alpha males are surprisingly rare among primates – new research – https://theconversation.com/alpha-males-are-surprisingly-rare-among-primates-new-research-260472

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Measles isn’t just dangerous – it may erase your immune system

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Antony Black, Lecturer, Life Sciences, University of Westminster

    INSAGO/Shutterstock

    Blindness, pneumonia, severe diarrhoea and even death – measles virus infections, especially in children, can have devastating consequences. Fortunately, we have a safe and effective defence. Measles vaccines are estimated to have averted more than 60 million deaths between 2000 and 2023.

    Yet despite this success, measles cases are rising sharply in the UK and around the world. This global surge is the result of several factors, from vaccine hesitancy to missed immunisation campaigns, leaving many children unprotected and vulnerable.

    But there’s more at stake than just measles itself. Emerging research suggests that the measles vaccination may offer surprising additional health benefits. Children who receive the vaccine have been shown to have a significantly lower risk of infections from diseases unrelated to measles.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    One explanation for this broader benefit is the idea of “measles amnesia.” This refers to the ability of the measles virus to erase parts of the body’s immune memory.

    Our immune system contains various cells that protect us from infections. Some produce antibodies that neutralise viruses, while others detect and destroy infected cells. Immune memory allows the body to “remember” past infections and mount faster responses in the future.

    However, measles infection may reduce the number and diversity of these memory cells – leaving children vulnerable to a wide range of diseases they had previously developed immunity to. In other words, the virus doesn’t just make children ill in the short term, it may also undo years of immune protection.

    In one study, researchers found that between 11% and 73% of antibodies targeting other diseases were lost after a measles infection in unvaccinated children. This immune depletion was not observed in children who had received the vaccine, suggesting that vaccination protects against this damaging effect.

    This broad loss of immune protection may explain why measles outbreaks are often followed by spikes in other infectious diseases. Ongoing studies are exploring the impact of measles amnesia in regions such as West Africa, where measles and other infections remain widespread.

    A vaccine that does more?

    Another theory for the vaccine’s broader benefit is known as the “non-specific effect”. Unlike measles amnesia, which explains how the virus weakens immunity, the non-specific effect suggests that the measles vaccine actively strengthens the immune system against a wide range of pathogens.

    Recent research has shown that measles vaccination may enhance the function of certain immune cells, making them more effective at fighting off other diseases. Some scientists believe this effect, rather than protection against amnesia alone, could be the primary reason why vaccinated children have better overall health outcomes.

    The measles vaccine is a live attenuated vaccine, which means it uses a weakened version of the virus to stimulate a strong immune response. Live vaccines, including the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis, are known to provide broad immune training effects, which may explain this non-specific protection.

    Forgotten the dangers

    In the 1960s, before widespread vaccination, measles caused around 2.6 million deaths per year. It’s hard to imagine today, but that’s partly the problem.

    As measles became rare, society began to forget how serious it is. We forgot how contagious it is (one infected person can spread the virus to up to 90% of nearby unvaccinated people) and we forgot how effective vaccination is (two doses provide more than 90% long-term protection).

    And in some circles, this fading memory has been replaced by something more dangerous: mistrust. Misinformation, vaccine myths, and anti-vaccine rhetoric are spreading, just like the virus itself.

    So, whether the additional protection offered by the vaccine is due to prevention of immune amnesia, a non-specific immune boost, or both, the takeaway is the same: Vaccinate children against measles. Because when we protect them from measles, we may also be protecting them from so much more.

    Antony Black 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. Measles isn’t just dangerous – it may erase your immune system – https://theconversation.com/measles-isnt-just-dangerous-it-may-erase-your-immune-system-261136

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Zonal pricing is dead – here’s how the UK should change its electricity system instead

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cassandra Etter-Wenzel, DPhil Candidate in Energy Policy, University of Oxford

    Marcin Rogozinski/Shutterstock

    The UK government has decided against setting different prices for electricity based on the locations of consumers.

    Zonal pricing would have categorised Britain into distinct zones, each with wholesale electricity prices that reflect how much power is generated locally, and how much demand there is for it. It would have raised prices in areas with lots of demand but low generation, like London, and lowered them where supply outstrips demand, such as in the turbine-rich Scottish Highlands.

    This might have caused an immediate increase in the energy bills of already vulnerable households in some high-demand, low-generation areas, such as Tower Hamlets in London and Blackpool in north-west England.

    But the idea was to encourage the construction of renewable energy to meet high demand in higher-priced zones, and prompt big electricity consumers to move to where electricity is cheaper. It was also intended to ease the need for new infrastructure to transmit electricity over long distances, like pylons. Australia, Norway and several EU nations already use this method.

    The ultimate goal of zonal pricing was to make the price of electricity more accurately reflect generation and transmission costs. However, one thing has significantly inflated electricity prices in recent years, which this pricing method wouldn’t have addressed on its own: gas.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    Gas is expensive, even more so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Britain’s electricity system operator brings power plants onto the system to meet demand in order of the lowest to highest marginal costs.

    The point at which supply meets demand forms the wholesale price of electricity. Renewable sources, like wind and solar, have zero or very low marginal costs. But most of the time the wholesale price is set by gas plants, because they can readily fill a gap in supply but have high and erratic marginal costs (largely tied to what they pay for fuel).

    We need another, cheaper technology to set the wholesale price of electricity. Batteries, which can store electricity over several hours, and options capable of storing energy for longer, such as compressed air and low-carbon hydrogen, could be just the thing.

    The idea is simple: batteries can be charged at times when there is a lot of surplus electricity generation (on a bright, windy day, for example) and discharge it at times of peak demand (or when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow). This would entail grid operators (and ultimately, consumers) not having to pay gas plants to fire up when renewable generation cannot meet the shortfall.

    Unfortunately, batteries comprised just 6% of Britain’s total electricity capacity in 2024. Investment in energy storage has lagged behind what the government forecasts is necessary to meet its 2030 clean power goals, but it is at least increasing.

    Research shows that the more money that is invested in batteries, the more associated costs come down. If used instead of gas to stabilise the grid, energy storage could significantly lower the wholesale cost of the UK’s energy over time, and with the right balance of policies, household bills too. This would require subsidies to cover some of the cost of making and installing batteries, and planning mandates to build new renewables alongside new batteries.

    Affordable and fair

    The government could also try alternatives to zonal pricing. Wholesale electricity prices could reflect the “strike” price in renewable energy contracts. This is the price at which developers have agreed to build clean electricity generation projects, like wind farms. This would mean that gas no longer sets the wholesale price, but stable, predictable prices agreed years in advance, which would help to regulate the retail costs consumers pay.

    Solar arrays installed on farmland in Devon, southern England.
    Pjhpix/Shutterstock

    These types of reforms can help set efficient energy prices, which the government usually talks about as the price needed to encourage investment in new energy technologies. But just because prices are efficient, it doesn’t mean they’re fair. Some households struggle to afford their energy bills even when markets are working efficiently. So, when prices change to encourage cleaner energy, it can hit them harder.

    The government should implement new policies and expand eligibility for existing measures to take the burden off energy-poor households. These include social tariffs, which offer discounted rates to vulnerable consumers, and discounts for blocks of electricity use when renewables are generating a lot of it.

    Transition funds could help poorer households meet bills, while schemes to encourage home insulation and other improvements could see more homes with rooftop solar panels and battery storage.

    This support, combined with increasing investment in energy storage and renewables, will lower the wholesale price of electricity over time – and make energy more affordable (and fair) for everyone.

    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.

    Anupama Sen has previously received funding from the Quadrature Climate Foundation and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

    Cassandra Etter-Wenzel and Sam Fankhauser 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. Zonal pricing is dead – here’s how the UK should change its electricity system instead – https://theconversation.com/zonal-pricing-is-dead-heres-how-the-uk-should-change-its-electricity-system-instead-260985

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: MethaneSat: The climate spy satellite that went quiet

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vincent Gauci, Professorial Fellow, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham

    Satellites circling the Earth have many different functions, including navigation, communications and Earth observation. About 8%-10% of all active satellites are military or “dual use” serving intelligence or reconnaissance functions as spy satellites.

    But it was a climate satellite serving as both spy and “name and shame” police officer in the sky that recently caught the world’s attention when it went quiet.

    MethaneSat was developed to spot emission hot spots or plumes of invisible methane pollution from space. Built by the US non-profit, the Environmental Defense Fund with Nasa’s support, it tracked methane leaks from oil and gas sites, farms and landfills across the globe.

    These are among the biggest human-caused emission sources. But methane emissions are traditionally hard to spot because they come from so many relatively small point sources or plumes.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    This specialist observation satellite was developed and deployed because methane acts differently to other greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that, over 20 years, is more than 80 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

    Since 1750, additional human-caused methane emissions have contributed directly and indirectly, to around 60% of the global warming of carbon dioxide over that time.

    Methane also has a short lifetime. Where carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for in excess of 100 years, relying on plant uptake for its removal from the atmosphere and conversion into other carbon forms, methane is broken down in the atmosphere by molecules known as hydroxyl radicals. These are nicknamed “the atmosphere’s detergent”, because they effectively remove methane from the atmosphere in less than ten years.

    A gas flare at an oil refinery – one of many pinpoint sources of methane emissions.
    hkhtt hj/Shutterstock

    This combination of short lifetime and high global warming potential (a measure of the climate strength of the gas relative to carbon dioxide) makes methane both a problem and an ideal target for reduction. In fact, growth in atmospheric methane is occurring at such a rate that it is placing us dangerously off track from meeting our Paris agreement obligations to stay within 1.5°C of climate warming by 2050 and 2°C by 2100.

    Eyes in the sky

    But how can we achieve these reductions and what was the role of MethaneSat in seeking to meet this objective?

    There are two ways atmospheric methane concentrations can be reduced. A recent and more challenging proposition is that methane is actively removed from the atmosphere.

    This is difficult because it relies on technological advances that are at their earliest stages (although growing more trees can go some way to achieving this). Another more realistic approach is to reduce emissions and then to let atmospheric chemistry do the work of removing excess methane in the atmosphere.

    The global methane pledge was announced in 2021 at the UN climate summit, Cop26, in Glasgow. This aimed to reduce human-caused methane emissions by 30% on 2020 levels by 2030. More than 150 countries have now signed up to this pledge. If successful, it could reduce warming by up to 0.2°C by 2050. That’s why MethaneSat was so useful.

    MethaneSat is fitted with a hyperspectral sensor – which can record sunlight reflected off Earth in hundreds of narrow colour bands across the spectrum, far beyond what our eyes can see. It’s capable of picking up concentrations of methane in air at minute quantities.

    This sensor allowed the satellite to spot individual plumes of methane, so it had a crucial role in identifying those problem areas. Given that these are dispersed but also individual point sources, it was invaluable in intervening in the leaks, permitting identification of those responsible so they could be held to account and so address the problem.

    No one instrument can cover what MethaneSat could do with freely available data. It had high precision, high spatial resolution and, critically, global coverage and it was particularly useful at identifying plumes in nations that don’t have the resources for the sort of regional surveys using aircraft mounted systems that can fill the gap in developed regions.

    Now that MethaneSat is no longer operational, there are some other tools to identify small anthropogenic emissions sources, but they tend to be regionally focused like the aircraft measurements mentioned.

    Other satellites gather similar data but that data sits behind commercial paywalls, whereas MethaneSat data was freely available. Collectively, these drawbacks mean that it’s just going to be that much harder to spot the emissions MethaneSat was so good at tracking.

    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.

    Vincent Gauci receives funding from the NERC, Spark Climate Solutions, the JABBS Foundation and has received funding from the Royal Society, Defra and the AXA Research Fund.

    – ref. MethaneSat: The climate spy satellite that went quiet – https://theconversation.com/methanesat-the-climate-spy-satellite-that-went-quiet-261022

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: AI can be your wingman when online dating – but should you let it?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natasha McKeever, Lecturer in Applied Ethics, University of Leeds

    YWdesign/Shutterstock

    Many dating app companies are enthusiastic about incorporating generative AI into their products. Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of dating app Bumble, wants gen-AI to “help create more healthy and equitable relationships”. In her vision of the near future, people will have AI dating concierges who could “date” other people’s dating concierges for them, to find out which pairings were most compatible.

    Dating app Grindr is developing an AI wingman, which it hopes to be up and running by 2027. Match Group, owner of popular dating apps including Tinder, Hinge and OK Cupid, have also expressed keen interest in using gen-AI in their products, believing recent advances in AI technology “have the power to be transformational, making it more seamless and engaging for users to participate in dating apps”. One of the ways they think gen-AI can do this is by enhancing “the authenticity of human connections”.

    Use of gen-AI in online dating is not just some futuristic possibility, though. It’s already here.

    Want to enhance your photos or present yourself in a different style? There are plenty of online tools for that. Similarly, if you want AI to help “craft the perfect, attention-grabbing bio” for you, it can do that. AI can even help you with making conversation, by analysing your chat history and suggesting ways to reply.

    Extra help

    It isn’t just dating app companies who are enthusiastic about AI use in dating apps either. A recent survey carried out by Cosmopolitan magazine and Bumble of 5,000 gen-Zers and millennials found that 69% of respondents were excited about “the ways AI could make dating easier and more efficient”.

    An even higher proportion (86%) “believe it could help solve pervasive dating fatigue”. A surprising 86% of men and 77% of the women surveyed would share their message history with AI to help guide their dating app conversations.

    Dating today can feel like a mix of endless swipes, red flags and shifting expectations. From decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy, relationships in your 20s and 30s come with unique challenges.Love IRL is the latest series from Quarter Life that explores it all.

    These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love to help you build meaningful connections, no matter your relationship status.

    It’s not hard to see why AI is so appealing for dating app users and providers. Dating apps seem to be losing their novelty: many users are reportedly abandoning them due to so-called “dating app fatigue” – feeling bored and burnt out with dating apps.

    Apps and users might be hopeful that gen-AI can make dating apps fun again, or if not fun, then at least that it will make them actually lead to dates. Some AI dating companions claim to get you ten times more dates and better dates at that. Given that men tend to get fewer matches on dating apps than women, it’s also not surprising that we’re seeing more enthusiasm from men than women about the possibilities AI could bring.

    Talk of gen-AI in connection to online dating gives rise to many ethical concerns. We at the Ethical Dating Online Network, an international network of over 30 multi-disciplinary academics interested in how online dating could be more ethical, think that dating app companies need to convincingly answer these worries before rushing new products to market. Here are a few standout issues.

    Pitfalls of AI dating

    Technology companies correctly identify some contemporary social issues, such as loneliness, anxiety at social interactions, and concerns about dating culture, as hindering people’s dating lives.

    But turning to more technology to solve these issues puts us at risk of losing the skills we need to make close relationships work. The more we can reach for gen-AI to guide our interactions, the less we might be tempted to practise on our own, or to take accountability for what we communicate. After all, an AI “wingman” is of little use when meeting in person.

    Also, AI tools risk entrenching much of dating culture that people find stressful. Norms around “banter”, attractiveness or flirting can make the search for intimacy seem like a competitive battleground. The way AI works – learning from existing conversations – means that it will reproduce these less desirable aspects.

    Gen-AI may reproduce the negative elements of online dating culture.
    fizkes/Shutterstock

    Instead of embracing those norms and ideals, and trying to equip everyone with the tools to seemingly meet impossibly high standards, dating app companies could do more to “de-escalate” dating culture: make it calmer, more ordinary and help people be vulnerable. For example, they could rethink how they charge for their products, encourage a culture of honesty, and look at alternatives to the “swiping” interfaces.

    The possibility of misrepresentation is another concern. People have always massaged the truth when it comes to dating, and the internet has made this easier. But the more we are encouraged to use AI tools, and as they are embedded in dating apps, bad actors can more simply take advantage of the vulnerable.

    An AI-generated photo, or conversation, can lead to exchanges of bank details, grooming and sexual exploitation.

    Stopping short of fraud, however, is the looming intimate authenticity crisis. Online dating awash with AI generated material risks becoming a murky experience. A sincere user might struggle to identify like-minded matches on apps where use of AI is common.

    This interpretive burden is annoying for anyone, but it will exacerbate the existing frustrations women, more so than men, experience on dating apps as they navigate spaces full of with timewasting, abuse, harassment and unwanted sexualisation.

    Indeed, women might worry that AI will turbo-charge the ability of some men to prove a nuisance online. Bots, automation, conversation-generating tools, can help some men to lay claim to the attention of many women simultaneously.

    AI tools may seem like harmless fun, or a useful timesaver. Some people may even wholeheartedly accept that AI generated content is not “authentic” and love it anyway.

    Without clear guardrails in place, however, and more effort by app companies to provide informed choices based on transparency about how their apps work, any potential benefits of AI will be obscured by the negative impact it has to intimacy online.

    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. AI can be your wingman when online dating – but should you let it? – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-be-your-wingman-when-online-dating-but-should-you-let-it-254666

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Looking for meaningful romantic relationships? Start by diversifying your friendships and forgetting your wishlist

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mariko Visserman, Assistant Professor in Psychology, University of Sussex

    loreanto/Shutterstock

    When you’re looking for a relationship, chances are you’ll start off with a wishlist for your ideal partner. Maybe someone who is attractive or wealthy, someone who likes the same movies and the outdoors. Seems like a solid starting point, right? The problem is that in the real world, these wishlists are rarely helpful. And how realistic is the idea that one person can fulfil all our needs in the first place?

    In 2017, researchers conducted a large speed-dating study. They wanted to see how well the preferences people indicated for a potential partner predicted who they wanted to see again after the event.

    The researchers were left with nothing: people’s wishlists did not predict who they actually liked. Instead, they suggested that the best predictor of whether you like someone is seeing how they make you feel when you interact with them. Do you feel comfortable in their presence? Do they make you laugh?

    The scientific evidence suggests that you have to meet people in the flesh if you want to find your match.

    Dating today can feel like a mix of endless swipes, red flags and shifting expectations. From decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy, relationships in your 20s and 30s come with unique challenges. Love IRL is the latest series from The Conversation’s Quarter Life that explores it all.

    These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love to help you build meaningful connections, no matter your relationship status.

    People used to find their romantic partner by tapping into their social networks – through friends, family, or the people they met in their daily lives. Nowadays, we often look for a romantic partner using online dating platforms, which allow us to access a larger network of potential romantic partners than ever before.

    This apparent abundance may encourage a critical comparison with your wishlist and you may spend a lot of time swiping through profiles of potential partners, without initiating meeting them.

    Research suggests that doing so can leave you feeling paralysed by an overload of choice and less optimistic about your chances. Research also shows that people tend to have fewer matches as the number of profiles on offer increases.

    The researchers of this paradox suggest that you may be wise to put yourself on a dating diet: only looking at a limited number of profiles each day and exploring them with a curious mind. Then, when contact is established and you feel positive about the initial interaction, the real experiment begins.

    When you spend a long time interacting online you may construct an idealised version of your potential partner and what you hope they’re like. That leaves you all the more likely to be disappointed when meeting them in person, as it’s easy for them to fall short of your expectations.

    When you spend long time interacting online you may construct an idealised version of your potential partner.
    dodotone/Shutterstock

    A better strategy would be to meet them in the flesh with a curious mind, before becoming overly invested in an online persona that is not a fair representation of what the other person may be like.

    Taking it offline

    Whether you will go on to have a satisfying relationship in the long run depends more than anything on your relationship expectations and behaviour.

    Being kind and attentive to each other’s goals and needs ensures each partner’s happiness and will help weather any challenge, small or large, that couples inevitably face. But here too, technology may disrupt your mindful awareness of others – for example being on your phone in the presence of your partner – posing a risk to enjoying relationships.

    Couples today also seem to have historically high expectations for their partner to help them fulfil all their goals and needs. You may want a partner to be a passionate lover, your best friend, your motivational coach and help you achieve personal growth.

    In other words, people’s wishlists people carry into relationships too, as we long for a partner to fulfil all our needs.

    Diversifying your friendships can put less pressure on your romantic connection.
    Dupe/Daniel Bughiu

    Demanding all of this from one partner can place too much pressure on the relationships, rather than satisfying your needs. You may be left with a dissatisfying relationship that falls short of your expectations.

    In some ways, we may all benefit from adopting lower expectations when looking for a partner and when being with them long term. This may help us appreciate them instead of taking their support and kind acts for granted.

    It’s also a good idea to diversify your relationships. Having other important close (and even less close) relationships can help fulfil some needs your partner may not be best suited to meet, such as friends who like the same movies you do or who like to explore the outdoors together.

    Research has shown that a greater diversity of relationships benefits happiness, as different relationships can serve different roles in fulfilling your needs, which may take some pressure off “the one” fulfilling all your needs.

    Putting some brakes on your expectations for a romantic partner, when looking for a partner and when sharing your life with them, may help you to see more clearly who they are and appreciate what they contribute to your life.

    Mariko Visserman 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. Looking for meaningful romantic relationships? Start by diversifying your friendships and forgetting your wishlist – https://theconversation.com/looking-for-meaningful-romantic-relationships-start-by-diversifying-your-friendships-and-forgetting-your-wishlist-254022

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Love IRL: a new Quarter Life series on modern dating from The Conversation

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor

    Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

    None of the cultural love stories of the 2000s started with a swipe. Friends taught us that your social circle could double as a dating pool. The Office proved that love could blossom by the water cooler, and in High School Musical the perfect match could be the new girl at school.

    But in the years since, apps have changed the way we date. The old-fashioned meet-cute was replaced by swipes, and slow-burn feelings were forgotten in favour of instant digital chemistry. It came with some benefits. Gone were the days when your romantic options were limited to bad set-ups, overly flirty colleagues, or trying to catch the eye of the hottie reading on the train. And introverts could pursue connections without the anxiety of approaching someone in a noisy bar or making the first move with a friend. But there were losses too.

    While the convenience of dating apps expanded our horizons, they also stripped away some of the spontaneity and authenticity of in-person connections. The rush of emotions tied to real-life interactions – the spark of chemistry when eyes meet across a room or the thrill of an unexpected conversation – has become less frequent. Swiping left and right creates a kind of detachment, where it’s easier to dismiss someone with a flick of the thumb than to take a moment to truly get to know them. What we gained in options, we lost in meaningful connections.

    Now another love revolution is on the horizon as algorithms and AI start to play an ever-growing role in how we form and navigate our relationships. Whether you’re single, dating, married or somewhere in between, our love lives are increasingly mediated by technology.

    This is especially true for those of us in our 20s and 30s, who grew up with the promise of finding romance in real life but came of age as the dating app revolution began in earnest. Which is where Love IRL, a new Quarter Life series from The Conversation, comes in. These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love, from decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy. Along the way we’ll help you navigate the ghosts, love-bombers, breadcrumbers and catfishers and strive for more meaningful connections – offline and on.

    Some of the topics you’ll read about include how ditching the wishlists can help you find meaningful romantic relationships, how AI wingmen are influencing online dating, and how rising living costs are changing the way we date, live and love.

    Thoughts? Relationship woes? Get in touch at quarterlife@theconversation.com

    Dating today can feel like a mix of endless swipes, red flags and shifting expectations. From decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy, relationships in your 20s and 30s come with unique challenges. Love IRL is the latest series from Quarter Life that explores it all.

    These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love to help you build meaningful connections, no matter your relationship status.

    – ref. Love IRL: a new Quarter Life series on modern dating from The Conversation – https://theconversation.com/love-irl-a-new-quarter-life-series-on-modern-dating-from-the-conversation-259474

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: California farmers identify a hot new cash crop: Solar power

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jacob Stid, Ph.D. student in Hydrogeology, Michigan State University

    This dairy farm in California’s Central Valley has installed solar panels on a portion of its land. George Rose/Getty Images

    Imagine that you own a small, 20-acre farm in California’s Central Valley. You and your family have cultivated this land for decades, but drought, increasing costs and decreasing water availability are making each year more difficult.

    Now imagine that a solar-electricity developer approaches you and presents three options:

    • You can lease the developer 10 acres of otherwise productive cropland, on which the developer will build an array of solar panels and sell electricity to the local power company.
    • You can select 1 or 2 acres of your land on which to build and operate your own solar array, using some electricity for your farm and selling the rest to the utility.
    • Or you can keep going as you have been, hoping your farm can somehow survive.

    Thousands of farmers across the country, including in the Central Valley, are choosing one of the first two options. A 2022 survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that roughly 117,000 U.S. farm operations have some type of solar device. Our own work has identified over 6,500 solar arrays currently located on U.S. farmland.

    Our study of nearly 1,000 solar arrays built on 10,000 acres of the Central Valley over the past two decades found that solar power and farming are complementing each other in farmers’ business operations. As a result, farmers are making and saving more money while using less water – helping them keep their land and livelihood.

    A hotter, drier and more built-up future

    Perhaps nowhere in the U.S. is farmland more valuable or more productive than California’s Central Valley. The region grows a vast array of crops, including nearly all of the nation’s production of almonds, olives and sweet rice. Using less than 1% of all farmland in the country, the Central Valley supplies a quarter of the nation’s food, including 40% of its fruits, nuts and other fresh foods.

    The food, fuel and fiber that these farms produce are a bedrock of the nation’s economy, food system and way of life.

    But decades of intense cultivation, urban development and climate change are squeezing farmers. Water is limited, and getting more so: A state law passed in 2014 requires farmers to further reduce their water usage by the mid-2040s.

    California’s Central Valley is some of the most productive cropland in the country.
    Citizen of the Planet/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    The trade-offs of installing solar on agricultural land

    When the solar arrays we studied were installed, California state solar energy policy and incentives gave farm landowners new ways to diversify their income by either leasing their land for solar arrays or building their own.

    There was an obvious trade-off: Turning land used for crops to land used for solar usually means losing agricultural production. We estimated that over the 25-year life of the solar arrays, this land would have produced enough food to feed 86,000 people a year, assuming they eat 2,000 calories a day.

    There was an obvious benefit, too, of clean energy: These arrays produced enough renewable electricity to power 470,000 U.S. households every year.

    But the result we were hoping to identify and measure was the economic effect of shifting that land from agricultural farming to solar farming. We found that farmers who installed solar were dramatically better off than those who did not.

    They were better off in two ways, the first being financially. All the farmers, whether they owned their own arrays or leased their land to others, saved money on seeds, fertilizer and other costs associated with growing and harvesting crops. They also earned money from leasing the land, offsetting farm energy bills, and selling their excess electricity.

    Farmers who owned their own arrays had to pay for the panels, equipment and installation, and maintenance. But even after covering those costs, their savings and earnings added up to US$50,000 per acre of profits every year, 25 times the amount they would have earned by planting that acre.

    Farmers who leased their land made much less money but still avoided costs for irrigation water and operations on that part of their farm, gaining $1,100 per acre per year – with no up-front costs.

    The farmers also conserved water, which in turn supported compliance with the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act water use reduction requirements. Most of the solar arrays were installed on land that had previously been irrigated. We calculated that turning off irrigation on this land saved enough water every year to supply about 27 million people with drinking water or irrigate 7,500 acres of orchards. Following solar array installation, some farmers also fallowed surrounding land, perhaps enabled by the new stable income stream, which further reduced water use.

    Irrigation is key to cropland productivity in California’s Central Valley. Covering some land with solar panels eliminates the need for irrigation of that area, saving water for other uses elsewhere.
    Citizen of the Planet/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Changes to food and energy production

    Farmers in the Central Valley and elsewhere are now cultivating both food and energy. This shift can offer long-term security for farmland owners, particularly for those who install and run their own arrays.

    Recent estimates suggest that converting between 1.1% and 2.4% of the country’s farmland to solar arrays would, along with other clean energy sources, generate enough electricity to eliminate the nation’s need for fossil fuel power plants.

    Though many crops are part of a global market that can adjust to changes in supply, losing this farmland could affect the availability of some crops. Fortunately, farmers and landowners are finding new ways to protect farmland and food security while supporting clean energy.

    One such approach is agrivoltaics, where farmers install solar designed for grazing livestock or growing crops beneath the panels. Solar can also be sited on less productive farmland or on farmland that is used for biofuels rather than food production.

    Even in these areas, arrays can be designed and managed to benefit local agriculture and natural ecosystems. With thoughtful design, siting and management, solar can give back to the land and the ecosystems it touches.

    Farms are much more than the land they occupy and the goods they produce. Farms are run by people with families, whose well-being depends on essential and variable resources such as water, fertilizer, fuel, electricity and crop sales. Farmers often borrow money during the planting season in hopes of making enough at harvest time to pay off the debt and keep a little profit.

    Installing solar on their land can give farmers a diversified income, help them save water, and reduce the risk of bad years. That can make solar an asset to farming, not a threat to the food supply.

    Jacob Stid works for Michigan State University. Funding for this work came from the US Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture program and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Michigan State University. He also receives funding from the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research.

    Annick Anctil receives funding from NSF and USDA.

    Anthony Kendall receives funding from the USDA, NASA, the NSF, and the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research. He is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, and serves on the nonprofit board of the FLOW Water Advocates.

    – ref. California farmers identify a hot new cash crop: Solar power – https://theconversation.com/california-farmers-identify-a-hot-new-cash-crop-solar-power-259653

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Patients who feel heard are more likely to stick with medical treatment

    Source: The Conversation – France – By Diana Pérez-Arechaederra, Associate Professor of Organizational Psychology, ESCP Business School

    In the 2000s, when I worked as a psychologist in long-term elderly care and primary healthcare services, many of the patients I saw were living with chronic or complex conditions. These situations required that patients trust care providers, consistently adhere to treatments and, often, receive care over an extended period of time.

    But what stood out to me were the differences in how those protocols were applied. Some practitioners took time to explain something clearly, asked questions that showed genuine care, or invited patients into a conversation about their treatment. I also noticed how differently patients responded when none of that happened.

    The quality of communication – the level of respect, attention and clarity – often made the difference between patients’ cooperation and resistance, between their motivation and withdrawal.

    These observations led me to systematically investigate the psychological processes involved in how patients perceive fairness in healthcare.

    What I found, in collaboration with colleagues, is that this “soft” dimension of care – how people perceive their treatment, how information is shared with them, and how much time and space they are given to take part in the process – has very real effects on behaviour. Patients’ perception of respect – what we call interactional fairness – often hinges on whether they are given the chance to ask questions, make sense of information, weigh different options and even participate in making decisions. For patients to follow a practitioner’s recommendations, they need to feel informed, heard, respected and involved – not just treated.

    What fairness looks like in practice

    In our study, we examined two forms of what psychologists call organizational justice in healthcare settings:

    • Interactional justice – the sense of being treated with dignity, attentiveness and respect

    • Informational justice – the perception that shared information is clear, complete, timely and relevant

    We surveyed over 850 patients in Spain and the United States who had visited a healthcare provider in the previous six months. We asked them how they experienced their interactions with health professionals, how much they trusted those professionals, how satisfied they were with the service, whether they followed medical advice, and whether they intended to return to the same provider.

    What we saw was a clear pattern. Patients who perceived fairness – being treated with respect and given clear and appropriate information – were more likely to trust their healthcare provider. That trust, in turn, shaped whether they felt able to engage with treatment and sustain their relationship with (or, in the language of our study, their “loyalty” to) the healthcare service or physician. What we call informational fairness had a particularly strong direct link to adherence to treatments or clinical advice, showing its importance for understanding patient behaviour.

    In healthcare, patients are navigating uncertainty, vulnerability, and long-term relationships with systems and providers. Their ability to understand, participate in and trust that process is integral to care.


    A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

    Insights across borders

    Despite the structural and institutional differences between Spain, with its predominantly public healthcare system, and the United States, where healthcare is largely organised through the private sector, our goal was to identify common patterns in how patients interpret and engage with services. Specifically, we sought to understand whether similar cognitive and emotional processes create the patient experience, regardless of the broader healthcare system in place.

    Using path analysis models, we assessed the relationships between patients’ perceptions of fairness and their resulting levels of trust and satisfaction, and then, the relationship between those perceptions and patients’ adherence and loyalty to the service. While patients in the United States exhibited slightly stronger associations between perceived fairness and both trust and satisfaction, the overall nature of the relationships was highly consistent across both countries.

    These findings suggest that despite differences in how care is delivered and financed, patients in both countries respond to their healthcare interactions in fundamentally similar ways. This matters for healthcare providers and policymakers across diverse settings who are aiming to enhance patient-centred care.

    Recognizing patients as agents

    At the heart of this is an ethical question: Are patients treated as agents in their own care, or simply as objects of intervention?

    Medicine is not a closed, flawless system. It is a developing field of research being translated into practice, and its shortcomings are shaped by social and structural biases, and by the fact that patients may not be given all of the options they should receive. In areas such as women’s health, chronic pain, mental health and rare diseases, patients often offer insights that clinical protocols miss. When their lived experience is ignored or dismissed, we lose opportunities for better diagnoses, more responsive and efficient care, and more sustainable treatment plans.



    À lire aussi :
    Doctors need to talk through treatment options better for black men with prostate cancer

    When I was working in elderly care, I remember the testimony of a resident who was very upset because his parenteral treatment (an injection) had been changed to an enteral one (a drink). Nobody informed him about the change. When I asked him why he was so unhappy, he said: “I much preferred the injections because the clinician who came to administer them was very nice to me. We were friends. Now, I’ll never see her again.”

    I’m not sure whether continuing with the parenteral administration was even possible, but what was certain is that nobody asked him what he preferred. And that had an impact on him.

    Listening to patients is not merely being polite: it is recognizing that they have information that professionals lack. And that the ethical foundation of health care depends not only on what medical professionals do to patients, but on how they work with them.

    What can be done

    Creating fairer care involves the following concrete practices, which come from our findings:

    • Designing information systems that support timely, accessible and patient-centred communication

    • Designing procedures and allocating enough time for professionals to conduct themselves in accordance with interactional and informational fairness principles

    • Training for professionals in relational and communication skills that foster patients’ perceptions of respect and dignity

    • Educating patients about what care can reasonably provide to help set appropriate expectations

    • Reframing patient participation so that patients are not just surveyed after the fact, but listened to and given agency throughout the care process



    À lire aussi :
    Power to the patient: Person-centred care and how you can take your health into your own hands

    None of this is separate from clinical quality. On the contrary, it is what allows clinical care to work best and for all. When patients feel that they matter – that they are respected and informed – they are more likely to collaborate, follow through and return for more care if they need it. That would benefit patients, their practitioners, healthcare systems and society.

    The scientific article referred to in this piece was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), whose projects, RD24/0005/0018, were co-funded by the European Union and the Facility for Recovery and Resilience (MRR). The Network for Research on Chronicity, Primary Care and Health Promotion (RICAPPS) was involved in the development of RD24/0005/0018. Projects PI22/01677 and PI20/00321 were co-financed by the European Union. The government of Castilla y León also collaborated in the funding of this study through research projects BioSan 2009 and BioSan 2011. These funders played no role in the study design, data analysis, results reporting or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

    – ref. Patients who feel heard are more likely to stick with medical treatment – https://theconversation.com/patients-who-feel-heard-are-more-likely-to-stick-with-medical-treatment-260750

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-Evening Report: David Robie: New Zealand must do more for Pacific and confront nuclear powers

    Rongelap Islanders on board the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior travelling to their new home on Mejatto Island in 1985 — less than two months before the bombing. Image: ©1985 David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    He accused the coalition government of being “too timid” and “afraid of offending President Donald Trump” to make a stand on the nuclear issue.

    However, a spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Pacific that New Zealand’s “overarching priority . . . is to work with Pacific partners to achieve a secure, stable, and prosperous region that preserves Pacific sovereignty and agency”.

    The spokesperson said that through its foreign policy “reset”, New Zealand was committed to “comprehensive relationships” with Pacific Island countries.

    “New Zealand’s identity, prosperity and security are intertwined with the Pacific through deep cultural, people, historical, security, and economic linkages.”

    The New Zealand government commits almost 60 percent of its development funding to the region.

    Pacific ‘increasingly contested’
    The spokesperson said that the Pacific was becoming increasingly contested and complex.

    “New Zealand has been clear with all of our partners that it is important that engagement in the Pacific takes place in a manner which advances Pacific priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supportive of Pacific regional institutions.”

    They added that New Zealand’s main focus remained on the Pacific, “where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region.

    “We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific Governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need,” the spokesperson said.

    The cover of the latest edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Little Island Press

    However, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, writing in the prologue of Dr Robie’s book, said: “New Zealand needs to re-emphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.”

    Dr Robie added that looking back 40 years to the 1980s, there was a strong sense of pride in being from Aotearoa, the small country which set an example around the world.

    “We took on . . . the nuclear powers,” Dr Robie said.

    “And the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was symbolic of that struggle, in a way, but it was a struggle that most New Zealanders felt a part of, and we were very proud of that [anti-nuclear] role that we took.

    “Over the years, it has sort of been forgotten”.

    ‘Look at history’
     France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.

    Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were “clean” and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

    From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands by the US.

    The 1 March 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded by the United States, left a legacy of fallout and radiation contamination that continues to this day. Image: Marshall Islands Journal

    In 2024, then-US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, while responding to a question from RNZ Pacific about America’s nuclear legacy, said: “Washington has attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”

    However, Dr Robie said that was not good enough and labelled the destruction left behind by the US, and France, as “outrageous”.

    “It is political speak; politicians trying to cover their backs and so on. If you look at history, [the response] is nowhere near good enough, both by the US and the French.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: David Robie: New Zealand must do more for Pacific and confront nuclear powers

    Rongelap Islanders on board the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior travelling to their new home on Mejatto Island in 1985 — less than two months before the bombing. Image: ©1985 David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    He accused the coalition government of being “too timid” and “afraid of offending President Donald Trump” to make a stand on the nuclear issue.

    However, a spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Pacific that New Zealand’s “overarching priority . . . is to work with Pacific partners to achieve a secure, stable, and prosperous region that preserves Pacific sovereignty and agency”.

    The spokesperson said that through its foreign policy “reset”, New Zealand was committed to “comprehensive relationships” with Pacific Island countries.

    “New Zealand’s identity, prosperity and security are intertwined with the Pacific through deep cultural, people, historical, security, and economic linkages.”

    The New Zealand government commits almost 60 percent of its development funding to the region.

    Pacific ‘increasingly contested’
    The spokesperson said that the Pacific was becoming increasingly contested and complex.

    “New Zealand has been clear with all of our partners that it is important that engagement in the Pacific takes place in a manner which advances Pacific priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supportive of Pacific regional institutions.”

    They added that New Zealand’s main focus remained on the Pacific, “where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region.

    “We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific Governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need,” the spokesperson said.

    The cover of the latest edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Little Island Press

    However, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, writing in the prologue of Dr Robie’s book, said: “New Zealand needs to re-emphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.”

    Dr Robie added that looking back 40 years to the 1980s, there was a strong sense of pride in being from Aotearoa, the small country which set an example around the world.

    “We took on . . . the nuclear powers,” Dr Robie said.

    “And the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was symbolic of that struggle, in a way, but it was a struggle that most New Zealanders felt a part of, and we were very proud of that [anti-nuclear] role that we took.

    “Over the years, it has sort of been forgotten”.

    ‘Look at history’
     France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.

    Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were “clean” and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

    From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands by the US.

    The 1 March 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded by the United States, left a legacy of fallout and radiation contamination that continues to this day. Image: Marshall Islands Journal

    In 2024, then-US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, while responding to a question from RNZ Pacific about America’s nuclear legacy, said: “Washington has attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”

    However, Dr Robie said that was not good enough and labelled the destruction left behind by the US, and France, as “outrageous”.

    “It is political speak; politicians trying to cover their backs and so on. If you look at history, [the response] is nowhere near good enough, both by the US and the French.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Ken Henry urges nature law reform after decades of ‘intergenerational bastardry’

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phillipa C. McCormack, Future Making Fellow, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide

    Former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry has warned Australia’s global environmental reputation is at risk if the Albanese government fails to reform nature laws this term.

    In his speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Henry said reform was needed to restore nature and power the net zero economy.

    Speaking as chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, Henry said with “glistening ambition”, Australia can “build an efficient, jobs-rich, globally competitive, high-productivity, low-emissions nature-rich economy”.

    The speech comes at a crucial time for nature law reform in Australia. The new Environment Minister Murray Watt has committed to prioritise reform, after the Albanese government failed to achieve substantial changes to these laws in the last parliament.

    On Wednesday, Henry condemned previous failed attempts to reform the laws. He described delays in improving environmental management as “a wilful act of intergenerational bastardry”.

    The need for fundamental reform

    The Albanese government abandoned efforts to pass important reforms in its first term.

    Environment Minister Murray Watt has committed to achieving reforms within 18 months, acknowledging “our current laws are broken”.

    In his speech on Wednesday, Henry agreed with this sentiment. He described the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as “a misnomer, if ever there was one”.

    Henry is both a former Treasury Secretary and former chair of National Australia Bank. He also wrote Australia’s most important white paper on tax reform.

    Henry has previously said environmental law reform could be a template for other essential, difficult law reform, such as fixing Australia’s broken tax system.

    He understands Australia’s broken environmental laws. In 2022-23, he led an independent review into nature laws in New South Wales. That review found the laws were failing and would never succeed in their current form.

    At the start of his speech on Wednesday, Henry came close to tears when he acknowledged Greens Senator Sarah Hansen-Young’s support for those who look after injured and orphaned native animals.

    As a bureaucrat in Canberra, Henry also used to rescue injured animals and nurse them back to health.

    Logging and land clearing for development destroys koala habitat.
    Pexels, Pixabay, CC BY

    Big challenges ahead

    As Henry noted on Wednesday, Australia faces enormous challenges. These include the need to rapidly build more housing and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

    But before building suburbs, wind farms, transmission lines, mines and roads, projects need to be assessed for their potential to harm the environment.

    Henry on Wednesday called for sweeping changes, drawing on Graeme Samuel’s 2019-20 review of the EPBC Act. The changes include:

    • genuine cooperation across all levels of government, industry and the community
    • high-integrity evidence to inform decision making
    • clear, strong and enforceable standards applied nationwide
    • an independent and trusted decision-maker, in the form of a national Environment Protection Authority
    • a natural capital market, which – if well-designed – could provide a financial incentive for nature restoration and carbon storage in the form of tradable credits.

    Without the reforms, Henry said, Australia would not “retain a shred of credibility” for two global commitments: reaching net zero emissions, and halting and reversing biodiversity loss.

    The net zero commitment is at risk because existing laws are not sufficient to protect carbon sinks, such as forests. The roll out of renewable energy is also being slowed by inefficient approvals processes.

    Henry said the concept of “ecologically sustainable development”, which seeks to balance economic, social, and economic goals, needs serious rethinking. This concept has been the foundation of environment policy in Australia, including the EPBC Act, for the past 30 years.

    Henry wrote the first Intergenerational Report for the federal government in 2002. He has criticised governments for allowing environmental destruction that will leave future generations worse off.

    He has variously described Australia’s failure to steward our natural resources as an intergenerational tragedy, as intergenerational theft, and a wilful act of intergenerational bastardry – claims he repeated on Wednesday.

    Making money grow on trees

    Henry grew up on the Mid North Coast of NSW where his father, a worker in the timber industry, helped log native forests.

    Land clearing is the main threat to Australian biodiversity, and preventing native vegetation loss would also cut greenhouse gas emissions.

    The foundation Henry chairs advocates for the protection and restoration of Australia’s native forests. Henry has previously backed a plan to store carbon in native forests, which would mean trees were protected and not cut down.

    In his Press Club address, Henry lamented ongoing land clearing, poor fire management in remnant forests, and logging of habitat for endangered species such as the koala and the greater glider. He also called for nature laws that enable projects to be delivered in a way that not only protects but also restores nature. For instance, he said carbon credits could help fund the Great Koala National Park proposed for NSW.

    Logging continues in old growth native forest.
    Chris Putnam/Future Publishing via Getty Images

    What’s the Australian government doing?

    Despite Murray Watt’s stated commitment to nature law reform, there are signs the environment may again come off second-best.

    At a recent meeting with key stakeholders, including industry and environment groups, Watt said compromise was needed. He warned environmental protections must come with streamlined project approvals “to improve productivity”.

    Henry on Wednesday acknowledged faster approvals were needed, saying:

    We simply cannot afford slow, opaque, duplicative and contested environmental planning decisions based on poor information mired in administrative complexity.

    But he said faster approvals should not come at a greater cost to nature. In his words:

    with due acknowledgement of the genius of AC/DC, there is no point in building a faster highway to hell.

    Henry said the current parliament has time to put the right policy settings in place. The remedies also enjoy broad stakeholder support. “We’ve had all the reviews we need,” he said. “All of us have had our say. It is now up to parliament. Let’s just get this done.”

    Phillipa C. McCormack receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Natural Hazards Research Australia, the National Environmental Science Program, Green Adelaide and the ACT Government. She is a member of the National Environmental Law Association and affiliated with the Wildlife Crime Research Hub.

    – ref. Ken Henry urges nature law reform after decades of ‘intergenerational bastardry’ – https://theconversation.com/ken-henry-urges-nature-law-reform-after-decades-of-intergenerational-bastardry-261167

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Ken Henry urges nature law reform after decades of ‘intergenerational bastardry’

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phillipa C. McCormack, Future Making Fellow, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide

    Former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry has warned Australia’s global environmental reputation is at risk if the Albanese government fails to reform nature laws this term.

    In his speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Henry said reform was needed to restore nature and power the net zero economy.

    Speaking as chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, Henry said with “glistening ambition”, Australia can “build an efficient, jobs-rich, globally competitive, high-productivity, low-emissions nature-rich economy”.

    The speech comes at a crucial time for nature law reform in Australia. The new Environment Minister Murray Watt has committed to prioritise reform, after the Albanese government failed to achieve substantial changes to these laws in the last parliament.

    On Wednesday, Henry condemned previous failed attempts to reform the laws. He described delays in improving environmental management as “a wilful act of intergenerational bastardry”.

    The need for fundamental reform

    The Albanese government abandoned efforts to pass important reforms in its first term.

    Environment Minister Murray Watt has committed to achieving reforms within 18 months, acknowledging “our current laws are broken”.

    In his speech on Wednesday, Henry agreed with this sentiment. He described the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as “a misnomer, if ever there was one”.

    Henry is both a former Treasury Secretary and former chair of National Australia Bank. He also wrote Australia’s most important white paper on tax reform.

    Henry has previously said environmental law reform could be a template for other essential, difficult law reform, such as fixing Australia’s broken tax system.

    He understands Australia’s broken environmental laws. In 2022-23, he led an independent review into nature laws in New South Wales. That review found the laws were failing and would never succeed in their current form.

    At the start of his speech on Wednesday, Henry came close to tears when he acknowledged Greens Senator Sarah Hansen-Young’s support for those who look after injured and orphaned native animals.

    As a bureaucrat in Canberra, Henry also used to rescue injured animals and nurse them back to health.

    Logging and land clearing for development destroys koala habitat.
    Pexels, Pixabay, CC BY

    Big challenges ahead

    As Henry noted on Wednesday, Australia faces enormous challenges. These include the need to rapidly build more housing and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

    But before building suburbs, wind farms, transmission lines, mines and roads, projects need to be assessed for their potential to harm the environment.

    Henry on Wednesday called for sweeping changes, drawing on Graeme Samuel’s 2019-20 review of the EPBC Act. The changes include:

    • genuine cooperation across all levels of government, industry and the community
    • high-integrity evidence to inform decision making
    • clear, strong and enforceable standards applied nationwide
    • an independent and trusted decision-maker, in the form of a national Environment Protection Authority
    • a natural capital market, which – if well-designed – could provide a financial incentive for nature restoration and carbon storage in the form of tradable credits.

    Without the reforms, Henry said, Australia would not “retain a shred of credibility” for two global commitments: reaching net zero emissions, and halting and reversing biodiversity loss.

    The net zero commitment is at risk because existing laws are not sufficient to protect carbon sinks, such as forests. The roll out of renewable energy is also being slowed by inefficient approvals processes.

    Henry said the concept of “ecologically sustainable development”, which seeks to balance economic, social, and economic goals, needs serious rethinking. This concept has been the foundation of environment policy in Australia, including the EPBC Act, for the past 30 years.

    Henry wrote the first Intergenerational Report for the federal government in 2002. He has criticised governments for allowing environmental destruction that will leave future generations worse off.

    He has variously described Australia’s failure to steward our natural resources as an intergenerational tragedy, as intergenerational theft, and a wilful act of intergenerational bastardry – claims he repeated on Wednesday.

    Making money grow on trees

    Henry grew up on the Mid North Coast of NSW where his father, a worker in the timber industry, helped log native forests.

    Land clearing is the main threat to Australian biodiversity, and preventing native vegetation loss would also cut greenhouse gas emissions.

    The foundation Henry chairs advocates for the protection and restoration of Australia’s native forests. Henry has previously backed a plan to store carbon in native forests, which would mean trees were protected and not cut down.

    In his Press Club address, Henry lamented ongoing land clearing, poor fire management in remnant forests, and logging of habitat for endangered species such as the koala and the greater glider. He also called for nature laws that enable projects to be delivered in a way that not only protects but also restores nature. For instance, he said carbon credits could help fund the Great Koala National Park proposed for NSW.

    Logging continues in old growth native forest.
    Chris Putnam/Future Publishing via Getty Images

    What’s the Australian government doing?

    Despite Murray Watt’s stated commitment to nature law reform, there are signs the environment may again come off second-best.

    At a recent meeting with key stakeholders, including industry and environment groups, Watt said compromise was needed. He warned environmental protections must come with streamlined project approvals “to improve productivity”.

    Henry on Wednesday acknowledged faster approvals were needed, saying:

    We simply cannot afford slow, opaque, duplicative and contested environmental planning decisions based on poor information mired in administrative complexity.

    But he said faster approvals should not come at a greater cost to nature. In his words:

    with due acknowledgement of the genius of AC/DC, there is no point in building a faster highway to hell.

    Henry said the current parliament has time to put the right policy settings in place. The remedies also enjoy broad stakeholder support. “We’ve had all the reviews we need,” he said. “All of us have had our say. It is now up to parliament. Let’s just get this done.”

    Phillipa C. McCormack receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Natural Hazards Research Australia, the National Environmental Science Program, Green Adelaide and the ACT Government. She is a member of the National Environmental Law Association and affiliated with the Wildlife Crime Research Hub.

    – ref. Ken Henry urges nature law reform after decades of ‘intergenerational bastardry’ – https://theconversation.com/ken-henry-urges-nature-law-reform-after-decades-of-intergenerational-bastardry-261167

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: First-hand view of peacemaking challenge in the ‘Holy Land’

    Occupied West Bank-based New Zealand journalist Cole Martin asks who are the peacemakers?

    BEARING WITNESS: By Cole Martin

    As a Kiwi journalist living in the occupied West Bank, I can list endless reasons why there is no peace in the “Holy Land”.

    I live in a refugee camp, alongside families who were expelled from their homes by Israel’s violent establishment in 1948 — never allowed to return and repeatedly targeted by Israeli military incursions.

    Daily I witness suffocating checkpoints, settler attacks against rural towns, arbitrary imprisonment with no charge or trial, a crippled economy, expansion of illegal settlements, demolition of entire communities, genocidal rhetoric, and continued expulsion.

    No form of peace can exist within an active system of domination. To talk about peace without liberation and dignity is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.

    I often find myself alongside a variety of peacemakers, putting themselves on the line to end these horrific systems — let me outline the key groups:

    Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, co-ordinating demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience. Google “Iqrit village”, “The Great March of Return”, “Tent of Nations farm”. These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines.

    Protective Presence activists are a mix of about 150 Israeli and international civilians who volunteer their days and nights physically accompanying Palestinian communities. They aim to prevent Israeli settler violence, state-sanctioned home demolitions, and military/police incursions. They document the injustice and often face violence and arrest themselves. Foreigners face deportation and blacklisting — as a journalist I was arrested and barred from the West Bank short-term and my passport was withheld for more than a month.

    Reconciliation organisations have been working for decades to bridge the disconnect between political narratives and human realities. The effective groups don’t seek “co-existence” but “co-resistance” because they recognise there can be no peace within an active system of apartheid. They reiterate that dialogue alone achieves nothing while the Israeli regime continues to murder, displace and steal. Yes there are “opposing narratives”, but they do not have equal legitimacy when tested against the reality on the ground.

    Journalists continue to document and report key developments, chilling statistics and the human cost. They ensure people are seen. Over 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza. High-profile Palestinian Christian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh was killed by Israeli forces in 2022. They continue reporting despite the risk, and without their courage world leaders wouldn’t know which undeniable facts to brazenly ignore.

    Humanitarians serve and protect the most vulnerable, treating and rescuing people selflessly. More than 400 aid workers and 1000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza. All 38 hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, with just a small number left partially functioning. NGOs have been crippled by USAID cuts and targeted Israeli policies, marked by a mass exodus of expats who have spent years committed to this region — severing a critical lifeline for Palestinian communities.

    All these groups emphasise change will not come from within. Protective Presence barely stems the flow.

    Reconciliation means nothing while the system continues to displace, imprison and slaughter Palestinians en masse. Journalism, non-violence and humanitarian efforts are only as effective as the willingness of states to uphold international law.

    Those on the frontlines of peacebuilding express the urgent need for global accountability across all sectors; economic, cultural and political sanctions. Systems of apartheid do not stem from corrupt leadership or several extremists, but from widespread attitudes of supremacy and nationalism across civil society.

    Boycotts increase the economic cost of maintaining such systems. Divestment sends a strong financial message that business as usual is unacceptable.

    Many other groups across the world are picketing weapons manufacturers, writing to elected leaders, educating friends and family, challenging harmful narratives, fundraising aid to keep people alive.

    Where are the peacemakers? They’re out on the streets. They’re people just like you and me.

    Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the occupied West Bank and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: First-hand view of peacemaking challenge in the ‘Holy Land’

    Occupied West Bank-based New Zealand journalist Cole Martin asks who are the peacemakers?

    BEARING WITNESS: By Cole Martin

    As a Kiwi journalist living in the occupied West Bank, I can list endless reasons why there is no peace in the “Holy Land”.

    I live in a refugee camp, alongside families who were expelled from their homes by Israel’s violent establishment in 1948 — never allowed to return and repeatedly targeted by Israeli military incursions.

    Daily I witness suffocating checkpoints, settler attacks against rural towns, arbitrary imprisonment with no charge or trial, a crippled economy, expansion of illegal settlements, demolition of entire communities, genocidal rhetoric, and continued expulsion.

    No form of peace can exist within an active system of domination. To talk about peace without liberation and dignity is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.

    I often find myself alongside a variety of peacemakers, putting themselves on the line to end these horrific systems — let me outline the key groups:

    Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, co-ordinating demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience. Google “Iqrit village”, “The Great March of Return”, “Tent of Nations farm”. These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines.

    Protective Presence activists are a mix of about 150 Israeli and international civilians who volunteer their days and nights physically accompanying Palestinian communities. They aim to prevent Israeli settler violence, state-sanctioned home demolitions, and military/police incursions. They document the injustice and often face violence and arrest themselves. Foreigners face deportation and blacklisting — as a journalist I was arrested and barred from the West Bank short-term and my passport was withheld for more than a month.

    Reconciliation organisations have been working for decades to bridge the disconnect between political narratives and human realities. The effective groups don’t seek “co-existence” but “co-resistance” because they recognise there can be no peace within an active system of apartheid. They reiterate that dialogue alone achieves nothing while the Israeli regime continues to murder, displace and steal. Yes there are “opposing narratives”, but they do not have equal legitimacy when tested against the reality on the ground.

    Journalists continue to document and report key developments, chilling statistics and the human cost. They ensure people are seen. Over 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza. High-profile Palestinian Christian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh was killed by Israeli forces in 2022. They continue reporting despite the risk, and without their courage world leaders wouldn’t know which undeniable facts to brazenly ignore.

    Humanitarians serve and protect the most vulnerable, treating and rescuing people selflessly. More than 400 aid workers and 1000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza. All 38 hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, with just a small number left partially functioning. NGOs have been crippled by USAID cuts and targeted Israeli policies, marked by a mass exodus of expats who have spent years committed to this region — severing a critical lifeline for Palestinian communities.

    All these groups emphasise change will not come from within. Protective Presence barely stems the flow.

    Reconciliation means nothing while the system continues to displace, imprison and slaughter Palestinians en masse. Journalism, non-violence and humanitarian efforts are only as effective as the willingness of states to uphold international law.

    Those on the frontlines of peacebuilding express the urgent need for global accountability across all sectors; economic, cultural and political sanctions. Systems of apartheid do not stem from corrupt leadership or several extremists, but from widespread attitudes of supremacy and nationalism across civil society.

    Boycotts increase the economic cost of maintaining such systems. Divestment sends a strong financial message that business as usual is unacceptable.

    Many other groups across the world are picketing weapons manufacturers, writing to elected leaders, educating friends and family, challenging harmful narratives, fundraising aid to keep people alive.

    Where are the peacemakers? They’re out on the streets. They’re people just like you and me.

    Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the occupied West Bank and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Malcolm Turnbull on Australia’s ‘dumb’ defence debate

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

    The Albanese government remains in complicated territory on the international stage. It has to tread carefully with China, despite the marked warming of the bilateral relationship. It is yet to find its line and length with the unpredictable Trump administration.

    Meanwhile, with the new parliament meeting for the first time next week, the federal Opposition remains in a tough spot, still reeling from a brutal election defeat. The Liberals have an untested leader and uncertainty over what policies they will keep and which they will scrap, with their future commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 yet to be reconfirmed.

    Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has personally navigated the highs and lows of these issues, and joins the podcast today.

    On AUKUS and national security, Turnbull says the debate has “never been dumber”.

    The fundamental problem with our debate about national security is a profound lack of patriotism, because not enough people are putting Australia first. I mean I’m not saying that our politicians should be like Donald Trump, in terms of his bravado and braggadocio – you know all that sort of stuff he goes on with – but they should be like Trump in the sense of putting Australia first.

    You know Donald Trump expects other countries to stand for themselves. Who is the foreign leader that is an ally that he respects the most? [Israel’s Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu. Bibi Netanyahu stands up for himself and brutally. And brutally. I mean, Netanyahu’s attitude is, if you’re in the Middle East, if you’re weak, you’re roadkill.

    On defence spending, Turnbull calls a proper review on what Australia needs, rather then spending a certain percent on defence.

    We’ve got to have a proper examination of what capabilities we need, and what capabilities we can afford. The point about submarines is, if you’re going have a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines – they’re literally the most expensive defence platforms in the world – then you’ve got to work out what else you need and then what that’s going to cost you. That will come to quite a lot more than [the current] 2% of GDP, I would estimate.

    Turnbull also warns of a “reckless” degree of “delusion” in Canberra about the risk of not getting nuclear-powered submarines from the US.

    On global affairs, Turnbull says the Albanese government has performed well in a time of uncertainty.

    It’s complicated, but they’re managing this disrupted global environment well. The directions they’re going in are correct. The need plainly is to strengthen partnerships, alliances, relations with countries other than the United States.

    […] There’s a degree of anxiety about China because we don’t share the same political values. It clearly wants to displace the United States as the hegemon in this region […] I think the government and certainly most Australians would recognise that the days of American primacy in this region are over and the outcome for us that we want to have is, as [a former Japanese prime minister] Shinzo Abe used to say, a free and open Indo-Pacific, a balance between the two powers. Indeed as [Foreign Minister] Penny Wong said, a region where no one dominates, nobody is dominated.

    On Albanese’s failure to meet yet with the US president, Turnbull says it doesn’t matter “a huge amount”.

    It is very important for the prime minister of Australia to have a good personal relationship with Donald Trump. It really is. When I was prime minister, my relationship with him got off to a very stormy start, but it was a very good one, because by standing up to his bullying, I won his respect.

    […] When he does meet with Trump, it’s got to be in a situation where he can have an extended discussion, where it’s a substantive meeting and they can really get to know each other. So I think it’s not just the timing of the meeting, but the quality of the meeting.

    On the Liberal Party, Turnbull is pessimistic about its chances of moderating its views, even with Sussan Ley, generally regarded as centrist, as leader,

    [Ley’s] problem, even if she was centrist, and even if was genuine about moving the party back to the centre, I would question whether she can do it. Because there are not many moderates left in the party room in Canberra. How many moderates are left in the branches anymore? Has there been a sort of self-sorting now? Essentially the party […] has moved off into that right wing.

    […] The leader has a lot of authority. However, there is the right wing of the party and you cannot separate it from the right-wing media. From the Murdoch media in particular, they’re joined at the hip. I mean, they’re almost the same thing. They operate in the context of the Liberal Party almost like terrorists. Or like terrorists in this sense: they don’t kill people or blow things up, but they basically are prepared to burn the joint down if they don’t get what they want. I mean, I experienced that.

    Despite reservations, Turnbull says quotas for women are the only way to the Liberal party to where it wants to be.

    Everything else has been tried and it’s failed […] My view is that the party has got to say, well, we recognise this is contrary to grassroots tradition. But unless we do something fairly draconian and directive, then we’re not going to be able to get to the parity of men and women that we want, that we’ve said we wanted for years, and which the electorate clearly prefers.

    Michelle Grattan 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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Malcolm Turnbull on Australia’s ‘dumb’ defence debate – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-malcolm-turnbull-on-australias-dumb-defence-debate-261178

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Bribery in South Africa: law now puts a duty on companies to act

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Rehana Cassim, Professor in Company Law, University of South Africa

    Bribery is one of the most common forms of corruption in South African companies and state institutions. This has a number of harmful outcomes.

    Firstly, research shows that it weakens democracy and slows down economic growth. It also creates expensive barriers for honest businesses to succeed because it distorts fair competition. If bribery is not stopped or punished it has a demoralising effect, because it erodes trust and creates a culture where ethical conduct is undermined.

    In 2024 a new law came into force in South Africa that puts a duty on companies to take proactive steps to prevent bribery. This law falls under a broader law dealing with corruption in South Africa.

    The new provisions make it a crime for companies to fail to prevent bribery by an associated person. This is a major policy shift in South African anti-corruption law, and aligns with the United Kingdom’s anti-bribery legislation.

    An associated person is anyone who performs services for the company. This can include suppliers, joint venture partners, distributors, consultants, and other professionals advising the company. It can even be other companies, like subsidiaries.

    In my research I found that South Africa took inspiration from the United Kingdom (UK) Bribery Act 2010. The law makes it a criminal offence for commercial organisations to fail to prevent bribery by associated persons.

    Despite some successes, enforcement of the UK Bribery Act has been slow and the volume of prosecutions has been low.

    Based on my research into company conduct, given the current challenges in law enforcement and the low conviction rates for crimes of corruption, the new law might not work as well as hoped.

    But with improved enforcement, it has potential to reduce bribery in South Africa.

    What’s behind the new law?

    The new addition to the law was introduced after a commission of inquiry found evidence of widespread bribery and corruption under former president Jacob Zuma.

    For example, Angelo Agrizzi, former chief operating officer of African Global Operations (Pty) Ltd (formerly known as Bosasa), testified that Bosasa won about US$129 million in government tenders by paying about US$4 million in bribes to politicians and government officials. He said that every contract in which Bosasa was involved was linked to bribery and corruption.

    The new law is designed to prevent this from happening.

    If a person associated with a member of the private sector or an incorporated state-owned entity gives, agrees or offers to give a bribe (or gratification) to another person, the company could be held liable. This applies to companies as well as individuals, partnerships, trusts and other legal entities.

    The bribe must be given by the associated person to get business for the company or to gain a business advantage for it. Importantly, a company can be found guilty even if it didn’t know about the bribe.

    What counts as a bribe?

    A bribe (or gratification) is not just money. It includes avoiding a loss or other disadvantage, releasing any obligation or liability, or giving any favour or advantage.

    The bribe does not actually have to be given. It is enough if the associated person agrees or offers to give the bribe.

    It is not clear yet if hospitality or promotional expenditures count as bribes.

    Under the UK Bribery Act a hospitality payment is not regarded as a gratification unless it is disproportionate. In my view South Africa should follow the same approach.

    For example, if paying for transport from the airport to a hotel for an on-site visit, taking clients to dinner, or giving them tickets to an event aligns with the norms for the industry, this probably will not be seen as a bribe.

    Facilitation payments is another tricky area. These are small bribes made to minor officials to get routine administrative tasks done, such as applying for visas, clearing customs or getting licences.

    The new law doesn’t say whether facilitation payments are regarded as bribes. In my view, they should be.

    What companies need to do

    Companies can avoid liability under the new law if they can prove that they had adequate procedures in place to prevent bribery by associated persons.

    But the law doesn’t explain what “adequate procedures” are. Until the South African government provides guidance on this, it is useful to look at the guidance provided under the UK Bribery Act. It recommends the following:

    • Companies should adopt procedures that are proportionate to the bribery risks they face and the nature, scale and complexity of their activities.

    So a larger company operating in a high-risk market where bribery is known to be common must do more to prevent bribery than a smaller company in a low-risk market where bribery is less common.

    • The company’s board of directors should foster a culture where bribery is never acceptable.

    • Companies should periodically assess their exposure to potential bribery risks.

    • Companies should carry out due diligence procedures on their associated persons.

    • Companies should communicate their anti-bribery polices internally and externally. They should also provide training to ensure that everyone understands their anti-bribery position.

    • Companies should monitor their procedures and improve them where necessary.

    The way forward

    The South African government should urgently publish official guidelines to help companies understand what they must do to comply with the new law.

    The principles of South Africa’s corporate governance code, the King IV Report, can also be used to help companies comply with the new law. These principles promote ethical leadership, an ethical culture, risk management, accountability and transparency.

    Guidelines are also important for small and medium enterprises. They also have a legal duty to put in place adequate procedures to prevent bribery.

    Companies that have not already put in place anti-bribery procedures should act quickly. And they should check that their corporate hospitality policies are reasonable and proportionate to their businesses.

    Companies should also evaluate their relationships with the people associated with them.

    Setting up anti-bribery procedures may have cost implications. But not having them could cost far more. Having adequate procedures in place is the only defence under the new law.

    The Conversation

    Rehana Cassim 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. Bribery in South Africa: law now puts a duty on companies to act – https://theconversation.com/bribery-in-south-africa-law-now-puts-a-duty-on-companies-to-act-260148

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why is Israel bombing Syria?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Mamouri, Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University

    Conflict in Syria has escalated with Israel launching bombing raids against its northern neighbour.

    It follows months of fluctuating tensions in southern Syria between the Druze minority and forces aligned with the new government in Damascus. Clashes erupted in the last few days, prompting Israeli airstrikes in defence of the Druze by targeting government bases, tanks, and heavy weaponry.

    Israel Minister Amichai Chikli has called the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa –

    a terrorist, a barbaric murderer who should be eliminated without delay.

    Despite the incendiary language, a ceasefire has been reached, halting the fighting – for now.

    Syrian forces have begun withdrawing heavy military equipment from the region, while Druze fighters have agreed to suspend armed resistance, allowing government troops to regain control of the main Druze city of Suwayda.

    What do the Druze want?

    The Druze are a small religious minority estimated at over one million people, primarily concentrated in the mountainous regions of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Jordan.

    In Syria, their population is estimated at around 700,000 (of around 23 million total Syrian population), with the majority residing in the southern As-Suwayda Governorate – or province – which serves as their traditional stronghold.

    Since the 2011 uprising against the Assad regime, the Druze have maintained a degree of autonomy, successfully defending their territory from various threats, including ISIS and other jihadist groups.

    Following Assad’s fall late last year, the Druze — along with other minority groups such as the Kurds in the east and Alawites in the west — have called for the country to be federalized.

    They advocate for a decentralised model that would grant greater autonomy to regional communities.

    However, the transitional government in Damascus is pushing for a centralised state and seeking to reassert full control over the entire Syrian territory. This fundamental disagreement has led to periodic clashes between Druze forces and government-aligned troops.

    Despite the temporary ceasefire, tensions remain high. Given the core political dispute remains unresolved, many expect renewed conflict to erupt in the near future.

    Why is Israel involved?

    The ousting of the Assad regime created a strategic opening for Israel to expand its influence in southern Syria. Israel’s involvement is driven by two primary concerns:

    1. Securing its northern border

    Israel views the power vacuum in Syria’s south as a potential threat, particularly the risk of anti-Israeli militias establishing a foothold near its northern border.

    During the recent clashes, the Israeli military declared

    The Israeli Defence Forces will not allow a military threat to exist in southern Syria and will act against it.

    Likewise, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has stated he will not allow Syrian forces south of Damascus:

    We are acting to prevent the Syrian regime from harming them [the Druze] and to ensure the demilitarisation of the area adjacent to our border with Syria.

    In line with these warnings, the Israeli Air Force has conducted extensive strikes against Syrian military infrastructure, targeting bases, aircraft, tanks, and heavy weaponry.

    These operations are intended to prevent any future buildup of military capacity that could be used against Israel from the Syrian side of the border.

    2. Supporting a federated Syria

    Israel is backing the two prominent allied minorities in Syria — the Kurds in the northeast and the Druze in the south — in their push for a federal governance model.

    A fragmented Syria, divided along ethnic and religious lines, is seen by some Israeli policymakers as a way to maintain Israeli domination in the region.

    This vision is part of what some Israeli officials have referred to as a “New Middle East” — one where regional stability and normalisation emerge through reshaped borders and alliances.

    Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar recently echoed this strategy, stating:

    A single Syrian state with effective control and sovereignty over all its territory is unrealistic.

    For Israel, the logical path forward is autonomy for the various minorities in Syria within a federal structure.

    The United States’ role?

    According to unconfirmed reports, Washington has privately urged Israel to scale back its military strikes on Syria in order to prevent further escalation and preserve regional stability.

    The US is promoting increased support for Syria’s new regime in an effort to help it reassert control and stabilise the country.

    There are also indications the US and its allies are encouraging the Syrian government to move toward normalisation with Israel. Reports suggest Tel Aviv has held talks with the new Sharaa-led regime about the possibility of Syria joining the Abraham Accords (diplomatic agreements between Israel and several Arab states), which the regime in Damascus appears open to.

    US Special Envoy Tom Barrack has described the recent clashes as “worrisome”, calling for de-escalation and emphasising the need for

    a peaceful, inclusive outcome for all stakeholders – including the Druze, Bedouin tribes, the Syrian government, and Israeli forces.

    Given the deep-rooted political divisions, competing regional agendas, and unresolved demands from minority groups, the unrest in southern Syria is unlikely to end soon.

    Despite another temporary ceasefire, underlying tensions remain. Further clashes are not only possible but highly probable.

    Ali Mamouri 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. Why is Israel bombing Syria? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-israel-bombing-syria-261259

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why is Israel bombing Syria?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Mamouri, Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University

    Conflict in Syria has escalated with Israel launching bombing raids against its northern neighbour.

    It follows months of fluctuating tensions in southern Syria between the Druze minority and forces aligned with the new government in Damascus. Clashes erupted in the last few days, prompting Israeli airstrikes in defence of the Druze by targeting government bases, tanks, and heavy weaponry.

    Israel Minister Amichai Chikli has called the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa –

    a terrorist, a barbaric murderer who should be eliminated without delay.

    Despite the incendiary language, a ceasefire has been reached, halting the fighting – for now.

    Syrian forces have begun withdrawing heavy military equipment from the region, while Druze fighters have agreed to suspend armed resistance, allowing government troops to regain control of the main Druze city of Suwayda.

    What do the Druze want?

    The Druze are a small religious minority estimated at over one million people, primarily concentrated in the mountainous regions of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Jordan.

    In Syria, their population is estimated at around 700,000 (of around 23 million total Syrian population), with the majority residing in the southern As-Suwayda Governorate – or province – which serves as their traditional stronghold.

    Since the 2011 uprising against the Assad regime, the Druze have maintained a degree of autonomy, successfully defending their territory from various threats, including ISIS and other jihadist groups.

    Following Assad’s fall late last year, the Druze — along with other minority groups such as the Kurds in the east and Alawites in the west — have called for the country to be federalized.

    They advocate for a decentralised model that would grant greater autonomy to regional communities.

    However, the transitional government in Damascus is pushing for a centralised state and seeking to reassert full control over the entire Syrian territory. This fundamental disagreement has led to periodic clashes between Druze forces and government-aligned troops.

    Despite the temporary ceasefire, tensions remain high. Given the core political dispute remains unresolved, many expect renewed conflict to erupt in the near future.

    Why is Israel involved?

    The ousting of the Assad regime created a strategic opening for Israel to expand its influence in southern Syria. Israel’s involvement is driven by two primary concerns:

    1. Securing its northern border

    Israel views the power vacuum in Syria’s south as a potential threat, particularly the risk of anti-Israeli militias establishing a foothold near its northern border.

    During the recent clashes, the Israeli military declared

    The Israeli Defence Forces will not allow a military threat to exist in southern Syria and will act against it.

    Likewise, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has stated he will not allow Syrian forces south of Damascus:

    We are acting to prevent the Syrian regime from harming them [the Druze] and to ensure the demilitarisation of the area adjacent to our border with Syria.

    In line with these warnings, the Israeli Air Force has conducted extensive strikes against Syrian military infrastructure, targeting bases, aircraft, tanks, and heavy weaponry.

    These operations are intended to prevent any future buildup of military capacity that could be used against Israel from the Syrian side of the border.

    2. Supporting a federated Syria

    Israel is backing the two prominent allied minorities in Syria — the Kurds in the northeast and the Druze in the south — in their push for a federal governance model.

    A fragmented Syria, divided along ethnic and religious lines, is seen by some Israeli policymakers as a way to maintain Israeli domination in the region.

    This vision is part of what some Israeli officials have referred to as a “New Middle East” — one where regional stability and normalisation emerge through reshaped borders and alliances.

    Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar recently echoed this strategy, stating:

    A single Syrian state with effective control and sovereignty over all its territory is unrealistic.

    For Israel, the logical path forward is autonomy for the various minorities in Syria within a federal structure.

    The United States’ role?

    According to unconfirmed reports, Washington has privately urged Israel to scale back its military strikes on Syria in order to prevent further escalation and preserve regional stability.

    The US is promoting increased support for Syria’s new regime in an effort to help it reassert control and stabilise the country.

    There are also indications the US and its allies are encouraging the Syrian government to move toward normalisation with Israel. Reports suggest Tel Aviv has held talks with the new Sharaa-led regime about the possibility of Syria joining the Abraham Accords (diplomatic agreements between Israel and several Arab states), which the regime in Damascus appears open to.

    US Special Envoy Tom Barrack has described the recent clashes as “worrisome”, calling for de-escalation and emphasising the need for

    a peaceful, inclusive outcome for all stakeholders – including the Druze, Bedouin tribes, the Syrian government, and Israeli forces.

    Given the deep-rooted political divisions, competing regional agendas, and unresolved demands from minority groups, the unrest in southern Syria is unlikely to end soon.

    Despite another temporary ceasefire, underlying tensions remain. Further clashes are not only possible but highly probable.

    Ali Mamouri 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. Why is Israel bombing Syria? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-israel-bombing-syria-261259

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Bougainville election: More than 400 candidates vie for parliament

    By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    More than 400 candidates have put their hands up to contest the Bougainville general election in September, hoping to enter Parliament.

    Incumbent President Ishmael Toroama is among the 404 people lining up to win a seat.

    Bougainville is involved in the process of achieving independence from Papua New Guinea — an issue expected to dominate campaigning, which lasts until the beginning of September.

    Voting is scheduled to start on September 2, finishing a week later, depending on the weather.

    Seven candidates — all men — are contesting the Bougainville presidency. This number is down from when 25 people stood, including two women.

    Toroama is seeking a second term and is being challenged by his former colleague in the leadership of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), Sam Kauona.

    Kauona is one of several contesting a second time, along with Thomas Raivet and a former holder of the Bougainville Regional Seat in the PNG Parliament, Joe Lera.

    There are 46 seats to be decided, including six new constituencies.

    Two seats will have 21 candidates: the northern seat of Peit and the Ex-Combatants constituency.

    Several other constituencies — Haku, Tsitalato, Taonita Tinputz, Taonita Teop, Rau, and Kokoda — also have high numbers of candidates.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: We travelled to Antarctica to see if a Māori lunar calendar might help track environmental change

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Winton, Senior Research Fellow in Climatology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Holly Winton, CC BY-SA

    Antarctica’s patterns of stark seasonal changes, with months of darkness followed by a summer of 24-hour daylight, prompted us to explore how a Māori lunar and environmental calendar (Maramataka) might apply to the continent and help us recognise changes as the climate continues to warm.

    Maramataka represent an ancient knowledge system using environmental signs (tohu) to impart knowledge about lunar and environmental connections. It traces the mauri (energy flow) between the land (whenua), the ocean (moana) and the sky and atmosphere (rangi), and how people connect to the natural world.

    Maramataka are regionally specific. For example, in Manukau, the arrival of godwits from the Arctic indicates seasonal changes that align with the migration of eels moving up the local Puhinui stream.

    During matiti muramura, the third summer phase that aligns with the summer solstice, the environment offers tohu that guide seasonal activity. The flowering of pohutukawa is a land sign (tohu o te whenua), the rising of Rehua (Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius) is an atmospheric sign (tohu o te rangi), and sea urchins (kina) are a sea sign (tohu o te moana).

    When these signs align, it signals balance in nature and the right time to gather food. But if they are out of sync (such as early flowering or small kina), it means something in the environment (te taiao) is out of balance.

    These tohu remind us how deeply land, sea and sky are connected, and why careful observation matters. When they’re out of sync, they call us to pause, observe and adapt in ways that restore natural balance and uphold the mauri of te taiao.

    Tracking a Maramataka in Antarctica

    One of the key tohu we observed in Antarctica was the mass arrival of Weddell seals outside New Zealand’s Scott Base at the height of summer.

    Guided by Maramataka authorities, we explored other local tohu using Hautuu Waka, an ancient framework of weaving and wayfinding to navigate a changing environment. Originally used for navigating vast oceans, wayfinding in this context becomes a metaphor for navigating the complexities of today’s environmental and social challenges.

    During the Antarctic summer, the Sun doesn’t set. But we documented the Moon when visible in the day sky and observed the Sun, clouds, mountains and various forms of snow and ice. This included glacial ice on the land, sea ice in the ocean and snowflakes in the sky.

    One of the seasonal tohu in Antarctica is the mass arrival of Weddell seals outside New Zealand’s Scott Base at the height of summer.
    Holly Winton, CC BY-SA

    While the tohu in Antarctica were vastly different from those observed in Aotearoa, the energy phases of the Maramataka Moon cycles aligned with traditional stories (pūrākau) describing snow and ice.

    We identified some of the 12 different forms of snow recorded by ethnographers, who described them as the “offspring of wind and rain”.

    At Scott Base, we observed feather-like snow (hukapuhi) and floating snow (hukarangaranga). Further inland on the high-elevation polar plateau, we found “unseen” snow (hukakoropuku), which is not always visible to the naked eye but felt on the skin, and dust-like snow (hukapunehunehu), akin to diamond dust. The latter phenomenon occurs when air temperatures are cold enough for water vapour to condense directly out of the atmosphere and form tiny ice crystals, which sparkle like diamonds.

    In te ao Māori, snow has a genealogy (whakapapa) that connects it to wider systems of life and knowledge. Snow is part of a continuum that begins in Ranginui (the sky father) and moves through the god (atua) of weather Tāwhirimātea, who shapes the form and movement of clouds, winds, rain and snow. Each type of snow carries its own name, qualities and behaviour, reflecting its journey through the skies and land.

    The existence of the specific terms (kupu) for different forms of snow and ice reflect generations of observation, passed down through whakapapa and oral histories (kōrero tuku iho).

    Connecting Western science and mātauranga Māori

    Our first observations of tohu in Antarctica mark the initial step towards intertwining the ancient knowledge system of mātauranga Māori with modern scientific exploration.

    The Moon cycles at Scott Base align with traditional stories describing snow and ice.
    Holly Winton, CC BY-SA

    Observing snow through traditional practices provided insights into processes that cannot be fully understood through Western science methods alone. Mātauranga Māori recognises tohu through close sensory attention and relational awareness with the landscape.

    Drawing on our field observations and past and present knowledge of environmental calendars found in mātauranga Māori and palaeo-climate data such as ice cores, we can begin to connect different knowledge systems in Antarctica.

    For example, just as the Maramataka contains information about the environment over time, so do Antarctic ice cores. Every snowflake carries a chemical signature of the environment that, day by day, builds up a record of the past. By measuring the chemistry of Antarctic ice, we gain proxy information about environmental and seasonal cycles such as temperature, winds, sea ice and marine phytoplankton.

    The middle of summer in an ice core record is marked by peak levels in chemical signals from marine phytoplankton that bloom in the Ross Sea when sea ice melts, temperatures are warmer and light and nutrients are available. This biogenic aerosol is a summer tohu identified as a key environmental time marker in the Maramataka of the onset of the breading season and surge in biological activity.

    The knowledge of Maramataka has developed over millennia. Conceptualising this for Antarctica opens a way of using Māori methods and frameworks to glean new insights about the continent and ocean. Grounded in te ao Māori understanding that everything is connected, this approach invites us to see the polar environment not as a remote but a living system of interwoven tohu, rhythms and relationships.

    Holly Winton receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi (Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and Marsden Fast-Start) and Victoria University of Wellington (Mātauranga Māori Research Fund). Logistics support for Antarctic fieldwork was provided by Antarctica New Zealand.

    Ayla Hoeta receives funding from Victoria University of Wellington (Mātauranga Māori Research Fund). Logistics support for Antarctic fieldwork was provided by Antarctica New Zealand.

    – ref. We travelled to Antarctica to see if a Māori lunar calendar might help track environmental change – https://theconversation.com/we-travelled-to-antarctica-to-see-if-a-maori-lunar-calendar-might-help-track-environmental-change-239583

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Right-wing political group Advance is in the headlines. What is it and what does it stand for?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Riboldi, Lecturer in Social Impact and Social Change, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

    Advance/Facebook

    Political lobby group Advance has been back in the headlines this week. It was revealed an organisation headed by the husband of the Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, donated A$50,000 to the group.

    The news prompted outcry, though Segal denied any personal involvement.

    So what is Advance and what does it do?

    What is Advance?

    Advance (originally Advance Australia) is a digital campaigning organisation. It was formed in 2018 by a group of wealthy Australians, many with connections to the Liberal Party. The idea was to be a conservative counterpoint to progressive digital campaigning group GetUp!

    At the time, political journalist Mungo McCallum described them as a “stratospherically elite clique of rich, bored men looking for a hobby.” He suggested they would have little, if any, impact.

    Today the group has more than 330,000 members.

    They also successfully led the “No” campaign in the Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum in 2023.

    McCallum’s initial dismissal of Advance appears somewhat premature.

    What does Advance want?

    Advance’s stated aim is to “take the fight to the activists and elites” to “secure Australia’s freedom, security and prosperity”. They campaign against progressive taxation, immigration, the transition to renewable energy and even Welcome to Country ceremonies.

    This positions Advance alongside other right-wing populist actors, including Donald Trump, in the modern “war on woke”. This comparison was welcomed by founding Advance director, major donor and hedge fund manager Simon Fenwick.



    Read more:
    Follow the money: the organisations that spent the most on social media during the election

    These actors, which in Australia also include the Murdoch Press, construct elitism not along class lines, but along an urban/rural divide. In its view, Advance’s billionaire funders are apparently not elites. Instead, they attempt to foster divisions between urban “elites” and regional and suburban “mainstream Australians”.

    Like the Trumpian model of “flood(ing) the zone with shit”, Advance has been accused of pursuing these aims by “unleashing a veritable fire hose of disinformation”. The hose is often aimed at progressive political candidates, climate change, immigrants or the Voice referendum.

    Who runs and funds Advance?

    Advance’s longtime Executive Director and “main man” is the somewhat enigmatic Matthew Sheahan. Their current spokesperson is Sandra Bourke, who has a background in law enforcement and national security. In 2024, Bourke claimed Advance was “the biggest grassroots movement in Australian political history”.

    While Advance is structurally independent of any political party, a variety of Liberal Party figures have been closely connected to the organisation, including former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

    Early prominent members (and funders) of Advance included storage king Sam Kennard, far-right president of the Australian Jewish Association David Adler, and climate denier Maurice Newman.

    Founding Director Simon Fenwick has donated at least $400,000 to the organisation through his family trust since its inception.

    In 2023–24, Advance received a $500,000 donation from the Cormack Foundation, an investment fund created by the Liberal Party of Victoria.

    The organisation reported income of more than $15.5 million in the same period. It claims their average donation received from supporters is $160.

    What impact has Advance had?

    The 2023 Voice Referendum “made” Advance (and arguably Matthew Sheahan) via their management of two prominent No campaigns.

    Prior to this, Advance’s campaigning was arguably more nuisance than anything else.

    Advance’s No campaign featured significant amounts of dis- and misinformation across multiple media channels, including phone banking (cold calling voters). The campaign was characterised by contradictory micro campaigns that sowed the confusion that fed the slogan of “if you don’t know, vote No”.

    The Advance-led No campaigns also strongly embraced racism against leading First Nations voices. This included suggestions that media commentator Stan Grant had artificially darkened his skin, questioning the “blackness” of Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe, and utilising “Jim Crow” style advertising against leading Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo.

    The Jim Crow era of American history refers to a time in the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries where laws enforced racial segregation and discrimination.

    One of the key spokespeople for Advance’s No campaign was Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a woman with Aboriginal and Anglo-Celtic heritage. She’s a former Advance staffer and current Liberal Party Senator and made the comments about Lidia Thorpe.

    Why is Advance important?

    Following their role in the Voice campaign, Advance have arguably “eclipsed” their inspiration and progressive rivals GetUp! as Australia’s leading digital campaigning organisation. Glen Berman, current GetUp! chair, has even admitted “there were things that GetUp! could learn” from Advance.

    Advance appeared influential over Liberal Party strategy ahead of the 2025 federal election campaign. During the campaign, it was the highest spending third party group (non-party, non-candidate) on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) advertising. This saw it emerge as the conservative third party “opposition” to the Australian union movement.

    However, following the Australian Labor Party’s landslide victory, Advance attempted to distance themselves from the Coalition’s campaign. While they claim to have been focused on “destroying” the Greens, analysis suggests Advance’s campaign was equally focused on framing Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as “weak, woke and sending us broke”.

    Senior Liberal Party figures, for their part, have also “cast doubt on the effectiveness of Advance”, saying it may have cost them seats.

    Generally, scholars Marian Sawer and Kurt Sengul argue Advance, along with the Murdoch media, have engaged in the “populist mobilisation of resentment which is likely to exacerbate the kind of divisions seen in the Voice referendum” since 2018.

    Part of a worldwide trend towards right-wing populism, Advance will likely continue to be at the centre of conservative politics in Australia.

    Mark Riboldi 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. Right-wing political group Advance is in the headlines. What is it and what does it stand for? – https://theconversation.com/right-wing-political-group-advance-is-in-the-headlines-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-stand-for-261164

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Scientists could be accidentally damaging fossils with a method we thought was safe

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mathieu Duval, Adjunct Senior Researcher at Griffith University and La Trobe University, and Ramón y Cajal (Senior) Research Fellow, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH)

    185,000-year-old human fossil jawbone from Misliya Cave, Israel. Gerhard Weber, University of Vienna, CC BY-ND

    Fossils are invaluable archives of the past. They preserve details about living things from a few thousand to hundreds of millions of years ago.

    Studying fossils can help us understand the evolution of species over time, and glimpse snapshots of past environments and climates. Fossils can also reveal the diets or migration patterns of long-gone species – including our own ancestors.

    But when living things turn to rock, discerning those details is no easy feat. One common technique for studying fossils is micro-computerised tomography or micro-CT. It’s been used to find the earliest evidence of bone cancer in humans, to study brain imprints and inner ears in early hominins, and to study the teeth of the oldest human modern remains outside Africa, among many other examples.

    However, our new study, published today in Radiocarbon, shows that despite being widely regarded as non-destructive, micro-CT may actually affect fossil preservation and erase some crucial information held inside.

    Preserving precious specimens

    Fossils are rare and fragile by nature. Scientists are constantly evaluating how to balance their impact on fossils with the need to study them.

    When palaeontologists and palaeoanthropologists (who work on human fossils) analyse fossils, they want to minimise any potential damage. We want to preserve fossils for future generations as much as possible – and technology can be a huge help here.

    Micro-CT works like the medical CT scans doctors use to peek inside the human body. However, it does so at a much smaller scale and at a greater resolution.

    This is perfect for studying small objects such as fossils. With micro-CT, scientists can take high-resolution 3D images and access the inner structure of fossils without the need to cut them open.

    These scans also allow for virtual copies of the fossils, which other scientists can then access from anywhere in the world. This significantly reduces the risk of damage, since the scanned fossils can safely remain in a museum collection, for example.

    Micro-CT is popular and routinely used. The scientific community widely regards it as “non-destructive” because it doesn’t cause any visual damage – but it could still affect the fossil.

    Jaw bone of the human fossil species Homo antecessor from Spain. Left: micro-CT scan with a cutting plane to visualise the inner structures, bone and teeth; right: 3D reconstruction based on the high-resolution micro-CT images.
    Laura Martín-Francés

    How does micro-CT imaging work?

    Micro-CT scanning uses X-rays and computer software to produce high-resolution images and reconstruct the fossil specimens in detail. Typically, palaeontologists use commercial scanners for this, but more advanced investigations may use powerful X-ray beams generated at a synchrotron.

    The X-rays go through the specimen and are captured by a detector on the other end. This allows for a very fine-grained understanding of the matter they’ve passed through – especially density, which then provides clues about the shape of the internal structures, the composition of the tissues, or any contamination.

    The scan produces a succession of 2D images from all angles. Computer software is then used to “clean up” these high-resolution images and assemble them into a 3D shape – a virtual copy of the fossil and its inner structures.

    Example of micro-CT results on a hominin fossil known as Little Foot, from southern Africa.

    But X-rays are not harmless

    X-rays are a type of ionising radiation. This means they have a high level of energy and can break electrons away from atoms (this is called ionisation).

    In living tissue, ionising radiation can damage cells and DNA, although the level of damage will depend on the duration and intensity of exposure. X-rays and CT scans used in medicine generally have a very low risk since the exposure of the human body is reduced as much as possible.

    However, despite what we know about the impact of X-rays on living cells, the potential impact of X-rays on fossils through micro-CT imaging has never been deeply investigated.

    What did our study find?

    Using standard settings on a typical micro-CT scanner, we scanned several modern and fossil bones and teeth from animals. We also measured their collagen content before and after scanning.

    Collagen is useful for many analytical purposes, such as finding out the age of the fossils using radiocarbon dating, or for stable isotope analysis – a method used to infer the diet of the extinct species, for example. The collagen content in fossils is usually much lower than in modern specimens because it slowly breaks down over time.

    After comparing our measurements with unscanned samples taken from the same specimens, we found two things.

    First, the radiocarbon age remained unchanged. In other words, micro-CT scanning doesn’t affect radiocarbon dating. That’s the good news.

    The bad news is that we did observe a significant decrease in the amount of collagen present. In other words, the micro-CT scanned samples had about 35% less collagen than the samples before scanning.

    This shows micro-CT imaging has a non-negligible impact on fossils that contain collagen traces. While this was to be expected, the impact hasn’t been experimentally confirmed before.

    It’s possible some fossil samples won’t have enough collagen left after micro-CT scanning. This would make them unsuitable for a range of analytical techniques, including radiocarbon dating.

    What now?

    In a previous study, we showed micro-CT can artificially “age” fossils later dated with a method called electron spin resonance. It’s commonly used to date fossils older than 50,000 years – beyond what the radiocarbon method can discern.

    This previous study and our new work show that micro-CT scanning may significantly and irreversibly change the fossil and the information it holds.

    Despite causing no visible damage to the fossil, we argue that in this context the technique should no longer be regarded as non-destructive.

    Micro-CT imaging is highly valuable in palaeontology and palaeoanthropology, no doubt about that. But our results suggest it should be used sparingly to minimise how much fossils are exposed to X-rays. There are guidelines scientists can use to minimise damage. Freely sharing data to avoid repeated scans of the same specimen will be helpful, too.

    Mathieu Duval receives funding from the Spanish State Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación). He is currently the recipient of a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2018-025221-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ‘‘ESF Investing in your future”. This work is also part of Spanish Grant PID2021-123092NB-C22 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE, and by ‘‘ERDF A way of making Europe”.

    Laura Martín-Francés receives funding from Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions of the EU Ninth programme (2021-2027) under the HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01-Project: 101060482.

    – ref. Scientists could be accidentally damaging fossils with a method we thought was safe – https://theconversation.com/scientists-could-be-accidentally-damaging-fossils-with-a-method-we-thought-was-safe-258827

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –