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Category: Education

  • MIL-OSI Global: Stage 0 cancer is often overlooked — but it could be your earliest warning sign

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

    Beyonce and her mother, Tina Knowles in December 2024 DFree/Shutterstock

    At 71, Tina Knowles – the fashion designer, businesswoman, and mother of Beyoncé – made headlines not for her career, but for a deeply personal revelation: her breast cancer diagnosis. In 2023, a routine mammogram uncovered two tumours in her left breast, one benign and the other malignant. Diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer, she underwent surgery and is now cancer-free.

    Knowles had initially hesitated to share her story, even considering leaving it out of her upcoming memoir Matriarch. A private person by nature, she ultimately chose to speak out to educate and inspire others – especially women balancing busy lives – about the critical importance of regular screenings.



    Read more:
    Black women are more likely to die from breast cancer – so why is breast screening attendance still a problem?

    Knowles candidly revealed that her cancer might have been caught even earlier, at stage 0, if she hadn’t missed a mammogram during the COVID pandemic. Like many, she delayed rescheduling, and it wasn’t until nearly four years later that she returned for screening.

    Her sister, a breast cancer survivor herself, reminded her that if she had stayed on schedule, doctors might have detected her cancer before it had begun to invade surrounding tissue.

    Thankfully, Knowles’ tumour was small and slow-growing. Still, the experience shook her and reinforced a message she now shares widely: early detection saves lives.

    Knowles’ story opens the door to an important medical conversation: what exactly is stage 0 cancer, and why does it matter?

    Stage 0, often called “carcinoma in situ”, is the earliest form of cancer. The Latin phrase in situ means “in its original place”, and that’s exactly where these abnormal cells remain – they haven’t yet spread to nearby tissue or other parts of the body. In breast cancer, the most common type of stage 0 is ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), where abnormal cells are confined to the milk ducts.

    Because stage 0 cancers rarely cause symptoms or lumps, they’re usually detected through screening – most often, a mammogram. In fact, the breast is where stage 0 is most commonly diagnosed, thanks to the effectiveness of these screening programs.

    But stage 0 cancer is not unique to the breast. Similar early, non-invasive changes can be found in other organs, such as the cervix (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia) or the colon (certain types of polyps).

    There’s a growing debate in the medical community about whether stage 0 cancers should be labelled as “cancer” at all. Some experts argue that terms like “precancer” or “non-invasive cancer” might better reflect the low risk posed by these abnormal cells. Others caution that, while not invasive yet, some stage 0 cancers can become dangerous over time, especially if left untreated.

    Research suggests that up to 40% of untreated DCIS cases may eventually develop into invasive breast cancer, although the risk in any given year is relatively low at around 3%. Because we currently lack a reliable way to predict which cases will progress, most doctors recommend treatment such as surgery to remove abnormal cells.

    Treatment for stage 0 cancer is typically less aggressive than for more advanced stages, but it’s still personalised. In breast cancer, options often include:

    • Lumpectomy – surgery to remove only the affected area
    • Mastectomy – removal of the entire breast
    • Radiation therapy – often recommended after lumpectomy to reduce the risk of recurrence
    • Hormone therapy – for cancers that have hormone receptors, medication may be used to lower future risk.

    However, some experts are exploring a different approach: active surveillance. This strategy involves closely monitoring low-grade lesions without immediate treatment. While promising for some patients, it’s still controversial since there’s always a risk the cancer could progress silently.

    The prognosis for stage 0 cancer is overwhelmingly positive. The five-year survival rate for stage 0 breast cancer approaches 99% and most people diagnosed at this stage will never experience a recurrence.

    This remarkable outcome is a testament to the power of early detection and effective treatment. However, the rise in stage 0 diagnoses also raises questions about so-called over-diagnosis and over-treatment and whether this means some people are undergoing unnecessary procedures for abnormalities that might never have caused harm.

    Despite its early stage, a diagnosis of stage 0 cancer can carry a heavy emotional toll. There’s comfort in knowing the cancer was caught early but also anxiety about what might have happened if it hadn’t. Many patients struggle with the uncertainty of whether treatment was necessary or whether watchful waiting would have been safe.

    Knowles, for instance, spoke of disbelief, fear and the emotional rollercoaster that followed her diagnosis. She credits her daughters and friends for getting her through, providing love, laughter and perspective in a frightening time. Her openness underscores how vital it is to have a strong support system and a healthcare team that encourages open dialogue.

    Mammograms and other screening tools like colonoscopies are vital for catching cancers at the earliest, most treatable stages. While the increase in stage 0 diagnoses has fuelled debate about over-treatment, it’s clear that early detection gives people options and a chance at a cure before cancer becomes more aggressive.

    My research team is working to develop more effective methods for distinguishing which early abnormalities truly require treatment and which can be safely monitored. Until those tools are widely available, public health experts continue to stress one clear message: stay up to date with recommended screenings.

    Knowles’ story is more than a celebrity health headline, it’s a powerful reminder that prioritising routine care can change the course of your life. Stage 0 cancer represents a rare window of opportunity: a chance to intervene early, often with excellent outcomes. But it also requires careful decision-making, emotional resilience and support.

    The message is simple and urgent: take care of yourself. Reschedule that appointment. Get screened. It might just save your life.

    Justin Stebbing 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. Stage 0 cancer is often overlooked — but it could be your earliest warning sign – https://theconversation.com/stage-0-cancer-is-often-overlooked-but-it-could-be-your-earliest-warning-sign-255460

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: The Academic Council discussed youth policy issues

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –

    The meeting of the Academic Council began, as per tradition, with a pleasant ceremony of honoring the Polytechnicians and the university’s partners.

    For her significant contribution to the development of the university, the rector of SPbPU Andrey Rudskoy awarded the commemorative badge “For Merit” to the federal inspector for St. Petersburg of the Office of the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Northwestern Federal District Tatyana Kubrakova.

    Then Andrey Ivanovich congratulated the graduate and postgraduate student of the Polytechnic University, assistant of the Higher School of Sports Pedagogy of the Institute of Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism, Honored Master of Sports of the Russian Federation, World and European Champion in short water Kirill Prigoda with a recent victory at the Russian Swimming Championship. The Polytechnician was the best in five distances: 50, 100, 200 meters breaststroke, in the 4×100 relay medley swimming and broke the Russian record. Kirill is the pride of the Polytechnic University, and given his great contribution to strengthening the positive image of the university, the Rector of SPbPU presented him with the main award of the university – the “For Merit” badge with special feeling.

    Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences diplomas were awarded to Igor Rovnin, a graduate of the Institute of Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism, deputy director of the private general education institution Gazprom School Saint Petersburg (academic supervisor – professor of the Higher School of Sports Pedagogy of SPbPU Alexander Bolotin) and senior lecturer of the Department of Foreign Languages Galina Borshchenko (academic supervisor – doctor of pedagogical sciences, professor Anna Rubtsova).

    Milana Zhavner received an associate professor’s certificate in the scientific specialty “Mechanical Science”.

    It’s time to honor the winners and prize winners of various competitions and contests. Winner of the Gazprom Neft League of Universities Award The SPbPU team won in the “Big Prospects” nomination, presenting an additional professional development program “Reverse Engineering of Oil Industry Enterprises”: Vice-Rector for Continuing and Pre-University Education Dmitry Tikhonov, Director of the Information Technology and Business Analysis Research Center “Gazprom Neft” Irina Rudskaya, Head of the Directorate of Continuing Education and Industry Partnership, Head of the Program Ivan Kurta, and Leading Analyst of the Directorate of Continuing Education and Industry Partnership Natalia Ivanova.

    The team of the Higher School of Media Communications and Public Relations of the Humanitarian Institute, consisting of Adelina Borodina, Aya Klimacheva, Vladislava Smelova, and Taisiya Temirova (project mentor – Director of the Higher School of Media Communications and Public Relations Marina Arkannikova), won in two nominations of the All-Russian competition of student works “Archer of the Future”.

    And the volunteer project “Polytech Gives Good” by students of the Higher School of Microbiology and Social Sciences Sofia Ryabinina and Elina Avakova took 1st place in the All-Russian competition “School of Volunteers”.

    L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University (Kazakhstan) sent letters of gratitude to Polytechnic University teachers Natalia Chicherina, Maya Bernavskaya, Evgenia Tuchkevich and Evgenia Vorontsova for promoting fruitful educational and scientific cooperation, supporting scientific events and active participation in the international seminar “New paradigms of scientific research in the era of AI: opportunities and transformation of research practices”.

    The SPbPU Certificate of Honor for many years of conscientious work and high professionalism was awarded to the Head of the Quality Control Department, Maxim Dyuldin.

    For the first time in the history of the Polytechnic Military Training Center, for excellent academic performance, active civic position, initiative and diligence demonstrated in volunteer work and assistance to participants of the SVO, students of the communications department Grigory Aleksandrov (IMMiT) and Artem Tikhonravov (IEIT) received departmental awards of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation – the medal “Marshal of the Signal Troops Peresypkin”.

    Lecturer at the Institute of Secondary Vocational Education Tatiana Tsvetkova received two awards – gratitude from the Committee on Science and Higher Education “For conscientious work, great personal contribution to the development of the professional education system of St. Petersburg” and gratitude from the rector of SPbPU A. I. Rudskoy “For the successful organization and holding of the opening Museum of the History of the Development of Public Catering in St. Petersburg as part of the St. Petersburg government project “St. Petersburg cuisine”.

    At the international robot fighting championship RoboWars, which took place in the Indian city of Surat during the largest technology festival Mindbend and brought together more than 80 teams from different countries, the CML-team of the Student Design Bureau of the Advanced Engineering School “Digital Engineering” won – engineer of the Experimental Design Bureau of the SPbPU PISh Vsevolod Bolshakov and laboratory assistant of the Experimental Design Bureau of the SPbPU PISh Daria Kuatkhina. The guys also became winners in the individual competition “Battle of Robots – KRASHILOVO”, in which more than 40 teams from different regions of Russia participated.

    As always, the athletes pleased us with their success. The Polytechnicians became the first in the St. Petersburg student cheerleading competitions (thanks to students Marat Gainutdinov, Victoria Nechaeva, Arina Rakhmatulina and Margarita Senina)

    According to the results of the student karate competitions (VKF) within the framework of the St. Petersburg Student Sports Games 2025, Polytech won 1st place in the overall team standings. This is the merit of the coach of the Student Sports Club “Black Bears-Polytech” Elizaveta Orlova, as well as students Anastasia Vasilenko, Maria Luganskaya and Valery Kazantsev.

    The SPbPU hockey team also won the All-Russian final of the Student Hockey League championship and earned special congratulations from the SPbPU Academic Council.

    After the official ceremony, the Academic Council moved on to the agenda. Vice-Rector for Youth Policy and Communication Technologies Maxim Pasholikov spoke about the implementation of youth policy at the university.

    “It is important that students from their first year begin to understand the values our university lives by, accept these values and leave the Polytechnic as spiritually mature people with the right life guidelines,” emphasized Maxim Pasholikov. “Our communities have always been the main actor in our youth policy. It is impossible to reach all 30 thousand students given the limited resources. That is why trade union organizations, the headquarters of student teams, the adapter movement, patriotic and sports clubs, creative associations that attract a large number of young people are important to us, and, accordingly, through them, through their leaders, we work with young people.”

    Maxim Aleksandrovich noted that the leaders of student associations in many cases become mentors for their younger comrades, and even after graduating from university, they return here as members of the alumni association and ambassadors of the Polytechnic University.

    The Vice-Rector noted that the SPbPU History Museum, creative semesters and last year’s innovation – musical changes on the White Staircase of the Main Academic Building – play an important role in the education and formation of students’ personalities.

    The number of visitors, projects and grants is also growing in the Polytechnic Tower. Work continues within the framework of the “We are together” campaign – for this the vice-rector separately thanked the Humanitarian Institute and the “Harmony” Center.

    Maxim Aleksandrovich drew the attention of the institute directors to the fact that the relevance of social and psychological assistance at the university has grown significantly.

    This year we managed to expand the staff of the Psychological Support Center; people are asking for help, and these are not just people who want to talk, but those who are really experiencing difficulties and problems, emphasized Maxim Pasholikov.

    Maxim Aleksandrovich spoke in detail about the events dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, talking about the festive decoration of the campus, exhibitions, the ongoing project “Scientific Regiment” and the new video project “Memory of Glory Lives”, the play “Engineers of Victory” and the upcoming press conference at TASS about the new book “Polytech. Fortitude. 1941-1945”. As always, the inter-university military-patriotic rally “Syandeba” and “Family Victory Day” will be held in the Polytech Park on May 17, including the traditional run named after Hero of the Soviet Union Viktor Lyagin.

    The second issue on the agenda was the presentation of academic titles. By a majority of votes, the members of the SC voted to award the academic title of “professor” to Vladimir Sergeev (PhysMekh) and Alexey Flimonov (IEIT); the title of “associate professor” to Alexey Lukin (PhysMekh), Roman Burkovsky (IEIT), Alexey Grachev and Dmitry Masailo from IMMIT, Alexander Moskvichev (IBSS) and Elena Ladik (ISI).

    On the third issue, “On monitoring the implementation of decisions of the Academic Council,” the scientific secretary of SPbPU, Dmitry Karpov, made a report.

    Also, the members of the Academic Council unanimously supported the nomination of the assistant of the Rais of the Republic of Tatarstan Albert Gilmutdinov for the award of the title of “Honorary Professor of SPbPU”.

    Photo archive

    Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI: Brett Snortland Joins Rate as Senior Vice President of Market Growth & Development

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    CHICAGO, April 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rate, a leader in fintech mortgage solutions, today announced that Brett Snortland has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Market Growth and Development. Based in Houston, Snortland will focus on expanding Rate’s presence and production across the West Division, helping drive growth through recruitment, development, and sales strategy.

    With more than 30 years of experience in sales and recruiting within the mortgage industry, Snortland brings a proven track record of success. He has funded more than $20 billion in his career, including $3.1 billion in 2020 and 2021 alone. A seasoned relationship manager and coach to originators, he specializes in growth, P&L management, relationship selling, and strategic recruiting.

    “Joining Rate at this time of innovation and opportunity is truly energizing,” said Snortland. “This team is unmatched in its commitment to both technology and talent. I’m excited to build on that foundation and help drive significant growth across the West.”

    Snortland is married to his wife Carrie of 32 years and is a proud father to three sons. A former collegiate golfer at The University of Texas, he played professionally from 1993 to 1995.

    “Brett’s leadership style and experience in cultivating high-performing teams will be a huge asset to Rate,” said Todd Heaton, EVP and Western Divisional Manager for Rate. “He’s joining at the perfect time as we continue investing in both people and platforms to expand our reach and better serve homebuyers.”

    About Rate

    Rate Companies is a leader in mortgage lending and digital financial services. Headquartered in Chicago, Rate has over 850 branches across all 50 states and Washington D.C. Since its launch in 2000, Rate has helped more than 2 million homeowners with home purchase loans and refinances. The company has cemented itself as an industry leader by introducing innovative technology, offering low rates, and delivering unparalleled customer service.

    Honors and awards include Best Mortgage Lender for First-Time Homebuyers by NerdWallet for 2023; HousingWire’s Tech100 award for the company’s industry-leading FlashClose℠ digital mortgage platform in 2020, MyAccount in 2022, and Language Access Program in 2023; the most Scotsman Guide Top Originators for 11 consecutive years; Chicago Agent Magazine’s Lender of the Year for seven consecutive years; and Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces list for seven straight years.

    Visit rate.com for more information.

    Media Contact

    press@rate.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: QuEra Selected for Phase I of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    BOSTON, April 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — QuEra, the leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, is pleased to announce its selection by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Stage A of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI). DARPA QBI is a multi-stage program which aims to determine whether it is possible to build a commercially useful, fault-tolerant quantum computer within a decade.

    “We are honored that QuEra has been invited to participate in the first phase of the QBI program,” said Andy Ory, CEO of QuEra. “This initiative represents an opportunity to demonstrate the true potential of our neutral-atom approach. We look forward to working with DARPA’s team and accelerate the path toward a transformative computing platform and build a neutral-atom quantum supercomputer.”

    DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is designed to rigorously verify and validate diverse quantum computing approaches. Participants enter a six-month Stage A, during which they detail their technical concepts and planned research paths. Companies that successfully complete this stage may then advance to a year-long Stage B, followed by a final Stage C, where an independent verification and validation (IV&V) team evaluates prototype hardware and accompanying technologies. This evaluation process is meant to assess the feasibility of achieving “utility-scale” quantum computing — systems that can deliver a true computational advantage for practical industry and government applications.

    QuEra will use its unique neutral-atom architecture to advance work on fault-tolerant quantum computing. The approach leverages the natural scalability of neutral atoms and QuEra’s unique qubit shuttling technology. QuEra’s team of world-class physicists, engineers, and collaborators from leading research institutions has been steadily refining this platform, culminating in the opportunity to share its plan in more detail during Stage A of QBI.

    By participating in QBI, QuEra will continue developing its systems and present evidence of how its unique quantum computing approach could ultimately meet the cost-benefit threshold required for industrial utility. The company’s research and development roadmap will be subject to rigorous technical scrutiny — aligning with QBI’s overarching mission of determining realistic quantum computing capabilities in the near term.

    QuEra is dedicated to advancing quantum computing using neutral-atom architectures. Drawing upon expertise in atomic physics, optical engineering, and algorithm design, QuEra is forging a path toward the development of scalable, fault-tolerant quantum processors that address complex computational challenges in industry, government, and academia.

    For additional information on the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, please visit: https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/quantum-benchmarking-initiative

    About QuEra

    QuEra Computing is the leader in developing and productizing quantum computers using neutral atoms, widely recognized as a highly promising quantum computing modality. Based in Boston and built on pioneering research from Harvard University and MIT, QuEra operates the world’s largest publicly accessible quantum computer, available over a major public cloud and for on-premises delivery. QuEra is developing useful, scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computers to tackle classically intractable problems, becoming the partner of choice in the quantum field. Simply put, QuEra is the best way to quantum. For more information, visit us at quera.com and follow us on X or LinkedIn.

    Media Contact

    Merrill Freund
    press@quera.com
    +1-415-577-8637

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From shrinking bladders to severe stomach pain: survey reveals the painful realities of ketamine addiction

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rebecca Harding, PhD Candidate, Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, UCL

    Ketamine’s rising popularity has created a paradox. While it’s hailed by some doctors as a breakthrough psychiatric treatment, it’s also driving a surge in addiction and harming people’s health. To better understand people’s experience of ketamine and how it might be best used in medical treatment, we surveyed hundreds of people who self-identify as struggling with ketamine addiction.

    Ketamine is gaining recognition as a promising, rapid-acting intervention for mental health conditions for many. Phase three clinical trials are now underway for its use with people with alcohol problems. A ketamine-based nasal spray, Spravato, has also been approved as a standalone therapy for treatment-resistant depression,

    But for others, particularly recreational users in their 20s, ketamine use can lead to more harm than healing.

    Once seen as a fringe party drug, ketamine – also known as “K” – has now entered the mainstream, gaining popularity as a nightlife narcotic and reports of widespread use in Hollywood. But with its rise have come warnings: several high-profile deaths, including actor Matthew Perry and drag artist The Vivienne, have sparked public concern.

    Medical ketamine is a regulated drug used in hospitals and clinics under professional supervision. Illegal ketamine, often used recreationally, is unregulated, may be contaminated and carries higher risks of overdose, addiction and health complications due to unknown purity and unsafe use.

    To better understand the experience of ketamine addiction and to help inform improved treatments, our research team at the University of Exeter and University College London surveyed 274 people with self-identified ketamine addiction from Europe, North America and Australia**. We believe the results offer the most in-depth data of its kind to date.

    While ketamine is chemically distinct from opioids, some users described its emotional and social toll as equally devastating. One participant described it as “the heroin of a generation”.

    This stark characterisation underscores the growing number of people seeking treatment – not only for addiction, but also for physical health complications that can follow heavy, prolonged use.

    Sixty percent of respondents reported bladder problems – a side effect well known among long-term ketamine users, but rarely discussed outside specialist circles. Many also described intense psychological symptoms such as cravings, low mood, anxiety and irritability.

    While these experiences probably reflect heavier users than the average recreational consumer, they highlight the serious harms experienced by those who become dependent.

    Alarming statistics

    Alarmingly, over a third of our respondents had never sought treatment. Among those who had, only 36% were satisfied with the care they received. One person noted: “I think they need to research drugs or options that fight K bladder, K kidneys and K stomach cramps. Ketamine can make your lifespan much shorter.”

    A recurring theme throughout the survey responses was frustration at the lack of awareness – among peers, educators, healthcare providers and even addiction specialists – about ketamine’s risks.

    “No one even understands what ketamine is or what it does,” said one participant. They added: “It shouldn’t be our job to explain the science. It should be taught. People need to be educated. There’s so much less information out there compared to drugs like cocaine.”

    Most participants had first encountered ketamine in recreational settings. Only four participants first encountered it through prescription, primarily in the United States, where at-home ketamine therapy is becoming more common. In contrast, the UK restricts ketamine use to clinical supervision.

    Crucially, the doses reported by participants were far higher than those used in medical settings. Rapid tolerance development and escalating use were common concerns.

    New treatment strategies

    To support those struggling with ketamine addiction, our findings point to the urgent need for new treatment strategies. These include pharmacological options to address physical complications like “K cramps” (severe abdominal pain often described as excruciating) and improved understanding of how ketamine causes bladder and kidney damage.

    Equally vital is improving education – both for the public and for healthcare professionals – about the risks of ketamine use and the realities of addiction. We hope our survey offers a platform for those with experience to be heard and for their voices to shape future research, clinical care and public health messaging.



    Read more:
    Ketamine: what you need to know about the UK’s growing drug problem

    This survey comes at a crucial time in ketamine’s evolving story. In response to rising recreational use and recent fatalities, the UK government is reportedly considering reclassifying ketamine as a Class A drug. However, when ketamine was reclassified from Class C to Class B in 2014, use among 16–24-year-olds increased by 231%, suggesting that harsher penalties do little to curb demand.

    Instead of relying on punitive measures, we must focus on expanding treatment access, reducing stigma and investing in prevention. Our study shows the urgent need for more research into what makes ketamine addictive, how to prevent its physical harms and, most importantly, how to help people recover and reclaim their lives.

    Celia Morgan receives funding from National Institute of Health Research (UK), Medical Research Council (UK), Economic and Social Research Council UK; Medical Research Foundation; Wellcome Trust; Awakn Life Sciences.

    Rebecca Harding 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. From shrinking bladders to severe stomach pain: survey reveals the painful realities of ketamine addiction – https://theconversation.com/from-shrinking-bladders-to-severe-stomach-pain-survey-reveals-the-painful-realities-of-ketamine-addiction-255197

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The world needs climate change leadership – it’s time for China to step up

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yixian Sun, Associate Professor in International Development, University of Bath

    The second Trump administration has announced various anti-climate policies under its “America first” strategy. Leaving the Paris agreement, kicking off a trade war, shutting down USAid and drilling for more oil and gas will not only undermine the US’s international reputation but will undermine the global effort to combat climate change.

    With the US in retreat from climate action and Europe preoccupied by security challenges, new leadership is urgently needed. China may be poised to fill this gap.

    The country is already dominant in most clean technologies, and its top leaders say climate action can help the country fulfil its responsibilities as a major power. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, reiterated this message at a recent closed-door meeting of heads of state, organised by the UN secretary general to discuss the climate crisis.

    After nodding to the Trump-initiated global economic shock, Xi said China “will overcome the headwinds and steadily move forward global climate governance”.

    But to take on this leadership, Beijing must first strengthen China’s domestic policies along with its support for climate action in the global south. The country has made remarkable progress on clean energy and its carbon emissions may peak this year.

    But more than 60% of the electricity generated in the country still comes from coal, and it remains unclear how fast the government plans to phase out fossil fuels. Meanwhile, some provincial governments are still issuing permits to add new coal-fired power plants.

    Coal storage in Ningbo, China.
    Alex Tao Wang / shutterstock

    There are things China can do almost immediately to show its commitment to climate action and rebuild international confidence in the Paris agreement. First, it must set very ambitious pledges to reduce its emissions for the coming decades ahead of this year’s UN climate conference (Cop30) to be held in November in Belém, Brazil.

    China was one of the many countries that missed a February deadline for submitting its targets (only 15 countries were on time). Until now, Beijing’s strategy has been to “wait and see” given the turbulence caused by the new Trump administration.

    What China ends up pledging will have a profound impact on global ambition. An ambitious target might mean reducing its emissions from their peak level by at least 30%. This is still achievable if the country can maintain its current progress in renewables.

    Despite the missed deadline, there are some positive noises coming from Beijing. In a recent high-level meeting organised by the UN secretary general, Xi announced that China’s next set of emission reduction targets, covering the period up to 2035, will cover all economic sectors and all greenhouse gases.

    This will be a major progress compared to China’s previous pledges, which only covered carbon dioxide (China is the world’s biggest emitter of the potent greenhouse gas methane, for instance) and did not integrate national targets into individual sectoral policies.

    More support for developing countries

    China has also been instrumental in bridging gaps between developed and developing countries in recent international talks. This was especially the case during negotiations at Cop29 last year in Baku, Azerbaijan, for a new global climate finance goal.

    Climate finance, in this context, refers to providing developing countries with the resources to help them reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change. China still has developing country status in the UN’s climate change convention and, as such, has no official obligation to provide international climate finance.

    Despite this, it has already provided or helped raise around US$24.5 billion (£18.32 billion) for clean energy, disaster recovery and other climate actions in developing countries. That makes it the world’s fifth-largest climate finance donor according to some estimates.

    But for this investment to have a lasting impact, Beijing needs to be more transparent about where its funding goes and how projects are financed. It should also get local people more involved in designing and implementing the projects it funds.

    Reform the system

    China should also play a major role in reforming the global financial system to make it aligned with the Paris agreement. As a strong supporter of green finance, it can influence upcoming international talks such as the Financing for Development conference in Seville, as well as the UN’s negotiations on international tax cooperation. As co-chair of the G20’s sustainable finance working group, China also has the opportunity to push for more funding to support net zero.

    China is by far the world’s biggest producer of renewables, batteries, electric vehicles and many other clean technologies, and is in a unique position to supply them affordably.

    While it has already exported lots of these products, many developing countries still don’t have the know-how or the basic infrastructure to make the most of them (solar farms are of limited use if you don’t have a battery capable of storing the electricity they generate, for instance). China can address this by partnering with other governments in the global south to share technologies and invest in manufacturing.

    With global climate leadership at risk, China has the chance to step up. As an emerging superpower with advantages in clean technologies and a leadership that recently reaffirmed their commitment to climate action, the country is well positioned. The world is watching to see if China will follow through.

    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.

    Yixian Sun receives funding from UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (grant number: MR/X035956/1).

    – ref. The world needs climate change leadership – it’s time for China to step up – https://theconversation.com/the-world-needs-climate-change-leadership-its-time-for-china-to-step-up-252698

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: My Cypriot grandfather was one of millions of foreign servicemen who fought for Britain. Now I’m telling their stories

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christiana Gregoriou, Professor in English Language and Stylistics, University of Leeds

    The second world war veteran community is far more ethnically diverse than many people realise, with over 3 million foreign servicemen serving with the British armed forces during the conflict.

    Second world war memoirs are vital records of how these servicemen remembered the war. They offer insights into their relationship to trauma and resilience and their search for meaning in life.

    May 8 2025 is the 80th anniversary of VE Day. As we mark it, it’s important that we celebrate this ethnic diversity and highlight how much this community’s memoirs can teach us about the joy of making sense and finding lessons, however challenging life may be.

    My research into second world war memoirs uses original archival materials including the memoir of my grandfather, Cypriot sergeant Phylactis Aristokleous (British Army). He was a prisoner of war (PoW) and one of the thousands of colonised Cypriots who volunteered to serve in the army’s Cyprus regiment at the time.

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    My colleague George Rodosthenous is currently adapting my grandfather’s memoir into a theatrical monologue. It will form the basis of a lecture-performance which will tour Yorkshire heritage sites in May as part of a week commemorating VE Day. All are welcome to attend.

    Though his story is one of deprivation and difficulty, Aristokleous’ war experience was also one he took huge pride in. He believed his time had been beneficial and felt a strong need to share his story with others.

    Memoirists are narrators of the history they bore witness to. Though their stories appear to be individual and personal, they are in constant dialogue with their readers, and with each other, informed by experience that is rich, historic and detailed.

    The stories in these memoirs are part of a web of experiences shared with and influenced by others. Read collectively, a culturally dominant story emerges of survival and determination.

    The war experience

    My grandfather believed that serving in the allied forces and writing about his experiences in his memoir shaped the rest of his life. He claimed that his war experiences determined his outlook and prepared him for the life he led after service. All the while, he was aware that his time had also split his sense of self into parts – some of which he left “behind”.

    Even though this positivity might well be more of a feature of his character rather than the war experience itself, it is nevertheless telling. Aristokleous selected many individual incidents to write about, and my analysis of his memoir focuses on them. He acknowledged that only some of them were incidents he had witnessed firsthand; the rest were stories that others had shared with him.

    The authenticity of the stories he shared tended to be driven by his belief that collectively, and in the war specifically, groups of people from the same nations behaved in the same sort of way.

    In one instance, for example, he accepted the authenticity of a story about Australians being courageous only on the basis of him witnessing a random Australian being courageous at a different point in time entirely. The story concerned two Australians who – after killing a German guard – shot each other so they would not be arrested. He believed this story because of an incident he witnessed himself – an Australian PoW who avenged the killing of an innocent British PoW by killing the German guard responsible, only to then be killed himself.

    Even though my grandfather’s stories were compellingly told and retold over the course of several decades, writing them down helped him organise and conceptualise them into a narrative life-story. In so doing, he added unlikely connections between incidents across his life and PoW journey. He made sense of incidents that happened at one point in place and time by linking them to another place and time entirely.

    In one chapter, for example, he talked about winning bread in a raffle, a moment he linked back to having previously asked God for forgiveness for having given a hungry British sergeant dry biscuits that were not his to give away. He deemed his winning a response to prayer.

    He also drew on analogies for the prisoner experience found in the natural world, which speaks to his dehumanisation during that time. There’s the story of a prisoner’s pet-crow, Jack, for example, who hid cheese the PoWs gave him in the snow for when he needed it. From this, he suggested that the PoWs needed to do the same themselves. These connections helped him to construct sense and rationale around what he went through, and even find closure and catharsis.

    Analysis of his many anecdotes also reveals a tendency to dissociate, by using “we” instead of “I”, for instance. He also distanced himself from what was happening by using direct quotes from others in mostly foreign languages. This lends his stories an air of authenticity.

    The memoir also uses proverbs specific to his Greek Cypriot culture. This enabled him to find another purpose to his stories – to turn them into life lessons for others, particularly his own children and grandchildren.

    An enduring legacy

    Most of the second world war veteran community is no longer with us. But their experience in the form of memoirs is, and so is the enduring legacy they left behind.

    The most cynical of us may argue that life is chaotic, futile and devoid of meaning, but what these memoirs, and my grandfather, may teach us is that we can craft ourselves a narrative to help make sense of it.

    Perhaps most importantly, this multicultural veteran community serves as a powerful reminder that, despite the global conflict they endured, it was through diverse nations uniting across ethnic lines, that they were able to defend their freedom, lives and livelihoods from those who sought to destroy them.

    Christiana Gregoriou 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. My Cypriot grandfather was one of millions of foreign servicemen who fought for Britain. Now I’m telling their stories – https://theconversation.com/my-cypriot-grandfather-was-one-of-millions-of-foreign-servicemen-who-fought-for-britain-now-im-telling-their-stories-252697

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What magic reveals about the brain – and how magicians sometimes fool themselves

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Radoslaw Wincza, Lecturer in Behavioural Sciences, University of Central Lancashire

    FOTOKITA/Shutterstock

    Magicians have long been masters of mind games, turning our brain’s quirks and blind spots into moments of pure astonishment. But magic isn’t just for show – it’s become a powerful tool in the cognitive science of unlocking the mind’s hidden limitations.

    The science of magic has grown into a serious field of study, showing us how unreliable our intuitions and self-perceptions can be. However, a new study shows that magicians may be wrong about why their tricks work.

    From psychology and artificial intelligence to education and mental health, magic is inspiring fresh approaches to some of today’s biggest challenges. Today, scientists and magicians are teaming up, bringing sleight-of-hand into the lab to reveal surprising truths about how we think, see and behave.

    For example, misdirection is a key conjuring principle used to manipulate what we see, and scientific research on misdirection shows just how easily our attention can be hijacked. Other techniques such as “forcing,” involve subtle ways to steer our decisions without us even noticing. These illusions expose the gap between what we think we’re aware of and what’s actually happening in our minds.

    Magicians are masters of mind control – using techniques like misdirection to guide your attention to one thing while something else slips by unnoticed. Take English illusionist Derren Brown. He claims that, with the right mix of gestures and phrases, he can get you to think of a card he’s already predicted. Sounds wild, right?

    According to research, it actually works. Well, kind of. Not 100% of the time, but around 20%. That might not sound like much, but consider this: the chance of randomly naming a specific card from a deck is less than 2%, and even lower if we account for biases (like people often picking the Ace of Spades). So, bumping that chance up tenfold is pretty impressive.

    What does this tell us? That our decisions – what we choose, what we notice – are heavily influenced by what’s going on around us, even if we have no clue it’s happening.

    And this doesn’t just apply to magic. For example, as you are doing your weekly shop, you might think you pick your favourite brand of toilet paper because it’s the best. But research shows that people often choose whatever is placed at eye level, or in the centre of a shelf. Supermarkets know this. That’s why the most profitable products get prime shelf space – to gently (but powerfully) sway your choices.

    We love to believe we’re rational thinkers. But the truth is, we’re often guided by invisible hands – and not just the magician’s.

    Magicians were tapping into the secrets of the human mind long before scientists caught up. For decades, they’ve been using intuition to craft tricks that play perfectly on our mental blind spots. But even seasoned professionals can be fooled by their own assumptions.

    Here’s a standout example: in the magic world, it’s commonly believed that if a spectator names a card out loud (like “Queen of Hearts”), that choice is freer and less influenced by a magician than if the spectator had physically picked a card from the deck the magician is holding. Sounds reasonable, right? Except – it’s the opposite.

    Actions v thoughts

    In our recent study, we interviewed nearly 140 people after taking part in a magic trick where they either named or physically picked a card. On average, people felt more in control when they physically selected a card, and less influenced by the magician – despite what the magic community might expect.

    These findings reveal something fascinating: our sense of control is split. We feel more ownership over our actions – what we do – than over our thoughts. In other words, we trust our hands more than our heads.

    The human brain isn’t as rational as we think.
    Everett Collection/Shutterstock

    But it doesn’t stop there. Another long-held belief among magicians is that a trick feels more impossible and impressive – and creates a stronger emotional punch – when it happens in the spectator’s hands.

    Think about it: if a card magically swaps places with another while you’re holding them that should blow your mind more than if the same trick happens, say, under a box on the table.

    Surprisingly, that’s not what the research shows. In our study, participants were shown two versions of the same trick – in one version, a freely selected card changed in the hands of the participant, while in the other version, the card changed underneath a box.

    We found that people’s reactions to this kind of trick didn’t significantly change based on where it happened. Whether the cards swapped places in their hands or under a box, their sense of amazement was the same. The only difference? When it happened in their own hands, they felt more confused – but not more astonished.

    Why? We think it’s because the trick itself, just like many others out there, is already packed with emotional punch. No matter where the magic takes place, the effect is still jaw-dropping. So, it turns out, the “where” doesn’t matter as much as magicians had thought. It’s the “what” – the impossibility of the effect – that really leaves people stunned.

    So, why are some magicians wrong about this stuff? Honestly, we don’t have a definitive answer yet. But what we do know is this: even with years of experience, our perceptions can still lead us astray. That’s why it’s so important to test our assumptions – not just trust our gut. Magic gives us a powerful reminder of this by turning our mental shortcuts into moments of surprise.

    And this lesson goes way beyond card tricks. In everyday life, we carry beliefs and assumptions – about people, situations, even ourselves – that might feel true but are built on shaky ground. Sometimes, it’s just a harmless mistake. Other times, it can lead to stereotyping, misunderstandings, or missed opportunities.

    So next time you catch yourself making a snap judgement, pause and ask: How sure am I, really? A little curiosity could save you from an awkward moment – or even help you connect with someone you might’ve otherwise dismissed.

    Because if there’s one thing magic teaches us, it’s this: the mind is full of surprises – and we’re all a little easier to fool than we’d like to admit.

    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. What magic reveals about the brain – and how magicians sometimes fool themselves – https://theconversation.com/what-magic-reveals-about-the-brain-and-how-magicians-sometimes-fool-themselves-255236

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Co-working spaces aren’t just about convenience – they bring a whole range of benefits for employees and communities

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mariachiara Barzotto, Senior Lecturer in Management Strategy and Organisation, University of Bath

    Master1305/Shutterstock

    When you think of co-working spaces – where workers from different industries come together to share a convenient workplace – you might picture a group of young freelancers hunched over laptops. But today’s co-working spaces have evolved into something more powerful – particularly in a world still reshuffling office work practices in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

    As workplaces adapt to new ways of operating, from hybrid to “digital nomadism”, co-working spaces can do more than simply offer flexibility. They can support workers’ wellbeing and work–life balance by enhancing a sense of community, building trust and new friendships, and encouraging continuous learning.

    Research I undertook with colleagues shows these spaces may also play a role in addressing societal challenges. They can provide support for workers with family or caring responsibilities and enhance digital connectivity in under-served areas by offering faster, stable internet access. They can also encourage knowledge-sharing around new technology – while reducing the need for long commutes, which brings environmental benefits.

    Other research shows that co-working staff tend to report higher levels of job satisfaction and wellbeing, particularly compared with those working at home. There are various reasons for this.

    The ability to choose how and where to work, to exchange knowledge with others on-site, and to avoid long commutes all contribute to better mental health, happiness and wellbeing.

    Productivity can also be boosted by, for example, the social support and interactions encouraged by open architecture and flexible workstations, as well as by a workplace that is much closer to home.

    Some co-working spaces have gone a step further, integrating childcare, wellness programmes and even care for older dependants. One example is COWORCare, a European initiative linking co-working spaces with family support such as kindergartens and elderly-care services. This helps parents (especially mothers) participate more fully in the labour market.

    Workers often need to update their skills to stay competitive. While informal learning happens in traditional offices too, co-working spaces can offer advantages by connecting professionals, entrepreneurs and freelancers across industries. This encourages knowledge-sharing between sectors.

    Many also host training sessions, workshops and networking events, making it easier to develop skills than when working from home or in more homogeneous office settings.

    Some of these spaces also create opportunities, both formal and informal, for young people to learn from more skilled and experienced workers. They can also help youngsters who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) into the workforce.

    This all matters because the shift to greener and more digital economies – known as the “twin transition” – is creating both opportunities and risks. Many workers, especially in rural and older populations, could be left behind without access to training or digital infrastructure. Co-working spaces specifically for older people are ideally placed to address this.

    Such spaces can act as “infrastructures of care” by helping workers feel like part of a community. Perhaps one of the most underrated benefits of co-working is how it can combat loneliness and boost morale for staff who might otherwise be working from home or face a long commute to their employer’s office.

    Remote working can be lonely – and people in the early stages of their career can miss out on chances to learn from more experienced workers.
    fizkes/Shutterstock

    During the pandemic, many people realised how much they missed casual chats and social interaction. Co-working can bring that back – even for remote workers. In fact, co-working spaces can create the kind of “light-touch” community that encourages inclusion without being overwhelming.

    Left-behind places

    Co-working isn’t just for buzzing city centres. Some of the most exciting developments are happening in small towns and rural areas.

    Governments across Europe are supporting this shift. Ireland’s Connected Hubs scheme has built a national network of remote-working hubs, aiming to revitalise rural communities and reduce the urban-rural divide.

    These hubs can provide better internet than workers may have at home, and keep talented young people in the region. They can also spark local entrepreneurship, especially when paired with funding and mentoring. For example, the Youth Re-Working Rural project across Norway, Italy, Spain, Greece, Latvia and Slovenia supports youth and creative industries through co-working and digital training.

    But these spaces aren’t a silver bullet. Our research also shows they are most effective when public investment simultaneously targets specific areas.

    This could be extending high-speed broadband to rural areas, improving transport connections and providing vocational and digital skills training. Policies that support back-to-work programmes – for example, mentoring for unemployed people, parents returning after career breaks, or those who have lost jobs reintegrating into the labour market – are crucial, alongside access to affordable housing.

    Co-working spaces can be part of the solution to making work better – not just more convenient and efficient, but more human. They can improve wellbeing, encourage new skills, and bring life back into places that have been left behind after traditional local industries declined.

    Rethinking the future of work in the face of multiple transitions – digital, green and demographic – means also thinking about the kind of spaces that make learning, connection and wellbeing possible.

    Mariachiara Barzotto 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. Co-working spaces aren’t just about convenience – they bring a whole range of benefits for employees and communities – https://theconversation.com/co-working-spaces-arent-just-about-convenience-they-bring-a-whole-range-of-benefits-for-employees-and-communities-255281

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: RFK Jr. said many autistic people will never write a poem − even though there’s a rich history of neurodivergent poets and writers

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bradley J. Irish, Associate Professor of English, Arizona State University

    Scholars today believe Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw was probably on the autism spectrum. Bettmann/Getty Images

    U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently declared autism a national “epidemic,” calling it a “preventable disease” that is growing at an “alarming rate.”

    He went on to cast autism as an “individual tragedy” that “destroys families,” while stating that many autistic people will “never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.”

    The remarks drew widespread criticism from researchers, advocacy groups and autistic people. They objected to these scientifically unsound characterizations of autism, along with the broad strokes with which Kennedy described autistic people, who exist on a vast spectrum.

    As an autistic English professor who studies literature and neurodiversity, I was especially unnerved by Kennedy’s contention that many autistic people will never write poetry.

    It couldn’t be further from the truth.

    Working poets

    There’s a remarkable corpus of poetry written by autistic people, who have also written novels, plays and virtually any kind of literature imaginable. The Autism Books by Autistic Authors Project catalogs 133 collections of poetry authored by autistic individuals, which represents only a fraction of the work created by autistic poets throughout history.

    One of the most well-known contemporary autistic poets is David Miedzianik, who in 1986 also wrote one of the earliest autistic memoirs. He’s published his poetry in the books “I Hope Some Lass Will Want Me After Reading All This,” “Taking the Load Off My Mind: Autobiographical and Other Poems” and “Now All I’ve Got Left is Myself: Autobiographical Poems, 1993-1996.”

    Adam Wolfond is another celebrated autistic poet. Wolfond, who is nonspeaking, has released several books of poetry, including “In Way of Music Water Answers Toward Questions Other Than What Is Autism” in 2019, “The Wanting Way” in 2022 and “Open Book in Ways of Water” the following year. And Traci Neal is an autistic poet, advocate and spoken-word artist whose work has been featured in Newsweek and NPR’s Poetry Moment.

    Autistic poets write about many topics. But their work is particularly poignant when discussing how they fit into a world that often labels them broken, incomplete or something less than human.

    In writer and poet Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay’s 2010 poem “Misfit,” the speaker of the poem notes that other people often ostracize him for his differences. But he doesn’t care: 

      My hands, as usual, were flapping
  The birds knew I was Autistic;
  They found no wrong with anything.

    Poets from the past

    Beyond living writers, readers and researchers have also explored the possibility that poets from the past may have had autistic characteristics, even before autism came to be formally theorized by clinicians in the mid-20th century.

    Of course, it’s important to exercise caution when categorizing people from the past, since they lived in worlds without those terms. At the same time, there have always been people whose minds and bodies worked in ways we’d now describe as autistic. So most literary scholars believe it is perfectly reasonable to discuss it as a possibility, as long as these historical figures aren’t given a formal, authoritative “diagnosis.”

    In 2010, for example, literary scholar Julie Brown suggested that renowned American poet Emily Dickinson had characteristics – such as sensory issues, social quirkiness and a savant’s command of language – that align with those of some individuals on the autism spectrum. More recent readers have agreed.

    In fact, many historical poets, novelists and playwrights have been tentatively associated with autism or other kinds of neurodivergence, such as William Wordsworth, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf.

    Unique voices, unique perspectives

    Of course, there are countless autistic people who write poetry who aren’t famous and haven’t published books. Neurodivergent poet and educator Chris Martin, who works with autistic people around the world, helps his students discover how to express themselves in poems.

    He describes this work in “May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our Neurodiverse Future,” a book that’s part memoir of Martin’s own journey and part poetry anthology of his students’ poetry.

    Autistic poet and educator Chris Martin and autistic poet Adam Wolfond, who is nonspeaking, participate in a reading in 2023.

    Martin describes the “remarkable reciprocity poetry shares with autism or autistic minds or autistic ways of moving through the world.”

    “Time and again,” he adds, “I have watched my students … grasp the hand of poetry and begin dancing like they’ve been doing it their whole lives.”

    In fact, he argues that “poetry’s patterned structure uniquely serves neurodivergent thinking.” Because many autistic people seek patterns with a “combination of knack and urgency,” reading and writing poetry, which is anchored in patterns of words, images, sounds and forms, is particularly well suited for their way of thinking.

    In a recent interview with the magazine Mother Jones, autistic poet, educator and attorney Elizabeth R. McClellan said, “I know so many poets with various kinds of neurodivergence and that adds to the way that we see the world in our unique way, and that adds to our unique voice as poets.”

    In other words, autistic people are able to expand the possibilities of poetry itself.

    Bradley J. Irish 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. RFK Jr. said many autistic people will never write a poem − even though there’s a rich history of neurodivergent poets and writers – https://theconversation.com/rfk-jr-said-many-autistic-people-will-never-write-a-poem-even-though-theres-a-rich-history-of-neurodivergent-poets-and-writers-255367

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: No whistleblower is an island – why networks of allies are key to exposing corruption

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kate Kenny, Professor of Business and Society, University of Galway

    Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen speaks at a conference in 2022. Kimberly White/Getty Images for SumOfUs

    Whistleblowers – people who expose wrongdoing within their organizations – play a crucial role in holding governments and corporations accountable. But speaking up can come at a cost. People who report misconduct often face retaliation, job loss or legal threats, making whistleblowing risky and challenging. And when legal protections for whistleblowers are weakened, the risks only grow.

    That’s exactly the situation many workers face today.

    In the U.S., a Trump administration executive order threatens to effectively strip thousands of federal workers’ rights to whistleblower protection. The executive order is part of a larger effort to reclassify civil servants as “at-will” workers who can be sacked at any time for any reason. While federal workers have enjoyed protection against whistleblower reprisal for decades, those safeguards are now under threat. And this comes as private-sector whistleblowers have increasingly faced reprisal, too.

    Yet while the risks are real, whistleblowing isn’t impossible. Indeed, after researching whistleblowing for over 10 years, I’ve observed that insiders who successfully sound the alarm often do so with help − by partnering with allies who can amplify their message and help shield them from retaliation.

    Meet the ‘regulators of last resort’

    My new book, “Regulators of Last Resort: Whistleblowers, the Limits of the Law and the Power of Partnerships,” tells the stories of whistleblowers from Facebook, Amazon, Theranos, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers and Ireland’s public electricity service. In each case, the worker suffered reprisal and was aggressively silenced. In each case, they persisted, and allies emerged to help.

    For Facebook employee Frances Haugen, finding an ally meant teaming up with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, a specialist in tech who had been writing about Facebook’s misdeeds for some time. When Haugen decided to go public about the social media platform’s knowing exploitation of teenagers and its awareness of the violence incited by poorly regulated non-English versions of its site, Horwitz was pivotal in orchestrating when and how the newspaper articles would appear, helping maximize their impact and granting Haugen control over how her story was told.

    This partnership was no accident; Haugen chose the reporter and tech expert carefully. “I auditioned Jeff for a while,” she later told a reporter. “One of the reasons I went with him is that he was less sensationalistic than other choices I could have made.”

    Indeed, many whistleblowers disclose with the wrong journalist, leaving themselves open to attack.

    At Theranos – a multibillion-dollar biotech company that turned out to be a fraud – a lawyer “friend of a friend” gave whistleblower Erika Cheung critical advice about disclosing to a regulator. This was a lifeline for the recent graduate, who feared for her career and safety after being threatened by bosses and lawyers and warned to stay silent and obey her nondisclosure agreement. Meanwhile, Cheung had no money for formal legal representation. It was that call to the lawyer that made all the difference, Cheung told me. “He said, ‘You can whistleblow.’”

    Her contact explained that if she disclosed to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, she could avail of whistleblower protection and break her NDA. She would have to do it right and focus on the details: to highlight Theranos’ “regulatory noncompliance” and demonstrate the firm was violating the rules for proficiency testing. But all it would require of Cheung was a simple email to the right organization.

    Finally, my research also detailed the many colleagues at Amazon who supported whistleblowing manager Chris Smalls in disclosing risks to life and health during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York. When Smalls was fired for speaking out and subject to racist language in internal memos about the incident that were later leaked, his close colleague Derrick Palmer described his response. “I was appalled,” Palmer said. “I just knew that they wanted to – pretty much – silence the whole effort. Anyone speaking out. That was how they were going to treat them, moving forward. Including myself.”

    Labor leader Chris Smalls speaks during a conference in Chicago, Ill., in 2022.
    Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

    This strengthened Palmer’s determination to help Smalls. Meanwhile, the leaked memo prompted letters of support and emails “from people from all over the country – Amazon workers, non-Amazon workers, that just want to help advocate as well,” as Smalls put it. In the days and weeks after, workers held demonstrations at Amazon facilities all across the U.S., with banners declaring solidarity with the New York warehouse whistleblowers.

    No whistleblower is an island

    These allies often go overlooked when the media focuses on whistleblowers. But their support is critical, particularly in an era when protections for workers who speak up are coming under increasing threat worldwide.

    Organizing whistleblowing allies involves strategy, and some nonprofit and civil society groups have become experts in this domain. Leading the way is the U.S. Government Accountability Project and its “information matchmaking” approach. The idea is simple: Whistleblowers need a whole team of other people – from experts to members of the public – on their side. And this takes planning.

    For years, lawyer-activists like those at the Government Accountability Project have been treating whistleblower protection and support efforts as holistic campaigns that entail a media operation and networking effort, as well as a legal defense.

    Take the example of Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center – a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractor – who encountered and disclosed medical misconduct and critical failures. Dana Gold at the Government Accountability Project supported her whistleblowing with other activists, enlisted civil society groups and politicians in the cause, helped land newspaper articles in The Guardian and The New York Times, and even arranged a New Yorker podcast in which Wooten told her story.

    The information went viral, and multiple investigations ensued. Within a year, the Department of Homeland Security directed ICE to formally end its contract with the Irwin County Detention Center, citing the revelations made public by Wooten and some of the detained women.

    None of this is straightforward. In most whistleblowing disputes, the organization holds the balance of power. It has the files, the witnesses and the money to pay good lawyers. I’ve found that whistleblower allies must work with whatever limited resources they can marshal to give themselves an advantage. This means engaging influential people who might help, including pro bono lawyers, specialists who can give evidence, concerned regulators and beat journalists. In short, what is necessary is experts across all domains who are interested in the story and willing to help. And it’s the collective effort that matters.

    Even with this support, however, whistleblowers don’t have it easy. In many high-profile cases where a disclosure is made public and a whistleblower is clearly vindicated and recognized as a courageous truth-teller, they can suffer afterward. Potential employers can balk at the prospect of hiring a whistleblower, even a celebrated one. And vindictive organizations can and do continue retaliating, even years after a story has dropped off the front pages.

    Whistleblower allies and their strategies don’t offer a magic bullet. But they can help tip the balance of power, bringing public opinion to bear on an employer bent on reprisal or a government intent on coddling the powerful.

    Kate Kenny 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. No whistleblower is an island – why networks of allies are key to exposing corruption – https://theconversation.com/no-whistleblower-is-an-island-why-networks-of-allies-are-key-to-exposing-corruption-250721

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Florida panthers and black bears need a literal path for survival – here’s how the Florida Wildlife Corridor provides it in one of the fastest-growing US states

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Thomas Hoctor, Research Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Florida

    Florida panthers are a federally endangered species. Carlton Ward Jr./Wildpath

    Imagine a Florida panther slinking its way 400 miles (645 kilometers) from the Big Cypress Swamp, in the southwest part of the state, to Okefenokee Swamp, on Florida’s northern border with Georgia, without ever being spotted by a human.

    No one has yet documented a panther making this journey. But evidence suggests it happens.

    Florida panthers were once distributed throughout most of the southeast U.S., but now their number is tiny – maybe 200 or so – and their known breeding range has greatly shrunk, now concentrated in southwest Florida.

    They do show up in north Florida and Georgia on occasion when young males travel north looking to escape social pressure from adult males. Biologists have found their tracks not far south of Okefenokee. One panther made it almost to Atlanta before it was shot by a hunter.

    Large mammals such as the Florida panther and black bear literally need room to roam in order to hunt, breed and thrive. Such journeys across the state of Florida are possible thanks to the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a statewide system of interconnected wildlife habitat that turns 15 this year.

    The Florida Wildlife Corridor built on conservation efforts that date back to the 1980s and 1990s, when researchers from the University of Florida, including the two of us and our mentor Larry Harris, created maps of existing and proposed conservation areas that interlinked across the state.

    A family of Florida black bears scratches on a log in the dry season.
    Carlton Ward Jr./Wildpath

    Today, the Florida Wildlife Corridor spans 18 million acres – about half of the state.

    Ten million of these acres are protected from development. They are either local, state, regional or federal public conservation lands or they are private conservation easements. These easements restrict the landowners’ uses of the land to activities compatible with wildlife conservation, such as ranching, timber production and other sustainable activities.

    The other 8 million acres are the focus of state-funded land protection efforts to close the unprotected gaps. For now, these lands could be converted to intensive residential, commercial or industrial development.

    The corridor is an ambitious conservation project. It provides sufficient habitat to sustain healthy wildlife populations while also protecting Florida’s key ecosystem services, including water quality and flood storage. Ecosystem services refers to the benefits that ecosystems provide humans.

    The corridor is also a unique example of how conservationists can combine science with public education and outreach to protect important natural habitats – even in regions like Florida that face burgeoning population growth.

    Florida’s population boom

    Until the early 20th century, Florida was the most remote and undeveloped state on the East Coast.

    After World War II and the introduction of affordable home air conditioning, Florida transformed from a sleepy winter holiday destination to the third-most-populated state in the nation.

    Currently, about 300,000 new residents move to Florida each year.

    With this population growth came a rapid loss of natural habitat and rural landscapes. Using federal land use data, we calculate that approximately 60,000 acres of Florida habitat are lost each year.

    Florida’s development was initially concentrated along the coasts, especially in areas with extensive beaches. With the opening of tourist attractions such as Disney World near Orlando in 1971, central Florida also became a hub of rapid growth.

    It became clear to concerned Floridians that virtually all land not protected by permanent conservation designations could eventually be lost to urban and suburban sprawl.

    Responding to these concerns, Florida became a leader in land protection, which has generally been popular and bipartisan in the Sunshine State.

    Since the 1970s, Florida has protected millions of acres of conservation lands through programs including the Florida Preservation 2000 Act of 1990, the Florida Forever acquisition program that replaced it in 2001, and the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program, also created in 2001.

    The authors estimate that approximately 60,000 acres of Florida habitat are lost each year to development.
    Carlton Ward Jr./Wildpath

    Scientists identify key areas to protect

    Wildlife biologists since the 1930s have observed how birds and mammals use wooded fencerows, hedgerows, streamsides and other natural corridors to travel through agricultural regions in the U.S. and Canada.

    When corridors are protected, they allow animals to travel safely across landscapes and they can save animals from extinction. They also provide people with ecosystem services such as clean water and flood protection.

    Since 1995, the Florida Ecological Greenways Network, or FEGN, has identified a statewide system of large, intact natural areas and connecting green spaces. It is now part of the state-legislated Florida Greenways and Trails System, a statewide network of recreational trails and ecological corridors.

    As conservation scientists who are deeply involved with the FEGN, we were able to make use of the state’s early investment in geographic information systems. GIS produces digital maps and other high-quality data on the locations of wildlife habitat and other conservation priorities.

    The Florida Wildlife Corridor covers nearly 18 million acres of Florida. A little over half of the acres, pictured in dark green, are conserved lands while the rest, pictured in light green, are considered opportunity areas for future conservation.
    University of Florida Center for Landscape Conservation Planning

    We continue to work with state agencies and other partners to continually update the FEGN as land use changes and as better data and tools become available to identify conservation priority areas.

    Getting the public on board

    While the FEGN proved fundamental for supporting state conservation programs, it was not widely known by Floridians or visitors to the state.

    In 2010, conservation photographer Carlton Ward and colleagues proposed a simple, unified map and a public campaign to promote protection of the top-priority lands in the Florida Ecological Greenways Network.

    Ward called it the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

    He organized a team of photographers, videographers and scientists who trekked across large swaths of the corridor to document Florida’s natural ecosystems and native species that were threatened by development.

    The expeditioners highlighted species like the Florida panther, Florida black bear and Florida grasshopper sparrow. They raised awareness about the corridor’s connection to water conservation, lands managed by ranchers and foresters, and recreational opportunities. And they produced documentary films, media and social media coverage, and public talks and events to educate the public on the importance of protecting the corridor.

    Photographer Carlton Ward Jr. paddles to set up cameras at a site in the Fakahatchee Strand in southwest Florida.
    Carlton Ward Jr./Wildpath

    Bipartisan support continues

    In June 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act into law. The legislation, which had unanimous support from the state Legislature, officially recognized the corridor’s critical role in Florida’s economy, cultural and natural heritage, and protection of imperiled species and ecosystems.

    The law also reenergized legislative support and funding to acquire land directly for conservation and to establish conservation easements on private lands.

    Ranchers with the Seminole Tribe of Florida steer cattle through wooden sorting pens at the Big Cypress Reservation in southern Florida.
    Carlton Ward Jr./Wildpath

    The 2025-2026 Florida budget, which is still under negotiation, earmarks US$300 million to $450 million for land protection programs.

    And on April 23, 2025, the Florida Senate passed a resolution to proclaim April 22 as Florida Wildlife Corridor Day. The resolution affirmed the corridor’s importance as “a unique natural resource” that is essential for “preserving the green infrastructure that is the foundation of this state’s economy and quality of life.”

    There is a lot of land protection work left to be done in a race against a burgeoning human population. But Florida has proved ready to implement science-based strategies and work with willing landowners to protect a statewide wildlife corridor as a key element of Florida’s future.

    The Florida Wildlife Corridor is also a potential model for other states and regions that want to protect viable wildlife populations and ecosystem services.

    Uplands and wetlands east of Fort Myers, in the core of Florida panther territory, are part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
    Carlton Ward Jr./Wildpath

    Thomas Hoctor receives funding from state government related to working on the science and planning associated with the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

    Reed Frederick Noss 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. Florida panthers and black bears need a literal path for survival – here’s how the Florida Wildlife Corridor provides it in one of the fastest-growing US states – https://theconversation.com/florida-panthers-and-black-bears-need-a-literal-path-for-survival-heres-how-the-florida-wildlife-corridor-provides-it-in-one-of-the-fastest-growing-us-states-251790

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The ‘sacramental shame’ many LGBTQ+ conservative Christians wrestle with – and how they find healing

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dawne Moon, Professor of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette University

    Not all LGBTQ+ Christians belong to congregations that support that aspect of their identity. D-Keine/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Kai found Jesus as a teenager. A person of white and Hawaiian descent, Kai now goes by gender-neutral pronouns and identifies as “māhū,” the traditional Hawaiian term for someone in-between masculine and feminine. But when they first became Christian, the high-schooler identified as gay – and was committed to celibacy.

    Kai – a pseudonym to protect their privacy – embraced their church’s “welcoming but not affirming” teachings about LGBTQ+ people, agreeing that same-sex intimacy was incompatible with being Christian. It felt good to be sacrificing for the Lord, Kai recalls. But they eventually realized they were harming themself.

    “I found myself unconsciously shutting down connection,” Kai told us. “Inside, I was crumbling in every moment because I was so fervently policing myself.”

    Kai believed – and their church taught – that God’s own love is a gift, freely given. Nevertheless, they still felt that to be worthy of that love, Kai had to “surrender” their orientation and need for emotional connection, even with friends.

    “It took me a long time to be able to look back on that and say, ‘Those were days when I hated myself,’” Kai said. “I hated myself for the sake of demonstrating how much I loved God.”

    Kai began to reflect on what it meant to be Christian and concluded that Jesus didn’t have a problem with same-sex marriage, or gender beyond clear ideas of “male” and “female.” Christian “friends” quietly cut Kai out of their lives.

    As a sociologist and a philosopher, we’ve worked together to understand the experiences of LGBTQ+ conservative Christians. Kai’s story illustrates a dynamic that in our 2025 book, “Choosing Love,” we call “sacramental shame.”

    In Christianity, the word “sacrament” often refers to a particular rite, like baptism, that provides a tangible sign of God’s presence. Many of the LGBTQ+ Christians we spoke with felt that conservative congregations expected them to demonstrate shame for their identity to prove they hadn’t turned their backs on God – that God was still present in their lives.

    Weight of shame

    Some Protestant denominations fully affirm LGBTQ+ identities, same-sex marriage and gender transition, and other churches are split.

    Two women at a church in Suffolk, England, on Dec. 17, 2023, after blessings for same-sex couples were approved for Church of England services.
    Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images

    But when we learned that LGBTQ+ people and their allies were advocating for change in conservative churches, we wanted to hear their stories.

    In interviews and fieldwork, LGBTQ+ evangelicals told us that their churches often treated being cisgender and straight as though it were more important than the Ten Commandments. In some congregations, being LGBTQ+ is treated as an especially grave sin. But since people can’t change their sexual orientation or gender identity at will, treating these things as sins creates an experience of endless shame.

    In the “sacramental shame” dynamic, churches require LGBTQ+ people to feel and display shame as the sign that they have not rejected God. Their churches, families and friends more or less require them to act as though their very capacity to love others, and to recognize the truth about themselves, is a danger to the people they love.

    As one person recalled, “there were a lot of [friends] that I cut off. And I thought I was endangering them. I thought that I was going to poison them.”

    Feeling unworthy of the love of God and other people can make people feel like their lives are not worth living. We heard about countless struggles with addiction, depression and suicide attempts – and sometimes even physical symptoms, like unexplained asthma attacks or autoimmune disorders that developed as LGBTQ+ people wrestled with the stress of trying fervently to be worthy of love.

    Queer Christians of color

    Sacramental shame isn’t easy for anyone, but often it can be more complicated for Black or Indigenous Christians and other Christians of color. In part, that’s because centuries-old racist tropes often depict minority groups in a sexualized way, as “promiscuous” or “exotic.” Not wanting to affirm those stereotypes can make it harder for LGBTQ+ Christians of color to navigate life.

    Kai, like many Christians, was drawn to the faith’s message of love and justice for the oppressed. Religion can offer support and strength for dealing with the realities of racism. But that can sometimes turn into a pressure to disprove racism by behaving as “respectably” as possible.

    LGBTQ+ Christians who are people of color sometimes feel added pressure.
    bojanstory/E+ via Getty Images

    A Black, bisexual pastor we’ll call Imani grew up in a church that quietly supported LGBTG+ people, but she never knew it. As a young person, Imani worried that her own sexuality might cause trouble for her mother, who had already been through a lot:

    I was scared of embarrassing my mother. … All I could think about was the swirling doom that would be, if people found out. … I never even thought for a second that it was an option.

    Some white respondents, too, feared that coming out would embarrass their parents. But for Imani, silence about her sexuality seemed necessary to protect the Black community’s respectability, as well as her family’s belonging in the church.

    We also met Darren: a Black, gay man who was urged to try to fight being gay. His pastor’s ideas about how to “fix” Darren involved having him live in an out-of-state church building for four years, sleeping on the altar and fasting two days a week.

    It ended when Darren heard Christ telling him to stop hiding from life. So he went home, and his pastor told the church not to talk to him.

    Shifting views

    Some conservative Christians, including allies who aren’t LGBTQ+, are starting to change the conversation – and their own views.

    In 2024, New Testament scholar Richard Hays and his son Christopher Hays drew ire from some fellow evangelicals by publishing a book arguing that God’s mercy creates room in the church for LGBTQ+ people. Before them, evangelical leaders such as Tony Campolo, David Gushee and James Brownson had also changed their minds.

    Leaders or laypeople who have rethought the issue often pointed out to us that Jesus said all of the Ten Commandments come down to loving God and your neighbor. Some said their views began to shift when they remembered to exercise humility, realizing that they might not know everything about gender, sexuality and God’s plan.

    In interviews, many Christians talked about the power of humility.
    Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images

    For example, the Book of Genesis says that God created male and female; it also says God created day and night, and sea and dry land. But as transgender Bible scholar Austen Hartke writes in his 2018 book “Transforming,” recognizing night and day doesn’t preclude sunsets. The fact that there are seas and dry land doesn’t mean marshes are abominable.

    As Kai tried to share God’s love with other LGBTQ+ people, Kai came to realize that their church’s expectation for all LGBTQ+ people to be celibate “wasn’t just hurting me; it was hurting other people.” Kai decided that “As holy as this feels, it’s not the spirit of the Jesus I fell in love with when I became a Christian.”

    Humility is not the opposite of pride; it is a realistic awareness of your gifts and your limitations. When LGBTQ+ people celebrate pride, they are celebrating the often hard-won knowledge that they are human beings, worthy of love.

    Dawne Moon received funding for this project from the Templeton Religion Trust, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Louisville Institute, and Marquette University. In the course of conducting research for the project this draws from, she served from 2015-2017 on the board of the Center for Inclusivity.

    Theresa Tobin received funding from the Templeton Religion Trust and Marquette University.

    – ref. The ‘sacramental shame’ many LGBTQ+ conservative Christians wrestle with – and how they find healing – https://theconversation.com/the-sacramental-shame-many-lgbtq-conservative-christians-wrestle-with-and-how-they-find-healing-248961

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Almost Zion: Remembering a short-lived Jewish state in New York

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Adam L. Rovner, Director of the Center for Judaic Studies, University of Denver

    Twin bridges spanning the Niagara River lead from Tonawanda to Grand Island, New York — the proposed site of ‘Ararat.’ Kevin Menschel/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    At dawn on Sept. 15, 1825, a burst of cannon fire shook the ramshackle buildings of Buffalo, New York. Families raced down the main street to witness a grand ceremony, following a parade of soldiers, clergymen, Freemasons, musicians and Seneca tribesmen, including their venerable chief, Red Jacket. All surged toward St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the frontier town’s only grand edifice.

    Inside, a crowd of Christians, Jews and Native Americans were already packed together to witness the founding of Ararat, a tract of land on nearby Grand Island that was intended to be the first autonomous Jewish city-state in almost 1,800 years.

    Ararat’s 400-pound cornerstone, engraved with a central Jewish tenet of faith from the Bible’s Book of Deuteronomy, rested inside the church. When the swell of the organ died down, former diplomat, political power broker and playwright Mordecai Manuel Noah – the man who had dreamed up Ararat – rose to his feet.

    Today, this marker is one of the few surviving signs of the proposed settlement.
    Adam Rovner

    Described as a “stout … gentleman, with sandy hair, a large Roman nose, and … red whiskers,” Noah had draped himself for the ceremony in fur-trimmed robes borrowed from a theater. He triumphantly announced the reestablishment of “the Government of the Jewish Nation … under the auspices and protection of the constitution and laws of the United States of America.”

    Noah also welcomed Native Americans, whom he – like many Americans at the time – mistakenly believed were “the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.” In addition, he granted equal “rights and religious privileges” to the “black Jews of India and Africa,” disclosing a rare-for-his-time sensitivity toward Jews of color.

    A portrait of Mordecai Noah by 19th-century painter John Wood Dodge.
    Smithsonian American Art Museum via Wikimedia Commons

    But Noah’s utopian ark sank with barely a trace. Not a single Jew heeded his call to settle Ararat. Noah himself abandoned ship when his calls for a Jewish republic were rebuffed by religious leaders. All that he left behind was the cornerstone.

    As a scholar who scours archives to trace connections between literature and history, I’ve seen how Noah’s efforts to found a Jewish statelet have fascinated students of both American and Zionist history.

    Noah was only the first of many modern thinkers to propose establishing Jewish territories far from the biblical land of Israel. In the 20th century, organizations seeking a humanitarian solution to Jewish persecution considered carving out enclaves the world over, including lands in today’s Kenya, Angola, Madagascar, Tasmania and Suriname.

    ‘City of refuge’

    Noah wielded considerable influence in early 19th-century America through his roles as a political party boss, helming various daily newspapers, and as a popular playwright. But he was also a marginalized outsider at a time when there were fewer than 500 Jews in Manhattan, the young republic’s largest city.

    Noah used his press pulpit to demand equality for Jews, even proposing himself as a presidential candidate. He remained one of few high-profile American Jews throughout his life, urging other citizens to acknowledge that one’s faith and patriotism need never be at odds. Yet antisemitic slurs dogged him throughout his career.

    After witnessing the persecution of Jews in Europe during his diplomatic travels, Noah hoped Ararat would be a territorial solution to religious oppression.

    ‘Noah’s Ark,’ by 19th-century American painter Edward Hicks.
    Philadelphia Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons

    In some ways, his efforts hearkened back to the origins of America itself. Instead of the Mayflower, Noah invoked the symbolic ark of his biblical namesake – “Ararat” is the biblical name of the mountain where the ark came to a rest after the flood. In the role of the Puritans, he cast European Jewry. And instead of Plymouth Rock, he landed on Grand Island. As the cornerstone of Ararat proclaimed, the settlement was to be a “city of refuge for the Jews” – one that Noah hoped would grow to become a state and be admitted to the American republic.

    In his speeches, Noah imagined that Ararat would allow European Jews to escape persecution while simultaneously fulfilling America’s need for immigration, industry and financial capital. He also believed that his purchase of 2,555 acres of Grand Island would prove a lucrative personal investment: The recently completed Erie Canal, he reasoned, would make Buffalo a major port.

    Failure to launch

    At the time of Noah’s proposal, the Zionist movement – the modern political program for Jewish national self-determination – had not yet coalesced. Most Jews at the time believed that founding a Jewish state in the land of Israel was a pipe dream, or worse. God had expelled their ancestors from the Holy Land in 70 C.E., they believed, so taking matters into their own hands and rebuilding a Jewish state there would be blasphemy.

    Noah hoped to sidestep those theological objections by locating a Jewish polity in the promised land of America, not the biblical promised land. Nonetheless, Jewish leaders dismissed his vision as contrary to God’s will. The chief rabbis of England and France publicly condemned Noah’s plan, and the September 1825 ceremony in Buffalo proved Ararat’s high point.

    Though ridiculed in the press for Ararat’s failure, Noah took a philosophical view:

    I … stand as the pioneer of the great work, leaving others to complete it. … When sneers and mockery shall have had their day … then my motives and objects will have been duly estimated and rewarded.“

    The front page of one of Mordecai Noah’s books, published in 1819.
    Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons

    Birth of Zionism

    Noah quickly resumed his career as a journalist and emerged as a kind of ambassador, penning articles and delivering speeches that linked Jewish and Christian America. To Christians, he explained Jewish practices. To his brethren, he demonstrated the fundamental compatibility between the ideals of Judaism and the United States, assuring them that America “is the country which the Almighty has blessed,” a land in which Jews “may repose in safety and happiness.”

    Yet Noah never abandoned his plans for Jewish self-government and ultimately advocated national repatriation to areas of Palestine, then under Ottoman control. In 1845 he published a short book, “Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews.” A young journalist whom he had befriended, Edgar Allan Poe, praised Noah’s proposal for a Jewish return to the biblical land of Israel as “extraordinary [and] full of novel and cogent thought.”

    Noah did not live to see his dreams fulfilled. After his death in March 1851, nearly 50 years passed before another playwright and journalist resurrected the idea of Jewish political autonomy: Theodor Herzl.

    Herzl’s vision laid the groundwork for the establishment of the state of Israel. Today, he is considered the father of Zionism, with his image paraded on Israeli Independence Day.

    Paradoxically, Noah is remembered today thanks only to the spectacular failure of his American Zion.

    Adam L. Rovner 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. Almost Zion: Remembering a short-lived Jewish state in New York – https://theconversation.com/almost-zion-remembering-a-short-lived-jewish-state-in-new-york-253534

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Spider-Man’s lessons for us all on the responsibility to use our power, great or small, to do good

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By George Tsakiridis, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Religion, South Dakota State University

    A large statue of Spider-Man at a mall in Dubai. Giuseppe Cacace AFP via Getty Images

    As a child, I watched reruns of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon on television. I was drawn to the action and colors and, of course, the catchy tune. This was my early introduction to Spider-Man, as it was for many children who grew up in the 1960s-’80s.

    Spidey, as he is affectionately called, was a huge part of popular culture. The Spider-Man story was first released in 1962 as part of another comic book, Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy (192) #15. A year later he became his own title character, branching out into cartoons, merchandising and feature films. In other words, Spider-Man became ubiquitous.

    With the advent of films featuring him in 2002, however, Spider-Man reached an entirely new level of influence, so much so that academic interest in him increased. I edited a 2021 book in which I wrote a chapter about Spider-Man’s creeds – his main sets of beliefs, or one might say his religion: “Theology and Spider-Man.”

    A phrase that has appeared in various forms in Spider-Man lore – “with great power comes great responsibility” – is an example of such a creedal statement. I examine how this one phrase can resonate with readers and viewers to such a degree that it shapes their everyday lives and makes Spider-Man a moral exemplar to many of us.

    More broadly, however, I believe that as a moral exemplar, Spider-Man exemplifies the struggle for virtue that most of us face every day.

    Spider-Man is relatable

    Moral exemplars are figures who transcend the average human experience, achieving extraordinary feats in pursuit of virtue. They serve as models for others to follow. They can be historical figures or people we interact with every day.

    A 2017 study led by educational psychology scholar Hyemin Han states moral exemplars influence others because their stories seem relevant and attainable. The study shows evidence that people are more likely to respond to a peer’s example of good behavior and be motivated by that. This means that role models who feel relatable to our daily lives tend to have the greatest impact.

    I would argue that Marvel superheroes and the films they have inspired are popular because we see ourselves in these stories. These characters are the sort of moral exemplars that can influence our behavior because we identify with them so closely.

    Spider-Man particularly fits this bill. Peter Parker is a teenager who unexpectedly gains superhuman power. In this transformation, he is forced to struggle with moral behavior on a higher level because he now has newfound abilities to do things normal humans cannot. He can use his powers for good or selfish ends, and the effects are much more damaging than for a normal person.

    Spider-Man is popular because many people identify with him closely.
    Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

    Moral exemplars are connected in a fundamental way to virtue ethics – a framework of behavior based in core virtues such as honesty, bravery and kindness. Virtue ethics focuses on building character within versus following a set of rules.

    Moral exemplars are the people who represent virtue ethics in its purest form. They are the most virtuous in their character, displaying what all humans should aspire to when practicing virtue ethics. The virtuous hero is the one we emulate and build our own character around, being a representative of a virtuous life.

    Spidey is a perfect moral exemplar because he is relatable. He is one of us. He has limitations but invites us to work beyond them.

    Morality is Spider-Man’s strength

    In the 2021 film “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Spidey is confronted with the choice of using his power for good or for revenge. As a portal opens to other dimensions, he encounters a number of villains from past films, including the Green Goblin from the 2002 film.

    In contrast to the Green Goblin, Spidey chooses to use his power for good. Green Goblin kills Aunt May because he wants Spidey to embrace the power he has and use it for selfish means. Aunt May serves as a moral foundation for Peter Parker, and with her gone, perhaps the Goblin sees an opportunity for Spidey to embrace power for power’s sake. He tells Spidey, “Morality is your weakness.”

    Spider-Man must struggle with the temptation to kill the Goblin in a fit of revenge – exactly the kind of self-serving thinking that the Green Goblin himself encourages. Green Goblin is the anti-moral exemplar. He embraces power and vice, while Spidey embraces doing good for others. Earlier in the film, the Goblin states, “Gods don’t have to choose; we take.” For the Goblin, there is no real morality. His power entitles him to any action.

    On the contrary, Spider-Man sees his power as a gift to be used – “with great power comes great responsibility.” Spider-Man continually sacrifices the joy in his life – his relationships, his health and his family – in order to fight villains and protect the innocent. This is practicing virtue ethics at a high level, one that reaches the status of a moral exemplar.

    Spidey’s determination to use his power for good arises out of his origin story in the original narrative found in Amazing Fantasy #15. Spider-Man feels a strong sense of guilt and responsibility due to his uncle’s death, which he feels is the result of his inaction. Thus he is committed to using his power for good.

    At first, he uses his abilities to make money wrestling or finding fame on television. In the aftermath of a television appearance, however, he allows a thief to escape because he doesn’t feel morally responsible to stop him. As the thief escapes, Spidey states, “From now on I just look out for number one – that means – me!” Soon after, he finds that same thief has killed his uncle.

    It is out of this origin story that is born his adoption of the phrase “with great power comes great responsibility.” His uncle’s death was necessary for his moral tranformation.

    Spider-Man shows us that moral responsibility does not go away just because one has power. It is in this lesson that Spider-Man exemplifies morality for us. He becomes a moral exemplar.

    George Tsakiridis 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. Spider-Man’s lessons for us all on the responsibility to use our power, great or small, to do good – https://theconversation.com/spider-mans-lessons-for-us-all-on-the-responsibility-to-use-our-power-great-or-small-to-do-good-248529

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Whooping cough is making a comeback, but the vaccine provides powerful protection

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Annette Regan, Adjunct Associate Professor of Epidemiology, University of California, Los Angeles

    Infants can get vaccinated against whooping cough starting at 6 weeks of age. Hill Street Studios/Corbis via Getty Images

    Whooping cough, a bacterial infection that can be especially dangerous for babies and young children, is on the rise. Already in 2025 the U.S. has recorded 8,485 cases. That’s compared with 4,266 cases during the same period in 2024.

    Like measles, which is also spreading at unprecedented levels, whooping cough, more formally known as pertussis, can be prevented by a safe
    and effective vaccine. But with anti-vaccine sentiment increasing and cuts to immunization services, vaccination rates for whooping cough over the past two years have declined in children.

    The Conversation asked epidemiologist Annette Regan to explain why pertussis has become so prevalent and how families can protect themselves from the disease.

    What is pertussis and why is it dangerous?

    Pertussis is a vaccine-preventable disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. Researchers in France first identified the B. pertussis bacterium in 1906. The first recorded epidemic of pertussis is thought to have occurred in Paris in 1578.

    Infection can cause an acute respiratory illness characterized by severe and spasmodic coughing spells. The classic symptom of pertussis is a “whoop” sound caused by someone trying to breath during a bad cough. Severe complications of pertussis include slowed or stopped breathing, pneumonia and seizures. The disease is most severe in young babies, although severe cases and deaths can also occur in older children and adults.

    Some doctors call pertussis “the 100-day cough” because symptoms can linger for weeks or even months.

    The World Health Organization estimates that 24.1 million pertussis cases and 160,700 deaths occur worldwide in children under 5 each year. Pertussis is highly contagious. Upon exposure, 80% of people who have not been previously exposed to the bacterium or vaccinated against the disease will develop an infection.

    Fortunately, the disease is largely preventable with a safe and effective vaccine, which was first licensed in the U.S. in 1914.

    Whooping cough causes violent fits of coughing that can make it difficult to inhale.

    How do cases last year and this year compare with past years?

    During the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022, pertussis cases were lower than usual. This may have been a result of limited social contact due to social distancing, masking, school closures and lockdown measures, which reduced the spread of disease overall.

    In the past two years, however, pertussis cases have surpassed figures from before the pandemic. In 2024, local and state public health agencies reported 35,435 pertussis cases to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – a rate five times higher than the 7,063 cases reported in 2023 and nearly double the 18,617 cases reported in 2019 prior to the pandemic.

    Between October 2024 and April 2025, at least four people in the U.S. have died of pertussis: two infants, one school-age child and one adult.

    Why are pertussis cases rising?

    Although vaccines have resulted in a dramatic decline in pertussis infections in the U.S., incidence of the disease has been rising since the 1990s, except for a brief dip during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Before the start of routine childhood vaccination for pertussis in 1947, its rates hovered between 100,000 and 200,000 cases per year. With vaccines, rates plunged under 50,000 annually by the late 1950s and under 10,000 per year in the late 1960s. They reached a low of 1,010 cases in 1976.

    Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, however, the U.S. and several other countries have been seeing a steady resurgence of pertussis cases, which have exceeded 10,000 cases in the U.S. every year from 2003 to 2019. They dropped again during the pandemic until last year’s resurgence.

    There is no single explanation for why cases have been rising recently, but several factors probably contribute. First, pertussis naturally occurs in cyclic epidemics, peaking every two to five years. It is possible that the U.S. is headed into one of these peaks after a period of low activity between 2020 and 2022. However, some scientists have noted that the increase in cases is larger than what would be expected during a usual peak.

    A public health worker processes blood samples during a whooping cough outbreak in Ohio in December 2010.
    National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

    Some scientists have noted that this apparent resurgence correlates with a change in the type of vaccine used in children. Until the 1990s, the pertussis vaccine contained whole, killed B. pertussis bacteria cells. Whole-cell vaccine can stimulate a long-lasting immune response, but it is also more likely to cause fever and other vaccine reactions in children.

    In the 1990s, national vaccine programs began to transition to a vaccine that contains purified components of the bacterial cell but not the whole cell. Some scientists now believe that although this partial-cell vaccine is less likely to cause high fevers in children, it provides protection for a shorter time. Immunity after whole-cell vaccination is thought to last 10-12 years compared with three to five years after the partial-cell vaccine. This means people may become susceptible to infection more quickly after vaccination.

    Vaccination rates are also not as high as they should be and have started falling in children since 2020. In the U.S., the percent of kindergartners who are up to date with recommended pertussis vaccines has declined from 95% during the 2019-20 school year to 92% in the 2023-24 school year. Even fewer adolescents receive a booster dose.

    How can people protect themselves and their families?

    Routine vaccination for children starting in infancy followed by booster doses in adolescents and adults can help keep immunity high.

    Public health experts recommend that children receive five doses of the pertussis vaccine. According to the recommendations, they should receive the first three doses at 2, 4 and 6 months of age, then two additional doses at 15 months and 4 years of age, with the aim of providing protection through early adolescence.

    Infants younger than 6 weeks are not old enough to get a pertussis vaccine but are at the greatest risk of severe illness from pertussis. Vaccination during pregnancy can offer protection from birth due to antibodies that pass from the mother to the developing fetus. Many countries, including the U.S., now recommend that women receive one dose of pertussis vaccine between the 27th and 36th week of every pregnancy to protect their babies.

    To maintain protection against pertussis after childhood, a booster dose of pertussis vaccine is recommended for adolescents at 11 to 12 years of age. The CDC recommends that all adults receive at least one booster dose.

    The pertussis vaccine’s protction wanes over time, so public health experts recommend a booster around age 11 or 12.
    SELF Magazine via flickr, CC BY

    Because immunity declines over time, people who are in contact with infants and other high-risk groups, such as caregivers, parents and grandparents, may benefit from additional booster doses. When feasible, the CDC also recommends a booster dose for adults 65 years and older.

    Vaccine safety studies over the past 80 years have proven the pertussis vaccine to be safe. Around 20% to 40% of vaccinated infants experience local reactions, such as pain, redness and swelling at the vaccination site, and 3% to 5% of vaccinated infants experience a low-grade fever. More severe reactions are much less common and occur in fewer than 1% of vaccinated infants.

    The vaccine is also highly effective: For the first year after receiving all five doses of the pertussis vaccine, 98% of children are protected from pertussis. Five years after the fifth dose, 65% of vaccinated children remain protected.

    Booster vaccination during adolescence protects 74% of teens against pertussis, and booster vaccination during pregnancy protects 91% to 94% of immunized babies against hospitalization due to pertussis.

    Families can talk to their regular health care providers about whether a pertussis vaccine is needed for their child, themselves or other family members.

    Annette Regan receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Global Vaccine Data Network.

    – ref. Whooping cough is making a comeback, but the vaccine provides powerful protection – https://theconversation.com/whooping-cough-is-making-a-comeback-but-the-vaccine-provides-powerful-protection-254647

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How Trump promotes a radical, unscientific theory about sex and gender in the name of opposing ‘gender ideology extremism’

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ina Seethaler, Associate Professor and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies, Coastal Carolina University

    Sexual diversity has been documented in every species in the animal kingdom, including among humans. smartboy10/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

    The Trump administration claims to be rooting out “gender ideology extremism” and “restoring biological truth” in the United States.

    In a January 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump decreed that there are only two genders – male and female – and that anyone who believes differently denies “the biological reality of sex.”

    Yet as a gender studies scholar, I know what the science really says about gender and sex.

    Most researchers in my field, as well as those in other disciplines such as sociology and biology, agree that biological sex is vastly more complicated than solely the two variants of male and female. Sexual diversity has been documented among all animals, including humans.

    Trump’s claim otherwise is itself a gender “ideology” – that is, a set of beliefs and values about gender.

    Sex and gender are not the same thing

    Experts in many disciplines have shown how gender is different from sex. Sex refers to bodily attributes such as genitals, hormones and chromosomes; gender is made up of the norms, roles, behaviors and expectations people are supposed to comply with based on the culture and society they live in.

    As such, gender is socially constructed – that is, defined by a community’s beliefs and rituals. In other words, gender does not follow biology. Instead, people have what’s called a “gender identity” – an internal sense of themselves as masculine, feminine or somewhere in-between.

    There are many ways in which gender and sex don’t necessarily line up.

    Among humans, a conservative estimate by the United Nations suggests that up to 1.7% of the world’s population are intersex, meaning their bodies vary from what has been labeled typical combinations of chromosomes, hormones and genitals.

    Intersex rights advocates have long pushed for medical treatment that reflects this fact, rather than common expectations of the human body. Recognition of gender and sex diversity can significantly reduce the stigma and trauma of being an intersex person.

    In the animal kingdom, female spotted hyenas have a penis. Male seahorses get pregnant.

    It took biologists a long time to figure out that some male animals do things that defy socially determined understandings of masculinity. But once they did, groundbreaking insights into the complexity of evolutionary processes have emerged.

    By labeling the concept of gender identity as an “ideology,” the Trump administration has reduced all people – but especially transgender and nonbinary people – to a belief system, ignoring their complex human identities.

    Don’t tell this dad he can’t give birth. A seahorse couple at the New England Acquarium’s 2009 Pregnant Male Seahorse exhibit.
    Matt Stone/MediaNewsGroup/Boston Herald via Getty Images

    What is gender ideology, really?

    Trump’s executive order on gender is itself based on a gender ideology called “biological determinism” – the belief that there are only two genders and that the sex assigned at birth permanently determines one’s role in society.

    This ideology dismisses research and data that document the complexity of human life. This can have serious social consequences.

    Because adherents of biological determinism see sex and gender as one and the same, they generally want to ban puberty blockers, hormone therapy and other gender-affirming health care for trans youth. These are important and sometimes lifesaving treatments; the Trump administration and other adherents of their ideology dismiss them as medical malpractice.

    The executive order also claims that enforcing a rigid male-female divide will keep women and girls safe because bathrooms and domestic violence shelters become dangerous for women when transgender people are allowed to use them.

    Research has consistently debunked this notion. Privacy and safety problems have not increased due to the legal recognition of transgender individuals. There is no evidence that cisgender women – that is, those assigned female at birth – should fear violence committed against them by transgender women.

    Biology is not destiny

    Much of my academic work has focused on how societies rooted in biological determinism tend to be patriarchal. They are designed by men for the benefit of men, and men hold most positions of authority.

    Patriarchal countries, including the U.S., tend to value masculinity over femininity. Political and religious leaders, the media and social norms suggest women are weaker than men, more emotional and better suited for care work. As a result, they portray women as less effective leaders than men.

    Historically, these societies have limited women’s sphere of influence to the household. That, in turn, prevented them from widespread access to, and success in, economic, religious and political leadership positions, just to name a few.

    U.S. feminists in the 1960s and 1970s protested the idea that a person’s body should dictate what they can and cannot do with their life. Back then, patriarchal beliefs restricted women’s participation in sports – they weren’t allowed to run marathons – and jobs, with fields such as practicing law and surgery essentially off-limits.

    Women in the U.S. also lacked full bodily autonomy for much of the 20th century. Access to contraception was limited, and terminating a pregnancy was illegal.

    By the 1980s, women had succeeded in convincing much of U.S. society that they had the same abilities and should enjoy the same rights as men. By the early 2000s, they had made great strides toward attaining equality in education, career choice and reproductive freedom, among others.

    Trans people began making similar progress in the 2010s.

    Moving backward

    As the Trump administration reverts to a simplistic interpretation of sex and gender, public debate on these basic social and political rights is reemerging.

    There is legislation at the state and federal level banning transgender women athletes from participating in sports, bills that would make it a crime to identify as transgender and challenges to women serving in combat roles in the U.S. military.

    Abortion, established as a constitutional right in 1973, had that constitutional protection reversed in 2022. Abortion is now outlawed in 12 states; others severely limit the ability to get the procedure.

    Trump signs the ‘No Men in Women’s Sports’ executive order barring transgender women from women’s sports on Feb. 5, 2025. It was his third order targeting transgender people.
    Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    To enforce Trump’s “gender ideology” executive order, the Department of Veterans Affairs is phasing out gender-affirming health care. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention temporarily scrubbed data about women’s health that has been vital in raising public awareness and fueling ongoing research into aspects of women’s health, such as safe forms of contraception.

    The administration’s policies and ideas are ingrained in a gender ideology that predates the feminist movement of the mid-20th century.

    When asked in court during proceedings in lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order, lawyers representing the Trump administration have repeatedly failed to define what exactly the administration is referring to with the term “radical gender ideology.”

    One lawyer, when prompted by a judge, replied that he was “loathe to speculate” what the president means by the phrase.

    In my assessment, the administation’s inability to define “gender ideology” is a meaningful signal. The Trump administration is pursuing, in essence, its own gender ideology masked as anti-gender ideology.

    Ina Seethaler serves on the boards of the Palmetto State Abortion Fund and the Family Justice Center of Horry and Georgetown Counties.

    – ref. How Trump promotes a radical, unscientific theory about sex and gender in the name of opposing ‘gender ideology extremism’ – https://theconversation.com/how-trump-promotes-a-radical-unscientific-theory-about-sex-and-gender-in-the-name-of-opposing-gender-ideology-extremism-250552

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From cats and dogs to penguins and llamas, treating animals with acupuncture has become mainstream in veterinary medicine

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joe Smith, Assistant Professor of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee

    Kevin, a King Charles spaniel, receives acupuncture treatment at a Washington, D.C. animal hospital. Alastair Pike/AFP via Getty Images

    A perentie lizard in Dallas, an African penguin in Boston and an Oberhasli goat in Chicago are just a few recent examples of animals at zoos and aquariums benefiting recently from acupuncture therapy. As acupuncture has gained wide use in human medicine in the U.S., it also has become increasingly common in veterinary practice, especially for pain management.

    The Conversation U.S. interviewed University of Tennessee Assistant Professor of Veterinary Medicine Joe Smith, a specialist in farm animal medicine and veterinary clinical pharmacology, about this trend. He describes acupuncture’s current uses for treating many species, from household dogs and cats to large animals like horses, cows and llamas:

    Is veterinary acupuncture modeled on the traditional Chinese version?

    There are two schools of thought about veterinary acupuncture. The original form of acupuncture, which has been practiced for thousands of years, follows principles of traditional Chinese medicine. It views the patient through a lens of five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water.

    Each element is associated with a different type of energy. Practitioners work to maintain balance between those energies, which they believe is essential for a healthy body to function.

    Another approach focuses on anatomical effects on the body. Practitioners place needles to achieve specific effects by stimulating muscles or nerves.

    Both versions of acupuncture can help veterinary patients. They use very small, flexible needles, about two-tenths of a millimeter wide – less than one-hundredth of an inch. The needles are placed at various parts of the body to elicit specific responses from connective tissues, muscles and nerves.

    The needles can be used by themselves, or with low levels of electrical current – a process called electroacupuncture. Both approaches are effective, but research suggests that benefits from electroacupunture last longer.

    Veterinary acupuncturists can treat nearly any animal, from a bear to a porcupine, a dog or a sea turtle.

    What does research show about using acupuncture on animals?

    Acupuncture and electroacupuncture both increase the body’s levels of compounds called endogenous opioids. These are pain-relieving substances that the body produces naturally. They work similarly to pharmaceutical opioids, such as fentanyl and morphine.

    Acupuncture increases these compounds so dramatically that the effect can be reversed with opioid antidotes, such as Narcan.

    Studies in small animal medicine show that using acupuncture can speed up healing from nerve injuries, such as spinal cord damage from herniated disks. This is a condition in which material from the disks in between the vertebra of the spinal cord is damaged, and puts pressure on the spinal cord and other parts of the nervous system.

    Herniated disks can be very painful for animals. A 2023 study found that when dogs with this condition were treated with acupuncture, nearly 80% recovered, compared with 60% of animals whose cases were managed conservatively without acupuncture. Acupuncture can also make other techniques, such as epidural nerve blocks, more effective when both methods are used together.

    Many vets are using acupuncture creatively for other purposes, such as increasing sick animals’ appetites, improving their digestion and accelerating healing from injuries.

    How does your veterinary medicine group use acupuncture?

    Our practice at the University of Tennessee has used acupuncture most extensively to help rehabilitate animals recovering from conditions like radial nerve paralysis and femoral nerve injury. We can use acupuncture to stimulate muscles or to provide pain relief, either by itself or combined with other therapies.

    In our Farm Animal Hospital, we regularly use acupuncture for recumbent or “down” animals. That’s a veterinary term for animals that have been unable to stand for extended periods of time.

    With acupuncture, and occasionally electroacupuncture, we can stimulate muscles and nerves that aren’t functioning normally. This help to prevent atrophy, or wasting and thinning of muscle mass.

    For every day that a large animal is down, its muscles atrophy and fluid builds up around injured limbs or joints. These effects can prolong their recovery, or even make it less likely that they will recover.

    By using acupuncture to stimulate atrophied muscles, veterinarians can start to reverse this process. We have used acupuncture extensively on large animals, including cattle, horses, llamas, alpacas, sheep, goats, pigs and even camels.

    One example is goats that have spinal cord injuries caused by parasite migration – a condition called cerebrospinal nematodiasis, or “meningeal worm.” Worm larvae that normally are parasites of white tail deer infect goats through the animals’ digestive tracts, then migrate to the spinal cord and nervous system. They get lost and die there, causing inflammation that can do significant damage.

    We use acupuncture and electroacupuncture to stimulate the goats’ large and accessory spinal nerves and the muscles in the animals’ legs and backs. This gives the goats more muscle function when the inflammation clears, and we believe it helps reduce their pain.

    We’ve also had good results with acupuncture treatment for llamas and alpacas, which are widely used in Tennessee’s Smokey Mountains to carry tourists’ gear up- and downhill. As large animals like these age, they can develop osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that’s incredibly painful and debilitating for them. Acupuncture and electroacupuncture can help keep them moving.

    Our equine services mainly use acupuncture for rehabilitation, helping horses recover from injuries.

    One advantage of acupuncture and electroacupuncture in large animals is that they don’t have many adverse effects. Drugs can have side effects such as nausea and diarrhea, and may cause potentially serious complications. An acupuncture needle placed by a trained veterinarian has few to no adverse effects when it’s done correctly.

    A crow and an opossum at the Nashville Zoo receive acupuncture treatment for mobility issues.

    Can pet owners be confident if their vet recommends acupuncture?

    If there is a nerve or muscle involved, there is probably a veterinary treatment option using acupuncture or electroacupuncture. New studies regularly add to our understanding of the neurology and biochemistry that underlie these therapies.

    Although we’re still learning, if your vet recommends acupuncture for an aging dog or cat – especially for chronic pain – you can be confident that it’s not a fringe treatment. As long as the person treating your pet is a licensed veterinarian, and is certified by a professional organization like Curacore, Chi University or the American Academy of Veterinary Acupuncture, acupuncture should make your pet more comfortable and improve its quality of life.

    Joe Smith has attended attended Curacore Inc’s Medical Acupuncture for Veterinarians course.

    – ref. From cats and dogs to penguins and llamas, treating animals with acupuncture has become mainstream in veterinary medicine – https://theconversation.com/from-cats-and-dogs-to-penguins-and-llamas-treating-animals-with-acupuncture-has-become-mainstream-in-veterinary-medicine-226451

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Students of SPbGASU are prize winners of the All-Russian Olympiad “Production and Application of Construction Materials and Products”

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Anastasia Kim, Georgy Khrenov and Sofia Mikheeva

    From April 21 to 24, the final stage of the All-Russian Student Olympiad in the field of “Production and Application of Construction Materials and Products” was held at the Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

    SPbGASU was represented by a team consisting of master’s students from the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Sofia Mikheeva and Anastasia Kim, under the supervision of Associate Professor of the Department of Construction Materials Technology and Metrology, Georgy Khrenov.

    To successfully solve the Olympiad tasks, both theoretical knowledge of building materials and skills in solving creative engineering problems were required. Our students confidently coped with the Olympiad tasks and took second place in the team standings, and Sofia Mikheeva took third place in the individual standings. We congratulate our winners and are proud of them!

    Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: Cambodia, KOICA and WFP launch initiative to boost national homegrown school feeding programme

    Source: World Food Programme

    PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA – The Royal Government of Cambodia, through the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS), in partnership with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), has launched a US$ 10 million initiative from 2025 to 2029 to accelerate the expansion of Cambodia’s national homegrown school feeding programme.

    The programme currently reaches 190,000 children across 686 schools. The renewed support from South Korea builds on the achievements of Phase I (2020—2024) and will enable MoEYS and WFP to provide hot, nutritious meals to 133,300 schoolchildren across 428 schools. These schools will be progressively integrated into the national programme with full government ownership and management expected by 2028. 

    “The Ministry is deeply grateful for the continued support from the Government of the Republic of Korea, KOICA, and WFP,” said H.E. Hang Chuon Naron, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Youth and Sport. “Through this programme, we are not only improving access to nutritious food but also investing in Cambodia’s future by building a stronger, more resilient education system that supports our national development goals.” 

    The Royal Government of Cambodia has shown strong leadership and commitment to school meals. In August 2024, it approved the School Feeding Policy, a landmark step that formalized the programme’s role in contributing to education, nutrition, agriculture and social protection. This approach aligns closely with Cambodia’s broader human capital development agenda and the priorities of the Pentagonal Strategy—building a healthier, more educated, and resilient generation.

    “We are honoured to continue this important collaboration with the Royal Government of Cambodia and WFP,” said Moon Jung Choi, Country Director of KOICA Cambodia Office. “This second phase of support reaffirms the Government of Republic Korea’s commitment to inclusive and sustainable development for the Cambodian people by supporting national systems that deliver lasting improvements in education, nutrition and rural livelihoods.”

    The national school feeding programme adopts a home-grown approach, linking education and nutrition with local agriculture by sourcing food from smallholder farmers. In a country where over half of the population relies on agriculture, this approach stimulates local economies, strengthens food systems and serves as a safety net for vulnerable families affected by recurrent shocks.

    “WFP is proud to continue supporting Cambodia’s journey towards a nationally owned, sustainable school feeding programme,” said Claire Conan, WFP Representative in Cambodia. “The renewed partnership with KOICA and MoEYS is a powerful example of how partnership can improve children’s well-being, enhance learning, and build more resilient communities.”

    In addition to meal provision, the programme focuses on capacity strengthening, infrastructure upgrades and institutional development at national, sub-national, and school levels. These efforts are designed to enable MoEYS to take ownership, while ensuring the quality, efficiency, and sustainability of the programme. 

    #                                  #                                  #

    The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies, building prosperity and supporting a sustainable future for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Towards Victory! Polytechnic remembers the heroes of the Great Patriotic War

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –

    In honor of the 80th anniversary of the Victory, the Polytechnic University is organizing a large-scale program dedicated to the heroes who participated in the Great Patriotic War from among the students and teachers of the university. Special projects cover in detail the fates of those who defended the Motherland on the front lines, those who survived the siege of Leningrad, and those who, sparing no effort, worked for the coming victory.

    The SPbPU History Museum presents the project “The Institute That Survived the War”. It consists of nine chapters, each of which is dedicated to the students, teachers and staff of the Polytechnic University during the Great Patriotic War. The project describes the work of the military hospital in the Main Building, the transformation of the university for the needs of the front, the activities of defense workshops, scientific developments of scientists and the learning process during that difficult time, as well as the participation of polytechnics in military operations. All information is illustrated with historical photographs and archival documents. It can be read on the website or listened to in audio format. These unique stories will allow you to better understand the fates of people who stood at the forefront of scientific and social life during the war years.

    ‘

    The Polytechnic University park has information stands telling about the history of the university during the war years and the role of the Polytechnics in the victory. Each stand has a QR code, which can be used to obtain additional information and listen to an audio recording.

    The exhibition “The Path to Victory” presents the fates of great graduates of our university – engineers who made a significant contribution to the development of technical equipment of the USSR army. The exhibition also tells about polytechnics awarded the honorary title “Hero of the Soviet Union” and about students who went to the front or worked in the rear. The exhibition can be viewed on the first floor of the Main Building.

    At the end of May – beginning of June, a historical exhibition will be organized on the territory of Fort Reef, which will tell about the graduates and teachers of the university who played an important role in the development of Kronstadt and strengthening its defensive positions.

    Also in May, Library No. 9 will host an exhibition dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War and to Daniil Granin, a 1940 graduate of the Leningrad Industrial Institute, after whom the library is named.

    The events of the Polytechnic University will be a bright event for everyone who is interested in the history of our country and wants to honor the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. On the eve of Victory Day, new unique elements of the exhibition dedicated to one of the outstanding polytechnicians will appear in the SPbPU History Museum. We believe that the best way to pay tribute to the dead and the survivors is to remember their feats. Let’s do it together, – commented Valery Klimov.

    In addition, ondigital information panels, installed in the main buildings of the Polytechnic University, broadcasts of the student video blog “The memory of glory lives on”. The project’s host, IMMiT student Yegor Bredikhin, talks about the university’s memorable locations and the unforgettable stories they have kept for decades.

    Supplementing the virtual chronicles of the university, the Main Building has boards dedicated to the heroes of the Polytechnics. The updated panels present biographies of our outstanding graduates and employees, whose heroism during the war became a symbol of unbending will and devotion to the Motherland.

    The Directorate of Cultural Programs and Youth Creativity of SPbPU organized a three-day showing of the production for Polytechnic students “Engineers of Victory”, which tells about the Polytechnicians who participated in the war and the university’s contribution to the victory. Soloists of the SPbPU Variety and Symphony Orchestra, the Student Theater, the Polyhymnia Youth Choir, the Polytechnic Chamber Choir, and students of the Humanitarian Institute took part in its creation with the support of the SPbPU History Museum.

    The Glagol People’s Theatre, where students and graduates of the university serve, will present a musical and poetic composition based on poems and documents from the wartime, “Shards of Silence,” on May 3. On May 10 and 17, the play “Thirteen Women of Sergeant Major Vaskov Between the Premonition of Great Love and the Expectation of Sudden Death” based on the screenplay by Boris Vasiliev, “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” will be performed.

    Students, university staff and guests are invited to three festive concerts in the White Hall. On May 6, songs of the Great Victory will be performed, on May 7, music by Shostakovich performed by the Klassika Orchestra, and on May 8, songs by Bulat Okudzhava, a war veteran whose birthday is celebrated on May 9.

    The Immortal Regiment will “stand” on the territory of SPbPU and student dormitories. The Directorate of Cultural Programs and Youth Creativity is installing 80 structures with portraits of students who went to the front from their student benches.

    Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Three new schools join Birmingham’s ‘School Streets’ initiative

    Source: City of Birmingham

    Birmingham City Council is continuing to ensure safer and healthier streets for children walking, wheeling and cycling to school.

    Three new additions to its ‘School Streets’ initiative has taken the overall number across the city to 21.

    Cotteridge Primary School (Stirchley ward), The Oval School (Garretts Green ward) and Whitehouse Common Primary School (Sutton Trinity ward) are the latest schools to join the scheme.

    The School Streets programme restricts the movement of motor vehicles on roads outside schools at the start and end of the day. The aim is to reduce traffic congestion, improve air quality and make it safer to walk, wheel and cycle to school.

    Since the initial launch of the programme in Birmingham in 2019 more than 70% of people (consisting of residents, parents, and school staff) have shown support for the programme at their school. This feedback has also shown that the initiative reduces school-related congestion, helping to make roads feel safer and less polluted.

    Birmingham City Council’s Cabinet Member for the Environment and Transport, Councillor Majid Mahmood, welcomed the latest expansion of the programme, saying: “School Streets is a programme that has already been proven to make roads safer, less congested and less polluted, and we are pleased to add a further three schools to those who are benefitting from the scheme.

    “Reducing the number of cars on our roads and encouraging people to use active travel and public transport is key to both the Birmingham Transport Plan and our Clean Air Strategy, and School Streets is key to ensuring we are on track to do just that. I wish the schools involved the best of luck as they launch the programme.”

    Ed Wicks, Project Coordinator of Living Streets, added: “We’re delighted to support the launch of these School Streets. Fewer cars outside school gates means children can walk to school safely and breathe cleaner air.

    “We know that many of us are put off walking to school because of speeding vehicles and inconsiderate parking. By removing cars, we remove these barriers and support more families to choose cleaner and healthier ways to travel.”

    The School Streets programme is funded through net surplus revenues from the Clear Air Zone, which must be spent on transport-related strategies and policies that help improve air quality.

    School Streets is just one way that the Council is working to promote safer, greener and healthier travel, with the Modeshift STARS national award scheme available to all schools.

    Notes to editor:

    About School Streets

    Birmingham City Council uses Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders to trial a time-limited street closure at the start and end of the school day. This can stay in place for a maximum of 18 months, during which time we will monitor and assess the effect of this change before deciding whether it should be made permanent. As part of this we are asking for feedback on these schemes.

    Local residents are able to apply for a free permit which allows them to drive their vehicle in the area where this restriction is in place in order to access their property. There are some other exemptions for traffic that can access streets at these times, including blue badge holders and emergency services. Anyone else driving in the restricted zone at these times (without a valid permit or exemption) can be issued with a Fixed Penalty Notice charge of £50.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: More than 250 people wrote the “Victory Dictation” at SPbGASU

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Dictation participants

    On April 25, the annual international historical dictation on the events of the Great Patriotic War, “Victory Dictation”, was held within the walls of SPbGASU. According to the organizers, more than 250 students and employees of the university took part in it. More than two million people wrote it in all regions of our country and in 84 countries of the world.

    “Victory Dictation” was held simultaneously at three SPbGASU sites. Within 45 minutes, participants completed 25 tasks developed by leading historians of the country.

    Volunteer assistance in conducting the dictation was provided by activists of the all-Russian student project of Rosmolodezh “Your Move”, second-year bachelor’s students of the Faculty of Engineering Ecology and Urban Economy Victoria Marusey and Danil Ivanov. We asked them to share their opinions about the dictation, as well as to tell about their projects.

    “The dictation is our memory of the events of the war years. We must remember the feat of our ancestors,” Danil is sure.

    “Thanks to such events, young people learn more about history,” Victoria believes.

    Together with second-year undergraduate students of the Institute of Economics and Geophysics Alina Prikhodko and Anna Kozhina, Victoria is working on an environmental project within the framework of the “I Do” track, “Analysis of the state of soil and ground in St. Petersburg to assess the possibility of planting green spaces.” The result of the project will be an electronic map that visually displays the environmental state of various areas, as well as recommendations for planting plants. Information can be entered into the map by all interested city residents, and not only. “I have a special interest in ecology and strive to contribute to improving the environmental situation both in the city and in the country,” said the student, who is also the group leader.

    Danil Ivanov not only studies, but also works as a technologist in the company. As part of the “I Do” track, he is implementing the WaterTechnologies project, aimed at making the process of developing treatment facilities easier.

    “Any treatment facilities are very expensive and complicated. A lot of documents are created when implementing even simple water treatment plants for both drinking and technical purposes. The presence of such water treatment plants is the key to the development of any modern city. There are very few people who can and want to do such a complex task. They have a huge amount of work, and this overload causes burnout, inattention, which leads to errors. My project will help reduce the workload of each person, speed up the process of document development, reduce the influence of the human factor and make the water in our country a little cleaner,” the student said.

    One of the participants of the “Victory Dictation” was a fourth-year bachelor’s student of the construction faculty Zlata Zolotykh, who heads the “EcoTusa” project. The children collect waste paper and plastic caps, participate in city and all-Russian clean-up days.

    “This dictation is a very important event, and I am glad that so many of our students are here. The questions were interesting. I learned some things for the first time,” Zlata shared.

    “Victory Dictation”, aimed at increasing historical literacy and patriotic education of youth, is of particular importance in the year of the eightieth anniversary of the Great Victory and in the Year of the Defender of the Fatherland. At SPbGASU they do everything to instill in young people respect for the feat of our people during the Great Patriotic War.

    Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI: Kaltura Announces “Connect on the Road 2025” Conference Schedule: Join Experts from IBM, AWS, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bloomberg, Adobe, and more in Exploring Digital Immortality and Institutional Knowledge Activation in the Age of Agentic AI

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    New York, April 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Kaltura (Nasdaq: KLTR), the AI Video Experience Cloud, today announced the lineup of speakers for the company’s annual Connect on the Road conference. Coming to New York (May 13th), San Francisco (May 15th), and London (May 20th), the sessions will focus on “Digital Immortality” and how AI is reshaping the ways organizations are creating living content archives to fuel smarter decisions and continuous personalization. 

    “Every enterprise knows that knowledge, whether institutional, operational, customer-centric or otherwise, drives business growth”, said Nohar Zmora, SVP Head of Marketing at Kaltura. “Digital immortality is about more than preserving information, it’s about using AI to make knowledge accessible, actionable, and alive across the enterprise. When AI becomes a strategic layer in the video database, it shapes employee and customer experiences, accelerates learning, and enables personalization we’ve never seen before.”  

    With hundreds of executives and leaders in Marketing, Communications, and Enterprise Media expected to attend, guests will have the opportunity to hear from some of the expert voices leading AI-driven transformations within their organizations, including: 

    • Toni VanWinkle, Vice President Digital Employee Experience, Adobe 
    • Phil Le-brun, Director, Enterprise Strategy, AWS 
    • Bill Macaitis, Advisor, former CMO, Slack & Zendesk 
    • Judy Lee, Senior Director, Global Brand Experiences, Pinterest 
    • Bruce Ableson, Senior Director of Global Readiness and Enablement, Adobe  
    • Viral Sanghvi, Senior Manager, Global Sales & Communications Platforms, Vanguard 
    • Davood Shamsi, Director of AI/ML, JPMorgan Chase & Co.  
    • RJ Crowder-Schaefer, Global Head of Event Product & Technology, Bloomberg  
    • Jennifer Sacks Tobener, VP, Digital & Marketing Technology, Salesforce 
    • Rodrigo Davies, AI Product Leader, Figma 
    • Amy Tennison, VP of TechXchange, IBM 
    • Unmesh Suryawanshi, Head of Streaming and Security, Visa 
    • Chris Hamilton, Senior Global Communications Director, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals 
    • Santiago Casto, Global Head of Automation and AI, MUFG 

    Among the topics that will be explored are: 
    1) Agentic AI that can think and execute decisions is turning corporate knowledge into a proactive, hyper-personalized, intelligent system.  
    2) Transforming content into “Living archives” with content that self-updates, contextualizes insights, and delivers hyper-relevant knowledge based on a user’s real-time needs.  
    3) Creating enduring, engaging institutional memory sources that don’t disappear with employee turnover but scale across teams, leveraging proven messaging and strategies.  
    4) Ensuring brand continuity with consistent messaging across customer and user interactions to enhance engagement.  
    5) Tackling AI ethics & ownership questions, such as who controls knowledge? How can organizations shape, govern, and direct AI-driven decision-making?  

    Attendees will also get front-row, hands-on demos of several of Kaltura’s next-generation AI platform’s new capabilities, including the Customer Experience Genie and Work Genie AI agents. These agents redefine and hyper-personalize customer engagement, employee onboarding and training by transforming search within a video library into interactive, conversational journeys tailored to each user. The Kaltura Content Lab, also available for demo, enables creators to quickly transform long-form video content into engaging, bite-sized experiences. With a single click, Content Lab generates clips, video quizzes, summaries, and chapters from videos and audio, saving time, reducing costs, and maximizing content value. These products mark a shift from passive video consumption into active, personalized experiences, reflecting Kaltura’s differentiated approach to AI – rooted in a proprietary cloud-based database, built for secure enterprise environments, and designed to transform passive content into actionable business value.  

    Kaltura will also be hosting its Education Connect on the Road track in both Europe and the US, kicking off in Utrecht, Netherlands, on May 12th. The events will bring together leaders in higher education to share insights on how they are using AI and additional new technologies to improve education, increase engagement, and more. See more locations and details here. 

    Reserve your spot at a location that works for you here. 

    About Kaltura 
    Kaltura’s mission is to create and power AI-infused hyper-personalized video experiences that boost customer and employee engagement and success. Kaltura’s AI Video Experience Cloud includes a platform for enterprise and TV content management and a wide array of Gen AI-infused video-first products, including Video Portals, LMS and CMS Video Extensions, Virtual Events and Webinars, Virtual Classrooms, and TV Streaming Applications. Kaltura engages millions of end-users at home, at work, and at school, boosting both customer and employee experiences, including marketing, sales, and customer success; teaching, learning, training and certification; communication and collaboration; and entertainment, and monetization. For more information, visit www.corp.kaltura.com. 

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: As European carmakers navigate the autonomous car race, Lighty’s new AI edge software offers them a lifeline amid rising tariffs

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Zurich, April 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — As European automakers face increasing tariffs and mounting pressure from American and Asian competitors in the autonomous driving race, leading Swiss AI startup Lightly today launches LightlyEdge – a groundbreaking edge-based data collection solution that could help level the playing field. At a time when Bosch is cutting 12,000 jobs and Mercedes is offering up to €500,000 for voluntary exits, clearly being effective and efficient matters for automotive companies. Lightly’s innovation tackles a critical bottleneck in AI development: capturing only the data that truly matters, directly at the source. This offers a strategic advantage at a time when workforce reductions threaten to slow in-house development and widen the gap with faster-moving rivals.

    As companies around the world race to develop safer autonomous vehicles, the fundamental challenge remains the same: they are drowning in data and the resulting costs. While collecting large volumes of data is essential, the difficulty lies in identifying what’s truly relevant. As AI models grow more sophisticated, so does the redundancy in the data feeding them. LightlyEdge solves this problem by making intelligent decisions about what data to keep at the moment of capture, before it enters the storage and processing pipeline.

    The LightlyEdge data collection report. 

    LightlyEdge deploys intelligent models directly onto vehicles’ cameras and sensors. The system revolutionizes data collection by analyzing video footage in real-time as it’s being captured, automatically identifying rare and valuable scenarios – like a child at a crossroad or an accident in snowy conditions – while ignoring redundant data that adds no value to training datasets. This approach dramatically slashes unnecessary storage and bandwidth costs while ensuring training datasets become more comprehensive, diverse, and optimized for real-world driving conditions.

    “This launch is a fantastic opportunity to increase development cycles for autonomous driving and driving assistance,” said Matthias Heller, Co-Founder of Lightly. “With LightlyEdge, our partners can harness smarter, real-time data collection that not only accelerates AI model training but also provides a competitive edge against established industry giants. By focusing on quality data from uncommon scenarios and hazards, we’re empowering a new era of innovation that will drive the future of mobility.”

    Lightly founders Matthias Heller and Igor Susmelj.

    The timing of LightlyEdge’s release is particularly significant. European automotive manufacturers are working to maintain their position against competitors like Tesla, whose innovative “Active Learning” approach – feeding only the most valuable data into AI models – has become a benchmark for the industry. While European companies have a rich history of engineering excellence, they now have an opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence’s potential to overhaul their operations.

    LightlyEdge captures data from cameras. 

    Building on what Lightly already achieved with LightlyOne in data centers, this new product shifts the intelligence right to where it’s needed – the edge devices in vehicles themselves. LightlyEdge gives developers real-time feedback and smart capture capabilities directly on the road. With its easy-to-use interface, teams can quickly deploy their AI models, keep an eye on them, and make them better over time – all of which dramatically speeds up how fast they can bring innovations to life.

    That speed is becoming essential. As European carmakers are feeling the squeeze from global competitors and tough trade barriers.LightlyEdge offers them a way to innovate faster while keeping costs down. By being smarter about what data they collect, these manufacturers can build better autonomous driving systems in less time and with fewer resources. This might be exactly what they need to win the autonomous car race.

    Ends

    Media images are here 

    About Lightly
    Lightly was founded in Zurich, Switzerland by Matthias Heller and Igor Susmelj, former ETH and Harvard students who worked in autonomous driving and research on computer vision and deep learning. 

    Lightly helps companies to build better machine learning models faster through better data. Data to train machine learning models is currently the biggest bottleneck in AI development. Today, Lightly is used by Fortune 500 companies and startups in autonomous driving, robotics, and video analytics. For more information, please visit https://www.lightly.ai/ or follow the company on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. 

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Economics: Catch the Replay: 10 U.S. Public Schools. 1 Impactful STEM Competition. 3 National Winners.

    Source: Samsung

    Relive the excitement as Samsung Electronics America hosted the final round of its 15th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition on April 28, 2025 at Samsung DC in the heart of our nation’s capital. Ten National Finalist teams—each already awarded a $50,000 prize package of Samsung technology and classroom supplies—took the stage to pitch their groundbreaking STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) solutions to community challenges. But only three emerged as National Winners, each securing a $100,000 prize package for their schools—part of more than $2 million in prizes up for grabs.
    Revisit the big moments —watch the livestream replay right here:
    National Finalists Pitch Event: Monday, April 28, 2025 |9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. ET
    National Winners Reveal Event: Monday, April 28, 2025 | 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. ET

    National Finalists Pitch Event
    Celebrating its 15th year, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow empowers public school students in grades 6-12 to apply STEM skills to tackle real-world problems and drive positive change in their communities. Representing the very best from this year’s competition, the 10 student teams—hailing from middle and high schools in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wyoming—presented their groundbreaking STEM solutions at a live morning pitch event on April 28. These Gen Z and Gen Alpha student innovators have created game-changing solutions to tackle challenges such as healthcare access, accessibility in sports, gaming, and music, climate-driven heat disparities, youth mental health, and more—demonstrating the power of STEM to drive real-world impact.
    Their projects, developed using cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), 3D modeling and printing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics, were evaluated by a panel of esteemed judges, including Charlotte Dungan, Chief Learning Officer at the Mark Cuban Foundation; Enobong Etteh, YouTube Creator; Hope King, Macro Talk News Founder and Axios Contributor; Rameen Rana, Investor at Samsung NEXT; and Renzo Villavicencio, Vice President of Process Innovation & Procurement at Samsung Electronics America. Kicking off the event, Alix Guerrier, CEO of DonorsChoose—the leading education nonprofit for teachers and a long-time Solve for Tomorrow partner—delivered the opening remarks.

    National Winners Reveal Event
    Evening festivities kicked off with an inspiring keynote from Gitanjali Rao, a 19-year-old MIT sophomore, innovator, author, and changemaker. Named TIME’s Kid of the Year and a UNICEF Youth Advocate, Gitanjali has been recognized globally for her groundbreaking work in STEM taking on issues ranging from contaminated drinking water to opioid addiction and cyberbullying. With accolades like Forbes 30 Under 30, America’s Top Young Scientist, Stephen Hawking Medal Junior for Science Communications, and the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award, she embodies the next generation of problem-solvers harnessing technology for good.
    Following the keynote, the “AI for Good: Empowering the Next Generation of Problem-Solvers” panel explored how AI can drive positive impact while addressing key challenges like bias, energy consumption, and ethical responsibility. Moderated by Allison Stransky, CMO of Samsung Electronics America, the panel featured Charlotte Dungan from the Mark Cuban Foundation, Paul Kim, Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Samsung Electronics America, and Jordan Harrod, AI Strategist and Ph.D. Candidate in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program.

    MIL OSI Economics –

  • MIL-OSI Economics: Samsung Awards $300K to National Winners in 15th Annual Solve for Tomorrow STEM Competition

    Source: Samsung

    Today, Samsung Electronics America proudly names the winners of the 15th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition—a national education program that challenges public middle and high school students to turn science, technology, engineering, and math concepts into real-world solutions for challenges in their local communities. The three National Winners—each awarded a $100,000 prize package for their schools—were announced by Yoonie Joung, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America: Bentonville West High School from Centerton, AR; Bloomington High School South from Bloomington, IN; and Charter School of Wilmington from Wilmington, DE.
    Reflecting on the achievement and the promise of student-driven STEM solutions, Yoonie Joung shared, “These students are a profound reminder of why Samsung Solve for Tomorrow exists—to ignite innovation, inspire action, and ensure all young people have access to the tools they need to shape a better future. As they embrace emerging technologies like AI, Samsung is focused on helping close both the knowledge and resource gaps in STEM education—ensuring educators are equipped and students are empowered to apply these tools in transformative ways. Fifteen years in, Solve for Tomorrow continues to demonstrate what’s possible when we invest in youth, education, and bold thinking.”
    At the core of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is a mission to advance STEM literacy, proficiency, and equity—and this year marks a celebration of its 15-year legacy of student-driven innovation. To date, Samsung has provided more than $29 million in technology and classroom resources to nearly 4,300 public schools across the U.S. This year’s three National Winners rose to the top from thousands of bold, imaginative entries—emerging from a highly competitive journey that began with 300 State Finalists, narrowed to 50 State Winners, and culminated in 10 National Finalists who pitched their visions for a brighter tomorrow.

    10 National Finalists. 1 Unforgettable Pitch Event. Endless Impact.
    Representing the next generation of changemakers, these 10 standout Gen Z and Gen Alpha student teams tackled issues like healthcare access, accessibility in sports, climate-driven heat disparities, and public safety on frozen lakes—using cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), 3D modeling and printing, machine learning (ML), and robotics to bring their ideas to life.
    Their innovations took center stage at a live Solve for Tomorrow Pitch Event on April 28 at Samsung DC, where a panel of distinguished judges—including Charlotte Dungan from the Mark Cuban Foundation; YouTube creator Enobong Etteh; Hope King, founder of Macro Talk News and Axios contributor; Rameen Rana from Samsung NEXT; and Renzo Villavicencio from Samsung Electronics America—evaluated each team’s project. The event began with opening remarks from Alix Guerrier, CEO of DonorsChoose, a long-time Solve for Tomorrow partner dedicated to expanding access to classroom resources.
    “Every year, I’m inspired by the incredible ingenuity, empathy, and determination these students bring to solving real-world problems in their communities. At Samsung, we believe in the power of technology as a force for good for all—and these young innovators are living proof of that. Watching them harness STEM to build a better future is not only hopeful—it’s a reminder of what’s possible when we invest in the next generation of problem-solvers,” said Allison Stransky, CMO of Samsung Electronics America.

    MIL OSI Economics –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Show “Don’t Sleep!” at the Polytechnic: music, interactive and acting performances

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –

    The immersive music show “Don’t Sleep!” was held at the Polytechnic University Student Club. The event was decorated in the “Mafia” style and attracted over 300 guests.

    Several hours of music and interactive tasks, fingerprinting and solving the commissar’s board, acting performances and cut scenes – that’s how rich the show turned out to be. The songs were performed not only for the audience, but also with them. One of the features was the alternate performance of compositions by different groups under the direction of vocalists and the invitation of guests to a white dance.

    Each of us put a part of ourselves into the concert. I especially remember the rehearsals, when we devoted time to improvisation and created music the way we felt it together, — shared third-year student of the State Institute of Music and keyboard player Ekaterina Roslyakova.

    The acting troupe united members of the Polytechnic University Student Theatre and ETU “LETI” students. The participants of the show tried on different roles: a commissioner and his assistant, a doctor, a mayor, a cabaret owner and a crazy fanatic. They had to interact with civilians, who became fewer and fewer by the end of the show, while the number of mafia supporters increased.

    I have never seen such dedication from a team before. Despite the fact that a lot of effort was expended, with such active people it comes easy, – said LETI master’s student and the actor who plays the mayor Kamil Abdrakhmanov.

    The show “Don’t Sleep!” started in 2023 with a concert-house concert featuring members of the vocal studio Polyvox. This year, the event became one of the most anticipated events of April.

    I can’t believe that our show has become so popular! Everyone had an unforgettable experience. Despite the difficulties, this is exactly what we do everything for, and we need to keep moving forward. And the most valuable thing that this project has given me (and, I think, not only me) is the people, our team, the quartet, the community that together is capable of great achievements, – emphasized the vocalist and first-year student of the PISh “CI” Anastasia Sreznevskaya.

    Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Study Examines Attitudes, Challenges for Disabled Grad Students

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    There are multiple entry points in higher education for individuals pursuing a career in physics, beginning with the transition into graduate school and continuing in doctoral and post-doctoral programs. In each of these stages, people with disabilities are underrepresented, and continue to experience marginalization and barriers to accessing physics careers.

    A team of researchers looking at how two factors – academic ableism and disability identity – contribute to barriers or help reduce them. Erin Scanlon, a physics assistant professor-in-residence, is the UConn-PI on the three-year project. The team is seeking to identify solutions and increase the representation among disabled scholars in the field of physics.

    The National Science Foundation is funding the study through a $1.3 million grant. Scanlon is conducting the study with Allison Lombardi, Carlyn Mueller, and Graham Rifenbark, all faculty at the department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education at the University of Wisconsin, and Emily Tarconish, an assistant professor of Special Education at the University of Illinois.

    “There has not been a lot of work done in this space,” says Scanlon. “I think this research will help this career be more accessible and inclusive.”

    Lombardi, who was an associate professor at UConn for 14 years before joining the Wisconsin faculty, initiated the collaboration, tapping researchers not only interested in the topic, but who may have experienced the barriers the study examines in their own academic journeys. Four of the five researchers working on the study have an identified disability, including Scanlon, who has chronic migraines, depression, and anxiety.

    “I’m hoping we’ll hear about lifelong experiences like mine and learn about what’s working and not working to make things work better in the future,” Scanlon says.

    The three strands of the project – titled Disability in STEM: Measuring Ableism Not in Teaching, and Learning Environments, or DisMANTLE – will be overseen by the respective institutions of the project team. Scanlon’s role will be to assess perceptions about disabilities among practicing physicists, who will be asked about their knowledge of disability diagnosis, and their attitudes and beliefs about the viability of a career in physics for people with disabilities.

    Within the survey, there will be questions about specific categories of disabilities, such as deafness or autism, to determine practitioners’ thoughts on what career in physics might be viable for a scholar with that disability. The answers will help center the narrative about disabilities in academia, says Scanlon.

    For their part, Lombardi, Mueller, and Graham will focus on the higher education experiences of disabled scholars pursuing a career in physics. Their research will build on a pilot study conducted by the Lombardi, Tarconish, and Scanlon and published in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society in 2024. That study looked at the lifelong experiences of about 20 graduate students and faculty engaged in physics.

    Tarconish, who overcame a traumatic brain injury at 15 to pursue her career in academia, will survey graduate students in engineering from a more holistic standpoint that considers each students experiences in academia as well as their individual disabilities.

    The DisMANTLE study will be significantly bigger than the pilot study, says Scanlon, who will tap the membership of the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and possibly the American Institute of Physics, to recruit the hundreds of participants needed for her survey.

    In addition to the adding to the scant literature about disability in postsecondary physics, the project aims to provide additional supports for disabled scholars by shifting from a traditional disability services model, where the focus is on diagnosis and coursework accommodation, toward one that puts the identity of the student first instead of his or her disability.

    While 19.4% of undergraduate students identify with disabilities, only 12% of graduate students do. Researchers note that those numbers likely underestimate the actual prevalence of disabled students in higher education.

    Students, graduate students, and often university employees must navigate a multitude of pathways – offices of disability services as well as human resources and employee services – to access reasonable accommodation. Supports can both confuse graduate students and dissuade them from accessing the resources they need. Further, because offices of disability services primarily serve undergraduate students, the types of services they offer may not be the ones needed by graduate students, such as manuscript preparation, course development, or developing conference presentations.

    Disability is an often overlooked facet of diversity. And with people with disabilities making up just 3% of the STEM workforce, and 11% of science and engineering doctoral programs, the need for improvement is great.

    “We are really trying to combat ableism in the academy and physical science community in higher education,” says Scanlon. “The physical science community has not always been supportive. We’re trying to understand the experiences of disabled people, so we can create opportunities for the disabled and so physicists can be aware and be anti-ableist in their own practice. We want to make sure that anyone who can do science is able to do science.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: 2025 Commencement Speakers and Honorary Degree Recipients

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    From business success to the National Science Foundation, from policymaking in Hartford to the world’s most popular YouTube sneaker channel, from the Chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation to the President of the Rwanda Academy of Sciences, the honored guests of UConn’s commencement ceremonies bring a wealth of experience, insight, and wisdom to share with this year’s graduates. Speakers at the ceremonies, which begin on Saturday, May 10, include:

    College of Engineering (Saturday, May 10, 9 a.m. at Gampel Pavilion): Mark P. Sarkisian ’83

    Mark Sarkisian is a partner in the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. He is a licensed professional engineer and structural engineer in 31 states. In 2021, Sarkisian was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and is a member of the University of Connecticut Academy of Distinguished Engineers. He received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from UConn in 1983, and his master’s degree in structural engineering from Lehigh University. Sarkisian’s career focuses on developing innovative structural engineering solutions for over 100 major building projects around the world, including the Jin Mao Tower in China and the Al Hamra Fidrous Tower in Kuwait, both over 1,300 feet[1]tall. Sarkisian holds 10 U.S. patents and five international patents. Sarkisian has authored over 150 technical papers related to the design of building structures, and in 2012 completed his first book, “Designing Tall Buildings – Structure as Architecture.” He teaches integrated studio design courses focused on collaborative design opportunities at the University of California, Berkeley; California College of the Arts; Stanford University; California Polytechnic State University; Northeastern University; North Carolina State University; and the Pratt Institute.

    School of Nursing (Saturday, May 10, 9 a.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): Joan Y. Reede

    Dr. Joan Y. Reede was appointed as Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) first Dean for Diversity and Community Partnership in January of 2002, and has been responsible for the development and management of a comprehensive program that has provided leadership, guidance, and support to promote the increased recruitment, retention, and advancement of diverse faculty, particularly individuals from groups underrepresented in medicine. This charge includes oversight of all diversity activities at HMS as they relate to faculty, trainees, students, and staff. Reede is a graduate of Brown University and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She completed a pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and a fellowship in child psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital. She holds an MPH and an MS in Health Policy Management from Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and an MBA from Boston University. Reede created and developed more than 20 programs at HMS that aim to address pathway and leadership issues for minorities and women who are interested in careers in medicine, academic and scientific research, and the health care professions. At a national level, Reede’s advice and expertise is highly sought after among several committees and councils, such as being appointed to the Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Minority Health and serving on the Board of Governors for the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center. She also has many affiliations, including the Task Force for the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, CTSA Women in CTR Interest Group of the NIH, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science STEM Education Review Committee.

    School of Business (Saturday, May 10, 1:30 p.m. at Gampel Pavilion): Richard Eldh ‘81

    Rich Eldh was born in the village of Ardsley, New York, and moved homes five times between the ages of 5 and 15. He attended Staples High School in Westport, graduating as a three-sport athlete and an all-state football player. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Connecticut. In what would have been his junior year, 1978–1979, he took a leave of absence to travel abroad, living in Kempten, Germany, in Bavaria. There, he worked at Dixie Union, a manufacturing company, as a computer programmer, where he developed new automation software for the finance department. This experience in Germany highlighted the significant impact computing technology would have on business. Motivated by this realization, he decided to pursue a career in the computer industry. Upon returning to the University of Connecticut for his final two years, he majored in finance at the School of Business and graduated in 1981 with a degree in Finance. He first joined a manufacturing firm implementing automation software, then moved to Four Phase Systems, a Motorola company, selling data entry systems. Later, he joined Hewlett-Packard, specializing in manufacturing systems and automation. It was at HP that he met his wife; they married and started a family. After working for two very large corporations, Rich joined a startup called Gartner Group in Stamford. He was the 100th employee, and in ten years, the company grew from $9 million in revenue to just under $1 billion with 4,500 employees. Today, Gartner boasts a market cap of $38 billion with 21,000 employees. These early career highlights led Rich to co-found Sirius Decisions, which became a leader in high-performance go-to[1]market research and benchmarking. Headquartered in Wilton, Sirius Decisions grew to 400 employees with private equity backing and offices worldwide. The company was eventually monetized for approximately $300 million through a sale to a public company in Boston. Throughout his career, he has had the honor of working with associates and clients across more than 50 countries. Alongside his career, Rich and his wife Joyce raised two daughters and a son. They have each found success in the medical field, the fashion world, and the blockchain and crypto industry, respectively.

    School of Social Work (Saturday, May 10, 1:30 p.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): Maggie Mitchell Salem

    Maggie Mitchell Salem joined IRIS as Executive Director in January 2024. Throughout her nearly 30-year career, Maggie has managed diverse teams focused on civic education, intercultural dialogue, social and political rights, and forced displacement. She arrived in Connecticut following three years leading the National Democratic Institute’s democratic governance program in Tunisia. Given the exponential increase in the number of refugees, humanitarian parolees, and other immigrants that IRIS assists, Maggie has focused on organizational structure, systems, and policies that create a strong foundation for the organization’s continued growth. Her previous experience at Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Services) and Fugees Academy have underscored the importance of collaborative, communicative leadership and management. For more than a decade, she was the founding executive director of Qatar Foundation International and expanded Arabic language and culture education to public K-12 schools across the U.S., UK, and Germany. As the Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), she expanded or created new programs in Jordan, Iran, and Iraq. Maggie started up and led the Middle East Institute’s Communications Department from 2001-2004. She also served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in Mumbai and Tel Aviv, and as staff on the Executive Secretariat of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Maggie was a Fulbright Scholar in Syria while studying for her Masters in Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. She received a bachelor’s degree in political science and psychology from Johns Hopkins University. She has two sons and two daughters. She lives with her six dogs and two cats in East Haddam.

    Bachelor of General Studies (Saturday, May 10, 2 p.m. at Student Union Theater): Daniel Mercier ‘95

    Daniel Mercier graduated from the Bachelor of General Studies program in 1995 with a focus in Visual Communications. After serving as a Graphics Specialist for a few years, Mercier returned to UConn in 1998 as a Media Producer. In 2001, he transitioned to the role of Instructional Developer in the Instructional Design and Development Department. After completing a Master of Arts in Educational Technology in 2003, Mercier became Manager of Instructional Design and Development and ultimately served as Assistant Director and Director of the Institute of Teaching and Learning. In 2015, he took on the role of Director, Instructional Design, in the Center for Pedagogical Innovation at Wesleyan University. In 2017, Mercier returned to UConn as the Director of Academic Affairs at the Avery Point Campus of the University of Connecticut. Throughout his 30-plus-year career, Mercier has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the development of instructional tools, to help faculty utilize technologies to reach our students. In his work, he has supported faculty, staff and students across the higher education landscape. His commitment to the University of Connecticut spans nearly 25 years. In his current position, he recruits faculty, oversees academic advising and other academic support programs, and develops partnerships between the Avery Point campus and other academic entities within and outside UConn. These partnerships include the support of students in the Bachelor of General Studies Program.

    College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (Saturday, May 10, 6 p.m. at Gampel Pavilion): Rodney Butler ’99 (BUS)

    Rodney A. Butler is the Chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation (MPTN) since January 2010. Butler’s service on Tribal Council began in 2004, and after one year, he was appointed Tribal Council Treasurer; a position he held through 2009. During his tenure, Butler chaired the Tribe’s Finance, Housing, and Judicial Committees, the MPTN Utility Authority, and served as an Interim CEO for Foxwoods Resort Casino. Butler earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Finance from the University of Connecticut where he played Defensive Back for the UConn Huskies football team. Prior to Tribal Council, Butler worked in the finance department at Foxwoods Resort Casino. He later became Chairman of the Tribal Business Advisory Board; an executive body responsible for overseeing the Tribe’s non-gaming businesses and commercial properties. Butler was actively involved in multiple resort expansions at Foxwoods, as well as community development initiatives on the Reservation, the establishment of the Mashantucket (Western) Pequot Tribe Endowment Trust, and the legalization of Sports Betting and iGaming in the state of Connecticut. He was also a participant in Harvard Business School’s program “Leading People and Investing to Build Sustainable Communities.” He is a regular speaker on national panels related to Native American issues. Butler presently serves on the Board of Directors for Mashantucket Pequot Interactive and is on the board of Foxwoods El San Juan Casino. He also serves as the President of Native American Finance Officers Association (NAFOA), as Alternate Vice President for the National Congress of American Indians, and on the boards for the United South and Eastern Tribes, Indian Gaming Association, American Gaming Association, the Mystic Aquarium, and the United Way of Southeastern Connecticut. He is the 2019 recipient of the Citizen of the Year award from the Eastern Connecticut Chamber of Commerce, and the National Indian Gaming Association’s John Kieffer Sovereignty Award. In 2018, he received the St. Edmund’s Medal of Honor Award from the Enders Island Retreat Center. In 2017, Butler was appointed “Tribal Leader of the Year” by the NAFOA. As Chairman, Butler’s primary focus is to ensure long-term stability for the Tribe’s citizens, government, and business enterprises.

    School of Fine Arts (Saturday, May 10, 6 p.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): Jacob G. Padrón

    Jacob G. Padrón is the Artistic Director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven. He is also the Founder and Artistic Director of The Sol Project, a national theater initiative that works in partnership with leading theater companies to amplify the voices of Latino playwrights in New York City and beyond. Padrón has held senior-level artistic positions at theater companies across the country. He was the Senior Line Producer at The Public Theater where he worked on new plays, new musicals, Shakespeare in the Park, and Public Works. He was formerly the Producer at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago where he supported the artistic programming in the Garage – Steppenwolf’s dedicated space for new work, new artists, and new audiences. From 2008 to 2011, he was an Associate Producer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where he was instrumental in producing all shows in the 11-play repertory. Under the guidance of his late mentor Diane Rodriguez, he served as the producer of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “365 Days/365 Plays” for Center Theatre Group, a collaboration that included over 50 theater companies to launch Festival 365 in Los Angeles. He is a co-founder of the Artist Anti-Racism Coalition, a grassroots movement committed to dismantling structural racism within the Off-Broadway community. Jacob is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University (B.A.) and David Geffen School of Drama (M.F.A.). His first artistic home was El Teatro Campesino located in San Juan Bautista, California.

     

    College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Ceremony I (Sunday, May 11, 9 a.m. at Gampel Pavilion): Maureen Ahern ‘85

    Maureen Ahern is an Executive Leadership Coach on her third career whose journey began in the same classrooms as today’s graduates. A proud Husky who earned both a Bachelors and a Masters, Maureen’s connection to UConn runs deep. For over 10 years, she returned to UConn Stamford each week as an Adjunct Professor, teaching Interpersonal Communications and Public Speaking after her corporate day job in New York, driven by her belief that becoming a great communicator gives you the power and confidence to take meaningful action to shape your future. Maureen started as a Sales Executive at The Associated Press and quickly rose to lead the Satellite Networks division before transitioning to Standard and Poor’s Comstock. At S&P she led many different departments as Director of Operations, VP of US Sales and Managing Director for Asian and South American markets, building successful international relationships while traveling the world. She was part of the management team that sold Comstock to IDC and then pivoted from corporate into the digital world, as Partner and COO of momAgenda, where she helped build a thriving e-commerce company. Drawing on her teaching background, leadership experience and desire to coach and mentor others, Maureen completed her leadership coaching certification at Georgetown University’s Transformational Leadership Institute. Today as Founder of Ahern Leadership Coaching and Consulting, Maureen partners with C-suite executives and emerging leaders across industries, facilitating leadership development through one-on-one coaching, team coaching, and specialized training and leadership development workshops. Her coaching philosophy – described by clients as “tough but loving”-centers on her belief that leaders aren’t born, they are made and that everyone has leadership capacity waiting to be unlocked through awareness, action and courage. Maureen was a mentor with the Freshman Founders Program at the Werth Institute at UConn Stamford, in addition to her volunteer work with CT NEXT and Startup Westport as a business mentor. She is also an angel investor with Tidal River Fund whose goal is to fund underrepresented founders. When not working with her clients whom she loves and adores, Maureen enjoys yoga, beach walks, and time with her three adult children (Patrick, Brendan and Caeleigh). She shares life in Cos Cob with her husband Mike Santini (fellow UConn grad) and their black lab, Nino.

    Neag School of Education (Sunday, May 11, 9 a.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): Suzanne M. Wilson

    Suzanne M. Wilson is the Neag Endowed Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, where she also serves as a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her undergraduate degree is in history and American studies from Brown University; she also has an M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in psychological studies in education from Stanford University. She was a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University, where she served on the faculty for 26 years. Wilson also served as the first director of the Teacher Assessment Project, which developed prototype assessments for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Wilson is a committed teacher, having taught undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral classes in educational policy, teacher learning, and research methods. She has directed 36 dissertations and served as a committee member for another 45. Wilson serves on multiple editorial and advisory boards. She was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2013 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. Wilson has written on teacher knowledge, qualitative methods, curriculum reform, educational policy, and teacher preparation and professional development. She has published in Science, American Educator, American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, Elementary School Journal, Teaching and Teacher Education, Journal of Teacher Education, Phi Delta Kappa, and Teaching Education. She is the author of “California Dreaming: Reforming Mathematics Education” (Yale, 2003) and editor of Lee Shulman’s collection of essays, “Wisdom of Practice: Essays on Teaching, Learning, and Learning to Teach” (Jossey-Bass, 2004). She is currently working on a collection of essays entitled, “Why Teach?”

    College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Ceremony II (Sunday, May 11, 1:30 p.m. at Gampel Pavilion): Joe La Puma ‘05

    Joe La Puma serves as SVP of Content Strategy at Complex NTWRK and hosts Complex’s Sneaker Shopping, the world’s No. 1 sneaker show, which has garnered over 1 billion views on YouTube. He has been at the forefront of sneaker and street culture at Complex for the past 15 years. La Puma started his journalism career writing for The Daily Campus and was voted “Rookie of the Year” by fellow staffers. After graduating from UConn in 2005 with a degree in Journalism, he returned to Bay Shore to manage The Finish Line—where he previously worked in high school—while contributing articles to both local and global publications like Newsday and Hypebeast.com. In 2006, La Puma landed an internship at Complex magazine, a pop culture publication specializing in convergence culture through hip-hop, sneakers, and fashion. La Puma has written more cover stories (21) than any other writer in Complex history, including profiles on Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and Kid Cudi. La Puma is also a published author of the book “Complex Presents: Sneaker of the Year: The Best Since ’85.” In his current SVP role, La Puma has led Complex to over 200% growth in audience and engagement. In 2014, Complex debuted the YouTube show Sneaker Shopping, a series that La Puma created and hosts to this day. Over the past decade of Sneaker Shopping, La Puma has interviewed icons like Eminem, Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Hart, Mark Wahlberg, Billie Eilish, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, and conducted one of the only lifestyle interviews with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2020 election cycle. The show has filmed episodes across the U.S., as well as abroad in China, England, Spain, and Japan. With his extensive editorial work on footwear and over 300 episodes of Sneaker Shopping, La Puma is regarded as one of the foremost sneaker experts in the world. La Puma is a three-time Webby Award winner and has been featured on Good Morning America, and The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. In 2024, La Puma was inducted into the Bay Shore High School Hall of Fame, a group that includes only 79 members since the school opened in 1893. La Puma currently lives in Brooklyn, and takes half-days at work when he can during UConn Basketball March Madness runs.

    School of Pharmacy – Doctor of Pharmacy (Sunday, May 11, 1:30 p.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): JoAnn Trejo

    JoAnn Trejo, Ph.D., MBA is professor of pharmacology and senior assistant Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences Faculty Affairs at the University of California (UC) San Diego. She completed her undergraduate degree at UC Davis, earned her Ph.D. and MBA at UC San Diego and completed postdoctoral training at UC San Francisco. Trejo is a basic science researcher with expertise in cell signaling in the context of vascular inflammation and cancer. Her research has been published in more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and she is a recipient of a NIH R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) and the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award. Trejo is an outstanding educator, mentor and a leader actively engaged in initiatives aimed at enhancing excellence in science and pharmacology. She is the director of five NIH-supported training programs including the UC San Diego IRACDA Postdoctoral Scholars Program, FIRST Program and three early career faculty development programs. Trejo served as an elected member of the leadership Council for the ASCB and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and is a current member of the scientific advisory boards for Septerna and Versiti. She has also served on multiple NIH Study Sections, the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors for Basic Sciences, and Blavatnik, HHMI and Chan Zuckerberg foundation review panels. Trejo is a current member of the NIGMS Advisory Council. She is the Associate Editor for Molecular Biology of the Cell and is an editorial board member for Proceedings National Academy of Sciences Nexus, Journal of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. Trejo is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Fellow and 100 Inspiring Hispanic / Latinx Scientists and was recently elected honorary fellow of the British Pharmacological Society.

    College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Ceremony III (Sunday, May 11, 5:30 p.m., Gampel Pavilion): Joe La Puma ‘05

    School of Pharmacy – Bachelor of Science (Sunday, May 11, 6 p.m., Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): Joe Honcz ‘98

    Joe Honcz is a distinguished expert in managed care and market access, boasting a robust 25-year career that spans significant sectors of the health care industry. Early in his career, he played a pivotal role in leading teams for the launch of Medicare Part D, followed by instrumental involvement in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act while at Anthem BCBS and Aetna. Since 2020, Joe has leveraged his profound understanding of managed care to deliver strategic market access insights, empowering over 20 biotech and pharmaceutical clients to effectively navigate complex market dynamics. His contributions have been crucial in the successful launch of innovative products in both traditional and rare/orphan disease categories. As a “pharmacy futurist,” he continues to drive innovation and shape market access strategies at Petauri Health, supporting the emerging pharmaceutical and health tech industries. His exceptional ability to anticipate industry trends has consistently provided clients with strategic advantages, enabling them to stay ahead of competitors with foresight and precision. Beyond his professional endeavors, Joe is actively involved at Yale Ventures as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and at the University of Connecticut Technology Commercialization Services in the same capacity. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of St. Joseph School of Pharmacy and is on the Board of Directors for the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) and Avery’s Little Army, whose mission is to honor the legacy of Avery Marie Lafferty, an exceptionally brave cancer rebel, and all patients like her. Joe’s extensive background is complemented by diverse roles at Pfizer, Walgreens, Humana, PrecisionAQ, and CVS. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy and a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing from the University of Connecticut, underscoring his deep roots and commitment to the field. In addition to being a Board member, he is also an AMCP diplomat to the UConn School of Pharmacy, where he fulfills his passion for mentoring and coaching.

    The Graduate School – Masters Ceremony (Monday, May 12, 9 a.m. at Gampel Pavilion): Manasse Mbonye ’95 Ph.D.

    Manasse Mbonye is a Founding Fellow of the Rwanda Academy of Sciences (RAS) and its current President. He is also the Group Leader and Professor, Rwanda Astrophysics Space and Climate Sciences Research Group (RASCSRG) at the University of Rwanda and a member of the national Science Advisory Group (SAG). By Training, Mbonye is a theoretical Astrophysicist and Cosmologist. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 1995. Mbonye has taught Physics at various institutions including UConn, the University of Michigan, and RIT. He has also worked at NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center). In 2012, Mbonye returned to Africa. Since then, his appointments have included, Provost (later) Ag Rector (National University of Rwanda), the first Principal (University of Rwanda, College of Science and Technology), and Executive Secretary (Rwanda’s National Council for Science and Technology, (NCST)). During Mbonye’s tenure, NCST instituted a major review of Rwanda’s Science, Technology, Research and Innovation (STRI) policy. Further, the National Research and Innovation Agenda (NRIA) was constructed, along with its implementation enabler, the National Research and Innovation Fund (NRIF) framework. Rwanda launched the NRIF in June 2018. Mbonye has served on the East African Science and Technology Commission (EASTCO) Board of Directors as its Rapporteur (2017-2018). He has also been Chairman of the Rwanda Energy Group (REG) (2015-2018), Rwanda’s sole electric energy production source and utility company. Prof. Mbonye continues to do research and supervise students, at the University of Rwanda.

     

    UConn Health (Monday, May 12, 1 p.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): Manisha Juthani

    Dr. Manisha Juthani, is the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH). Juthani is the first Indian American to serve as a commissioner in the State of Connecticut. She served as professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine through September 2024 and currently serves as an adjunct professor of medicine. She served as Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program from 2012 to 2021. Juthani received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and M.D. from Cornell University Medical College, completed Internal Medicine residency training at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell campus, and served as chief resident at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She came to Connecticut in 2002 as an Infectious Diseases fellow at Yale School of Medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Juthani was a leader in the COVID response at Yale which led to her appointment as Commissioner of CT DPH in 2021. In the early days of the pandemic, she was a voice to help educate the public in both local and national media outlets, a role she was able to expand in her role as Commissioner. Upon joining CT DPH, she helped guide Connecticut out of the pandemic and worked to revitalize areas of public health, such as gun violence, maternal health, opioid use, and sexually transmitted diseases, that were exacerbated during the pandemic. As she continues in her role as DPH Commissioner, Juthani has shifted her core vision to “Preserve and Protect Core Public Health Principles and Services.” As Connecticut is presented with new public health challenges, she remains committed to preserving public health achievements made over the years, including improvements in regulatory oversight in health care, drinking water, and environmental health which includes food safety. It is more important than ever to highlight the importance of vaccines, control of infectious diseases, road safety, and healthier mothers and babies. Clear, accurate communication about public health risks is vital to her mission. She continues to advocate for health as a human right which is the core vision of CT DPH. Juthani is on the Board of Directors of UConn Health.

    The Graduate School – Doctoral Ceremony (Monday, May 12, 6 p.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts): Sethuraman Panchanathan

    Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan is a computer scientist and engineer who served as the 15th director of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2020 until 2025. Panchanathan was nominated to by the president in 2019 and unanimously confirmed by the Senate on June 18, 2020. NSF is a $9.06 billion independent federal agency, and the only government agency charged with advancing all fields of scientific discovery, technological innovation and science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

    Panchanathan previously served as the executive vice president of the Arizona State University (ASU) Knowledge Enterprise, where he was also chief research and innovation officer. He was also the founder and director of the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing at ASU. Under his leadership, the university increased research performance fivefold, earning recognition as the fastest growing and most innovative research university in the U.S.

    Prior to joining NSF, Panchanathan was appointed by the president to serve on the National Science Board, where he was a chair of the Committee on Strategy and a member of the External Engagement and National Science and Engineering Policy committees. Additionally, he was chair of the Council on Research of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and co-chair of the Extreme Innovation Taskforce of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils. Arizona’s governor appointed Panchanathan as senior advisor for science and technology in 2018. He was the editor-in-chief of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) MultiMedia magazine and editor and associate editor of several international journals.

    For his scientific contributions, Panchanathan has received numerous awards, including honorary doctorates from prestigious universities, distinguished alumni awards, the Governor’s Innovator of the Year for Academia Award, the Washington Academy of Sciences Distinguished Career Award and the IEEE-USA Public Service Award.

    Panchanathan is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, where he also served as vice president for strategic initiatives. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE and the Society of Optical Engineering.

    School of Law (Sunday, May 18, 10:30 a.m. at UConn School of Law): Mayor Arunan Arulampalam

    The son of Sri Lankan refugees, Arunan Arulampalam was born in Zimbabwe and made a home and a family in Hartford after graduate school. Prior to being elected mayor of Hartford in November 2023, he served as CEO of the Hartford Land Bank, where he developed a first-in-the-nation program to train Hartford residents to become local developers and tackle blight in their city. Arulampalam served in Governor Ned Lamont’s administration as Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. Before that, he was a lawyer at the downtown firm Updike, Kelly & Spellacy, P.C. Arulampalam also served on the Board of the Hartford Public Library, the House of Bread, and on the Hartford Redevelopment Authority. He earned his BA in International Studies from Emory University and his JD from Quinnipiac University School of Law.

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