NewzIntel.com

Category: The Conversation

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Trade in a mythical fish is threatening real species of rays that are rare and at risk

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By James Marcus Drymon, Associate Extension Professor in Marine Fisheries Ecology, Mississippi State University

    These ‘pez diablo,’ or devil fish, are actually guitarfishes that have been caught, killed, dried and carved into exotic shapes. Bryan Huerta-Beltrán, CC BY-ND

    From the Loch Ness monster to Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, to the jackalope of the U.S. West, mythical animals have long captured human imagination.

    Some people are so fascinated with mythical creatures that they create their own, either working from pure fantasy or by modifying real animals. In a newly published study, we show that in countries such as Mexico, people are catching, drying and shaping guitarfishes – members of the rhino ray family, one of the most threatened groups of marine fishes – to create mythical specimens called “pez diablo,” or devil fish.

    Depending on where these curios are sold, they might also be referred to as Jenny Hanivers, garadiávolos or rayas chupacabras. The origin and meaning of the term “Jenny Haniver” is unclear, but the most accepted explanation is “Jeune d’Anvers,” or “young girl from Antwerp” in French.

    We found that pez diablo are made for many reasons, including as curios for the tourist trade and as purported cures for cancer, arthritis and anemia. Some are simply used for hoaxes. Regardless, the pez diablo trade could threaten the survival of guitarfishes.

    Young guitarfishes on display at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

    Fishy talismans

    Skates and rays, including guitarfishes, are flat-bodied fishes related to sharks and are found worldwide. Together, they make up a group known as elasmobranchs, which are characterized by their unique skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone like most other fishes.

    Skates have long been used to craft mythical creatures. The earliest known examples date back to 1558 in Europe, where they were fashioned to resemble dragons. These objects were thought to offer pathways to the divine or medicinal cures.

    In the mid-20th century, dried guitarfishes emerged as a new generation of mythical creatures. This may be because their unique shape can be fashioned into more humanlike forms. Their long nostrils, which are positioned just above their mouths, can resemble eyes.

    The ‘eyes’ of these dried guitarfishes are actually nostrils on top of the fishes’ long, pointed snouts.
    Bryan Huerta-Beltrán, CC BY-ND

    The first known case of a modified guitarfish was described in 1933. Since then, specimens have made their way into museums, and dozens of North American newspapers have published stories featuring modified guitarfishes.

    A real and endangered fish

    Guitarfishes are one of the most threatened vertebrate groups on the planet: Without careful management, they are at risk of global extinction. As many as two-thirds of all guitarfishes are classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List, a global inventory that assesses extinction risks to wild species.

    Guitarfishes are found in warm temperate and tropical oceans around the world. Fishers target them as an inexpensive source of protein. Guitarfishes may also be caught accidentally or collected live for the aquarium trade.

    Ultimately, however, these species are worth more as pez diablo than for other uses. For example, an entire fresh guitarfish in Mexico is worth approximately US$2, whereas guitarfish that have been killed, dried and carved into pez diablo can be worth anywhere from $50–$500 on eBay and other e-commerce sites.

    Curbing the pez diablo trade

    Internationally, the guitarfish trade is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international agreement between governments. This agreement requires member countries to manage guitarfish trade across international borders.

    Most countries where guitarfishes occur, however, do not have national regulations to protect these species. As a result, people who create or sell pez diablo are likely unaware that these fishes are threatened.

    There are as many as 37 species of guitarfish, some of which are at higher risk of extinction than others. Yet to the untrained eye, it can be hard to distinguish one guitarfish species from another. It’s especially hard to identify dried and mutilated guitarfishes that have been processed into pez diablo and look very different from their natural form.

    An intact guitarfish, left, and a carved, dried version.
    Bryan Huerta-Beltrán, CC BY-ND

    This is a common challenge for agencies that monitor trade in animal products. The global wildlife trade is an enormous market, involving billions of animals moving through both legal and illegal channels. Many wildlife products are heavily altered, which makes it hard to identify the species and determine where the product came from.

    Another source of confusion is that many people in Mexico also refer to an invasive freshwater fish that has overrun lakes and rivers across the nation as pez diablo. This “other” pez diablo is actually a suckermouth catfish and is not at all related to any of the threatened guitarfishes. Local education efforts need to distinguish clearly between these two species, since the desired outcome is to protect guitarfish while removing the invasive catfish.

    A dried and modified guitarfish, left, compared with an invasive suckermouth catfish.
    Bryan Huerta-Beltrán, CC BY-ND

    Guitarfish CSI

    Fortunately, advances in wildlife forensics offer a way to distinguish between species. Molecular techniques have been used to identify many illegally traded species, including guitarfishes. By taking a small skin sample, scientists can use DNA to identify the species of individual pez diablo. This method can help protect endangered species by helping to ensure that laws against wildlife trafficking are followed.

    Refining this kind of molecular tool is the most promising way to improve traceability in the trade of guitarfishes. By documenting where and how pez diablo are traded, scientists and conservationists can help clarify the threats to these species. The pez diablo is an imaginary creature, but it is doing real harm to threatened guitarfishes in the world’s warm oceans.

    Bryan Huerta-Beltran receives funding from Save Our Seas Foundation.

    Nicole Phillips is affiliated with the Sawfish Conservation Society and receives funding from the Save Our Seas Foundation.

    James Marcus Drymon and Peter Kyne do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Trade in a mythical fish is threatening real species of rays that are rare and at risk – https://theconversation.com/trade-in-a-mythical-fish-is-threatening-real-species-of-rays-that-are-rare-and-at-risk-247433

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Trauma is carried in your DNA. But science reveals a more complicated story

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Tara-Lyn Camilleri, Postdoctoral researcher of transgenerational effects, Monash University

    Radu Bercan/Shutterstock

    As war continues to rage in Gaza and Ukraine, there is concern about how the related trauma might be transmitted to future generations of people in those regions.

    More generally, interest in the idea of transgenerational trauma has recently surged. For example, earlier this year, National Geographic magazine asked whether genes carry past family trauma.

    But while this might be a catchy question, it’s also slightly misleading. Because while trauma can ripple across generations, shaped by how our bodies respond to their environments, its effects aren’t hard-coded in our genes.

    Plastic minds and bodies

    At the heart of this process is what’s known as phenotypic plasticity.

    This is the capacity for organisms to produce different outcomes from the same genes, depending on their environment. These outcomes, called phenotypes, can include stress sensitivity and body shape.

    One way different phenotypes can arise from the same genes is via epigenetics: small chemical changes to the DNA molecule that make particular genes more or less active. Think of these like a director’s notes on a script. These notes guide the cell on which lines to emphasise or soften, without changing the script itself.

    But epigenetics is just one way this plasticity is expressed.

    Understanding how trauma is passed across generations means looking beyond genes and cells to the environments that shape and influence them.

    Human development is sculpted by lived experience, from caregiving and community to stress, safety and belonging.

    These factors interact to produce lasting – but not always fixed – effects. By focusing on how they interact, rather than on single causes, we can better understand why trauma echoes across generations. This also helps us identify how that cycle might be disrupted.

    Widespread in nature

    Phenotypic plasticity is widespread in nature.

    In honeybees, genetically identical larvae become queens or workers depending on what they eat while developing. In three-spined stickleback fish, early exposure to predators reshapes their stress physiology and body shape, making them harder for predators to grasp.

    These aren’t genetic differences – they’re environmental effects on development.

    In humans, early-life conditions similarly shape development. A child raised in an unsafe setting may develop heightened vigilance or stress sensitivity – traits that help in danger but can persist as anxiety or chronic stress in times of safety. This is known as environmental mismatch.

    Across generations, plasticity becomes more complicated. In some of my past research, I studied how diet in one generation of fruit flies shaped health, reproduction and longevity in their offspring and grand offspring.

    The results varied depending on diet, generation and trait. Traits that appeared to be useful in one generation weren’t always so in the next. This highlights how difficult transgenerational effects are to predict – precisely because of this plasticity.

    In three-spined stickleback fish, early exposure to predators reshapes their stress physiology and body shape.
    drakiragavon/iNaturalist, CC BY-ND

    Too narrow an explanation

    Epigenetics often reflect environmental exposures – such as stress, trauma, nutrition or caregiving. But they’re not necessarily permanent “scars”. Many are dynamic and can shift with changing environments – especially early in life.

    Studies show that epigenetic patterns linked to early childhood adversity vary depending on later environments such as family stability and social support. This suggests the biological imprint of early stress is shaped by what happens next.

    It’s tempting to treat epigenetics as the key to explaining inherited trauma – but that’s too narrow. Trauma can influence the next generation through altered hormones, immune function or in utero conditions – all of which shape brain development and stress reactivity.

    Genetic variation also plays a major role. It doesn’t encode trauma itself, but it shapes traits such as sensitivity to threat or emotional regulation. These traits aren’t chosen – they arise from a web of biological and social influences beyond our control.

    But how they unfold, and whether they’re amplified or softened, depends on the systems that surround us.

    Connection to culture

    Connection to culture plays an important role too.

    In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori-led initiatives that centre land, language and whakapapa (ancestral lineage) have shown promise in restoring wellbeing after generations of colonisation-related trauma.

    For Holocaust survivors and descendants, connection to cultural identity through ritual and shared narrative can reduce the psychological burden of transmitted trauma.

    But not all trauma is collective or institutional. Interventions such as trauma-informed parenting and early relational therapies have been shown to improve outcomes in the next generation.

    These psychological supports affect biology. Feeling safe in our relationships, having stable routines and a sense of meaning can reduce stress hormones, modulate immune function, and buffer against long-term disease risk.

    In this way, culture, caregiving and connection are all biological interventions. When they soften the effects of earlier stress, they may help interrupt its transmission.

    Trauma-informed parenting has been shown to improve outcomes in the next generation.
    fizkes/Shutterstock

    Reframing inherited vulnerability

    This matters, because it changes how we understand inherited vulnerability.

    Rather than a permanent wound passed down through DNA, the effects of trauma are better understood as changeable responses shaped by context.

    Thanks to plasticity, our biology is always in conversation with the environment – and when we change the context, we can change the outcome.

    Tara-Lyn Camilleri receives funding from from Australian Graduate Women, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for education and supports women in postgraduate education with scholarships. Her research has also been supported by Australian Research Council grants and Royal Society funding. She is a volunteer committee member for Graduate Women Victoria.

    – ref. Trauma is carried in your DNA. But science reveals a more complicated story – https://theconversation.com/trauma-is-carried-in-your-dna-but-science-reveals-a-more-complicated-story-259057

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Trauma is carried in your DNA. But science reveals a more complicated story

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Tara-Lyn Camilleri, Postdoctoral researcher of transgenerational effects, Monash University

    Radu Bercan/Shutterstock

    As war continues to rage in Gaza and Ukraine, there is concern about how the related trauma might be transmitted to future generations of people in those regions.

    More generally, interest in the idea of transgenerational trauma has recently surged. For example, earlier this year, National Geographic magazine asked whether genes carry past family trauma.

    But while this might be a catchy question, it’s also slightly misleading. Because while trauma can ripple across generations, shaped by how our bodies respond to their environments, its effects aren’t hard-coded in our genes.

    Plastic minds and bodies

    At the heart of this process is what’s known as phenotypic plasticity.

    This is the capacity for organisms to produce different outcomes from the same genes, depending on their environment. These outcomes, called phenotypes, can include stress sensitivity and body shape.

    One way different phenotypes can arise from the same genes is via epigenetics: small chemical changes to the DNA molecule that make particular genes more or less active. Think of these like a director’s notes on a script. These notes guide the cell on which lines to emphasise or soften, without changing the script itself.

    But epigenetics is just one way this plasticity is expressed.

    Understanding how trauma is passed across generations means looking beyond genes and cells to the environments that shape and influence them.

    Human development is sculpted by lived experience, from caregiving and community to stress, safety and belonging.

    These factors interact to produce lasting – but not always fixed – effects. By focusing on how they interact, rather than on single causes, we can better understand why trauma echoes across generations. This also helps us identify how that cycle might be disrupted.

    Widespread in nature

    Phenotypic plasticity is widespread in nature.

    In honeybees, genetically identical larvae become queens or workers depending on what they eat while developing. In three-spined stickleback fish, early exposure to predators reshapes their stress physiology and body shape, making them harder for predators to grasp.

    These aren’t genetic differences – they’re environmental effects on development.

    In humans, early-life conditions similarly shape development. A child raised in an unsafe setting may develop heightened vigilance or stress sensitivity – traits that help in danger but can persist as anxiety or chronic stress in times of safety. This is known as environmental mismatch.

    Across generations, plasticity becomes more complicated. In some of my past research, I studied how diet in one generation of fruit flies shaped health, reproduction and longevity in their offspring and grand offspring.

    The results varied depending on diet, generation and trait. Traits that appeared to be useful in one generation weren’t always so in the next. This highlights how difficult transgenerational effects are to predict – precisely because of this plasticity.

    In three-spined stickleback fish, early exposure to predators reshapes their stress physiology and body shape.
    drakiragavon/iNaturalist, CC BY-ND

    Too narrow an explanation

    Epigenetics often reflect environmental exposures – such as stress, trauma, nutrition or caregiving. But they’re not necessarily permanent “scars”. Many are dynamic and can shift with changing environments – especially early in life.

    Studies show that epigenetic patterns linked to early childhood adversity vary depending on later environments such as family stability and social support. This suggests the biological imprint of early stress is shaped by what happens next.

    It’s tempting to treat epigenetics as the key to explaining inherited trauma – but that’s too narrow. Trauma can influence the next generation through altered hormones, immune function or in utero conditions – all of which shape brain development and stress reactivity.

    Genetic variation also plays a major role. It doesn’t encode trauma itself, but it shapes traits such as sensitivity to threat or emotional regulation. These traits aren’t chosen – they arise from a web of biological and social influences beyond our control.

    But how they unfold, and whether they’re amplified or softened, depends on the systems that surround us.

    Connection to culture

    Connection to culture plays an important role too.

    In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori-led initiatives that centre land, language and whakapapa (ancestral lineage) have shown promise in restoring wellbeing after generations of colonisation-related trauma.

    For Holocaust survivors and descendants, connection to cultural identity through ritual and shared narrative can reduce the psychological burden of transmitted trauma.

    But not all trauma is collective or institutional. Interventions such as trauma-informed parenting and early relational therapies have been shown to improve outcomes in the next generation.

    These psychological supports affect biology. Feeling safe in our relationships, having stable routines and a sense of meaning can reduce stress hormones, modulate immune function, and buffer against long-term disease risk.

    In this way, culture, caregiving and connection are all biological interventions. When they soften the effects of earlier stress, they may help interrupt its transmission.

    Trauma-informed parenting has been shown to improve outcomes in the next generation.
    fizkes/Shutterstock

    Reframing inherited vulnerability

    This matters, because it changes how we understand inherited vulnerability.

    Rather than a permanent wound passed down through DNA, the effects of trauma are better understood as changeable responses shaped by context.

    Thanks to plasticity, our biology is always in conversation with the environment – and when we change the context, we can change the outcome.

    Tara-Lyn Camilleri receives funding from from Australian Graduate Women, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for education and supports women in postgraduate education with scholarships. Her research has also been supported by Australian Research Council grants and Royal Society funding. She is a volunteer committee member for Graduate Women Victoria.

    – ref. Trauma is carried in your DNA. But science reveals a more complicated story – https://theconversation.com/trauma-is-carried-in-your-dna-but-science-reveals-a-more-complicated-story-259057

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Trump demands an end to the war in Gaza – could a ceasefire be close?

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Marika Sosnowski, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne

    Anas-Mohammed/Shutterstock

    Hopes are rising that Israel and Hamas could be inching closer to a ceasefire in the 20-month war in Gaza.

    US President Donald Trump is urging progress, taking to social media to demand:

    MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!

    Trump further raised expectations, saying there could be an agreement between Israel and Hamas “within the next week”.

    But what are the prospects for a genuine, lasting ceasefire in Gaza?

    Ceasefires are generally complicated to negotiate because they need to take into account competing demands and pressures. They usually (but not always) require both sides to compromise.

    Gaza is no exception. In a conflict that has been going on for more than 70 years, compromise and concession have become a game of cat and mouse.

    Israel is the cat that holds the military strength and the majority of the political power. Hamas is the mouse that can dart and delay, but in the end has little choice but to accept the terms of a ceasefire if it wants to halt the violence currently being inflicted on Palestinians.

    Trump the peacemaker?

    Trump appears buoyed by what he perceives as the recent success of his efforts to broker a truce in the Israel–Iran war. He may think he can use similar tactics to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into making a ceasefire deal for Gaza.

    US President Donald Trump has posted on social media that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is negotiating a deal with Hamas ‘right now’.
    noamgalai/Shutterstock

    Netanyahu will return to Washington next week for talks at the White House. This is a good sign some US pressure is being brought to bear.

    Trump’s current push for a Gaza ceasefire may also signal he is keen for a return to the normalisation of economic ties previously delivered by the Abraham Accords between Israel and various Arab states. A ceasefire could unlock frozen regional relationships, potentially boosting the US economy (and Trump’s own personal wealth).

    Israeli opportunities

    Another positive sign a ceasefire may be on the cards is Netanyahu’s recent comments that the war with Iran had created opportunities for Israel in Gaza.

    During its 12-day war with Iran, Israel assassinated 30 Iranian security chiefs and 11 nuclear scientists. Iran’s weakened security apparatus might disrupt its support for Hamas and help advance Israeli objectives.

    Similar to what happened in Iran, this might enable Netanyahu to publicly declare Israeli victory in Gaza and agree to a ceasefire without losing face or political backing from his government’s right wing.

    Domestic Israeli politics have also played a role in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations. As part of the current round, Trump reportedly demanded the cancellation of Netanyahu’s ongoing trial on corruption charges. The idea is to enable Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire without the threat of criminal conviction, and potentially prison, awaiting him afterwards.

    Given there are no political or legal prescriptions or rules around what terms need to be included in a ceasefire, it is possible for such a demand to be made, although it is unclear how it would be accommodated by Israeli law.

    Difficult terms

    The current ceasefire deal, as proposed by Qatar and Egypt, seems to pick up where the deal negotiated in January fell apart – with a 60-day ceasefire.

    Reports suggest it requires Hamas’ leadership to go into exile and that four Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, would be tasked with jointly governing Gaza.

    Hamas has said for many months that it is open to a
    more permanent ceasefire deal that Israel has so far refused. However, the proposed terms appear too far-reaching to make it likely Hamas would accept them in their current form.

    The uptick in Israel’s military bombardment, as well as recent evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza, suggest that even if there is a deal it may well mean Israel retains permanent territorial control of the northern Gaza Strip.

    As part of any ceasefire, it also seems likely Israel would retain control over all Gaza crossings.

    This, and the ongoing highly problematic promotion by Israel and the United States of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as the only organisation authorised to deliver and administer aid in Gaza, will be difficult for Hamas, and Palestinians, to accept.

    Displaced Palestinians carrying bags of flour distributed by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
    Haitham Imad/Shutterstock

    There have also been reports a deal would enable Gazans wishing to emigrate to be absorbed by several as-yet-unnamed countries. Such a term would continue the Trump administration’s earlier calls for the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, as well as Israel’s insistence such displacement would be a humanitarian initiative rather than a war crime.

    It would also not be the first time the terms of a ceasefire were used to forcibly displace civilian populations.

    Hope for the future?

    Many dynamics are wrapped up in getting to a ceasefire in Gaza.

    They include US allyship and pressure, domestic Israeli politics, and the recent war between Israel and Iran. There is also the international opprobrium of Israel’s actions in Gaza which, for public (if not legal) purposes, amount to a genocide.

    Ideally, any negotiated ceasefire would have detailed terms to ensure the parties know what they should do and when. Detailed terms would also enable international actors and other third parties to denounce any violations of the deal.

    However, a ceasefire would only ever be a short-term win. In the best case, it would enable a reduction in violence and an increase of aid into Gaza, and the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

    However, amid the deep-seated sense of injustice and anxiety in the region, any ceasefire that does not address historic oppression and is forced on the parties would inevitably have deleterious consequences in the months and years to come.

    Marika Sosnowski 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. Trump demands an end to the war in Gaza – could a ceasefire be close? – https://theconversation.com/trump-demands-an-end-to-the-war-in-gaza-could-a-ceasefire-be-close-260185

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Trump demands an end to the war in Gaza – could a ceasefire be close?

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Marika Sosnowski, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne

    Anas-Mohammed/Shutterstock

    Hopes are rising that Israel and Hamas could be inching closer to a ceasefire in the 20-month war in Gaza.

    US President Donald Trump is urging progress, taking to social media to demand:

    MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!

    Trump further raised expectations, saying there could be an agreement between Israel and Hamas “within the next week”.

    But what are the prospects for a genuine, lasting ceasefire in Gaza?

    Ceasefires are generally complicated to negotiate because they need to take into account competing demands and pressures. They usually (but not always) require both sides to compromise.

    Gaza is no exception. In a conflict that has been going on for more than 70 years, compromise and concession have become a game of cat and mouse.

    Israel is the cat that holds the military strength and the majority of the political power. Hamas is the mouse that can dart and delay, but in the end has little choice but to accept the terms of a ceasefire if it wants to halt the violence currently being inflicted on Palestinians.

    Trump the peacemaker?

    Trump appears buoyed by what he perceives as the recent success of his efforts to broker a truce in the Israel–Iran war. He may think he can use similar tactics to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into making a ceasefire deal for Gaza.

    US President Donald Trump has posted on social media that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is negotiating a deal with Hamas ‘right now’.
    noamgalai/Shutterstock

    Netanyahu will return to Washington next week for talks at the White House. This is a good sign some US pressure is being brought to bear.

    Trump’s current push for a Gaza ceasefire may also signal he is keen for a return to the normalisation of economic ties previously delivered by the Abraham Accords between Israel and various Arab states. A ceasefire could unlock frozen regional relationships, potentially boosting the US economy (and Trump’s own personal wealth).

    Israeli opportunities

    Another positive sign a ceasefire may be on the cards is Netanyahu’s recent comments that the war with Iran had created opportunities for Israel in Gaza.

    During its 12-day war with Iran, Israel assassinated 30 Iranian security chiefs and 11 nuclear scientists. Iran’s weakened security apparatus might disrupt its support for Hamas and help advance Israeli objectives.

    Similar to what happened in Iran, this might enable Netanyahu to publicly declare Israeli victory in Gaza and agree to a ceasefire without losing face or political backing from his government’s right wing.

    Domestic Israeli politics have also played a role in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations. As part of the current round, Trump reportedly demanded the cancellation of Netanyahu’s ongoing trial on corruption charges. The idea is to enable Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire without the threat of criminal conviction, and potentially prison, awaiting him afterwards.

    Given there are no political or legal prescriptions or rules around what terms need to be included in a ceasefire, it is possible for such a demand to be made, although it is unclear how it would be accommodated by Israeli law.

    Difficult terms

    The current ceasefire deal, as proposed by Qatar and Egypt, seems to pick up where the deal negotiated in January fell apart – with a 60-day ceasefire.

    Reports suggest it requires Hamas’ leadership to go into exile and that four Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, would be tasked with jointly governing Gaza.

    Hamas has said for many months that it is open to a
    more permanent ceasefire deal that Israel has so far refused. However, the proposed terms appear too far-reaching to make it likely Hamas would accept them in their current form.

    The uptick in Israel’s military bombardment, as well as recent evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza, suggest that even if there is a deal it may well mean Israel retains permanent territorial control of the northern Gaza Strip.

    As part of any ceasefire, it also seems likely Israel would retain control over all Gaza crossings.

    This, and the ongoing highly problematic promotion by Israel and the United States of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as the only organisation authorised to deliver and administer aid in Gaza, will be difficult for Hamas, and Palestinians, to accept.

    Displaced Palestinians carrying bags of flour distributed by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
    Haitham Imad/Shutterstock

    There have also been reports a deal would enable Gazans wishing to emigrate to be absorbed by several as-yet-unnamed countries. Such a term would continue the Trump administration’s earlier calls for the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, as well as Israel’s insistence such displacement would be a humanitarian initiative rather than a war crime.

    It would also not be the first time the terms of a ceasefire were used to forcibly displace civilian populations.

    Hope for the future?

    Many dynamics are wrapped up in getting to a ceasefire in Gaza.

    They include US allyship and pressure, domestic Israeli politics, and the recent war between Israel and Iran. There is also the international opprobrium of Israel’s actions in Gaza which, for public (if not legal) purposes, amount to a genocide.

    Ideally, any negotiated ceasefire would have detailed terms to ensure the parties know what they should do and when. Detailed terms would also enable international actors and other third parties to denounce any violations of the deal.

    However, a ceasefire would only ever be a short-term win. In the best case, it would enable a reduction in violence and an increase of aid into Gaza, and the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

    However, amid the deep-seated sense of injustice and anxiety in the region, any ceasefire that does not address historic oppression and is forced on the parties would inevitably have deleterious consequences in the months and years to come.

    Marika Sosnowski 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. Trump demands an end to the war in Gaza – could a ceasefire be close? – https://theconversation.com/trump-demands-an-end-to-the-war-in-gaza-could-a-ceasefire-be-close-260185

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Distressed by all the bad news? Here’s how to stay informed but still look after yourself

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Reza Shabahang, Research Fellow in Human Cybersecurity, Monash University and Academic Researcher in Media Psychology, Flinders University

    KieferPix/Shutterstock

    If you’re feeling like the news is particularly bad at the moment, you’re not alone.

    But many of us can’t look away – and don’t want to. Engaging with news can help us make sense of what’s going on and, for many of us, is an ethical stance.

    So, how can you also take care of your mental health? Here’s how to balance staying informed with the impact negative news can have on our wellbeing.

    Why am I feeling so affected by the news?

    Our brains are wired to prioritise safety and survival, and respond rapidly to danger. Repeatedly activating such processes by consuming distressing news content – often called doomscrolling – can be mentally draining.

    Unfiltered or uncensored images can have an especially powerful psychological impact. Graphic footage of tragedies circulating on social media may have a stronger effect than traditional media (such as television and newspapers) which are more regulated.

    Research shows consuming negative news is linked to lower wellbeing and psychological difficulties, such as anxiety and feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. It can make us feel more pessimistic towards ourselves, other people, humanity and life in general.

    In some cases, consuming a lot of distressing news can even cause vicarious trauma. This means you may experience post-traumatic stress symptoms such as flashbacks and trouble sleeping despite not being directly involved in the traumatic events.

    But this doesn’t stop us seeking it out. In fact, we are more likely to read, engage with, and share stories that are negative.

    Is there a better way to consume news?

    Switching off may not be an option for everyone.

    For example, if you have friends or family in areas affected by conflict, you may be especially concerned and following closely to see how they’re affected.

    Even without personal ties to the conflict, many people want to stay informed and understand what is unfolding. For some, this is a moral decision which they feel may lead to action and positive change.

    This is why, in research I co-authored, we suggest simply restricting your exposure to negative news is not always possible or practical.

    Instead, we recommend engaging more mindfully with news. This means paying attention to shifts in your emotions, noticing how the news makes you feel, and slowing down when needed.

    How to consume news more mindfully

    When you plan to engage with news, there are some steps you can take.

    1. Pause and take a few deep breaths. Take a moment to observe how your body is feeling and what your mind is doing.

    2. Check in. Are you feeling tense? What else do you have going on today? Maybe you’re already feeling worried or emotionally stretched. Think about whether you’re feeling equipped to process negative news right now.

    3. Reflect. What is motivating you to engage right now? What are you trying to find out?

    4. Stay critical. As you read an article or watch a video, pay attention to how credible the source is, the level of detail provided and where the information comes from.

    5. Tune into how it’s making you feel. Do you notice any physical signs of stress, such as tension, sweating or restlessness?

    6. Take time. Before quickly moving on to another piece of news, allow yourself to process the information you’ve received as well as your response. Has it changed your emotions, thoughts or attitudes? Did it fulfil your intention? Do you still have energy to engage with more news?

    It may not always be possible to take all these steps. But engaging more mindfully before, during and after you’re exposed to negative news can help you make more informed decisions about how and when to consume it – and when to take a break.

    Signs the news is affecting your mental health

    If you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed, you’re more likely to have an automatic and emotion-driven response to what you’re reading or watching.

    Signs your negative news consumption may be affecting your mental health include:

    • compulsive engagement, feeling like you can’t stop checking or following negative news

    • experiencing feelings of despair, hopelessness, or lack of motivation

    • feeling irritable

    • difficulty concentrating

    • fatigue

    • strong physical symptoms (such as an upset stomach)

    • trouble sleeping

    • an increase in rash or risky behaviours, or behaviours you don’t usually display when you’re calm, such as panic shopping and hoarding following news about bad events.

    What should I do when I’m feeling upset?

    First, take a break. This could be a few minutes or a few days – as long as it takes you to feel emotionally steady and ready to re-engage with negative news.

    You might find it useful to reflect by writing down observations about how news is making you feel, and keeping track of intense fluctuations in emotions.

    It can also be helpful to connect with supportive people around you and do activities you enjoy. Spending time outdoors and doing hands-on tasks, such as gardening, painting or sewing, can be particularly helpful when you’re feeling anxious or emotional.

    But if you’re feeling overwhelmed and it’s affecting your work, life or relationships, it’s a good idea to seek professional help.

    In Australia, the government provides free mental health support at walk-in Medicare Mental Health Centres, Kids Hubs or via phone.

    Other free resources – including a symptom checker and links to online chat support – are available at Health Direct.

    If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

    Reza Shabahang 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. Distressed by all the bad news? Here’s how to stay informed but still look after yourself – https://theconversation.com/distressed-by-all-the-bad-news-heres-how-to-stay-informed-but-still-look-after-yourself-259913

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Antarctic summer sea ice is at record lows. Here’s how it will harm the planet – and us

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Edward Doddridge, Senior Research Associate in Physical Oceanography, University of Tasmania

    An icebreaker approaches Denman Glacier in March, when there was 70% less Antarctic sea ice than usual. Pete Harmsen AAD

    On her first dedicated scientific voyage to Antarctica in March, the Australian icebreaker RSV Nuyina found the area sea-ice free. Scientists were able to reach places never sampled before.

    Over the past four summers, Antarctic sea ice extent has hit new lows.

    I’m part of a large group of scientists who set out to explore the consequences of summer sea ice loss after the record lows of 2022 and 2023. Together we rounded up the latest publications, then gathered new evidence using satellites, computer modelling, and robotic ocean sampling devices. Today we can finally reveal what we found.

    It’s bad news on many levels, because Antarctic sea ice is vital for the world’s climate and ecosystems. But we need to get a grip on what’s happening – and use this concerning data to prompt faster action on climate change.

    Sea ice around Antarctica waxes and wanes with the seasons, growing in the cold months and melting in warm ones. But this rhythmic cycle is changing.

    What we did and what we found

    Our team used a huge range of approaches to study the consequences of sea ice loss.

    We used satellites to understand sea ice loss over summer, measuring everything from ice thickness and extent to the length of time each year when sea ice is absent.

    Satellite data was also used to calculate how much of the Antarctic coast was exposed to open ocean waves. We were then able to quantify the relationship between sea ice loss and iceberg calving.

    Data from free-drifting ocean robots was used to understand how sea ice loss affects the tiny plants that support the marine food web.

    Every other kind of available data was then harnessed to explore the full impact of sea ice changes on ecosystems.

    Voyage reports from international colleagues came in handy when studying how sea ice loss affected Antarctic resupply missions.

    We also used computer models to simulate the impact of dramatic summer sea ice loss on the ocean.

    In summary, our extensive research reveals four key consequences of summer sea ice loss in Antarctica.

    1. Ocean warming is compounding

    Bright white sea ice reflects about 90% of the incoming energy from sunlight, while the darker ocean absorbs about 90%. So if there’s less summer sea ice, the ocean absorbs much more heat.

    This means the ocean surface warms more in an extreme low sea ice year, such as 2016 – when everything changed.

    Until recently, the Southern Ocean would reset over winter. If there was a summer with low sea ice cover, the ocean would warm a bit. But over winter, the extra heat would shift into the atmosphere.

    That’s not working anymore. We know this from measuring sea surface temperatures, but we have also confirmed this relationship using computer models.

    What’s happening instead is when summer sea ice is very low, as in 2016, it triggers ocean warming that persists. It takes about three years for the system to fully recover. But recovery is becoming less and less likely, given warming is building from year to year.

    Comparing an average sea ice summer (a) to an extreme low sea ice summer (b) in which there is less sea ice for wildlife and more sunlight is absorbed by the ocean. The ice shelf is more exposed to ocean waves, calving more icebergs. The ocean is also less productive and tourist vessels can make a closer approach.
    Doddridge, E., W., et al. (2025) PNAS Nexus., CC BY-NC-ND

    2. More icebergs are forming

    Sea ice protects Antarctica’s coast from ocean waves.

    On average, about a third of the continent’s coastline is exposed over summer. But this is changing. In 2022 and 2023, more than half of the Antarctic coast was exposed.

    Our research shows more icebergs break away from Antarctic ice sheets in years with less sea ice. During an average summer, about 100 icebergs break away. Summers with low sea ice produce about twice as many icebergs.

    Antarctic ice sheets without sea ice are more exposed to waves.
    Pete Harmsen AAD

    3. Wildlife squeezed off the ice

    Many species of seals and penguins rely on sea ice, especially for breeding and moulting.

    Entire colonies of emperor penguins experienced “catastrophic breeding failure” in 2022, when sea ice melted before chicks were ready to go to sea.

    After giving birth, crabeater seals need large, stable sea ice platforms for 2–3 weeks until their pups are weaned. The ice provides shelter and protection from predators. Less summer sea-ice cover makes large platforms harder to find.

    Many seal and penguin species also take refuge on the sea ice when moulting. These species must avoid the icy water while their new feathers or fur grows, or risk dying of hypothermia.

    4. Logistical challenges at the end of the world

    Low summer sea ice makes it harder for people working in Antarctica. Shrinking summer sea ice will narrow the time window during which Antarctic bases can be resupplied over the ice. These bases may soon need to be resupplied from different locations, or using more difficult methods such as small boats.

    Supply ships typically unload their cargo directly onto the sea ice, but that may have to change.
    Jared McGhie, Australian Antarctic Division

    No longer safe

    Anarctic sea ice began to change rapidly in 2015 and 2016. Since then it has remained well below the long-term average.

    The dataset we use relies on measurements from US Department of Defense satellites. Late last month, the department announced it would no longer provide this data to the scientific community. While this has since been delayed to July 31, significant uncertainty remains.

    One of the biggest challenges in climate science is gathering and maintaining consistent long-term datasets. Without these, we don’t accurately know how much our climate is changing. Observing the entire Earth is hard enough when we all work together. It’s going to be almost impossible if we don’t share our data.

    Antarctic sea ice extent anomalies (the difference between the long-term average and the measurement) for the entire satellite record since the late 1970s.
    Edward Doddridge, using data from the US NSIDC Sea Ice Index, version 3., CC BY

    Recent low sea ice summers present a scientific challenge. The system is currently changing faster than our scientific community can study it.

    But vanishing sea ice also presents a challenge to society. The only way to prevent even more drastic changes in the future is to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels and reach net zero emissions.

    Edward Doddridge receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    – ref. Antarctic summer sea ice is at record lows. Here’s how it will harm the planet – and us – https://theconversation.com/antarctic-summer-sea-ice-is-at-record-lows-heres-how-it-will-harm-the-planet-and-us-256104

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: ‘Shit in, shit out’: AI is coming for agriculture, but farmers aren’t convinced

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Tom Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

    David Gray / AFP / Getty Images

    Australian farms are at the forefront of a wave of technological change coming to agriculture. Over the past decade, more than US$200 billion (A$305 billion) has been invested globally into the likes of pollination robots, smart soil sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) systems to help make decisions.

    What do the people working the land make of it all? We interviewed dozens of Australian farmers about AI and digital technology, and found they had a sophisticated understanding of their own needs and how technology might help – as well as a wariness of tech companies’ utopian promises.

    The future of farming

    The supposed revolution coming to agriculture goes by several names: “precision agriculture”, “smart farming”, and “agriculture 4.0” are some of the more common ones.

    These names all gesture towards a future in which the relationships between humans, computing and nature have been significantly reconfigured. Perhaps remote sensing technology will monitor ever more of a farm system, autonomous vehicles will patrol it, and AI will predict crop growth or cattle weight gain.

    But there’s another story to tell about the way technological change happens. It involves people and communities creating their own future, their own sense of important change from the past.

    AI, country style

    Our research team conducted more than 35 interviews with farmers, specifically livestock producers, from across Australia.

    The dominant themes of their responses were captured in two pithy quotes: “shit in, shit out” and “more automation, less features”.

    “Shit in, shit out” is an earthier version of the “garbage in, garbage out” adage in computer science. If the data going into a model is unreliable or overly abstract, then the outputs will be shaped by those errors.

    This captured a real concern for many farmers. They didn’t feel they could trust new technologies if they didn’t understand what knowledge and information they had been built with.

    A different kind of automation

    On the other hand, “more automation, less features” is what farmers want: technologies that may not have a lot of bells and whistles, but can reliably take a task off their hands.

    Australian farmers have a ready appetite for labour-saving technologies. When human bodies are scarce, as they often are in rural Australia, machines are created to fill the void.

    Windmills, wire fences, and even the iconic Australian sheepdog have been a crucial part of the technological narrative of settler colonial farming. These things are not “autonomous” in the same way as computer-powered vehicles and drones, but they offer similar advantages to farmers.

    What these classic farm technologies have in common is a simplicity that derives from a clarity of purpose. They are the opposite of the “everything apps” that fuel the dreams of many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

    “More automation, less features” is in this sense a farmer envisaging a digital product that fits with their image of a useful technology: transparent in its operations, and a reliable replacement for or an addition to human labour.

    The lesson of the Suzuki Sierra Stockman

    When speaking with one farmer about favoured technologies of her lifetime, she mentioned the Suzuki Sierra Stockman. These small, no-frills, four-wheel-drive vehicles became something of an icon on Australian sheep and cattle farms through the 1970s, ‘80s and ’90s.

    By the 1990s, the Suzuki Sierra Stockman had an iconic status among Australian farmers.
    Turbo_J / Flickr

    Reflecting on her memories of first using the vehicle, the farmer said:

    Once I learnt that I could actually draft cattle out with the Suzuki, that changed everything. You could do exactly what you did on a horse with a vehicle.

    It seems unlikely that Suzuki’s engineers in Japan envisaged their little jeep chasing cattle in the paddocks of Central West of NSW. The Suzuki was in a sense remade by farmers who found innovative uses for it.

    Future technology must be simple, adaptable and reliable

    The combustion engine was a key technological change on farms in the 20th century. Computers may play a similar role in the 21st.

    We are perhaps yet to see a digital product as iconic as wire fences, windmills, sheepdogs and the Suzuki Stockman. Computers are still largely technologies of the office, not the paddock.

    However, this is changing as computers get smaller and are wired into water tanks, soil monitors and in-paddock scales. More data input from these sensors means AI systems have more scope to help farmers make decisions.

    AI may well become a much-loved tool for farmers. But that journey to iconic status will depend as much on how farmers adapt the technology as on how the developers build it. And we can guess at what it will look like: simple, adaptable and reliable.

    This article is based on research conducted by the Foragecaster project, led by AgriWebb and supported by funding from Food Agility CRC Ltd, funded under the Commonwealth Government CRC Program. The CRC Program supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community. This project was also supported by funding from Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA).

    – ref. ‘Shit in, shit out’: AI is coming for agriculture, but farmers aren’t convinced – https://theconversation.com/shit-in-shit-out-ai-is-coming-for-agriculture-but-farmers-arent-convinced-259997

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Gum disease, decay, missing teeth: why people with mental illness have poorer oral health

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Bonnie Clough, Senior Lecturer, School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University

    mihailomilovanovic/Getty Images

    People with poor mental health face many challenges. One that’s perhaps lesser known is that they’re more likely than the overall population to have poor oral health.

    Research has shown people with serious mental illness are four times more likely than the general population to have gum disease. They’re nearly three times more likely to have lost all their teeth due to problems such as gum disease and tooth decay.

    Serious mental illnesses include major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. These conditions affect about 800,000 Australians.

    People living with schizophrenia have, on average, eight more teeth that are decayed, missing or filled than the general population.

    So why does this link exist? And what can we do to address the problem?

    Why is this a problem?

    Oral health problems are expensive to fix and can make it hard for people to eat, socialise, work or even just smile.

    What’s more, dental issues can land people in hospital. Our research shows dental conditions are the third most common reason for preventable hospital admissions among people with serious mental illness.

    Meanwhile, poor oral health is linked with long-term health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and even cognitive problems. This is because the bacteria associated with gum diseases can cause inflammation throughout the body, which affects other systems in the body.

    Why are mental health and oral health linked?

    Poor mental and oral health share common risk factors. Social factors such as isolation, unemployment and housing insecurity can worsen both oral and mental health.

    For example, unemployment increases the risk of oral disease. This can be due to financial difficulties, reduced access to oral health care, or potential changes to diet and hygiene practices.

    At the same time, oral disease can increase barriers to finding employment, due to stigma, discrimination, dental pain and associated long-term health conditions.

    It’s clear the relationship between oral health and mental health goes both ways. Dental disease can reduce self-esteem and increase psychological distress. Meanwhile, symptoms of mental health conditions, such as low motivation, can make engaging in good oral health practices, including brushing, flossing, and visiting the dentist, more difficult.

    And like many people, those with serious mental illness can experience significant anxiety about going to the dentist. They may also have experienced trauma in the past, which can make visiting a dental clinic a frightening experience.

    Separately, poor oral health can be made worse by some medications for mental health conditions. Certain medications can interfere with saliva production, reducing the protective barrier that covers the teeth. Some may also increase sugar cravings, which heightens the risk of tooth decay.

    Some medications people take for mental health conditions can affect oral health.
    Gladskikh Tatiana/Shutterstock

    Our research

    In a recent study, we interviewed young people with mental illness. Our findings show the significant personal costs of dental disease among people with mental illness, and highlight the relationship between oral and mental health.

    Smiling is one of our best ways to communicate, but we found people with serious mental illness were sometimes embarrassed and ashamed to smile due to poor oral health.

    One participant told us:

    [poor oral health is] not only [about] the physical aspects of restricting how you eat, but it’s also about your mental health in terms of your self-esteem, your self-confidence, and basic wellbeing, which sort of drives me to become more isolated.

    Another said:

    for me, it was that serious fear of – God my teeth are looking really crap, and in the past they’ve [dental practitioners] asked, “Hey, you’ve missed this spot; what’s happening?”. How do I explain to them, hey, I’ve had some really shitty stuff happening and I have a very serious episode of depression?

    What can we do?

    Another of our recent studies focused on improving oral health awareness and behaviours among young adults experiencing mental health difficulties. We found a brief online oral health education program improved participants’ oral health knowledge and attitudes.

    Improving oral health can result in improved mental wellbeing, self-esteem and quality of life. But achieving this isn’t always easy.

    Limited Medicare coverage for dental care means oral diseases are frequently treated late, particularly among people with mental illness. By this time, more invasive treatments, such as removal of teeth, are often required.

    It’s crucial the health system takes a holistic approach to caring for people experiencing serious mental illness. That means we have mental health staff who ask questions about oral health, and dental practitioners who are trained to manage the unique oral health needs of people with serious mental illness.

    It also means increasing government funding for oral health services – promotion, prevention and improved interdisciplinary care. This includes better collaboration between oral health, mental health, and peer and informal support sectors.

    Amanda Wheeler is an investigator on a MetroSouth Health 2025 grant exploring use of Queensland Emergency Departments for people with mental ill-health seeking acute care for oral health problems.

    Steve Kisely has received a grant on oral health from Metro South Research Foundation and one from the Medical Research Future Fund.

    Bonnie Clough, Caroline Victoria Robertson, and Santosh Tadakamadla 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. Gum disease, decay, missing teeth: why people with mental illness have poorer oral health – https://theconversation.com/gum-disease-decay-missing-teeth-why-people-with-mental-illness-have-poorer-oral-health-258403

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: What did ancient Rome smell like? Honestly, often pretty rank

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Thomas J. Derrick, Gale Research Fellow in Ancient Glass and Material Culture, Macquarie University

    minoandriani/Getty Images

    The roar of the arena crowd, the bustle of the Roman forum, the grand temples, the Roman army in red with glistening shields and armour – when people imagine ancient Rome, they often think of its sights and sounds. We know less, however, about the scents of ancient Rome.

    We cannot, of course, go back and sniff to find out. But the literary texts, physical remains of structures, objects, and environmental evidence (such as plants and animals) can offer clues.

    So what might ancient Rome have smelled like?

    Honestly, often pretty rank

    In describing the smells of plants, author and naturalist Pliny the Elder uses words such as iucundus (agreeable), acutus (pungent), vis (strong), or dilutus (weak).

    None of that language is particularly evocative in its power to transport us back in time, unfortunately.

    But we can probably safely assume that, in many areas, Rome was likely pretty dirty and rank-smelling. Property owners did not commonly connect their toilets to the sewers in large Roman towns and cities – perhaps fearing rodent incursions or odours.

    Roman sewers were more like storm drains, and served to take standing water away from public areas.

    Professionals collected faeces for fertiliser and urine for cloth processing from domestic and public latrines and cesspits. Chamber pots were also used, which could later be dumped in cesspits.

    This waste disposal process was just for those who could afford to live in houses; many lived in small, non-domestic spaces, barely furnished apartments, or on the streets.

    A common whiff in the Roman city would have come from the animals and the waste they created. Roman bakeries frequently used large lava stone mills (or “querns”) turned by mules or donkeys. Then there was the smell of pack animals and livestock being brought into town for slaughter or sale.

    Animals were part of life in the Roman empire.
    Marco_Piunti/Getty Images

    The large “stepping-stones” still seen in the streets of Pompeii were likely so people could cross streets and avoid the assorted feculence that covered the paving stones.

    Disposal of corpses (animals and human) was not formulaic. Depending on the class of the person who had died, people might well have been left out in the open without cremation or burial.

    Bodies, potentially decaying, were a more common sight in ancient Rome than now.

    Suetonius, writing in the first century CE, famously wrote of a dog carrying a severed human hand to the dining table of the Emperor Vespasian.

    Deodorants and toothpastes

    In a world devoid of today’s modern scented products – and daily bathing by most of the population – ancient Roman settlements would have smelt of body odour.

    Classical literature has some recipes for toothpaste and even deodorants.

    However, many of the deodorants were to be used orally (chewed or swallowed) to stop one’s armpits smelling.

    One was made by boiling golden thistle root in fine wine to induce urination (which was thought to flush out odour).

    The Roman baths would likely not have been as hygienic as they may appear to tourists visiting today. A small tub in a public bath could hold between eight and 12 bathers.

    The Romans had soap, but it wasn’t commonly used for personal hygiene. Olive oil (including scented oil) was preferred. It was scraped off the skin with a strigil (a bronze curved tool).

    This oil and skin combination was then discarded (maybe even slung at a wall). Baths had drains – but as oil and water don’t mix, it was likely pretty grimy.

    Scented perfumes

    The Romans did have perfumes and incense.

    The invention of glassblowing in the late first century BCE (likely in Roman-controlled Jerusalem) made glass readily available, and glass perfume bottles are a common archaeological find.

    Animal and plant fats were infused with scents – such as rose, cinnamon, iris, frankincense and saffron – and were mixed with medicinal ingredients and pigments.

    The roses of Paestum in Campania (southern Italy) were particularly prized, and a perfume shop has even been excavated in the city’s Roman forum.

    The trading power of the vast Roman empire meant spices could be sourced from India and the surrounding regions.

    There were warehouses for storing spices such as pepper, cinnamon and myrrh in the centre of Rome.

    In a recent Oxford Journal of Archaeology article, researcher Cecilie Brøns writes that even ancient statues could be perfumed with scented oils.

    Sources frequently do not describe the smell of perfumes used to anoint the statues, but a predominantly rose-based perfume is specifically mentioned for this purpose in inscriptions from the Greek city of Delos (at which archaeologists have also identified perfume workshops). Beeswax was likely added to perfumes as a stabiliser.

    Enhancing the scent of statues (particularly those of gods and goddesses) with perfumes and garlands was important in their veneration and worship.

    An olfactory onslaught

    The ancient city would have smelt like human waste, wood smoke, rotting and decay, cremating flesh, cooking food, perfumes and incense, and many other things.

    It sounds awful to a modern person, but it seems the Romans did not complain about the smell of the ancient city that much.

    Perhaps, as historian Neville Morley has suggested, to them these were the smells of home or even of the height of civilisation.

    Thomas J. Derrick 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. What did ancient Rome smell like? Honestly, often pretty rank – https://theconversation.com/what-did-ancient-rome-smell-like-honestly-often-pretty-rank-257111

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Our memories are unreliable, limited and suggestible – and it’s a good thing too

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne

    Shutterstock

    Milan Kundera opens his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting with a scene from the winter of 1948. Klement Gottwald, leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, is giving a speech to the masses from a palace balcony, surrounded by fellow party members. Comrade Vladimir Clementis thoughtfully places his fur hat on Gottwald’s bare head; the hat then features in an iconic photograph.

    Four years later, Clementis is found guilty of being a bourgeois nationalist and hanged. His ashes are strewn on a Prague street. The propaganda section of the party removes him from written history and erases him from the photograph.

    “Nothing remains of Clementis,” writes Kundera, “but the fur hat on Gottwald’s head.”

    Review: Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember – Ciara Greene & Gillian Murphy (Princeton University Press)

    Efforts to enforce political forgetting are often associated with totalitarian regimes. The state endeavours to control not only its citizens, but also the past. To create a narrative that glorifies the present and idealises the future, history must be rewritten or even completely obliterated.

    In a famous article on “the totalitarian ego”, the social psychologist Anthony Greenwald argued that individual selves operate in the same way. We deploy an array of cognitive biases to maintain a sense of control, and to shape and reshape our personal history. We distort the present and fabricate the past to ensure we remain the heroes of our life narratives.

    Likening the individual to a destructive political system might sound extreme, but it has an element of truth. Memory Lane, a new book by Irish psychology researchers Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy, shows how autobiographical memory has a capacity to rewrite history that is almost Stalinesque.

    There is no shortage of books on memory, from self-help guides for the anxiously ageing to scholarly works of history. Memory Lane is distinctive for taking the standpoint of applied cognitive psychology. Emphasising how memory functions in everyday life, Greene and Murphy explore the processes of memory and the influences that shape them.

    What memory is not

    The key message of the book is that the memory system is not a recording device. We may be tempted to see memory as a vault where past experience is faithfully preserved, but in fact it is fundamentally reconstructive.

    Memories are constantly revised in acts of recollection. They change in predictable ways over time, moulded by new information, our prior beliefs and current emotions, other people’s versions of events, or an interviewer’s leading questions.


    According to Greene and Murphy’s preferred analogy, memory is like a Lego tower. A memory is initially constructed from a set of elements, but over time some will be lost as the structure simplifies to preserve the gist of the event. Elements may also be added as new information is incorporated and the memory is refashioned to align with the person’s beliefs and expectations.

    The malleability of memory might look like a weakness, especially by comparison to digital records. Memory Lane presents it as a strength. Humans did not evolve to log objective truths for posterity, but to operate flexibly in a complex and changing world.

    From an adaptive standpoint, the past only matters insofar as it helps us function in the present. Our knowledge should be updated by new information. We should assimilate experiences to already learned patterns. And we should be tuned to our social environment, rather than insulated from it.

    “If all our memories existed in some kind of mental quarantine, separate from the rest of our knowledge and experiences,” the authors write, “it would be like using a slow, inefficient computer program that could only show you one file at a time, never drawing connections or updating incorrect impressions.”

    Simplifying and discarding memories is also beneficial because our cognitive capacity is limited. It is better to filter out what matters from the deluge of past experiences than to be overwhelmed with irrelevancies. Greene and Murphy present the case of a woman with exceptional autobiographical memory, who is plagued by the triggering of obsolete memories.

    Forgetting doesn’t merely de-clutter memory; it also serves emotional ends. Selectively deleting unpleasant memories increases happiness. Sanding off out-of-character experiences fosters a clear and stable sense of self.

    “Hindsight bias” boosts this feeling of personal continuity by bringing our recollections into line with our current beliefs. Revisionist history it may be, but it is carried out in the service of personal identity.

    ‘Forgetting doesn’t merely de-clutter memory; it also serves emotional ends.’
    Shutterstock

    Eyewitness memories and misinformation

    Memory Lane pays special attention to situations in which memory errors have serious consequences, such as eyewitness testimony. Innocent people can be convicted on the basis of inaccurate eyewitness identifications. An array of biases make these more likely and they are especially common in interracial contexts.

    Recollections can also be influenced by the testimony of other witnesses, and even by the language used during questioning. In a classic study, participants who viewed videos of car accidents estimated the car’s speed as substantially faster when the cars were described as having “smashed” rather than “contacted”. These distortions are not temporary: new information overwrites and overrides the original memory.

    Misinformation works in a similar way and with equally dire consequences, such as vaccination avoidance. False information not only modifies existing memories but can even produce false memories, especially when it aligns with our preexisting beliefs and ideologies.

    Greene and Murphy present intriguing experimental evidence that false memories are prevalent and easy to implant. Children and older adults seem especially susceptible to misinformation, but no one is immune, regardless of education or intelligence.

    Reassuringly, perhaps, digital image manipulation and deepfake videos are no more likely to induce false memories than good old-fashioned verbiage. A doctored picture may not be worth a thousand words when it comes to warping memory.

    Memory Lane devotes some time to the “memory wars” of the 1980s and 1990s, when debate raged over the existence of repressed memories. Greene and Murphy argue the now mainstream view that many traumatic memories supposedly recovered in therapy were false memories induced by therapists. Memories for traumatic events are not repressed, they argue, and traumatic memories are neither qualitatively different from other memories, nor stored separately from them.

    Here the science of memory runs contrary to the wildly popular claims of writers such as psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of the bestseller The Body Keeps the Score.



    Read more:
    The Body Keeps the Score: how a bestselling book helps us understand trauma – but inflates the definition of it

    Psychology researchers Ciara Greene (left) and Gillian Murphy (right) want us to be humbler about our fallible memories.
    Princeton University Press

    Misunderstanding memory

    The authors of Memory Lane contend that we hold memory to unrealistic standards of accuracy, completeness and stability. When people misremember the past or change their recollections, we query their honesty or mental health. When our own memories are hazy, we worry about cognitive decline.

    Greene and Murphy argue that it is in the very nature of memory to be fallible, malleable and limited. This message is heartening, but it does not clarify why we would expect memory to be more capacious, coherent and durable in the first place. Nor does it explain why we persist with this wrongheaded expectation, despite so much evidence to the contrary.

    The authors hint that our mistake might have its roots in dominant metaphors of memory. If we now understand the mind as computer-like, we will see memories as digital traces that sit, silent and unchanging, in a vast storage system.

    “Many of the catastrophic consequences of memory distortion arise not because our individual memories are terrible,” they argue, “but because we have unrealistic expectations about how memory works, treating it as a video camera rather than a reconstruction.”

    In earlier times, when memory was likened to a telephone switchboard or to books or, for the ancient Greeks, to wax tablets, memory errors and erasures may have seemed less surprising and more tolerable.

    These shifting technological analogies, explored historically in Douwe Draaisma’s Metaphors of Memory, may partly account for our extravagant expectations for memory. Expecting silicon chip performance from carbon-based organisms, who evolved to care more about adaptation than truth, would be foolish.

    But there is surely more to this than metaphor. All aspects of our lives are increasingly recorded and datafied, a process that demands objectivity, accuracy and consistency. The recorded facts of the matter determine who should be rewarded, punished and regulated. The bounded and mutable nature of human memory presents a challenge to this digital regime.

    Human memory is also increasingly taxed by the overwhelming and accelerating volume of information that assails us. Our frustration with its limitations reflects the desperate mismatch we feel between human nature and the impersonal systems of data in which we live.

    Greene and Murphy urge us to relax. We should be humbler about our memory, and more realistic and forgiving about the memories of others. We should not be judgemental about the errors and inconsistencies of friends, or overconfident about our own recollections. And we should remember that, although memory is fallible, it is fallible in beneficial ways.

    A person whose memory system always kept an accurate record of our lives would be profoundly impaired, Greene and Murphy argue. Such a person “would struggle to plan for the future, learn from the past, or respond flexibly to unexpected events”. Brimming with insights such as these, Memory Lane offers an informative and readable account of how the apparent weaknesses of human memory may be strengths in disguise.

    Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    – ref. Our memories are unreliable, limited and suggestible – and it’s a good thing too – https://theconversation.com/our-memories-are-unreliable-limited-and-suggestible-and-its-a-good-thing-too-258682

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Pop, soda or coke? The fizzy history behind America’s favorite linguistic debate

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Valerie M. Fridland, Professor of Linguistics, University of Nevada, Reno

    ‘I’ll have a coke – no, not Coca-Cola, Sprite.’ Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    With burgers sizzling and classic rock thumping, many Americans revel in summer cookouts – at least until that wayward cousin asks for a “pop” in soda country, or even worse, a “coke” when they actually want a Sprite.

    Few American linguistic debates have bubbled quite as long and effervescently as the one over whether a generic soft drink should be called a soda, pop or coke.

    The word you use generally boils down to where you’re from: Midwesterners enjoy a good pop, while soda is tops in the North and far West. Southerners, long the cultural mavericks, don’t bat an eyelash asking for coke – lowercase – before homing in on exactly the type they want: Perhaps a root beer or a Coke, uppercase.

    As a linguist who studies American dialects, I’m less interested in this regional divide and far more fascinated by the unexpected history behind how a fizzy “health” drink from the early 1800s spawned the modern soft drink’s many names and iterations.

    Bubbles, anyone?

    Foods and drinks with wellness benefits might seem like a modern phenomenon, but the urge to create drinks with medicinal properties inspired what might be called a soda revolution in the 1800s.

    An 1878 engraving of a soda fountain.
    Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images

    The process of carbonating water was first discovered in the late 1700s. By the early 1800s, this carbonated water had become popular as a health drink and was often referred to as “soda water.” The word “soda” likely came from “sodium,” since these drinks often contained salts, which were then believed to have healing properties.

    Given its alleged curative effects for health issues such as indigestion, pharmacists sold soda water at soda fountains, innovative devices that created carbonated water to be sold by the glass. A chemistry professor, Benjamin Stillman, set up the first such device in a drugstore in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1806. Its eventual success inspired a boom of soda fountains in drugstores and health spas.

    By the mid-1800s, pharmacists were creating unique root-, fruit- and herb-infused concoctions, such as sassafras-based root beer, at their soda fountains, often marketing them as cures for everything from fatigue to foul moods.

    These flavored, sweetened versions gave rise to the linking of the word “soda” with a sweetened carbonated beverage, as opposed to simple, carbonated water.

    Seltzer – today’s popular term for such sparkling water – was around, too. But it was used only for the naturally carbonated mineral water from the German town Nieder-Selters. Unlike Perrier, sourced similarly from a specific spring in France, seltzer made the leap to becoming a generic term for fizzy water.

    Many late-19th-century and early 20th-century drugstores contained soda fountains – a nod to the original belief that the sugary, bubbly drink possessed medicinal qualities.
    Hall of Electrical History Foundation/Corbis via Getty Images

    Regional naming patterns

    So how did “soda” come to be called so many different things in different places?

    It all stems from a mix of economic enterprise and linguistic ingenuity.

    The popularity of “soda” in the Northeast likely reflects the soda fountain’s longer history in the region. Since a lot of Americans living in the Northeast migrated to California in the mid-to-late 1800s, the name likely traveled west with them.

    As for the Midwestern preference for “pop” – well, the earliest American use of the term to refer to a sparkling beverage appeared in the 1840s in the name of a flavored version called “ginger pop.” Such ginger-flavored pop, though, was around in Britain by 1816, since a Newcastle songbook is where you can first see it used in text. The “pop” seems to be onomatopoeic for the noise made when the cork was released from the bottle before drinking.

    A jingle for Faygo touts the company’s ‘red pop.’

    Linguists don’t fully know why “pop” became so popular in the Midwest. But one theory links it to a Michigan bottling company, Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works – today known as Faygo Beverages – that used “pop” in the name of the sodas they marketed and sold. Another theory suggests that because bottles were more common in the region, soda drinkers were more likely to hear the “pop” sound than in the Northeast, where soda fountains reigned.

    As for using coke generically, the first Coca-Cola was served in 1886 by Dr. John Pemberton, a pharmacist at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta and the founder of the company. In the 1900s, the Coca-Cola company tried to stamp out the use of “Coke” for “Coca-Cola.” But that ship had already sailed. Since Coca-Cola originated and was overwhelmingly popular in the South, its generic use grew out of the fact that people almost always asked for “Coke.”

    No alcohol means not ‘hard’ but ‘soft.’
    Nostalgic Collections/eBay

    As with Jell-O, Kleenex, Band-Aids and seltzer, it became a generic term.

    What’s soft about it?

    Speaking of soft drinks, what’s up with that term?

    It was originally used to distinguish all nonalcoholic drinks from “hard drinks,” or beverages containing spirits.

    Interestingly, the original Coca-Cola formula included wine – resembling a type of alcoholic “health” drink popular overseas, Vin Mariani. But Pemberton went on to develop a “soft” version a few years later to be sold as a medicinal drink.

    Due to the growing popularity of soda water concoctions, eventually “soft drink” came to mean only such sweetened carbonated beverages, a linguistic testament to America’s enduring love affair with sugar and bubbles.

    With the average American guzzling almost 40 gallons per year, you can call it whatever you what. Just don’t call it healthy.

    Valerie M. Fridland 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. Pop, soda or coke? The fizzy history behind America’s favorite linguistic debate – https://theconversation.com/pop-soda-or-coke-the-fizzy-history-behind-americas-favorite-linguistic-debate-259114

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: 1 in 4 Americans reject evolution, a century after the Scopes monkey trial spotlighted the clash between science and religion

    Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By William Trollinger, Professor of History, University of Dayton

    The 1925 Scopes trial, in which a Dayton, Tennessee, teacher was charged with violating state law by teaching biological evolution, was one of the earliest and most iconic conflicts in America’s ongoing culture war.

    Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” published in 1859, and subsequent scientific research made the case that humans and other animals evolved from earlier species over millions of years. Many late-19th-century American Protestants had little problem accommodating Darwin’s ideas – which became mainstream biology – with their religious commitments.

    But that was not the case with all Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, who held that the Bible is inerrant – without error – and factually accurate in all that it has to say, including when it speaks on history and science.

    The Scopes trial occurred July 10-21, 1925. Between 150 and 200 reporters swooped into the small town. Broadcast on Chicago’s WGN, it was the first trial to be aired live over radio in the United States.

    One hundred years after the trial, and as we have documented in our scholarly work, the culture war over evolution and creationism remains strong – and yet, when it comes to creationism, much has also changed.

    The trial

    In May 1919, over 6,000 conservative Protestants gathered in Philadelphia to create, under the leadership of Baptist firebrand William Bell Riley, the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, or WCFA.

    Holding to biblical inerrancy, these “fundamentalists” believed in the creation account detailed in chapter 1 of Genesis, in which God brought all life into being in six days. But most of these fundamentalists also accepted mainstream geology, which held that the Earth was millions of years old. Squaring a literal understanding of Genesis with an old Earth, they embraced either the “day-age theory” – that each Genesis day was actually a long period of time – or the “gap theory,” in which there was a huge gap of time before the six 24-hour days of creation.

    This nascent fundamentalist movement initiated a campaign to pressure state legislatures to prohibit public schools from teaching evolution. One of these states was Tennessee, which in 1925 passed the Butler Act. This law made it illegal for public schoolteachers “to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

    The American Civil Liberties Union persuaded John Thomas Scopes, a young science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, to challenge the law in court. The WCFA sprang into action, successfully persuading William Jennings Bryan – populist politician and outspoken fundamentalist – to assist the prosecution. In response, the ACLU hired famous attorney Clarence Darrow to serve on the defense team.

    A huge crowd attending the Scopes trial.
    Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images

    When the trial started, Dayton civic leaders were thrilled with the opportunity to boost their town. Outside the courtroom there was a carnivalesque atmosphere, with musicians, preachers, concession stands and even monkeys.

    Inside the courtroom, the trial became a verbal duel between Bryan and Darrow regarding science and religion. But as the judge narrowed the proceedings to whether or not Scopes violated the law – a point that the defense readily admitted – it seemed clear that Scopes would be found guilty. Many of the reporters thus went home.

    But the trial’s most memorable episode was yet to come. On July 20, Darrow successfully provoked Bryan to take the witness stand as a Bible expert. Due to the huge crowd and suffocating heat, the judge moved the trial outdoors.

    The 3,000 or so spectators witnessed Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan, which was primarily intended to make Bryan and fundamentalism appear foolish and ignorant. Most significant, Darrow’s questions revealed that, despite Bryan’s’ assertion that he read the Bible literally, Bryan actually understood the six days of Genesis not as 24-hour days, but as six long and indeterminate periods of time.

    American lawyer and politician William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn.
    Hulton Archive/Getty Image

    The very next day, the jury found Scopes guilty and fined him US$100. Riley and the fundamentalists cheered the verdict as a triumph for the Bible and morality.

    The fundamentalists and ‘The Genesis Flood’

    But very soon that sense of triumph faded, partly because of news stories that portrayed fundamentalists as ignorant rural bigots. In one such example, a prominent journalist, H. L. Mencken, wrote in a Baltimore Sun column that the Scopes trial “serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land.”

    The media ridicule encouraged many scholars and journalists to conclude that creationism and fundamentalism would soon disappear from American culture. But that prediction did not come to pass.

    Instead, fundamentalists, including WCFA leader Riley, seemed all the more determined to redouble their efforts at the grassroots level.

    But as Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan made obvious, it was not easy to square a literal reading of the Bible – including the six-day creation outlined in Genesis – with a scientific belief in an old Earth. What fundamentalists needed was a science that supported the idea of a young Earth.

    In their 1961 book, “The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications, fundamentalists John Whitcomb, a theologian, and Henry Morris, a hydraulic engineer, provided just such a scientific explanation. Making use, without attribution, of the writings of Seventh-day Adventist geologist George McCready Price, Whitcomb and Morris made the case that Noah’s global flood lasted one year and created the geological strata and mountain ranges that made the Earth seem ancient.

    “The Genesis Flood” and its version of flood geology remains ubiquitous among fundamentalists and other conservative Protestants.

    Young Earth creationism

    Today, opinion polls reveal that roughly one-quarter of all Americans are adherents of this newer strand of creationism, which rejects both mainstream geology as well as mainstream biology.

    Replica of Noah’s Ark at the Ark Encounter, near Williamstown, Ky.
    Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    This popular embrace of young Earth creationism also explains the success of Answers in Genesis – AiG – which is the world’s largest creationist organization, with a website that attracts millions of visitors every year.

    AiG’s tourist sites – the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky – have attracted millions of visitors since their opening in 2007 and 2016. Additional AiG sites are planned for Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

    Presented as a replica of Noah’s Ark, the Ark Encounter is a gigantic structure – 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, 51 feet high. It includes representations of animal cages as well as plush living quarters for the eight human beings who, according to Genesis chapters 6-8, survived the global flood. Hundreds of placards in the Ark make the case for a young Earth and a global flood that created the geological strata and formations we see today.

    Ark Encounter has been the beneficiary of millions of dollars from state and local governments.

    Besides AiG tourist sites, there is also an ever-expanding network of fundamentalist schools and homeschools that present young Earth creationism as true science. These schools use textbooks from publishers such as Abeka Books, Accelerated Christian Education and Bob Jones University Press.

    The Scopes trial involved what could and could not be taught in public schools regarding creation and evolution. Today, this discussion also involves private schools, given that there are now at least 15 states that have universal private school choice programs, in which families can use taxpayer-funded education money to pay for private schooling and homeschooling.

    In 1921, William Bell Riley admonished his opponents that they should “cease from shoveling in dirt on living men,” for the fundamentalists “refuse to be buried.” A century later, the funeral for fundamentalism and creationism seems a long way off.

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

    – ref. 1 in 4 Americans reject evolution, a century after the Scopes monkey trial spotlighted the clash between science and religion – https://theconversation.com/1-in-4-americans-reject-evolution-a-century-after-the-scopes-monkey-trial-spotlighted-the-clash-between-science-and-religion-258163

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: In LGBTQ+ storybook case, Supreme Court handed a win to parental rights, raising tough questions for educators

    Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton

    The parents who brought the case had requested that their children be excused when books with LGBTQ+ characters were used in class. SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images

    The Supreme Court tends to save its blockbuster orders for the last day of the term – and 2025 was no exception.

    Among the important decisions handed down June 27, 2025, was Mahmoud v. Taylor – a case of particular interest to me, because I teach education law. Mahmoud, I believe, may become one of the court’s most consequential rulings on parental rights.

    An interfaith coalition of Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Catholic parents in Montgomery County, Maryland – including Tamer Mahmoud, for whom the case is named – questioned the school board’s refusal to allow them to opt their young children out of lessons using picture books with LGBTQ+ characters. Ruling in favor of the parents, the court found that the board violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion by requiring their children to sit through lessons with materials inconsistent with their faiths.

    Case history

    The parents in Mahmoud challenged the use of certain storybooks that the board had approved for use in preschool and elementary school. “Pride Puppy!” for example – a book the schools later removed – portrays a family whose pet gets lost at a LGBTQ+ Pride parade, with each page devoted to a letter of the alphabet. The book’s “search and find” list of words directs readers to look for terms in the pictures, including “(drag) queen” and “king,” “leather” and “lip ring.” Other materials included stories about same-sex marriage, a transgender child, and nonbinary bathroom signs.

    Initially, school administrators agreed to allow opt-outs for students whose parents objected to the materials. A day later, however, educators changed their minds. School officials cited concerns about absenteeism, the feasibility of accommodating opt-out requests, and a desire to avoid stigmatizing LGBTQ+ students or families.

    In August 2023, a federal trial court rejected the parents’ claim that officials had violated their fundamental due process right to direct the care, custody and education of their children. The following year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed in favor of the board, finding that officials did not violate the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religious beliefs, as protected by the First Amendment.

    A group of parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, protest the lack of opt-outs on July 20, 2023.
    Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    On appeal, a 6-3 Supreme Court reversed in favor of the parents. Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the court’s opinion, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, plus Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

    Supreme Court

    In brief, the court held that by denying the parental requests to opt their children out of instruction inconsistent with their beliefs, school officials violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

    Alito largely grounded the court’s rationale in a dispute from 1925, Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary, and even more heavily on 1972’s Wisconsin v. Yoder. Both cases recognize the primacy of parental rights to direct the education of their children. According to Pierce’s famous dictum, “the child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

    In Yoder, Amish parents – an Anabaptist Christian community that avoids using many modern technologies – objected to sending their children to school after eighth grade because this would have violated their religious beliefs. The justices unanimously agreed with the parents that their children received all of the education they needed in their communities. The justices added that requiring the children to attend high school would have violated the parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing.

    Accordingly, the court acknowledged that the parental right “to guide the religious future and education of their children” was “established beyond debate.”

    Similarly, in Mahmoud the court declared that “the Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion.”

    Thomas agreed fully with the court, yet wrote a separate concurrence, which emphasized “an important implication of this decision for schools across the country.” Citing Yoder, Thomas contended that rather than support inclusion, the board’s policy “imposes conformity with a view that undermines parents’ religious beliefs, and thus interferes with the parents’ right to ‘direct the religious upbringing of their children.’”

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, feared “the result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools. Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools.”

    Supporters of LGBTQ+ rights demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor on April 22, 2025.
    Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images

    She maintained that “simply being exposed to beliefs contrary to your own” does not violate a person’s free exercise rights. Insulating children from different ideas, she wrote, denies them of an experience that is crucial for democracy: “practice living in our multicultural society.”

    Implications

    After the decision was handed down, Montgomery County’s Board of Education issued a statement promising to “analyze the Supreme Court decision and develop next steps in alignment with today’s decision, and as importantly, our values.”

    Mahmoud raises challenging questions about the scope or reach of how far parents can question curricular content.

    On the one hand, parents should not be able to micromanage curricular content via the “heckler’s veto,” because this can lead to larger issues. Moreover, while Mahmoud concerns religious rights, what happens if parents question teachings based on another type of sincerely held belief – discussing war if they are pacifist, for example, or capitalism if they are socialists? While Mahmoud dealt with free-exercise rights, it may open the door to other types of First Amendment challenges from parents wishing to exempt their children from lessons.

    On the other hand, Mahmoud highlights the need to take legitimate parental concerns into consideration. While educators typically control instruction, how can they be respectful of parents’ rights as primary caregivers of their children when conflicts arise?

    Mahmoud may go a long way in defining parents’ free-exercise rights in public schools. Still, such disputes are likely far from over in America’s increasingly diverse religious culture.

    Charles J. Russo 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. In LGBTQ+ storybook case, Supreme Court handed a win to parental rights, raising tough questions for educators – https://theconversation.com/in-lgbtq-storybook-case-supreme-court-handed-a-win-to-parental-rights-raising-tough-questions-for-educators-260064

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Bill Moyers’ journalism strengthened democracy by connecting Americans to ideas and each other, in a long and extraordinary career

    Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Julie Leininger Pycior, Professor of History Emeritus, Manhattan University

    “Bill Moyers? He’s spectacular!” George Clooney said – and no wonder.

    I mentioned this legendary television journalist to the actor and filmmaker after Clooney emerged from the Broadway theater where he just had been portraying another news icon: Edward R. Murrow. Or as the Museum of Broadcast Communications put it in a tribute to Moyers, he was “one of the few broadcast journalists who might be said to approach the stature of Edward R. Murrow. If Murrow founded broadcast journalism, Moyers significantly extended its traditions.”

    Moyers, who died at 91 on June 26, 2025, was among the most acclaimed broadcast journalists of the 20th century. He’s known for TV news shows that exposed the role of big money in politics and episodes that drew attention to unsung defenders of democracy, such as community organizer Ernesto Cortés Jr..

    Earlier in his life, Moyers served in significant roles in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, but his fame comes from his journalism.

    Making a connection

    Despite his prominence, Moyers was the same down-to-earth guy in person as he seemed to be on the screen. In 1986, he was commanding a television audience of millions, and I was a historian at home with a preschooler, teaching the occasional college course in a dismal job market. Seeing that Moyers would be speaking at the conference on President Lyndon B. Johnson where I would be giving a paper, I wrote to him.

    To my utter amazement, he replied and then showed up to hear my paper, on Johnson’s experiences as a young principal of the “Mexican” school in Cotulla, Texas, where he championed his students but also forged links to segregationists. Cotulla was “seminal” to LBJ’s development, Moyers said. In 1993, he recommended me for a grant that helped me finish a book: “LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power.

    A few years later, he asked me to head up a project researching the documents related to his time in Johnson’s administration. His memoir of the Johnson years never materialized. Instead, I edited the bestselling ”Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times.“

    Part of what always impressed me about Moyers was his belief that what matters is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality.

    ‘Amazing Grace’

    Moyers didn’t just dwell on politics and policy as a journalist. He also delved into the meaning of creativity and the life of the mind. Many of his most moving interviews spotlighted scientists, novelists and other exceptional people.

    He was also arguably among the best reporters on the religion beat. Even if it wasn’t always the main focus of his work or what comes to mind for those familiar with his legacy, still, he was a lifelong spiritual seeker.

    This is hardly surprising: Moyers had degrees in both divinity and journalism. As a young man, he briefly served as a Baptist minister.

    He once told me that his favorite of the many programs that he produced was the PBS documentary ”Amazing Grace.“ It featured inspiring renditions of this popular Christian hymn as performed by country legend Johnny Cash, folk icon Judy Collins, opera diva Jessye Norman and other musical geniuses. As they share with Moyers their personal connections to this song of redemption, he draws viewers into the stirring saga of its creator, John Newton: a slave trader who became an abolitionist through “amazing grace.”

    Bill Moyers interviews Judy Collins about singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ following the production of his PBS special about the hymn.

    Life’s ultimate questions

    This appreciation of the ineffable clearly informed Moyers’ blockbuster TV series exploring life’s ultimate questions, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.”

    His interviews with Campbell, a comparative mythologist, evoked moments that made time stand still, and this reminded me of Thomas Merton, the American monk and poet, writing, “Everything is emptiness and everything is compassion” on beholding the immense Polonnaruwa Buddhas of Sri Lanka.

    To my surprise, Moyers knew about this Trappist monk, telling me, “I always wished that I could have interviewed Merton,” who died in 1968.

    It turned out that Moyers had been introduced to Merton by Sargent Shriver, founding director of the Peace Corps, where Moyers was a founding organizer and the deputy director.

    Mentored by LBJ

    Moyers characterized his Peace Corps years as the most rewarding of his life. When Johnson, his mentor, became president, he asked Moyers to join the White House staff. Moyers turned down the offer, so Johnson made it a presidential command.

    The wunderkind – Moyers was 29 years old in 1963, when Johnson was sworn in after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination – coordinated the White House task forces that created the largest number of legislative proposals in American history. Among the programs and landmark reforms established and passed during the Johnson administration were Medicare and Medicaid, a landmark immigration law, the Freedom of Information Act, the Public Broadcasting Act and two historic civil rights laws.

    Johnson’s war on poverty, in addition, introduced several path-breaking programs, such as Head Start.

    Moyers served as one of Johnson’s speechwriters and was a top official in Johnson’s 1964 presidential campaign. The following year, the Johnson administration began escalating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and Johnson named a new press secretary: Bill Moyers. Again, the young man tried to decline, but the president prevailed.

    As Moyers had feared, he could not serve two masters – journalists and his boss – especially as the administration’s Vietnam War policies became increasingly unpopular.

    President Lyndon B. Johnson confers with Bill Moyers, his press secretary, in 1965.
    Corbis Historical via Getty Images

    Appreciating the world around you

    Moyers left the Johnson administration in 1967, turning to journalism. He became the publisher of Newsday, a Long Island, New York, newspaper, before becoming a producer and commentator at CBS News. His commentaries reached tens of millions of viewers, but the network refused to provide a regular time slot for his documentaries. He had previously worked at PBS. In 1987, he decamped there for good.

    Moyers’ programs won many journalism awards, including over 30 Emmys, along with the Lifetime Emmy for news and documentary productions.

    He helped millions of Americans appreciate the world around them. As he reflected in 2023, in one of the last interviews he gave, to PBS journalist Judy Woodruff at the Library of Congress: “Everything is linked, and if you can find that nerve that connects us to other things and other places and other ideas – and television should be doing it all the time – we’d be a better democracy.”

    Judy Woodruff interviews Bill Moyers about his life’s work in government and the media, including his contributions to the launch of PBS, at the Library of Congress.

    Today, with disinformation metastasizing, professional journalists losing their jobs by the thousands and some newspaper owners muzzling their editorial staff, thoughtful explanations can lose out. That means Americans can lose out.

    “It takes time, commitment” to dig below the surface and discover the deeper meaning of people’s lives, Moyers noted. He sought to understand, for example, why so many folks in his own hometown of Marshall, Texas, have become much more suspicious – resentful, even – of outsiders than when he gave these folks voice in his poignant, prize-winning 1984 program Marshall, Texas; Marshall, Texas.

    In this era of growing threats to democracy, what can a young person do who aspires to follow in Bill Moyers’ footsteps – whether in journalism or public life?

    Woodruff asked Moyers that question, to which he responded: “You can’t quit. You can’t get out of the boat! Find a place that gives you a sense of being, gives you a sense of mission, gives you a sense of participation.”

    Today, with the future of journalism – and of democracy itself – at stake, I think it would help everyone to take to heart the insights of this late, great American journalist.

    Julie Leininger Pycior edited the book “Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times.” She also was hired by Moyers to direct the 18-month “LBJ Years” research project.

    In addtion, she served as an unpaid, informal historical adviser for some of his public television programs.

    – ref. Bill Moyers’ journalism strengthened democracy by connecting Americans to ideas and each other, in a long and extraordinary career – https://theconversation.com/bill-moyers-journalism-strengthened-democracy-by-connecting-americans-to-ideas-and-each-other-in-a-long-and-extraordinary-career-260047

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Keeping brain-dead pregnant women on life support raises ethical issues that go beyond abortion politics

    Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Lindsey Breitwieser, Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies, Hollins University

    Laws such as Georgia’s LIFE Act can complicate ethical and legal decision-making in postmortem pregnancy.
     Darya Komarova/Moment via Getty Images

    Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old woman from Georgia who had been declared brain-dead in February 2025, spent 16 weeks on life support while doctors worked to keep her body functioning well enough to support her developing fetus. On June 13, 2025, her premature baby, named Chance, was born via cesarean section at 25 weeks.

    Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she suffered multiple blood clots in her brain. Her story gained public attention when her mother criticized doctors’ decision to keep her on a ventilator without the family’s consent. Smith’s mother has said that doctors told the family the decision was made to align with Georgia’s LIFE Act, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and bolsters the legal standing of fetal personhood. A statement released by the hospital also cites Georgia’s abortion law.

    “I’m not saying we would have chosen to terminate her pregnancy,” Smith’s mother told a local television station. “But I’m saying we should have had a choice.”

    The LIFE Act is one of several state laws that have passed across the U.S. since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision invalidated constitutional protections for abortion. Although Georgia’s attorney general denied that the LIFE Act applied to Smith, there’s little doubt that it invites ethical and legal uncertainty when a woman dies while pregnant.

    Smith’s case has swiftly become the focus of a reproductive rights political firestorm characterized by two opposing viewpoints. For some, it reflects demeaning governmental overreach that quashes women’s bodily autonomy. For others it illustrates the righteous sacrifice of motherhood.

    In my work as a gender and technology studies scholar, I have cataloged and studied postmortem pregnancies like Smith’s since 2016. In my view, Smith’s story doesn’t fit straightforwardly into abortion politics. Instead, it points to the need for a more nuanced ethical approach that does not frame a mother and child as adversaries in a medical, legal or political context.

    Birth after death

    For centuries, Catholic dogma and Western legal precedent have mandated immediate cesarean section when a pregnant woman died after quickening, the point when fetal movement becomes discernible. But technological advances now make it possible sometimes for a fetus to continue gestating in place when the mother is brain-dead, or “dead by neurological criteria”– a widely accepted definition of death that first emerged in the 1950s.

    The first brain death during pregnancy in which the fetus was delivered after time on life support, more accurately called organ support, occurred in 1981. The process is extraordinarily intensive and invasive, because the loss of brain function impedes many physiological processes. Health teams, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, must stabilize the bodies of “functionally decapitated” pregnant women to buy more time for fetal development. This requires vital organ support, ventilation, nutritional supplements, antibiotics and constant monitoring. Outcomes are highly uncertain.

    Adriana Smith’s baby was delivered by cesarian section on June 13, 2025.

    Smith’s 112-day stint on organ support ranks third in length for a postmortem pregnancy, with the longest being 123 days. Hers is also the earliest ever gestational age from which the procedure has been attempted. Because time on organ support can vary widely, and because there is no established minimum fetal age considered too early to intervene, a fetus could theoretically be deemed viable at any point in pregnancy.

    Postmortem pregnancy as gender-based violence

    Over the past 50 years, critics of postmortem pregnancy have argued that it constitutes gender-based violence and violates bodily integrity in ways that organ donation does not. Some have compared it with Nazi pronatalist policies. Others have attributed the practice to systemic sexism and racism in medicine. Postmortem pregnancy can also compound intimate partner violence by giving brain-dead women’s murderers decision-making authority when they are the fetus’s next of kin.

    Fetal personhood laws complicate end-of-life decision-making in ways that many consider violent too. As I have seen in my own research, when the fetus is considered a legal person, women’s wishes may be assumed, debated in court or committee, or set aside entirely, nearly always in favor of the fetus.

    From the perspective of reproductive rights advocates, postmortem pregnancy is the bottom of a slippery slope down which anti-abortion sentiment has led America. It obliterates women’s autonomy, pitting living and dead women against doctors, legislators and sometimes their own families, and weaponizing their own fetuses against them.

    A medical perspective on rights

    Viewed through a medical lens, however, postmortem pregnancy is not violent or violating, but an act of repair. Although care teams have responsibilities to both mother and fetus, a pregnant woman’s brain death means she cannot be physically harmed and her rights cannot be violated to the same degree as a fetus with the potential for life.

    Medical practitioners are conditioned to prioritize life over death, motivating a commitment to salvage something from a tragedy and try to partially restore a family. The high-stakes world of emergency medicine makes protecting life reflexive and medical interventions automatic. Once fetal life is detected, as one hospital spokesperson put it in a 1976 news article in The Boston Globe, “What else could you do?”

    This response does not necessarily stem from conscious sexism or anti-abortion sentiment, but from reverence for vulnerable patients. If physicians declare a pregnant woman brain-dead, patienthood often automatically transfers to the fetus needing rescue. No matter its age and despite its survival being dependent on machines, just like its mother, the fetus is entirely animate. Who or what counts as a legal person with privileges and protections might be a political or philosophical determination, but life is a matter of biological fact and within the doctors’ purview.

    The first baby born from a postmortem pregnancy was delivered in 1981.
    Emmanuel Faure/The Image Bank via Getty Images

    An ethics of anti-opposition

    Both of the above perspectives have validity, but neither accounts for postmortem pregnancy’s ethical and biological complexity.

    First, setting mother against fetus, with the rights of one endangering the rights of the other, does not match pregnancy’s lived reality of “two bodies, sutured,” as the cultural scholar Lauren Berlant put it.

    Even the Supreme Court recognized this entangled duality in their 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade, which established both constitutional protections for abortion and a governmental obligation to protect fetal life. Whether a fetus is considered a legal person or not, they wrote, pregnant women and fetuses “cannot be isolated in their privacy” – meaning that reproductive rights issues must strike a balance, however tenuous, between maternal and fetal interests. To declare postmortem pregnancy unequivocally violent or a loss of the “right to choose” fails to recognize the complexity of choice in a highly politicized medical landscape.

    Second, maternal-fetal competition muddles the right course of action. In the U.S., competent patients are not compelled to engage in medical care they would rather avoid, even if it kills them, or to stay on life support to preserve organs for donation. But when a fetus is treated as an independent patient, exceptions could be made to those medical standards if the fetus’s interests override the mother’s.

    For example, pregnancy disrupts standard determination of death. To protect the fetus, care teams increasingly skip a necessary diagnostic for brain death called apnea testing, which involves momentarily removing the ventilator to test the respiratory centers of the brain stem. In these cases, maternal brain death cannot be confirmed until after delivery. Multiple instances of vaginal deliveries after brain death also remain unexplained, given that the brain coordinates mechanisms of vaginal labor. All in all, it’s not always clear women in these cases are entirely dead.

    Ultimately, women like Adriana Smith and their fetuses are inseparable and persist in a technologically defined state of in-betweenness. I’d argue that postmortem pregnancies, therefore, need new bioethical standards that center women’s beliefs about their bodies and a dignified death. This might involve recognizing pregnancy’s unique ambiguities in advance directives, questioning default treatment pathways that may require harm be done to one in order to save another, or considering multiple definitions of clinical and legal death.

    In my view, it is possible to adapt our ethical standards in a way that honors all beings in these exceptional circumstances, without privileging either “choice” or “life,” mother or fetus.

    This research was supported by a grant from The Institute for Citizens and Scholars.

    – ref. Keeping brain-dead pregnant women on life support raises ethical issues that go beyond abortion politics – https://theconversation.com/keeping-brain-dead-pregnant-women-on-life-support-raises-ethical-issues-that-go-beyond-abortion-politics-258457

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Detroit restaurants identified as ‘Black-owned’ on Yelp saw a slight drop in business ratings

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Matthew Bui, Assistant Professor of Information and Digital Studies, University of Michigan

    Yelp’s Black-owned tag was designed to help business owners like Don Studvent attract more customers. His restaurant closed in 2018 after nine years in business. AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

    When the online review platform Yelp added a “Black-owned” tag in 2020, it boosted the visibility of Black-owned restaurants in Detroit. It also caused their ratings to drop, according to our recent study.

    Both local and nonlocal reviewers who showed awareness of a restaurant’s Black ownership rated restaurants 3.03 stars on average. Those who did not acknowledge Black ownership gave a rating of 3.78 stars on average. The tag seems to have caused the average rating to drop by attracting more reviewers who were aware of Black ownership.

    Why it matters

    Technology companies often introduce new features and tools to influence user behavior and make their platforms more usable.

    Although Yelp intended to support Black communities with the Black-owned tag, the design intervention was harmful to Black restaurant owners in Detroit because Yelp failed to consider platform and community-based factors that significantly shape user interactions.

    Yelp’s user base is predominantly white, educated and affluent. Making Detroit’s Black-owned restaurants more visible to Yelp users may have amplified cross-cultural interactions and frictions. For example, non-Black users sometimes mentioned “slower” and “rude” service as justifications for lower ratings. Close readings of these reviews hinted at intercultural and communicative clashes.

    Even if Black-owned restaurants businesses didn’t select the tag, they appeared in searches for “Black-owned restaurants,” in 2022 when we conducted the study and as recently as 2025. Businesses can remove the “Black-owned” tag, but Yelp doesn’t provide a way for them to opt out of search results.

    How we did our work

    To examine the local impacts of Yelp’s Black-owned tag, we collected over 250,000 Yelp reviews of Black- and non-Black-owned restaurants in Detroit and Los Angeles.

    We identified Black-owned restaurants through community-sourced lists for Detroit and Los Angeles and then generated a random sample for the non-Black-owned restaurants.

    We then identified reviews that explicitly noted “Black ownership” for closer analysis.

    Detroit’s Black-owned businesses saw a greater loss in business compared with “ownership-unreported” restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. This means they also potentially had more to gain from the new tag.

    We found the awareness of Black ownership on Yelp significantly increased following Yelp’s addition of the Black-owned tag in June 2020. A year after the tag was added, reviews in Detroit mentioned Black ownership 4.3% more often than a year before it was rolled out.

    Detroit Black-owned restaurants also saw a small temporary spike in their number of reviews, largely around the time Yelp added the Black-owned tag. At the same time, the restaurants’ average star ratings dropped from 3.91 to 3.88. In contrast, non-Black-owned restaurants’ ratings stayed relatively steady at 3.90.

    This metric is an aggregate of all Detroit restaurants’ Yelp reviews over their entire existence, so a .03-star rating change is small but significant.

    Even minor changes to star ratings affect the number of diners restaurants attract, their earning potential and the likelihood they will sell out of food.

    Adding obstacles in digital platforms serves to reproduce and amplify inequalities these businesses already face, rather than alleviate them. For example, Black-owned businesses have a harder time getting loans and are relatively underrepresented in Michigan as a whole.

    These findings may seem surprising given that Detroit is a majority Black city. However, Black users on Yelp are a minority. Keeping in mind the skewed user base of Yelp, we hypothesize the lower reviews for businesses featuring a Black-owned tag reflect existing racial and digital divides in the city.

    Generally, our study provides additional evidence that digital interventions are not “one-size-fits-all,” nor is digital visibility inherently positive for all businesses.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    _This article was updated to clarify how labels are added to profiles.

    This research was supported by a research grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

    Matthew Bui 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.

    Cameron Moy 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. Detroit restaurants identified as ‘Black-owned’ on Yelp saw a slight drop in business ratings – https://theconversation.com/detroit-restaurants-identified-as-black-owned-on-yelp-saw-a-slight-drop-in-business-ratings-256306

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Invasive carp threaten the Great Lakes − and reveal a surprising twist in national politics

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mike Shriberg, Professor of Practice & Engagement, School for Environment & Sustainability, University of Michigan

    Invasive Asian carp are spreading up the Mississippi River system and already clog the Illinois River. AP Photo/John Flesher

    In his second term, President Donald Trump has not taken many actions that draw near-universal praise from across the political spectrum. But there is at least one of these political anomalies, and it illustrates the broad appeal of environmental protection and conservation projects – particularly when it concerns an ecosystem of vital importance to millions of Americans.

    In May 2025, Trump issued a presidential memorandum supporting the construction of a physical barrier that is key to keeping invasive carp out of the Great Lakes. These fish have made their way up the Mississippi River system and could have dire ecological consequences if they enter the Great Lakes.

    It was not a given that Trump would back this project, which had long been supported by environmental and conservation organizations. But two very different strategies from two Democratic governors – both potential presidential candidates in 2028 – reflected the importance of the Great Lakes to America.

    As a water policy and politics scholar focused on the Great Lakes, I see this development not only as an environmental and conservation milestone, but also a potential pathway for more political unity in the U.S.

    A feared invasion

    Perhaps nothing alarms Great Lakes ecologists more than the potential for invasive carp from Asia to establish a breeding population in the Great Lakes. These fish were intentionally introduced in the U.S. Southeast by private fish farm and wastewater treatment operators as a means to control algae in aquaculture and sewage treatment ponds. Sometime in the 1990s, the fish escaped from those ponds and moved rapidly up the Mississippi River system, including into the Illinois River, which connects to the Great Lakes.

    Sometimes said to “breed like mosquitoes and eat like hogs,” these fish can consume up to 40% of their body weight each day, outcompeting many native species and literally sucking up other species and food sources.

    Studies of Lake Erie, for example, predict that if the carp enter and thrive, they could make up approximately one-third of the fish biomass of the entire lake within 20 years, replacing popular sportfishing species such as walleye and other ecologically and economically important species.

    Invasive carp are generally not eaten in the U.S. and are not desirable for sportfishing. In fact, silver carp have a propensity to jump up to 10 feet out of the water when startled by a boat motor. That can make parts of the Illinois River, which is packed with the invasive fish, almost impossible to fish or even maneuver a boat.

    Look out! Silver carp fly out of the water, obstructing boats and hitting people trying to enjoy a river in Indiana.

    The Brandon Road Lock and Dam solution

    Originally, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River were not connected to each other. But in 1900, the city of Chicago connected them to avoid sending its sewage into Lake Michigan, from which the city draws its drinking water.

    The most complete way to block the carp from invading the Great Lakes would be to undo that connection – but that would recreate sewage and flooding issues for Chicago, or require other expensive infrastructure upgrades. The more practical, short-term alternative is to modify the historic Brandon Road Lock and Dam in Joliet, Illinois, by adding several obstacles that together would block the carp from swimming farther upriver toward the Great Lakes.

    The barrier, estimated to cost US$1.15 billion, was authorized by Congress in 2020 and 2022 after many years of intense planning and negotiations. For the first phase of construction, the project received $226 million in federal money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to complement $114 million in state funding – $64 million from Michigan and $50 million from Illinois.

    On the first day of Trump’s second term, however, he paused a wide swath of federal funding, including funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And that’s when two different political strategies emerged.

    A brief documentary explains the construction of a connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basin.

    Pritzker vs. Whitmer vs. Trump

    Illinois, a state that has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1992, has the most financially at stake in the Brandon Road project because the project requires the state to acquire land and operate the barrier. When Trump issued his order, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, postponed the purchase of a key piece of land, blaming the “Trump Administration’s lack of clarity and commitment” to the project. Pritzker essentially dared Trump to be the reason for the collapse of the Great Lakes ecosystem and fisheries.

    Another Democrat, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a swing state with the most at stake economically and ecologically if these carp species enter the Great Lakes, took a very different approach. She went to the White House to talk with Trump about invasive carp and other issues. She defended her nonconfrontational approach to critics, though she also hid her face from cameras when Trump surprised her with an Oval Office press conference. When Trump visited Michigan, she stood beside him as they praised each other.

    When Trump released the federal funding in early May, Pritzker kept up his adversarial language, saying he was “glad that the Trump administration heard our calls … and decided to finally meet their obligation.” Whitmer stayed more conciliatory, calling the funding decision a “huge win that will protect our Great Lakes and secure our economy.” She said she was “grateful to the president for his commitment.”

    Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer greets President Donald Trump as he arrives in her state in late April 2025.
    AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    Why unity on carp?

    Whether coordinated or not, the net result of Pritzker’s and Whitmer’s actions drew praise from both sides of the aisle but was little noticed nationally.

    Trump’s support for the project was a rare moment of political unity and an extremely unusual example of leading Democrats being on the same page as Trump. I attribute this surprising outcome to two key factors.

    First, the Great Lakes region holds disproportionate power in presidential elections. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have backed the eventual winner in every presidential race for the past 20 years. This swing state power has been used by advocates and state political leaders to drive funding for Great Lakes protection for many years.

    Second, Great Lakes are the uniting force in the region. According to polling from the International Joint Commission, the binational body charged with overseeing waterways that cross the U.S.-Canada border, there is “nearly unanimous support (96%) for the importance of government investment in Great Lakes protections” from residents of the region.

    There aren’t any other issues with such high voter resonance, so politicians want to be sure Great Lakes voters are happy. For example, Vice President JD Vance has been particularly vocal about the Great Lakes. And Great Lakes restoration funding was one of the few things in the presidential budget that Democrats and Republicans agreed on.

    Both Pritzker and Whitmer likely had state-based and national motivations in mind and big aspirations at stake.

    Their combined effort has put the project back on track: As of May 12, 2025, Pritzker authorized Illinois to sign the land-purchase agreement he had paused back in February.

    And perhaps the governors have identified a new area for unity in a divided United States: Conservation and environmental issues have broad public support, particularly when they involve iconic natural resources, shared values and popular outdoor pursuits such as fishing and boating. Even when political strategies diverge, the results can bring bipartisan satisfaction.

    Mike Shriberg was previously the Great Lakes Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation, which entailed being a co-chair (and, for part of the time, Director) of the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition.

    – ref. Invasive carp threaten the Great Lakes − and reveal a surprising twist in national politics – https://theconversation.com/invasive-carp-threaten-the-great-lakes-and-reveal-a-surprising-twist-in-national-politics-257707

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Mexican flags flown during immigration protests bother white people a lot more than other Americans

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Edward D. Vargas, Associate Professor, School of Transborder Studies, Arizona State University

    Protesters wave the Mexican flag in Los Angeles on June 9, 2025. Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a series of raids throughout Los Angeles and Southern California in early June 2025, sparking protests in downtown Los Angeles and other cities, including New York, Chicago and Austin, Texas.

    Some demonstrators expressed growing frustration with ICE by showcasing the Mexican flag, which has become the defining symbol of the protests in Los Angeles.

    The use of the flag has also become the subject of intense debate in the media.

    Some outlets have depicted the flag as symbolizing ethnic pride, solidarity with immigrants and opposition to the Trump administration.

    Others have called it the “perfect propaganda” tool for Republicans and conservatives, some of whom have referred to the Mexican flag as the “confederate banner of the L.A. riots.” They point to its use as evidence of anarchy and a city taken over by immigrants.

    But what do Americans think about protesters waving the Mexican flag, and why?

    Much of our knowledge surrounding this question is based on the 2006 immigrant rights protests across the United States, which occurred in a much less politically polarized era. Additionally, a vast majority of protesters then brought U.S. flags compared with other national flags, including the Mexican flag.

    Research published in 2010 found that even though the public was more likely to be bothered by protesters waving the Mexican flag than the U.S. flag, that difference was largely absent once you divided the public into subgroups, including white people, Latinos and immigrants.

    To reexamine public attitudes toward protesters waving the Mexican flag, we conducted an online survey experiment among 10,145 U.S. adults in 2016.

    As political scientists who specialize in Latino politics and immigration-related issues, we tested how exposure to the Mexican flag versus the American flag shaped opinion about protests during Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016.

    We found that even though much of the public continued to be less bothered by the American flag than the Mexican flag, there were also important and perhaps surprising differences in protest attitudes between white Americans and other racial and ethnic groups.

    A demonstrator holds a Mexican flag in front of law enforcement during a protest on June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles.
    AP Photo/Wally Skalij

    More or less bothered

    In the study, we randomly divided respondents into two groups: a treatment group and a control group. Respondents in the treatment group were shown an image of protesters waving a Mexican flag. Respondents in the control group were shown an image of protesters waving the U.S. flag. After viewing the image, respondents were then asked about the extent to which they supported or were bothered by the protests.

    Overall, 41% of the respondents said they were bothered by protesters waving the Mexican flag, and 28% said protesters waving the U.S. flag bothered them.

    Our results show important differences in opinion between racial and ethnic groups.

    White respondents were more likely than any other racial and ethnic group to say they were bothered by protesters waving Mexican flags. Sixty-nine percent of white respondents said they were bothered, 31 percentage points more than the average of nonwhite respondents.

    However, 51% of white respondents were also bothered by the image of protesters waving U.S. flags. By contrast, just 20% of Latinos, 33% of Black Americans and 34% of Asian Americans said they were bothered by protesters waving U.S. flags.

    Put differently, large majorities of nonwhite respondents were supportive of showing U.S. flags at protests despite their more positive views toward Mexican flags.

    What explains racial differences?

    When taking a deeper look at what causes Americans to feel bothered about protesters waving Mexican flags, some clear patterns emerge.

    On average, older Americans were more likely to be bothered relative to younger Americans. This was particularly true for Americans over 40 years of age compared with millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z respondents, born between 1997 and 2012.

    However, there are some nuances when examining age groups and whether they had attended a protest, march or rally in the previous year.

    Our findings suggest that older Americans who had not engaged in protests were most likely to be bothered when they saw images of protesters waving Mexican flags. Millennials and Gen Z respondents who participated in a protest were least likely to be bothered.

    Given that this issue intersects nationality, race, ethnicity, gender and citizenship status, it’s logical that these factors explained why Americans supported or opposed the use of Mexican flags at immigration protests.

    A woman carrying a flag with details of the United States and Mexican flags walks past members of the United States Marine Corps on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles.
    Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images

    For example, racial minorities who have a stronger sense of ethnic or racial identity were more likely to be supportive of protesters waving Mexican and U.S. flags. In other words, group identity is a strong predictor of support for protests in general, regardless of what flag is being flown.

    However, minorities who lack a sense of ethnic pride and identity were most likely to be upset when they saw others expressing their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

    The reality is that recent immigration protests across the country are the first time many of the Latino youth who are citizens have participated in these types of protests. Anyone under age 22 would not have memory of, or been alive during, the last large pro-immigrant protests in 2006.

    The Mexican flag represents more than nationalistic pride. It represents their parents’ heritage, hard work and their binational experience as Americans engaged in politics.

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

    – ref. Mexican flags flown during immigration protests bother white people a lot more than other Americans – https://theconversation.com/mexican-flags-flown-during-immigration-protests-bother-white-people-a-lot-more-than-other-americans-259004

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: The hidden cost of convenience: How your data pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars for app and social media companies

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kassem Fawaz, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Many apps and social media platforms collect detailed information about you as you use them, and sometimes even when you’re not using them. Malte Mueller/fStop via Getty images

    You wake up in the morning and, first thing, you open your weather app. You close that pesky ad that opens first and check the forecast. You like your weather app, which shows hourly weather forecasts for your location. And the app is free!

    But do you know why it’s free? Look at the app’s privacy settings. You help keep it free by allowing it to collect your information, including:

    • What devices you use and their IP and Media Access Control addresses.
    • Information you provide when signing up, such as your name, email address and home address.
    • App settings, such as whether you choose Celsius or Fahrenheit.
    • Your interactions with the app, including what content you view and what ads you click.
    • Inferences based on your interactions with the app.
    • Your location at a given time, including, depending on your settings, continuous tracking.
    • What websites or apps that you interact with after you use the weather app.
    • Information you give to ad vendors.
    • Information gleaned by analytics vendors that analyze and optimize the app.

    This type of data collection is standard fare. The app company can use this to customize ads and content. The more customized and personalized an ad is, the more money it generates for the app owner. The owner might also sell your data to other companies.

    Many apps, including the weather channel app, send you targeted advertising and sell your personal data by default.
    Jack West, CC BY-ND

    You might also check a social media account like Instagram. The subtle price that you pay is, again, your data. Many “free” mobile apps gather information about you as you interact with them.

    As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, we follow the ways software collects information about people. Your data allows companies to learn about your habits and exploit them.

    It’s no secret that social media and mobile applications collect information about you. Meta’s business model depends on it. The company, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is worth US$1.48 trillion. Just under 98% of its profits come from advertising, which leverages user data from more than 7 billion monthly users.



    Read more:
    How Internet of Things devices affect your privacy – even when they’re not yours

    What your data is worth

    Before mobile phones gained apps and social media became ubiquitous, companies conducted large-scale demographic surveys to assess how well a product performed and to get information about the best places to sell it. They used the information to create coarsely targeted ads that they placed on billboards, print ads and TV spots.

    Mobile apps and social media platforms now let companies gather much more fine-grained information about people at a lower cost. Through apps and social media, people willingly trade personal information for convenience. In 2007 – a year after the introduction of targeted ads – Facebook made over $153 million, triple the previous year’s revenue. In the past 17 years, that number has increased by more than 1,000 times.

    Five ways to leave your data

    App and social media companies collect your data in many ways. Meta is a representative case. The company’s privacy policy highlights five ways it gathers your data:

    First, it collects the profile information you fill in. Second, it collects the actions you take on its social media platforms. Third, it collects the people you follow and friend. Fourth, it keeps track of each phone, tablet and computer you use to access its platforms. And fifth, it collects information about how you interact with apps that corporate partners connect to its platforms. Many apps and social media platforms follow similar privacy practices.

    Your data and activity

    When you create an account on an app or social media platform, you provide the company that owns it with information like your age, birth date, identified sex, location and workplace. In the early years of Facebook, selling profile information to advertisers was that company’s main source of revenue. This information is valuable because it allows advertisers to target specific demographics like age, identified gender and location.

    And once you start using an app or social media platform, the company behind it can collect data about how you use the app or social media. Social media keeps you engaged as you interact with other people’s posts by liking, commenting or sharing them. Meanwhile, the social media company gains information about what content you view and how you communicate with other people.

    Advertisers can find out how much time you spent reading a Facebook post or that you spent a few more seconds on a particular TikTok video. This activity information tells advertisers about your interests. Modern algorithms can quickly pick up subtleties and automatically change the content to engage you in a sponsored post, a targeted advertisement or general content.

    Your devices and applications

    Companies can also note what devices, including mobile phones, tablets and computers, you use to access their apps and social media platforms. This shows advertisers your brand loyalty, how old your devices are and how much they’re worth.

    Because mobile devices travel with you, they have access to information about where you’re going, what you’re doing and who you’re near. In a lawsuit against Kochava Inc., the Federal Trade Commission called out the company for selling customer geolocation data in August 2022, shortly after Roe v Wade was overruled. The company’s customers, including people who had abortions after the ruling was overturned, often didn’t know that data tracking their movements was being collected, according to the commission. The FTC alleged that the data could be used to identify households.

    Kochava has denied the FTC’s allegations.

    Information that apps can gain from your mobile devices includes anything you have given an app permission to have, such as your location, who you have in your contact list or photos in your gallery.

    If you give an app permission to see where you are while the app is running, for instance, the platform can access your location anytime the app is running. Providing access to contacts may provide an app with the phone numbers, names and emails of all the people that you know.

    Cross-application data collection

    Companies can also gain information about what you do across different apps by acquiring information collected by other apps and platforms.

    The settings on an Android phone show that Meta uses information it collects about you to target ads it shows you in its apps – and also in other apps and on other platforms – by default.
    Jack West, CC BY-ND

    This is common with social media companies. This allows companies to, for example, show you ads based on what you like or recently looked at on other apps. If you’ve searched for something on Amazon and then noticed an ad for it on Instagram, it’s probably because Amazon shared that information with Instagram.

    This combined data collection has made targeted advertising so accurate that people have reported that they feel like their devices are listening to them.

    Companies, including Google, Meta, X, TikTok and Snapchat, can build detailed user profiles based on collected information from all the apps and social media platforms you use. They use the profiles to show you ads and posts that match your interests to keep you engaged. They also sell the profile information to advertisers.

    Meanwhile, researchers have found that Meta and Yandex, a Russian search engine, have overcome controls in mobile operating system software that ordinarily keep people’s web-browsing data anonymous. Each company puts code on its webpages that used local IPs to pass a person’s browsing history, which is supposed to remain private, to mobile apps installed on that person’s phone, de-anonymizing the data. Yandex has been conducting this tracking since 2017, while Meta began in September 2024, according to the researchers.

    What you can do about it

    If you use apps that collect your data in some way, including those that give you directions, track your workouts or help you contact someone, or if you use social media platforms, your privacy is at risk.

    Aside from entirely abandoning modern technology, there are several steps you can take to limit access – at least in part – to your private information.

    Read the privacy policy of each app or social media platform you use. Although privacy policy documents can be long, tedious and sometimes hard to read, they explain how social media platforms collect, process, store and share your data.

    Check a policy by making sure it can answer three questions: what data does the app collect, how does it collect the data, and what is the data used for. If you can’t answer all three questions by reading the policy, or if any of the answers don’t sit well with you, consider skipping the app until there’s a change in its data practices.

    Remove unnecessary permissions from mobile apps to limit the amount of information that applications can gather from you.

    Be aware of the privacy settings that might be offered by the apps or social media platforms you use, including any setting that allows your personal data to affect your experience or shares information about you with other users or applications.

    These privacy settings can give you some control. We recommend that you disable “off-app activity” and “personalization” settings. “Off-app activity” allows an app to record which other apps are installed on your phone and what you do on them. Personalization settings allow an app to use your data to tailor what it shows you, including advertisements.

    Review and update these settings regularly because permissions sometimes change when apps or your phone update. App updates may also add new features that can collect your data. Phone updates may also give apps new ways to collect your data or add new ways to preserve your privacy.

    Use private browser windows or reputable virtual private networks software, commonly referred to as VPNs, when using apps that connect to the internet and social media platforms. Private browsers don’t store any account information, which limits the information that can be collected. VPNs change the IP address of your machine so that apps and platforms can’t discover your location.

    Finally, ask yourself whether you really need every app that’s on your phone. And when using social media, consider how much information you want to reveal about yourself in liking and commenting on posts, sharing updates about your life, revealing locations you visited and following celebrities you like.

    This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it.

    Kassem Fawaz receives funding from the National Science Foundation. In the past, his research group has received unrestricted gifts from Meta and Google.

    Jack West 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. The hidden cost of convenience: How your data pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars for app and social media companies – https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-cost-of-convenience-how-your-data-pulls-in-hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars-for-app-and-social-media-companies-251698

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Why the US bombed a bunch of metal tubes − a nuclear engineer explains the importance of centrifuges to Iranian efforts to build nuclear weapons

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anna Erickson, Professor of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

    An image from Iranian television shows centrifuges lining a hall at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2021. IRIB via APPEAR

    When U.S. forces attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 21, 2025, the main target was metal tubes in laboratories deep underground. The tubes are centrifuges that produce highly enriched uranium needed to build nuclear weapons.

    Inside of a centrifuge, a rotor spins in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 revolutions per minute, 10 times faster than a Corvette engine’s crankshaft. High speeds are needed to separate lighter uranium-235 from heavier uranium-238 for further collection and processing. Producing this level of force means the rotor itself must be well balanced and strong and rely on high-speed magnetic bearings to reduce friction.

    Over the years, Iran has produced thousands of centrifuges. They work together to enrich uranium to dangerous levels – close to weapons-grade uranium. Most of them are deployed in three enrichment sites: Natanz, the country’s main enrichment facility, Fordow and Isfahan. Inside of these facilities, the centrifuges are arranged into cascades – series of machines connected to each other. This way, each machine yields slightly more enriched uranium, feeding the gas produced into its neighbor to maximize production efficiency.

    As a nuclear engineer who works on nuclear nonproliferation, I track centrifuge technology, including the Iranian enrichment facilities targeted by the U.S. and Israel. A typical cascade deployed in Iran is composed of 164 centrifuges, working in series to produce enriched uranium. The Natanz facility was designed to hold over 50,000 centrifuges.

    Iran’s early intentions to field centrifuges on a very large scale were clear. At the peak of the program in the early 2010s it deployed over 19,000 units. Iran later scaled down the number of its centrifuges in part due to international agreements such as the since scrapped Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in 2015.

    Legacy of enrichment

    Iran has a long history of enriching uranium.

    In the late 1990s, it acquired a Pakistani centrifuge design known as P-1. The blueprints and some components were supplied via the A.Q. Khan black market network – the mastermind of the Pakistani program and a serious source of nuclear proliferation globally. Today, the P-1 design is known as IR-1. IR-1 centrifuges use aluminum and a high-strength alloy, known as maraging steel.

    About one-third of the centrifuges that were deployed at the sites of the recent strike on June 21 are IR-1. Each one produces on the order of 0.8 separative work units, which is the unit for measuring the amount of energy and effort needed to separate uranium-235 molecules from the rest of the uranium gas. To put this in perspective, one centrifuge would yield about 0.2 ounces (6 grams) of 60%-enriched uranium-235 per year.

    A typical uranium-based weapon requires 55 pounds (25 kilograms) of 90%-enriched uranium. To get to weapons-grade level, a single centrifuge would produce only 0.14 ounces (4 grams) per year. It requires more work to go higher in enrichment. While capable of doing the job, the IR-1 is quite inefficient.

    The author explains the uranium enrichment process to CBS News.

    More and better centrifuges

    Small yields mean that over 6,000 centrifuges would need to work together for a year to get enough material for one weapon such as a nuclear warhead. Or the efficiency of the centrifuges would have to be improved. Iran did both.

    Before the strike by U.S. forces, Iran was operating close to 7,000 IR-1 centrifuges. In addition, Iran designed, built and operated more efficient centrifuges such as the IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 designs. Comparing the IR-1 with the latest designs is like comparing a golf cart with the latest electric vehicles in terms of range and payload.

    Iran’s latest centrifuge designs contain carbon fiber composites with exceptional strength and durability and low weight. This is a recipe for producing light and compact centrifuges that are easier to conceal from inspections. According to the international nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, before the strike Iran was operating 6,500 IR-2m centrifuges, close to 4,000 IR-4 centrifuges and over 3,000 IR-6 centrifuges.

    With each new generation, the separative work unit efficiency increased significantly. IR-6 centrifuges, with their carbon fiber rotors, can achieve up to 10 separative work units per year. That’s about 2.8 ounces (80 grams) of 60%-enriched uranium-235 per year. The International Atomic Energy Agency verified that the IR-6 cascades have been actively used to ramp up production of 60%-enriched uranium.

    The most recent and advanced centrifuges developed by Iran, known as IR-9, can achieve 50 separative work units per year. This cuts down the time needed to produce highly enriched uranium for weapon purposes from months to weeks. The other aspect of IR-9 advanced centrifuges is their compactness. They are easier to conceal from inspections or move underground, and they require less energy to operate.

    Advanced centrifuges such as the IR-9 drive up the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation significantly. Fortunately, the International Atomic Energy Agency reports that only one exists in testing laboratories, and there is no evidence Iran has deployed them widely. However, it’s possible more are concealed.

    Bombs or talks?

    Uranium enrichment of 60% is far beyond the needs of any civilian use. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran stockpiled about 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium before the attack, and it might have escaped intact. That’s enough to make 10 weapons. The newer centrifuges – IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 – would need a bit over eight months to produce that much.

    It’s not clear what the U.S. attack has accomplished, but destroying the facilities targeted in the attack and hindering Iran’s ability to continue enriching uranium might be a way to slow Iran’s move toward producing nuclear weapons. However, based on my work and research on preventing nuclear proliferation, I believe a more reliable means of preventing Iran from achieving its nuclear aims would be for diplomacy and cooperation to prevail.

    Anna Erickson receives funding from Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) related to nuclear nonproliferation technologies. She has previously served on the Board of Directors of the American Nuclear Society.

    – ref. Why the US bombed a bunch of metal tubes − a nuclear engineer explains the importance of centrifuges to Iranian efforts to build nuclear weapons – https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-bombed-a-bunch-of-metal-tubes-a-nuclear-engineer-explains-the-importance-of-centrifuges-to-iranian-efforts-to-build-nuclear-weapons-259883

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Humans and animals can both think logically − but testing what kind of logic they’re using is tricky

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Olga Lazareva, Professor of Psychology, Drake University

    For some mental processes, humans and animals likely follow similar lines of thinking. Catherine Falls Commercial/Moment via Getty Images

    Can a monkey, a pigeon or a fish reason like a person? It’s a question scientists have been testing in increasingly creative ways – and what we’ve found so far paints a more complicated picture than you’d think.

    Imagine you’re filling out a March Madness bracket. You hear that Team A beat Team B, and Team B beat Team C – so you assume Team A is probably better than Team C. That’s a kind of logical reasoning known as transitive inference. It’s so automatic that you barely notice you’re doing it.

    It turns out humans are not the only ones who can make these kinds of mental leaps. In labs around the world, researchers have tested many animals, from primates to birds to insects, on tasks designed to probe transitive inference, and most pass with flying colors.

    As a scientist focused on animal learning and behavior, I work with pigeons to understand how they make sense of relationships, patterns and rules. In other words, I study the minds of animals that will never fill out a March Madness bracket – but might still be able to guess the winner.

    Logic test without words

    The basic idea is simple: If an animal learns that A is better than B, and B is better than C, can it figure out that A is better than C – even though it’s never seen A and C together?

    In the lab, researchers test this by giving animals randomly paired images, one pair at a time, and rewarding them with food for picking the correct one. For example, animals learn that a photo of hands (A) is correct when paired with a classroom (B), a classroom (B) is correct when paired with bushes (C), bushes (C) are correct when paired with a highway (D), and a highway (D) is correct when paired with a sunset (E). We don’t know whether they “understand” what’s in the picture, and it is not particularly important for the experiment that they do.

    In a transitive inference task, subjects learn a series of rewarded pairs – such as A+ vs. B–, B+ vs. C– – and are later tested on novel pairings, like B vs. D, to see whether they infer an overall ranking.
    Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND

    One possible explanation is that the animals that learn all the tasks create a mental ranking of these images: A > B > C > D > E. We test this idea by giving them new pairs they’ve never seen before, such as classroom (B) vs. highway (D). If they consistently pick the higher-ranked item, they’ve inferred the underlying order.

    What’s fascinating is how many species succeed at this task. Monkeys, rats, pigeons – even fish and wasps – have all demonstrated transitive inference in one form or another.

    The twist: Not all tasks are easy

    But not all types of reasoning come so easily. There’s another kind of rule called transitivity that is different from transitive inference, despite the similar name. Instead of asking which picture is better, transitivity is about equivalence.

    In this task, animals are shown a set of three pictures and asked which one goes with the center image. For example, if white triangle (A1) is shown, choosing red square (B1) earns a reward, while choosing blue square (B2) does not. Later, when red square (B1) is shown, choosing white cross (C1) earns a reward while choosing white circle (C2) does not. Now comes the test: white triangle (A1) is shown with white cross (C1) and white circle (C2) as choices. If they pick white cross (C1), then they’ve demonstrated transitivity.

    In a transitivity task, subjects learn matching rules across overlapping sets – such as A1 matches B1, B1 matches C1 – and are tested on new combinations, such as A1 with C1 or C2, to assess whether they infer the relationship between A1 and C1.
    Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND

    The change may seem small, but species that succeed in those first transitive inference tasks often stumble in this task. In fact, they tend to treat the white triangle and the white cross as completely separate things, despite their common relationship with the red square. In my recently published review of research using the two tasks, I concluded that more evidence is needed to determine whether these tests tap into the same cognitive ability.

    Small differences, big consequences

    Why does the difference between transitive inference and transitivity matter? At first glance, they may seem like two versions of the same ability – logical reasoning. But when animals succeed at one and struggle with the other, it raises an important question: Are these tasks measuring the same kind of thinking?

    The apparent difference between the two tasks isn’t just a quirk of animal behavior. Psychology researchers apply these tasks to humans in order to draw conclusions about how people reason.

    For example, say you’re trying to pick a new almond milk. You know that Brand A is creamier than Brand B, and your friend told you that Brand C is even waterier than Brand B. Based on that, because you like a thicker milk, you might assume Brand A is better than Brand C, an example of transitive inference.

    But now imagine the store labels both Brand A and Brand C as “barista blends.” Even without tasting them, you might treat them as functionally equivalent, because they belong to the same category. That’s more like transitivity, where items are grouped based on shared relationships. In this case, “barista blend” signals the brands share similar quality.

    How researchers define logical reasoning determines how they interpret results.
    Svetlana Mishchenko/iStock via Getty Images

    Researchers often treat these types of reasoning as measuring the same ability. But if they rely on different mental processes, they might not be interchangeable. In other words, the way scientists ask their questions may shape the answer – and that has big implications for how they interpret success in animals and in people.

    This difference could affect how researchers interpret decision-making not only in the lab, but also in everyday choices and in clinical settings. Tasks like these are sometimes used in research on autism, brain injury or age-related cognitive decline.

    If two tasks look similar on the surface, then choosing the wrong one might lead to inaccurate conclusions about someone’s cognitive abilities. That’s why ongoing work in my lab is exploring whether the same distinction between these logical processes holds true for people.

    Just like a March Madness bracket doesn’t always predict the winner, a reasoning task doesn’t always show how someone got to the right answer. That’s the puzzle researchers are still working on – figuring out whether different tasks really tap into the same kind of thinking or just look like they do. It’s what keeps scientists like me in the lab, asking questions, running experiments and trying to understand what it really means to reason – no matter who’s doing the thinking.

    Olga Lazareva 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. Humans and animals can both think logically − but testing what kind of logic they’re using is tricky – https://theconversation.com/humans-and-animals-can-both-think-logically-but-testing-what-kind-of-logic-theyre-using-is-tricky-253001

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Toxic fungus from King Tutankhamun’s tomb yields cancer-fighting compounds – new study

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

    Miro Varcek / Shutterstock.com

    In November 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter peered through a small hole into the sealed tomb of King Tutankhamun. When asked if he could see anything, he replied: “Yes, wonderful things.” Within months, however, Carter’s financial backer Lord Carnarvon was dead from a mysterious illness. Over the following years, several other members of the excavation team would meet similar fates, fuelling legends of the “pharaoh’s curse” that have captivated the public imagination for just over a century.

    For decades, these mysterious deaths were attributed to supernatural forces. But modern science has revealed a more likely culprit: a toxic fungus known as Aspergillus flavus. Now, in an unexpected twist, this same deadly organism is being transformed into a powerful new weapon in the fight against cancer.

    Aspergillus flavus is a common mould found in soil, decaying vegetation and stored grains. It is infamous for its ability to survive in harsh environments, including the sealed chambers of ancient tombs, where it can lie dormant for thousands of years.

    When disturbed, the fungus releases spores that can cause severe respiratory infections, particularly in people with weakened immune systems. This may explain the so-called “curse” of King Tutankhamun and similar incidents, such as the deaths of several scientists who entered the tomb of Casimir IV in Poland in the 1970s. In both cases, investigations later found that A flavus was present, and its toxins were probably responsible for the illnesses and deaths.

    Despite its deadly reputation, Aspergillus flavus is now at the centre of a remarkable scientific finding. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that this fungus produces a unique class of molecules with the potential to fight cancer.

    These molecules belong to a group called ribosomally synthesised and post-translationally modified peptides, or RiPPs. RiPPs are made by the ribosome – the cell’s protein factory – and are later chemically altered to enhance their function.

    While thousands of RiPPs have been identified in bacteria, only a handful have been found in fungi – until now.

    The process of finding these fungal RiPPs was far from simple. The research team screened a dozen different strains or types of aspergillus, searching for chemical clues that might indicate the presence of these promising molecules. Aspergillus flavus quickly stood out as a prime candidate.

    The researchers compared the chemicals from different fungal strains to known RiPP compounds and found promising matches. To confirm their discovery, they switched off the relevant genes and, sure enough, the target chemicals vanished, proving they had found the source.

    Purifying these chemicals proved to be a significant challenge. However, this complexity is also what gives fungal RiPPs their remarkable biological activity.

    The team eventually succeeded in isolating four different RiPPs from Aspergillus flavus. These molecules shared a unique structure of interlocking rings, a feature that had never been described before. The researchers named these new compounds “asperigimycins”, after the fungus in which they were found.

    The next step was to test these asperigimycins against human cancer cells. In some cases, they stopped the growth of cancer cells, suggesting that asperigimycins could one day become a new treatment for certain types of cancer.

    The team also worked out how these chemicals get inside cancer cells. This discovery is significant because many chemicals, like asperigimycins, have medicinal properties but struggle to enter cells in large enough quantities to be useful. Knowing that particular fats (lipids) can enhance this process gives scientists a new tool for drug development.

    Further experiments revealed that asperigimycins probably disrupt the process of cell division in cancer cells. Cancer cells divide uncontrollably, and these compounds appear to block the formation of microtubules, the scaffolding inside cells that are essential for cell division.

    Tremendous untapped potential

    This disruption is specific to certain types of cells, so this may in turn reduce the risk of side-effects. But the discovery of asperigimycins is just the beginning. The researchers also identified similar clusters of genes in other fungi, suggesting that many more fungal RiPPs remain to be discovered.

    Almost all the fungal RiPPs found so far have strong biological activity, making this an area with tremendous untapped potential. The next step is to test asperigimycins in other systems and models, with the hope of eventually moving to human clinical trials. If successful, these molecules could join the ranks of other fungal-derived medicines, such as penicillin, which revolutionised modern medicine.

    The story of Aspergillus flavus is a powerful example of how nature can be both a source of danger and a wellspring of healing. For centuries, this fungus was feared as a silent killer lurking in ancient tombs, responsible for mysterious deaths and the legend of the pharaoh’s curse. Today, scientists are turning that fear into hope, harnessing the same deadly spores to create life-saving medicines.

    This transformation, from curse to cure, highlights the importance of continued exploration and innovation in the natural world. Nature has in fact provided us with an incredible pharmacy, filled with compounds that can heal as well as harm. It is up to scientists and engineers to uncover these secrets, using the latest technologies to identify, modify and test new molecules for their potential to treat disease.

    The discovery of asperigimycins is a reminder that even the most unlikely sources – such as a toxic tomb fungus – can hold the key to revolutionary new treatments. As researchers continue to explore the hidden world of fungi, who knows what other medical breakthroughs may lie just beneath the surface?

    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. Toxic fungus from King Tutankhamun’s tomb yields cancer-fighting compounds – new study – https://theconversation.com/toxic-fungus-from-king-tutankhamuns-tomb-yields-cancer-fighting-compounds-new-study-259706

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: When do we first feel pain?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laurenz Casser, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of Sheffield

    Alina Troeva/Shutterstock.com

    At some point between conception and early childhood, pain makes its debut. But when exactly that happens remains one of medicine’s most challenging questions.

    Some have claimed that foetuses as young as twelve weeks can already be seen wincing in agony, while others have flat-out denied that even infants show any true signs of pain until long after birth.

    New research from University College London offers fresh insights into this puzzle. By mapping the development of pain-processing networks in the brain – what researchers call the “pain connectome” – scientists have begun to trace exactly when and how our capacity for pain emerges. What they discovered challenges simple answers about when pain “begins”.

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

    The researchers used advanced brain imaging to compare the neural networks of foetuses and infants with those of adults, tracking how different components of pain processing mature over time. Until about 32 weeks after conception, all pain-related brain networks remain significantly underdeveloped compared with adult brains. But then development accelerates dramatically.

    The sensory aspects of pain – the basic detection of harmful stimuli – mature first, becoming functional around 34 to 36 weeks of pregnancy. The emotional components that make pain distressing follow shortly after, developing between 36 and 38 weeks. However, the cognitive centres responsible for consciously interpreting and evaluating pain lag far behind, and remain largely immature by the time of birth, about 40 weeks after conception.

    This staged development suggests that while late-term foetuses and newborns can detect and respond to harmful stimuli, they probably experience pain very differently from older children and adults. Most significantly, newborns probably can’t consciously evaluate their pain – they can’t form the thought: “This hurts and it’s bad!”

    Does it hurt?
    Martin Valigursky/Shutterstock.com

    A history of changing views

    These findings represent the latest chapter in a long-running scientific debate that has swung dramatically over the centuries, often with profound consequences for medical practice.

    For most physiologists in the 18th and 19th centuries, the perceived delicacy of the infant’s body meant that it must be exquisitely sensitive to pain, so much so that some have had their doubts if infants ever felt anything else. Birth, in particular, was imagined to be an extremely painful event for a newborn.

    However, advances in embryology during the 1870s reversed this thinking. As scientists discovered that infant brains and nervous systems were far less developed than adult versions, many began questioning whether babies could truly feel pain at all. If the neural machinery wasn’t fully formed, how could genuine pain experiences exist?

    This scepticism had troubling practical consequences. For nearly a century, many doctors performed surgery on infants without anaesthesia, convinced that their patients were essentially immune to suffering. The practice continued well into the 1980s in some medical centres.

    Towards the end of the 20th century, public outrage about the medical treatment of infants and new scientific results turned the tables yet again. It was found that newborns exhibited many of the signs (neurological, physiological and behavioural) of pain after all, and that, if anything, pain in infants had probably been underestimated.

    The ambiguous brain

    The reason why there has been endless disagreement about infant pain is that we cannot access their experiences directly.

    Sure, we can observe their behaviour and study their brains, but these are not the same thing. Pain is an experience, something that’s felt in the privacy of a person’s own mind, and that’s inaccessible to anyone but the person whose pain it is.

    Of course, pain experiences are typically accompanied by telltale signs: be it the retraction of a body part from a sharp object or the increased activity of certain brain regions. Those we can measure. But the trouble is that no one behaviour or brain event is ever unambiguous.

    The fact that an infant pulls back their hand from a pin prick may mean that it experiences the pricking as painful, but it may also just be an unconscious reflex. Similarly, the fact that the brain is simultaneously showing pain-related activity may be a sign of pain, but it may also be that the processing unfolds entirely unconsciously. We simply don’t know.

    Perhaps the infant knows. But even if they do, they can’t tell us about their experiences yet, and until they can, scientists are left guessing. Fortunately, their guesses are becoming increasingly well informed, but for now, that is all they can be – guesses.

    What would it take to get certainty? Well, it would require an explanation that connects our brains and behaviour to our conscious experiences. But so far, no scientifically respectable explanation of this kind has been forthcoming.

    Laurenz Casser receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

    – ref. When do we first feel pain? – https://theconversation.com/when-do-we-first-feel-pain-259588

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: From Roman drains to ancient filters, these artefacts show how solutions to water contamination have evolved

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rosa Busquets, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy and Chemistry, Kingston University

    Thirst: In Search of Freshwater, an exhibition at Wellcome Collection. Benjamin Gilbert., CC BY-NC-ND

    A new exhibition in London (open until February 2026) called Thirst: In search of freshwater highlights how civilisations have treasured – and been intrinsically linked to – safe, clean water.

    As a chemist, I research how freshwater is polluted by modern civilisation. Common contaminants in rivers include pharmaceuticals,
    microplastics
    (which degrade further when exposed to sunlight and wave power), and forever chemicals or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) (some of which are carcinogenic).

    Synthetic toxic chemicals are introduced into the environment from the products we make, use and dispose of. This wasn’t a problem centuries ago, where we had a totally different manufacturing industry and technologies.

    Some, such as PFAS from stain-resistant textiles or nonstick materials such as cookware, can be particularly difficult to remove from wastewater. PFAS don’t degrade easily, they resist conventional heat treatments and can easily pass through wastewater treatments, so they contaminate rivers or lakes that are sources of our drinking water.

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

    Testing for pollutants is even more critical in developing nations that lack sanitation and face drought or flooding.
    Having to protect and conserve drinking water and its sources is as relevant today as it always has been.

    For this exhibition, curator at the Wellcome Collection in London, Janice Li, has selected 125 historical objects, photographs and feats of engineering that link to drought, rain, glaciers, rivers and lakes. These three artefacts from Thirst illustrate how our relationship with water contamination has evolved:

    1. Ancient water filters

    Made from natural materials such as clay, water jug filters have been used for hundreds of years in every continent by ancient civilisations. They show that purifying water for drinking was commonplace. The sand and soil particles that naturally get suspended in water and removed by these filters would have carried microbes.

    Water jug filters with Arabic inscription, found in Egypt, dating back to 900-1,200.
    Victoria and Albert Museum London/Wellcome Collection, CC BY-NC-ND

    But in ancient times, pharmaceuticals and other drugs, pesticides, forever chemicals and microplastics would not have been a problem. Those filters could work relatively well despite being made of simple materials with wide pores.

    Today, those ancient filters would no longer be effective. Modern water filters are made using more advanced materials which typically have small pores (called micropores and mesopores). For example, filters often include activated carbon (a highly porous type of carbon that can be manufactured to capture contaminants) or membranes that filter water. Only then is it safe for people to drink.



    Read more:
    Forever chemicals are in our drinking water – here’s how to reduce them

    2. Roman water pipes

    Lead water pipes (known as fistulae) were useful parts of a relatively advanced plumbing system that distributed drinking water throughout Roman cities. They are still common in water systems in our cities today. In the US, there are about 9.2 million lead service lines in use. Exposure to lead causes severe human health problems. Lead exposure, not necessarily from drinking water only, was attributed to more than 1.5 million deaths in 2021.

    A Roman lead water pipe that dates back to 1-300CE.
    Courtesy of Wellcome Collection/Science Museum Group., CC BY-NC-ND

    It’s now understood that lead is neurotoxic and it can diffuse or spread from the pipes to drinking water. Lead from paints and batteries, including car batteries, can also contaminate drinking water.

    To protect us from lead leaching or flaking off from pipes, some government agencies are calling for the replacement of lead pipes with copper or plastic pipes. Water companies routinely add phosphates (mined powder that contains phosphorus) to drinking water to help capture potential lead contamination and make it safe to drink.

    3. The horror of unhealthy water

    One caricature titled The Monster Soup by artist William Heath (1828) is part of the Wellcome Trust’s permanent collection. The graphics read “microcosms dedicated to the London Water companies” and “Monster soup, commonly called Thames Water being a correct representation of the precious stuff doled out to us”. The cartoon shows a lady so terrified at the sight of microbes in river water from the Thames that she drops her cup of tea.

    Monster Soup by William Heath.
    Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection., CC BY-NC-ND

    Even today, many people remain shocked at the toxic contamination in rivers and sewage pollution prevents people from swimming.

    By 2030, 2 billion people will still not have safely managed drinking water and 1.2 billion will lack basic hygiene services. Drinking water will still be contaminated by bacteria such as E. coli and other dangerous pathogens that cause waterborne diseases. So advancing technologies to filter out contamination will be just as crucial in the future as it has been in the past.

    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.

    Rosa Busquets receives funding from UKRI/ EU Horizons MSCA Staff exchanges Clean Water project 101131182, DASA, project ACC6093561. She is affiliated with Kingston University, UCL, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, UNEP EEAP.

    – ref. From Roman drains to ancient filters, these artefacts show how solutions to water contamination have evolved – https://theconversation.com/from-roman-drains-to-ancient-filters-these-artefacts-show-how-solutions-to-water-contamination-have-evolved-253876

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: How Trump plays with new media says a lot about him – as it did with FDR, Kennedy and Obama

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sara Polak, University Lecturer in American Studies, Leiden University

    There is a strange and worrying parallel between the breakneck speed at which Donald Trump has operated in the first few months of his presidency and the ever-accelerating pace at which information moves on social media platforms. Where in his first term he used Twitter, now, the 47th US president is using his own platform, TruthSocial, to announce changes of direction that are sometimes so fundamental that they change decades of US policy.

    Social media has become a key tool of governing for Trump’s administration. He uses it both to make announcements and to drum up support for those announcements. His social media posts can move the markets and make or break careers. They can even, it seems, stop wars.

    So when he used TruthSocial to announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on June 23, giving the two countries a deadline to stop firing missiles, it appears that neither of the antagonists were fully aware of the situation, given they carried on attacking each other. So an all-caps message followed: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” he posted. “BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” – adding, just in case anyone had any doubt he was serious: “DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

    Trump’s use of his TruthSocial platform began as he sought to re-establish himself from the political wilderness after the insurrection of January 6 2021. It has now become a tool of his extreme power and his willingness to use (and abuse) it – globally as well as domestically.

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    He’s the latest in a string of US presidents known for their adroit use of whichever is the medium most guaranteed to connect with the greatest number of people. From Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt’s adept cultivation of print journalists in the early 20th century through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s comforting use of radio as it gained popularity and John F. Kennedy’s mastery of the rising medium of television, presidents have expanded their reach and influence through adept use of media.

    FDR’s “fireside chats”, broadcast on the radio throughout the US in the 1930s, reached an estimated 80% of the population, showing he understood the key media principle of reach. Roosevelt would address his listeners as “my friends” and Americans came to understand them as seemingly intimate conversations with their president.

    FDR dominated the airwaves at a time when many Americans hardly understood the important role that the federal government played in their own lives – and millions of households were only just getting mains electricity (thanks to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936). But radios were becoming a common mass medium and FDR perfectly understood how to use it. If you listen to the fireside chats, FDR may sound patrician – and at times formal – but his tone is also friendly, thoughtful and reassuring.

    In Germany at around the same time, Adolf Hitler’s massive stadium speeches were very effective for people who were in the stadium and being lifted by the intensity of the crowd and all the carefully thought out visual cues. But when broadcast on radio, Hitler had nothing like Roosevelt’s ability to connect with people on a personal level.

    Roosevelt was hardly the first leader – or even the first US president – to speak on the radio. But he was the first to master the medium. He figured out how to use its potential to deliver a key implicit message: that his government should and did take on a central role in people’s lives.

    Equally, John F. Kennedy can be said to have “discovered” political television. Not just as a medium for political campaigns, debates and speeches – but also for putting across to a mass audience his role as the embodiment of American decency, beauty and masculinity: JFK’s White House as Camelot.

    JFK was considered a master of the fast-growing medium of television.

    Both Roosevelt and Kennedy were in several ways physically disabled and lived with chronic illness, yet through the “new medium” of their time were able to project an image of quintessentially American strength and trustworthiness. In part this was their own doing – but it’s also a testament to the power of the media they used for their time.

    Mastering the medium

    These possibilities of a medium used to its best advantage – for example, to be heard around the US, but still to project a sense of intimacy – have become known as the “affordances” of a medium. The medium afforded Roosevelt space to be authentic without showing his disability. Kennedy appeared young, fit and handsome – even when dependent on painkillers.

    When a new medium is introduced, people start to play around with its affordances – and this applies to politicians too. Political leaders who develop a special aptitude for using the new medium to emphasise their unique style can become particularly successful, as has Donald Trump with his use of social media.

    The US president rose to power helped by his adept use of many of Twitter’s attributes – the imposed brevity of his messages, the ease of retweeting, the tendency for other users to “pile on” (and the user anonymity, which tends to encourage pile-ons) to polarise American public debate.

    Trump was forced off Twitter after the Capitol Hill insurrection of January 6 2021. So he came back with his own platform, TruthSocial, where he can also make the rules. And now he uses the platform to make foreign policy, trumpeting his positions (which can change with bewildering speed) on TruthSocial well before they can be announced by the White House press team, which often has to scramble to catch up.

    When Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan penned his famous phrase: “The medium is the message” in his groundbreaking 1964 study, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, he meant to say that media form and content are not as distinct from one another as one might think and that the form of a medium of communication can shape society as much as its content. In Donald Trump’s use of social media, we are seeing this idea at work.

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

    – ref. How Trump plays with new media says a lot about him – as it did with FDR, Kennedy and Obama – https://theconversation.com/how-trump-plays-with-new-media-says-a-lot-about-him-as-it-did-with-fdr-kennedy-and-obama-248923

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Why Asos should be wary of banning customers returning unwanted goods

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nic Sanders, Senior Lecturer in Management and Marketing, University of Westminster

    ‘Now where’s that returns label?’ Cast of Thousands.Shutterstock

    Shopping for clothes online is a risky business. How do you know if that top will be a good fit, or those shoes will definitely be the right colour? One popular solution to this predicament is to order lots of tops and lots of shoes, try them on at home, and send back all the ones you don’t want – often at no cost.

    But that tactic can be expensive for the fashion retailer, which needs to pay for all those deliveries and returns. And now Asos, which sends millions of shipments every month, has started banning some customers for over-returning items – prompting something of a backlash.

    The response by the retail giant, which says it wants to maintain a “commitment to offering free returns to all customers across all core markets”, also raises questions about the sustainability of the online fashion business model which Asos helped to create.

    Many online retailers rely on the emotional highs of shopping. The excitement of placing an order, the anticipation of delivery, and the dopamine hit of unpacking a purchase is central to its popular customer experience.

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    Online shopping generally has thrived on impulsive buying, with the option of returning items treated as a normal part of the process. Of course, even in the days before online shopping there would be customers who routinely returned items.

    But by digitising and simplifying the process, the likes of Asos have helped this to happen on a massive scale. Shoppers have become completely used to ordering multiple sizes or styles with the express intention of returning most of the items they receive. Their homes effectively become fitting rooms.

    And those customers could reasonably argue that online retailers often use digital strategies which encourage multi-item purchases.

    Some sites remind shoppers of recently viewed products and provide suggestions of similar items, for example. There may be are prompts and nudges towards clothes which are frequently bought together.

    Items are then sometimes temporarily reserved in a shopper’s basket for 60 minutes, creating a sense of urgency. Targeted emails and limited time offers drive bulging shopping baskets, encouraging more risk purchases and returns.

    Yet returned items carry a significant cost. They may be unfit for resale and ultimately disposed of, which beyond the financial burden, has an environmental price.

    In addition to creating landfill, each delivery and return has a carbon footprint. And although many younger consumers express support for sustainable practices, their buying behaviour continues to prioritise price and convenience.

    But free returns have become part of the online fashion industry landscape. Research suggests that customers are simply more likely to buy something if returns are free.

    And today’s tricky financial climate, marked by inflation and rising living costs will surely have made consumers even more cautious. Many will be reluctant to buy items that incur delivery and return costs.

    Shopping around

    Frustrations can then arise from unclear return policies, often buried in lengthy terms and conditions documents. Some of those banned by Asos say they were confused about the rules.

    Automated customer service systems offering generic responses may then leave shoppers with no clear way to challenge these decisions.

    Perhaps the wider issue here is that online shopping cannot fully replicate the benefits of shopping in store. In physical shops, customers can try on items before deciding.

    But online, this can’t happen, so returns become fundamental to the decision-making process. For cost-conscious shoppers, avoiding unnecessary spending is essential. But if returns policies become harder to access, they may turn to other retailers which offer more certainty.

    Return to sender?
    A08/Shutterstock

    For example, retailers such as Zara and H&M, with a business model which mixes online convenience with a high street (or shopping mall) presence, offer the option to order online and then return in person.

    This hybrid (or “omni-channel”) model appears to be driving consumers to physical shops for a blended experience which provides convenience and helps reduce return costs.

    For Asos, doing something similar would require major investment (in bricks and mortar) and increased operational costs – so is perhaps an unlikely solution for the company.

    But to balance sustainability, cost and customer satisfaction, Asos could explore other options. These might include clearer, more visible communication regarding “fair use” policies and their consequences. It could aim for more human interactions and better dialogue with customers it plans to ban.

    Offering physical retail locations or return collection points to simplify the process and reduce the environmental impact and costs will provide customer flexibility. Overall, these areas will help create a better customer service experience.

    Ultimately, Asos and other similar online clothing retailers must evolve. With changing consumer expectations, a challenging economic climate and rising operational costs, the model that defined these retailers’ early success cannot remain unchanged.

    If they make adjustments, they may emerge stronger. If they do not, they risk sparking a customer exodus that would be hard to reverse.

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

    – ref. Why Asos should be wary of banning customers returning unwanted goods – https://theconversation.com/why-asos-should-be-wary-of-banning-customers-returning-unwanted-goods-259952

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Self determination theory: how to use it to boost wellbeing

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Fabian, Reader of Public Policy, University of Warwick

    Self-determination theory (SDT) is one of the most well established and powerful approaches to wellbeing in psychological research literature. Yet it doesn’t seem to have broken through into popular discussions about wellbeing, happiness and self-help. That’s a shame, because it has so much to contribute.

    A foundational idea in self-determination theory is that we have three basic psychological needs: for autonomy, competence and relatedness.

    Autonomy is the need to be in control of your own life rather than being controlled by others. Competence is the need to feel skilful at the tasks one values or needs to thrive. Relatedness refers to feeling loved and cared for, and a sense of belonging to a group that provides social support.

    If our basic psychological needs are met, then we are more likely to experience wellbeing. Symptoms include emotions such as joy, vitality and excitement because we’re doing the things we love, for example. We’ll probably have a sense of meaning and purpose because we live within a community whose culture we value.

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    Conversely, when our basic needs are thwarted we should see symptoms of illbeing. Anger, frustration and boredom grow when our behaviour is controlled by parents, bureaucrats, bosses or other forces that press our energies towards their ends instead of ours.

    Depression is liable when we our competence is overwhelmed by failure. And anxiety is often a social emotion that arises when we’re worried about whether our group cares for us.

    So we should cultivate our basic psychological needs – but how? You need to discover what you want to do with your life, what skills to become competent in, who to relate to and what communities to contribute to.

    Using motivation to find your way

    Here’s where the second foundational idea in SDT can be super helpful, as I explain in my new book, Beyond Happy: How to rethink happiness and find fulfilment. SDT proposes a motivational spectrum running from extrinsic at one end to intrinsic at the other. Finding out where you are on the spectrum for a certain activity or task can help you work out how to be happier.

    The more extrinsically motivated something is, the more self-regulation it requires. For example, when refugees flee their homes due to encroaching war, there is often a large part of them that wants to stay. Willpower is required to act. In contrast, intrinsically motivated behaviour springs spontaneously from us. You don’t need willpower to get stuck into your hobbies.

    Each type of motivation comes with different emotional signals and deciphering them can help us find what values, behaviour and groups suit us.

    The spectrum of motivation according to self-determination theory.
    CC BY-NC

    “Identified” motivation, for example, sits between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. It occurs when we value an activity but don’t inherently enjoy it. That’s why success in identified behaviour is usually met with a feeling of accomplishment or the warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you do the right thing, like going a bit out of your way to put your rubbish in a bin.

    In contrast, “introjected” motivation is where you value something contingent to the behaviour itself. Many of us loathe the gym, for example, but we want to be healthy. A child might not want to practice the cello, but they do want their parent’s approval.

    Because introjection is relatively extrinsic, it requires willpower, and probably a bit more of it than for identified behaviour. Completion of an introjected activity is often met with relief rather than accomplishment and little desire to keep going.

    Sometimes things that are dependent on introjected behaviour can make us unhappy. In teen dramas, for example, the protagonist often does something because they want to be popular, but when they win the approval of the cool kids they realise those kids are mean and lame.

    Why money, power and status won’t make you happy

    If that’s how you feel, you’ve found something inauthentic to you. Then there’s very little chance the introjected activity will lead to your wellbeing. In fact, SDT has identified some common values. You’ll recognise them immediately: popularity, fame, status, power, wealth and success.

    They’re extrinsic because they’re not peculiar to you. If you get rich doing the thing you love, that’s great, but many of us never even think about what we love because we’re too busy thinking about how to get rich.

    Extrinsic pursuits are ultimately bad for our wellbeing because they’re all poor substitutes for basic psychological needs. When our autonomy is thwarted by strict parents or disciplinarian teachers, we crave power. When we don’t know what sort of life to build and thus what skills we need competence in, we adopt other people’s notions of success instead.

    Extrinsic pursuits often emerge from a wounded place and a defensive reaction. When we’re lonely or feel unloved for who we are, for example, we might compensate by seeking fame or popularity. We’ll start talking about our accomplishments on LinkedIn, for example.

    The problem is that the people this attracts don’t value you specifically, only your power, status or money. You sense that if you ever lost those things, you would lose these people too.

    SDT can help you learn to listen to your emotions and interpret your motivations instead, and use them to guide you towards the values, activities and people that are right for you.

    For example, if you feel joyful and fulfilled when you solve a complex puzzle, perhaps consider a career that involves that activity, such as law or engineering. If such puzzles feel like torture, that’s a signal too. Perhaps something more relational or intuitive, like social work, would work better.

    When you pursue things that are authentic to you it will nourish your sense of autonomy. You’ll build competence in those activities because they’re intrinsically motivated. And you’ll form deep relationships with the people you encounter because you genuinely like each other. Wellbeing will follow.

    Mark Fabian 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. Self determination theory: how to use it to boost wellbeing – https://theconversation.com/self-determination-theory-how-to-use-it-to-boost-wellbeing-259829

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Dune director Denis Villeneuve will helm the next Bond – but what will his 007 be like?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By William Proctor, Associate Professor in Popular Culture, Bournemouth University

    Wiki Commons/Canva, CC BY-SA

    The James Bond franchise has lain dormant for four years, since Daniel Craig’s swansong as 007, No Time to Die. A legal quarrel between Bond’s producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, and Amazon Studios resulted in a stalemate and production on a new Bond film has remained in limbo.

    Nevertheless, speculation has been rife about which actor will next play Ian Fleming’s super-spy (the latest actor to be associated with the role is former Spider-man Tom Holland).

    When news surfaced in February 2025 that Amazon MGM (Amazon purchased MGM in 2021) had effectively become Bond’s new custodians, critics and audiences alike expressed concern – to put it lightly. Many feared that Jeff Bezos was more interested in stimulating Amazon Prime membership by driving multiple content streams through spin-offs and merchandising than protecting Fleming’s legacy.

    However, last week’s announcement that Denis Villeneuve has been appointed as the director of the 26th Bond film is a savvy move. It’s a declaration of intent that seeks to promote and market Amazon MGM as safe harbour for the Bond franchise.

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    The announcement positions the next era of Bond as a prestigious exercise helmed by “a cinematic master”, not a journeyman director. Villeneuve was previously offered the opportunity to direct No Time to Die, but turned the role down because of his commitment to the Dune films.

    By appointing Villeneuve, Amazon has managed to radically shift the public debate. Villeneuve is “much more than a technical director”, wrote Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw. “He is an alpha-grade auteur in the same league as Christopher Nolan.”

    Other critics have pointed to his rare ability to “combine blockbuster momentum (and ticket sales) with the finer, more nuanced sensibilities of a filmmaker always concerned with slowing down, honing in on character and theme”.

    Although Sam Mendes, director of Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), came with artistic status, Villeneuve is something different – a marquee name frequently described as an auteur.

    Villeneuve talks about his love for Bond.

    Since his transition from making mostly low-key independent films in his native Canada to his arrival in Hollywood with Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal (2013), Villeneuve has amassed an impressively eclectic filmography.

    He has proven that he is as comfortable shooting realistic crime thrillers (Sicario, 2015) and surrealist cinema that David Lynch would be proud of (Enemy, 2013), as he is with science fiction (Arrival, 2016, Blade Runner 2049, 2017, and the Dune films, 2021 and 2024).

    Villeneuve’s Bond

    Although Sicario may be the closest in terms of genre to the Bond films, establishing Villeneuve as a director who can expertly shoot action sequences, it is nevertheless difficult at this stage to conceptualise what a Villeneuve Bond film might be like.

    Some critics have suggested that the director’s cinematic resume, eclectic as it is, might not bode well for Bond. The Hollywood Reporter’s film critic Benjamin Svetkey, for instance, worries that Villeneuve’s “lugubrious, meditative filmmaking” is sorely lacking in humour – which could be fatal for 007. “A certain amount of wit and winking is critical to the character,” he claims.

    It is early days for Amazon MGM and Villeneuve. As yet, there is reportedly no treatment, no script, no writer and – more pointedly – no actor appointed to the role. Whatever happens, the 26th Bond film is likely to be a hard reboot that wipes the slate clean (again) after the fate of 007 in No Time to Die.

    Villeneuve’s choice for Bond is unlikely to be as cartoonish as Pierce Brosnan’s iteration.

    Although Villeneuve has said that he intends to honour tradition and that Bond is “sacred territory” for him, Bond’s capacity for revision and regeneration has been key to the franchise’s longevity.

    As socoiologists Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott argue in their seminal study, Bond and Beyond, the figure of Bond has over the past six decades “been differently constructed at different moments,” with “different sets of ideological and cultural concerns”.

    So what kind of Bond film Villeneuve ends up directing largely depends on the story and whichever actor is anointed as the next James Bond. It is doubtful that audiences will expect a campy pantomime Bond like Roger Moore, or a Bond with an invisible car, like Pierce Brosnan in the cartoonish Die Another Day (2002). Villeneuve’s choice of Casino Royale as his favourite 007 may provide a clue. But it is also unlikely that the director will be satisfied with slavishly repeating the past.

    William Proctor 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. Dune director Denis Villeneuve will helm the next Bond – but what will his 007 be like? – https://theconversation.com/dune-director-denis-villeneuve-will-helm-the-next-bond-but-what-will-his-007-be-like-260140

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Why frequent nightmares may shorten your life by years

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Timothy Hearn, Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics, Anglia Ruskin University

    Lightfield Studios/Shutterstock.com

    Waking up from a nightmare can leave your heart pounding, but the effects may reach far beyond a restless night. Adults who suffer bad dreams every week were almost three times more likely to die before age 75 than people who rarely have them.

    This alarming conclusion – which is yet to be peer reviewed – comes from researchers who combined data from four large long-term studies in the US, following more than 4,000 people between the ages of 26 and 74. At the beginning, participants reported how often nightmares disrupted their sleep. Over the next 18 years, the researchers kept track of how many participants died prematurely – 227 in total.

    Even after considering common risk factors like age, sex, mental health, smoking and weight, people who had nightmares every week were still found to be nearly three times more likely to die prematurely – about the same risk as heavy smoking.

    The team also examined “epigenetic clocks” – chemical marks on DNA that act as biological mileage counters. People haunted by frequent nightmares were biologically older than their birth certificates suggested, across all three clocks used (DunedinPACE, GrimAge and PhenoAge).

    The science behind the silent scream

    Faster ageing accounted for about 39% of the link between nightmares and early death, implying that whatever is driving the bad dreams is simultaneously driving the body’s cells towards the finish line.

    How might a scream you never utter leave a mark on your genome? Nightmares happen during so-called rapid-eye-movement sleep when the brain is highly active but muscles are paralysed. The sudden surge of adrenaline, cortisol and other fight-or-flight chemicals can be as strong as anything experienced while awake. If that alarm bell rings night after night, the stress response may stay partially switched on throughout the day.

    Continuous stress takes its toll on the body. It triggers inflammation, raises blood pressure and speeds up the ageing process by wearing down the protective tips of our chromosomes.

    On top of that, being jolted awake by nightmares disrupts deep sleep, the crucial time when the body repairs itself and clears out waste at the cellular level. Together, these two effects – constant stress and poor sleep – may be the main reasons the body seems to age faster.

    Your brain clears out waste when you sleep.
    Teeradej/Shutterstock.com

    The idea that disturbing dreams foreshadow poor health is not entirely new. Earlier studies have shown that adults tormented by weekly nightmares are more likely to develop dementia and Parkinson’s disease, years before any daytime symptoms appear.

    Growing evidence suggests that the brain areas involved in dreaming are also those affected by brain diseases, so frequent nightmares might be an early warning sign of neurological problems.

    Nightmares are also surprisingly common. Roughly 5% of adults report at least one each week and another 12.5% experience them monthly.

    Because they are both frequent and treatable, the new findings elevate bad dreams from a spooky nuisance to a potential public health target. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, imagery-rehearsal therapy – where sufferers rewrite the ending of a recurrent nightmare while awake – and simple steps such as keeping bedrooms cool, dark and screen free have all been shown to curb nightmare frequency.

    Before jumping to conclusions, there are a few important things to keep in mind. The study used people’s own reports of their dreams, which can make it hard to tell the difference between a typical bad dream and a true nightmare. Also, most of the people in the study were white Americans, so the findings might not apply to everyone.

    And biological age was measured only once, so we cannot yet say whether treating nightmares slows the clock. Crucially, the work was presented as a conference abstract and has not yet navigated the gauntlet of peer review.

    Despite these limitations, the study has important strengths that make it worth taking seriously. The researchers used multiple groups of participants, followed them for many years and relied on official death records rather than self-reported data. This means we can’t simply dismiss the findings as a statistical fluke.

    If other research teams can replicate these results, doctors might start asking patients about their nightmares during routine check-ups – alongside taking blood pressure and checking cholesterol levels.

    Therapies that tame frightening dreams are inexpensive, non-invasive and already available. Scaling them could offer a rare chance to add years to life while improving the quality of the hours we spend asleep.

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

    – ref. Why frequent nightmares may shorten your life by years – https://theconversation.com/why-frequent-nightmares-may-shorten-your-life-by-years-260008

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