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Category: Reportage

  • MIL-OSI Global: Financial firms are driving up rent in Toronto — and targeting the most vulnerable tenants

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Cloé St-Hilaire, PhD Candidate in Planning, University of Waterloo

    In recent years, Canadians have increasingly seen financial firms — such as private equity firms and real estate investment trusts (REITs) — buying up apartment buildings. The largest 25 financial landlords in Canada hold nearly 20 per cent of the country’s private, purpose-built rental stock.

    At the same time, Canada’s housing affordability crisis has exploded. A 2022 report found that in 93 per cent of Canadian neighbourhoods, a full-time minimum wage worker cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment.

    Many observers have connected this financialization of housing to rising unaffordability. But until recently, a lack of data has made it challenging to prove it.

    Our recent study, based on building-level rent and ownership data in the Greater Toronto Area, is the first to decisively show that financial firms charge higher rents and raise them more quickly than other landlords. We also found that financial firms raise rents most aggressively in lower-income areas with more racialized residents.

    Why does financialization raise rents?

    Financialization refers to the growing role of the finance sector in various parts of the economy. In the rental housing market, it involves the purchase of rental buildings by financial firms like asset managers, REITs and pension funds.

    These “financial landlords” treat housing as an investment product, not as a basic human need.



    Read more:
    Housing is both a human right and a profitable asset, and that’s the problem

    Financial landlords act differently from other landlords. Unlike smaller landlords, they are guided by the “shareholder value maximization” principle, which means their primary goal is to maximize returns for their shareholders.

    While smaller landlords are most likely also motivated by profit, they do not have a duty to external investors like financial firms do and they do not have access to the same strategies to manage their properties. Financial landlords have the scale and sophistication to pursue these profits in ways that smaller-scale landlords cannot.

    Research shows that financial landlords in Canada are associated with increased cost burdens for renters, higher eviction filing rates and higher rates of building disrepair. Our study adds to this evidence by showing they also charge higher rents.

    Financial firms openly promote higher rents

    Even before conducting our analysis, we had reason to believe financial firms would charge higher rents, in part because many of them have publicly said so.

    In a 2018 investor presentation, Minto REIT wrote that they charged “the highest in-place rent” among their public peers.

    Similarly, Centurion REIT published a report in 2020 featuring a graph demonstrating that its rent increases were outpacing both inflation and average rents.

    In a 2019 white paper, Canada’s largest private landlord, Starlight Investments, wrote about how their “value add strategy” for upgrading apartments sets them apart from other types of landlords. In the same publication, they reported increasing the monthly rent in one property by $411 — a 31 per cent increase.

    Financial firms charge the highest rent premiums

    Our analysis reveals that financial firms do indeed charge more.

    Our study compared building-level quarterly rent data to average rents from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for 1,602 buildings between 2022 and 2024.

    We found that when landlords advertise a unit to rent, they typically charge more than the average neighbourhood rent. We call this upcharge a rent “premium” — the dollar or percentage difference between the rent posted for an available unit and the average neighbourhood rent for a unit of the same size.

    We found that financial firms charged the highest premiums across the GTA, posting 44 per cent higher rents — or $670 more — than local averages. By comparison, non-financial chain landlords — those with multiple buildings but not classified as financial firms — charged a 30 per cent, or $477, premium.

    Meanwhile, smaller-scale owners owners of just a few buildings charged a smaller rent premium of 15-22 per cent. We found financial firms charged the highest premiums regardless of whether the building was brand new or in need of repairs.

    Algorithmic pricing and rent inflation

    One of the landlords with the highest rent premiums is private equity firm Woodbourne, which said they used RealPage’s YieldStar platform, an algorithmic pricing software.

    This software is at the centre of a lawsuit alleging more than a dozen landlords and property managers conspired to artificially inflate rents across Canada.

    The use of AI-driven pricing tools in Canada’s rental market is now under investigation by the Competition Bureau.

    Our study also found that, over time, financial firms raised rents more aggressively than other landlords. On average, they increased asking rents by five per cent — or $96 — every quarter. By comparison, smaller-scale landlords owning just one property raised asking rents by 3.6 per cent, or $59.

    Using a regression model, we demonstrated that out of all ownership types, financial ownership was the strongest predictor for higher rents and higher rent premiums. Using our model, we estimated that a tenant would pay 13 per cent more for their unit if it was owned by a financial firm instead of a single property owner.

    Low-income, marginalized tenants are exposed

    Our study also found that the highest rent premiums were being charged in Toronto’s “neighbourhood improvement areas.” These are areas the city has identified as having inequitable social and economic outcomes.

    While we found that all landlords charge higher premiums in these neighbourhoods, financial landlords were the most aggressive, charging a 49 per cent premium compared to 41 per cent elsewhere.

    We also identified a spatial connection between high rent premiums and the number of racialized residents in a neighbourhood: areas with higher rent premiums often had a greater percentage of racialized residents.

    These findings suggest that financial firms are complicit in driving gentrification in marginalized neighbourhoods, targeting areas with lower-income and racialized renters for the most aggressive rent increases.

    Reining in financial landlords

    While financial firms report on record breaking annual returns and “rental uplifts” of 15 per cent, Canada faces a dire housing affordability crisis.

    Financialization is detrimental to the right to adequate housing. We show that financialization is worsening affordability in Toronto: a trend that will continue, especially since financial landlords are the largest acquirers of suites in the city and the country’s largest landlords.

    To address this issue, we support recent policy recommendations aimed at reining in the power of financial landlords. These include better tracking of who landlords are, stricter tenant protections and more social housing.

    If left unchecked, financialization will continue to deepen the affordability crisis, with the greatest harms falling on those who can least afford it.

    Cloé St-Hilaire receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship). She previously received funding from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec.

    Martine August receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award.

    – ref. Financial firms are driving up rent in Toronto — and targeting the most vulnerable tenants – https://theconversation.com/financial-firms-are-driving-up-rent-in-toronto-and-targeting-the-most-vulnerable-tenants-255935

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Independence Hall, Gettysburg and – Epcot? How Reagan helped elevate Disney to America’s roster of honored patriotic sites

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bethanee Bemis, Museum Specialist, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

    First lady Nancy Reagan kisses Mickey Mouse as President Ronald Reagan and Minnie Mouse watch 20 bands marching in the unofficial inaugural parade at Disney’s Epcot Center on Memorial Day, May 27, 1985. Bettmann/Getty Images

    A presidential or political visit is one of the ways in which the United States marks places as uniquely important. A space meriting the pomp and circumstance that accompanies a president, or a place viewed as so particularly American that an aspiring president might want to have their picture taken there, takes on special status in American culture.

    Twelve of the last 14 presidents visited Philadelphia’s Independence Hall during their political careers. American politicians often visit sites of great importance to the national character, and Independence Hall is the location of both the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the drafting of the Constitution.

    The U.S. has many sacred civil spaces, places that the country looks to when celebrating or reflecting on American identity. Some of these places were established for the express purpose of serving these functions: the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol in Washington and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, built to commemorate the country’s westward expansion.

    Some of these places earn this designation through association with history: Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, sites of significant events in the American Revolution; the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, commemorating American deaths from the Japanese attack that sparked U.S. entrance into World War II; and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where local police in 1965 attacked and bloodied civil rights protesters, who ultimately crossed the bridge two weeks later under the protection of a federal court order.

    Still other places emerge through a sort of national consensus, taking on special status over time as Americans use them in ways that mark them with meaning.

    And while twelve of the last 14 presidents may have visited Independence Hall, the same 12 also visited some of the places often forgotten when accounting for holy civic sites: the Disney theme parks.

    Thousands attended presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s election eve rally at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Nov. 7, 2016.
    Joe Sohm, Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Record cold and a second chance

    In my book “Disney Theme Parks and America’s National Narratives: Mirror Mirror for Us All,” I explore how Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida, have become two of the most important spaces for the celebration and creation of American identity.

    One of the reasons for this is the legitimization a presidential visit bestows on a site. Forty years ago this month, Walt Disney World received a very special visitor.

    In January 1985, as President Ronald Reagan prepared to take the oath of office for a second time, temperatures in the Washington area dipped to record lows. The inauguration and some related festivities were due to take place outdoors, but conditions were severe enough to cause concern for the many thousands scheduled to participate. So the usual celebrations, including the popular Inaugural Parade, were canceled in favor of a smaller event indoors.

    Only a handful of the 25 high school marching bands that had traveled from places like Kentucky, Massachusetts and Michigan to play in the parade were able to perform for the president. That left thousands of students and their families disappointed.

    In a presidential history first, however, the Inaugural Bands Parade would get a second chance to march outside the ceremonial space of Washington at what could be called the nation’s other capital – Walt Disney World.

    In April 1985, Walt Disney World announced that it had partnered with Days Inn, Greyhound Bus Lines and Burger King to offer reduced price accommodations and food for about 4,000 students to enjoy a weekend at the theme park before performing in their own parade on Memorial Day, May 27.

    Not only would the bands get to play at Disney’s Epcot Center, but they would also be able to perform for the president, who flew from Washington to be there for this special parade.

    President George H.W. Bush at a Disney World 20th anniversary celebration marking his volunteerism initiative, on Sept. 30, 1991.
    Dirck Halstead/Contributor/The Chronicle Collection, Getty Images

    New site for American identity

    Memorial Day, the day of the parade itself, was warm and sunny. Disney visitors thronged the 1.2-mile parade route and waved American flags as they listened to patriotic songs. The parade was watched over by the president and first lady, Nancy Reagan. The equivalent of the president and first lady of Disney, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, joined them.

    This moment was remarkable for several reasons.

    First, Reagan had been one of the hosts of the show “Dateline Disneyland,” the live coverage of the opening of Disneyland in 1955 only 30 years before, when no one knew he would be the nation’s 40th president.

    Second, the visit marked an important moment in the recognition of the Disney theme parks as sites of American identity.

    Reagan went directly from laying wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, a treasured American tradition, to an appearance at Epcot, where in an economic policy speech to the crowd, he introduced a “new American revolution.” This second American revolution was announced not in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, but at the American Adventure pavilion in Orlando.

    The Reagans’ photo with Mickey – with Mickey dressed as Uncle Sam and Minnie in a colonial-style dress – captures the idea, I believe, that culturally Disney spaces are as legitimate as national parks or historic sites as places for the celebration of the American story.

    As longtime Disney cast member Terry Brinkoetter remembers, presidential visits like Reagan’s affirmed Disneyland and Walt Disney World as “places where people could learn and be inspired to continue our shared journey toward a more perfect union.”

    Disney parks have become stops on a secular pilgrimage made by presidents and ordinary citizens alike, places to understand what it means to be an American.

    Bethanee Bemis 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. Independence Hall, Gettysburg and – Epcot? How Reagan helped elevate Disney to America’s roster of honored patriotic sites – https://theconversation.com/independence-hall-gettysburg-and-epcot-how-reagan-helped-elevate-disney-to-americas-roster-of-honored-patriotic-sites-254919

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Coin by Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher wins the Dylan Thomas Prize – an expert from the judging panel explains why

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel G. Williams, Professor of English Literature, Swansea University

    Yasmin Zaher’s remarkable novel The Coin has won the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for writers under the age of 40.

    This is not a story that begins at the beginning. Instead, its narrator starts with dirt and an obsession with cleanliness, but suggests later that the coin of the title – an Israeli shekel that she accidentally swallowed on a family road trip in which her parents were killed in a car crash – would have been an equally appropriate place to begin.

    Long forgotten, the swallowed coin begins to make its presence felt, somewhere in her body, following her move to America. The narrator is a wealthy young Palestinian woman, teaching boys at a New York City middle school. Her wealth, however, is in the hands of a brother who controls her allowance. She responds by developing a scheme to resell luxury handbags with a homeless con-artist, known throughout as “Trenchcoat”.

    This is one of several attempts at shaping the world around her: she revels in her sexuality and ability to redefine herself through fashionable clothes and accessories; she teaches her class about black power and takes them on a trip to listen to the “dagger poems” of a black nationalist poet in New Jersey.

    I assume this poet is Amiri Baraka since they eat “Black Dada Nihilismus” burgers, a reference to his poem of the same name. But such acts of resistance, if not futile, are limited. Like the swallowed coin, the levers of control, whether material or psychic, lie out of reach as we witness the narrator’s gradual unravelling.

    It is perhaps appropriate that a novel set in New York should win the prize named after Swansea’s most famous poet. New York both enticed and frightened Dylan Thomas. It was the city in which he died. The city, also, in which he recorded the ground-breaking reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

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    In that story, as in his earlier Return Journey, his childhood self is a ghostly presence wandering among the “blitzed flat graves” of shops “marbled with snow and headstoned with fences”. The snow hides devastation. The destruction of the city that Thomas knew as a child. The 44 air raids mounted on Swansea between 1940 and 1943 killed 390 people. And it’s the similar loss of people and places, and the suffering in Gaza today, which Zaher’s novel examines.

    Palestine is a persistent and troubling presence in the The Coin. For Dylan the devastation of Swansea was a metonym for a wider world where civilians were increasingly the victims of war. His world is, regrettably, still ours in that sense. The Coin is a profound meditation on our contemporary world and our complicity in the destruction of another place and people.

    In a moving scene, the narrator recalls a Jewish friend, “a very gentle girl who dreamed of becoming a ballerina”. She lived in a house that once belonged to “a Palestinian family that had been expelled in 1948”. The friend tells her about two underground rooms in the garden. One of the rooms, “the poop room”, allows access to the second which contains “a big wooden chest full of treasures and gold”. The narrator keeps “thinking of that secret chamber off the shit room, the wooden chest inside, full of silverware and gold of the family who thought they would return.”

    The swallowed coin. The inaccessible allowance. The wooden chest full of treasures and gold. Unreachable currency functions as a powerful symbolic centre connecting the brief scenes and meditations that constitute this appropriately fragmented novel. Lost somewhere in the narrator’s entrails, removed from economic exchange, the coin belongs with the excrement and detritus of urban life, which is the object of the narrator’s disgusted obsessions.

    New York in this novel is a repository of failed circulation – the filth of the city’s streets offering a gothic underside to the endless flows of capitalism, frustrating the narrator’s obsessive attempts at keeping herself clean. Narratives and circulation end in the stasis of dirt. Palestinian history ends in dispossession. Swallowed coin, inaccessible allowance and a buried treasure chest are symbolic repositories of Palestinian traumatic memory.

    Zaher shows us how the novel form can still offer a unique way of understanding the world, of mapping our contemporary disorientation. It does this not by offering clarity, but by lingering in the spaces where movement, value and meaning break down. This is a novel about circulation – of money, of bodies and of meaning.

    The swallowed coin is itself a kind of resistance, a refusal to go along with the restless movement of capital that defines our world. The coin refuses liquidity and thereby refuses complicity; its removal from the economic system mimics a kind of muted protest. Beneath the novel’s often frenetic and energetic surface hides a resistant counter-politics of inaction.

    Daniel G. Williams was a judge of this years’ Dylan Thomas Prize.

    – ref. The Coin by Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher wins the Dylan Thomas Prize – an expert from the judging panel explains why – https://theconversation.com/the-coin-by-palestinian-writer-yasmin-zaher-wins-the-dylan-thomas-prize-an-expert-from-the-judging-panel-explains-why-257063

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How mindfulness therapy could help those left behind by depression treatment

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thorsten Barnhofer, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, School of Psychology, University of Surrey

    Yuri A/PeopleImages.com/Shutterstock

    For some people, depression is like an unwanted guest who moves in and refuses to leave. Even with therapy and medication, the heavy fog of low mood, exhaustion and hopelessness never fully lifts for long. For around 30% of people with depression, this is a daily reality.

    It’s not just a personal burden. Difficult-to-treat depression affects families, workplaces and communities – and carries a huge cost for society.

    In England, the NHS Talking Therapies programme is the first place many adults turn when they’re struggling with depression or anxiety. In 2023-24, it supported more than 1.26 million people. Yet, for all its reach, around half of those who complete treatment still feel depressed by the end. And if the therapy hasn’t worked, there are often no further options available.

    Most people in this situation are sent back to their GP. A small number may be referred to more specialist mental health services, but those are typically reserved for the most severe cases. That leaves a significant number of people in limbo – still unwell, but without a clear route to further care.

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    This is part of a wider problem in mental health services: the so-called “missing middle”. These are people whose needs are too complex for primary (GP) care, but not severe enough for secondary services. As a result, they fall through the cracks.

    For many of these people, medication is often the only treatment on offer. But our study, with colleagues, suggests that a different approach, using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), could offer a way forward.

    Promising results

    We worked with more than 200 patients who had completed NHS Talking Therapies but were still experiencing symptoms of depression. Half were offered an eight-week MBCT course, delivered in small online groups. The others continued with their usual care.

    MBCT blends traditional cognitive therapy (which aims to reduce negative thinking patterns) with intensive mindfulness training. Participants learn how to stay present, recognise harmful thought spirals early, and respond to difficult emotions with greater awareness and compassion. Most importantly, they gain skills they can use for the rest of their lives.

    The results were promising. People who took part in the mindfulness programme reported bigger improvements in their depressive symptoms than those who didn’t. Six months later, the benefits had not only lasted – they had consolidated and slightly strengthened.

    What’s more, those in the MBCT group used fewer health and social care services overall. The programme was also inexpensive to run, costing less than £100 per person. In a time when health systems are under extreme financial pressure, that’s a big deal. Our research suggests MBCT is not just effective, it’s cost-saving too.

    When depression doesn’t respond to standard treatment, it can upend lives. People may struggle to work, maintain relationships, or care for their families. Children are especially affected when a parent has long-term depression. Without the right support, things often get worse – and the costs, both personal and financial, continue to grow.

    MBCT is already being used for relapse prevention – and there is a trained workforce to deliver it. Consisting of just eight group-based sessions, it is accessible and designed to equip people with practical tools. We believe it can offer hope to those who do not benefit sufficiently from existing services, and should be made available to more people.

    Beyond the promise of MBCT itself, this research offers a wider message: we need to invest in psychological therapies for people in the “missing middle”. These are people who are often overlooked but stand to gain the most from targeted, practical support.

    In times of tight budgets, the idea that we can improve lives and save money is more than compelling – it’s necessary. This is a clear opportunity to improve outcomes, reduce strain on overstretched services, and help people move forward with their lives.

    Thorsten Barnhofer is the author of a book on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). He regularly provides workshops on mindfulness-based interventions. He is co-investigator of a programme grant evaluating an adapted MBCT course for adolescents experiencing depression and is among the investigators for the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit-funded trial described in this article.

    Barney Dunn receives funding from the National Institute of Health Research for mental health treatment trials at the University of Exeter, including the Research for Patient Benefit Funding for the RESPOND trial discussed in this article. He co-directs an NHS commissioned psychological therapies service, which delivers Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.

    Clara Strauss is co-lead for Sussex Mindfulness Centre (SMC), part of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and has received funding to conduct MBCT research from NIHR and other funders, funding to deliver MBCT courses and funding to train MBCT therapists within SMC.

    – ref. How mindfulness therapy could help those left behind by depression treatment – https://theconversation.com/how-mindfulness-therapy-could-help-those-left-behind-by-depression-treatment-256547

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Labour governments have always struggled with immigration – here’s what Keir Starmer could learn from them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Erica Consterdine, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Lancaster University

    The government has outlined its plans to reduce net migration to the UK. The proposals are generally restrictive: scrapping social care visas, tightening work visas, longer residency requirements, tougher English tests and restructuring student visas.

    While Reform’s recent success at the local elections hardened Keir Starmer’s rhetoric in announcing the changes, the thrust of this policy was to be expected. But will the political calculation pay off?

    Immigration has long been a headache for Labour. It is a topic that cuts across the party’s ideological factions – its protectionist roots, its universalist values, and its market-friendly third way leanings. Each of these calls for a different approach on immigration.

    Labour’s record on immigration is historically patchy. Previous Labour governments have been responsible for some of the most deplorable immigration acts, including the racially discriminatory 1968 act, which restricted non-white immigration in a betrayal of Kenyan Asians fleeing persecution.

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    The British public then was far more illiberal on immigration than it is today. Trade unions were historically anti-immigrant, perceiving foreign labour as a threat to wages and job displacement. Labour, like their Tory counterparts, mostly operated on a bipartisan consensus of limiting immigration, on the idea that this was better for cohesion.

    This is exemplified in the Hattersley equation (named for former MP Roy Hattersley), a bipartisan political consensus that lasted from the postwar years up until Thatcher’s government. The compromise was between restrictive immigration policy and liberal integration measures (the Race Relations Act) to appease Labour’s liberal base.

    New Labour embraced the Thatcherite, neoliberal agenda, with Tony Blair declaring that there is no alternative to globalisation and therefore immigration. Framing immigration as an economic good, and humanitarian mobility as the bogeyman, Labour’s regime radically transformed the immigration system from one of the most restrictive in Europe to one of the most liberal labour regimes. But this was never for the benefit of migrants – it was simply economic calculation.

    We know what happened next: the political battleground, the cursed net migration target, Brexit and the lurches to the right ever since. In opposition, Labour has never been able to resolve this.

    Starmer’s approach

    A sticking point since 2010 has been traditionally working-class Labour constituents, viewed as “left behind” due to globalisation, and who now make up the red wall. The narrative goes that these voters have drifted rightwards due to dissatisfaction with immigration.

    But overall, Labour voters are still more positive than Conservatives towards immigration. A regressive policy on migrant rights could lose Labour some of its voter base.

    What’s more, net migration is likely to decrease over Labour’s term anyway, due to changes made by the last government and the tailing off of unprecedented migration from bespoke humanitarian schemes, like the one for Ukrainians. Arguably, Starmer’s reforms weren’t strictly necessary.

    Starmer could have framed the same policies around a softer rhetoric, one that embraces multicultural Britain while making the case for reforming the labour market. The enemy could have easily been cast as the Conservative government that neglected investment in the people at the expense of global corporations.

    Data from the Institute of Public Policy Research suggests that the UK public has become softer on immigration, but they want fairness. The easy way out here was to praise the benefits that immigration can bring while emphasising the need for control to maximise those benefits.

    Denigrating the current system as a “squalid chapter” of history is playing to Reform voters – arguably a foolish move, given that evidence shows you can’t beat the far right at its own game.

    Will the proposals work?

    If these proposals do reduce migration, it will come at a high cost for the country, not least in the consequences for the higher education and social care sectors. It may even increase irregular migration, as more people go underground in their attempts to reach Britain.

    The crux of the government’s problem is promising to reduce immigration in a system dependent on labour market flexibility. The proposals would make the UK extortionately expensive for both applicants and the employers who sponsor them, and make it economically unviable for the sectors that rely on foreign labour to recruit.

    A more social democratic immigration policy would invest in training, skills and wages of domestic workforces, while providing rights to the migrants who already reside here.

    Labour’s policy does not do this. It curtails rights significantly, for example in the doubling of the waiting period to apply for the right to stay indefinitely, and the plans to review how the right to family life is applied. Both of these are arguably counterproductive to the aims of integration and out of step with other countries.

    The theory behind the government reforms is that migrant workers will be replaced by the economically inactive domestic labour force – a win-win. Aside from the suspect simplicity of this equation, it will require more than sticks on employers and migrants. It necessitates a radical overhaul of the system, the economic model and a more interventionist state to move towards a coordinated market economy, one with more organisation and regulation on the labour market.

    Despite the government’s significant majority, a disciplined cabinet and an infighting opposition, the government appears reluctant to make such dramatic change, wedded to the existing paradigms of neoliberal free markets in a quest for growth in stagnating economies. If it wants its plans to work, Labour will have to be bolder and provide carrots to go with the sticks.

    Erica Consterdine 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. Labour governments have always struggled with immigration – here’s what Keir Starmer could learn from them – https://theconversation.com/labour-governments-have-always-struggled-with-immigration-heres-what-keir-starmer-could-learn-from-them-256737

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: After another call with Putin, it looks like Trump has abandoned efforts to mediate peace in Ukraine

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

    After a two-hour phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on May 19, US president Donald Trump took to social media to declare that Russia and Ukraine will “immediately start negotiations” towards a ceasefire and an end to the war. He did, however, add that the conditions for peace “will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be”.

    With the Vatican, according to Trump, “very interested in hosting the negotiations” and European leaders duly informed, it seems clear that the US has effectively abandoned its stalled mediation efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

    It was always a possibility that Trump could walk away from the war, despite previous claims he could end it in 24 hours. This only became more likely on May 16, when the first face-to-face negotiations between Ukraine and Russia for more than three years predictably ended without a ceasefire agreement.

    When Trump announced shortly afterwards that he would be speaking to his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts by phone a few days later, he effectively mounted the beginning of a rearguard action. This was further underlined when, shortly before the Trump-Putin call, Vice-President J.D. Vance, explicitly told reporters that the US could end its shuttle diplomacy.

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    The meagre outcomes of the talks between Russia and Ukraine – as well as between Trump and Putin – are not surprising. Russia is clearly not ready for any concessions yet. It keeps insisting that Ukraine accept its maximalist demands of territorial concessions and future neutrality.

    Putin also continues to slow-walk any negotiations. After his call with Trump, he reportedly said that “Russia will offer and is ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement”, including “a possible ceasefire for a certain period of time, should relevant agreements be reached.”

    The lack of urgency on Russia’s part to end the fighting and, in fact, the Kremlin’s ability and willingness to continue the war was emphasised the day before the Trump-Putin call. Russia carried out its largest drone attack against Ukraine so far in the war, targeting several regions including Kyiv.

    There has been no let-up in the fighting since. And the fact that Putin spoke to Trump while visiting a music school in the southern Russian city of Sochi does not suggest that a ceasefire in Ukraine is high on the Russian leader’s priority list.

    A large part of the Kremlin’s calculation seems to be its desire to strike a grand bargain with the White House on a broader reset of relations between the US and Russia. It is signalling clearly that this is more important than the war in Ukraine and might even happen without the fighting there ending.

    This also appears to be driving thinking in Washington. Trump foreshadowed an improvement in bilateral relations by describing the “tone and spirit” of his conversation with Putin as “excellent”. He also seemed pleased about the prospects of “large-scale trade” with Russia.

    Abandoning European allies

    Trump is on record as saying that there would be no progress towards peace in Ukraine until he and Putin get together. But it is worth bearing mind that very little movement towards a ceasefire in Ukraine – let alone a peace agreement – occurred after the last phone call between the two presidents in February.

    Part of this lack of progress has been Trump’s reluctance to put any real pressure on Putin. And despite agreement in Brussels and preparations in Washington for an escalation in sanctions against Russia, it is unlikely that Trump will change his approach.

    In this context, the sequence in which the calls occurred is telling. Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had a short call before the former spoke with Putin. Zelensky said he told Trump not to make decisions about Ukraine “without us”.

    But rather than presenting Putin with a clear ultimatum to accept a ceasefire, Trump apparently discussed future relations with Putin at great length before informing Zelensky and key European allies that the war in Ukraine is now solely their problem to solve.

    This has certainly raised justifiable fears in Kyiv and European capitals that, for the sake of a reset with Russia, the US might yet completely abandon its allies across the Atlantic.

    However, if a reset with Russia at any cost really is Trump’s strategy, it is bound to fail. As much as Putin seems willing to continue with his aggression against Ukraine, Zelensky is as unwilling to surrender. Putin can rely on China’s continued backing while Zelensky can count on support from Europe.

    Supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine is essential for China to keep Moscow on side in its rivalry with the US. And for Europe, supporting Ukraine has become an existential question of deterring and containing a revisionist Russia hell-bent on restoring a Soviet-style sphere of influence in central and eastern Europe.

    In a world that has been in flux since Trump’s return to the White House, these are some of the emerging constants. And they make a US-Russia reset highly improbable.

    Even if it were to happen, it would not strengthen Washington’s position with Beijing. Walking away from Ukraine and Europe now will deprive the US of the very allies it will need in the long term to prevail in its rivalry with China.

    By abandoning his mediation between Moscow and Kyiv, Trump may have broken the deadlock in his efforts to achieve a reset with Russia. But getting this deal over the line will be a pyrrhic victory.

    Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

    – ref. After another call with Putin, it looks like Trump has abandoned efforts to mediate peace in Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/after-another-call-with-putin-it-looks-like-trump-has-abandoned-efforts-to-mediate-peace-in-ukraine-257021

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why do protestors use disruptive, confrontational tactics? New research shows they’re not just a last resort

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mete Sefa Uysal, Lecturer in Social & Political Psychology, University of Exeter

    HJBC/Shutterstock

    Public protests are on the rise globally, from climate marches and university occupations to roadblocks and mass political demonstrations. These actions may sometimes include confrontational tactics such as civil disobedience, disruption and, at times, violent resistance.

    At Columbia University in the US, for instance, pro-Palestine student protests recently captured global attention for their tactics. They ranged from non-confrontational actions such as gatherings and sit-ins to campus encampments and occupations aimed at disrupting daily activities, which eventually led to confrontations with police.

    Actions like these often spark debate. Are activists acting strategically, or simply reacting out of desperation and rage? Our new research sheds light on this question. Contrary to popular belief, people do not only turn to confrontational protest because they are desperate or lack political alternatives.

    Confrontational protests are frequently portrayed negatively. They are often associated with extremism, disorder, or desperation. So it’s long been a mystery why people choose such confrontational forms of protest, especially given more conventional options like petitions or authorised rallies offer broader public support and visibility.

    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.

    In our surveys of 3,833 people across three countries – Germany, Turkey and the UK – we found that people choose confrontational action when they believe it is effective and legitimate for achieving their group’s political goals.

    That said, in some protests, confrontational tactics may emerge spontaneously as a self-defence, driven by immediate threats. But it is not simply an emotional outburst or a last resort: it can be a strategic choice.

    This challenges a widely discussed idea in social and political psychology called the “nothing-to-lose” hypothesis. According to this view, people are driven to confrontational protest when they see non-confrontational action (such as voting, petitioning, or authorised marches) as ineffective. This is often because they have little political trust or are oppressed. Our studies ultimately tested this hypothesis.

    We found that most people rated non-confrontational actions as more effective than confrontational ones. But they still saw confrontational tactics as worthwhile if they also seemed effective and justifiable.

    Interestingly, we discovered that low political trust – a lack of belief that the political system works fairly – did not predict confrontational protest. In fact, it was only weakly linked to perceived effectiveness and legitimacy of such tactics.

    While previous theories suggested that people with nothing to lose would be the ones most drawn to radical action, our findings paint a more complex picture. People don’t necessarily need to lose all faith in the political system before considering disruptive protest. Rather, they judge whether a specific tactic will advance their cause and align with their collective moral values.

    Just Stop Oil protestors with hands glued to the frame of da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
    wikipedia, CC BY-SA

    We also found that when people think that protests are more likely to be met with state violence, they are more likely to view confrontational tactics as legitimate and effective. In other words, when crowds foresee push-back, they recalibrate their strategies rather than withdrawing altogether from activism.

    Constructive disruption

    This research matters now more than ever. From climate movement and pro-Palestine rallies in many countries to anti-government and pro-democracy protests in the US, Turkey, Serbia and Argentina, we are witnessing a global wave of protest crowds.

    Understanding what drives people to disruptive and confrontational actions can help both policymakers and the public make sense of protest in today’s divided world. This may be a better option than moralising about good versus bad forms of protests, which serves to silence and criminalise disruptive and confrontational actions.

    The former UK home secretary Suella Braverman labelled climate protesters “extremists” and pro-Palestinian protests “hate marches”. She also proposed harsher crackdowns. But such an approach is only likely to make the protests more disruptive.

    Similarly, several government responses to UK parliamentary reports on protest policing distinguish “right to peaceful protest” from any kind of disruptive and confrontational activism. They also highlight that the legal definition of “serious disruption” has been widened.

    But viewing all disruptive protests as being outside of legal boundaries is likely to create pushback among activists and limit the potential constructive social influence of such protests.

    We argue that it’s time to rethink how we talk about confrontational and disruptive protests. Rather than viewing them as irrational, extreme or born of despair, we should understand it as part of a wider repertoire of political action.

    Here, labelling a set of protests through binary, moralised terms can lead to overlooking and silencing a crucial and effective protest strategy: constructive disruption. Constructive disruption relies on carefully balancing non-violent but disruptive actions. This can apply pressure for change while signalling positive intent that encourages a conciliatory response to protest.

    As a group of social psychologists recently showed, constructive disruption could generate support even among those who are most resistant.

    If we recognise that such tactics are often grounded in a sense of justice and strategic reasoning, we can move away from moralistic judgements and toward democratic dialogue by better engaging with the underlying demands that drive them.

    As protest movements continue to shape political life around the world, we believe it’s time to take their strategies seriously – not just their slogans.

    Mete Sefa Uysal received funding from the International Society of Political Psychology Scholar Under Threat Fund for a part of this study.

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

    – ref. Why do protestors use disruptive, confrontational tactics? New research shows they’re not just a last resort – https://theconversation.com/why-do-protestors-use-disruptive-confrontational-tactics-new-research-shows-theyre-not-just-a-last-resort-256716

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is this bad for my health? Kenyan study tests three types of warning labels on food

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Shukri F. Mohamed, Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center

    Diet-related health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity, are on the rise in Kenya, putting immense strain on already over-stretched public health systems. These conditions are often driven by high intake of sugars, salts and unhealthy fats. So it’s more critical than ever for consumers to understand what’s in the foods they’re buying.

    But making sense of nutrition information isn’t always straightforward, especially with the small, complex labels on the back of most packages.

    Our recent study examined whether front-of-pack food labels could help Kenyan consumers make better choices. We tested three types of label designs to see which one was most effective at helping people identify nutrients of concern and make healthier purchase decisions.

    Front-of-pack labels are simplified labels on the front of food packaging, designed to help consumers quickly assess healthiness through symbols, colours, or ratings. Examples include providing a “high in sugar” warning. In contrast, back-of-pack labels provide mandatory, detailed information such as full ingredient lists, nutrition facts and expiry dates typically in a standardised, text-heavy format on the back or side. Front-of-pack labels aren’t mandatory in all countries but back-of-pack labels are.

    Many countries, including Chile, Mexico and Israel, have already introduced mandatory warning labels. Research shows that there has been a positive impact on public health.

    Kenya is planning to take a major step in promoting public health by introducing a front-of-label system that will rank packed foods and non-alcoholic beverages based on their nutritional quality. Currently, packaged foods in Kenya are required to list ingredients, but this information can be hard to interpret. Front-of-pack labels will simplify this by highlighting key nutritional facts at a glance.

    The new system will also guide policies like restricting marketing of unhealthy foods to children and other measures to improve Kenya’s food environment. With rising obesity and diet-related diseases driven by a shift from traditional foods to processed options, changes are urgently needed.



    Read more:
    Marketing unhealthy food as good for kids is fuelling obesity in South Africa: how to curb it

    We have been involved in food environment policies research for the last five years. Our study emphasises the potential of front-of-pack food labels to affect consumers’ choices. Presenting clear information about a product’s nutritional content on the front of packaging could shift consumer behaviour towards healthier choices. In turn, this could lead to better public health outcomes.

    Testing three label types

    The study randomly assigned participants to different label types to compare the results fairly.

    The study involved 2,198 adults from four counties: the capital, Nairobi; Mombasa, the second largest city; Kisumu, which is home to the third largest city; and Garissa in north-eastern Kenya. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three label types: red and green octagon label (RG), red and green octagon with icons (RGI), and black octagon warning label (WL).

    Each label had a unique approach to highlighting sugars, fats and salts, which are the nutrients linked to diet-related diseases.

    • The Red-Green (RG) label used the colours red and green to show if a product had high or within-threshold levels of salt, sugar, fat, or saturated fat. Red meant the nutrients were above the set threshold, making that food unhealthy, while green meant it was below the set threshold levels.

    • The Red-Green with Icons (RGI) label worked like the RG label and it also included icons (like a spoon for sugar, a salt shaker for salt) and abbreviations (F for fat, SF for saturated fat) to make it easier to understand.

    • The black octagon Warning Label (WL) only appeared on products high in salt, sugar or fats, with a clear “high in” warning message to alert consumers.



    Read more:
    Why South Africa should introduce mandatory labelling for fast foods

    Each participant was asked to evaluate a sample of food products based on the label type they were shown. They were also asked about their purchase intentions and perceptions of the products’ healthiness.

    First, the study participants were shown images of packaged foods without any labels, and they were asked to answer questions about them. Then, study participants were shown the same images, but this time with a front-of-pack label added to the images. They were then asked the same questions again to see if the labels influenced their responses.

    Our results showed that warning labels were the most effective in helping consumers identify foods high in sugars, salts and fats. Participants who saw the warning labels were more likely to recognise unhealthy packaged food products and less likely to choose them, compared to those who used the Red and Green labels.

    In the same study we asked consumers about awareness and use of labels and we found that approximately two thirds (64.3%) reported being aware of food labels, while 55.0% reported reading nutrition information before purchasing products.

    Next steps

    Our research provides a strong evidence base to support policymakers in adopting mandatory front-of-pack labelling.

    Moving forward, establishing a clear regulatory framework that mandates simple, effective and standardised labelling systems is essential in reducing diet-related diseases. Ensuring these labels are easily understandable and prominently displayed on all packaged foods will empower consumers to make healthier choices, particularly those in low- and middle-income communities, who are at higher risk of poor dietary outcomes.

    Several law-making processes are in place that Kenya could use to implement mandatory labelling. But efforts are needed to identify and pursue the most effective route to effective legal change.

    Shukri F. Mohamed receives funding from the International Development Research Center.

    – ref. Is this bad for my health? Kenyan study tests three types of warning labels on food – https://theconversation.com/is-this-bad-for-my-health-kenyan-study-tests-three-types-of-warning-labels-on-food-253657

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Armed groups are invading Benin’s forest reserves. Why and what to do about it

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Papa Sow, Senior Researcher, The Nordic Africa Institute

    Benin’s Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, also called Pendjari National Park, and its surroundings have been targeted by non-state armed groups since 2019.

    Pendjari National Park, which covers approximately 4,800km², is one of five protected areas in Benin and is one of the main biodiversity conservation areas in west Africa. It has been a World Heritage Site since 2017.

    It is an integral part of the W-Arly-Pendjari complex, a transboundary biosphere reserve. The W Park is shared by Niger, Benin and Burkina Faso. Arly is located in Burkina Faso and Pendjari in Benin.

    The geographical configuration of the park facilitates all kinds of movements. Non-state armed groups attempt to exploit the porous borders to hide, stock up on natural resources — including gold and poached wildlife — or turn them into rear bases. Non-state armed groups take advantage of the park’s inaccessibility and its dense, wild forests to turn them into refuges.

    Bloody battles are underway to conquer special forest territories, which I call “protected jihadism areas” because of their use by armed movements claiming to be jihadists.

    As part of a study on the causes of migration in and from the northern parts of Benin Republic, close to Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo and Nigeria, I analysed the impact that these non-state armed groups were having on local populations and protected areas.

    I have been working on migration issues for about 25 years, and most of my observations in west Africa show that armed groups cause displacements in the sub-region. They contribute to a land and pastoral crisis, inconsistency in the distribution of forest resources, and a poorly integrated approach to the management of protected areas.

    I interviewed experts, local journalists, research assistants who I worked with during several years and displaced people in Benin and the west African sub-region about the direct impacts of smuggling, the depletion of natural resources, threats, and the use of violence in forest reserves.

    My observations are that the spiral of violence by non-state armed groups is dangerously disrupting the conservation and protection of the environment, increasing fear and insecurity among communities, and ruining the local economy, especially activities that revolve around the tourism sector.

    The violence

    On 8 January 2025, close to 30 soldiers were killed in the north of Benin, in Karimama near the “Triple Point” – an extensive area in the W-Arly-Pendjari complex where Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso meet.

    More than 120 soldiers were killed in the area between 2021 and 2024. There has also been carnage of the animals and plants.

    Since 2018, the Katiba Ansar-ul Islam, Serma, Sekou Muslimou and Abou Hanifa have been operating in Burkina Faso. They are considered jihadists – mostly under the aegis of Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), the Al Qaeda branch in the Sahel.

    Reasons for the proliferation of non-state armed groups in the park are multiple. It’s difficult for the state authorities to reach them there. There is the battle among non-state armed groups over the control of pastures and water bodies in the area. The park is also a place where non-state armed groups work with traffickers of adulterated gasoline from Nigeria, called Kpayo in Benin. They buy thousands of litres of gasoline from them every week at exorbitant prices.

    The Beninese state is is not very visible in some places despite the anti-terrorist Operation Mirador launched in 2021 with more than 3,000 soldiers. Since the first attack in 2019, more than US$120 million has been spent on security by Benin. But the number of attacks and kidnappings has multiplied.

    The main reason is the fragility of the security of the three state border areas.

    The non-State armed groups have their own crossing points that they control. Sub-regional collaboration between states is almost non-existent. The 2017 Accra Initiative, composed of five countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo – seems to have stagnated since some member states pulled out of the regional grouping Ecowas. A genuine regional force capable of countering the activities of these non-state armed groups is necessary.

    Benin is developing a military partnership with France. But the already tense diplomatic relationship between Benin and its neighbours – Niger and Burkina Faso – and the ambivalent policy of Togo, which “threatens” to join the Alliance of Sahel States – are not factors conducive to effective regional military cooperation.

    How people are being affected

    The park depends, in part, on funding generated by tourism and external partners. Conservation has been managed, since 2020, by the APN – Rangers African Parks Network. In 2024, it employed 337 eco-guards, including six expatriates. These eco-guards, on the front lines against non-state armed groups, are also being killed. Their work in gathering threat-related information is important to the Beninese Armed Forces.

    The activities of residents living near the park, transport networks and systems, and trekking services are the hardest hit. The work of NGOs that supported local populations has been reduced. Many NGOs have withdrawn from their activities. Small businesses are under threat.

    But the hardest-hit sector is tourism, which has affected the livelihoods of people. There has been a significant decline in the number of tourists. This directly affects local communities for whom tourism activities remain an important source of income.

    Tanguiéta, a town 70km from the border with Burkina Faso and not far from Pendjari Park, has been the worst affected due to a decline in income from accommodation and catering activities. Jobs have been lost.

    Migrants from the sub-region who had specialised in tourism entrepreneurship, including tour guides and artisans, have turned to other activities or left the town.

    What needs to be done

    The following measures could help protect the park and local people:

    • strengthen communication and surveillance capabilities

    • increase surveillance aircraft, helicopters and drones with the support of international donors and the Ecowas

    • train Beninese Armed Forces in conservation practices

    • increase support for community development projects

    • diversify activities to reduce dependence on tourism.

    Papa Sow 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. Armed groups are invading Benin’s forest reserves. Why and what to do about it – https://theconversation.com/armed-groups-are-invading-benins-forest-reserves-why-and-what-to-do-about-it-256136

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The UK might have accepted the idea of youth mobility with the EU, but it’s not happening any time soon

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Usherwood, Professor of Politics & International Studies, The Open University

    View Apart/Shutterstock

    The language might be dry, but the political shift is significant. Monday’s summit between the UK and EU leaders in London resulted in an acknowledgement of the “mutual interest to deepen our people-to-people ties, particularly for the younger generation”.

    This announcement is an important step forward in the creation of a youth mobility scheme between the EU and UK, even if it has required a name change to become a “youth experience scheme”. It is the first time that a British government has formally accepted this as something to negotiate and implement.

    However, there is scant detail about how it will work in practice and what the inevitable limits will be. While the permitted activities (“work, studies, au-pairing, volunteering, or simply travelling”) seem extensive, they are prefaced with the dreaded words “such as” – which means no one has actually agreed any of it.

    It was clear over a year ago that the basic models that the two sides have for youth mobility differ. The EU wants lengthy exchange periods and home tuition fees for students; the UK wants shorter stays, caps on numbers and retention of international fees for EU students at UK universities. The achievement of a deal would require at least one of them to move. This week makes this difference now the formal position, rather than showing whether movement is possible.

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    It’s possible that discussion of British participation in the Erasmus+ scheme for student mobility might be a partial stopgap, making exchanges within study programmes easier. However, the ambition for creating those deeper people-to-people ties will need more to make it meaningful.

    As the troubled history of this idea should indicate, there’s still a very long way to go before anyone gets to use the scheme in practice.

    The founding irony of a youth mobility scheme with the EU after Brexit is that it was originally a British idea. It was produced under Rishi Sunak following his conclusion of the Windsor Framework on Northern Ireland, when he was looking for areas to rebuild ties with Europe.

    In 2023, feelers had been put out to various EU member states about concluding bilateral deals with the UK. While there was some interest, the general feeling was that this was best handled at an EU level, to avoid any cherrypicking of countries by London.

    A summary of UK-EU youth mobility proposals.
    Simon Usherwood, CC BY-NC-SA

    In April 2024, the European Commission produced an ambitious proposal for a scheme. It put forward that 18- to 30-year-olds would be able to get a visa for up to four years for any purpose – work, study, travel – without quotas on numbers.

    Both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition had rejected the proposal out of hand. This was partly out of concerns over the potential impact on immigration figures and on student finances: the commission suggested EU students should be able to pay UK university fees. Mostly, however, it came from a desire not to be seen to make a big agreement with the EU that looked a bit like freedom of movement.

    To be clear, youth mobility is very much not freedom of movement. The latter implies no limits on entry, length or purpose of stay, as well as access to any kinds of public services as if you were a resident national. The former still means paying for a visa and strict limits on those services. But such legal points remain rather marginal in the British political and media debate.

    Since last year, there has been some to and fro, but largely behind closed doors and with the incoming Labour government continuing the line that such a scheme wasn’t on the cards. While the UK has a number of youth mobility schemes with countries around the world, these are typically limited by quotas and time (normally to two years) and require the person to be working or studying.

    Moving on?

    On the British side, Home Office concern about immigration figures is clearly still critical, especially in the context of the recent white paper that aims to cut back migration. Universities too have been vocal about the financial impact of losing tuition fee income from EU students.

    But on the EU side, the matter is seen very differently. To some extent, the interest is in maintaining the links with the UK, especially for young people that could gain from experiencing more of how their neighbours live. But much more than this is the sense that youth mobility has become something of a test for the British government.

    Labour’s return to office last July marked the unleashing of a significant diplomatic effort to engage with European counterparts and to talk up the value of working together. Youth mobility is a test of that value for some in European capitals, both in terms of being able to negotiate an agreement and of being able to sell it to the British public.

    The coming weeks and months will therefore be a key period if the reset is to result in more sustainably improved relations. Even if the basic shape of UK-EU relations isn’t about to shift, the ability for both sides to be able to talk and act constructively will still matter in delivering from that long list of summit ambitions.

    Simon Usherwood receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, as a Senior Fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative.

    – ref. The UK might have accepted the idea of youth mobility with the EU, but it’s not happening any time soon – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-might-have-accepted-the-idea-of-youth-mobility-with-the-eu-but-its-not-happening-any-time-soon-256628

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The DIY guide to checking how well you’re ageing

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marco Arkesteijn, Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Biomechanics, Aberystwyth University

    Ground Picture/Shutterstock

    A few years ago, a social media trend challenged people to see if they could stand up from the floor without using their hands. Now, it’s all about how long you can balance on one leg while brushing your teeth. These quirky “tests” promise to tell us how well we’re ageing – but do they really?

    When we talk about “ageing well”, we’re usually referring to both physical and psychological wellbeing. That includes feeling good (hedonic wellbeing) and finding meaning and purpose (eudaimonic wellbeing). Engaging in activities and monitoring ourselves plays a role in both.

    But ageing isn’t just about how strong your grip is or how fast you can walk. It’s a complex mix of physical, cognitive, emotional and social changes – and no single test captures the whole picture.

    Physically, one simple measure that gets a lot of attention is walking speed. According to one famous study, people who walk faster than 1.32 metres per second were less likely to die in the next three years – jokingly framed as “too fast for the Grim Reaper to catch”.

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    On the flip side, a slower walking speed – below 0.8 metres per second – can be a sign of sarcopenia, a condition involving reduced muscle mass, muscle strength and physical function. These are all important indicators of age-related decline.

    But while these markers are useful, they’re not easy to measure at home. Most research relies on specialist equipment and your local GP probably doesn’t have a grip-strength dynamometer sitting in a drawer. But they could time how long it takes you to stand up and sit down five times from a chair.

    How to do a DIY MOT

    So, what can you realistically do to track your own ageing?

    To truly understand how you’re ageing, it helps to think beyond physical health. Mental sharpness, emotional resilience and social connection matter just as much. One helpful idea is to assess your cognitive fitness, which includes skills like attention, memory and flexibility.

    Here are some cognitive tests you can try at home:

    Trail making test: connect numbers and letters in sequence (1, A, 2, B, etc.) and time how long it takes. This measures your ability to switch between tasks.

    Stroop task: challenges your ability to ignore competing information. Try saying the colour of a word, not the word itself – like saying “red” when you see the word “blue” printed in red ink. It’s harder than it sounds!

    Dual-task challenge: walk at your normal speed while counting backwards from 100 in threes. If your walking speed changes significantly, it could indicate cognitive strain.

    These kinds of tasks test how well your brain handles competing demands – a key ability that becomes even more important as we age. This skill is known as cognitive flexibility, and it helps you adapt to changing situations, switch between tasks and manage distractions.

    Trying out these tests is great, but how do you know if you’re improving? After all, when you have spent time trying to improve your walking speed, or Stroop ability – or even rubbing your head, patting your belly while saying the Finnish alphabet out loud – it’s important to know if you are seeing benefits.

    Some measures, like single-leg stance, can vary wildly from day to day – or even hour to hour. You might get better just from repeating it, which doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ageing better, just that you’ve practised.

    Others, like grip strength, change very slowly even with regular strength training. And some improvements are task-specific: getting better at the trail making test doesn’t necessarily make you sharper at doing Wordle.

    That’s why it helps to complete the test a few times at the start, then retest yourself once a month or so – again, doing it a couple of times – to track any improvements. Cognitive changes may be slower to notice than physical ones, so regular checks can help reveal progress over time.

    More of a puzzle than a test

    There’s no single test or score that can capture how well you’re ageing. Think of it more like a jigsaw puzzle. Physical health, mental agility, emotional balance, social connection – they all matter, and they all interact. And, of course, even if you perform well now, some changes in the future may be beyond your control. No test can fully predict what lies ahead.

    At the end of the day, maybe the best sign of ageing well isn’t how fast you walk or how long you can stand on one leg – it’s how you feel about your life. Are you feeling engaged, content, connected?

    Tools like the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience can help you take stock of your emotional wellbeing. This short, 12-question survey asks about your everyday feelings – from joy and calm to sadness and frustration – offering insight into both the pleasurable (hedonic) and meaningful (eudaimonic) sides of wellbeing.

    Ageing well isn’t about beating a stopwatch or acing a memory test. It’s about knowing yourself – your body, your mind and your values – and making small, meaningful changes that help you feel more you.

    So, go ahead, stand on one leg if you like. But don’t forget to check in with your brain, body, emotions and your sense of purpose too.

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

    – ref. The DIY guide to checking how well you’re ageing – https://theconversation.com/the-diy-guide-to-checking-how-well-youre-ageing-256297

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How to tackle new strains of potato blight and avoid another great famine

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By David O’Connor, Associate Professor, School of Chemical Sciences, Dublin City University

    A new aggressive potato blight strain was detected in Wales and eastern Scotland earlier this year. The strain, identified as EU 46, can withstand certain fungicides, making it harder to control. It serves as a stark reminder that nearly 175 years after Ireland’s great famine, this destructive pathogen continues to evolve and endanger crops around the world.

    Each year, farmers lose an estimated US$6–7 billion (£4.5-5.2 billion) worth of crops due to this disease. In Europe alone, direct losses and control costs amount to over €1 billion (£800 million) annually. That includes the cost of expensive fungicide sprays that farmers rely on for protection.

    In developing countries, the stakes are even higher. Many smallhold farmers lack resources for intensive disease management. In Uganda, potato blight can destroy up to 100% of a farmer’s crop, endangering livelihoods and local food security.

    Just as in the Irish famine, dependence on a single crop is risky. When blight strikes these vulnerable communities, the consequences can be devastating.

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    After decades of research, blight remains hard to defeat, partly due to the pathogen’s remarkable adaptability. Over the years, Phytophthora infestans (late blight) has repeatedly evolved new genetic strains that overcome both chemical fungicides and the resistant potato varieties bred to fend it off.

    The newly identified EU 46 strain is just one example of how quickly blight can develop resistance. In this case, tolerating a key fungicide and showing reduced sensitivity to others.

    Meanwhile, environmental changes and global trade create opportunities for wind-blown spores to migrate into new regions. All of this means farmers must remain vigilant; what worked against blight last year might not work today.

    After the Irish famine of the 1840s, science eventually identified its microscopic culprit and ways to fight it, but innovation didn’t stop there. Today, researchers and farmers are enlisting cutting-edge technology to stay ahead of blight.

    One promising tool is real-time spore detection. Devices like the SwisensPoleno, a monitor developed in Switzerland, can constantly scan the air on farms and spot signs of P. infestans spores as they appear.

    In Ireland, I’m leading a project testing this technology out on farms. These sensors rely on advanced imaging and AI to tell blight spores apart from other particles, giving farmers an early warning so they can act before the disease spreads.

    Potato blight is caused by a pathogen called Phytophthora Infestans.
    Elena Masiutkina/Shutterstock, CC BY-NC-ND

    Equally, new rapid DNA diagnostics can detect blight more quickly than traditional lab tests which take days to identify new strains. Portable testing kits are bringing diagnostics to the field. My colleagues and I have developed a simple in-field test (like COVID-19 lateral flow tests) that detects specific blight strains from a crushed leaf or air samples in under 30 minutes.

    Such tests not only confirm the presence of blight but can tell if the strain is one known to resist certain fungicides. This information allows farmers to choose the right treatment immediately, targeting the pathogen’s weaknesses and avoiding wasted effort.

    Farmers are also using data and computer modelling to anticipate outbreaks of the disease allowing them to act before it can takes hold. Sophisticated forecasting systems crunch weather data (temperature, humidity, rainfall) and spore counts to predict when and where blight is likely to strike next.

    By pinpointing high-risk periods, these models help schedule fungicide applications more strategically – only when needed, rather than on a fixed calendar. This not only cuts costs and environmental damage by reducing unnecessary sprays, but also slows down resistance development in the pathogen.

    Digital tech can help farmers detect crop diseases like potato blight quickly and accurately.
    Andrii Medvediuk/Shutterstock

    A global fight

    Defeating potato blight demands international efforts. There’s no wonder drug or magic gene that can eliminate this ever-changing pathogen. Like other experts, I advocate for an integrated pest-management approach.

    This combines cultural practices (like crop rotation and destroying infected plant debris) alongside biological controls (naturally occurring microbes, like beneficial bacteria, to help suppress the disease and limit its impact on crops). Judicious fungicide use to reduce the chances of blight taking hold is also effective.

    Using technology to leverage real-time data enables farmers to act on early warnings and apply treatments in a targeted way, preserving yields while minimising environmental damage.

    Investing in research and farmer education is essential too – from developing resistant potato breeds to training farmers in remote areas on how to use new diagnostic kits.

    The fight against potato blight is global by necessity. An airborne spore originating in one country can hop to another on the wind, as Europe’s experience shows. Likewise, breakthroughs in one lab or farm – whether a new sensor, a resistant potato variety, or an effective organic spray – need to be shared and supported across borders.

    International initiatives are putting the latest blight-fighting tools into the hands of farmers around the world. Supporting smallhold farmers in developing countries is especially vital, because they often face blight with limited resources and far more is at stake in terms of food security.

    In the mid-19th century, Ireland’s potato-dependent society was caught tragically off guard. Today, we have knowledge, technology and hard-earned lessons on our side.

    By embracing an integrated, technology driven strategy and ensuring it reaches farmers everywhere, that blight cycle could be broken. The continued emergence of strains like EU 46 is a warning, but also a call to action. One that we are now better equipped than ever to answer.

    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.

    David O’Connor receives funding from Research Ireland and Irish EPA.

    – ref. How to tackle new strains of potato blight and avoid another great famine – https://theconversation.com/how-to-tackle-new-strains-of-potato-blight-and-avoid-another-great-famine-256926

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Coin by Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher wins the 20th Dylan Thomas Prize – an expert from the judging panel explains why

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel G. Williams, Professor of English Literature, Swansea University

    Yasmin Zaher’s remarkable novel The Coin has won the 20th International Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for writers under the age of 40.

    This is not a story that begins at the beginning. Instead, its narrator starts with dirt and an obsession with cleanliness, but suggests later that the coin of the title – an Israeli shekel that she accidentally swallowed on a family road trip in which her parents were killed in a car crash – would have been an equally appropriate place to begin.

    Long forgotten, the swallowed coin begins to make its presence felt, somewhere in her body, following her move to America. The narrator is a wealthy young Palestinian woman, teaching boys at a New York City middle school. Her wealth, however, is in the hands of a brother who controls her allowance. She responds by developing a scheme to resell luxury handbags with a homeless con-artist, known throughout as “Trenchcoat”.

    This is one of several attempts at shaping the world around her: she revels in her sexuality and ability to redefine herself through fashionable clothes and accessories; she teaches her class about black power and takes them on a trip to listen to the “dagger poems” of a black nationalist poet in New Jersey.

    I assume this poet is Amiri Baraka since they eat “Black Dada Nihilismus” burgers, a reference to his poem of the same name. But such acts of resistance, if not futile, are limited. Like the swallowed coin, the levers of control, whether material or psychic, lie out of reach as we witness the narrator’s gradual unravelling.

    It is perhaps appropriate that a novel set in New York should win the prize named after Swansea’s most famous poet. New York both enticed and frightened Dylan Thomas. It was the city in which he died. The city, also, in which he recorded the ground-breaking reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

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

    In that story, as in his earlier Return Journey, his childhood self is a ghostly presence wandering among the “blitzed flat graves” of shops “marbled with snow and headstoned with fences”. The snow hides devastation. The destruction of the city that Thomas knew as a child. The 44 air raids mounted on Swansea between 1940 and 1943 killed 390 people. And it’s the similar loss of people and places, and the suffering in Gaza today, which Zaher’s novel examines.

    Palestine is a persistent and troubling presence in the The Coin. For Dylan the devastation of Swansea was a metonym for a wider world where civilians were increasingly the victims of war. His world is, regrettably, still ours in that sense. The Coin is a profound meditation on our contemporary world and our complicity in the destruction of another place and people.

    In a moving scene, the narrator recalls a Jewish friend, “a very gentle girl who dreamed of becoming a ballerina”. She lived in a house that once belonged to “a Palestinian family that had been expelled in 1948”. The friend tells her about two underground rooms in the garden. One of the rooms, “the poop room”, allows access to the second which contains “a big wooden chest full of treasures and gold”. The narrator keeps “thinking of that secret chamber off the shit room, the wooden chest inside, full of silverware and gold of the family who thought they would return.”

    The swallowed coin. The inaccessible allowance. The wooden chest full of treasures and gold. Unreachable currency functions as a powerful symbolic centre connecting the brief scenes and meditations that constitute this appropriately fragmented novel. Lost somewhere in the narrator’s entrails, removed from economic exchange, the coin belongs with the excrement and detritus of urban life, which is the object of the narrator’s disgusted obsessions.

    New York in this novel is a repository of failed circulation – the filth of the city’s streets offering a gothic underside to the endless flows of capitalism, frustrating the narrator’s obsessive attempts at keeping herself clean. Narratives and circulation end in the stasis of dirt. Palestinian history ends in dispossession. Swallowed coin, inaccessible allowance and a buried treasure chest are symbolic repositories of Palestinian traumatic memory.

    Zaher shows us how the novel form can still offer a unique way of understanding the world, of mapping our contemporary disorientation. It does this not by offering clarity, but by lingering in the spaces where movement, value and meaning break down. This is a novel about circulation – of money, of bodies and of meaning.

    The swallowed coin is itself a kind of resistance, a refusal to go along with the restless movement of capital that defines our world. The coin refuses liquidity and thereby refuses complicity; its removal from the economic system mimics a kind of muted protest. Beneath the novel’s often frenetic and energetic surface hides a resistant counter-politics of inaction.

    Daniel G. Williams was a judge of this years’ Dylan Thomas Prize.

    – ref. The Coin by Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher wins the 20th Dylan Thomas Prize – an expert from the judging panel explains why – https://theconversation.com/the-coin-by-palestinian-writer-yasmin-zaher-wins-the-20th-dylan-thomas-prize-an-expert-from-the-judging-panel-explains-why-257063

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: International Booker prize 2025: six experts review the shortlisted novels

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Vassallo, Associate Professor of French and Translation, University of Exeter

    From a longlist of 13, six novels have been shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker prize. Our academics review the finalists ahead of the announcement of the winner on May 20.

    Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda

    Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird offers us glimpses of one imagined future for earth and humanity.

    Its vision could be described as post-apocalyptic. After unspecified cataclysmic events, humans exist only in tiny, scattered communities and extinction seems imminent. But this is also a beautiful, if dreamlike, world and one in which humanity still has the potential for astonishing growth and change.

    Each chapter introduces something new and startling to the reader. Many of the tropes are familiar – cloning, superpowers, mutation, AI. Yet they are configured in unfamiliar ways and prompt reflections on the nature of humanity and our relationship with the rest of creation – as well as on time, religion and the possibility of an afterlife.

    Despite grappling with so many huge questions, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is an accessible and absorbing novel. And, although tragedy is never far away, there remains humour – and hope.

    Sarah Annes Brown, Professor of English Literature

    Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi

    Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp shines a light on the lives of Muslim women in rural India. In a bold and memorable translation from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, this quietly powerful collection of short stories opens up the intimate space of domestic rituals and family tensions.

    Mushtaq’s fervent advocacy of women’s rights is evident in the compassion with which she brings to life the women in the stories: from the lack of autonomy suffered by young girls forced into wedlock to the indignity of an older woman obliged to accept her husband taking a second wife or a widow whose son arranges a new marriage for her, the women’s lives are dictated by men.

    Heart Lamp is perhaps best summed up in the final story, “Be a Woman Once, O Lord!” Throughout these stories, Mushtaq invites us – and whichever male deity might be listening – to walk in the shoes of women overlooked by an unquestioned patriarchal hierarchy.

    Helen Vassallo, Associate Professor of French and Translation

    A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson

    Published in France in 2008 as Un chapeau léopard, A Leopard-Skin Hat is a novel about a friendship spanning 20 years between a woman called Fanny and a man known throughout only as “the Narrator”. He is not, though, the narrator of the novel. Rather, an unknown storyteller tells us how the Narrator sees Fanny gradually lose the fight against madness (the novel’s word) and, in the end, death.

    This is a novel about the mystery of other people, about how unknowable others are to us. It explores how we narrate to try to understand people who are not us, but whom we love. What is most extraordinary about Serre’s novel is the way it shows us two friends doing very ordinary things – going out for dinner, going on holiday, walking in the countryside and swimming in lakes – but shows us through this the strangeness and complexity of friendship, love and life.

    Leigh Wilson, Professor of English Literature

    Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes

    Perfection is a slim account of the way that time “disappears” for Anna and Tom, an expat couple living in Berlin as creative freelancers in the 2010s.

    Written in homage to Georges Perec’s Things: The Story of the Sixties (1965), the novel opens with an overbearing description of the items in their apartment, moving in and out of the characters’ dissatisfaction with the aesthetic, social, creative, economic and political routes open to them in 120 pages spanning a little over 10 years.

    As international elections, the European refugee crises and climate catastrophe dance in and out of their peripheral vision, Anna and Tom find neither satisfaction with their current moment nor successfully imagine a better one. As such, Latronico gently, but with an increasing sense of fatalism, considers the stagnation of a millennial creative class whose views on influence, status, power and happiness remain deeply linked to the “new emotions” of digital mediation.

    By Rachel Sykes, Associate Professor in Contemporary Literature and Culture

    On The Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara Haveland

    In On The Calculation of Volume, a woman, Tara Selter, finds herself trapped in an endlessly repeating day, November 18. Volume I, the first of seven books, recounts the first 365 days of this time loop, with Tara attempting to make sense of her predicament, to explain it to her husband – who is still bound by the normal rules of time – and to try to fix whatever has initiated this situation.

    As the novel continues, it becomes less focused on the novelty of the situation and more on the philosophical questions it raises: the alternate claustrophobia and liberation of replaying the same day; how our friends and partners sometimes feel like they inhabit a different reality; the way in which time pulls things and people apart; of the importance we place in the idea of “tomorrow”.

    What’s remarkable about Balle’s novel is how compulsive it is – even though we know time is standing still, we still want to know what will happen next.

    David Hering, Senior Lecturer in English Literature

    Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson

    Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boat is a slim, bruising novel that centres on a real horror: the drowning of 27 migrants in the English Channel in November 2021. In a small, inflatable craft, they reached out over crackling radio lines, asking for help that never came.

    Small Boat focuses not on the migrants themselves, but on a French coastguard operator who spent that night on the radio, fielding their calls for rescue. Delecroix’s brilliance lies in showing how violence at the border is carried out not by villains, but by workers. It was not evil that allowed those people to die in the water, it was a string of decisions made by people in warm rooms who believed they were doing their jobs.

    In a world ever more brutal towards those who flee war, hunger and despair, Delecroix’s novel is a necessary – and merciless – indictment. It reminds us that the shipwreck is not theirs alone. It is ours too.

    Fiona Murphy, Assistant Professor in Refugee and Intercultural Studies

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

    – ref. International Booker prize 2025: six experts review the shortlisted novels – https://theconversation.com/international-booker-prize-2025-six-experts-review-the-shortlisted-novels-255464

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: In ‘Paying For It,’ ex-lovers reimagine friendship, family and the meaning of sex work

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ummni Khan, Associate Professor, Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University

    Emily Lê and Daniel Beirne star in the film that sees director and multidisciplinary artist Sook-Lin Yee adapt the graphic memoir of her ex-lover, Chester Brown, for the screen. (Wilding Pictures & Hawkeye Pictures)

    The film Paying For It, Sook-Yin Lee’s live-action adaptation of cartoonist Chester Brown’s 2011 graphic memoir, reveals unexpected overlaps between paid sexual encounters and romantic relationships.

    Lee, a boundary-shattering artist working across film, music, acting and broadcast, has never shied away from taboo. With Paying For It, she takes on sex work, romance and the messy labour of chosen family by adapting her ex-lover’s memoir for the screen.

    ‘Paying For It,’ graphic memoir by Chester Brown.
    (Drawn & Quarterly)

    In my 2019 article “Chester Brown and the Queerness of Johns,” I analyze Brown’s original book, which traces his pivot from monogamy with Lee to regularly seeing sex workers in the late 1990s.

    Both a memoir and a manifesto, the book pairs accounts of paid sex with arguments for decriminalizing sex work, voiced through debates with friends and a detailed appendix. In my analysis, I frame Brown’s memoir as a queer intervention, one that disrupts heteronormative ideals of romantic relations, intimate exchanges and sexual propriety.

    Lee’s cinematic version of Paying For It affirms Brown’s stance, but filters the story through her own perceptions and snapshots of her love life. In doing so, she traces how she and Brown reinvented their relationship, while portraying his encounters with sex workers with nuance and care.

    Drawing on my research in sexuality — including scholarship on sex work, client surveillance and client regulation — I see the film as a defiant celebration of unconventional bonds between exes who remain best friends, and between clients and sex workers, where even purchased orgasms can carry moments of tenderness and mutual respect.

    Radical relationship honesty

    The film opens with Sonny (Lee’s fictional persona, played by Emily Lê) confessing to live-in boyfriend Chester (Daniel Beirne) that she’s falling in love with someone else.

    Rather than erupting in rage or jealousy, Chester remains composed. Together, they choose to see what might come next. As Sonny begins seeing other people, Chester continues living in the house and becomes privy to her romantic sagas, from the steamy beginnings to the bitter blowouts. To the bewilderment of his friends, he remains content with the arrangement.

    Eventually, Chester decides to pay for sex, a decision he shares with Sonny.
    What emerges is a portrait of creative kinship where two people refuse the usual scripts and choose radical openness instead.

    Unconventional bond

    Decades after the events depicted in the film, Lee has described Brown as her “best friend” and “as family.”

    Lee and Brown shape personal histories into overlapping narratives. That they’ve promoted the film together, and appeared in joint interviews and public discussions, suggests a sense of mutual trust at the heart of their collaboration.

    Probing the meanings of sex and intimacy

    Chester moves — and sometimes stumbles — through criminalized terrain, figuring out how to find sex workers, engage respectfully and follow the unspoken rules of the exchange. The film suggests sometimes it’s just sex for Chester, and at other times, the exchange carries an emotional connection for him.

    With one sex worker, Chester shares his real name and gifts a book he wrote about Louis Riel.

    Sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein has analyzed how sex workers are sometimes paid to offer their clients an erotic experience “premised upon the performance of authentic interpersonal connection.”

    In the film, a potential for emotional reciprocity between Chester and a sex worker becomes evident. Without giving too much away, by the film’s end we see how a casual and transactional beginning transforms into something more enduring for both parties.

    ‘Paying For It,’ trailer.

    Risks in both romance and sex work

    The film also highlights the risks running through both sex work and romance.

    Sex workers face threats of abuse, arrest, disrespect and boundary violations. The film gestures to these realities in a scene following a police raid on a sex work venue.

    But the film also shows Sonny’s relationships aren’t immune to danger either. One boyfriend’s rage nearly results in harm to her pet.

    Just as navigating risk is part of both romance and sex work, so too is grappling with the social forces that shape desire. In one pointed exchange, Sonny calls out Chester for only paying young, conventionally attractive women. He counters by asking why she doesn’t date Asian men, forcing them both to confront their own biases.

    Sex worker rights

    While Paying For It is deeply personal, it is also unmistakably political, especially in its implicit advocacy for sex worker rights.

    To navigate the ethical complexities of depicting sex work, Lee consulted with performer, activist and author Andrea Werhurn, who wrote a memoir about being a former escort; Werhurn stars in the film as the sex worker Denise.

    Lee also interviewed Valerie Scott — one of the applicants who challenged Canada’s prostitution laws in the Bedford case.

    The film presents sex work as legitimate labour, highlighting the skills and emotional intelligence it demands. At the same time, it underscores how sex workers remain vulnerable to police harassment, violence and social stigma.

    Canada’s perverse laws on sex work

    The marginalized status of sex work, as dramatized in the film, is shaped by a legal system structured by moralism and hypocrisy.

    Set in the 1990s, Paying For It takes place at a time when Canada didn’t criminalize the sale of sex directly but prohibited nearly everything around it, including soliciting, working indoors and operating brothels.

    These contradictions pushed the industry underground, exposing sex workers to abuse, police harassment, sting operations and heightened health risks, while often branding them with criminal records.

    Sex work kept in the shadows

    In 2013, the Supreme Court’s Bedford decision struck down these provisions, ruling that they violated sex workers’ constitutional rights, most importantly, the right to security of the person.

    But the legal victory was short-lived. In 2014, the Conservative government introduced the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which criminalized the purchase of sexual services while ostensibly decriminalizing its sale.

    In practice, the model keeps paid sex in the shadows, where workers face ongoing risks, limited negotiating power and barriers to reporting abuse or working in safer indoor settings. What’s being protected isn’t sex workers, but a puritanical social order.



    Read more:
    Sex workers are left out in the cold by Ottawa’s unjust conviction amendments

    This puritanical approach also underpins the newly criminalized status of clients. In my chapter “From Average Joe to Deviant John,” I trace how western attitudes toward men who pay for sex evolved from a “boys will be boys” tolerance to a framework that pathologizes and vilifies them.

    Paying For It resists this framing. The film presents Chester as awkward but principled: a considerate client navigating desire in a criminalized and judgmental culture.

    The price of choosing love freely

    Paying For It offers an alternative kind of love story. It spotlights a relationship where former lovers honour the heart (their continued commitment to one another), the body (respecting each other’s sexual autonomy) and the mind (their willingness to question social norms).

    In this way, the film redefines “paying for it” not as a burden but as a conscious and liberating investment in diverse forms of love and intimacy.

    Ummni Khan 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. In ‘Paying For It,’ ex-lovers reimagine friendship, family and the meaning of sex work – https://theconversation.com/in-paying-for-it-ex-lovers-reimagine-friendship-family-and-the-meaning-of-sex-work-255294

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Meta’s Community Notes program is promising, but needs to prioritize transparency

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sameer Borwankar, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, McGill University

    Meta has changed its approach to fact-checking, moving away from platform-controlled moderation. (Shutterstock)

    Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has more than 3.35 billion combined monthly active users. Recently, Meta has changed its approach to fact-checking in response to criticisms of its role in circulating fake news and disinformation. The company frames its Community Notes program as a way to uphold free expression.

    Although Meta has not officially announced a launch date for Community Notes in Canada, interested users can join the waitlist via Meta’s Community Notes page.



    Read more:
    Meta shift from fact-checking to crowdsourcing spotlights competing approaches in fight against misinformation and hate speech

    The initiative was first launched in the United States, and will be expanding globally. Meanwhile, X (formerly Twitter) has already experimented with a similar program, with mixed results. The experience of X’s Community Notes (previously known as Birdwatch) underscores that both platforms and regulators must take an active role in refining these programs.

    Meta has the opportunity to learn from four years of Community Notes evolution at X and improve upon its shortcomings. This involves adjusting features, addressing algorithmic biases and ensuring that they function as effective tools rather than mere symbolic gestures.

    CBC reports on Meta ending its fact-checking program.

    Community-driven moderation

    X launched Birdwatch in January 2021 when it was known as Twitter. Marketed as a way to broaden the range of voices beyond platform-based and centralized fact-checking efforts, the program aimed to curb the spread of misinformation through community-driven moderation.

    Over time, the team refined many of its features based on feedback from pilot participants and internal research. When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he implemented major changes, including a rebranding of the program’s name.

    Community Notes operates on the principles of crowdsourcing, a method proven effective in various domains. Research has shown that groups of users can collectively identify low-quality news sources and misleading content.

    On X, users participating in the Community Notes program contribute additional context to posts in the form of notes. They can also rate others’ contributions. Notes that receive supportive ratings from a diverse group of users become publicly visible. Once approved, they appear directly beneath the original post, providing added context for the broader audience.

    However, even if a post is widely deemed misleading by Community Notes contributors, the platform does not take action against the post itself or the individuals who spread misinformation. Instead, the program relies solely on surfacing user-generated context rather than the company moderating content.

    Positive impact?

    Preliminary research suggests that the Community Notes program has had a positive impact on curbing the spread of misinformation on the platform. Recent work shows that when a note is attached to a post, authors often voluntarily retract their posts by deleting them.

    On the content creation aspect, participation in the program appears to influence user behaviour: contributors tend to adopt a more measured tone, reducing extreme sentiment in their writing after engaging with the system.

    One of the most notable strengths of X’s Community Notes is its transparency. Since the program’s inception, X has provided public access to both the data and the algorithms that determine which fact-checks are displayed.

    This open-source approach has allowed researchers — both within and outside the company — to study the program and propose improvements. This stands in contrast to the recent trend of social media platforms rolling back data-sharing partnerships.

    Prior to Musk’s acquisition, X also had a dedicated team researching the impact of the program. Early changes to the program were shaped by feedback from participants and internal research.

    For example, in November 2021, X introduced anonymity for fact-checkers to prevent trolling and harassment. This decoupling of roles between content creators and fact-checkers has had a positive effect, reducing the risk of retaliation and fostering a more positive content creation by the participants of the program.

    Groups of users can collectively identify low-quality news sources and misleading content.
    (Shutterstock)

    Challenges and limitations

    Despite its potential, X’s Community Notes program faces several significant challenges, including its low popularity among users. Meta now has an opportunity to address these shortcomings from the outset.

    One of the biggest concerns is manipulation by co-ordination. Given the presence of organized troll networks on social media, there is a high risk that co-ordinated groups could misuse the program to flag legitimate content as misinformation.

    To counteract this, X implemented a consensus-based approach, where a note is only made visible if users with diverse viewpoints agree on its accuracy.

    While this system appears sound in theory, in practice it has led to a severe lack of approved notes as less than nine per cent of submitted notes reach the general audience. Many contributions never gain visibility, often due to insufficient ratings from diverse users.

    Another limitation of the consensus approach is that the algorithm must first recognize diverse viewpoints, which are not always straightforward. Social media platforms operate across hundreds of countries, where political, cultural and social divisions can be complex and nuanced. In such cases, enforcing consensus among a diverse audience may be highly unreliable and require reassessment.

    Shifting responsibility

    There is also the risk that Community Notes serve as a smokescreen, allowing platforms to shift responsibility away from active misinformation management. Since taking over X, Musk has laid off more than 80 per cent of the company’s Trust and Safety team.

    This included members of the Community Notes team, leaving critical gaps in oversight and research. Meta’s recent move to distance itself from third-party fact-checkers suggests a similar retreat from proactive intervention.

    Legal frameworks across different countries add further complications. Although Community Notes contributors remain anonymous to the public, it is unclear how platforms will respond if governments demand access to contributor identities.

    The Wikipedia legal case in India serves as a cautionary example of how platforms may be pressured into compliance. In September 2024, the Delhi High Court issued a contempt-of-court notice to Wikipedia over the site’s delay in providing identifying information about edits.

    No real consequences

    Finally, these programs are further weakened by the platforms’ explicit assurance that they will not take enforcement action based on Community Notes outcomes. Without real consequences for those spreading misinformation, the program risks being a symbolic effort rather than an effective tool for content moderation.

    Overall, there is hope that Meta’s Community Notes program can be effective, but its success will depend on continuous experimentation and improvement. The company must prioritize transparency to rebuild public trust and ensure the program does not become another performative gesture.

    Regulators also have a crucial role in holding platforms accountable, ensuring that data from these programs remains accessible to independent researchers and that the algorithms determining which notes are displayed are fair and unbiased.

    Without these safeguards, Community Notes risks becoming yet another tool that platforms use to shift responsibility rather than a meaningful solution to misinformation.

    Sameer Borwankar receives funding from SSHRC.

    – ref. Meta’s Community Notes program is promising, but needs to prioritize transparency – https://theconversation.com/metas-community-notes-program-is-promising-but-needs-to-prioritize-transparency-248324

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Do photons wear out? An astrophysicist explains light’s ability to travel vast cosmic distances without losing energy

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jarred Roberts, Project Scientist, University of California, San Diego

    Light, whether from a star or your flashlight, travels at 186,000 miles per second. Artur Debat/Moment via Getty Images

    My telescope, set up for astrophotography in my light-polluted San Diego backyard, was pointed at a galaxy unfathomably far from Earth. My wife, Cristina, walked up just as the first space photo streamed to my tablet. It sparkled on the screen in front of us.

    “That’s the Pinwheel galaxy,” I said. The name is derived from its shape – albeit this pinwheel contains about a trillion stars.

    The light from the Pinwheel traveled for 25 million years across the universe – about 150 quintillion miles – to get to my telescope.

    My wife wondered: “Doesn’t light get tired during such a long journey?”

    Her curiosity triggered a thought-provoking conversation about light. Ultimately, why doesn’t light wear out and lose energy over time?

    Let’s talk about light

    I am an astrophysicist, and one of the first things I learned in my studies is how light often behaves in ways that defy our intuitions.

    The author’s photo of the Pinwheel galaxy.
    Jarred Roberts

    Light is electromagnetic radiation: basically, an electric wave and a magnetic wave coupled together and traveling through space-time. It has no mass. That point is critical because the mass of an object, whether a speck of dust or a spaceship, limits the top speed it can travel through space.

    But because light is massless, it’s able to reach the maximum speed limit in a vacuum – about 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second, or almost 6 trillion miles per year (9.6 trillion kilometers). Nothing traveling through space is faster. To put that into perspective: In the time it takes you to blink your eyes, a particle of light travels around the circumference of the Earth more than twice.

    As incredibly fast as that is, space is incredibly spread out. Light from the Sun, which is 93 million miles (about 150 million kilometers) from Earth, takes just over eight minutes to reach us. In other words, the sunlight you see is eight minutes old.

    Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to us after the Sun, is 26 trillion miles away (about 41 trillion kilometers). So by the time you see it in the night sky, its light is just over four years old. Or, as astronomers say, it’s four light years away.

    Imagine – a trip around the world at the speed of light.

    With those enormous distances in mind, consider Cristina’s question: How can light travel across the universe and not slowly lose energy?

    Actually, some light does lose energy. This happens when it bounces off something, such as interstellar dust, and is scattered about.

    But most light just goes and goes, without colliding with anything. This is almost always the case because space is mostly empty – nothingness. So there’s nothing in the way.

    When light travels unimpeded, it loses no energy. It can maintain that 186,000-mile-per-second speed forever.

    It’s about time

    Here’s another concept: Picture yourself as an astronaut on board the International Space Station. You’re orbiting at 17,000 miles (about 27,000 kilometers) per hour. Compared with someone on Earth, your wristwatch will tick 0.01 seconds slower over one year.

    That’s an example of time dilation – time moving at different speeds under different conditions. If you’re moving really fast, or close to a large gravitational field, your clock will tick more slowly than someone moving slower than you, or who is further from a large gravitational field. To say it succinctly, time is relative.

    Even astronauts aboard the International Space Station experience time dilation, although the effect is extremely small.
    NASA

    Now consider that light is inextricably connected to time.
    Picture sitting on a photon, a fundamental particle of light; here, you’d experience maximum time dilation. Everyone on Earth would clock you at the speed of light, but from your reference frame, time would completely stop.

    That’s because the “clocks” measuring time are in two different places going vastly different speeds: the photon moving at the speed of light, and the comparatively slowpoke speed of Earth going around the Sun.

    What’s more, when you’re traveling at or close to the speed of light, the distance between where you are and where you’re going gets shorter. That is, space itself becomes more compact in the direction of motion – so the faster you can go, the shorter your journey has to be. In other words, for the photon, space gets squished.

    Which brings us back to my picture of the Pinwheel galaxy. From the photon’s perspective, a star within the galaxy emitted it, and then a single pixel in my backyard camera absorbed it, at exactly the same time. Because space is squished, to the photon the journey was infinitely fast and infinitely short, a tiny fraction of a second.

    But from our perspective on Earth, the photon left the galaxy 25 million years ago and traveled 25 million light years across space until it landed on my tablet in my backyard.

    And there, on a cool spring night, its stunning image inspired a delightful conversation between a nerdy scientist and his curious wife.

    Jarred Roberts receives funding from NASA.

    – ref. Do photons wear out? An astrophysicist explains light’s ability to travel vast cosmic distances without losing energy – https://theconversation.com/do-photons-wear-out-an-astrophysicist-explains-lights-ability-to-travel-vast-cosmic-distances-without-losing-energy-252880

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Nonprofit news media leaders are struggling to stop leaning on the foundations that say they should branch out more

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Katherine Fink, Associate Professor of Media, Communications, and Visual Arts, Pace University

    If the basket falls, at least there are some other eggs on hand that might not break. Iryna Veklich/Moment via Getty Images

    You’ve probably heard the adage about not putting all your eggs in one basket.

    It’s an especially meaningful one for newspapers. For decades, they relied heavily on advertising revenue. That arrangement stopped working about 20 years ago, as audiences moved online and advertisers followed. News media outlets moved online as well, but they found themselves in a losing battle for advertising dollars against new digital competitors such as Craigslist, Facebook and Google. One-third of U.S. newspapers have closed in the past two decades, most of them local.

    As their income from ads and subscriptions has dwindled, some news organizations that used to rely mainly on ad revenue, such as The Salt Lake Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, have become nonprofits – opening the door to other sources of revenue. And interest in launching news organizations as nonprofits has been growing. Meanwhile, some for-profit media outlets have begun to obtain some philanthropic support and ask for donations from readers and subscribers.

    I’m a journalism studies researcher and a former journalist myself. To better understand how news leaders were thinking about their future in this ever-evolving landscape, I researched the fundraising approaches of local nonprofit news outlets across the U.S.

    I interviewed 23 local news leaders about their fundraising strategies and their views on the best way to balance their sources of funding in the long term. What I found is that nonprofit news media outlets are finding it necessary to pursue multiple streams of revenue, including from foundations, in the search for sustainable business models. But the ideal revenue mix may look different for each organization.

    Foundations are footing half the bill

    Foundations, especially the Knight Foundation, have become major supporters of nonprofit news media in recent years. According to the Institute for Nonprofit News, foundations provided about half of all revenue for nonprofit news media in 2023. Another 29% came from individual donations. And 17% came from ads and other sources of earned, rather than donated, revenue.

    Money raised through grants from foundations can arrive in larger amounts and be more predictable than advertising revenue. But it often comes with strings attached. For example, in exchange for a grant, a media outlet might be pressured to adjust its editorial priorities or adopt specific technologies.

    The nonprofit news leaders I interviewed also said foundations tend to be more interested in starting new organizations than sustaining media outlets that are already up and running.

    Some foundations are now making that point clearer than ever by telling the nonprofit news organizations they have supported not to depend too much on them anymore. The Knight Foundation and other funders have informed potential applicants they must demonstrate they are pursuing revenue diversity as a condition for getting a grant.

    In other words, nonprofit media shouldn’t put all of their eggs in the foundation basket, either.

    Branching out

    The local news leaders I interviewed said they didn’t necessarily see having a variety of revenue sources as a path to sustainability. And adding new revenue streams comes with costs, such as hiring membership directors or advertising salespeople. Local news leaders said it’s hard to know whether making those investments will pay off.

    Still, under pressure to rely less on foundations and more on other types of revenue, they’ve been branching out in recent years. According to the Institute for Nonprofit News, foundations provided 57% of nonprofit news revenue in 2018; in 2024, that share had declined to 51%.

    But it’s not clear how much more revenue could come from other sources. Donations from readers tend to be provided in small amounts, so news organizations need a lot of them. And individuals donate to news organizations for a variety of reasons, so news organizations need to hire fundraisers who can craft a variety of messages. Getting large numbers of readers to donate is hard, however, because audiences for local news tend to be small.

    Nonprofit news organizations can also accept advertising. However, advertising is a taxable form of revenue, unlike donations. The IRS has also warned organizations that they can lose their tax-exempt status if they accept too much income that is “unrelated” to their nonprofit missions, including advertising.

    Pooling donor funds

    Ultimately, the nonprofit news leaders I interviewed say every type of revenue has its drawbacks. And the more complicated their revenue mix becomes, the more complicated their approach to fundraising has to be.

    Local news organizations already operating on shoestring budgets don’t have the capacity to complicate their fundraising, even though they say they agree with the general principle of revenue diversity.

    The nonprofit news leaders did have encouraging things to say about a newer fundraising trend: pooled donor funds. With pooled donor funds, multiple donors contribute to a single charity that serves as an intermediary that disburses that donated money to a particular kind of nonprofit.

    For the media, examples include the Institute for Nonprofit News’ NewsMatch and Press Forward, a coalition of 20 foundations.

    Pooled donor funds can be considered a form of revenue diversity, since they combine contributions from multiple sources and are used to persuade individual readers to “match” donations from the pooled funds with their own contributions. That can potentially insulate news organizations from major changes as grants from individual foundations come and go.

    Researching the role of ‘earned revenue’

    I plan to publish the results of another study soon. It’s about the role that “earned revenue,” meaning advertising, sponsorships and other entrepreneurial sources of money, is playing in the funding of nonprofit news media.

    The Institute for Nonprofit News has called it “perhaps the most underutilized revenue stream for nonprofit news.”

    But the nonprofit news leaders I interviewed had mixed feelings about earned revenue. In part, that was because of ambiguous guidance about how much of it news organizations may accept without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

    Given President Donald Trump’s recent threats against other nonprofits, including universities and hospitals, news organizations may be even more reluctant to test those limits.

    Katherine Fink 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. Nonprofit news media leaders are struggling to stop leaning on the foundations that say they should branch out more – https://theconversation.com/nonprofit-news-media-leaders-are-struggling-to-stop-leaning-on-the-foundations-that-say-they-should-branch-out-more-255821

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The one-size-fits-all diversity training model is broken – here’s a better alternative

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Radostina Purvanova, Professor of Management and Organizational Leadership, Drake University

    Diversity training is more effective when it’s personalized, according to my new research in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Psychology.

    As a professor of management, I partnered with Andrew Bryant, who studies social marketing, to develop an algorithm that identifies people’s “personas,” or psychological profiles, as they participate in diversity training in real time. We embedded this algorithm into a training system that dynamically assigned participants to tailored versions of the training based on their personas.

    We found that this personalized approach worked especially well for one particular group: the “skeptics.” When skeptics received training tailored to them, they responded more positively – and expressed a stronger desire to support their organizations’ diversity efforts – than those who received the same training as everyone else.

    In the age of social media, where just about everything is customized and personalized, this sounds like a no-brainer. But with diversity training, where the one-size-fits-all approach still rules, this is radical. In most diversity trainings, all participants hear the same message, regardless of their preexisting beliefs and attitudes toward diversity. Why would we assume that this would work?

    Thankfully, the field is realizing the importance of a learner-centric approach. Researchers have theorized that several diversity trainee personas exist. These include the resistant trainee, who feels defensive; the overzealous trainee, who is hyper-engaged; and the anxious trainee, who is uncomfortable with diversity topics. Our algorithm, based on real-world data, identified two personas with empirical backing: skeptics and believers. This is proof of concept that trainee personas aren’t just theoretical – they’re real, and we can detect them in real time.

    But identifying personas is just the beginning. What comes next is tailoring the message. To learn more about tailoring, we looked to the theory of jujitsu persuasion. In jujitsu, fighters don’t strike. They use their opponent’s energy to win. Similarly, in jujitsu persuasion, you yield to the audience, not challenge it. You use the audience’s beliefs, knowledge and values as leverage to make change.

    In terms of diversity training, this doesn’t mean changing what the message is. It means changing how the message is framed. For example, the skeptics in our study still learned about the devastating harms of workplace bias. But they were more persuaded when the message was framed as a “business case” for diversity, rather than a “moral justice” message. The “business case” message is tailored to skeptics’ practical orientation. If diversity training researchers and practitioners embrace tailoring diversity training to different trainee personas, more creative approaches to tailoring will surely be designed.

    Why it matters

    The Trump administration is leading a backlash against diversity initiatives, and a backlash to that backlash is emerging. This isn’t entirely new: Diversity has long been a contentious issue.

    Organizations like the Pew Research Center, the United Nations and others have consistently reported a conservative-liberal split, as well as a male-female split, around diversity. Diversity training has done little to bridge these gaps.

    For one, diversity training is often ineffective at reducing bias and improving diversity metrics in organizations. Many organizations treat diversity training efforts as a box-checking exercise. Worse, it’s not unusual for such efforts to backfire.

    Our research offers a solution: Identify the trainee personas represented in your audience and customize your training accordingly. This is what social media platforms like Facebook do: They learn about people in real time and then tailor the content they see.

    To illustrate the importance of tailoring diversity training specifically, consider how differently skeptics and believers think. One skeptic in our study – which focused on gender diversity training – said: “The issue isn’t as great as feminists try to force us to believe. Women simply focus on other things in life; men focus on career first.” In contrast, a believer said: “In my own organization, all CEOs and managers are men. Women are not respected or promoted very often, if at all.”

    Clearly, trainees are different. Tailoring the training to different personas, jujitsu style, may be how we change hearts and minds.

    What still isn’t known

    Algorithms are only as good as the data they rely on. Our algorithm identified personas based on information the trainees reported about themselves. More objective data, such as data culled from human resources systems, may identify personas more reliably.

    Algorithms also improve as they learn over time. As artificial intelligence tools become more widely used in HR, persona-identifying algorithms will get smarter and faster. The training itself needs to get smarter. A one-time training session, even a tailored one, stands less of a chance at long-term change compared with periodic nudges. Nudges are bite-sized interventions that are unobtrusively delivered over time. Now, think about tailored nudges. They could be a game changer.

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

    Radostina Purvanova 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 one-size-fits-all diversity training model is broken – here’s a better alternative – https://theconversation.com/the-one-size-fits-all-diversity-training-model-is-broken-heres-a-better-alternative-250495

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ancient pollen reveals stories about Earth’s history, from the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs to the Mayan collapse

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Francisca Oboh Ikuenobe, Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Missouri University of Science and Technology

    An electron microscope image, colorized, shows different structures of pollen grains, including sunflower, morning glory and primrose. Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility

    If you are sneezing this spring, you are not alone. Every year, plants release billions of pollen grains into the air, specks of male reproductive material that many of us notice only when we get watery eyes and runny noses.

    However, pollen grains are far more than allergens – they are nature’s time capsules, preserving clues about Earth’s past environments for millions of years.

    Pollen’s tough outer shell enables it to survive long after its parent plants have disappeared. When pollen grains become trapped in sediments at the bottom of lakes, oceans and riverbeds, fossil pollen can provide scientists with a unique history of the environments those pollen-producing plants were born into. They can tell us about the vegetation, climate and even human activity through time.

    Fossil pollen grains of Carya (hickory) have been found in southeastern Missouri that are millions of years old.
    Francisca Oboh Ikuenobe

    The types of pollen and the quantities of pollen grains found at a site help researchers reconstruct ancient forests, track sea-level changes and identify the fingerprints of significant events, such as asteroid impacts or civilizations collapsing.

    As palynologists, we study these ancient pollen fossils around the world. Here are a few examples of what we can learn from these microscopic pollen grains.

    Missouri: Pollen and the asteroid

    When an asteroid struck Earth some 66 million years ago, the one blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs, it is believed to have sent a tidal wave crashing onto North America.

    Marine fossils and rock fragments found in southeastern Missouri appear to have been deposited there by a massive wave generated by the asteroid hitting what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

    Among the rocks and marine fossils, scientists have found fossilized pollen from the Late Cretaceous and Early Paleocene periods that reflects changes in the surrounding ecosystems. The pollen reveals how ecosystems were instantly disrupted at the time of the asteroid, before gradually rebounding over hundreds to thousands of years.

    A University of Michigan-led study using data from the Chicxulub asteroid impact crater modeled how far the resulting tsunami likely would have reached. Ancient pollen grains and marine fossils found in southeastern Missouri and analyzed by scientists at the Missouri University of Science and Technology offer hard evidence of the flooding.
    Molly M. Range, et al., 2022, CC BY

    Pollen from gymnosperms, such as pines, as well as ferns and flowering plants, such as grasses, herbs and palm trees, all record a clear pattern: Some forest pollen disappeared after the impact, suggesting that the regions’ vegetation changed. Then the pollen slowly began to reemerge as the environment stabilized.

    US Gulf Coast: Sequoia pollen and sea-level rise

    Fossilized pollen grains have also helped scientists trace slower but equally dramatic changes along the eastern Gulf Coast states of Mississippi and Alabama.

    During the Early Oligocene, around 33.9 to 28 million years ago, sea levels rose and flooded low-lying conifer forests in the region. Researchers identified a distinct change in pollen released by Sequoia-type trees, giant conifers that once dominated the coastal plains.

    Scientists have been able to use those pollen records to reconstruct how far the shoreline moved inland by tracking the proportion of pollen grains in the geologic record to the rise of marine microfossils.

    The evidence shows how the sea flooded land ecosystems hundreds of miles from today’s coast. Pollen is a biological marker and geographic tracer of this ancient change.

    Western Australia: From swamp to salinity

    In Western Australia, sediment cores from the beds of Lake Aerodrome, Gastropod Lake and Prado Lake reveal how long-term drying can change the ecology of a region.

    During the Eocene, a period from about 55.8 million to 33.9 million years ago, lush swamp forests surrounded freshwater lakes there. That’s reflected by abundant pollen from tropical trees and moisture-loving shrubs and fern spores at that time. However, vegetation changed dramatically as the Australian tectonic plate drifted northward and the climate became more arid.

    The upper layers of the sediment cores, which capture more recent times, contain pollen mostly from wind-pollinated, salt- and drought-tolerant plants – evidence of shifting vegetation under growing environmental stress.

    Magnified images of fossil pollen studied in Australia. Clockwise from upper left, they are pollen from acacia, aglaonema and eucalyptus.
    Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe

    The presence of Dunaliella, a green alga that thrives in very salty water, alongside sparse pollen from plants that could survive dry environments, confirms that lakes that once supported forests became highly saline.

    Guatemala: Maya history and forest recovery

    Closer to the tropics, Lake Izabal in Guatemala offers a more recent archive spanning the past 1,300 years. This sediment record reflects both natural climate variation and the profound impact of human land use, especially during the rise and fall of the Maya civilization.

    Around 1,125 to 1,200 years ago, pollen from crops such as maize and opportunistic herbs surged, at the same time tree pollen dropped, reflecting widespread deforestation. Historical records show political centers in the region collapsed not long afterward.

    Quiriguá was an ancient Mayan city near Lake Izabal, where pollen studies show the rise in deforestation and the recovery. Quiriguá began to decline in the ninth century and was eventually abandoned.
    Daniel Mennerich/Flickr, CC BY-SA

    Only after population pressure eased did the forest begin to recover. Pollen from hardwood tropical trees increased, indicating vegetation rebounded even as rainfall declined during the Little Ice Age between the 14th and mid-19th centuries.

    The fossil pollen shows how ancient societies transformed their landscapes, and how ecosystems responded, providing more evidence and explanations for other historical accounts.

    Modern pollen tells a story, too

    These studies relied on analyzing fossil pollen grains based on their shapes, surface features and wall structures. By counting grains – hundreds to thousands per sample – scientists can statistically build pictures of ancient vegetation, the species present, their abundances, and how the composition of each shifted with the climate, sea-level changes or human activity.

    This is why modern pollen also tells a story. As today’s climate warms, the behavior of pollen-producing plants is changing. In temperate regions such as the U.S., pollen seasons start earlier and last longer due to warming temperatures and rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from vehicles, factories and other human activities.

    All of that is being recorded in the fossil pollen record in the sediment layers at the bottoms of lakes around the world.

    So, the next time you suffer from allergies, remember that the tiny grains floating in the air are biological time capsules that may one day tell future inhabitants about Earth’s environmental changes.

    Francisca Oboh Ikuenobe receives funding from the National Science Foundation, American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund, and International Continental Scientific Drilling Program. She is affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union Geological Society of America, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Association for Women Geoscientists, Geological Society of Nigeria, AASP – The Palynological Society, SEPM – Society for Sedimentary Geology, and The Paleontological Society.

    Linus Victor Anyanna receives research support from the National Science Foundation. He is a member of the Geological Society of America, AASP-The Palynological Society, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and the Geological Society of Nigeria.

    – ref. Ancient pollen reveals stories about Earth’s history, from the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs to the Mayan collapse – https://theconversation.com/ancient-pollen-reveals-stories-about-earths-history-from-the-asteroid-strike-that-killed-the-dinosaurs-to-the-mayan-collapse-254190

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: An 18th-century rebellion for liberty, equality and freedom − not in France or the United States, but Ireland

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of Charleston

    A sculpture in Wexford, Ireland, by Eamonn O’Doherty, called ‘Fuascailt,’ commemorates the 1798 rebellion. Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images

    Shortly before midnight on May 23, 1798, highwaymen just north of Dublin intercepted and set on fire a mail coach headed to Belfast.

    It was the signal meant to ignite revolution across all Ireland.

    At the time, Ireland was a kingdom within the state of Great Britain. The island’s three religious factions had long been divided. Families who belonged to the Anglican Church of Ireland made up the aristocratic landlords and colonial administrators. Presbyterians, concentrated in the north, boasted a robust middle class. But as “dissenters” from the Anglican church, they were second-class citizens.

    And most of the remaining 80% of the population, the “native” Catholics, were near-destitute farmers. For more than a hundred years, they had lived under debilitating penal laws meant to keep Catholics out of economic and political power.

    Portrait of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, painted by Hugh Douglas Hamilton.
    Gallery of the Masters via Wikimedia Commons

    A new organization, the Society of United Irishmen, was established in the early 1890s in Belfast, and chapters quickly spread to Dublin and across the country. Anyone could join, so long as they dreamed of making Ireland a republic, like the United States and France, where the people had dispensed with the monarch and ruled themselves.

    Catholics and Presbyterians flocked to the cause, and even a few Anglicans joined up. The handsome and charismatic Lord Edward Fitzgerald, an Anglican son of a duke, renounced his title and commanded the society’s militia.

    By 1798, a quarter of a million men, many armed with long-handled, iron-tipped pikes, awaited the summons.

    It was the last time Catholics and Presbyterians in Ireland would unite under one banner in a really meaningful way until 1998, when a majority of both factions signed on to the Good Friday Agreement.

    As an Irish studies scholar, I’d argue the nationalist movement was symbolized best by revolutionary Theobald Wolfe Tone, whose father was an Anglican tradesman and whose mother was born and raised a Catholic.

    “I am a Protestant,” Tone wrote in his most famous political pamphlet, but also “a lover of justice and a steady detester of tyranny.”

    Enlightenment ideals

    Ever since King Henry VIII severed his nation’s ties to Roman Catholicism in the 16th century, Irish Catholics had suffered for their faith. Their lands were confiscated. They couldn’t bear arms. They couldn’t run schools or build churches. Though the worst of these laws had been reformed by the end of the 18th century and a small Catholic middle class was emerging, they were still barred from political office.

    Inspired by the American and French revolutions, the United Irishmen wanted a secular republic that separated church from state. They professed the Enlightenment principles of equality, liberty and government by the people – and thought citizens had a duty to abolish any government destructive of their rights.

    Their creed was a secular catechism, often expressed in the form of a question-and-answer text:

    What is in your hand? It is a branch.
    Of what? Of the Tree of Liberty
    Where did it first grow? In America.
    Where did it bloom? In France.
    Where did the seeds fall? In Ireland.

    Transcending sectarian differences, these Irish patriots took green as the color of their national flag. Upon this field they imposed an ancient symbol of Ireland, the harp.

    The rebellion

    The English began to suspect a revolt, and in 1787 they decided to strike first, unleashing a brutal crackdown. Redcoats “dragooned” the country, ransacking and burning homes, and flogging and summarily executing suspects.

    The Irish still sing about it today in the ballad “The Wearing of the Green”:

    I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand,
    He said, “How’s dear old Ireland and how does she stand?”
    “She’s the most distressful country that you have ever seen,

    They’re hanging men and women for the wearing of the green.”

    Young Wolfe Tones singing ‘The Wearing of the Green.’

    Most of the United Irishmen’s leaders, including Fitzgerald, were arrested or killed in the dragnet. As a result, when the signal finally came, the flaming mail coach proved a fizzle rather than a rocket.

    Like guttering candles, the rebellion spent itself in uncoordinated risings at different times in different parts of the country. Help from France, which was then at war with Great Britain, came too little and too late. By October, Ireland’s revolution had been brutally suppressed.

    Historical memory

    Even before the conflict was over, aristocratic Anglican writers such as Sir Richard Musgrave spun the rebellion as an uprising of disgruntled Catholics. Reprisal killings, like rebels’ massacre of government supporters in County Wexford, helped them portray the rebellion as a religious war: Catholics against Protestants.

    Cynical English policies further dissolved the Presbyterian-Catholic alliance. An “Act of Union” in 1800 rewarded Irish Presbyterians with full citizenship – not in an Irish republic, but in the Protestant, monarchical state of Great Britain.

    Catholics, still oppressed and impoverished, had yet to face their most difficult trial: An Gorta Mor, the potato famine of the 1840s. About a million people, nearly all of them Catholic, died of starvation or disease, and another 2 million emigrated. Ireland’s population was reduced by a third.

    Because Irish nationalism became synonymous with Catholic liberation, it was mostly Catholics who celebrated the memory of the United Irishmen. The “Fenians,” a nationalist brotherhood who fought for Irish independence in the 1860s, used the United Irishmen for inspiration. Their famous ballad “The Rising of the Moon” laments, “What glorious pride and sorrow/ Fill the name of Ninety-Eight!”

    A memorial in County Wicklow to mark the 200th anniversary of the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion.
    Hugh Rooney/Eye Ubiquitous/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Religious states

    On Easter Monday 1916, Irish republicans rose up again in Dublin, beginning the revolution that would lead, finally, to Irish independence. One portion of their forces, the Citizen Army, raised the old United Irishmen’s banner above their headquarters in Dublin, Liberty Hall.

    But when the Irish got their “Free State,” they did not build the kind of secular republic envisioned by the United Irishmen. The new country was a decidedly Catholic nation.

    The nation’s new flag, the Irish tricolor, included green for Catholics, orange for Protestants and white to represent peace between them. But it was a largely empty gesture. Today only about 4% of the population of the Republic of Ireland identify as Protestant, while another 15% say they have no religion.

    A parade in Dublin in 1948 commemorates the 150th anniversary of the 1798 rebellion.
    Independent News And Media/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

    That’s mostly because in 1922 the British carved out an enclave of six northern counties where most of the Presbyterians and many Anglicans lived. This political entity, “Northern Ireland,” stayed united to England. Protestants outnumbered Catholics 2-to-1, and the minority faced widespread discrimination.

    Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Catholics in Northern Ireland began a campaign for equal rights in 1968. But when their acts of civil disobedience were met with violence, peaceful protest devolved into “the Troubles,” a guerrilla war to get the British out.

    Making peace

    A ceasefire was called in 1994, not long before the bicentennial of Ireland’s 1798 rebellion.

    To coincide with the anniversary, historian Kevin Whelan published an influential book, “The Tree of Liberty,” which emphasized the 1798 rebellion’s Enlightenment foundation. Catholics and Protestants together, Whelan argued, had fought to construct a secular nation based on equal rights.

    In 1998, people all over the country commemorated the rebellion, though the sectarian divisions and the violence of the Troubles loomed large.

    Almost exactly 200 years after the United Irishmen rose up, the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voted in favor of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Though Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom today, the treaty secured the main goal of the 1798 rebellion: equal rights and self-determination for all citizens, no matter their religion.

    Joseph Patrick Kelly 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. An 18th-century rebellion for liberty, equality and freedom − not in France or the United States, but Ireland – https://theconversation.com/an-18th-century-rebellion-for-liberty-equality-and-freedom-not-in-france-or-the-united-states-but-ireland-249817

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Teens of any age who drink alcohol with their parents’ permission drink more as young adults, new research shows

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bernard Pereda, Doctoral Student in Psychoolgy, University at Buffalo

    Parents play an important role in teaching their children about alcohol. StockPlanets/E+ via Getty Images

    Children and teenagers of any age who sip or taste alcohol with their parents’ permission are more likely to engage in risky drinking in young adulthood. That was the finding of a new study my colleagues and I published in the journal Addictive Behaviors.

    In the study, we examined questionnaires filled out annually between 2009 and 2018 by 387 adolescents starting at age 11 and an accompanying parent. Topics included history of child and parent alcohol use, beliefs about alcohol and rules about alcohol in the home. The questionnaires also asked adolescents if they ever drank alcohol with their parents’ permission, even just a few sips – and if yes, at what age they first did so.

    We analyzed whether drinking alcohol with parental permission during adolescence predicted alcohol outcomes in young adulthood, at ages 18 to 20. These outcomes included how often and how much they drank, alcohol use disorder symptoms and negative consequences such as self-injury and regretting things said while drinking.

    Then, we looked at whether the age at which this practice began affected likelihood of risky drinking. In our analysis, we also accounted for factors such as peer alcohol use, parental alcohol use and personality.

    In our sample, drinking with parental permission began anywhere from age 5 to age 17, but typically started around age 12. We found that about 80% of the adolescents responded that they had drunk alcohol with parental permission. That number is higher than in some other studies, most likely because our study had a wide age range. Research exploring this topic generally focuses on younger adolescents, who are less likely to be allowed to try alcohol by their parents, but this practice becomes more common as adolescents get older.

    We found that adolescents were more likely in young adulthood to drink more often and in greater amounts in families that allowed this practice compared with those that did not. The risk of experiencing symptoms of alcohol use disorder and negative consequences from drinking in young adulthood was also higher. Importantly, the age at which drinking with parents’ permission began did not change this effect.

    Alcohol slows down the brain by affecting brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.

    Why it matters

    Parents play a critical role in teaching their children about alcohol. The family is often the first context in which children are introduced to alcohol, either by trying it themselves or by observing others drinking. In the U.S., studies suggest that 30% to 40% of children under age 13 try alcohol with parental permission.

    Many parents view this as a protective strategy, believing that it reduces curiosity about alcohol and provides an opportunity to supervise safe drinking. Yet studies from several research groups have found that parents providing alcohol, even just sips or tastes, actually increases rather than decreases future drinking.

    Our study is the first to explore whether the age that trying alcohol with parental permission makes a difference for increased potential of later alcohol use. Overall, the findings can inform public health messages explaining the risks of allowing adolescents to try alcohol at any age.

    Why might parental permission to sip or taste alcohol increase risk? Some scientists have speculated that it may promote the belief that parents approve of underage drinking and shift children’s attitudes and beliefs to be more pro-alcohol.

    Ongoing and still unpublished work in our lab supports this. Namely, it strengthens their beliefs in the potential positive outcomes of drinking, such as making parties more fun, and weakens their beliefs in the potential negative outcomes, such as getting in trouble.

    What still isn’t known

    Future studies can shed light on whether regularly sipping and tasting alcohol in adolescence is more risky than doing it just once or twice.

    Additionally, how harmful the practice is may depend on adolescents’ personalities as well as the context in which parents allow it. For example, it may be particularly harmful for children who are inclined to seek out novel and exciting experiences. On the other hand, in highly structured settings such as religious events, it may be less risky.

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

    Bernard Pereda 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. Teens of any age who drink alcohol with their parents’ permission drink more as young adults, new research shows – https://theconversation.com/teens-of-any-age-who-drink-alcohol-with-their-parents-permission-drink-more-as-young-adults-new-research-shows-254789

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How 3D printing is personalizing health care

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anne Schmitz, Associate Professor of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Stout

    A girl, wearing her prosthetic hands, walks to school in Uruguay. AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico

    Three-dimensional printing is transforming medical care, letting the health care field shift from mass-produced solutions to customized treatments tailored to each patient’s needs. For instance, researchers are developing 3D-printed prosthetic hands specifically designed for children, made with lightweight materials and adaptable control systems.

    These continuing advancements in 3D-printed prosthetics demonstrate their increasing affordability and accessibility. Success stories like this one in personalized prosthetics highlight the benefits of 3D printing, in which a model of an object produced with computer-aided design software is transferred to a 3D printer and constructed layer by layer.

    We are a biomedical engineer and chemist who work with 3D printing. We study how this rapidly evolving technology provides new options not just for prosthetics but for implants, surgical planning, drug manufacturing and other health care needs. The ability of 3D printing to make precisely shaped objects in a wide range of materials has led to, for example, custom replacement joints and custom-dosage, multidrug pills.

    Better body parts

    Three-dimensional printing in health care started in the 1980s with scientists using technologies such as stereolithography to create prototypes layer by layer. Stereolithography uses a computer-controlled laser beam to solidify a liquid material into specific 3D shapes. The medical field quickly saw the potential of this technology to create implants and prosthetics designed specifically for each patient.

    One of the first applications was creating tissue scaffolds, which are structures that support cell growth. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital combined these scaffolds with patients’ own cells to build replacement bladders. The patients remained healthy for years after receiving their implants, demonstrating that 3D-printed structures could become durable body parts.

    As technology progressed, the focus shifted to bioprinting, which uses living cells to create working anatomical structures. In 2013, Organovo created the world’s first 3D-bioprinted liver tissue, opening up exciting possibilities for creating organs and tissues for transplantation. But while significant advances have been made in bioprinting, creating full, functional organs such as livers for transplantation remains experimental. Current research focuses on developing smaller, simpler tissues and refining bioprinting techniques to improve cell viability and functionality. These efforts aim to bridge the gap between laboratory success and clinical application, with the ultimate goal of providing viable organ replacements for patients in need.

    Three-dimensional printing already has revolutionized the creation of prosthetics. It allows prosthetics makers to produce affordable custom-made devices that fit the patient perfectly. They can tailor prosthetic hands and limbs to each individual and easily replace them as a child grows.

    Three-dimensionally printed implants, such as hip replacements and spine implants, offer a more precise fit, which can improve how well they integrate with the body. Traditional implants often come only in standard shapes and sizes.

    Surgeons are able to use 3D printing to make medical implants to fit individual patients.

    Some patients have received custom titanium facial implants after accidents. Others had portions of their skulls replaced with 3D-printed implants.

    Additionally, 3D printing is making significant strides in dentistry. Companies such as Invisalign use 3D printing to create custom-fit aligners for teeth straightening, demonstrating the ability to personalize dental care.

    Scientists are also exploring new materials for 3D printing, such as self-healing bioglass that might replace damaged cartilage. Moreover, researchers are developing 4D printing, which creates objects that can change shape over time, potentially leading to medical devices that can adapt to the body’s needs.

    For example, researchers are working on 3D-printed stents that can respond to changes in blood flow. These stents are designed to expand or contract as needed, reducing the risk of blockage and improving long-term patient outcomes.

    Simulating surgeries

    Three-dimensionally printed anatomical models often help surgeons understand complex cases and improve surgical outcomes. These models, created from medical images such as X-rays and CT scans, allow surgeons to practice procedures before operating.

    For instance, a 3D-printed model of a child’s heart enables surgeons to simulate complex surgeries. This approach can lead to shorter operating times, fewer complications and lower costs.

    Personalized pharmaceuticals

    In the pharmaceutical industry, drugmakers can three-dimensionally print personalized drug dosages and delivery systems. The ability to precisely layer each component of a drug means that they can make medicines with the exact dose needed for each patient. The 3D-printed anti-epileptic drug Spritam was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2015 to deliver very high dosages of its active ingredient.

    Drug production systems that use 3D printing are finding homes outside pharmaceutical factories. The drugs potentially can be made and delivered by community pharmacies. Hospitals are starting to use 3D printing to make medicine on-site, allowing for personalized treatment plans based on factors such as the patient’s age and health.

    Three-dimensionally printed pharmaceuticals make it possible to customize the types, doses and release times of drugs.

    However, it’s important to note that regulations for 3D-printed drugs are still being developed. One concern is that postprinting processing may affect the stability of drug ingredients. It’s also important to establish clear guidelines and decide where 3D printing should take place – whether in pharmacies, hospitals or even at home. Additionally, pharmacists will need rigorous training in these new systems.

    Printing for the future

    Despite the extraordinarily rapid progress overall in 3D printing for health care, major challenges and opportunities remain. Among them is the need to develop better ways to ensure the quality and safety of 3D-printed medical products. Affordability and accessibility also remain significant concerns. Long-term safety concerns regarding implant materials, such as potential biocompatibility issues and the release of nanoparticles, require rigorous testing and validation.

    While 3D printing has the potential to reduce manufacturing costs, the initial investment in equipment and materials can be a barrier for many health care providers and patients, especially in underserved communities. Furthermore, the lack of standardized workflows and trained personnel can limit the widespread adoption of 3D printing in clinical settings, hindering access for those who could benefit most.

    On the bright side, artificial intelligence techniques that can effectively leverage vast amounts of highly detailed medical data are likely to prove critical in developing improved 3D-printed medical products. Specifically, AI algorithms can analyze patient-specific data to optimize the design and fabrication of 3D-printed implants and prosthetics. For instance, implant makers can use AI-driven image analysis to create highly accurate 3D models from CT scans and MRIs that they can use to design customized implants.

    Furthermore, machine learning algorithms can predict the long-term performance and potential failure points of 3D-printed prosthetics, allowing prosthetics designers to optimize for improved durability and patient safety.

    Three-dimensional printing continues to break boundaries, including the boundary of the body itself. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a technique that uses ultrasound to turn a liquid injected into the body into a gel in 3D shapes. The method could be used one day for delivering drugs or replacing tissue.

    Overall, the field is moving quickly toward personalized treatment plans that are closely adapted to each patient’s unique needs and preferences, made possible by the precision and flexibility of 3D printing.

    Daniel Freedman has received funding related to 3D printing from IBM, Braskem and Mediprint and is affiliated with the Stratasys Educational Community Advisory Board.

    Anne Schmitz 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. How 3D printing is personalizing health care – https://theconversation.com/how-3d-printing-is-personalizing-health-care-249106

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Can you treat headaches with physiotherapy? Here’s what the research says

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Zhiqi Liang, Lecturer in Physiotherapy, The University of Queensland

    BaanTaksinStudio/Shutterstock

    You might’ve noticed some physiotherapists advertise they offer treatments for headaches and wondered: would that work?

    In fact, there’s a solid body of research showing that physiotherapy treatments can be really helpful for certain types of headache.

    Sometimes, however, medical management is also necessary and it’s worth seeing a doctor. Here’s what you need to know.

    Cervicogenic headache: when pain travels up your neck

    Cervicogenic headache is where pain is referred from the top of the neck (an area known as the upper cervical spine).

    Pain is usually one-sided. It generally starts just beneath the skull at the top of the neck, spreading into the back of the head and sometimes into the back of the eye.

    Neck pain and headache are often triggered by activities that put strain on the neck, such as holding one posture or position for a long time, or doing repetitive neck movements (such as looking up and down repeatedly).

    Unlike in migraine, people experiencing cervicogenic headache don’t usually get nausea or sensitivity to light and sound.

    Because this is a musculoskeletal condition of the upper neck, physiotherapy treatments that improve neck function – such as manual therapy, exercise and education – can provide short- and long-term benefits.

    Cervicogenic headache is where pain is referred from the top of the neck.
    24K-Production/Shutterstock

    Can physio help with migraine?

    Migraine is a neurological disorder whereby the brain has difficulty processing sensory input.

    This can cause episodic attacks of moderate to severe headache, as well as:

    • sensitivity to light and noise
    • nausea and
    • intolerance to physical exertion.

    There are many triggers. Everyone’s are different and identifying yours is crucial to self-management of migraine. Medication can also help, so seeing a GP is the first step if you suspect you have migraine.

    About 70-80% of people with migraine also have neck pain, commonly just before or at the onset of a migraine attack. This can make people think their neck pain is triggering the migraine.

    While this may be true in some people, our research has shown many people with migraine have nothing wrong with their neck despite having neck pain.

    In those cases, neck pain is part of migraine and can be a warning (but not a cause or trigger) of an imminent migraine attack. It can signal patients need to take steps to prevent the attack.

    Migraine is a neurological disorder whereby the brain has difficulty processing sensory input.
    Srdjan Randjelovic/Shutterstock

    On the other hand, if the person has musculoskeletal neck disorder, physiotherapy neck treatments may help improve their migraine. Musculoskeletal neck disorder is what physiotherapists call typical neck pain caused by, for instance, a sports injury or sleeping in a weird way.

    You may have heard of the Watson manual therapy technique being used to treat migraine. It involves applying manual pressure to the upper cervical spine and neck area.

    There are currently no peer-reviewed studies looking at how effective this technique is for migraine.

    However, recent studies investigating a combination of manual therapy, neck exercises and education tailored to the individual’s circumstances show some small effects in improving the number of migraine attacks and the disabling effects of headache.

    Manual therapy and neck exercises can also give short-term pain relief.

    However, in some cases the neck can become very sensitive and easily aggravated in migraine. That means inappropriate assessment or treatment could end up triggering a migraine.

    Physiotherapy can help with migraine but you first need a comprehensive and skilled physical assessment of the neck by an experienced physiotherapist. It’s crucial to identify if a musculoskeletal neck disorder is present and, if so, which type of neck treatment is needed.

    It is also important people with migraine understand how their migraine is triggered, what lifestyle factors contribute to it and when to take the appropriate medications to help manage their migraines.

    A trained physiotherapist can provide some of this information and help patients make sense of their condition and recommend the patient see their GP for medication, when appropriate.

    What about tension headaches?

    Tension type headache is the most common type of headache, characterised by a feeling of “tightness” or “band-like” pain around the head.

    Nausea and sensitivity to light and noise are not usually present with this type of headache.

    Like migraine, tension type headache is often associated with neck pain and also has different aggravating factors, not all of which are due to the neck.

    Tension type headache is often associated with neck pain.
    staras/Shutterstock

    Again, a detailed assessment by a trained physiotherapist is needed to identify if the neck is involved and what type of neck treatment is best.

    There is some evidence a combination of manual therapy and exercise can reduce tension type headache.

    Physiotherapists can also provide education and advice on aggravating factors and self management.

    Seeking help

    There are many types and causes of headache. If you suffer frequent headaches or have a new or unusual headache, ask a doctor to investigate.

    There is good evidence physiotherapy treatment will improve cervicogenic headache and emerging evidence it might help migraine and tension type headache (alongside usual medical care).

    If you are wondering if you have cervicogenic headache or if you have bothersome neck pain associated with headache, ask your doctor to refer you to a skilled physiotherapist trained in headache treatment. A careful assessment can determine if physiotherapy treatment will help.

    Zhiqi Liang received funding from the Australian Physiotherapy Association and the Physiotherapy Research Foundation. She is affiliated with the Australian College of Physiotherapists and the Australian Physiotherapy Association.

    Julia Treleaven and Lucy Thomas 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. Can you treat headaches with physiotherapy? Here’s what the research says – https://theconversation.com/can-you-treat-headaches-with-physiotherapy-heres-what-the-research-says-256581

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Are independent vets really better? The real issue isn’t necessarily who owns them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Williams, Reader in Human Resource Management, Cardiff University

    maxbelchenko/Shutterstock

    Taking your pet to the vet might feel different these days, and there’s a reason for that. About 60% of UK practices are now owned by just six big companies, raising concerns about cost, care and competition.

    But ownership is only part of the picture. After four years researching life inside vet practices, I’ve found that what really shapes the experience – for vets and pet owners alike – is how each clinic is managed.

    Although it is the head offices of these large companies that determine business strategies, it is local managers who implement the policies. The way they choose to do this can significantly affect the experiences of vets and their clients.

    Until 1999, UK vet practices had to be owned by qualified vets. Most were small, local and privately run.

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    But that changed when the Veterinary Surgeons Act was amended to allow wider ownership. This opened the door for venture capitalists, healthcare companies and multinational corporations, like Mars and Nestlé, to expand into the veterinary sector. They quickly bought up small vet practices and soon dominated the market.

    This domination has led to concerns of an excessive focus on profit rather than affordable veterinary care, leading to high costs for owners and stressful performance targets for vets. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating the veterinary sector since September 2023 because of this.

    Veterinary practices are either owned by individuals, joint ventures between corporations and vets, or wholly owned by large corporations. Those in the first category tend to be known colloquially as “independents” and the rest as “corporates”.

    Much of the narrative in the media has concentrated on the dichotomy between independents and corporates. There’s a suggestion that corporates charge excessive fees and pressurise vets to sell additional services.

    But my research, which included 97 interviews with 25 vets, suggests that the profession is far more nuanced than this. I spoke with a vet who described the most stressful, target-driven environment not in a corporate, but in an independent practice.

    In contrast, several vets working for corporates had remained in the same practice since they graduated. They experienced supportive working environments, high standards of care and no pressure to meet targets.

    Another vet had switched between corporate and independent practices and believed that it was easier to provide affordable care in the independent practices due to lower prices and greater autonomy. But they left one independent practice as they were uncomfortable with the standard of care offered. “Independent good, corporate bad” is not always the case.

    shutterstock.
    Vaillery/Shutterstock

    Management matters

    I found that practice management shapes the experiences of vets and clients far more than ownership. Even within the same corporate, there are significant differences in how managers implement policies and support their teams.

    Whereas in one practice a manager may turn a blind eye when a vet supports a client by missing a minor item from a bill, in another they may be reminded to bill correctly. Vets described staying in practices where they felt valued and supported, where they could provide appropriate care for their patients and where they could keep learning.

    High professional standards and compassionate management cultures were important. But other vets described crying at the end of the day when the relentless workload and lack of support meant they could not care for their patients as they wished. They spoke out and nothing changed until eventually they left.

    Vets may not agree with all elements of the corporate business strategy, but they are more likely to remain with a practice due to the actions of local managers than due to decisions made at the corporate headquarters.



    Read more:
    Rising vet fees leave pet owners facing tough choices – and vets often bear the brunt

    What about pet owners? A survey by the CMA as part of their investigation found that most people choose a vet based on location and quality of care, not cost.

    However, the research also found that many owners were not aware that their vet practices were corporates. Only two of the six corporates use distinct corporate names and branding for their practices, with the others often only mentioning corporate ownership in their small print. This lack of transparency may lead to owners choosing a practice because they incorrectly believe it is independent, a situation that concerns the CMA.

    There are real challenges facing the veterinary profession, from rising costs to staff burnout and workforce shortages. But pitting independents against corporates risks missing the point. The conversation needs to be shifted away from who owns the practice and towards how they’re run on the ground. What matters is whether vets are supported to provide the kind of care they trained for, and whether managers are equipped to lead teams with compassion, fairness and professionalism.

    After all, that’s what benefits everyone, whether it be the vets, the clients or the animals.

    Rachel Williams 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. Are independent vets really better? The real issue isn’t necessarily who owns them – https://theconversation.com/are-independent-vets-really-better-the-real-issue-isnt-necessarily-who-owns-them-256035

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Overshooting 1.5°C: even temporary warming above globally agreed temperature limit could have permanent consequences

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Dodds, Professor of Energy Systems, UCL

    Earth’s surface temperature has been 1.5°C hotter than the pre-industrial average for 21 of the last 22 months.

    The 2015 Paris agreement committed countries to keeping the global temperature increase “well below 2°C”, which is widely interpreted as an average of 1.5°C over a 30-year period. The Paris agreement has not yet failed, but recent high temperatures show how close the Earth is to crossing this critical threshold.

    Climate scientists have, using computer simulations, modelled pathways for halting climate change at internationally agreed limits. However, in recent years, many of the pathways that have been published involve exceeding 1.5°C for a few decades and removing enough greenhouse gas from the atmosphere to return Earth’s average temperature below the threshold again. Scientists call this “a temporary overshoot”.

    If human activities were to raise the global average temperature 1.6°C above the pre-industrial average, for example, then CO₂ removal, using methods ranging from habitat restoration to mechanically capturing CO₂ from the air, would be required to return warming to below 1.5°C by 2100.

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    Do we really understand the consequences of “temporarily” overshooting 1.5°C? And would it even be possible to lower temperatures again?

    Faith that a temporary overshoot will be safe and practicable has justified a deliberate strategy of delaying emission cuts in the short term, some scientists warn. The dangers posed by remaining above the 1.5°C limit for a period of time have received little attention by researchers like me, who study climate change.

    To learn more, the UK government commissioned me and a team of 36 other scientists to examine the possible impacts.

    How nature will be affected

    We examined a “delayed action” scenario, in which greenhouse gas emissions remain similar for the next 15 years due to continued fossil fuel burning but then fall rapidly over a period of 20 years.

    We projected that this would cause the rise in Earth’s temperature to peak at 1.9°C in 2060, before falling to 1.5°C in 2100 as greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere. We compared this scenario with a baseline scenario in which the global temperature does not exceed 1.5°C of warming this century.

    Our Earth system model suggested that Arctic temperatures would be up to 4°C higher in 2060 compared to the baseline scenario. Arctic Sea ice loss would be much higher. Even after the global average temperature was returned to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, in 2100, the Arctic would remain around 1.5°C warmer compared to the baseline scenario. This suggests there are long-term and potentially irreversible consequences for the climate in overshooting 1.5°C.

    Temperature increases caused by overshooting 1.5°C are primarily felt in the Arctic and on land.
    Selena Zhang, Maria Russo, Luke Abraham and Alex Archibald.

    As global warming approaches 2°C, warm-water corals, Arctic permafrost, Barents Sea ice and mountain glaciers could reach tipping points at which substantial and irreversible changes occur. Some scientists have concluded that the west Antarctic ice sheet may have already started melting irreversibly.

    Our modelling showed that the risk of catastrophic wildfires is substantially higher during a temporary overshoot that culminates in 1.9°C of warming, particularly in regions already vulnerable to wildfires. Fires in California in early 2025 are an example of what is possible when the global temperature is higher.

    Our analysis showed that the risk of species going extinct at 2°C of warming is double that at 1.5°C. Insects are most at risk because they are less able to move between regions in response to the changing climate than larger mammals and birds.

    The impacts on society

    Only armed conflict is considered by experts to have a greater impact on society than extreme weather. Forecasting how extreme weather will be affected by climate change is challenging. Scientists expect more intense storms, floods and droughts, but not necessarily in places that already regularly suffer these extremes.

    In some places, moderate floods may reduce in size while larger, more extreme events occur more often and cause more damage. We are confident that the sea level would rise faster in a temporary overshoot scenario, and further increase the risk of flooding. We also expect more extreme floods and droughts, and for them to cause more damage to water and sanitation systems.

    Floods and droughts will affect food production too. We found that impact studies have probably underestimated the crop damage that increases in extreme weather and water scarcity in key production areas during a temporary overshoot would cause.

    We know that heatwaves become more frequent and intense as temperatures increase. More scarce food and water would increase the health risks of heat exposure beyond 1.5°C. It is particularly difficult to estimate the overall impact of overshooting this temperature limit when several impacts reinforce each other in this way.

    In fact, most alarming of all is how uncertain much of our knowledge is.

    For example, we have little confidence in estimates of how climate change will affect the economy. Some academics use models to predict how crops and other economic assets will be affected by climate change; others infer what will happen by projecting real-word economic losses to date into future warming scenarios. For 3°C of warming, estimates of the annual impact on GDP using models range from -5% to +3% each year, but up to -55% using the latter approach.

    We have not managed to reconcile the differences between these methods. The highest estimates account for changes in extreme weather due to climate change, which are particularly difficult to determine.

    We carried out an economic analysis using estimates of climate damage from both models and observed climate-related losses. We found that temporarily overshooting 1.5°C would reduce global GDP compared with not overshooting it, even if economic damages were lower than we expect. The economic consequences for the global economy could be profound.

    So, what can we say for certain? First, that temporarily overshooting 1.5°C would be more costly to society and to the natural world than not overshooting it. Second, our projections are relatively conservative. It is likely that impacts would be worse, and possibly much worse, than we estimate.

    Fundamentally, every increment of global temperature rise will worsen impacts on us and the rest of the natural world. We should aim to minimise global warming as much as possible, rather than focus on a particular target.

    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.

    Paul Dodds has received funding from the UK government through the Climate Services for a Net Zero World (CS-N0W) programme. While the UK government set the research questions for the study, it was carried out independently by scientists from nine organisations. Dodds has also received funding for other research projects from a range of organisations, including UK Research and Innovation organisations (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council); the IEA Energy Technology Systems Analysis Program (ETSAP); and private organisations (National Grid; Fuels Industry UK; Johnson Matthey; Cadent). A team at UCL led by Paul Dodds jointly develops the UK TIMES energy system model in a partnership with the UK government. This model was not used in this study.

    – ref. Overshooting 1.5°C: even temporary warming above globally agreed temperature limit could have permanent consequences – https://theconversation.com/overshooting-1-5-c-even-temporary-warming-above-globally-agreed-temperature-limit-could-have-permanent-consequences-255523

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Batteries that absorb carbon emissions move a step closer to reality – new study

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel Commandeur, Surrey Future Fellow, School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, University of Surrey

    Future power. Sweetie Khatun

    What if there were a battery that could release energy while trapping carbon dioxide? This isn’t science fiction; it’s the promise of lithium-carbon dioxide (Li-CO₂) batteries, which are currently a hot research topic.

    Lithium-carbon dioxide (Li-CO₂) batteries could be a two-in-one solution to the current problems of storing renewable energy and taking carbon emissions out of the air. They absorb carbon dioxide and convert it into a white powder called lithium carbonate while discharging energy.

    These batteries could have profound implications for cutting emissions from vehicles and industry – and might even enable long-duration missions on Mars, where the atmosphere is 95% CO₂.

    To make these batteries commercially viable, researchers have mainly been wrestling with problems related to recharging them. Now, our team at the University of Surrey has come up with a promising way forward. So how close are these “CO₂-breathing” batteries to becoming a practical reality?

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    Like many great scientific breakthroughs, Li-CO₂ batteries were a happy accident. Slightly over a decade ago, a US-French team of researchers were trying to address problems with lithium air batteries, another frontier energy-storage technology. Whereas today’s lithium-ion batteries generate power by moving and storing lithium ions within electrodes, lithium air batteries work by creating a chemical reaction between lithium and oxygen.

    The problem has been the “air” part, since even the tiny (0.04%) volume of CO₂ found in air is enough to disrupt this careful chemistry, producing unwanted lithium carbonate (Li₂CO₃). As many battery scientists will tell you, the presence of Li₂CO₃ can also be a real pain in regular lithium-ion batteries, causing unhelpful side reactions and electrical resistance.

    Nonetheless the scientists noticed something interesting about this CO₂ contamination: it improved the battery’s amount of charge. From this point on, work began on intentionally adding CO₂ gas to batteries to take advantage of this, and the lithium-CO₂ battery was born.

    How it works

    Their great potential relates to the chemical reaction at the positive side of the battery, where small holes are cut in the casing to allow CO₂ gas in. There it dissolves in the liquid electrolyte (which allows the charge to move between the two electrodes) and reacts with lithium that has already been dissolved there. During this reaction, it’s believed that four electrons are exchanged between lithium ions and carbon dioxide.

    This electron transfer determines the theoretical charge that can be stored in the battery. In a normal lithium-ion battery, the positive electrode exchanges just one electron per reaction (in lithium air batteries, it’s two to four electrons). The greater exchange of electrons in the lithium-carbon dioxide battery, combined with the high voltage of the reaction, explains their potential to greatly outperform today’s lithium-ion batteries.

    In terms of the benefits to carbon emissions, by our rough calculations, 1kg of catalyst could absorb around 18.5kg of CO₂. Since a car driving 100 miles emits around 18kg-20kg of CO₂, that means such a battery could potentially offset a day’s drive.

    However, the technology has a few issues. The batteries don’t last very long. Commercial lithium-ion packs routinely survive 1,000–10,000 charging cycles; most LiCO₂ prototypes fade after fewer than 100.

    They’re also difficult to recharge. This requires breaking down the lithium carbonate to release lithium and CO₂, which can be energy intensive. This energy requirement is a little like a hill that must be cycled up before the reaction can coast, and is known as overpotential.

    You can reduce this requirement by printing the right catalyst material on the porous positive electrode. Yet these catalysts are typically expensive and rare noble metals, such as ruthenium and platinum, which is a significant barrier to commercial viability.

    Our team has found an alternative catalyst, caesium phosphomolybdate, which is far cheaper and easy to manufacture at room temperature. This material made the batteries stable for 107 cycles, while also storing 2.5 times as much charge as a lithium-ion. And we significantly reduced the energy cost involved in breaking down lithium carbonate, for an overpotential of 0.67 volts, which is only about double what would be necessary in a commercial product.

    Our research team is now working to further reduce the cost of this technology by developing a catalyst that replaces caesium, since it’s the phosphomolybdate that is key. This could make the system more economically viable and scalable for widespread deployment.

    We also plan to study how the battery charges and discharges in real time. This will provide a clearer understanding of the internal mechanisms at work, helping to optimise performance and durability.

    Lithium-carbon dioxide batteries could help humans to colonise Mars.
    Forelse Stock

    A major focus of upcoming tests will be to evaluate how the battery performs under different CO₂ pressures. So far, the system has only been tested under idealised conditions (1 bar). If it can work at 0.1 bar of pressure, it will be feasible for car exhausts and gas boiler flues, meaning you could capture CO₂ while you drive or heat your home. Demonstrating that this works will be an important confirmation of commercial viability, albeit we would expect the battery’s charge capacity to reduce at this pressure.

    If the batteries work at 0.006 bar, the pressure on the Martian atmosphere, they could power anything from an exploration rover to a colony. At 0.0004 bar, Earth’s ambient air pressure, they could capture CO₂ from our atmosphere and store power anywhere. In all cases, the key question will be how it affects the battery’s charge capacity.

    Meanwhile, to improve the battery’s number of recharge cycles, we need to address the fact that the electrolyte dries out. We’re currently investigating solutions, which probably involve developing casings that only CO₂ can move into. As for reducing the energy required for the catalyst to work, it’s likely to require optimising the battery’s geometry to maximise the reaction rate – and to introduce a flow of CO₂, comparable to how fuel cells work (typically by feeding in hydrogen and oxygen).

    If this continued work can push the battery’s cycle life above 1,000 cycles, cut overpotential below 0.3 V, and replace scarce elements entirely, commercial Li-CO₂ packs could become reality. Our experiments will determine just how versatile and far-reaching the battery’s applications might be, from carbon capture on Earth to powering missions on Mars.

    Daniel Commandeur receives funding from the Royal Society. He is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Christians in Science.

    Siddharth Gadkari receives funding from UKRI.

    Mahsa Masoudi 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. Batteries that absorb carbon emissions move a step closer to reality – new study – https://theconversation.com/batteries-that-absorb-carbon-emissions-move-a-step-closer-to-reality-new-study-256915

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What the strength of your grip can tell you about your overall health

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lawrence Hayes, Lecturer in Physiology, Lancaster University

    A strong grip can tell you many things about your health. XArtProduction/ Shutterstock

    Predicting your risk of a range of health outcomes – from type 2 diabetes to depression and even your longevity – is as simple as testing how tight your grip is.

    Grip strength refers to the power generated by the muscles of the hand and forearm to perform actions such as grabbing, squeezing an object or even shaking hands. This action involves a complex interplay between the various muscle groups located in the forearm, as well as the muscles within the hand itself.

    Grip strength is a very cheap, easy and non-invasive measure of muscle strength. This test has been used since the mid-1950s as a measure of overall health. Since then, the simple test has been firmly established as a reliable marker of various aspects of health – with some researchers even suggesting grip strength can be used to determine a person’s risk of everything from type 2 diabetes to depression.

    The standard method for measuring grip strength involves using a handheld dynanometer – an instrument which can measure a person’s power. This test is usually done while a person is sitting down. With their forearm bent at a 90-degree angle and wrist held in a neutral position, the person then squeezes the dynamometer as hard as they can – usually three separate times for one minute each.

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    The average of the highest readings from each hand, or sometimes just the dominant hand, is then recorded as the person’s grip strength. This can be measured in both kilograms or pounds. A grip strength value of under 29kg for men and 18kg for women is typically considered low. You can pick up a handgrip dynamometer for under £5 should you wish to test at home.

    Not only is grip strength a trusted indicator of overall health, it’s also strongly correlated with overall muscle strength and lean body mass across a person’s lifespan.

    Moreover, the stronger a person’s grip is, the more independent they will be in their daily life as they get older. This means they’ll be able to perform normal daily activities without assistance, such as rising from a chair and moving around the house.

    A substantial body of evidence also shows low grip strength is not only linked with greater susceptibility of a wide range of chronic diseases – including cancer and cardiovascular disease – but greater risk of early death due to these chronic disease, as well.

    Researchers have also observed links between low grip strength and greater risk of depression, anxiety and diabetes, to name a few.

    There’s also a significant association between grip strength and a person’s lifespan. In this study, people who died before the age of 79 were 2.5 times less likely than those who lived to be 100 to be in the top 33% for grip strength when they were middle aged.

    Grip strength is actually a proxy measure of overall muscle strength.
    Microgen/ Shutterstock

    However, in a 12-year prospective study published in 2022, the authors reported that baseline hand grip strength was the same in participants that died between the beginning and end of the study as in those who survived. But walking speed, speed of standing up from a chair and leg press strength were all worse in the people that died than in t that survived. This tells us is that there are better predictors of longevity than grip strength – such as total body muscle mass and leg strength.

    So why is it that such a simple measure can tell us about the risk of so many diseases, and ultimately death? The answer is that grip strength is a proxy measure of total muscle strength and size. This means that grip strength alone is not a cause of early mortality or disease, but is correlated with a cause of early mortality or disease (such as low muscle mass or muscle strength of the legs).

    Muscle mass is crucial for overall health. It plays an integral role in our metabolism. For example, muscle helps regulate blood sugar by removing glucose from circulation. This may explain why muscle mass protects against developing diabetes.

    Muscle also releases chemicals called myokines, which act upon other tissues and organs in the body – such as fat, our bones, the gut, liver and even our skin and brain. These myokines generally appear to have a protective effect on all of these tissues. This suggests muscle provides more than just the power we need to move our bodies.

    Improving your grip strength

    Unless you’re a rock climber or otherwise need a strong grip, there’s not much point working specifically on improving your grip strength. Although grip strength is linked with longevity and disease, this is because grip strength is an estimate of total body strength.

    As such, if you want to improve your health and strength, you should focus on training your leg strength. Leg strength is particularly important for health and fitness as it permits movement and helps you continue doing tasks independently in your daily life. Research also shows a correlation between leg strength and a person’s risk of chronic disease and their longevity.

    You can also add in other movements such as deadlifts, press-ups and pull-ups to build strength in your core, back and arms.

    Grip strength values serve as a very cheap and easy measure of a person’s overall health. It’s a cost-effective tool for measuring health but there are better ways to improve health with exercise.

    Lawrence Hayes has received funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Chief Scientist Office (CSO), the RS Macdonald Charitable Trust, and the Physiological Society.

    – ref. What the strength of your grip can tell you about your overall health – https://theconversation.com/what-the-strength-of-your-grip-can-tell-you-about-your-overall-health-256271

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Disaster authoritarianism: how autocratic regimes deal with earthquakes

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nimesh Dhungana, Lecturer in Disasters and Global Health, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester

    An earthquake that struck south-east Asia in late March is thought to have killed more than 3,000 people in Myanmar, a country ruled by a military junta that has blocked humanitarian aid and continued waging war on quake-ravaged rebel territory.

    I am interested in how authoritarian regimes handle disasters and whether they disrupt or reinforce the ruling elite’s agenda. My research has led me to Tibet, which has endured Chinese occupation since 1951 and suffered a 7.1-magnitude earthquake in early January 2025.

    Beijing controls the access of independent media and international observers in Tibet. What we know about the disaster’s impact is largely based on initial reporting by the Chinese media, which has claimed the loss of 126 lives and damage to roads and communication networks.

    Tibetan sources have, however, contended that there has been much greater destruction, including to a number of monasteries and nunneries across the region.

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    Following the earthquake, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, ordered “all-out search and rescue efforts” and pledged a rapid recovery. The constrained political environment has meant that Chinese relief agencies and the Chinese state-run media have controlled the narrative, praising Beijing’s capacity for “speed and compassion” in mobilising rescue efforts while using the disaster to highlight China’s record of “good governance and putting people and their lives first”.

    These accounts not only fail to report on the civic responses to disaster, such as mutual aid networks organised by Tibetans both locally and internationally, but they tend to overlook the immediate concerns of the affected communities.

    Survivors and activists using social media to challenge Chinese media narratives of purported success in rescue and relief efforts have faced censorship and outright hostility from the Chinese authorities. A previous study, looking at the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, found that communities that were considered a challenge to Chinese authority had their demands for relief suppressed.

    Firefighters shift rubble in Shigatse on January 7 2025.
    China News Service, CC BY-SA

    The earthquake has sparked further concerns among Tibetans that Chinese authorities will use the disaster to tighten their grip on the region.

    The situation is reminiscent of the April 2010 earthquake that struck Tibet’s Yushu region, claiming more than 2,600 lives and causing significant disruption to local life. The earthquake enabled China to push its vision of modernity and development in Tibet amid allegations of corruption in relief distribution and forced relocations.

    The aftermath revealed a divergence between the Chinese interpretation of recovery and what many Tibetans saw as essential for preserving and promoting their unique cultural identity.

    In their study of the Zimbabwean state’s response to tropical cyclone Idai in 2019, anthropologist Denboy Kudejira described this phenomenon as “disaster authoritarianism”: when an authoritarian regime exploits a disaster to reassert its power. Akin to China’s model, the Zimbabwean government restricted the involvement of non-state groups in longer-term recovery efforts.

    The relative lack of attention journalists and politicians abroad pay to Tibet makes this problem more acute. For instance, the wildfires in Los Angeles erupted at the same time as the earthquake, but garnered greater and more sustained media attention that mounted scrutiny on responsible agencies. By contrast, the Tibet earthquake quickly faded from the news.

    ‘Confrontational politics emerging’

    For Tibetans, challenging disaster authoritarianism is part of a delicate political struggle. Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, called the disaster “a natural phenomenon and not the result of human activities”, while urging Tibetans not to be “angry with the Chinese”. This appears to reflect his long-held wisdom that antagonising Chinese authorities will invite further hardship for communities enduring political marginalisation.

    Others are more sceptical. Some people inside Tibet have questioned the official number of casualties reported by Beijing and pushed Chinese authorities to clarify the scale of the tragedy.

    There are signs of more confrontational politics emerging. The International Campaign for Tibet, which lobbies for self-determination for Tibetans, has labelled the disaster “the silent earthquake” and accused Chinese authorities of censoring the true nature of suffering.

    Another rights group, the Tibetan Rights Collective, has highlighted China’s interventions in Tibet that have made the region more geologically unstable, including the building of hydropower dams and roads. Recent research shows that China’s push to build infrastructure in the region has increased the risk of disasters, such as floods and landslides, for downstream communities in south Asia.

    Research a colleague and I conducted during the pandemic showed that community groups can compensate for gaps in state-led disaster responses, and alert where help is needed. But this depends on public participation and grassroots organising that, in authoritarian contexts such as Tibet and Myanmar, is heavily restricted.

    The climate crisis is increasing the risk of disasters at the same time as there is widespread fear of increasing authoritarianism globally. We should all worry about how these two trends might interact.

    Nimesh Dhungana 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. Disaster authoritarianism: how autocratic regimes deal with earthquakes – https://theconversation.com/disaster-authoritarianism-how-autocratic-regimes-deal-with-earthquakes-248188

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Do we see colour the same way? What scientists can learn from artists

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sasha Rakovich, Senior Lecturer in Physics, King’s College London

    TSViPhoto/Shutterstock

    As many people sit at the wheel of their car, they are certain they know what colour is. It’s the red traffic light in front of them, the garish yellow hatchback in the next lane, or the green verge banking to their right.

    Colour, as many people understand it, is the property of a thing. That light is green. The sky is blue. But scientifically, that’s not quite true. No one can experience the exact same colour as you do. Colour is a perceptual experience created by our brains.

    It’s the interaction between a material, light and the mind. The way a material absorbs and scatters light affects what reaches our eyes. And colour needs to be processed by the brain.

    The shape of objects and the context in which you encounter them can also shape the way you perceive colour. If you’ve ever picked a paint colour that looked perfect in the shop but turned into something entirely difference once on your walls, you’ve already encountered this phenomenon.

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    This notion of colour as experience was recently shown in a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who used lasers to manipulate participants’ eyes into seeing a new colour – a blue-green they call olo.

    To achieve this, the scientists used lasers to activate specific photoreceptor cells in the retina that detect green wavelengths of light, called M cones. We also have S and L cones, types of photoreceptors that detect short blue, and longer red wavelengths of light respectively. Everyone has slight variations in the number and sensitivity of these cones, so we each experience colour a little differently.

    Outside the lab, the reflected light that comes into our eyes illuminates large areas of the retina, which stimulates multiple cone types. The wavelengths perceived by the M and L cones overlap by over 85%. This means that under natural conditions, the two are always activated together, but in varying degrees.

    By targeting just the M cones, the scientists at Berkeley have in essence created a pure colour. Olo doesn’t have context or material conditions. It will look the same to different people.

    But this isn’t the only example which shows the place of the brain in colour perception.

    The most common type of red-green colour blindness, deuteranomaly, occurs when the M and L cones overlap more than they should. This reduces people’s ability to distinguish between colours in that range, without affecting sharpness or brightness.

    Language may play a role in colour perception, influencing how easily or accurately we discriminate between colours, especially when languages differ in how they categorise or label colour distinctions. This highlights the gulf between an objective property and the processing of the brain.

    The difference between the subjective experience of colour and the fixed, physical means of producing it means that most artists’ search for “pure” paint will fail. British artist Stuart Semple recently claimed he’d recreated olo in paint form. He called the paint yolo. But when people look at it, M and L cones will be activated at the same time. A “pure” paint is still impossible.

    Semple’s Black 3.0, along with other ultra-black materials, is marketed as a “pure” black paint. It absorbs nearly all light, using a high concentration of light-absorbing pigments and a matte binder to minimise reflections. But instead of offering a pure colour, it removes colour altogether – delivering a universal experience of “black” by eliminating visual stimulus.

    Colour is never static.
    gkkhjn/Shutterstock

    In truth, artists have known colour is a matter of perception for quite some time. The modernist artist Mark Rothko was notoriously meticulous about how his work was displayed. Rothko insisted that his work be hung low, with as little white wall visible as possible, in dim light.

    He was shaping the experience of colour his work presented to the onlooker by controlling brightness, contrast and the surroundings. Rothko, like the scientists at Berkeley, recognised that colour is an interaction between material, light and observer. It is not just about manipulating what we don’t see, but about engineering what we do.

    I have been running a public engagement programme, Transcending the Invisible, which brings together scientists and artists to explore scientific ideas through art. What I’ve been struck by most is that scientists and artists

    – ref. Do we see colour the same way? What scientists can learn from artists – https://theconversation.com/do-we-see-colour-the-same-way-what-scientists-can-learn-from-artists-256142

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –