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  • MIL-OSI Global: How Asian American became a racial grouping – and why many with Asian roots don’t identify with the term these days

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jennifer Ho, Professor of Asian American Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

    People gather for a rally in New York on March 16, 2023, to protest racism against Asian Americans. Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    For the first time, in 1990, May was officially designated as a month honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage. Though the current U.S. administration recently withdrew federal recognition, the month continues to be celebrated by a wide array of people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

    People from the Pacific Islands have their own distinct histories and issues, delineated in part by a specific geography. Yet when we refer to the even broader category of Asian Americans, a concept with a deep yet often unknown history, who exactly are we referring to?

    There are nearly 25 million people of Asian descent who live in the United States, but the term Asian American remains shrouded by cultural misunderstanding and contested as a term among Asians themselves.

    As a professor of Asian American studies, I believe it is important to understand how the label came into being.

    A long history of Asian people in America

    The arrival of people from Asia to the U.S. long predates the country’s founding in 1776.

    After visits to modern-day America that began in the late 16th century, Filipino sailors formed – as early as 1763 – what is believed to be the first Asian settlement in St. Malo, Louisiana.

    But it wasn’t until the 1849 California Gold Rush that Asian immigration to the U.S. – from China – began on a mass scale. That was bolstered in the 1860s by Chinese laborers recruited to build the western portion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

    Starting toward the end of the 19th century, Japanese immigration steadily picked up, so that by 1910 the U.S. Census records a similar number for both communities – just over 70,000. Likewise, a small number of South Asian immigrants began arriving in the early 1900s.

    An exclusionary backlash

    Yet after coming to the U.S. in search of economic and political opportunities, Asian laborers in America were met by a surge of white nativist hostility and violence. That reaction was codified in civil society groups and government laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

    By 1924, federal law had expanded into a virtual ban on all Asian immigration, and through the first half of the 20th century, a multitude of anti-Asian laws targeted areas including naturalization, marriage and housing, among others.

    In 1933, Chinese Americans in Sacramento, Calif., protested against deportations of Asian people and for higher unemployment insurance benefits.
    Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images

    From the start, people from Asian countries in the U.S. were generally identified broadly with identifiers such as “Oriental,” a common term at the time mostly for those from China, Japan and Korea.

    As more Asians came to the U.S, other terms were used to denigrate and demean these new immigrants, whose physical appearance, language and cultural norms were distinctly different from their Euro-American neighbors.

    ‘Asian American’ and the birth of a movement

    The desire to claim America was one of the drivers for activists in the 1960s to create the concept of Asian American that we know today.

    The movement began in the charged political context of anti-Vietnam War protests and the Civil Rights Movement for Black equality. Students of Asian heritage at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley were organizing for the establishment of ethnic studies classes, specifically those that centered on the histories of Asians in the U.S.

    Rejecting the term “oriental” as too limiting and exotic, since oriental literally means “from the East,” the student activists wanted a term of empowerment that would include the Filipino, Chinese, Korean and Japanese students at the heart of this organizing. Graduate students Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka came up with “Asian American” as a way to bring activists under one radical organizing umbrella, forming the Asian American Political Alliance in 1968.

    A contested term

    Today, the Asian American label has moved beyond its activist roots. The term might literally refer to anyone who traces their lineage from the whole of the Asian continent. This could include people from South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka to parts of West Asia like Syria, Lebanon or Iran.

    Yet not all people who identify as Asian actually use the words Asian American, since it is a term that flattens ethnic specificity and lumps together people with as disparate of backgrounds as Hmong or Bangladeshi, for example.

    A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of self-identified Asian adults living in the U.S. revealed that only 16% of people polled said they identified as “Asian American,” with a majority – 52% – preferring ethnic Asian labels, either alone or in tandem with “American.”

    Chinese immigrants play cards while waiting to be called in the immigration offices in New York in the 1940s.
    Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

    Moreover, unlike the student activists who worked together through their shared Asian American identity, the majority of people of Asian descent living in the U.S. came after the 1965 Immigration Act was passed, which ended all prior anti-Asian immigration laws. This, combined with a subsequent wave of Asian immigration from parts of Asia not represented in the past – including Vietnam, Taiwan and Pakistan – means that most Asian Americans alive today are either immigrants or one generation removed from immigrants.

    As a largely immigrant and recently Americanized group, many Asians therefore may not relate to the struggles of an earlier history of Asians in the U.S. That may contribute to why many don’t connect with the term “Asian American.” Korean immigrants, for instance, may not see their history connected with third-generation Japanese Americans, particularly when considering their homelands have been in conflict for decades.

    For some, Asian American is too broad a term to capture the complexity of Asian-heritage Americans.

    Indeed, Asian Americans come from over 30 countries with different languages, diverse cultures, and histories that have often been in conflict with other Asian nations. Within such a broad grouping as “Asian American,” a wide range of political, socioeconomic, religious and other differences emerge that greatly complicate this racial label.

    Even though the term remains contested, many Asians still see value in the concept. Much like the activists who first created the label in the 1960s, many believe it signifies a sense of solidarity and community among people who – despite their many differences – have been treated like outsiders to the American experience, regardless of how American their roots are.

    Jennifer Ho 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 Asian American became a racial grouping – and why many with Asian roots don’t identify with the term these days – https://theconversation.com/how-asian-american-became-a-racial-grouping-and-why-many-with-asian-roots-dont-identify-with-the-term-these-days-255578

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI can scan vast numbers of social media posts during disasters to guide first responders

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ademola Adesokan, Postdoctoral Researcher in Computer Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology

    Rescuers need to know ASAP where they’re needed in disasters. AP Photo/Mike Stewart

    When disasters happen – such as hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes – every second counts. Emergency teams need to find people fast, send help and stay organized. In today’s world, one of the fastest ways to get information is through social media.

    In recent years, researchers have explored how artificial intelligence can use social media to help during emergencies. These programs can scan millions of posts on sites such as X, Facebook and Instagram. However, most existing systems look for simple patterns like keywords or images of damage.

    In my research as an AI scientist, I’ve developed new models that go further. They can understand the meaning and context of posts – what researchers call semantics. This helps improve how accurately the system identifies people in need and classifies situational awareness information during emergencies. The results show that these tools can give rescue teams a clearer view of what’s happening on the ground and where help is needed most.

    From posts to lifesaving insights

    People share billions of posts on social media every day. During disasters, they often share photos, videos, short messages and even their location. This creates a huge network of real-time information.

    How social media can help when a disaster strikes, by the European Commission.

    But with so many posts, it’s hard for people to find what’s important quickly. That’s where artificial intelligence helps. These systems, which use machine learning, can scan thousands of posts every second, find urgent messages, spot damage shown in pictures, and tell real information from rumors.

    During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, people sent over 20 million tweets over six days. If AI tools had been used then, they could have helped find people in danger even faster.

    Training AIs

    Researchers begin by teaching AI programs to understand emergencies. In one study I conducted, I looked at thousands of social media posts from disasters. I sorted them into groups like people asking for help, damaged buildings and general comments. Then, I used these examples to train the program to sort new posts by itself.

    One big step forward was teaching the program to look at pictures and words together. For example, a photo of flooded streets and a message like “we’re trapped” are stronger signals than either one alone. Using both, the system became much better at showing where people needed help and how serious the damage was.

    Finding information is just the first step. The main goal is to help emergency teams act quickly and save lives.

    I’m working with emergency response teams in the United States to add this technology to their systems. When a disaster hits, my program can show where help is needed by using social media posts. It can also classify this information by urgency, helping rescue teams use their resources where they are needed most.

    For example, during a flood, my system can quickly spot where people are asking for help and rank these areas by urgency. This helps rescue teams act faster and send aid where it’s needed most, even before official reports come in.

    AI scans of social media could help guide first responders to where they’re most urgently needed.
    Jon Cherry/Getty Images

    Addressing the challenges

    Using social media to help during disasters sounds great, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes, people post things that aren’t true. Other times, the same message gets posted many times or doesn’t clearly state where the problem is. This mix can make it hard for the system to know what’s real.

    To fix this, I’m working on ways to check a post’s credibility. I look at who posted it, what words they used and whether other posts say the same thing.

    I also take privacy seriously. I only use posts that anyone can see and never show names or personal details. Instead, I look at the big picture to find patterns.

    The future of disaster intelligence

    As AI systems improve, they are likely to be even more helpful during disasters. New tools can understand messages more clearly and might even help us see where trouble is coming before it starts.

    As extreme weather worsens, authorities need fast ways to get good information. When used correctly, social media can show people where help is needed most. It can help save lives and get supplies to the right places faster.

    In the future, I believe this will become a regular part of emergency work around the world. My research is still growing, but one thing is clear: Disaster response is no longer just about people on the ground – it’s also about AI systems in the cloud.

    Ademola Adesokan receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Kummer Institute for Student Success, Research, and Economic Development at the Missouri University of Science and Technology through the Kummer Innovation and Entrepreneurship Doctoral Fellowship.

    – ref. AI can scan vast numbers of social media posts during disasters to guide first responders – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-scan-vast-numbers-of-social-media-posts-during-disasters-to-guide-first-responders-255316

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why collect asteroid samples? 4 essential reads on what these tiny bits of space rock can tell scientists

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mary Magnuson, Associate Science Editor

    The OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule contained rock from the asteroid Bennu. NASA/Keegan Barber

    China’s Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is set to launch this month, May 2025, en route to the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3). The country could join the United States and Japan, whose space agencies have both successfully retrieved a sample from an asteroid to study back on Earth.

    Several space missions have flown by asteroids before and gotten a peek at their compositions, but bringing a sample back to Earth is even more helpful for scientists. The most informative analyses require having physical samples to poke and prod, shine light at, run through CT scanners and examine under electron microscopes.

    These missions require detailed planning and specialized spacecraft, so to shed light on why agencies go through the trouble, we compiled four stories from The Conversation U.S.’s archive. These articles describe the ways asteroid sample return missions generate new scientific insights at every stage – from the collection process, to the container’s return to Earth, to laboratory analyses.

    1. Ryugu’s colorful history

    The asteroid Ryugu is made of carbon-rich rock. Japan targeted Ryugu for its sample return mission Hayabusa2 in 2020.

    A sealed container that holds a piece of the Ryugu sample from Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission.
    NASA/Robert Markowitz

    As planetary scientist Paul K. Byrne from Washington University in St. Louis described in his article, the Hayabusa2 team shot the asteroid with a metal projectile and collected the dusty debris that floated into space. This process allowed the Hayabusa2 craft to gather a sample to bring home and also get a close-up look at the asteroid’s surface.

    One thing the collection team noticed: The material that flew off the asteroid was redder than the surface they shot at, which had a bluer tinge.

    Some parts of Ryugu appear almost striped – the middle latitudes are redder, while the poles look more blue. The sample collection process gave researchers some hints about why that is.

    “At some point the asteroid must have been closer to the Sun that it is now,” Byrne wrote. “That would explain the amount of reddening of the surface.”



    Read more:
    Touching the asteroid Ryugu revealed secrets of its surface and changing orbit

    2. Return capsules make shock waves

    Similar to how researchers gained valuable data just from the Hayabusa2 collection process, atmospheric scientists didn’t even need to open the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule to learn something new.

    NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission traveled to the carbon-rich asteroid Bennu and sent home a small capsule containing a sample in September 2023.

    Released from the OSIRIS-REx craft, the sample return capsule hurtled down to Earth in a heavy box about the size of a microwave. Aside from the fact that it had been released from a spacecraft about 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) away, the return looked strikingly similar to that of a meteorite hitting Earth.

    Scientists don’t often have the advance notice needed to study how real meteoroids – the term given to meteorites before they hit the ground – behave when they enter the atmosphere, so they jumped on the opportunity to study the capsule as it returned to Earth.

    As physicists Brian Elbing from Oklahoma State University and Elizabeth A. Silber from Sandia National Laboratories discussed in their article, OSIRIS-REx’s reentry was the perfect opportunity to study what happens in the atmosphere when meteoroid-size objects fly through.

    The teams set up networks of sensitive microphones and other instruments – both on the ground and attached to balloons – to log the sound wave frequencies that the capsule generated in the atmosphere. Understanding how waves travel through the atmosphere can help scientists figure out how to detect hazards such as natural disasters.



    Read more:
    NASA’s asteroid sample mission gave scientists around the world the rare opportunity to study an artificial meteor

    3. Building blocks of life on Bennu

    Once the OSIRIS-REx return capsule was safely back on Earth, researchers across the world – including geologist Timothy J. McCoy from the Smithsonian Institution and planetary scientist Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum in the U.K. – got to work running tests on its contents, while handling the sample carefully to avoid contaminating it.

    As they described in their article, McCoy and Russell found the sample was mostly water-rich clay, which they expected from a carbon-rich asteroid. But they also found a surprising amount of salty and brine-related minerals. These minerals form when water evaporates off a rock’s surface.

    Because these minerals – aptly called evaporites – dissolve when they come into contact with moisture, scientists had never seen them in the meteorites that fly through Earth’s atmosphere, even ones with similar compositions to Bennu. The spacecraft’s sample container kept the Bennu sample airtight, so these evaporites stayed intact.

    These results suggest that the asteroid used to be wet and muddy. And a salty, water-rich environment like Bennu may have once been a great place for organic molecules to form. Some scientists predict that Earth got its ingredients for life from a collision with an asteroid like Bennu.



    Read more:
    Bennu asteroid reveals its contents to scientists − and clues to how the building blocks of life on Earth may have been seeded

    4. Looking ahead: Asteroid mining

    Asteroid sample return missions generate lots of scientific insights. They can also help space agencies and companies understand what exactly is out there, available to bring home from asteroids. While carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu aren’t flush with precious metals, other asteroids have more valuable contents.

    Launched in 2023 and currently traveling through space, NASA’s Psyche mission will explore a metallic asteroid. The Psyche asteroid likely contains platinum, nickel, iron and possibly gold – all materials of commercial interest.

    Scientists can learn about the formation and composition of Earth’s core from metallic asteroids like Psyche, which is the mission’s main goal. But as planetary scientist Valerie Payré from the University of Iowa wrote in her article, “The Psyche mission is a huge step in figuring out what sort of metals are out there.”

    For now, commercial asteroid mining operations are science fiction – not to mention legally fraught. But some companies have started considering early-stage plans for how they one day might do it. Asteroid sample missions can lay some early groundwork.



    Read more:
    NASA’s robotic prospectors are helping scientists understand what asteroids are made of – setting the stage for miners to follow someday

    This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

    – ref. Why collect asteroid samples? 4 essential reads on what these tiny bits of space rock can tell scientists – https://theconversation.com/why-collect-asteroid-samples-4-essential-reads-on-what-these-tiny-bits-of-space-rock-can-tell-scientists-255705

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Researchers uncovered hundreds of genes linked to OCD, providing clues about how it changes the brain − new research

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Carol Mathews, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Florida

    No single gene causes OCD, but identifying the genetic markers linked to the condition can help clarify how it develops. Viktoria Ruban/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Obsessive compulsive disorder has many unknowns, including what causes it, why symptoms can differ so much between people, how medication and therapy for it actually work, and why treatment is effective for some people and not for others. In our newly published research, my colleagues and I made a step toward unraveling some of these mysteries by shedding light on the genetics of OCD.

    Obsessive compulsive disorder is one of the most impairing illnesses worldwide. Affecting about 1 in 50 people globally, OCD is among the top 10 causes of years lost to disability, leading to harmful effects on a person’s ability to work and function in the world and on their family.

    Compared with people without OCD, a person with the condition has a 30% higher chance of dying prematurely from natural causes, such as infections or other illnesses, and a 300% higher chance of dying early from nonnatural causes, such as accidents or suicide.

    People with OCD experience obsessions – disturbing, recurrent and unwanted thoughts, fears or mental images – and compulsions, such as repetitive behaviors and rituals performed to ease the anxiety usually caused by obsessions. For example, someone might wash their hands dozens of times or in a specific way to get rid of germs, even if they know it’s excessive or illogical. Avoiding certain places or situations to reduce anxiety or prevent triggering obsessions and compulsions is also common.

    People with OCD have compulsions that interfere with their daily lives to a debilitating degree.
    Jena Ardell/Moment via Getty Images

    While the exact causes of OCD are unclear, researchers know that both genetic and environmental factors play a role in its development. OCD can run in families; studies attribute between 40% to 65% of OCD cases to genetic factors. OCD that begins in childhood has a stronger genetic influence than OCD that begins in adulthood.

    But unlike some genetic diseases caused by a single faulty gene, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease, OCD is influenced by hundreds to thousands of genes that each play a small part in disease risk.

    My colleagues and I analyzed the DNA of over 53,000 people with OCD and over 2 million people without OCD, the largest study of this kind for this condition. We discovered hundreds of genetic markers potentially linked to OCD – data we hope will ultimately lead to improved ways of identifying people who are at risk for OCD and, down the line, to better treatments.

    How scientists study OCD genetics

    To find the genes involved in OCD risk, researchers use a method called a genome-wide association study, or GWAS. These studies compare the DNA of tens to hundreds of thousands of people with a disease of interest with the DNA of people without the disease, looking for tiny differences in the genetic material. These genetic markers may be linked to OCD or indicate the presence of other genes linked to the disease.

    In a GWAS, scientists carefully test each of the millions of genetic markers across the genome to identify those found more often in people with OCD than in people without OCD. They then determine which genes those markers are associated with, where in the body they are active and how they might contribute to the condition.

    GWAS studies look for genetic associations between different traits.

    We identified 30 areas in the genome linked to OCD, containing 249 genes of interest in total. Of those, 25 genes stood out as likely contributors to the development of OCD.

    The top three genes we found are also linked to other brain disorders such as depression, epilepsy and schizophrenia. Several other genes of interest for OCD were found in a region of the genome that plays a role in adaptive immunity and has been associated with other psychiatric disorders.

    Importantly, no single gene can predict or cause OCD on its own. Previous genetic studies have demonstrated that genes across all of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in people may contribute to OCD risk.

    Genetic insights into OCD

    Because the contribution of each genetic marker or gene to disease susceptibility is very small, GWAS are not useful for identifying genes that cause OCD for a given person. Rather, this kind of research helps scientists understand how the brain works in people with OCD and whether OCD shares genetic roots with conditions that commonly occur alongside it.

    For example, the genetic markers we found to be associated with OCD were highly active in several brain regions known to play a role in development of the condition. These brain areas are collectively involved in planning, decision-making, motivation, error detection, emotion regulation, and fear and anxiety, all of which can malfunction in OCD.

    We also found associations with a brain region called the hypothalamus, which converts emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety or excitement into physical responses. The hypothalamus has not been directly linked to OCD before, but it is part of a network of brain regions that may contribute to its symptoms.

    Additionally, we found that certain types of brain cells – particularly medium spiny neurons in a brain region called the striatum – were strongly linked to the OCD genes we identified. Medium spiny neurons play an important role in habit formation, the process by which a behavior becomes automatic and habitual – think compulsions. Specific receptors on medium spiny neurons are common targets for medications that are sometimes used to help treat OCD.

    Many people with OCD also suffer from anxiety.
    triocean/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    The results of our study can help researchers better understand the relationships between OCD and other conditions. We found genetic links between OCD and several other psychiatric disorders, especially anxiety, depression, anorexia and Tourette syndrome. People with OCD also showed lower genetic risk for conditions such as alcohol dependence and risk-taking behavior, aligning with what doctors see in clinics: Many people with OCD tend to be cautious and avoid risks.

    Surprisingly, we also found genetic overlaps between OCD immune-related conditions. While having OCD appears to be linked to an increased risk of asthma and migraines, it may also be linked to a reduced risk of inflammatory bowel disease. These findings may lead to new insights about the role the immune system and inflammation play in brain health.

    More effective OCD treatment

    OCD is a complex disorder that can look very different from person to person. Understanding the genetic and biological factors behind OCD helps researchers move closer to better diagnosis, treatment and possibly even prevention.

    As a practicing psychiatrist and researcher, I have spent my career working to understand the causes of OCD and to improve the lives of those who live with the condition. With larger studies and continued research, my team and I hope to better match specific biological patterns to individual symptoms.

    In time, this could lead to more personalized and effective treatments – improving the lives of millions of people living with OCD around the world.

    Carol Mathews receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. She is a member of the scientific advisory boards for the Family Foundation for OCD Research and the International OCD Foundation, and acts as a consultant for the Office of Mental Health for the State of New York.

    – ref. Researchers uncovered hundreds of genes linked to OCD, providing clues about how it changes the brain − new research – https://theconversation.com/researchers-uncovered-hundreds-of-genes-linked-to-ocd-providing-clues-about-how-it-changes-the-brain-new-research-255572

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why protecting wildland is crucial to American freedom and identity

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Leisl Carr Childers, Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University

    The Wet Beaver Wilderness in Coconino National Forest in Arizona is one of many designated wilderness areas in the U.S. Deborah Lee Soltesz

    As summer approaches, millions of Americans begin planning or taking trips to state and national parks, seeking to explore the wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities across the nation. A lot of them will head toward the nation’s wilderness areas – 110 million acres, mostly in the West, that are protected by the strictest federal conservation rules.

    When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, it described wilderness areas as places that evoked mystery and wonder, “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” These are wild landscapes that present nature in its rawest form.

    The law requires the federal government to protect these areas “for the permanent good of the whole people.” Wilderness areas are found in national parks, conservation land overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, national forests and U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuges.

    In early May 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives began to consider allowing the sale of federal lands in six counties in Nevada and Utah, five of which contain wilderness areas. Ostensibly, these sales are to promote affordable housing, but the reality is that the proposal, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican, is a departure from the standard process of federal land exchanges that accommodate development in some places but protect wilderness in others.

    Regardless of whether Americans visit their public lands or know when they have crossed a wilderness boundary, as environmental historians we believe that everyone still benefits from the existence and protection of these precious places.

    This belief is an idea eloquently articulated and popularized 65 years ago by the noted Western writer Wallace Stegner. His eloquence helped launch the modern environmental movement and gave power to the idea that the nation’s public lands are a fundamental part of the United States’ national identity and a cornerstone of American freedom.

    Humble origins

    In 1958, Congress established the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission to examine outdoor recreation in the U.S. in order to determine not only what Americans wanted from the outdoors, but to consider how those needs and desires might change decades into the future.

    One of the commission’s members was David E. Pesonen, who worked at the Wildland Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He was asked to examine wilderness and its relationship to outdoor recreation. Pesonen later became a notable environmental lawyer and leader of the Sierra Club. But at the time, Pesonen had no idea what to say about wilderness.

    However, he knew someone who did. Pesonen had been impressed by the wild landscapes of the American West in Stegner’s 1954 history “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.” So he wrote to Stegner, who at the time was at Stanford University, asking for help in articulating the wilderness idea.

    Stegner’s response, which he said later was written in a single afternoon, was an off-the-cuff riff on why he cared about preserving wildlands. This letter became known as the Wilderness Letter and marked a turning point in American political and conservation history.

    Pesonen shared the letter with the rest of the commission, which also shared it with newly installed Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Udall found its prose to be so profound, he read it at the seventh Wilderness Conference in 1961 in San Francisco, a speech broadcast by KCBS, the local FM radio station. The Sierra Club published the letter in the record of the conference’s proceedings later that year.

    But it was not until its publication in The Washington Post on June 17, 1962, that the letter reached a national audience and captured the imagination of generations of Americans.

    Wallace Stegner, right, knew the power of American wilderness landscapes. In this photo, probably from the 1950s, he pauses with his son Page and wife, Mary, on a Yosemite National Park hiking trail.
    Multimedia Archives, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

    An eloquent appeal

    In the letter, Stegner connected the idea of wilderness to a fundamental part of American identity. He called wilderness “something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people … the challenge against which our character as a people was formed … (and) the thing that has helped to make an American different from and, until we forget it in the roar of our industrial cities, more fortunate than other men.”

    Without wild places, he argued, the U.S. would be just like every other overindustrialized place in the world.

    In the letter, Stegner expressed little concern with how wilderness might support outdoor recreation on public lands. He didn’t care whether wilderness areas had once featured roads, trails, homesteads or even natural resource extraction. What he cared about was Americans’ freedom to protect and enjoy these places. Stegner recognized that the freedom to protect, to restrain ourselves from consuming, was just as important as the freedom to consume.

    Perhaps most importantly, he wrote, wilderness was “an intangible and spiritual resource,” a place that gave the nation “our hope and our excitement,” landscapes that were “good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

    Without it, Stegner lamented, “never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.” To him, the nation’s natural cathedrals and the vaulted ceiling of the pure blue sky are Americans’ sacred spaces as much as the structures in which they worship on the weekends.

    Stegner penned the letter during a national debate about the value of preserving wild places in the face of future development. “Something will have gone out of us as a people,” he wrote, “if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” If not protected, Stegner believed these wildlands that had helped shape American identity would fall to what he viewed as the same exploitative forces of unrestrained capitalism that had industrialized the nation for the past century. Every generation since has an obligation to protect these wild places.

    Stegner’s Wilderness Letter became a rallying cry to pass the Wilderness Act. The closing sentences of the letter are Stegner’s best: “We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

    This phrase, “the geography of hope,” is Stegner’s most famous line. It has become shorthand for what wilderness means: the wildlands that defined American character on the Western frontier, the wild spaces that Americans have had the freedom to protect, and the natural places that give Americans hope for the future of this planet.

    Death Valley National Park in California contains one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States.
    National Park Service/E. Letterman

    America’s ‘best idea’

    Stegner returned to themes outlined in the Wilderness Letter again two decades later in his essay “The Best Idea We Ever Had: An Overview,” published in Wilderness magazine in spring 1983.

    Writing in response to the Reagan administration’s efforts to reduce protection of the National Park System, Stegner declared that the parks were “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic.” He said they reflect us as a nation, at our best rather than our worst, and without them, millions of Americans’ lives, his included, would have been poorer.

    Public lands are more than just wilderness or national parks. They are places for work and play. They provide natural resources, wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water and recreational opportunities to small towns and sprawling metro areas alike. They are, as Stegner said, cures for cynicism and places of shared hope.

    Stegner’s words still resonate as Americans head for their public lands and enjoy the beauty of the wild places protected by wilderness legislation this summer. With visitor numbers increasing annually and agency budgets at historic lows, we believe it is useful to remember how precious these places are for all Americans. And we agree with Stegner that wilderness, public lands writ large, are more valuable to Americans’ collective identity and expression of freedom than they are as real estate that can be sold or commodities that can be extracted.

    Leisl Carr Childers has received funding from the USDA Forest Service, the Henry Luce Foundation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.

    Michael Childers has received funding from the USDA Forest Service, the Henry Luce Foundation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.

    – ref. Why protecting wildland is crucial to American freedom and identity – https://theconversation.com/why-protecting-wildland-is-crucial-to-american-freedom-and-identity-254862

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why do cuts to Medicaid matter for Americans over 65? 2 experts on aging explain why lives are at stake

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jane Tavares, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer of Gerontology, UMass Boston

    Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for more than 82 million Americans. FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images

    Republicans in Congress intend to cut about US$880 billion in federal health care spending.

    One of their primary targets is Medicaid. That government program covers 82 million Americans with health insurance. Most of the people enrolled in the program are low income, have disabilities, or both.

    Medicaid, jointly funded by the federal government and the states, is also the biggest funder in the U.S. of long-term care services, whether they are delivered in the patient’s home, another location where they spend part of their day or a nursing home. That makes it particularly important for older adults and those with disabilities. All states must meet the basic federal guidelines for Medicaid coverage. But 41 states have opted to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act provision that expanded eligibility to cover more people under the program.

    We are gerontology researchers who study health and financial well-being in later life. We’ve been analyzing what the potential impacts of Medicaid cuts might be.

    While the debate about how to reduce the budget focuses largely on dollars and cents, we believe that cutting federal spending on Medicaid would harm the health and well-being of millions of Americans by reducing their access to care. In our view, it’s also likely that any savings achieved in the short term would be smaller than the long-term increase in health care costs born by the federal government, the states and patients – including for many Americans who are 65 and older.

    Republican lawmakers are weighing different strategies that could cut federal Medicaid spending.

    Weak track record

    Wary of backlash from their constituents, Republicans have agreed on a strategy that would largely cut Medicaid spending in a roundabout way.

    Previous efforts by the GOP in some states, such as imposing work requirements for some people to get Medicaid benefits, have not greatly reduced costs. That’s largely because there are relatively few people enrolled in the Medicaid program who are physically able to be employed and aren’t already in the workforce. Nor have past efforts to reduce fraud, waste and abuse led to significant savings.

    According to widespread media reports, Republicans are considering changes that would cut the amount of money that the federal government reimburses states for what they spend on Medicaid.

    In May 2025, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 8.6 million Americans would lose their health insurance coverage should the GOP proposal become law.

    Historically, states have dealt with budget cuts by reducing their payments to health care providers, limiting eligibility or restricting benefits. These reductions all particularly affected home- and community-based services that many disabled and older adults rely on.

    About 3 in 4 of the people with Medicaid coverage who receive long-term care through the program get that care at home, in their communities or both, rather than residing in a nursing home. States save an estimated 26 cents for every dollar spent on those services delivered outside nursing homes.

    Losing coverage can be harmful for your health

    We recently analyzed data from a nationally representative study of approximately 6,000 people who had Medicaid coverage but lost it when they turned age 65 because their income exceeded 100% of the federal poverty level. In 2025, that cutoff is about $15,560 for a single person and $21,150 for a couple.

    Medicaid income eligibility generally drops from 138% to 100% of the federal poverty level at age 65 once Medicare becomes a person’s primary health insurer.

    The people who participated in the study had lost their Medicaid coverage upon turning 65 between 1998 and 2020. Our team followed the experiences of these participants over a 10-year period starting at age 65 to see how they fared compared with people who continue to be enrolled in Medicaid after their 65th birthday.

    What we found was both surprising and disturbing.

    Fewer activities of daily living

    Over the decade following that milestone, the people who lost their Medicaid coverage had more chronic conditions and could perform fewer activities of daily living, such as bathing and getting dressed, without any assistance as compared with those who still had Medicaid coverage. In addition, they were twice as likely to experience depression and be in fair or poor health.

    As people’s health worsened, they also went to the hospital more often and stayed there longer. They also used outpatient surgery services more frequently.

    These services are particularly expensive for the health care system. Depending on the service, it may also be costly for patients. Unlike the comprehensive coverage of Medicaid, the Medicare program fully covers only inpatient hospitalizations, short-term nursing facility care, hospice, some short-term home care, annual wellness visits, vaccines and some basic preventive care. Beyond that, Medicare requires the payment of premiums to help with uncovered services that can also include deductibles and copays.

    This arrangement can lead to significant out-of-pocket costs that make health care hard for low-income older adults to afford unless they have both Medicare and Medicaid coverage.

    We also found that older people who lost Medicaid coverage were less likely to see their primary care physician for routine and follow-up care, despite being enrolled in Medicare. This explains in part why they are going to the hospital more often, likely avoiding routine health care that may incur out-of-pocket costs and eventually utilizing Medicare-covered hospital care when needed.

    In short, we found that exiting the Medicaid program upon turning 65 actually leads to an increase in the use of some of the most expensive health care services, such as inpatient hospitalization and outpatient surgery. So although Medicaid may no longer pay for these costs, the rest of the health care system does.

    Just under 90% of older adults enrolled in Medicare have some kind of supplemental coverage that helps them pay for services that the program doesn’t cover. For 16% of the people with Medicare coverage, Medicaid covers those additional health care costs. The rest of that nearly 90% obtain supplemental coverage from private insurance companies or are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan that’s run by a private company instead of the government.

    However, 11% of Americans covered by Medicare don’t have any additional coverage. It is likely that those who lost Medicaid benefits at age 65 may not be able to afford any other supplemental coverage options and fall into this group.

    People who lose Medicaid coverage may die sooner

    One of our more troubling findings was that people who lost Medicaid coverage at age 65 were 14% more likely to die within the next 10 years than were those who kept their coverage in addition to gaining Medicare coverage. This was true even though the people who lost their Medicaid access tended to start out in better health.

    Roughly 12 million Americans are enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid today. Much is at stake for them and other low-income people as Congress considers making major changes to the program to cut federal spending on it.

    For some Americans, it’s a matter of life and death. For others, it’s a matter of healthy versus unhealthy aging that leads to costlier health care not just for themselves but for the U.S. as a whole.

    Jane Tavares receives funding from the RRF Foundation for Aging.

    Marc Cohen receives funding from the RRF Foundation for Aging.

    – ref. Why do cuts to Medicaid matter for Americans over 65? 2 experts on aging explain why lives are at stake – https://theconversation.com/why-do-cuts-to-medicaid-matter-for-americans-over-65-2-experts-on-aging-explain-why-lives-are-at-stake-254256

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump guts low-income energy assistance as summer heat descends and electricity prices rise

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Economic Geography, University of South Carolina

    Cities like Houston get high humidity in addition to the heat, making summer almost unbearable without cooling. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

    The U.S. is headed into what forecasters expect to be one of the hottest summers on record, and millions of people across the country will struggle to pay their power bills as temperatures and energy costs rise.

    A 2023 national survey found that nearly 1 in 4 Americans were unable to pay their full energy bill for at least one month, and nearly 1 in 4 reported that they kept their homes at unsafe temperatures to save money. By 2025, updated polling indicated nearly 3 in 4 Americans are worried about rising energy costs.

    Conservative estimates suggest that utilities shut off power to over 3 million U.S. households each year because the residents cannot pay their bills.

    This problem of high energy prices isn’t lost on the Trump administration.

    On the first day of his second term in 2025, President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency by executive order, saying that “high energy prices … devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed incomes.”

    Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright raised concerns about utility disconnections and outlined a mission to “shrink that number, with the target of zero.”

    Yet, the administration’s 2026 budget proposal zeros out funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, the federal program that administers funding to help low-income households pay their utility bills. And on April 1, 2025, the administration laid off the entire staff of the LIHEAP office.

    During the hottest periods, even nighttime temperatures might not drop below 90 in Phoenix. Without air conditioning, homes can become dangerously hot.
    Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

    Many people already struggle to cobble together enough help from various sources to pay their power bills. As researchers who study energy insecurity, we believe gutting the federal office responsible for administering energy bill assistance will make it even harder for Americans to make ends meet.

    The high stakes of energy affordability

    We work with communities in South Carolina and Tennessee where many residents struggle to heat and cool their homes.

    We see how high energy prices force people to make dangerous trade-offs. Low-income households often find themselves choosing whether to buy necessities, pay for child care or pay their utility bills.

    One elderly person we spoke with for our research, Sarah, explained that she routinely forgoes buying medications in order to pay her utility bill. Another research participant who connects low-income families to energy bill assistance in Tennessee said: “I’ve gone into these homes, and it’s so hot. Your eyes roll in the back of your head. It’s like you can’t breathe. How do you sit in here? It’s just unreal.”

    Unfortunately, these stories are increasingly common, especially in low-income communities and communities of color.

    Electricity prices are predicted to rise with worsening climate change: More frequent heat waves and extreme weather events drive up demand and put pressure on the grid. Furthermore, rising energy demand from data centers – supercharged by the increasing energy use by artificial intelligence – is accelerating price increases.

    Shrinking resources for assistance

    LIHEAP, created in 1981, provides funding to states as block grants to help low-income families pay their utility bills. In fiscal year 2023, the program distributed US$6.1 billion in energy assistance, helping some 5.9 million households avoid losing power connections.

    The program’s small staff played critical roles in disbursing this money, providing implementation guidelines, monitoring state-level fund management and tracking and evaluating program effectiveness.

    A long line of utility customers wait to apply for help from the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program in Trenton, N.J., in 2011. In 2023, around 6 million households benefited from LIHEAP.
    AP Photo/Mel Evans

    LIHEAP has historically prioritized heating assistance in cold-weather states over cooling assistance in warmer states. However, recent research shows a need to revisit the allocation formula to address the increasing need for air conditioning. The layoffs removed staff who could direct this work.

    It is unlikely that other sources of funding can fill in the gaps if states do not receive LIHEAP funds from the federal government. The program’s funding has never been high enough to meet the need. In 2020, LIHEAP provided assistance to just 16% of eligible households.

    Our research has found that, in practice, many households rely on a range of local nonprofits, faith-based organizations and informal networks of family and friends to help them pay their bills and keep the power on.

    For example, a research participant named Deborah reported that when faced with a utility shut-off, she “drove from church to church to church” in search of assistance. United Way in South Carolina received over 16,000 calls from people seeking help to pay their utility bills in 2023.

    These charitable services are an important lifeline for many, especially in the communities we study in the South. However, research has shown that faith-based programs do not have the reach of public programs.

    Without LIHEAP, the limited funds provided by nonprofits and the personal connections that people patch together will be stretched even thinner, especially as other charitable services, such as food banks, also face funding cuts.

    What’s ahead

    The $4.1 billion that Congress allocated to LIHEAP for the 2025 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, has already been disbursed. Going forward, however, cuts to LIHEAP staff affect its ability to respond to growing need. Congress now has to decide if it will kill the program’s future funding as well.

    Maricopa County in Arizona, home to Phoenix, illustrates what’s at stake. Annual heat-related deaths have risen 1,000% there in the past decade, from 61 to 602. Hundreds of these deaths occurred indoors.

    Cooling becomes essential during Arizona’s extreme summers. Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, reported more than 600 heat-related deaths in 2024.
    AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin

    We believe gutting LIHEAP puts the goal of energy affordability for all Americans – and Americans’ lives – in jeopardy. Until more affordable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, can be scaled up, an expansion of federal assistance programs is needed, not a contraction.

    Increasing the reach and funding of LIHEAP is one option. Making home weatherization programs more effective is another.

    Governments could also require utilities to forgive past-due bills and end utility shut-offs during the hottest and coldest months. About two dozen states currently have rules to prevent shut-offs during the worst summer heat.

    For now, the cuts mean more pressure on nonprofits, faith-based organizations and informal networks. Looking ahead to another exceptionally hot summer, we can only hope that cuts to LIHEAP staff don’t foreshadow a growing yet preventable death toll.

    Etienne Toussaint, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, and Ann Eisenberg, a law professor at West Virginia University, contributed to this article.

    Conor Harrison receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    Elena Louder receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    Nikki Luke receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She previously worked at the U.S. Department of Energy.

    Shelley Welton receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    – ref. Trump guts low-income energy assistance as summer heat descends and electricity prices rise – https://theconversation.com/trump-guts-low-income-energy-assistance-as-summer-heat-descends-and-electricity-prices-rise-256194

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Iran and Ethiopia have a security deal – here’s why they signed it

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Eric Lob, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University

    Ethiopia and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on 6 May 2025. Under it, their national police agencies will cooperate on security and intelligence. This will include combating cross-border crime, sharing intelligence and building capacity. They will also share experiences and training.

    For Iran, the MOU marks a significant step towards strengthening relations with a regional power that’s strategically located in the Horn of Africa.

    Tehran has been using its security apparatus and military capabilities to establish and expand political and economic ties with countries in Africa. This has included drone transfers to the Ethiopian government that helped it turned the tide of the Tigray war, a separatist struggle in the country’s north that took place from 2020 to 2022.

    Iran has also supplied the Sudanese army with surveillance and combat drones. These have been used against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s ongoing civil war.

    The agreement is important for Ethiopia for two reasons.

    Firstly, it’s likely to enable the Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa to combat ethnic militias more effectively. It faces increasing internal instability, including tensions with hostile factions of the separatist Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

    Secondly, the agreement comes after a meeting in Addis Ababa between the Ethiopian police chief, Demelash Gebremichael, and a delegation from Iran’s regional rival, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The exchange concentrated on investigating and extraditing cross-border criminals.

    Addis Ababa’s willingness to work with regional rivals in the Middle East shows its pragmatic approach to foreign relations. Ethiopia needs all the friends it can muster as an embattled and weakened state. Since the Tigray war, it has battled the rise of ethnic militias and confronted economic adversity. It is also facing renewed hostility with neighbouring Eritrea.

    What Iran stands to gain

    Since 2016, Ethiopia has been a gateway for Iran to gain a foothold in the Horn of Africa. That year, other countries in the region severed relations with Iran. This followed Tehran’s disengagement from sub-Saharan Africa under Hassan Rouhani, who served as president from 2013 to 2021, and his prioritisation of a nuclear deal with the US.

    The severing of ties was also a byproduct of geopolitical pressure exerted by Saudi Arabia and the UAE on countries in the region. The Middle Eastern states wanted to reduce, if not eliminate, Iran’s presence in the Horn of Africa and Red Sea to limit its support for Houthi rebels in the ongoing Yemeni civil war.



    Read more:
    Iran’s intervention in Sudan’s civil war advances its geopolitical goals − but not without risks

    Ethiopia was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to establish relations with Iran during the 1960s. It was also one of its top trading partners on the continent before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

    Strategically and ideologically, this special relationship was based on the pro-western and anti-communist stances of their monarchs: the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled from 1941 to 1979, and Emperor Haile Selassie, who was in power from 1930 to 1974.

    After the revolution, Iran-Ethiopia relations revived under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served as Iranian president from 2005 to 2013. He pursued an active Africa policy to mitigate Iran’s international isolation and circumvent US sanctions.

    After Rouhani initially downgraded these relations, they were renewed during his second term. This followed US withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

    Relations firmed when Ebrahim Raisi, who served as Iranian president from 2021 to 2024, delivered military drones and other aid to Addis Ababa during the Tigray war.

    What’s in it for Ethiopia

    Ethiopia is facing increasing instability and uncertainty. The Tigray war has depleted the state’s resources. There is an economic crisis caused by rising inflation and unemployment.

    Addis Ababa continues to confront ethnic tensions. Hostile factions of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front remain. It also faces tensions with the Amhara Fano militia, which initially fought alongside the government against Tigrayan forces. Forced disarmament policies and ongoing land disputes caused the militia to take up arms against the government.



    Read more:
    Somaliland-Ethiopia port deal: international opposition flags complex Red Sea politics

    Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed also faces growing opposition and resistance from his own ethnic group, the majority Oromo, and their Oromo Liberation Army. The reason for their discontent is Abiy’s imposition of centralised rule on their regional state within a federal system.

    The security and intelligence cooperation with Iran could allow Addis Ababa to combat ethnic militias more effectively.

    It would also enable Ethiopia to prepare for another possible war against neighbouring Eritrea.

    Ethiopia and Eritrea normalised relations and fought together against Tigrayan forces. However, tensions between the two countries have been brewing again. These have been triggered by two factors. First, the conditions of the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement caused Eritrea to maintain forces inside Ethiopia. Second are the ambitions of Addis Ababa to acquire a Red Sea port in Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia. Eritrea has supported Somalia’s opposition to the deal.

    Regional power games

    This isn’t the first time that Ethiopia has tried working with two regional rivals – Iran and the UAE. The UAE is also among its top trading partners, along with Saudi Arabia.

    In 2016, Ethiopia was the only country in the Horn of Africa that didn’t cut ties with Iran, though it was under pressure from the UAE and Saudi Arabia to do so. The decision was taken by Abiy’s predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, whose term ran from 2012 to 2018.

    During the Tigray war, Ethiopia received military drones and other assistance from Iran and the UAE, alongside Turkey.

    The civil war in Sudan has presented an even more complicated story. Ethiopia has vacillated between engaging with the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces at different points in the conflict.

    For its part, Iran has supported the Sudanese army. The UAE has backed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

    Ethiopia’s efforts to strengthen its security ties with Iran and the UAE show a unique case of convergence between regional rivals that have otherwise remained on opposite sides of conflicts in countries like Yemen and Sudan.

    Eric Lob 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. Iran and Ethiopia have a security deal – here’s why they signed it – https://theconversation.com/iran-and-ethiopia-have-a-security-deal-heres-why-they-signed-it-256486

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Viking pregnancy was deeply political – new study

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marianne Hem Eriksen, Associate Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester

    Britomart by Walter Crane (1900). Library of Decorative Arts, Paris

    Pregnant women wielding swords and wearing martial helmets, foetuses set to avenge their fathers – and a harsh world where not all newborns were born free or given burial.

    These are some of the realities uncovered by the first interdisciplinary study to focus on pregnancy in the Viking age, authored by myself, Kate Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen as part of the Body-Politics project. Despite its central role in human history, pregnancy has often been overlooked in archaeology, largely because it leaves little material trace.

    Pregnancy has perhaps been particularly overlooked in periods we mostly associate with warriors, kings and battles – such as the highly romanticised Viking age (the period from AD800 until AD1050).

    Topics such as pregnancy and childbirth have conventionally been seen as “women’s issues”, belonging to the “natural” or “private” spheres – yet we argue that questions such as “when does life begin?” are not at all natural or private, but of significant political concern, today as in the past.

    In our new study, my co-authors and I puzzle together eclectic strands of evidence in order to understand how pregnancy and the pregnant body were conceptualised at this time. By exploring such “womb politics”, it is possible to add significantly to our knowledge on gender, bodies and sexual politics in the Viking age and beyond.

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    First, we examined words and stories depicting pregnancy in Old Norse sources. Despite dating to the centuries after the Viking age, sagas and legal texts provide words and stories about childbearing that the Vikings’ immediate descendants used and circulated.

    We learned that pregnancy could be described as “bellyful”, “unlight” and “not whole”. And we gleaned an insight into the possible belief in personhood of a foetus: “A woman walking not alone.”

    Helgi and Guðrún in the Laxdæla saga, as depicted by Andreas Bloch (1898).
    Wiki Commons

    An episode in one of the sagas we looked at supports the idea that unborn children (at least high-status ones) could already be inscribed into complex systems of kinship, allies, feuds and obligations. It tells the story of a tense confrontation between the pregnant Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, a protagonist in the Saga of the People of Laxardal and her husband’s killer, Helgi Harðbeinsson.

    As a provocation, Helgi wipes his bloody spear on Guđrun’s clothes and over her belly. He declares: “I think that under the corner of that shawl dwells my own death.” Helgi’s prediction comes true, and the foetus grows up to avenge his father.

    Another episode, from the Saga of Erik the Red, focuses more on the agency of the mother. The heavily pregnant Freydís Eiríksdóttir is caught up in an attack by the skrælings, the Norse name for the indigenous populations of Greenland and Canada. When she cannot escape due to her pregnancy, Freydís picks up a sword, bares her breast and strikes the sword against it, scaring the assailants away.

    While sometimes regarded as an obscure literary episode in scholarship, this story may find a parallel in the second set of evidence we examined for the study: a figurine of a pregnant woman.

    This pendant, found in a tenth-century woman’s burial in Aska, Sweden, is the only known convincing depiction of pregnancy from the Viking age. It depicts a figure in female dress with the arms embracing an accentuated belly — perhaps signalling connection with the coming child. What makes this figurine especially interesting is that the pregnant woman is wearing a martial helmet.

    The figurine of a pregnant woman that was analysed in the study.
    Historiska Museet, CC BY-ND

    Taken together, these strands of evidence show that pregnant women could, at least in art and stories, be engaged with violence and weapons. These were not passive bodies. Together with recent studies of Viking women buried as warriors, this provokes further thought to how we envisage gender roles in the oft-perceived hyper-masculine Viking societies.

    Missing children and pregnancy as a defect

    A final strand of investigation was to look for evidence for obstetric deaths in the Viking burial record. Maternal-infant death rates are thought to be very high in most pre-industrial societies. Yet, we found that among thousands of Viking graves, only 14 possible mother-infant burials are reported.

    Consequently, we suggest that pregnant women who died weren’t routinely buried with their unborn child and may not have been commemorated as one, symbiotic unity by Viking societies. In fact, we also found newborns buried with adult men and postmenopausal women, assemblages which may be family graves, but they may also be something else altogether.

    Interpretative drawing of a grave from Fjälkinge, Sweden, of an adult woman buried together with newborn placed between her thighs. Note that the legs of the woman’s body have been weighed down by a boulder.
    Matt Hitchcock / Body-Politics, CC BY-SA

    We cannot exclude that infants – underrepresented in the burial record more generally – were disposed of in death elsewhere. When they are found in graves with other bodies, it’s possible they were included as a “grave good” (objects buried with a deceased person) for other people in the grave.

    This is a stark reminder that pregnancy and infancy can be vulnerable states of transition. A final piece of evidence speaks to this point like no other. For some, like Guđrun’s little boy, gestation and birth represented a multi-staged process towards becoming a free social person.

    For people lower on the social rung, however, this may have looked very different. One of the legal texts we examined dryly informs us that when enslaved women were put up for sale, pregnancy was regarded as a defect of their bodies.

    Pregnancy was deeply political and far from uniform in meaning for Viking-age communities. It shaped – and was shaped by – ideas of social status, kinship and personhood. Our study shows that pregnancy was not invisible or private, but crucial to how Viking societies understood life, social identities and power.

    Marianne Hem Eriksen leads the BODY-POLITICS project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 949886).

    This research was also supported by The Leverhulme Trust through a Philip Leverhulme Prize awarded to Marianne Hem Eriksen (PLP-2022-285).

    – ref. Viking pregnancy was deeply political – new study – https://theconversation.com/viking-pregnancy-was-deeply-political-new-study-254738

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider turned lead into gold – by accident

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ulrik Egede, Professor of Physics, Monash University

    Sunny Young / Unsplash

    Medieval alchemists dreamed of transmuting lead into gold. Today, we know that lead and gold are different elements, and no amount of chemistry can turn one into the other.

    But our modern knowledge tells us the basic difference between an atom of lead and an atom of gold: the lead atom contains exactly three more protons. So can we create a gold atom by simply pulling three protons out of a lead atom?

    As it turns out, we can. But it’s not easy.

    While smashing lead atoms into each other at extremely high speeds in an effort to mimic the state of the universe just after the Big Bang, physicists working on the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland incidentally produced small amounts of gold. Extremely small amounts, in fact: a total of some 29 trillionths of a gram.

    How to steal a proton

    Protons are found in the nucleus of an atom. How can they be pulled out?

    Well, protons have an electric charge, which means an electric field can pull or push them around. Placing an atomic nucleus in an electric field could do it.

    However, nuclei are held together by a very strong force with a very short range, imaginatively known as the strong nuclear force. This means an extremely powerful electric field is required to pull out protons – about a million times stronger than the electric fields that create lightning bolts in the atmosphere.

    The way the scientists created this field was to fire beams of lead nuclei at each other at incredibly high speeds – almost the speed of light.

    The magic of a near-miss

    When the lead nuclei have a head-on collision, the strong nuclear force comes into play and they end up getting completely destroyed. But more commonly the nuclei have a near miss, and only affect each other via the electromagnetic force.

    The strength of an electric field drops off very quickly as you move away from an object with an electric charge (such as a proton). But at very short distances, even a tiny charge can create a very strong field.

    So when one lead nucleus just grazes past another, the electric field between them is huge. The rapidly changing field between the nuclei makes them vibrate and occasionally spit out some protons. If one of them spits out exactly three protons, the lead nucleus has turned into gold.

    Counting protons

    So if you have turned a lead atom into gold, how do you know? In the ALICE experiment, they use special detectors called zero-degree calorimeters to count the protons stripped out of the lead nuclei.

    They can’t observe the gold nuclei themselves, so they only know about them indirectly.

    The ALICE scientists calculate that, while they are colliding beams of lead nuclei, they produce about 89,000 gold nuclei per second. They also observed the production of other elements: thallium, which is what you get when you take one proton from lead, as well as mercury (two protons).

    An alchemical nuisance

    Once a lead nucleus has transformed by losing protons, it is no longer on the perfect orbit that keeps it circulating inside the vacuum beam pipe of the Large Hadron Collider. In a matter of microseconds it will collide with the walls.

    This effect makes the beam less intense over time. So for scientists, the production of gold at the collider is in fact more of a nuisance than a blessing.

    However, understanding this accidental alchemy is essential for making sense of experiments – and for designing the even bigger experiments of the future.

    Ulrik Egede 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. Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider turned lead into gold – by accident – https://theconversation.com/physicists-at-the-large-hadron-collider-turned-lead-into-gold-by-accident-256478

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship heads to the Supreme Court

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jean Lantz Reisz, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director, USC Immigration Clinic, University of Southern California

    President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship resurrects a dissenting argument in an 1898 case that went before the Supreme Court. iStock/Getty Images Plus

    For more than 150 years, people who were born within U.S. territory automatically received citizenship – regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

    President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship – stating that children born in the U.S. to parents who are not in the country legally, or who are not permanent residents, cannot receive citizenship – threatens to upend this precedent.

    The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the case on May 14, 2025.

    This comes after federal judges in three cases that took place in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington banned Trump’s order from going into effect, determining that the president cannot change or limit the Constitution by executive order.

    The Trump administration has argued that courts previously did not interpret the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause correctly. But the administration’s argument in its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court is different. The administration is asking the Supreme Court to narrow the federal judges’ bans on implementing the order so their rulings apply only to the noncitizen plaintiffs named in those specific cases. If the Supreme Court justices agree, that could mean Trump’s executive order could apply to all of the other noncitizens not named in the cases at hand.

    The president has broad powers when enforcing immigration laws and has the most discretion to use this authority when immigration is a national security issue.

    At the same time, as an immigration law scholar, I understand that the president’s immigration power is limited by federal laws and the Constitution. American citizenship is a right that is spelled out in the Constitution – and the Constitution does not give the president the power to change how someone gets citizenship in the country.

    Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown speaks to the media after a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship on Feb. 6, 2025.
    Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images

    What the Constitution says about birthright citizenship

    Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment citizenship clause states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. …”

    There are currently two exceptions to who can receive birthright citizenship: children of war enemies who are occupying the U.S. and children of noncitizens working as foreign diplomats in the U.S.

    Trump’s executive order states there is now a third exception – the child of a mother who is living in the country without legal authorization, or has a temporary visa, if the father is also not a lawful permanent resident or U.S. citizen.

    Since Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, multiple states, cities, immigration rights organizations and private individuals, including pregnant mothers, have sued Trump. They have also sued the government agencies he instructed to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to noncitizens.

    If the president’s executive order were to fully take effect, hundreds of thousands of babies born in the U.S. would be living in the country illegally. They could be deported by the U.S. government and would potentially be stateless, meaning without citizenship in any country.

    If these babies stayed in the U.S., they would also be denied basic rights and privileges given to U.S. citizens, such as government-provided health care insurance and legal identification documents.

    Once these children became adolescents and then adults, they could not receive federal financial aid for education, may not be eligible to legally work and could not vote.

    This would create a vast and indefinitely growing population of noncitizens who are born and raised in the U.S. but do not have the legal right to stay there.

    What led to the 14th Amendment

    In 1868, the required 28 of the then 37 U.S. states ratified the 14th Amendment. This ensured that certain states did not deny citizenship to freed former slaves, who were of African descent and forcibly sent to the U.S., as well as their children.

    About 30 years later, a U.S.-born man of Chinese descent named Wong Kim Ark was returning home to San Francisco after visiting his parents in China. U.S. authorities would not let him leave a steamship docked in the San Francisco harbor and enter the U.S.

    Government officials prevented his entry under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a discriminatory law that barred Chinese nationals from entering the U.S. and becoming naturalized citizens, among other restrictions.

    Wong argued that he was a U.S. citizen at birth and not barred by the exclusion laws.

    The Supreme Court, albeit not unanimously, decided in 1898 that Wong was a citizen, since he was born in a U.S. territory.

    The Supreme Court noted that the framers of the 14th Amendment relied on the British legal principle of “jus soli,” a Latin term meaning right of soil, to give automatic citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. Under jus soli, any person born within the kingdom of the British king was a citizen of that kingdom.

    U.S. courts and lawmakers have similarly interpreted the 14th Amendment to automatically give citizenship to all children born in the U.S., even if their parents are immigrants.

    In 1952, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which incorporated language from the 14th Amendment into immigration law. This included the phrase that “any person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a “citizen of the United States at birth.”

    The 1952 statute did not exclude children born to immigrants living in the U.S. without legal authorization or immigrants with a temporary visa.

    In 1995, the Office of Legal Counsel for the Department of Justice evaluated proposed federal legislation that would deny birthright citizenship to certain children, based on their parents’ immigration status. The Department of Justice determined the legislation would be “unquestionably unconstitutional” and it did not become law.

    Less than 10 years later, the Supreme Court recognized in 2004 that accused Taliban fighter Yasser Hamdi had certain rights as a U.S. citizen. Hamdi was born in Louisiana to Saudi Arabian parents who had temporary visas.

    Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S. but denied reentry in 1895 in a case that went to the Supreme Court.
    National Archives/Interim Archives/Getty Images

    Trump’s 14th Amendment claims

    Whether Trump’s executive order ultimately survives depends on how the Supreme Court interprets the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment.

    The Trump administration argues that this phrase was never meant to include the children of immigrants who were living in the U.S. without legal authorization or with temporary visas. The administration also says the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means more than just being born in U.S. territory. It means having undivided sovereign allegiance to the U.S. government.

    The Trump administration argues that U.S.-born children of noncitizens owe allegiance to a different country.

    This is an old argument, based on the dissenting opinion in the Wong Kim Ark case in 1898. The Supreme Court already rejected this argument in that case.

    The courts are following historical precedent

    Three federal judges in the cases before the Supreme Court all determined in 2025 that Trump’s executive order is likely unconstitutional.

    The Washington judge, for example, said in February that the administration was rehashing a century-old losing argument.

    The appellate courts have also denied the government’s requests to change the preliminary injunctions.

    For over a century, the federal government has recognized that nearly every child born in the U.S., regardless of who their parents are, automatically becomes a U.S. citizen.

    Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether there is merit to the Trump administration’s technical argument that the federal judges’ block on its executive order should apply to plaintiffs in the three cases – an option that could permit the executive order to apply to all other noncitizens, even if it is unconstitutional.

    Whether the executive order itself is constitutional would be a question left for a later date. However, that date may come after the executive order causes irreversible damage to U.S. citizens.

    Jean Lantz Reisz 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. Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship heads to the Supreme Court – https://theconversation.com/trumps-bid-to-end-birthright-citizenship-heads-to-the-supreme-court-248819

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Feeling anxious before surgery? Anxiety can harm healing but innovative mental health support could help

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Renée El-Gabalawy, Associate Professor and Clinical Psychologist, University of Manitoba

    Poor mental health before surgery is linked to worse outcomes. (Unsplash), CC BY

    Feeling anxious before surgery is normal — but for many patients, it goes far beyond nerves. There is a growing body of research showing that poor mental health before surgery can derail recovery in ways that extend far beyond the operating room.

    For example, in recent research, my colleagues and I found that anxiety and depressive symptoms before surgery are linked to poorer surgical outcomes. This includes higher complication rates within 30 days and even increased risk of death within a year.

    On top of this, many patients rank anxiety as one of the worst parts of their surgical experience, worse than pain or other aspects of surgical recovery.

    Both patients and clinicians identify a need for mental health support, yet this need is often overlooked. As an expert in perioperative mental health, I have some solutions to offer.

    Demand for surgery is accelerating

    The growing number of surgical patients — driven by an aging population, rising rates of chronic diseases and advancements in medicine — has intensified pressure on the health-care system.

    Rising demand has led to longer wait times and increases in surgery delays and cancellations. This situation has been made even worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients can be left suffering in limbo for weeks, months or even years.

    My colleagues and I have found these surgery delays and cancellations to be linked with even further negative impacts on mental and physical health. Patients are getting worse while they wait.

    While this growing backlog represents a significant challenge, it also presents an opportunity.

    The opportunity

    The surgical waiting period, which is too often prolonged, offers a critical window to identify patients at highest risk for poor mental health. Identifying those in need is critical to deliver targeted and scientifically supported psychological treatments. It’s a time when patients are already engaged with the health-care system, motivated to do well and receptive to guidance.

    Evidence-based psychological treatments like cognitive behavioural therapy before surgery have been shown to improve outcomes like pain and function.

    International organizations, such as the World Health Organization, highlight the importance of including mental health support into hospital settings including surgical care.

    In the United States, the Center for Perioperative Mental Health, originating from Washington University, is one of the first large-scale initiatives of its kind aiming to integrate personalized pathways to support mental health for older adults.

    As the external advisory chair for this centre, I have seen how initiatives like these can significantly enhance perioperative care and patient outcomes.

    Globally, efforts such as pre-habilitation programs — which aim to enhance surgical readiness through exercise, nutrition and mental health support — are emerging. While these represent progress, they are not routinely implemented, often lack integration of evidence-based mental-health care, and show mixed results due to variability in design and delivery.

    There is strong evidence linking poor pre-operative mental health to worse outcomes, along with clear patient demand and promising results from existing programs. Yet, perioperative mental health support in Canada remains underfunded and far from standard clinical care.

    Mental health continues to be unaddressed in surgical settings.

    Leverage technological advancements

    Given the significant shortcomings of accessible mental-health care in Canada, creative solutions are critical. One way forward is to make the most of fast-growing technology.

    For example, our team has developed an innovative virtual reality (VR) program using patient input and strategies backed by science to support mental health before surgery.

    Patients found this both acceptable and helpful. These platforms assist patients to mentally prepare for surgery, familiarize themselves with the environment and feel more in control.

    Other large-scale digital initiatives such as the Power Over Pain Portal offer free evidence-based online psychological treatments for pain management from the comfort of your home. And pain management is especially important for those waiting extended periods for many types of surgeries.

    Our multidisciplinary team at the University of Manitoba believes these types of digital approaches can be delivered at scale, relatively low cost, and with high patient acceptability and satisfaction. This is not meant to replace human care, but to extend it.

    These are not just flashy gadgets but clinical tools with real potential to integrate evidence-based mental health treatments.

    Prepare physically and mentally

    Health-care systems are often under-resourced, and Canada is no exception. To address this, surgical care should prioritize greater investment in mental health support, including integration of technology. These efforts can better prepare patients physically and mentally for surgery and aid in their surgical recovery.

    Encouraging sign made for children with cancer at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
    (National Cancer Institute/Unsplash), CC BY

    Mental health is central to surgical outcomes — not secondary. We need a national strategy to fund the research and ultimately routinely apply accessible mental health treatments for surgical patients. This is especially important for those at highest risk.

    Patients have told us what they need. The evidence is undeniable. And the opportunity for change has never been greater. We need to build a system that truly cares for the whole patient.

    Renée El-Gabalawy received research funding for virtual reality projects from the New Frontiers in Research Fund – Exploration, National Research Council New Beginning Initiative, and the Winnipeg Foundation Innovation Fund. She is also the external advisory chair of the Center of Perioperative Mental Health and receives an honorarium for her involvement.

    – ref. Feeling anxious before surgery? Anxiety can harm healing but innovative mental health support could help – https://theconversation.com/feeling-anxious-before-surgery-anxiety-can-harm-healing-but-innovative-mental-health-support-could-help-255354

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI can guess racial categories from heart scans – what it means and why it matters

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tiarna Lee, Doctoral Candidate, School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London

    Radiological imaging/Shutterstock

    Imagine an AI model that can use a heart scan to guess what racial category you’re likely to be put in – even when it hasn’t been told what race is, or what to look for. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s real.

    My recent study, which I conducted with colleagues, found that an AI model could guess whether a patient identified as Black or white from heart images with up to 96% accuracy – despite no explicit information about racial categories being given.

    It’s a striking finding that challenges assumptions about the objectivity of AI and highlights a deeper issue: AI systems don’t just reflect the world – they absorb and reproduce the biases built into it.

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    First, it’s important to be clear: race is not a biological category. Modern genetics shows there is more variation within supposed racial groups than between them.

    Race is a social construct, a set of categories invented by societies to classify people based on perceived physical traits and ancestry. These classifications don’t map cleanly onto biology, but they shape everything from lived experience to access to care.

    Despite this, many AI systems are now learning to detect, and potentially act on, these social labels, because they are built using data shaped by a world that treats race as if it were biological fact.

    AI systems are already transforming healthcare. They can analyse chest X-rays, read heart scans and flag potential issues faster than human doctors – in some cases, in seconds rather than minutes. Hospitals are adopting these tools to improve efficiency, reduce costs and standardise care.

    Bias isn’t a bug – it’s built in

    But no matter how sophisticated, AI systems are not neutral. They are trained on real-world data – and that data reflects real-world inequalities, including those based on race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. These systems can learn to treat patients differently based on these characteristics, even when no one explicitly programs them to do so.

    One major source of bias is imbalanced training data. If a model learns primarily from lighter skinned patients, for example, it may struggle to detect conditions in people with darker skin.
    Studies in dermatology have already shown this problem.

    Even language models like ChatGPT aren’t immune: one study found evidence that some models still reproduce outdated and false medical beliefs, such as the myth that Black patients have thicker skin than white patients.

    Sometimes AI models appear accurate, but for the wrong reasons – a phenomenon called shortcut learning. Instead of learning the complex features of a disease, a model might rely on irrelevant but easier to spot clues in the data.

    Imagine two hospital wards: one uses scanner A to treat severe COVID-19 patients, another uses scanner B for milder cases. The AI might learn to associate scanner A with severe illness – not because it understands the disease better, but because it’s picking up on image artefacts specific to scanner A.

    Now imagine a seriously ill patient is scanned using scanner B. The model might mistakenly classify them as less sick – not due to a medical error, but because it learned the wrong shortcut.

    This same kind of flawed reasoning could apply to race. If there are differences in disease prevalence between racial groups, the AI could end up learning to identify race instead of the disease – with dangerous consequences.

    In the heart scan study, researchers found that the AI model wasn’t actually focusing on the heart itself, where there were few visible differences linked to racial categories. Instead, it drew information from areas outside the heart, such as subcutaneous fat as well as image artefacts – unwanted distortions like motion blur, noise, or compression that can degrade image quality. These artefacts often come from the scanner and can influence how the AI interprets the scan.

    In this study, Black participants had a higher-than-average BMI, which could mean they had more subcutaneous fat, though this wasn’t directly investigated. Some research has shown that Black individuals tend to have less visceral fat and smaller waist circumference at a given BMI, but more subcutaneous fat. This suggests the AI may have been picking up on these indirect racial signals, rather than anything relevant to the heart itself.

    This matters because when AI models learn race – or rather, social patterns that reflect racial inequality – without understanding context, the risk is that they may reinforce or worsen existing disparities.

    This isn’t just about fairness – it’s about safety.

    Solutions

    But there are solutions:

    Diversify training data: studies have shown that making datasets more representative improves AI performance across groups – without harming accuracy for anyone else.

    Build transparency: many AI systems are considered “black boxes” because we don’t understand how they reach their conclusions. The heart scan study used heat maps to show which parts of an image influenced the AI’s decision, creating a form of explainable AI that helps doctors and patients trust (or question) results – so we can catch when it’s using inappropriate shortcuts.

    Treat race carefully: researchers and developers must recognise that race in data is a social signal, not a biological truth. It requires thoughtful handling to avoid perpetuating harm.

    AI models are capable of spotting patterns that even the most trained human eyes might miss. That’s what makes them so powerful – and potentially so dangerous. It learns from the same flawed world we do. That includes how we treat race: not as a scientific reality, but as a social lens through which health, opportunity and risk are unequally distributed.

    If AI systems learn our shortcuts, they may repeat our mistakes – faster, at scale and with less accountability. And when lives are on the line, that’s a risk we cannot afford.

    Tiarna Lee receives funding from the EPSRC.

    – ref. AI can guess racial categories from heart scans – what it means and why it matters – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-guess-racial-categories-from-heart-scans-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters-254416

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: For children with a rare form of dementia, music could be a powerful therapy tool

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rebecca Atkinson, Researcher in Music Therapy, Anglia Ruskin University

    Music therapy may be helpful for children with a rare form of dementia. adriaticfoto/ Shutterstock

    When we hear the word “dementia”, we usually think of memory loss in older adults. But there’s another, much rarer form of the disease that strikes far earlier in life – childhood dementia, also known as Batten disease.

    Batten disease is a rare but serious genetic disorder that affects the brain and nervous system. It is unknown how many children in the UK are living with this heartbreaking condition, but recent estimates show between 150-200 are affected.

    It often appears in early in life – usually between the ages of 12 months to 12 years. The condition can lead to problems with vision, movement and thinking. And, because the condition is genetic, it often means that more than one child in a family can be affected.

    Right now, there’s no cure for Batten disease. Sadly, many children with the condition don’t survive into adulthood. Scientists and doctors are working hard to change that, but there’s still a long way to go.

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    While a promising drug has been shown to slow progression of one type of Batten disease, access to it is now under review in the UK. This leaves many children and families at risk of losing this lifesaving treatment.

    Without a viable cure, treatment for Batten disease mainly focuses on easing symptoms. Children often need physiotherapy, prescription drugs and educational support. But this care has been shown to be fragmented, with services spread across different providers. This lack of coordination makes it challenging for families to access consistent support.

    Families are open to looking for alternative forms of therapy – such as music therapy. Emerging research suggests that music and music therapy can be beneficial for children with Batten disease.

    Music therapy

    Researchers have begun exploring music therapy as a way of managing symptoms and possibly enhancing quality of life for children with Batten disease. Research in this area is still in its early stages. But if proven to be effective, music therapy could offer new opportunities and comfort to patients and their families.

    Music therapy uses music to help with emotional expression, psychological health and functional improvements. A typical music therapy session involves playing instruments, singing, listening to music or song writing to help patients improve psychological wellbeing, and cope with emotional or communication difficulties.

    For children with Batten disease, clinical researchers consider music therapy – when used alongside other standard therapies (such as physiotherapy and speech therapy) – to alleviate pain and anxiety in patients and improve their social interaction and enjoyment.

    In one case study, it was found that weekly music therapy sessions helped one ten-year-old child with Batten disease better express her feelings and memories through writing and singing songs. Not only this, these songs became a lasting legacy, helping loved ones stay connected to her after she passed away.

    An international survey of 182 parents and professionals who support children with Batten disease also found music therapy was beneficial. Around 80% of the people in the study said music helped their children communicate. In some cases, children who could no longer speak were still able to sing. Music also helped the children access memories, and generally improved their quality of life.

    Music therapy may help children with Batten disease to communicate and access memories.
    Da Antipina/ Shutterstock

    One specific strand of music therapy is neurologic music therapy. This approach can help people with neurological conditions manage their symptoms and function better in their everyday life through practical musical exercises. This is done through specific singing or rhythm exercises to help with speech, or targeted movement activities to help with mobility.

    Currently, no research has been conducted on the use of neurologic music therapy for children with Batten disease. But, research on other neurological conditions shows it can be very beneficial.

    For instance, research shows neurologic music therapy can improve speech, language, cognition and movement for some Parkinson’s sufferers and quality of life and well being for adults with dementia.



    Read more:
    Why researchers are turning to music as a possible treatment for stroke, brain injuries and even Parkinson’s

    Studies have also shown the practice can help children with neurological conditions similar to Batten disease, such as cerebral palsy and Rett’s syndrome. When added to standard rehabilitation programmes that target motor, language, movement and psychological goals, neurologic music therapy increased brain plasticity (meaning it strengthened connections in the brain).

    The children who received the therapy became more engaged and focused. These findings indicate that adding music therapy could speed up progress toward rehabilitation goals.

    For children with epilepsy, listening to music has even been shown to reduce the number of seizures over a six month period. Many children with Batten disease experience epileptic seizures which can become more unmanageable as the disease progresses. This suggests that music therapy could potentially be useful for managing seizures in children with Batten disease.

    The uniquely powerful effect of music could be explained by the fact that it activates multiple regions of the brain at once – including those linked to movement, memory, emotion and language.

    This global activation can be especially helpful for children with Batten disease, as it may stimulate areas of the brain that are still functioning. Music may also help with emotional expression and social connection, offering comfort and a sense of identity even as the disease progresses.

    While early findings from this field are promising, larger and more targeted studies are needed to confirm the benefits of music therapy for children with Batten disease and explore how it might be integrated into standard care.

    As Batten disease progresses, families face the heartbreaking reality of their child’s diminishing future. Many turn to supportive therapies and palliative care in their child’s final stages of life.

    Early findings on music therapy suggest that it may help children with Batten disease express themselves, stay connected and hold on to moments of independence for a little longer.

    Rebecca Atkinson is a board member of Chiltern Music Therapy, and has received funding from The Musicians Company to carry out research activities for children with Batten disease.

    – ref. For children with a rare form of dementia, music could be a powerful therapy tool – https://theconversation.com/for-children-with-a-rare-form-of-dementia-music-could-be-a-powerful-therapy-tool-171688

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Syria faces renewed sectarian violence as government fails to deliver inclusivity

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Katya Alkhateeb, Senior Researcher in International Human Rights Law & Humanitarian Law at Essex Law School and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex

    A recent surge in violence against Syria’s Druze religious community has reportedly seen over 100 people killed since the start of May. This is a grim extension of sectarian targeting that began with the massacre of Alawite civilians in March.

    Both crises are grounded in the same religious justifications, revealing problems in Syria’s transition following the end of the Assad family’s 53-year rule.

    Specifically these atrocities are linked by the misuse of nafir aam – a general call to arms or mass mobilisation. It is an Arabic term rooted in classical Islamic jurisprudence, especially in discussions about jihad and collective defence.

    It is declared only when the Muslim community faces an existential threat, such as an invasion or overwhelming danger from an enemy.

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    Recently though, it has been used by extremist groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda to summon Muslims to fight supposed enemies of the faith. These enemies have, in most cases, been innocent civilians.

    In March, when gunmen loyal to Syria’s former leader Bashar al-Assad (who is an Alawite) clashed with security forces, the transitional government issued a nafir aam. Loudspeakers in mosques across northern Syria broadcast mobilisation calls, tribal groups pledged support, and recruitment links flooded social media.

    The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that close to 1,400 Alawite civilians were subsequently murdered, with the final death toll likely to be much higher.

    A post on the Telegram channel of Syria’s ruling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham organisation reading: ‘General mobilisation now being announced via loudspeakers in Idlib and Aleppo toward the coast. Listen to the important and urgent announcement directly.’
    Telegram

    The same sectarian machinery has now been turned against the Druze. This latest wave of violence was triggered by the unproven allegation that a Druze cleric was responsible for an audio recording containing anti-Islamic remarks. Despite the cleric’s immediate denial, armed groups launched assaults on Druze areas near Syria’s capital, Damascus.

    Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to protect the Druze and the Israeli military subsequently carried out a series of airstrikes across Syria. These included strikes near the presidential palace. While Netanyahu has positioned these actions as protecting a vulnerable minority, they risk further destabilising Syria’s fragile transition.

    Deeply entrenched sectarianism

    Syria’s transitional government is led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Following its campaign against Assad, HTS has been implementing a new policy of tolerance towards minority groups. The Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has vowed to protect minorities and pursue more inclusive policies.

    But HTS is arguably failing to deliver the inclusive governance it promised when seizing control of the country in December 2024. The seven-member committee for the national dialogue conference, which began in February to discuss a new path for the nation, lacked Alawite, Kurdish and Druze representation.

    The resulting constitutional declaration offered no explicit protections for Syria’s religious diversity. It also centralises power in ways that undermine pluralism.

    Article 3 of the constitutional declaration states that the “religion of the president of the republic is Islam” and “Islamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation”. Officials have clarified that any future parliament would remain subordinate to Islamic law.

    The ideological basis and policy for sectarian violence in Syria remains deeply entrenched. A 14th-century fatwa (a religious edict) by Sunni Muslim scholar Ibn Taymiyyah branded Alawites as “infidels”. This fatwa continues to circulate in areas under government control.

    At the Brussels donors’ conference on Syria in March, Syrian foreign minister Asaad al-Shibani blamed “54 years of minority rule” for mass displacement and deaths – raising concerns about sectarian narratives. And the integrity of the investigation into the recent massacres have been questioned, notably by the Syrians for Truth and Justice human rights group.

    Criticisms have also been made over the inclusion of controversial figures to the newly formed Civil Peace Committee, which is tasked with healing the sectarian wounds left by Assad family rule. One of these figures, Sheikh Anas Ayrout, was reported 12 years ago to have made inciting comments against Alawites.

    Civil society organisations, including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, have called on the government to issue protective religious rulings for minority communities. But their appeals have gone unanswered. And violence, particularly against Alawites in Homs and Aleppo, has surged dramatically.

    Five months after Assad’s fall, it seems that Syria is not witnessing the long hoped for fruition of its 2011 revolution, where pro-democracy protests swept through the country, but rather its continuing unravelling.

    The groups now in power had little to do with the revolution’s early democratic hopes. They have emerged from transnational jihadist networks with a radically different vision for Syria’s future.

    In the view of prominent Syrian intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Syria urgently needs a period of de-escalation and genuine political concessions. He argues for “taking two or three steps back … to move more firmly forward”. Political solutions must precede the creation of public institutions, not the other way around.

    If the cycle of sectarian violence is not broken, Syria risks sliding deeper into communal bloodshed that could permanently fracture the nation’s social fabric.

    The international community must act decisively. It has to apply concrete political pressure that makes the protection of all Syrians – regardless of sect – a non-negotiable foundation for Syria’s path forward.

    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. Syria faces renewed sectarian violence as government fails to deliver inclusivity – https://theconversation.com/syria-faces-renewed-sectarian-violence-as-government-fails-to-deliver-inclusivity-255974

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How the weather got ‘stuck’ over the UK – and produced an unusually dry and warm spring

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon H. Lee, Lecturer in Atmospheric Science, University of St Andrews

    Wildfires have ignited in forests and on moorland across the UK in recent months. LSP EM/Shutterstock

    A “blocking” weather system lingering high above the UK has produced one of the driest, warmest and brightest starts to spring on record.

    April 2025 was the sunniest since records began in 1910. This followed the third-sunniest March, and both months saw temperatures well above average nationwide. On May 1, the temperature reached 29.3°C in Kew Gardens in London – a new record for the date.

    Meteorologists are warning of the potential for a summer drought, as the UK has seen roughly half its usual amount of rainfall for March and April. While farmers fret about this year’s harvest, some water companies are urging customers to help reservoir levels recover by limiting water use.

    Meanwhile, wildfires have engulfed forest and moorland in areas of Scotland, Wales and England.

    Most of the UK has experienced a record-dry spring so far.
    Met Office

    For several weeks, a stubborn area of high pressure over the UK has diverted the usual flow of mild, moist air from the North Atlantic like a boulder in a river. This is known as a blocking weather system.

    Within it, air descends, warms and dries, which is why this weather pattern tends to be linked to heatwaves and drought. Blocking is usually persistent, making it seem like the weather is stuck.

    Here’s how climate change may have played a role in setting up this unusual spring.

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    The human fingerprint

    The warming climate means that unusually warm weather is occurring more often and becoming more intense. At the same time, we can expect more periods of both severe drought and extreme rainfall. Sudden changes from drought to deluge, termed “weather whiplash”, are due to the intensification of the water cycle in a warmer atmosphere that can hold more water vapour.

    However, certain weather patterns are necessary to produce extreme weather. More blocking events in future could increase the chance of heatwaves or drought. But are blocking weather patterns becoming more common?

    It’s difficult to determine how weather patterns will change as a result of the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which is predominantly caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

    Part of the difficulty arises from the fact that weather patterns vary year to year. Several years in a row with more blocking events than usual could make it seem like blocking is increasing due to climate change, but it could simply be down to chance.

    As a result, it is difficult to detect the fingerprint of human activity from weather observations alone. For example, blocking weather patterns over Greenland during summer have happened more often in recent decades, which can enhance the melting of the ice sheet. But it isn’t clear that this trend is the result of human-induced climate change.

    Climate models do suggest future changes in the occurrence of blocking, however. These computer simulations, consisting of equations that describe the fundamental physics of the atmosphere, are the main tool scientists use to perform experiments that parse how the climate will behave in future.

    The blocking system is visible in the area of high pressure over Britain and Ireland.
    National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research/NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, CC BY

    When scientists run climate model simulations with increased greenhouse gas concentrations the results consistently show a decrease in blocking events. But blocking generally happens more often in real life than model simulations, which reduces the confidence scientists have in future projections.

    Keeping track of the jet stream

    The movement of weather systems in Earth’s mid-latitudes – including over the UK – is linked to the jet stream, which is a fast-flowing river of air driven by the contrast in temperature between the poles and mid-latitudes.

    Some researchers have suggested that, because the Arctic is warming faster than the tropics, the jet stream may weaken and become more “wavy”, increasing the occurrence of blocking events, contrary to what most climate models show.

    Outside of the scientific community, this idea has become popular. However, the hypothesis remains controversial among scientists, and observational evidence has weakened in recent years.

    In fact, tens of kilometres above the Earth’s surface, near commercial aircraft cruising altitudes, the opposite trends are occurring: the temperature difference between the Arctic and mid-latitudes is increasing, acting to increase the strength of the jet stream.

    There are considerable challenges with understanding how climate change is affecting the large-scale atmospheric patterns which drive the weather we experience. These include large natural variability and imperfect climate models. Models mostly suggest a decline in blocking events with climate change, though this remains relatively uncertain compared with other aspects of the science.

    Overall, we can be confident that climate change is bringing warmer conditions in all seasons. Scientists also have strong evidence to suggest that drought conditions will become more common. These changes are already affecting food production, energy generation and water availability and these impacts will continue to worsen with climate change.

    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.

    Simon H. Lee has received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council and the National Science Foundation.

    Matthew Patterson receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council in the UK via the the National Centre for Atmospheric Science.

    – ref. How the weather got ‘stuck’ over the UK – and produced an unusually dry and warm spring – https://theconversation.com/how-the-weather-got-stuck-over-the-uk-and-produced-an-unusually-dry-and-warm-spring-255987

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI can guess racial categories from heart scans – they’re detecting bias not biological differences

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tiarna Lee, Doctoral Candidate, School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London

    Radiological imaging/Shutterstock

    Imagine an AI model that can use a heart scan to guess what racial category you’re likely to be put in – even when it hasn’t been told what race is, or what to look for. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s real.

    My recent study, which I conducted with colleagues, found that an AI model could guess whether a patient identified as Black or white from heart images with up to 96% accuracy – despite no explicit information about racial categories being given.

    It’s a striking finding that challenges assumptions about the objectivity of AI and highlights a deeper issue: AI systems don’t just reflect the world – they absorb and reproduce the biases built into it.

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    First, it’s important to be clear: race is not a biological category. Modern genetics shows there is more variation within supposed racial groups than between them.

    Race is a social construct, a set of categories invented by societies to classify people based on perceived physical traits and ancestry. These classifications don’t map cleanly onto biology, but they shape everything from lived experience to access to care.

    Despite this, many AI systems are now learning to detect, and potentially act on, these social labels, because they are built using data shaped by a world that treats race as if it were biological fact.

    AI systems are already transforming healthcare. They can analyse chest X-rays, read heart scans and flag potential issues faster than human doctors – in some cases, in seconds rather than minutes. Hospitals are adopting these tools to improve efficiency, reduce costs and standardise care.

    Bias isn’t a bug – it’s built in

    But no matter how sophisticated, AI systems are not neutral. They are trained on real-world data – and that data reflects real-world inequalities, including those based on race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. These systems can learn to treat patients differently based on these characteristics, even when no one explicitly programs them to do so.

    One major source of bias is imbalanced training data. If a model learns primarily from lighter skinned patients, for example, it may struggle to detect conditions in people with darker skin.
    Studies in dermatology have already shown this problem.

    Even language models like ChatGPT aren’t immune: one study found evidence that some models still reproduce outdated and false medical beliefs, such as the myth that Black patients have thicker skin than white patients.

    Sometimes AI models appear accurate, but for the wrong reasons – a phenomenon called shortcut learning. Instead of learning the complex features of a disease, a model might rely on irrelevant but easier to spot clues in the data.

    Imagine two hospital wards: one uses scanner A to treat severe COVID-19 patients, another uses scanner B for milder cases. The AI might learn to associate scanner A with severe illness – not because it understands the disease better, but because it’s picking up on image artefacts specific to scanner A.

    Now imagine a seriously ill patient is scanned using scanner B. The model might mistakenly classify them as less sick – not due to a medical error, but because it learned the wrong shortcut.

    This same kind of flawed reasoning could apply to race. If there are differences in disease prevalence between racial groups, the AI could end up learning to identify race instead of the disease – with dangerous consequences.

    In the heart scan study, researchers found that the AI model wasn’t actually focusing on the heart itself, where there were few visible differences linked to racial categories. Instead, it drew information from areas outside the heart, such as subcutaneous fat as well as image artefacts – unwanted distortions like motion blur, noise, or compression that can degrade image quality. These artefacts often come from the scanner and can influence how the AI interprets the scan.

    In this study, Black participants had a higher-than-average BMI, which could mean they had more subcutaneous fat, though this wasn’t directly investigated. Some research has shown that Black individuals tend to have less visceral fat and smaller waist circumference at a given BMI, but more subcutaneous fat. This suggests the AI may have been picking up on these indirect racial signals, rather than anything relevant to the heart itself.

    This matters because when AI models learn race – or rather, social patterns that reflect racial inequality – without understanding context, the risk is that they may reinforce or worsen existing disparities.

    This isn’t just about fairness – it’s about safety.

    Solutions

    But there are solutions:

    Diversify training data: studies have shown that making datasets more representative improves AI performance across groups – without harming accuracy for anyone else.

    Build transparency: many AI systems are considered “black boxes” because we don’t understand how they reach their conclusions. The heart scan study used heat maps to show which parts of an image influenced the AI’s decision, creating a form of explainable AI that helps doctors and patients trust (or question) results – so we can catch when it’s using inappropriate shortcuts.

    Treat race carefully: researchers and developers must recognise that race in data is a social signal, not a biological truth. It requires thoughtful handling to avoid perpetuating harm.

    AI models are capable of spotting patterns that even the most trained human eyes might miss. That’s what makes them so powerful – and potentially so dangerous. It learns from the same flawed world we do. That includes how we treat race: not as a scientific reality, but as a social lens through which health, opportunity and risk are unequally distributed.

    If AI systems learn our shortcuts, they may repeat our mistakes – faster, at scale and with less accountability. And when lives are on the line, that’s a risk we cannot afford.

    Tiarna Lee receives funding from the EPSRC.

    – ref. AI can guess racial categories from heart scans – they’re detecting bias not biological differences – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-guess-racial-categories-from-heart-scans-theyre-detecting-bias-not-biological-differences-254416

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is matcha a healthier alternative to coffee? Here’s what you need to know

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of Westminster

    Ekateryna Zubal/Shutterstock

    Matcha, with its vibrant green hue and centuries-old tradition, is often celebrated as a health boosting superfood. But what exactly sets it apart from regular green tea, or even your morning coffee?

    Like green and black tea, matcha comes from
    the camellia sinensis plant. The difference lies in how it’s grown and processed. While black tea is fermented and regular green tea is simply dried, matcha is shade-grown for several weeks before harvest.

    This unique method alters the plant’s chemistry, boosting certain compounds like chlorophyll and amino acids and giving matcha its distinct flavour and rich green colour. The leaves are then dried and finely ground into a powder – hence its name, which literally translates to “powdered tea” in Japanese.

    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. Join The Conversation for free today.

    Although widely associated with Japanese culture and Zen tea ceremonies, matcha actually originated in China. It was brought to Japan in the 12th century by Buddhist monks, who used it to support meditation. Over time, it became a staple in Japanese tea culture, especially in formal tea ceremonies.

    From a health perspective, matcha offers many of the same benefits as green tea – thanks to its high content of polyphenols, including flavonoids, which are known antioxidants. However, because the leaves are consumed whole in powdered form, matcha may provide a more concentrated dose of these beneficial compounds.

    Lots of potential, relatively little research

    Matcha is touted for its wide range of potential health benefits: antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, anti-obesity and even anti-cancer effects, as well as potential improvements in brain function, stress relief, heart health and blood sugar regulation.

    But there’s a catch: most of the evidence supporting these claims comes from lab studies (on cells or animals), not robust clinical trials in humans. So while the early research is promising, it’s far from conclusive.

    One thing we do know: matcha contains caffeine – more than regular green tea, though typically less than coffee. Caffeine itself has well documented health benefits when consumed in moderation, including improved focus, mood, metabolism and even reduced risk of certain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

    But high doses can cause side effects like insomnia, anxiety and elevated blood pressure. The “more is better” approach doesn’t apply here, and the optimal dose of caffeine remains unclear.

    When comparing matcha to coffee, both offer similar antioxidant properties and cardiovascular benefits. However, coffee has been studied more extensively, with clearer guidelines: three to four cups a day appears to be a safe upper limit for most people.

    For matcha, the guidance is slightly more conservative, with sources suggesting one to three cups a day, probably due to the higher levels of polyphenols.



    Read more:
    All the reasons a cup of coffee really can be good for you

    Tannins and polyphenols in both tea and coffee can interfere with iron absorption, especially from plant-based foods. Drinking large amounts regularly, particularly around mealtimes, may increase the risk of iron-deficiency anaemia.

    That’s why it’s recommended to enjoy these beverages at least two hours before or after meals, especially for people who follow a predominantly plant-based diet or are already prone to low iron levels.

    Jitter-free

    Another consideration: both coffee and matcha are mildly acidic and can cause digestive discomfort or reflux in people with sensitive stomachs. That said, matcha may be a better choice for some. Unlike coffee, it contains L-theanine, an amino acid that promotes relaxation and may counteract the jittery effects of caffeine, making it a gentler alternative for people prone to anxiety.

    Both matcha and coffee have potential health benefits and the right choice depends on your personal needs and preferences. Coffee is better studied and may be ideal for those who tolerate caffeine well and enjoy several cups a day. Matcha, on the other hand, is a great option for those looking to consume less caffeine while still benefiting from antioxidants – and without the crash or jitters.

    Just remember to enjoy either in moderation, especially if you’re managing iron levels or digestive issues.

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

    – ref. Is matcha a healthier alternative to coffee? Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/is-matcha-a-healthier-alternative-to-coffee-heres-what-you-need-to-know-255729

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Climate Fiction Prize 2025: the five shortlisted books reviewed by our experts

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louisa Egbunike, Associate Professor in African Literature, Durham University

    Five novels have been shortlisted for the 2025 Climate Fiction Prize. Our academics review the finalists ahead of the announcement of the winner on May 14.

    And So I Roar by Abi Daré

    Abi Daré’s poignant second novel, And So I Roar, charts the parallel stories of Tia, an environmental advocate, and Adunni, a Nigerian teenager first introduced in The Girl with the Louding Voice (2020).

    Now under Tia’s care in Lagos, Adunni has escaped child marriage and domestic abuse.

    When she returns to her village, Ikati, where she and other girls are blamed for the drought and face the threat of violence, the novel unravels long-held secrets. Daré masterfully explores how environmental crises intersect with gendered violence, showing how impoverished women disproportionately bear the burden of climate change.

    And So I Roar highlights intergenerational, inter-ethnic and cross-class solidarity, celebrating the courage of women and girls who defy society’s expectations. It is a powerful testament to resilience, as women and girls confront injustice and find the strength to lift their voices and, finally, roar.

    By Louisa Uchum Egbunike, associate professor in African literature

    The Morningside by Téa Obreht

    Obreht’s The Morningside is a quietly dazzling piece of climate fiction – more adjacent to our world than removed from it, and all the more unsettling for it.

    Set in Island City, a place marked by an unnamed tragedy, the novel centres on Sil, an 11-year-old girl who moves into the Morningside apartment complex with her mother.

    Both are climate refugees, though the novel wears this reality lightly – what matters more are the small acts of home-making, the search for belonging and the ghosts that travel with them. Magical realism is deftly handled here, interlaced with hints of folklore that feel entirely plausible within the book’s fragile ecology.

    The Morningside is deeply readable – generous, tender and brimming with quiet unease. It never tips into bleakness, but its warnings are clear enough. “The things you had, the things you saw,” Sil’s mother tells us, “will probably be gone by the time [your children are] born.”

    By Sam Illingworth, professor of creative pedagogies

    Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen

    Roz Dineen’s Briefly Very Beautiful immerses readers in a world that both is and is not a familiar fiction. Crisply written, in direct, unfussy prose, it is, at one level, a story of a woman, Cass, trying to protect her children as her relationship unravels.

    At the same time, a parallel social collapse triggered by climate change puts the ordinary in an extraordinary frame.

    Much of the effect of this novel comes from Cass’s utterly believable responses to what is taking place around her, her almost peripheral awareness of other people fleeing the city, her own craving for fresh air “like she’d craved things in pregnancy, with a scary gorging hunger”.

    Briefly Very Beautiful is a novel brave enough to recognise that there is no simple, heroic response to some situations. That sometimes, the determination to live an ordinary life is the truly heroic course of action.

    By Christopher Morash, professor of Irish writing

    Orbital by Samantha Harvey

    Samantha Harvey’s Orbital skilfully exposes the human cost of space flight, set against the urgency of the climate crisis. While a typhoon of life-threatening proportions gathers across south-east Asia, six cosmonauts hurtle around Earth on the International Space Station.

    Their everyday routine of tasteless food and laboratory work is in stark contrast to the awesome spectacle of the blue planet, oscillating between night and day, dark and light, where international borders are meaningless.

    While they teach laboratory mice to orient themselves in micro-gravity, they rigorously document their own bodily functions to satisfy some “grand abstract dream of interplanetary life” away from “the planet held hostage by humans, a gun to its vitals”. These are humans, Harvey tells us, “with a godly view that’s the blessing and also the curse”. Harvey has written a novel for the end of the world as we know it. The hope it offers is that we might learn to know it differently.

    By Debra Benita Shaw, reader in cultural theory

    The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

    The best novels defy easy categorisation, and The Ministry of Time covers many genres: climate fiction, sci-fi, speculative fiction, romance, action.

    It tells the story of a female civil servant who is a handler for one of five people plucked from history before their death. It was fun to imagine how today’s world would be perceived from various perspectives, including a zesty young lesbian woman from the 17th century, a shy young lieutenant from the first world war and a 19th-century naval officer.

    The story adopts the usual dystopian tropes of a world that has destroyed itself through greed, power-seeking and over-indulgence. In the final plea to the reader not to let this terrible future unfold, the assumption is that if we’re scared enough, we’ll all give up red meat, stop flying and campaign for climate policies.

    My research, and psychological studies of fear caution us that the response is just as likely to be voting for far-right leaders, marginalisation of innocent victims, and buying up all the toilet rolls. I loved this book, but to inspire greener behaviour, showing visions of what a sustainable society might look like if we did things right would be a welcome change.

    By Denise Baden, professor of sustainable business

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

    The 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 Climate Fiction Prize 2025: the five shortlisted books reviewed by our experts – https://theconversation.com/the-climate-fiction-prize-2025-the-five-shortlisted-books-reviewed-by-our-experts-253056

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Medetomidine: what you need to know about the animal sedative turning up in opioid deaths

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Chazot, Professor of Pharmacology, Durham University

    Michael O’Keene/Shutterstock.com

    The opioid crisis, increasingly driven by synthetic opioids, continues to claim tens of thousands of lives annually in the US alone. Similar crises have arisen all over the western world.

    The crisis has become more complex as powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl, nitazenes and oxycodone are now being “cut” (mixed) with other drugs that slow brain activity, including animal tranquillisers.

    The emergence of medetomidine as a new contaminant in the US illicit drug market signals a worrying development in this escalating crisis. When public health officials in Philadelphia first began testing for the drug in May last year, medetomidine was found in 29% of fentanyl samples analysed. Six months later, the drug was found in 87% of fentanyl samples.

    Medetomidine, a drug approved only for veterinary use as a sedative and painkiller, has increasingly been implicated in illicit fentanyl-related overdoses.

    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. Join The Conversation for free today.

    Like xylazine – another veterinary tranquilliser recently detected in street drugs – it is believed that medetomidine is added to fentanyl to boost its euphoric effects and hence make it more appealing to users. However, medetomidine is even more potent and longer-lasting than xylazine.

    An overdose of medetomidine can cause extreme sleepiness, very low blood pressure, slow heart rate, trouble breathing (respiratory failure), and even coma or death. This is because medetomidine rapidly depresses the central nervous system and slows the heart rate significantly.

    When medetomidine is used with opioids, the risk is even greater because both drugs can slow breathing, and together they can make it much worse.

    Overdose-reversing drugs

    Police and paramedics use naloxone to reverse fentanyl overdoses. But if the drug is mixed with medetomidine, naloxone won’t work because medetomidine affects the body in a different way.

    Naloxone won’t reverse the effects of animal tranquillisers.
    oasisamuel / Shutterstock.com

    Atipamezole can reverse the effects of medetomidine – such as sedation, slowed breathing and slowed heart rate – but it’s only been tested in dogs. The US Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug for human use.

    Overdoses from fentanyl and high-potency nitazenes are also common in the UK and across Europe. The spread of medetomidine in street drugs in other parts of the world needs urgent attention.

    The first death in the UK involving xylazine was reported by the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths in December 2022. Between April 2023 and January 2024, 17 cases were reported in the UK, in a range of opioid tablets and powders, including codeine, tramadol and heroin.

    So far, no confirmed cases involving medetomidine have been reported in the UK. If trends in the US are reliable indicators, the UK may face similar challenges soon.

    Paul Chazot 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. Medetomidine: what you need to know about the animal sedative turning up in opioid deaths – https://theconversation.com/medetomidine-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-animal-sedative-turning-up-in-opioid-deaths-256015

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Deadly blood clots, risky treatments: The high-stakes battle against deep vein thrombosis in sports and beyond

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Peter Anthony Andrisani, PhD Candidate, Medical Sciences, McMaster University

    Seven-time NBA all-star Damian Lillard, 34, recently joined a growing list of NBA athletes to be sidelined by a diagnosis of deep-vein thrombosis, or DVT.

    The Milwaukee Bucks player joins Victor Wembanyama, 21, a rising star in the NBA who was diagnosed with the life-threatening condition earlier this season, along with Chris Bosh and Brandon Ingram, who were also sidelined with DVT during their careers.

    DVT in athletes

    DVT is caused by blood clots in the veins of the arms or legs. The condition is commonly associated with age, decreased mobility, obesity, some estrogen-containing medications and smoking, among other factors. Repetitive arm action above the head, like throwing a basketball, can also increase the risk of DVT.

    Typically, DVT causes swelling, pain and bruising in the affected limb. DVT on its own is not lethal, but left untreated, it can have serious consequences.

    Without treatment, pieces of blood clots that cause DVT can break off and travel to the lungs in a condition called pulmonary embolism (PE), which can result in severe damage to the lungs. Both DVT and PE are venous thromboembolic diseases, which are the third most common cause of deaths associated with the vascular system after heart attack and stroke.

    Tennis superstar Serena Williams developed PE twice. Like many people who develop it, she had trouble breathing, shortness of breath and chest pain.

    Although it might be scary to be diagnosed with DVT or PE, there are effective medicines to treat the conditions.

    My lab’s research focuses on identifying new blood-thinning drugs to treat blood-clotting conditions like DVT and stroke. Surgery and blood thinners are often combined to combat DVT and PE by removing the original blood clot and reducing the chances of a new clot forming.

    Despite their name, blood thinners do not literally make blood thinner. Instead, they make it harder for blood clots to form. Three general classes of blood thinners can be prescribed for DVT and PE: vitamin K antagonists such as warfarin, heparin and direct oral anticoagulants.

    Despite the help blood thinners provide, they create risks of their own, as they can increase the risk of bleeding, because blood clotting is a normal and necessary physiological process.

    Clot risks vs. bleeding risks

    Taking blood thinners is like walking a tightrope. The person taking the blood thinner is in a constant state of balance between preventing abnormal blood clots and excessive bleeding, which depends on the strength of the blood thinner. If you lean too far in either direction, you might fall off the tightrope, with serious consequences.

    The challenges of managing bleeding risk while preventing DVT was amplified in the case of Williams. Immediately after delivering her second child, Williams underwent a PE event and was placed on intravenous heparin. While heparin did prevent blood clots, Williams did have significant bleeding at the site of her C-section.

    The risk of bleeding often extends past the hospital. Typically, blood thinners are given to people with DVT for months, even years, to prevent ongoing risk of clot formation. The risk of bleeding persists as long as the person is taking the drug.

    Athletes on blood thinners playing contact sports are more vulnerable to injuries compared to others. Players commonly fall, which is more likely to cause potentially life-threatening internal bleeding.

    Due to this risk, athletes often must take to the sidelines to avoid injury after a DVT diagnosis.

    Balanced blood thinners

    The challenge of creating balanced blood-thinning drugs is of great interest to my lab at McMaster University’s Thrombosis and Atherosclerosis Research Institute. A promising candidate for treating clotting disorders is ADAMTS13. It’s a protein that plays a role in the typical maintenance of blood clots but shows great potential as a blood-thinning medication.

    Previous research with this protein has found that in acute blood-clotting conditions such as ischemic stroke, ADAMTS13 is effective at breaking apart blood clots but does not result in the same risk of bleeding. Further testing on the protein in chronic conditions like DVT still needs to be performed, but there is potential for it to act as a long-term blood thinner.

    The use of safer blood thinners will not only allow athletes like Lillard and Wembanyama to continue playing their respective sports, but will also help the general population.

    Approximately seven million new blood-thinner prescriptions for DVT and other conditions are written each year in Canada, highlighting the need for better therapeutics across the board.

    Peter Anthony Andrisani receives funding from CanVECTOR.

    Colin Kretz receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (R01HL172780).

    – ref. Deadly blood clots, risky treatments: The high-stakes battle against deep vein thrombosis in sports and beyond – https://theconversation.com/deadly-blood-clots-risky-treatments-the-high-stakes-battle-against-deep-vein-thrombosis-in-sports-and-beyond-253985

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Moomins drift through time like a myth – that’s why they resist meaning and endure

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Nash, Lecturer in Literature, Media, and Creative Writing, Leeds Beckett University

    The Moomins may look like hippos in aprons and top hats, but they’re more than just adorable characters from children’s books. Over the decades, these gentle creatures have become part of a living mythology – one that drifts across time, borders and generations.

    Created by Finnish-Swedish author Tove Jansson in the 1940s, the Moomins live in stories that blur the lines between fairy tale, folk wisdom and quiet philosophy. And perhaps that’s the secret to their enduring appeal: they resist being pinned down.

    Unlike traditional children’s characters tied to a tidy moral or neat storyline, the Moomins meander literally and metaphorically. Their world is one of seasonal migrations, long silences, floods, comets and unexpected departures.

    This is part of a series of articles celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Moomins. Want to celebrate their birthday with us? Join The Conversation and a group of experts on May 23 in Bradford for a screening of Moomins on the Riviera and a discussion of the refugee experience in Tove Jansson’s work. Click here for more information and tickets.

    Moominvalley isn’t a safe haven – it’s a landscape shaped by change. In that sense, Jansson’s stories echo something far older than modern literature: the mythic rhythms of Nordic storytelling, where time loops, endings blur and characters return in altered forms.

    A myth that moves

    The Viking sagas, for instance, were not written down at first but passed from voice to voice, reshaped with each telling. They weren’t concerned with tidy endings or moral clarity. Characters disappeared and reappeared. Time looped and fragmented.

    Similarly, Jansson’s stories don’t build to a climax. They wander. One book might end with a mystery, a quiet mood or a long silence. It’s a narrative style that feels strangely modern – and yet deeply ancient.

    Jansson herself resisted giving her stories a single message. In letters and interviews, she said she disliked moralising and preferred ambiguity. “A good story,” she wrote, “has no need to be explained; its truth lies in its telling, not in its conclusion.” That idea – of a truth that doesn’t depend on being pinned down – is at the heart of what makes the Moomins mythic.

    Of course, myths evolve. And the Moomins have evolved spectacularly. After the books found international success, the characters were adapted into Japanese anime, Nordic theatre, British radio and global branding campaigns.

    Each version tells a slightly different story. In Japan, the Moomins became symbols of warmth and nostalgia – gentle mascots of a simpler life. In the UK and US, early translations softened the melancholy and existential tones. More recently, new editions and critical reappraisals have returned to Jansson’s deeper themes of loss, solitude and transformation.

    The many lives of the Moomins

    This global journey has parallels with the evolution of Viking mythology. Once oral stories shared around fires, Norse myths have been repackaged for everything from national pride to Hollywood action. Like the Moomins, they’ve become flexible cultural symbols – used and re-used in ways that often have little to do with their original context.

    But unlike the fierce warriors of Norse myth, the Moomins are gentle, uncertain creatures. They worry. They drift. They don’t fight monsters – they reflect, explore, adapt. In Moominland Midwinter, Moomintroll wakes from hibernation to find the world cold and unfamiliar.

    His journey isn’t about conquering the landscape, it’s about learning how to live in it. That emotional honesty resonates with readers of all ages. It also reflects something uniquely Nordic: an existential awareness of solitude, change and survival.

    Folklore, loneliness and the Groke

    One character, the Groke, captures this beautifully. She’s a shadowy figure who creates frost wherever she walks. She’s not a villain, she’s just lonely. Children often fear her, but readers grow to understand her.

    She recalls Nordic spirits like the huldra or tomte – ghostly beings that live in the forests, blurring the line between human and otherworldly. In Jansson’s hands, this folklore becomes a way to explore anxiety, estrangement and the human need for warmth.

    The Moomins’ refusal to settle – geographically or philosophically – also speaks to today’s world of cultural fluidity. Jansson was from Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority and grew up between languages, cultures and post-war upheaval.

    Her books reflect that liminal identity, and they’ve found a home among readers who don’t always fit neatly into one place. That might be why the Moomins are particularly popular in countries dealing with identity shifts or cultural nostalgia.

    A myth for a shifting world

    As with all mythologies, there’s also a commercial side. The Moomins are now a global brand, with theme parks, merchandise, museums and a thriving fanbase. Some of this has softened their original complexity.

    But even through plush toys and animation, something essential remains: the feeling that these characters, like the stories they inhabit, can’t be reduced to one message. They are always slightly mysterious, slightly out of reach.

    In a world that often demands quick answers and strong opinions, the Moomins offer something gentler: ambiguity, openness and quiet reflection. They remind us that not all stories are meant to be solved with a neat conclusion. Some are meant to be returned to – revisited like familiar places in the mind, reshaped each time we arrive.

    That’s what makes the Moomins mythic. Not just their age or popularity, but their ability to change – and to change us – with every retelling. They invite us to wander, like Snufkin, and to sit still, like Moominmamma.

    They show us that myth isn’t just about gods and monsters – it’s about living with uncertainty, embracing return, and finding meaning in the stories that help us feel at home in the world.

    Steve Nash works for Leeds Beckett University.

    – ref. The Moomins drift through time like a myth – that’s why they resist meaning and endure – https://theconversation.com/the-moomins-drift-through-time-like-a-myth-thats-why-they-resist-meaning-and-endure-254742

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World should be read in tandem to understand today’s troubled times

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emrah Atasoy, Associate Fellow of English and Comparative Literary Studies & Honorary Research Fellow of IAS, University of Warwick

    Is there any past work of fiction that can help us make sense of today’s troubling trends? Taking into account the proliferation of references to obfuscating “Newspeak”, Big Brother-style leaders and impossible-to-circumvent surveillance systems in newspaper articles, this question cries out for a simple answer: “Yes – and that work is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

    People on both the political left and right see Orwell’s 1949 novel as the book from the last century that speaks to the present most powerfully. But there are others who regard consumer culture and social media obsession as the primary concerns of today. They have a different answer: “Yes – and that work is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”

    We, however, think the answer is “both”.

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    In the long-running debate over who was the most prophetic writer of their era, Orwell, who was a pupil of Huxley’s at Eton, is generally the favourite.

    One reason for this is that international alliances that long seemed stable are now in flux. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, his final novel, Orwell envisioned a future tri-polar world divided into competing blocks with shifting allegiances.

    In the short time since the US president, Donald Trump, began his second term, his policies and statements have triggered surprising realignments. The US and Canada, close partners for more than a century, have faced off against each other. And in April, an official from Beijing joined with his counterparts from South Korea and Japan to push back as an unlikely trio against Trump’s new tariffs.

    That is perhaps why there is a booming field of “Orwell studies”, with its own academic journal, but not “Huxley studies”. It also probably explains why Nineteen Eighty-Four, but not Brave New World, keeps making its way on to bestseller lists – sometimes in tandem with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). “Orwellian” (unlike the rarely heard “Huxleyan”) has few competitors other than “Kafkaesque” as an immediately recognisable adjective linked to a 20th-century author.

    Trailer for the film 1984, an adaptation of Orwell’s novel.

    As wonderful as Atwood and Kafka are, we are convinced that combining Orwell’s vision with Huxley’s offers scope for deeper analysis. This is true in part because of, not despite, how common it has been to contrast the modes of autocracy Orwell and Huxley describe.

    Orwellian and Huxleyan visions as one world

    We live in an era when all sorts of systems of control limit our freedoms of expression, identity and religion. Many do not quite fit the template that either Orwell or Huxley imagined, but instead combine elements.

    There are certainly places, such as Myanmar, where those in power rely on techniques that immediately bring Orwell to mind, with his focus on fear and surveillance. There are others, such as Dubai, that more readily evoke Huxley, with his focus on pleasure and distraction. In many cases, though, we find a mixture.

    This is especially clear if you take a global view. That’s something we specialise in as international and interdisciplinary researchers – a literary scholar from Turkey based in the UK, and a Californian cultural historian of China who has also published on southeast Asia.

    Like Orwell, Huxley wrote many books that were not dystopian fiction, but his foray into that genre became his most influential. Brave New World was well known throughout the cold war. In courses and commentaries, it was commonly paired with Nineteen Eighty-Four as a narrative illustrating a shallow society based on indulgence and consumerism, as opposed to the bleaker Orwellian world of suppression of desire and strict control.

    While it is common to approach the two books via their contrasts, they can be treated as interconnected and entangled works as well.

    Trailer for an adaptation of Brave New World, released in 2020.

    During the cold war, some commentators felt that Brave New World showed where capitalist consumerism in the age of television could lead. The west, according to this interpretation, could become a world in which autocrats like those in the novel stayed on top. They would do this by keeping people busy and divided among themselves, happily distracted by entertainment and the drug “soma”.

    Orwell, by contrast, seemed to provide a key to unlock the harder mode of control in non-capitalist, Communist Party-run lands, especially those of the Soviet bloc.

    Huxley himself in Brave New World Revisited, a non-fiction book he published in the 1950s, thought it was important to think about ways the techniques of power and societal engineering in the two novels could be combined, approached and analysed. And there is even more value in combining the approaches now, when capitalism has gone so global and the autocratic wave keeps reaching new shores in the so-called post-truth era.

    Orwellian hard-edged and Huxleyan soft-edged approaches to control and social engineering can be and often are combined. We see this within countries such as China, where the crude repressive methods of a Big Brother state are used against the Uyghur population, while cities such as Shenzhen evoke Brave New World.

    We see this mixing of dystopian elements in many countries – variations on the way that science fiction writer William Gibson, author of novels such as Neuromancer (1984), wrote about Singapore with a phrase that had a soft-edged first half and a hard-edged second: “Disneyland with the death penalty.”

    This can be a useful first step toward better understanding, and perhaps beginning to try to find a way of improving the troubling world of the mid-2020s. A world in which the smartphone in your pocket both keeps track of your actions and provides an endless set of enticing distractions.

    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. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World should be read in tandem to understand today’s troubled times – https://theconversation.com/nineteen-eighty-four-and-brave-new-world-should-be-read-in-tandem-to-understand-todays-troubled-times-253872

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: UK’s India trade deal offers wider access to a surging economy – and could make food imports cheaper

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sangeeta Khorana, Professor of International Trade Policy, Aston University

    India’s economy is growing rapidly. Radiokafka/Shutterstock

    After more than three years and 14 rounds of negotiations, the UK and India have finally announced a free trade agreement (FTA). UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will formally sign the deal on a visit to India later this year. This is the biggest and most economically significant bilateral trade deal the UK has struck since leaving the EU. It will have implications for both businesses and workers.

    In 2024, the UK’s trade with India was worth £43 billion – £17.1 billion of exports and £25.5 billion of imports. Government modelling estimates that trade between the nations will increase by as much as 39% and the UK’s GDP will expand by £4.8 billion or 0.1 percentage points per year as a result.

    India’s economy is growing fast. It is expected to expand by 6% annually, becoming the world’s third largest economy by 2028 after the US and China. This certainly makes the deal with the UK very timely.

    With a population of more than 1.4 billion and a growing middle class, the country offers huge market potential. Its import demand is predicted to grow by 144% between 2021 and 2035. This combination of strong economic growth and increasing numbers of citizens with disposable cash makes a compelling case for the deal.

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    Both the UK and India have agreed to reduce tariffs under the deal. India will immediately lower its 150% tariffs on Scotch whisky and gin to 75%, and then to 40% within ten years. Tariffs on foodstuffs such as lamb, salmon and cheeses will fall from around 30% to zero.

    Simplified trade rules, including faster customs processing, reduced barriers such as complex labelling requirements, and enhanced support for small businesses should bring gains for companies. Timely customs clearance will support exports of perishable items like Scottish salmon, where delays reduce the product’s shelf life. Similarly, exporters of things like biscuits and cheese will benefit from streamlined paperwork and be able to compete in India’s growing market.

    There will no longer be limits on the number of UK businesses allowed to provide telecommunications, environmental and construction services. And UK businesses will not need to set up a company in India or be a resident in India to supply their services in these sectors.

    Once the FTA comes into force, which could take up to a year, the UK will allow 99% of Indian imports duty-free access into the UK. The sectors set to benefit most are footwear, textiles and clothing, as well as processed prawns, basmati rice and ready meals. These reductions will mean lower prices for UK consumers, given tariffs on clothing and footwear are 12% and 16% respectively.

    Clothing and textile imports to the UK will have tariff-free access.
    Yevhen Prozhyrko/Shutterstock

    Tariffs on luxury cars will also be reduced from more than 100% to 10% under quotas on both sides. The FTA locks in zero tariffs on industrial machinery, advanced materials for use in hi-tech industries, and components for electric vehicles. This will position British suppliers inside a manufacturing market ranked the world’s second-most attractive after China.

    In terms of workers, there were well publicised fears that the agreement might lead to UK workers being undercut by Indian counterparts. Plans for a so-called “double contribution convention” grants a three-year exemption from national insurance contributions for Indian employees temporarily working in the UK. But this is a reciprocal deal and is likely to apply only to workers who are seconded from one country to the other, so should not result in UK workers being more expensive to hire.

    And although no changes to immigration policy are planned, the FTA will offer easier movement for skilled workers. UK providers of services like construction and telecoms will have access to India’s growing market.

    Both countries have committed to encouraging the recognition of professional qualifications. A professional services working group for UK and Indian government officials will provide a forum to monitor and support this initiative.

    Timing is everything

    Against a backdrop of rising protectionism and geopolitical tensions, the UK-India FTA stands out as a strategic deal. It is also a significant milestone in Britain’s Indo-Pacific “tilt”. This approach gives UK firms a hedge against over-reliance on any single region or country-centric supply chains, to keep trade flowing in the event of more US tariff shocks, for example.

    With the US fixation on tariffs, and global supply chains facing continued disruption, securing preferential access to the world’s fastest-growing major economy is a strategic win for the UK. From India’s perspective, the trade deal is aligned with its rise as a “China-plus-one” manufacturing hub (where businesses diversify to ensure they do not invest only in China).

    The UK and India share historical ties that are underpinned by cultural, educational and people-to-people links. The UK-India FTA marks a new phase in this relationship, where shared economic interests define a forward-looking partnership between the two countries.

    And in terms of its ongoing talks with the EU, India could use the agreement to showcase its willingness to negotiate ambitious trade deals. For the UK, given its own upcoming trade and cooperation talks with the EU, the FTA with India demonstrates that new partnerships can be built while maintaining vital European ties.

    Sangeeta Khorana has received funding from UK-ESRC, EU and other international organisations. She is affiliated with Chartered Institute of Export and International Trade as a Trustee Director.

    – ref. UK’s India trade deal offers wider access to a surging economy – and could make food imports cheaper – https://theconversation.com/uks-india-trade-deal-offers-wider-access-to-a-surging-economy-and-could-make-food-imports-cheaper-256387

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From Zoo Quest to Ocean: The evolution of David Attenborough’s voice for the planet

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil J. Gostling, Associate Professor in Evolution and Palaeobiology, University of Southampton

    Over the course of seven decades, Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries have reshaped how we see the natural world, shifting from colonial-era collecting trips to urgent calls for environmental action.

    His storytelling has inspired generations, but has only recently begun to confront the scale of the ecological crisis. To understand how far nature broadcasting has come, it helps to return to where it started.

    When Attenborough’s broadcasting career began in the 1950s, Austrian filmmakers Hans and Lotte Hass were already pushing the boundaries of what was possible by taking cameras below the sea and touring the world aboard their schooner, the Xafira.

    In one of their 1953 Galapagos films, a crewman handled a sealion pup, having crawled across the volcanic rock of Fernandina honking at sealions to attract them. A penguin and giant tortoise were brought on board Xafira. And as Lotte Hass took photographs, she’d beseech some poor creature to “not be frightened” and “look pleasant”.

    This is a world away from today’s expectations, where both research scientists and amateur naturalists are taught to observe without touching or disturbing wildlife. When the Hasses visited the Galápagos, it was still five years before the creation of the national park and the founding of the island’s conservation organisation Charles Darwin Foundation. Now, visitors must stay at least two metres from all animals – and never approach them.

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    At the same time, television was beginning to shape public perceptions of the natural world. In 1954, Attenborough was working as a young producer on Zoo Quest. By chance, he became its presenter when zoologist Jack Lester became ill.

    The programme followed zoologists collecting animals from around the world for London Zoo. Zoo Quest was filmed in exotic locations around the world and then in the studio where the animals found on the expedition were shown “up close”.

    Attenborough has since acknowledged that Zoo Quest reflected attitudes that would not be acceptable today. The series showed animals being captured from the wild and transported to London Zoo – practices which mirrored extractive, colonial-era approaches to science.

    David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest for a Dragon aired in 1956.

    Yet, Zoo Quest was also groundbreaking. The series brought viewers face-to-face with animals they might never have seen before and pioneered a visual style that made natural history television both entertaining and educational. It helped establish Attenborough’s reputation as a compelling communicator and laid the foundations for a new genre of science broadcasting – one that has evolved, like its presenter, over time.

    After a decade in production, Attenborough returned to presenting with Life on Earth (1979), a landmark series that traced the evolution of life from single-celled organisms to birds and apes. Drawing on his long-standing interest in fossils, the series combined zoology, palaeobiology and natural history to create an ambitious new template for science broadcasting.

    Life on Earth helped cement Attenborough’s reputation as a trusted communicator and became the foundation of the BBC’s “blue-chip” natural history format – big-budget, internationally produced films that put high-quality cinematic wildlife footage at the forefront of the story. The series did not simply document the natural world. It reframed it, using presenter-led storytelling and global spectacle to shape how audiences understood evolutionary processes.

    For much of his career, Attenborough has been celebrated for showcasing the beauty of the natural world. Yet, he has also faced criticism for sidestepping the environmental crises threatening it. Commentators such as the environmental journalist George Monbiot argued that his earlier documentaries, while visually stunning, often avoided addressing the human role in climate change, presenting nature as untouched and avoiding difficult truths about ecological decline.

    Building on the legacy of Life on Earth, Attenborough’s later series began to respond to these critiques. Blue Planet (2001) expanded the scope of nature storytelling, revealing the mysteries of the ocean’s most remote and uncharted ecosystems. Its 2017 sequel, Blue Planet II, introduced a more urgent tone, highlighting the scale of plastic pollution and the need for marine conservation.

    Although Blue Planet II significantly increased viewers’ environmental knowledge, it did not lead to measurable changes in plastic consumption behaviour – a reminder that awareness alone does not guarantee action. The subsequent Wild Isles (2023) continued the shift towards conservation messaging. While the main series aired in five parts, a sixth episode – Saving Our Wild Isles – was released separately and drew controversy amid claims the BBC had sidelined it for being too political. In reality, the episode delivered a clear call to action.

    Attenborough’s latest film, Ocean, continues in this more urgent register, pairing breathtaking imagery with an unflinching assessment of ocean health. After decades of gentle narration, he now speaks with sharpened clarity about the scale of the crisis and the need to act.

    A voice for action

    In recent years, Attenborough has taken on a new role – not just as a broadcaster, but as a powerful voice in environmental diplomacy. He has addressed world leaders at major summits such as the UN climate conference Cop24 and the World Economic Forum, calling for urgent action on climate change. He was also appointed ambassador for the UK government’s review on the economics of biodiversity.

    On the subject of environmemtal diplomacy, Monbiot recently wrote: “A few years ago, I was sharply critical of Sir David for downplaying the environmental crisis on his TV programmes. Most people would have reacted badly but remarkably, at 92, he took this and similar critiques on board and radically changed his approach.”

    Attenborough not only speaks. He listens. This is part of his charm and popularity. He is learning and evolving as much as his audience.

    What makes Attenborough stand out is the way he speaks. While official climate treaties often rely on technical or legal language, he communicates in emotional, accessible terms – speaking plainly about responsibility, urgency and the moral imperative to protect life on Earth. His calm authority and familiar voice make complex issues easier to grasp and harder to dismiss.

    Frequently named Britain’s most trusted public figure, Attenborough has become something of an unofficial diplomat for the planet – apolitical, measured, and often seen as a voice of reason amid populist noise. Despite his criticisms, Attenborough’s documentaries walk a careful line between fragility and resilience, using emotionally ambivalent imagery to prompt reflection. He shares his wonder with the natural world and brings people along with him

    Ocean shows our blue planet in more spectacular fashion than Lotte and Hans Hass could ever have imagined. But it is also Attenborough’s most direct reckoning with environmental collapse. With clarity and urgency, it confronts the damage wrought by industrial trawling and habitat destruction.

    After 70 years of gently guiding viewers through the natural world, Attenborough’s voice has sharpened. If he once opened our eyes to nature’s wonders, he now challenges us not to look away. As he puts it: “If we save the sea, we save our world. After a lifetime filming our planet, I’m sure that nothing is more important.”

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    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. From Zoo Quest to Ocean: The evolution of David Attenborough’s voice for the planet – https://theconversation.com/from-zoo-quest-to-ocean-the-evolution-of-david-attenboroughs-voice-for-the-planet-251727

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Keir Starmer’s immigration plans: research shows you don’t beat the far right by becoming them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Katy Brown, Research Fellow in Language and Social Justice, Manchester Metropolitan University

    Keir Starmer gives press conference on migration Flickr/Number 10, CC BY-NC-ND

    As British prime minister Keir Starmer vowed to “finally take back control of our borders” in a landmark speech on immigration on May 12, it felt a little like déjà vu.

    Some nine years earlier, we had heard those exact words repeated over and over in the build-up to the Brexit referendum from former prime minister Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign. It was a refrain also used by Nigel Farage and UKIP.

    Of course, this direct reference was the point. Starmer used it to claim that the Labour government’s white paper on immigration was finally going to deliver on what had been promised and desired for many years.

    In these opening lines, the tone was set. And as the speech went on, there were echoes of far-right language and ideas reverberating throughout. Starmer lamented the “squalid” state of contemporary politics, the “forces” pulling the country apart, and the previous government’s so-called “experiment in open borders”.

    This speech and the white paper that it unveiled are but the latest indication of the rightward direction of travel within UK politics, led by mainstream and far-right parties alike – as exemplified in recent months by the footage released of immigration raids and deportations.

    Some will argue this is Labour’s response to the rising threat of Reform UK, with results in the recent local elections seen as evidence of the far right’s growing popularity. So the story goes, Labour is proving that they can be tough on immigration, showing would-be Reform defectors that they can be trusted after all.

    This familiar narrative seems to follow a prevailing wisdom which is parroted in political, media and public debates – that appeasing the far right is the way to defeat it. Rather than beating the far right at their own game, however, research shows that these techniques simply legitimise their key talking points and further normalise exclusionary politics.

    Starmer’s speech is a case in point. In using “take back control” from the outset, there was no hiding the intended audience or message. Starmer claimed that this project would “close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country”, implying that excessive immigration has directly caused these problems and that stopping it solves them. This chimes with classic far-right narratives where migration is framed as the root of all societal ills.

    When these kinds of ideas are pushed by those in government, with great authority and influence, they are given greater credence and weight. A strikingly clear example of this came in the summer of 2024 when participants in racist riots waved posters containing the slogan “stop the boats” (a phrase popularised by the previous Tory government).

    Another component of the speech that was reminiscent of far-right tropes was the idea that increased immigration was a deliberate tactic by the previous government. Starmer suggested that the Conservatives were actively pursuing a “one-nation experiment in open borders” while deceiving the British public of their intentions.

    Far-right conspiracies are often premised on the idea that elites are deliberately encouraging mass immigration. It’s not hard to see how Starmer’s words could act as a dog whistle in this scenario.

    These claims are especially damaging when we think about the draconian measures introduced under former Conservative governments, such as the Rwanda policy. Labour is now indicating that these proposals didn’t go far enough.

    To justify bringing far stricter immigration rules, Starmer stated that “for the vast majority of people in this country, that is what they have long wanted to see”. As far-right parties so often do, Labour suggests that they are delivering on “people’s priorities”. Yet are they really a priority for people, or are we told that they are a priority which then makes them more of a priority?

    Research by Aurelien Mondon, senior lecturer in politics at the University of Bath, illustrates how people’s personal and national priorities differ dramatically. When people in the UK were asked to name the two most important issues facing them personally, immigration didn’t even make it into the top ten.

    However, when asked the same question about the issues facing their country, immigration topped the list. How can something that doesn’t affect you in your day-to-day life suddenly become a top priority for your country? We need to challenge the narrative that the government is simply acting on people’s wishes and acknowledge its own capacity to set the agenda.

    Other priorities

    Some will say that harsher anti-immigration policies are a necessary evil to defeat the far right. However, if people’s personal priorities are really the cost of living, housing and education, why is the government not focusing more of its energy on these things rather than scapegoating migrants?

    What’s more, research shows that even based on these terms, these strategies are ineffective and can actually boost the success of the far right electorally. After all, its ideas are being repeatedly normalised.

    In all this tactical talk, we lose sight of the fact that people are living the consequences of this rhetoric and policies right now. Rather than focus on Reform’s potential performance in a general election that is probably years away, we should recognise the immediate consequences of the rhetoric that has accompanied this white paper. Even if this did put a dent in Reform’s prospects, what is the meaning of defeating them if the policies they promote become part of the mainstream in the process?

    The bottom line is that you do not beat the far right by becoming them. It doesn’t work electorally or ideologically, and even if it did, minoritised communities suffer the consequences regardless. The far right is not some threat lying waiting in the future – its normalisation is happening now.

    Katy Brown has received funding from UK Research and Innovation and the Irish Research Council. She is affiliated with the Reactionary Politics Research Network and Manchester Centre for Research in Linguistics.

    – ref. Keir Starmer’s immigration plans: research shows you don’t beat the far right by becoming them – https://theconversation.com/keir-starmers-immigration-plans-research-shows-you-dont-beat-the-far-right-by-becoming-them-256499

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘Elbows up’ in Canada means sustainable resource development

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Steven J Cooke, Canada Research Professor, Conservation Physiology, Carleton University

    “Elbows up” means many things today in Canada, including using the country’s rich natural resources more effectively to support a strong, independent economy that benefits people and society.

    We agree with the need to ensure economic stability and independence in Canada — but as scientists, we know this is only possible if resource development and exploitation are done responsibly and sustainably. Otherwise, Canada will be burdening itself and future generations with immeasurable costs to the economy, health and quality of life.

    Politicians and decision-makers from across Canada have called for radical changes to how development proposals are evaluated. The recent federal election saw the leaders of the major parties all signalling that they intend to get resource development projects done faster.

    Several provinces have already brought forward legislation in recent days, including British Columbia’s Infrastructure Projects Act, while an Ontario act aimed ostensibly at “unleashing the economy” is under consideration by the provincial government.

    Cutting red tape can certainly speed up new development, but environmental regulations are not just red tape. They are designed to ensure the short- and long-term potential consequences of development decisions are fully considered, and are then minimized or avoided.

    Without strong environmental impact assessments, development can have devastating impacts on human health, resource sustainability and the rich natural resources Canadians rely upon. We are fearful of a future where obsolete infrastructure and exhausted resources are abandoned by the proponents of development, burdening the public with the cleanup or long-term consequences.

    Resources aren’t infinite

    Canada has a large land mass bordering three oceans and bountiful freshwater resources, including the Great Lakes. But its resources are not infinite.

    Impacts of resource development also extend to people. Effective impact assessment must recognize Indigenous rights and sovereignty, in keeping with the right to self-determination reinforced by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

    Effective land stewardship by Indigenous nations is the foundation of Canada’s rich natural heritage. When Canadian politicians talk about fast-tracking developments and resource exploitation, they inherently ignore the moral and legal rights of Indigenous Peoples and governments that are enshrined in Canada’s Constitution and in international law.



    Read more:
    Mark Carney wants to make Canada an energy superpower — but what will be sacrificed for that goal?

    Circular economy

    Outdated business models that threaten health and the future of resources won’t propel Canada into a new era of prosperity.

    Canada lags behind in innovation and labour productivity growth (GDP per person hour worked), which are predictors of standard of living. This lag is known as Canada’s “innovation problem.”

    Simply harvesting and selling raw logs or minerals as fast as possible will not solve it. However, Canada can escape its innovation problem by using resources more efficiently in a value-added, circular economy.



    Read more:
    Recycling more than pop cans: A circular economy for our energy landscapes

    The boreal forests and wetlands found in Canada represent the lungs and kidneys of the planet. Canada’s boreal forest is the largest intact forest in the world.

    Canada also contains 20 per cent of the Earth’s surface freshwater — more than any other nation — and 10 per cent of the world’s glacial waters.

    Canada’s wildlife is iconic and careful management of our wildlife benefits both Canada and the world. Canada’s current environmental policies and regulations represent the collective effort of opposing political parties that have recognized the shared need for clean air and water are non-partisan issues.

    Environmental requirements

    As Canada aggressively explores markets other than the United States for its resources, including the European Union, it will gain a competitive advantage by ensuring exports are sustainable and extracted without harming the environment and local people.

    That’s because markets like the European Union now require that all importers of many agricultural and household products prove that their production did not contribute to deforestation. As other jurisdictions see the fallacy of short-term gains at the expense of the environment, Canada can be ahead of the curve in providing sustainable products.

    The long-term health of Canada’s economy relies on sustainable resource management, and polling repeatedly shows that Canadians want a healthy environment. Sustainable resource extraction can deliver long-term benefits for nature and future generations, rather than short-term, financial benefits to only a select few.

    Boom-and-bust policies have failed before — think about the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery, the acid rain crisis associated with unchecked emissions or the Klondike gold rush.

    We implore politicians to ensure that development decisions are informed by rigorous and diverse forms of evidence, and robust and equitable policies that consider environmental justice. They should refrain from focusing solely on the short-term economic windfall. Instead, they must plan for resource use that is sustainable and equitable over the long term.

    Four ways to ensure sustainability

    We recognize that resource development is integral to maintaining Canadian prosperity and sovereignty — and the good news is that it can be done sustainably.

    The details may be complex, but the big picture is simple:

    1. Ensure that Indigenous rights-holders are not simply consulted but actively involved in planning, managing and leading development activities.
    2. Maintain strong environmental protection while cutting truly unnecessary red tape.
    3. Ensure that development does not cause harm to individuals, species or landscapes.
    4. Embrace evidence-informed decision-making processes that are robust, transparent and inclusive.

    Some of Canada’s international neighbours are enacting short-term actions, including cutting environmental regulations and spurring unfettered resource development.

    These actions are simultaneously a threat to Canada and an opportunity for Canadians to reject that approach and do better. If Canada chooses that path, it can gain a distinct competitive advantage today and long into the future and become less vulnerable to the political whims of other countries.

    Elbows up, Canada — let’s be proud of protecting what we have.

    Steven J Cooke receives funding from various government, NGO and industry partners. He is affiliated with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, KeepFishWet, and the Canadian Centre for Evidence-Informed Conservation.

    Christina Davy receives funding from various Canadian government, NGO and industry partners. She is affiliated with the Canadian Herpetological Society.

    Dalal Hanna receives funding from various Canadian Government and NGO partners. She is affiliated with Ripara.

    Joseph Bennett receives funding from various government and NGO sources. He is affiliated with the Canadian Institute for Ecology and Evolution and the Canadian Centre for Evidence-Informed Conservation.

    – ref. ‘Elbows up’ in Canada means sustainable resource development – https://theconversation.com/elbows-up-in-canada-means-sustainable-resource-development-255669

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How Donald Trump could remain president of the United States

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Pascal Lupien, Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Alberta

    United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of remaining in office after his second term ends in 2029. Since the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1951, no U.S. president has challenged the two-term limit it established.

    However, attempts to circumvent constitutional term limits are not unprecedented elsewhere.

    Virtually every country in Latin America has enshrined constitutional term limits as a safeguard against tyranny. These rules vary: some allow only a single term, some permit two, while others enable non-consecutive re-election. Yet several presidents have managed to defy these provisions.

    Recent examples include Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

    Although the institutional norms and political cultures of these countries differ from those of the U.S., examining how term limits have been dismantled offers valuable insights into how any similar efforts by Trump might unfold.

    How presidents have overstayed their term

    The most common tactic is for presidents to first ensure their political party in the legislature is fully subservient to them, and then leverage a loyal majority to amend the constitution — a move that has already been initiated in the U.S.

    Ortega and Correa successfully used their legislative majorities to pass constitutional amendments that eliminated term limits in Nicaragua and Ecuador.

    Whether Trump has achieved the same level of unwavering loyalty among Republicans is debatable, but getting amendments through the U.S. Congress is significantly more difficult. The process requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses, followed by ratification from three-quarters of state legislatures.

    In contrast, Nicaragua’s constitution can be amended with a 60 per cent majority and, as in Ecuador, sub-national jurisdictions have no say in the matter.

    Another crucial step involves co-opting or capturing the judiciary. In Bolivia, Morales achieved a controversial third term in 2014 supported by a partisan Constitutional Tribunal. More recently, El Salvador’s Bukele secured a 2021 Supreme Court ruling (from judges he appointed) allowing him to seek immediate re-election in 2024, despite a constitutional prohibition on consecutive terms.

    We have seen a worrying pattern of subservience to Trump by the U.S. Supreme Court. The limits of this deference are increasingly uncertain.

    Securing popular support

    Some presidents have turned to plebiscites to legitimize constitutional tampering by appealing directly to the electorate and framing the move as a democratic exercise. Chávez employed this strategy in Venezuela, winning a 2009 referendum to abolish term limits.

    The absence of a national referendum mechanism in the U.S. — where popular consultations are organized at the sub-national (state) level — limits the options available to a president seeking to remove term limits through this type of populist ploy.

    Related to this, populist presidents who have successfully circumvented term limits have typically done so while enjoying extraordinarily high levels of public support.

    Correa maintained approval ratings near 70 per cent during much of his presidency, while independent polls have put Bukele’s support at well over 80 per cent. Both, along with Morales and Chávez, leveraged their popularity to justify constitutional changes through legislative and judicial channels, framing their actions as carrying out the will of the people.

    In contrast, Trump’s approval ratings have consistently remained far lower. Currently, his favourability sits in the low 40s, making any attempt to claim a broad popular mandate for a third term both dubious and precarious.

    The military matters

    Due to inevitable opposition, military support is central to any leader’s attempt to defy the constitution. In much of Latin America, the military is highly politicized, and armed forces have historically been shaped by doctrines of internal control rather than external defence.

    Rooted in Cold War-era national security ideologies, this orientation casts domestic dissenters (“socialists,” Indigenous movements, unionists) as internal enemies, legitimizing repression as a patriotic duty.

    In some countries, military oaths reflect this politicization. In both Nicaragua and Venezuela, these oaths increasingly emphasize loyalty to the president or ruling party and their revolutionary legacy, undermining institutional neutrality.

    By contrast, in the U.S., military personnel swear an oath to defend the Constitution, not the president. While they must follow orders, these must align with constitutional and legal boundaries.

    The absence of a tradition of using soldiers against American citizens and an institutional culture of constitutional loyalty and political neutrality may, at least in principle, provide some protection against the authoritarian overreach that has allowed certain Latin American presidents to remain in power indefinitely.

    But a substantial portion of the U.S. armed forces leans politically to the right, like their counterparts in Latin America, raising concerns that partisan sympathies within the military could influence its response to a constitutional crisis.

    Furthermore, the increasing use of non-military security forces — such as local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — against civilians demonstrates that the state has a range of instruments at its disposal for exercising control.

    The U.S. government’s use of ICE is reminiscent of how governments in countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua have used police and paramilitary units loyal to the president with impunity to suppress dissent.



    Read more:
    How ICE is becoming a secret police force under the Trump administration

    The perils of complacency

    Many in the West still hold on to the belief that constitutional erosion is something that only happens in the Global South. Some believe that American institutions are uniquely resilient and therefore capable of withstanding any attempt to subvert the constitution.

    For much of U.S. history, this confidence may have been justified, but today, it’s not only complacent but dangerous.

    The strength of democratic institutions depends on the political will to defend them. Time will tell if the barriers that exist in the U.S. are strong enough to withstand the pressures now being placed upon them. What is clear is that relying on increasingly tenuous institutional resilience or historical exceptionalism is no substitute for vigilance and active defence of democratic norms.

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

    – ref. How Donald Trump could remain president of the United States – https://theconversation.com/how-donald-trump-could-remain-president-of-the-united-states-255589

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What causes inequality in African countries? New book traces a vicious cycle

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Murray Leibbrandt, UCT Chair in Poverty and Inequality Research; Director of ARUA’s African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Resaearch with the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit., University of Cape Town

    Inequality is a problem that exists in various forms in sub-Saharan Africa.

    Inequality is created by, among other factors, where you are born and live. Alongside this, income, assets, and access to education and healthcare differ among and between populations. These inequalities reinforce each other. The result is persistent poverty, lack of social mobility across generations, increased exposure to climate change, and a lack of inclusive economic growth.

    Our recently published book Inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Multidimensional Perspectives and Future Challenges presents an overview of the current situation. It identifies the key dimensions, challenges and causes of inequalities in the region. The book also proposes some solutions for equitable and sustainable development. These include progressive taxation and policies that address inequalities at their roots.

    The impact of inequality

    Migration: On a global scale, the greatest determinant of individual incomes – and thus of inequalities between individuals – is place of birth. More than half of income’s variability is explained by the country of residence and by the given circumstances at birth. These include being born in a rural environment.

    In sub-Saharan Africa, especially in low-income countries, internal migration remains the most prevalent migration pattern. Migration is often the chosen route for people seeking to escape poverty. The rural exodus that characterises many countries in sub-Saharan Africa illustrates this well. Young people in Africa, faced with high unemployment rates, often see migration as the only opportunity for social mobility.

    The dynamics of international migration are more complex. Given the high costs involved, international migration concerns only 2.5% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa. This is mostly intra-continental.

    Labour market: Access to the labour market remains the main
    determinant of inequalities in sub-Saharan Africa.

    Labour markets in the region are characterised by high proportions of informal employment. Formal sectors are relatively small (about 15% of total employment on the continent). Since the turn of the century, countries like Kenya have seen their share of informal employment increase significantly (from 73% in 2001 to 83% in 2017). At the same time formal wage employment has declined.

    This amplifies inequality because the informal sector is characterised by a lack of protection and high vulnerability. But not all informal activities are precarious. Some serve as springboards into formal jobs.

    In the formal sector, wage inequality in Africa is among the highest in the world.
    In South Africa, workers in high-skilled jobs earn nearly five times more than those in low-skilled jobs.

    Young people entering the labour market have much higher unemployment rates and little chance of regular employment.

    Gender inequality: Many gender inequalities persist, particularly access to the labour market. Unpaid care work makes women’s work invisible. In many African countries, women and girls spend more time on unpaid care which limits their economic opportunities.

    These inequalities are reinforced by inequalities in access to resources. About 38% of African women report owning land, compared to 51% of African men.

    Climate change: Africa is suffering the most severe impacts – droughts, floods and food insecurity – while contributing less than 5% of global carbon emissions.

    Arid conditions affect 43.5% of agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa compared to an estimated global average of 29%. Similarly, climate change mitigation costs, such as finding alternatives to hydroelectric power, are higher for low-income countries.

    In sub-Saharan Africa, the richest 10% emit seven times more tonnes of carbon dioxide than the poorest 50%. Disadvantaged groups are more vulnerable to adverse climate effects as their housing and wealth are more likely to be damaged by storms and floods.

    Skewed economic growth benefits: Economic growth has led to notably lower reductions in poverty in African countries than elsewhere. Unequal distribution of growth and its capture by those at the top of the income distribution ladder are evidence of non-inclusive economic growth. The richest 1% of Africans received 27% of the total revenue from growth on the continent.

    What needs to be done

    It is vital to give priority to promoting social and economic inclusion in the development strategies of African countries. Importantly, multidimensional inequalities such as income and health persist because they reinforce each other. Tackling them therefore requires coordinated and coherent policies.

    Murray Leibbrandt receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa, the Agence Française de Développement, UK Research and Innovation, the World Institute for Development Economics Research and the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics. He is affiliated with the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research and the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.

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

    – ref. What causes inequality in African countries? New book traces a vicious cycle – https://theconversation.com/what-causes-inequality-in-african-countries-new-book-traces-a-vicious-cycle-253376

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Marketing unhealthy food as good for kids is fuelling obesity in South Africa: how to curb it

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Aisosa Jennifer Omoruyi, Research fellow, University of the Western Cape

    Childhood overweight and obesity are a growing public health challenge in South Africa. In 2016, 13% of the country’s children were reported to be obese. This is predicted to double by 2030.

    This problem has been linked to the regular consumption of calorie-dense foods high in sugar, salt and fat.
    South African children are growing up in a food environment that tends to cause obesity.

    One of its key features is intense marketing of unhealthy food and beverages, using various channels and appealing strategies. Misleading health and nutrition claims are sometimes made.

    Children are considered lucrative consumers because they can sometimes buy food themselves, influence their parents’ food purchases (they have “pester power”, for one thing), and are future consumers.

    Marketers use several strategies that children find appealing, such as cartoon characters, brand mascots, bright colours, colourful packages, catchy songs and slogans.

    Although there is no specific regulation of marketing to children in South Africa, the Consumer Protection Act 58 of 2008 has important provisions that guide the marketing of goods and services. The law prohibits false, deceptive marketing.

    As a researcher into children’s rights and nutrition I coauthored a recent paper examining how the Consumer Protection Act could be used to address the misleading marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children.

    In our view, the South African consumer protection legal framework has the necessary scope to address misleading forms of marketing of unhealthy foods to children. But there needs to be better enforcement.



    Read more:
    Profit versus health: 4 ways big global industries make people sick

    Health claims: not always the full package

    A common strategy in food marketing is the use of misleading health or nutrition claims. These are often written (“contains vitamin C”, “high fibre”, “boosts immunity”, “supports brain health”), or implied by images of fruits and vegetables on the packaging of products.

    Some studies in South Africa have demonstrated the misleading use of these claims in television and magazine
    advertisements and food packages, including products meant for children.

    For instance, fruit juices often claim to be rich in vitamin C, but they have a high sugar content. Dairy products typically boast a high calcium content, but are also high in added sugar. Breakfast cereals frequently highlight their fibre content, despite being ultra-processed and containing a high amount of total carbohydrates and added sugar.

    Packaged foods often contain nutrition labels, but the printed words are small and usually obscured by the “healthy” claims. Those are positioned more prominently to capture the attention of the consumer.

    Health and nutrition claims can strongly influence purchasing decisions, especially in the South African context. Research has shown that many South African consumers do not read nutrition labels on packaged foods.



    Read more:
    Half of all South Africans are overweight or obese. Warning labels on unhealthy foods help change that

    What the law says

    Firstly, the Consumer Protection Act recognises children as vulnerable or disadvantaged consumers who deserve special protection (section 3(1)(b)(iii). This is because they have limited capacity to understand marketing strategies or defend themselves against their persuasive effects.

    Secondly, the Consumer Protection Act, in sections 29 and 41, prohibits the marketing of goods in a way that is reasonably likely to imply a false or misleading representation of facts such as their ingredients, benefits and qualities.

    Thirdly, the Consumer Protection Act provisions do not require a consumer to show that they were actually misled by the claim or that children’s health was negatively affected by consuming the food product. It is enough that it has been marketed in a manner that is reasonably likely to mislead children or their parents or caregivers into buying the product.

    Consumers have various ways to seek redress for misleading marketing. These include the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud and the Advertising Regulatory Board, the National Consumer Commission, the National Consumer Tribunal and the courts.

    However, delays and poor compliance with decisions can put consumers off.



    Read more:
    South Africa must ban sugary drinks sales in schools. Self regulation is failing

    Food for thought: the way forward

    Mandatory front-of-pack labels are needed in South Africa. They should be easy to understand and highlight nutrients of concern – salt, fat, sugar and artificial sweeteners – to reflect the overall nutritional profile of food products. They can also override the misleading “health halo” effect generated by health or nutrition claims.

    The public should support the Draft Regulation R3337 Relating to the Labelling and Advertising of Foodstuffs made under the Foodstuffs, Cosmetic, and Disinfectant Act 54 of 1972. It specifically prohibits marketing unhealthy food to children.

    The act needs to be used more and this requires much greater consumer activism.

    Dispute mechanisms could be stronger and the processes could be streamlined to encourage consumer participation.

    The government and public interest organisations need to create greater public awareness of consumer rights.

    Aisosa Jennifer Omoruyi is a Research Fellow at the Dullah Omar Institute, University of the Western Cape, which receives funding from the Global Center for Legal Innovation on Food Environments at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC.

    – ref. Marketing unhealthy food as good for kids is fuelling obesity in South Africa: how to curb it – https://theconversation.com/marketing-unhealthy-food-as-good-for-kids-is-fuelling-obesity-in-south-africa-how-to-curb-it-253994

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –