NewzIntel.com

Category: Reportage

  • MIL-OSI Global: Hacks season four tackles late-night TV – and is as funny and perceptive as ever

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jacqueline Ristola, Lecturer in Digital Animation, University of Bristol

    The comedy-drama Hacks has returned for a solid fourth season that continues to be both funny and perceptive. The series, about ruthless comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her compassionate writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), explores their developing relationship as they work in the entertainment industry. This season shifts to the backstage drama of late-night television.

    When we last saw them in season three, Deborah and colleagues were on a buzzy press tour, building Deborah’s profile to become the next host of late-night television. Deborah does indeed secure the position, promising Ava to be her head writer. But the immense pressure to succeed gets to Deborah, who rescinds her offer to go with a more established (male) writer.

    Learning of the betrayal, Ava takes a page from Deborah’s playbook, blackmailing her to reinstate her as head writer. Season four picks up from this dramatic upset, with Deborah and Ava quarrelling behind the scenes as they work on Deborah’s new series.

    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.

    Hacks has always examined women’s precarious place in the entertainment industry. This season introduces a new setting (late-night television) and a new character (network executive Winnie) to enable the series to subtly observe how women attain power and operate in a male-dominated industry.

    Winnie (a winning Helen Hunt) has subtly assimilated to become a detached decision-maker. In treating her children as inconveniences and telling manager-producer Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) to smile, her actions typify Hollywood’s male-dominated old guard. We see Jimmy’s business partner Kayla (Megan Stalter) developing along similar lines, belittling her staff and telling Jimmy that to establish herself, she needs to show people their place.

    Kayla’s abrupt transformation is an ostentatious example of how the series examines women in the workplace and the double-binds they often face. Be firm and get called frigid, or relent and become exploited.

    But while Ava also attains power in the industry, she resists developing a cruel streak. Ava insists on reasonable working hours for her writers, much to the chagrin of Deborah. Her own anxiety about the quality of her show drives Deborah to be overly demanding of everyone around her. This tension between empathy and ruthlessness aligns with the generational divide between Ava and Deborah. It’s a central tension that the series continues to explore to strong effect.

    The power of good editing

    While Hacks has already been lauded for its excellent performances and writing, which continues in this season, the series also deserves praise for its craft, such as editing.

    Episode four begins with a rapid montage depicting the flurry of activity in the weeks before Deborah’s late-night TV debut. Quickly cutting from her wig getting made, to production teams building the set, to Deborah anxiously weighing herself (pointing to a developing eating disorder), the montage shows both the verve and stress involved in the entire production.

    Its vivacious energy and colour (few pale blue and greys here) are an antidote to the cold pallor of most streaming series. Also, in an era where streaming television run-times are aimlessly bloated, Hacks doesn’t overstay its welcome running between 25 and 35 minutes an episode. It maintains plot and character progression at a neat pace.

    It’s been said that for a show about comedians, Hacks is more a drama than a comedy. This observation perhaps stems in part from Hacks being a comedy-drama rather than an outright sitcom.

    Whereas sitcoms typically rely on character stasis, our dynamic duo has slowly changed – and changed each other – through the series. In this way, Deborah and Ava’s relationship echoes the recent films of Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza, Phantom Thread, The Master), which examine entangled duos that recurrently attract and repel each other.

    It’s worth comparing this season to The Larry Sanders Show (1992 to 1998). The HBO sitcom, set in the office and stage of a late-night talk show, skewered late-night TV and Hollywood more broadly.

    While The Larry Sanders Show has insights about Hollywood as an industry (including women’s systematic exclusion), as a sitcom, its characters remain relatively static. The sitcom format doesn’t allow characters to develop much psychological depth. By contrast, the characters in Hacks change – albeit subtly. In a new twist to her character, normally so self-assured to the point of selfishness, Deborah feels insecure, a previously rare occurrence.

    This anxiety likely comes from her newfound vulnerability. In making her comedy more vulnerable and authentic, Deborah charges Ava with also making her comedy too “niche” as a result.

    As Deborah reminds her new writers, late-night TV works not because of the format, but “because of the person”. As she already receives scrutiny as a comedian, Deborah worries about the public’s acceptance of her new comedic persona.

    From women’s precarious place in the entertainment industry, to generational divides, Hacks explores these complex issues well in its light, compelling mix of comedy and drama.

    Jacqueline Ristola receives funding from ASIFA-Hollywood’s Animation Educators Forum.

    – ref. Hacks season four tackles late-night TV – and is as funny and perceptive as ever – https://theconversation.com/hacks-season-four-tackles-late-night-tv-and-is-as-funny-and-perceptive-as-ever-255555

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Our ape cousins show us empathy has deep evolutionary roots – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jake Brooker, Research Associate in the Department of Psychology, Durham University

    When people find out we study chimpanzees, they usually ask about their dark side. “You know chimpanzees kill each other, right?” or “Aren’t they the only animals besides humans that wage wars?”

    Chimpanzees are often cast as a mirror to our darkest tendencies, embodying violence, territoriality and power struggles. In contrast, bonobos are known as the most empathetic ape, heralded as the pacifist hippies, led by female collectives, who make love, not war.

    But our new research suggests it is time to leave these stereotypes at the door.

    The violent side of chimpanzee life has long captured the public imagination, and it’s true that when frustrated or feeling competitive, chimpanzees sometimes attack without much warning or provocation.

    However, what people often don’t know is that chimpanzees have a much softer side and can show amazing empathy towards one another, including reconciling and comforting others. Some of the first work conducted on animal empathy, led by the late primatologist Frans de Waal in the 1970s, explored this empathy in chimpanzees. De Waal and his colleagues provided beautiful examples of chimpanzees comforting one another, using behaviour that mirrors how we do so ourselves, such as embracing, touching and stroking.

    For a long time, scientists thought empathy was uniquely human, tied to our complex emotional skills and ability to think about others’ needs and perspectives. But this view was challenged when scientists started to notice animals responding to others in need, offering them help and comfort.

    Empathy is crucial for our social functioning. Consider the consequences when humans lose empathy for one another. For example, the perpetrators of abuse or during times of war. Thanks to research conducted with primates, rodents and other animals, we now know the roots of empathy run deep, reaching back through the branches of the evolutionary tree.

    As animals cannot talk to us, we cannot truly know what they are thinking or feeling. Yet research over the past several decades has shown that many animals have rich mental and emotional lives, including our closest living relatives, the bonobos and chimpanzees.

    Having separated from us around 5 to 7 million years ago, they provide us with the closest picture of what our last common ancestor might have been like. The two apes overlap in much of their behaviour and biology. However, differences in aspects of their social structures and dominance relationships mean they can also offer different insights into our own evolution.

    One quiet afternoon during routine observations at a sanctuary site in Zambia, we saw Misha, a greying middle-aged female chimpanzee emerge from the forest distraught. She wasn’t visibly hurt, but whatever had happened was serious enough to make her lose her cool, like a toddler having a temper tantrum. Normally composed, Misha threw herself onto the ground, legs splayed, screaming in distress. Moments later, something surprising happened. Little juvenile Tina started running towards her.

    Tina jumped onto Misha’s belly and embraced her tenderly. Then, another juvenile, Tom, approached to pat her gently. These friendly actions are what we call consolation, the offering of spontaneous comfort towards a distressed peer. We never found out why Misha was so upset, but she quickly settled down after these interactions. Having studied great apes now for over 20 years between us, we have collected hundreds of records of these apparent acts of kindness.

    Rethinking stereotypes

    In our new study, we compared consolation between bonobos and chimpanzees. There have been no previous direct comparisons of consolation in the two sister species.

    To provide a fair comparison, we studied them in similar environmental conditions over eight months. We studied large social groups at two African sanctuaries, chimpanzees in Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia and bonobos at the Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Against expectations, we found the two species consoled at similar rates and that the greatest source of variation was within each species. In other words, offering comfort was shaped by individual and social characteristics, not species.

    Younger chimpanzees and bonobos were especially likely to console others, suggesting empathy emerges early in ape life. Among chimpanzees, young males and close social partners showed the most consistent comforting behaviour. Among bonobos, younger apes again led the way, with strong bonds between peers driving many of the responses.

    Our findings challenge the idea that bonobos are naturally more empathetic than chimpanzees and that like humans, the expression of their empathy is flexible, shaped by who you are, who you’re with, and the broader social culture.

    Like us, our ape cousins can show remarkable tenderness as well as despotism. Although there are some differences between them, for instance, chimpanzees can be hostile to strangers while bonobos have relaxed territory boundaries, the two apes overlap in their capacity for empathy. This suggests empathy has deep evolutionary roots, perhaps dating back to our last common ancestor. We need to move beyond stereotypes and look at what the science is telling us. Recognising these apes’ capabilities gives us a more rounded picture of the origins of human behaviour and our shared ancestry.

    Jake Brooker receives funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation – Diverse Intelligences Initiative (0309).

    Zanna Clay receives funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation – Diverse Intelligences Initiative (0309), and the European Research Council Starting Grant (802979)

    – ref. Our ape cousins show us empathy has deep evolutionary roots – new research – https://theconversation.com/our-ape-cousins-show-us-empathy-has-deep-evolutionary-roots-new-research-255277

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How dandelions conquered concrete to bring nature back to cities

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yannick Woudstra, Postdoctoral Researcher in Asexual Plant Evolution, Stockholm University

    A dandelion in full bloom on the pavement of a busy street in Gothenburg, Sweden. Yannick Woudstra/Stockholm University

    “Nothing is so uncommon as a common dandelion” say Karst Meijer and Erik van den Ham, Dutch botanists who started an international day (April 27) to celebrate this yellow flower in 2020. The pair hoped to showcase the immense diversity and fascinating ecology of dandelions, which are often maligned as noxious weeds.

    Intensive farming and weeding have drastically diminished dandelions in the Dutch countryside. Insects, many of whom feed on the pollen and nectar of these plants, have been the first to suffer. Between 1990 and 2017, Dutch protected areas reported a 75% decline in flying insects which has prompted another precipitous drop in the numbers of plants that rely on insects to pollinate them.

    However, hope comes from unexpected corners and dandelions are thriving in cities.

    A small crack in the pavement is sufficient for a dandelion to grow a long taproot that can access water and nutrients in the soil below the concrete. But don’t be fooled – that dandelion you stepped over is withstanding extreme pressure to thrive in your neighbourhood. There’s pollution, trampling, the heat that radiates from the concrete after a hot day and artificial light from street lamps to contend with.

    Having found ways to resist these pressures, dandelions grow prolifically in unfriendly cities, helping other wild species to survive as well. How do they do it?

    Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.

    This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

    King of the urban jungle

    Cities are islands of heat. On average, a city like Amsterdam is 2°C warmer than its rural surroundings. On a hot summer day, it could be more than 11°C warmer. You can feel the heat when you walk a city’s streets in summer – how nice and cool does a park with trees and shade feel then?

    This heat is a challenge for plants too. Fortunately for dandelions, evolution has offered a helping hand. I discovered that dandelions evolved to use urban heat to their advantage: urban dandelions grow better and faster than their rural relatives at higher temperatures by making more efficient use of photosynthesis.

    Not only do urban dandelions cope better with summer heat, they can also avoid the problems other plants experience with warming winters caused by climate change.

    Plants are programmed to respond to changes in temperature; when a cold snap yields to milder weather, that’s a cue for plants to start flowering. Timing is crucial, as flowering must correspond with the emergence of pollinators. Milder city winters might weaken this signal and ensure plants miss their cue to flower. I discovered that urban dandelions have finetuned this process and can start flowering even after a very short and mild winter.

    Winter also brings frost. The salt sprayed on roads to keep traffic safe can stress the plants which grow on the roadside verge, but several dandelion species have, fortunately, become experts in dealing with high salt concentrations. The exact mechanisms are yet unknown, but it looks like these dandelions can store the toxic salts and metals that are typical of roadside pollution in their leaves, without being bothered by it.

    Urban dandelions even have a solution for feet and lawnmowers trampling and shredding them: growing low to the ground, so lawnmowers pass right over and feet do not cut the flowers away from the plants.

    Protector of the realm

    City plants cycle from eradication by concrete and asphalt to reconquest in the nooks and cracks that subsequently form. A group of artists from Sweden likened cities to disturbed gardens and said that people and plants alike are gardeners of this dynamic landscape.

    The dandelion is a pioneer of this disturbed garden: the first to arrive with its windborne seeds and the best equipped to conquer the pavement with its long taproots. Once established, dandelions enable others to arrive by providing a buffet for insects in early spring. A survey of urban meadows in Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol and Reading in the UK revealed that dandelions were providing 90% of the nectar (carbohydrates) and 80% of the pollen (proteins) in the diets of pollinators. As a result, more than 200 species of insects (that we know of) are supported by dandelions. These are the necessary pollinators that allow other plant species to establish, such as clover, mallow, mustard and poppy.

    A survey showed that 20% of insects visiting dandelions were solitary bees, like mining bees. Bumblebees were next most common (17%), then hoverflies (13%) and pollen beetles (6%).
    Yannick Woudstra/Stockholm University

    Because dandelions can grow almost anywhere there is a sliver of soil, they provide essential refreshment stops for urban pollinators on their way between gardens and parks. Not only does the dandelion rule the streets, it also protects and supports its inhabitants. And so, the dandelion can rightly be called king of the urban jungle.

    Next time you see one in your garden, think about what it does for friendly pollinating insects. Without dandelions, your garden plants would struggle to reproduce. And if all this talk about food makes you hungry, try some dandelion leaves in your salad for a tangy bite.

    Don’t hate dandelions. Let them spice up your life, your street and your garden.

    Yannick Woudstra receives funding from The European Commission (Horizon Europe; Marie-Skłodowska Curie Actions), The Sven & Lily Lawski Foundation (Sweden), The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, The Physiographical Society in Lund (Sweden) and the Lars Hiertas Memorial Foundation (Sweden).

    – ref. How dandelions conquered concrete to bring nature back to cities – https://theconversation.com/how-dandelions-conquered-concrete-to-bring-nature-back-to-cities-254849

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How fighters make weight in combat sports – and regain it for the match

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

    Chris Eubank Jr. missed weight by just 0.05lbs (23 grams) ahead of his highly anticipated clash with Conor Benn last weekend — a tiny margin that cost him a massive £375,000. But why does such a minuscule weight difference (roughly the weight of four sheets of A4 paper) matter so much in combat sports?

    Boxing, like most combat sports, uses weight classes to keep competition fair, strategic and safe. These classes exist to ensure that skill, not brute size, determines the outcome of a fight.

    By grouping fighters based on weight, the sport encourages more balanced match-ups that test a combination of power, speed, reach, endurance and skill.

    Where does weight come from?

    The body has two main “compartments” where weight can be lost from: fat mass and lean body (or fat-free) mass.

    Fat mass is self-explanatory and is influenced by sex, age, activity and other factors. A healthy percentage of body fat is about 25% for men and 30% for women.

    Lean mass includes just about everything else. About 50% is skeletal muscle, with organs, bones and water being the other 50%.

    Naturally, athletes try to lose fat while preserving lean mass – especially muscle, which plays a critical role in performance.

    How weight loss begins

    Preparing for a fight usually starts eight to 12 weeks before the bout, depending on the opponent, previous fights and training history.

    While there’s no universal rule for how much weight a fighter should drop, many aim to lose around 10% of their body weight.

    The primary goal? Cut fat without losing strength – a delicate process that combines nutrition, exercise and timing.

    How is weight lost?

    There are three major routes: reducing energy intake through fasting and dieting while increasing exercise. This is typically undertaken gradually with a long-term plan and a balanced diet that is focused on reducing fat mass and fuelling muscles.

    Within a few days of the weigh-in, more extreme measures are used, aimed at removing excess fluid from the body. These measures include heated activities, such as running or wrestling while wearing specialised suits or extra-layers to increase sweating when exercising.

    Stopping or limiting fluid intake can even go as far as spitting out saliva.

    Finally, in the most brutal category are the things that are advised against because they can cause harm, such as taking laxatives, diuretics or enemas.

    Normal defecation is likely to reduce the body weight by about 100-130g. However, depending on diet, it can be as much as 470g.

    Using laxatives or enemas can clear out the digestive tract, sometimes shedding about a kilogram of weight. Although this is risky and discouraged by health experts.

    By the time the weigh-in comes, everything that can be shed is pretty much gone and the athletes are in a dangerous physiological state.

    Reducing water intake while increasing water loss leads to reductions in body water content which directly reducesblood and plasma volume, extracellular water and haemoglobin mass – all things that are key for health and transporting energy, ions and minerals around the body.

    This fine physiological balancing act can result in a boxer collapsing before or at the weigh-in.

    Low blood sugar levels, dehydration and reduced oxygen delivery put a serious strain on the body. If this progresses too far, the blood can become too thick – increasing the risk of clotting – while the kidneys may begin to fail and the nervous system can start to malfunction.

    After weigh-ins

    Clearly, boxers and other combat athletes cannot fight in this depleted state, so weigh-ins typically happen the day before the fight. In Britain, the British Board of Boxing Control stipulates a weigh-in must happen 24 to 36 hours before a fight.

    Once the weigh-in is done, efforts to replenish those depleted resources are undertaken with fluids and electrolytes, combined with easily digestible carbohydrates to replenish glycogen stores in the body.

    The fluids are an important part of many body systems including muscle. Skeletal muscle is 76% water and dehydration has been shown to reduce muscle strength by 2% and muscle power by 3%.

    Similarly, glycogen stores need to be replenished and this can take up to 24 hours. Glycogen accounts for 1-2% of skeletal muscle volume and is the main energy source for muscle contraction – a key requirement in boxing. Any deficiency is likely to result in poorer performance.

    After the weigh-in, studies show that victorious boxers regain more weight (8%) than losers (6.9%). And for each per cent more weight gained between weigh-in and bout, there was a 13% increase in the likelihood of victory in the fight.

    And after months of sacrifice, relentless training and physical strain, it must feel terrific to regain a bit of weight.

    Adam Taylor 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 fighters make weight in combat sports – and regain it for the match – https://theconversation.com/how-fighters-make-weight-in-combat-sports-and-regain-it-for-the-match-255438

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: With Moominmama, Tove Jansson created a hero who wields a handbag instead of a sword

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Isabel Joely Black, Teaching Fellow in Anthropology, University of Manchester

    In 1989, the science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin published The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. In it, she notes that many stories depend heavily on a hero with a sword or weapon as a central object, while bags seem boring and insignificant.

    Le Guin argued against the idea of weapons being the most important tool in a novel. Novels themselves are not “sword-shaped”, she suggested, but bags of ideas bundled together. It might be unexpected to link Le Guin to Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories. But Moominmamma is a perfect example of the kind of hero Le Guin was imagining.

    The story Jansson tells in the first Moomin book, The Great Flood (1945), is not a conventional hero narrative. It is a bundle of experiences the Moomins encounter as they make their way through an uncertain environment. If the story functions more like the “bag” – of ideas, people, places and their relationships to each other – then the ideal object to sit at the heart of the story is a handbag.

    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.

    Moominmamma is, as children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce argues in his introduction to the 2024 edition of The Great Flood, the “hero” of the story in that she is often the person who drives the action forward. She approaches what appear to be dangerous situations with curiosity rather than fear. She rescues a cat and her kittens. She knocks on a door when she and Moomintroll are hungry and need help.

    Heroes normally come with weapons, as Le Guin argues. But as a different kind of hero, Moominmamma comes with a handbag. She shows how it is possible to survive a long and arduous journey to find a home without a weapon, using her bag to carry and collect items to support them on their journey rather than relying on violence to negotiate with the world.

    Le Guin remarks that it’s hard, but not impossible, to rise to the challenge of telling a story where the bag is the heroic object. With Moominmamma and her handbag in The Great Flood, Jansson fully rises to that challenge. Her courage, empathy and creativity encourage readers to think differently about how we live in the world and relate to others around us.

    Tove Jansson holding a model of Moominmama and her handbag.
    Wiki Commons

    Moominmamma’s handbag is ubiquitous in Jansson’s illustrations. She carries it wherever she goes and panics when it goes missing.

    The Exploits of Moominpappa (1950) depicts the first time Moominmama met her husband. She is introduced as she is washed up on shore, and her first worry is that she can’t find her handbag: “Suddenly, she sat up and cried: ‘Save my handbag! Oh, save my handbag!’”

    In Finn Family Moomintroll (1948), the shy, elfish creatures Thingummy and Bob take the handbag and turn it into a home for themselves. The whole of Moominvalley is involved in the hunt to return the bag and a party is thrown once it is found. Moominmama is even shown to sleep with it under her pillow in A Comet in Moominvalley (1946).

    An ice sculpture showing Moominmama with her handbag.
    Wiki Commons, CC BY-SA

    Moominmamma wasn’t drawn wearing her staple apron in the first few books, but the handbag has always been with her. In one comic strip, Moominpappa and Moomintroll know something must be seriously wrong when Moominmamma discards her bag before jumping into water.

    In The Great Flood, it is even shown in the very first drawing as a small black square held by Moominmamma as she and Moomintroll enter the dark forest. They are on a terrible journey in a search for a home, and what could be more useful than a bag carrying all the essentials they need, and able to store new items picked up along the way?

    The handbag’s many uses

    The handbag’s first value is carrying items Moominmamma or anybody else may need on their perilous travels. It is almost immediately put to use in The Great Flood, when Moomintroll falls in water and, once rescued, has wet feet. Moominmamma gives him a pair of dry socks that symbolise the comfort and reassurance Moomintroll needs (even though Moomins do not actually wear socks).

    When they discover a bottle with a message in it, she even has a corkscrew in the bag to open it. She also collects things in the environment that might be useful along the way, proving the value of a bag on a great journey is not only what you have when you start, but what you can gather.

    Moominmama moments from the 1990s cartoon adaptation of Jansson’s books.

    Moominmamma is always on the lookout for potentially useful things, including some chocolate she gathers off-page when the Moomins and a character described as the “little creature” are exploring. Much later, the Moomins are starving and can only find a few figs to eat. Moominmamma takes out the chocolate to keep Moomintroll and the little creature going when they desperately need it.

    Le Guin argued that novels can be thought of as bags of ideas, people and things bundled together and that literal bags can be just as useful in a crisis as a weapon. Moominmamma and her handbag are an ideal example of how this plays out. She is the alternative hero Le Guin imagined, and her bag is the bundle she uses as support, the most vital tool for a crisis or a long journey.

    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.

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

    – ref. With Moominmama, Tove Jansson created a hero who wields a handbag instead of a sword – https://theconversation.com/with-moominmama-tove-jansson-created-a-hero-who-wields-a-handbag-instead-of-a-sword-255332

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: China is reshaping central Asia’s energy sector as Russian influence fades

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lorena Lombardozzi, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy of Global Development, SOAS, University of London

    China has been developing closer ties with countries in central Asia over recent years. Trade between China and the central Asia region grew to US$89 billion (£69 billion) in 2023, an increase of 27% on the previous year. Chinese trade rose with every country there except Turkmenistan.

    In my paper from June 2024, which is part of a collection of studies looking at the impact of China’s sprawling belt and road initiative in low- and middle-income countries, I explored how Chinese investment is affecting Uzbekistan’s energy sector.

    Chinese investment in Uzbekistan has grown significantly since 2020. By the end of 2022, it had reached US$4.5 billion, up from US$2.8 billion one year before. There are now over 3,450 Chinese companies in Uzbekistan, accounting for roughly 20% of all foreign companies in the country.

    One of the main reasons for China’s expanding footprint in central Asia is to intensify energy cooperation. By becoming a major buyer, lender and investor in the region’s energy sector, China is hoping to reduce its dependence on countries such as Russia.

    Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
    Peter Hermes Furian / Shutterstock

    Central Asia has been politically and economically dependent on Russia since the Soviet Union invaded the region in the 19th century. Much of its infrastructure was built to provide commodities like cotton and energy to Russia, with the latter selling it at high prices to Europe. This infrastructure has, until relatively recently, remained largely unchanged.

    However, some central Asian countries have been able to reduce their dependence on Russia over the past decade or so. China has become the main importer of Uzbek gas, with a peak share of more than 80%. And Uzbekistan exported almost US$2 billion worth of goods to China in 2022, matching its volume of trade with Russia.

    Investment in energy infrastructure is taking place in a reflection of these trade patterns. Central Asia boasts significant reserves of oil and gas. But most of the region’s pipelines were traditionally directed towards Russia and, to a lesser extent, south-west to Turkey.

    Pipelines have been built and maintained with China’s support that are directed towards the east. These pipelines have facilitated trade with China and have helped reduce operational waste in the energy sectors of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

    In 2025, China plans to resume the construction of a pipeline stretching from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, pending the finalisation of a gas supply contract with Turkmenistan. This will further strengthen China’s energy ties with the region.

    A few years ago, while I was carrying out fieldwork in Uzbekistan, I interviewed policy experts and those involved in the Uzbek energy industry. My interviewees saw deals with China as more reliable than Russia, which has in the past renegotiated the terms of long-term energy contracts with central Asian countries or has added unfair clauses in its favour.

    In 2018, for example, the Uzbek government needed additional gas to meet domestic demand. Russia’s Lukoil energy company agreed to sell the gas from a joint Lukoil-Uzbek production facility to Uzbekistan, but at a hefty price. The Uzbek government incurred debt to Lukoil worth US$600 million.

    A train transporting gas parked in Samarkand train station, Uzbekistan.
    Lewis Tse / Shutterstock

    Chinese involvement in the Uzbek energy sector is also having an indirect effect on Uzbekistan’s green economy. During the pandemic, Uzbekistan’s gas exports to China dropped significantly, exposing operators to the vulnerability of relying on a single energy source.

    Gas exports to China have recovered since 2021. But this shock prompted policymakers to explore ways of diversifying Uzbekistan’s energy production away from fossil fuels. Over the past few years, Uzbekistan has invested over US$4 billion in renewable energy production, with the technology and expertise often coming from China.

    With the support of Chinese companies, vast solar power plants have been planned and developed near the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, as well as other cities like Navoi. Wind turbines have been supplied by Chinese firms for projects in Ferghana, near the border with Kyrgyzstan.

    Chinese-led investment in the renewable energy sector has created further demand for skilled and semi-skilled labour, such as translators, logistics operators and engineers. My interviewees noted positive – albeit limited – effects on employment and wages in the sector.

    New challenges ahead

    There are, however, also drawbacks to Chinese involvement in central Asia’s energy sector. Uzbekistan’s gas trade with China is a possible source of political and economic vulnerability.

    The export price of Uzbek gas is more profitable for energy companies than the local subsidised price, so exports have taken priority over the domestic market. Uzbek consumers often have to contend with rationed gas supplies or no access to gas at all, especially during the winter when demand is at its highest.

    This has led to dissatisfaction among the Uzbek population, especially in rural areas where people have had to resort to burning alternative sources of fuel like coal, firewood and animal dung. These energy sources are harmful to health and the environment.

    Western sanctions on Russian oil and gas since 2022, when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, have also created further competition for Uzbek gas. Russian gas suppliers have sought alternative markets in Asia to circumvent the sanctions. Trade flow data shows that India, Turkey and even China have increased the amount of Russian fossil fuels they buy.

    But, by and large, the state of play in the global energy market seems to be changing. Central Asia is in a strong position to benefit.

    Lorena Lombardozzi 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. China is reshaping central Asia’s energy sector as Russian influence fades – https://theconversation.com/china-is-reshaping-central-asias-energy-sector-as-russian-influence-fades-245232

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: DOGE’s AI surveillance risks silencing whistleblowers and weakening democracy

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Thomas Stuart, Lecturer in Communications, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria

    The United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is reportedly using artificial intelligence to surveil federal agency communications for anti-Donald Trump and anti-Elon Musk sentiment.

    AI tools now automate firings and assess U.S. federal employees’ sentiment and alignment with the administration’s “mission.” Musk, who has been appointed a “special government employee” by the U.S. president and leads DOGE, has framed these moves as an attempt to cut waste and increase efficiency.

    At least one agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has reportedly warned staff to watch what they say, type or do online.

    The move has been largely overshadowed by tariff debates and constitutional concerns. But research on AI and governance suggests surveillance may erode the transparency that defines public institutions.

    Now, with Musk signalling he may scale back his involvement with DOGE, questions remain about how the system will operate in his absence — and whether anyone will be tasked with dismantling it.

    Disruption replaces due process

    Musk has presented DOGE as a lean, tech-driven solution to government bloat — a message he has repeated in interviews and on social media. Artificial intelligence, he argues, can cut red tape, trim costs and optimize operations.

    However, within federal agencies, AI has been used less to support public servants than to evaluate them — and in some cases, to eliminate them.

    Since DOGE assumed control over key functions within the Office of Personnel Management in January, hundreds of federal employees have been dismissed without formal explanation. DOGE also restricted access to cloud systems and sidelined career officials.

    DOGE was established by Trump through an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025 and tasked with cutting federal spending.
    (Shutterstock)

    Concerns over data security soon followed. In March, a federal judge barred DOGE from accessing Treasury systems, citing a “chaotic and haphazard” approach that posed a “realistic danger” of exposing sensitive financial information.

    Internally, DOGE operates through tools more familiar to startups than government agencies. Staff use disappearing messages via the Signal messenger app and draft documents in Google Docs rather than approved federal platforms.

    Grok, a generative AI chatbot launched by Musk in 2023, has been integrated across departments, though its tasks remain unclear.

    How Doge’s AI targets workers

    Earlier this year, thousands of federal employees received an email from the Office of Personnel Management asking them to provide five bullet points listing what they accomplished that week. “Failure to respond,” Musk warned on X, “will be taken as a resignation.”

    The message triggered uncertainty across departments. Without clear legal guidance, many workers were left guessing whether silence would mean termination. The Department of Justice and several intelligence agencies warned staff not to respond.



    Read more:
    Musk’s ruthless approach to efficiency is not translating well to the U.S. government

    Others, like the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Transportation, instructed staff to comply with DOGE’s requests. HHS later warned responses could “be read by malign foreign actors.” The EPA distributed template responses to help staff navigate the demand.

    The following week, the Office of Personnel Management clarified participation was voluntary. By then, responses had already been processed.

    DOGE reportedly planned to feed the responses into a large language model to determine whether an employee was mission-critical. Musk later denied this, describing the exercise as a test “to see if the employee had a pulse.”

    DOGE’S algorithms judge allegiance

    According to reports, DOGE’s AI tools have now been deployed across agencies to monitor political sentiment of workers. There is no indication that these systems otherwise assess employee competence or efficacy.

    Trump administration officials reportedly said some government employees have been informed that DOGE is examining staff for signs of perceived disloyalty to both the Trump administration and Musk himself.

    When AI is used in this way — without transparency or clear performance frameworks — it optimizes for compliance rather than capability.

    AI designed to detect dissent offers little support for the work of public service. Rather than recognizing expertise or ethical judgment, these tools reduce complex decision-making to surface-level signs of loyalty.

    Effective collaboration between humans and AI depends on clear boundaries. AI might complement the public service by identifying patterns in data, for example. Humans though must retain authority over context and judgment. When AI polices allegiance, those boundaries collapse, sidelining human skill and integrity.

    AI surveillance rewrites workplace behaviour

    The inherent limitations of large language models amplify these risks. These models cannot reliably read nuance, navigate ethical grey areas or understand intent. Assigning surveillance or employee evaluations to these systems invites errors.

    Worse, such blunt tools force civil servants into self-censorship to avoid misinterpretation. Public service shifts from informed expertise to performative alignment.

    For employees, the consequences extend beyond flawed assessments. AI surveillance deployed through tools like Grok and Signal creates uncertainty about how performance is measured and by whom.

    As surveillance systems degrade psychological safety, employees disengage and become discouraged. Far from enhancing productivity, covert monitoring erodes trust in both management and mission.

    This atmosphere weakens accountability. Whistle-blowing often reflects loyalty to institutional values rather than defiance. By reframing personal beliefs and integrity as disloyalty, DOGE will silence mechanisms that safeguard transparency.

    AI surveillance becomes institutional

    Musk recently announced his involvement at DOGE “will drop significantly”, likely beginning in May. The move is attributed in part to pressure from Republicans urging Trump to distance himself from Musk, as well as pressure from Tesla investors.

    Despite his expected departure, around 100 DOGE employees — and the AI frameworks they manage — will remain embedded across federal departments. Musk’s departure may shift headlines, but it will leave structural risks embedded within federal operations.

    Once governments adopt new surveillance tools, they rarely dismantle them, regardless of whether their architect stays to oversee them. With no clear formal oversight beyond presidential discretion, the surveillance system is likely to outlast Musk’s tenure.

    Employees monitored for political conformity are less likely to raise concerns, report misconduct or challenge flawed directives.

    As human resource protocols are bypassed and oversight is diminished, the balance could shift from policy grounded in principle to regulations grounded in algorithms. Governance risks giving way to control, which could weaken the political neutrality of the civil service.

    Thomas Stuart 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. DOGE’s AI surveillance risks silencing whistleblowers and weakening democracy – https://theconversation.com/doges-ai-surveillance-risks-silencing-whistleblowers-and-weakening-democracy-254358

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The ‘entourage effect’ — what we don’t know about how cannabis works

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jonathan Simone, Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences, Brock University

    In the years since legalization, there has been a tremendous surge in the number of cannabis products available to Canadian consumers, many offering tailored experiences to enhance seemingly any mood or activity.

    Do you want something calming or uplifting? Are you looking to inspire focus, spark creativity or get a good night’s sleep? Do you prefer full-spectrum extracts or THC isolates?

    But how does one plant produce so many different experiences? Like many of its botanical relatives, cannabis is rich in active compounds. The prevailing view is that these compounds work together to shape the overall experience, a phenomenon known as the “entourage effect.”

    From a consumer standpoint, the idea of custom-tailored experiences guided by key active ingredients is appealing — and it certainly makes things easier. But in reality, it’s not so cut-and-dried.

    Making informed decisions as a cannabis consumer can seem overwhelming, and navigating a product menu can feel like it requires a chemistry degree. But how much do we really know about how cannabis works? And how well are we able to predict individual experiences based on a product’s composition?

    What’s in a high?

    Most research into cannabis’ effects has focused on two key compounds, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). CBD is non-intoxicating and thought to underlie many therapeutic effects of cannabis, whereas THC is the primary compound responsible for the classic cannabis high.

    Until recently, the most pertinent information available to cannabis consumers was the THC:CBD ratio, and from a regulatory standpoint, these are the only compounds required by Health Canada for product labels. But the cannabis plant produces over 500 potentially bioactive compounds, most notably cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids, with increasing emphasis being placed on how they interact to drive different experiences.

    The idea that the different components of cannabis work in concert, modulating one another’s activity to influence the overall experience, has been termed the “entourage effect.” Simply put, it seeks to explain the effects of cannabis beyond those of any individual component, such as THC or CBD, and offers an elegant explanation for a common question: how can products with the same amount of THC and CBD produce different effects?

    Indeed, the medical cannabis community has long-favoured full- and broad-spectrum products (those containing a varied chemical profile) over single-compound isolates such as purified THC or CBD, based on claims of superior safety and efficacy.

    Ask your local budtender for a recommendation and you will likely get a crash-course on terpene nomenclature, hearing words like limonene, myrcene, pinene and linalool.

    While this modern embrace of terpene pharmacology and natural product chemistry reflects a growing appreciation for the complexities of the cannabis plant, claims of entourage effects remain largely speculative, highlighting how much we’ve yet to learn.

    Sound science or smoke and mirrors?

    Initially coined by scientists in Israel and Italy in study published in 1998, the term “entourage effect” described interactions among endogenous cannabinoids (THC-and CBD-like molecules produced by the human body). The idea was that some of these compounds, which are inactive on their own, could enhance or modulate the activity of others, resulting in combined effects greater than the sum of their parts.

    It is important to note that this study did not examine plant-derived cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant, but rather structurally related compounds produced naturally in the brain and body. As such, the idea of cannabis-specific entourage effects did not emerge directly from the data itself, but from broader inferences drawn from that research that provided a rationale for the diverse effects often reported by cannabis users.

    Since then, and despite a lack of supporting evidence, the term has been widely adopted and adapted by the cannabis industry, often leveraged to differentiate products in an overly crowded market.

    The available support for entourage effects in humans is limited to a few small clinical and observational studies and meta-analyses that suggest whole-plant extracts may outperform isolates for conditions like chronic pain and pediatric epilepsy.

    However, these studies often use non-standardized extracts and are therefore unable to identify which chemical interactions are driving the effects. Further, direct comparisons of full-spectrum and isolate products are lacking, with most claims rooted in inferences made from pre-clinical (in other words, non-human) research and from studies of non-cannabis derived phytomolecules.

    That said, the entourage effect is a valid hypothesis and arguably the most promising in terms of explaining cannabis’s varied and nuanced effects. Similar effects have been described for other drug classes, though these interactions are often termed synergism and potentiation and typically involve just a few well-characterized compounds. In contrast, unlocking cannabis synergy requires untangling the interactions of hundreds of different molecules, many of which are still poorly understood.

    That complexity is what I’ve spent my career trying to understand. Researching how cannabis-derived compounds work in the brain and body, I have gained a considerable appreciation for how far our understanding of cannabis has come, how much we have still yet to uncover and how easy it is for enthusiasm to outpace evidence.

    Reading between the product lines

    As the cannabis industry continues to evolve, consumers need to approach product claims with a healthy dose of skepticism. There is no doubt the cannabis plant is a treasure trove of unexplored and underexplored bioactive molecules, and that we will continue to uncover interesting and unexpected interactions among them. But we are far from a complete picture.

    At present, the entourage effect remains a hypothesis more often co-opted for marketing than grounded in evidence. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but it does mean we should resist conflating convenient narratives with established science. This highlights an important question: where does the onus of responsibility for generating this new knowledge fall?

    If the cannabis industry continues invoking the entourage effect for marketing and product differentiation, then it should support and contribute to research that furthers the state of evidence.

    Relying solely on existing pre-clinical and academic studies in lieu of directly advancing the science and validating real-world product claims risks perpetuating hype at the expense of credibility. But industry is not alone in their duty. Government must also remedy the regulatory bottlenecks that impede new research.

    Establishing a credible, science-backed cannabis marketplace means moving beyond hype. It requires action, from industry and government, to generate the information consumers need to make informed decisions.

    Jonathan Simone 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. The ‘entourage effect’ — what we don’t know about how cannabis works – https://theconversation.com/the-entourage-effect-what-we-dont-know-about-how-cannabis-works-251799

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Informal workers in Ghana’s chop bars get no benefit from foreign aid: donors are getting it wrong

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Matteo Rizzo, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, SOAS, University of London

    Informal street food caterers, popularly known as chop bars, are a key feature of Ghanaian city life. They offer the urban poor the cheapest food.

    A 2016 survey by the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated there were about 3,300 chop bars in the capital, Accra, employing almost 4,300 workers. This figure is likely to be much higher now due to rapid urban growth in the last decade. Ghana’s urban population increased from 50.9% in 2010 to 56.7% in 2021. By the same year the Greater Accra region was home to 91.7% of the urban population in the country.

    Street food caterers in Accra face a number of problems, including insecurity of land tenure, inadequate knowledge of food hygiene, harassment from local authorities, cut-throat competition, and low returns from work.

    Foreign donors have over the years stepped in to attempt to address these problems. A flagship of this assistance has been a programme funded by Danish trade unions and the Danish Federation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. Under its aegis, Ghana’s Trades Union Congress was able to support workers in chop bars.

    Drawing on our expertise on trade unions in Ghana and on the informal economy, we assessed the effectiveness and strategic relevance of this aid.

    The aid focused on entrepreneurial skills and micro-credit. This overlooks some of the real problems in the sector. It leaves wage workers in a precarious position and does nothing to boost demand for what the sector supplies. We argue that to be more effective, foreign aid should address these gaps.

    Entrepreneurial pipe dreams

    Increased donor attention to workers in the informal economy and trade unions could be seen as a positive trend. After all, this is where the majority of workers in African cities are to be found. Ghana’s official statistical service places the size of the country’s informal sector between 70% and 80% of the working populace in its reports from 2024.

    However, close examination of the type of support given, and its results, yields a more sobering picture.

    Aid focused firstly on capacity building and entrepreneurship. This aimed at boosting skills such as financial literacy and capacity to care for customers. The programme’s own evaluation highlights the increased confidence that chop bar operators gained through this training. Important as this might be, increased confidence can do very little to overcome structural challenges, like intense competition in an oversupplied sector and the insecurity of land tenure.

    A second area of support was the provision of micro-credit via the Trades Union Congress (Ghana). One could argue that it boosted the creditworthiness of informal economy operators. But there is evidence, including our study, that credit can often result in a spiral of debt and “poverty finance”.

    Donors chose to focus on small-scale entrepreneurs as the only economic actors in the informal economy. This reflects an ideological, and market fundamentalist, understanding of the informal economy as inhabited only by small enterprises and self-employed workers, and the challenge as one of making the market work better for the poor.

    The blind spots of donors’ support to the informal economy

    This approach by donors neglects informal and highly precarious wage workers within the chop bar sector. Our research shows that the chop bar industry is stratified in terms of class. Within it, alongside genuine self-employed workers, there are people who own relatively small-scale capital (cooking assets and in some cases the land and buildings in which the bars are based) and who employ informal wage workers.

    The informal workforce is by and large made up of migrant female workers with relatively low education and skill. They work without contracts, for very long hours and very low wages, and face the risk of sudden dismissal and harassment from employers. Such poor working conditions stem from the lack of contracts, and of the rights that come with them. This is the weakest category of workers in the industry – yet they have no place in donors’ and trade unions’ activities to support workers.

    The main limitation of donors’ aid to the chop bar sector is that it focuses exclusively on supply-side interventions. It is based on the idea that improving skills and access to finance will result in increased demand for the services of small-scale entrepreneurs. Many aid programmes on employment make this mistake and suffer from so called “employment dementia” .

    This type of aid doesn’t ask where the stimulus to increase demand for street food will come from, or what the structural roots of urban employment challenges are. It doesn’t consider why African cities have large informal economies and poor-quality jobs.

    Aid priorities

    Donors should re-think their aid priorities, and put informal wage workers at their centre. This would entail moving away from the current focus on micro-solutions for job creation, and instead supporting policies to promote structural change, to tighten labour markets and increase the demand for good-quality jobs within them.

    This article was co-authored with Dr Prince Asafu-Adjaye, an associate of Labour Research Service.

    Matteo Rizzo 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. Informal workers in Ghana’s chop bars get no benefit from foreign aid: donors are getting it wrong – https://theconversation.com/informal-workers-in-ghanas-chop-bars-get-no-benefit-from-foreign-aid-donors-are-getting-it-wrong-253633

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why are women paid less than men? New research in South Africa shows the company you work for makes the biggest difference

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ihsaan Bassier, Researcher in Economics, University of Surrey

    Why do women earn less than men? The usual suspects – occupation, hours, experience – explain some of it. But a powerful, often overlooked reason is simply this: where women work. The companies that hire them play a huge role in shaping their lifetime earnings.

    South Africa has a severe gender pay gap, much of which is unexplained by worker characteristics such as occupation, skills or experience.

    In our new study published in the Journal of Development Economics, using tax data on the universe of formal workers in South Africa, we uncover a striking fact: nearly half of the gender pay gap in South Africa is explained by women working at lower-paying companies than men. That is, more women tend to work at companies that pay all workers less.

    In addition, this phenomenon evolves dramatically over a woman’s life.

    We tracked millions of workers between 2010 and 2018 using tax data. We wanted to figure out how much money different companies paid, relative to each other, regardless of the type of worker. To do this, we compared what two companies pay the same worker. We looked at workers who switched companies and compared how their pay changed when they moved to a new company. By doing this for many workers and many companies, we could see how much more or less that company tends to pay people with the same kind of background or job.

    In the formal sector in South Africa, women, on average, get paid 12% less than men. We find that about 45% of this gap – 5.5 percentage points – is due to women being concentrated in firms that pay less overall (to both women and men).

    This isn’t because women are paid less within the same company — that kind of direct discrimination plays a much smaller role. Instead, it’s largely about sorting: women and men end up at different companies, and those pay differently.

    Women disproportionately enter lower-paying sectors such as education, retail, or personal care, while men are over-represented in high-premium sectors like construction, mining, and manufacturing.

    As labour and development economists, we argue that reducing the gender pay gap takes more than putting women into male-dominated jobs or promoting equal pay for equal work. It means tackling the invisible structures that steer women into lower-paying companies.

    A gender gap that grows, then shrinks

    What’s particularly revealing is how the firm-pay gap changes across the life cycle. For workers in their early twenties, this gap is almost nonexistent. But from the mid-20s to the mid-40s — roughly the child-rearing years — the gap widens significantly.

    Why does this happen?

    First, women who remain continuously employed through their 30s tend to move to worse-paying firms than men, even though they switch jobs at similar rates.

    Second, women entering or re-entering formal work (after a spell of unemployment or informal work) tend to start at lower-paying firms than men. This disadvantage when re-entering contributes to the overall gap, but is more constant over the life cycle.

    Interestingly, churn (moving in and out of employment) is common — but men and women do it at similar rates. The key difference is what type of firm they land in when they return. Nearly half the gap among entrants is explained by industry sorting — women disproportionately enter lower-paying sectors such as education, retail, or personal care, while men are overrepresented in high-premium sectors like construction, mining, and manufacturing.

    This isn’t because women have less (or different) skills. That might be another contributor to the overall gender gap in pay, but it’s not what we looked at. This is the pay disadvantage that women face from being at firms that pay less for the same job or skill.

    The firms that women join tend to be in lower-paying industries, have fewer resources, and are less likely to be covered by collective bargaining agreements (union-negotiated industry wages) that boost pay.

    Just like women leave or re-enter formal jobs at the same rates as men, they are in fact just as likely to switch jobs when employed. The problem then is that their job switches are less likely to lead to upward moves in the pay hierarchy, possibly due to employer discrimination or a need to prioritise non-pay job characteristics (like flexibility).

    Then something remarkable happens. As women age into their late 40s and 50s, the gender gap begins to close. They start making more advantageous moves than men. This is likely because, having been sorted into lower-paying firms earlier in their careers, they have more room to climb. And with child-related constraints easing later in life, they finally can.

    Firms in developing countries

    Our finding — that women ending up in lower-paying companies accounts for nearly half of the pay gap — is higher than estimates from high-income countries like Portugal or Italy, where it explains around 20%–25%. But in developing countries like Brazil and Chile, the contribution is similar to what we find.

    Why do firms matter more in places like South Africa?

    Labour markets are more “monopsonistic” — firms have more power to set wages due to high unemployment and few outside options for workers. So because formal jobs are scarce, entering or moving up within the formal sector is harder, especially for women. In fact, we show that in regions of South Africa with lower levels of formality, the gender gap in firm pay is wider.

    Policy takeaways

    One instructive exception is the public sector, where the state has actively pursued gender equity in hiring. Public administration employs a much higher share of women than men and offers relatively high pay premia.

    In developing countries especially, where formality is limited and transitions into good jobs are harder, policy can focus on easing women’s access to high-paying companies.

    This can mean policies that support childcare, promote flexibility without penalising pay, or reduce discrimination in hiring. Otherwise, sorting into low-paying firms will keep reproducing the gender pay gap, one job move at a time.

    Ihsaan Bassier has previously received funding for several research projects, including this one, through the SA-TIED joint initiative between UNU-WIDER and the South African National Treasury. He is a research affiliate at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town.

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

    – ref. Why are women paid less than men? New research in South Africa shows the company you work for makes the biggest difference – https://theconversation.com/why-are-women-paid-less-than-men-new-research-in-south-africa-shows-the-company-you-work-for-makes-the-biggest-difference-254221

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From COVID to cancer: Why Canada’s RNA vaccine leadership matters more than ever

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Anna Blakney, Assistant Professor, Michael Smith Laboratories and School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia

    As the world marks World Immunization Week, attention turns once again to the lifesaving power of vaccines.

    Amid headlines about rising cases of measles, falling vaccination rates and growing vaccine hesitancy, a quieter revolution is underway — one that could fundamentally reshape how we respond to global health threats, including pandemics and cancer.

    This revolution is being powered by RNA technology — and Canada is uniquely positioned to lead it.

    A made-in-Canada breakthrough

    While the swift development of COVID-19 vaccines appeared to be a sudden scientific triumph, it was built on six decades of foundational work. Much of that work happened in Canada. Messenger RNA (mRNA) are large, negatively charged molecules that are easily degraded and repelled by our cells.

    To coax our cells to internalize them, scientists developed a way to encapsulate them in “fat bubbles” or lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), which were invented by Pieter Cullis and collaborators. Cullis, a co-author of this article, is a professor in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of British Columbia.

    Once inside a patients’ cells, the mRNA gives the cell instructions to translate a viral protein that triggers an immune response. Both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines — which relied on these fat bubbles — were found to be highly efficacious (more than 94 per cent) and safe, both in initial trials and continuous monitoring over time. They were estimated to have saved nearly 10 million lives in 2021 alone.

    That’s just the beginning. Research teams across the country are now building on this homegrown innovation to expand the potential of RNA vaccines beyond infectious diseases.

    The next generation: Less means more

    At the University of British Columbia, the Blakney Lab is focused on developing vaccines and therapies using self-amplifying RNA (saRNA), a technology that offers several advantages over conventional mRNA. Because saRNA replicates itself once inside a patient’s cells, much smaller doses are needed to produce a robust immune response.

    Now, this replication process may sound like something out of a science fiction film, but similar to mRNA vaccines, this technology has been developed over decades and has been thoroughly clinically validated. The saRNA technology reduces manufacturing costs and makes vaccine production more scalable during global emergencies. Notably, the lower dose can also minimize side effects, potentially reducing the risk of getting a sore arm or having to miss a day of work after vaccination.

    Recent pre-clinical studies have shown that saRNA vaccines can offer longer-lasting immunity with smaller doses, and multiple clinical trials are now underway to evaluate their use for influenza, Zika virus and even cancer.

    Vaccine equity, health security, economic growth

    Expanding Canada’s domestic RNA vaccine capacity is more than just a scientific priority; it’s a public health imperative and economic opportunity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply chain breakdowns exposed the risks of relying on international sources for essential vaccine ingredients and production. Investing in local infrastructure allows for faster and more flexible responses to future outbreaks.



    Read more:
    From PPE shortages to COVID-19 vaccine distribution, the supply chain has emerged as a determinant of health

    But it’s not just about pandemic readiness. One of the most exciting frontiers for RNA technology is the development of personalized cancer vaccines. These vaccines train the immune system to recognize and attack mutations specific to an individual’s tumour.

    In early clinical trials, mRNA-based cancer vaccines — such as those developed by Moderna and BioNTech — have shown promising results, dramatically reducing recurrence rates in melanoma and pancreatic cancer patients.

    Canada’s scientific ecosystem is primed to contribute meaningfully to this next generation of therapies. Strengthening our biotech infrastructure could create high-quality jobs, stimulate economic growth and reinforce Canada’s place as a leader in the global bioeconomy.

    From crisis to capacity

    The COVID-19 pandemic showed us how rapidly science can enable positive public health outcomes — and how easily inequities can widen if infrastructure and access aren’t prioritized.

    Despite being home to world-class researchers, Canada lacked the manufacturing capacity to produce its own mRNA vaccines. That gap is now being addressed through substantial recent investments from the government of Canada, but sustaining momentum will require long-term commitment from policymakers and funders.

    Equity must also remain at the forefront. Communities in rural, remote and Indigenous regions often face barriers to accessing vaccines — not because of hesitancy, but due to logistical challenges and under-resourced health systems. The Public Health Agency of Canada has emphasized the importance of building trust and tailoring solutions in partnership with these communities.

    Vaccine confidence remains another challenge. Post-pandemic surveys reveal that misinformation continues to shape public perceptions, even about long-established vaccines like MMR. Addressing this requires proactive science communication, sustained public education and rebuilding trusted relationships between communities and health systems.

    Looking ahead

    World Immunization Week offered a chance to celebrate how far we’ve come — but also to ask what comes next. With decades of research leadership, a strong innovation ecosystem and new investments in RNA infrastructure, Canada has the tools to lead the next chapter of mRNA technology development.

    Whether it’s fighting the next virus or personalizing cancer therapies for individual patients, RNA technologies hold transformative promise. Seizing this opportunity will require sustained support, policy alignment and a focus on equitable access.

    By investing in RNA innovation today, Canada can deliver not just vaccines, but a healthier, more resilient future for all.

    Immunity and Society is a new series from The Conversation Canada that presents new vaccine discoveries and immune-based innovations that are changing how we understand and protect human health. Through a partnership with the Bridge Research Consortium, these articles — written by academics in Canada at the forefront of immunology and biomanufacturing — explore the latest developments and their social impacts.

    Anna Blakney sits on the scientific advisory board and/or consults for Genvax Technologies, Replicate Biosciences and Pasture Biosciences. She receives funding from CIHR, CBRF, NSERC and CFI.

    Pieter Cullis a co-founder and have shares in Acuitas Therapeutics, the company that provided the LNP enabling the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. He receives funding from CIHR.

    – ref. From COVID to cancer: Why Canada’s RNA vaccine leadership matters more than ever – https://theconversation.com/from-covid-to-cancer-why-canadas-rna-vaccine-leadership-matters-more-than-ever-254692

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Boat wakes aren’t just a nuisance, they harm freshwater shorelines and wildlife

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Chris Houser, Professor in Department of Earth and Environmental Science, and Dean of Science, University of Waterloo

    After long winters, Canadians love their summers. For some, that means summer vacations by a lake, along a river or on a bay for some much-needed rest and relaxation. For some, it’s time to disconnect at the dock, while for others it’s a time to cruise the lake or enjoy the thrill of water-skiing, tubing and wake-boarding.

    Over the last decade, there’s been a strong growth in the sale of new and pre-owned motorboats, and in particular, wake boats that are designed to generate large wakes.

    While recreational boating is a multi-billion-dollar industry in Canada, and enjoyed by many — including me — there has been increasing concern among cottage owners and other advocacy groups about the impact of the wakes generated by these boats.

    Recreational boat wake and jet ski jumping wakes in cottage country in Ontario. (Chris Houser)

    There is increasing evidence that boat wakes erode the shoreline, disrupt aquatic ecosystems, degrade water quality and pose a safety hazard to those at the shoreline or also on the water.

    Stronger than waves

    In Ontario’s cottage country, boat wakes represent a significant portion of total wave energy.

    Except for lakes where motorboats are restricted, the energy generated by wakes is greater than the energy of the waves generated by winds. The exact amount depends on the size, shape and depth of the body of water, but recent research I conducted with colleagues suggests wakes can account for up to 90 per cent of the total wave energy in small lakes with widths up to five kilometres.

    One respondent to our survey noted that:

    “The shore is eroding. I’m losing land and trees into the water. The water is more murky than ever before and the constant large waves makes it unsafe for my kids to swim at times.”

    Wakes not only represent an increase in the number of waves, but they are also responsible for waves of greater height and energy, particularly those generated by wake boats. The smaller the lake, the greater the wake energy at the shoreline, but it is also larger along rivers, lake arms and in bays due to the types and frequency of boating in those areas.

    There is limited impact along rocky shorelines, our research has found, but change can occur where the shorelines are muddy or sandy and the water is shallow.

    Just like large storm waves, wakes can erode the shoreline and uproot and undermine shoreline vegetation. The resuspension of bottom sediment and organic material can also degrade water quality and clarity, leading to the development of algae blooms and hypoxia and the dispersion of contaminants.

    “We have boats that are enhanced for sale surfing and our lake is not wide enough or deep enough to handle the energy generated by the wakes that are produced by these boats. We have parts of our lake that are less than 20 metres wide and less than eigth feet deep, and these boats are generating cut-outs on the bottom of the lake bed, which of course stirs up silt from the floor bed and harms water clarity.” A cottager on Fairy Lake, north of Toronto.

    Dangers to loons, fish, docks and people

    The turbulence can also disturb loon nests and fish spawning in shallow water by destroying nests, washing away eggs and displacing juvenile fish, leading to reduced reproductive success.

    “It is not a coincidence we have not had loons nesting on our point for 10 years since our channel became a busy wake-surfing mecca.” A cottager on Lake Joseph, north of Toronto.

    In our research, residents and cottage owners also raised concerns that wakes cause damage to shoreline infrastructure and docked vessels, leading to greater maintenance and repair costs. Large wakes can make it difficult for smaller slower boats to navigate safely, and at the shoreline, those waves pose a hazard to swimmers, who may be knocked off balance or even swept out by larger waves.

    While studies suggest that wakes represent a significant portion of the wave energy on small lakes, there has been little actual documentation of impacts, and we discovered that there was little direct evidence of erosion. Most examples were extreme and highlighted potential hotspots of shoreline change associated with boat wakes.

    “Our shoreline has eroded approximately six feet in the last 10 years, causing trees and shoreline to collapse into the lake.” A Lake Joseph cottager.

    Most respondents to the survey identified boat operation, the experience of the operators and use of the lake by other users (for example, those fishing, swimming and relaxing) as the primary issues associated with wakes and boating in general. This is consistent with another recent study that found no evidence of shoreline erosion, but an increase in sediment resuspension and phosphorus availability.

    Speed limits, no-wake zones

    Further study is needed to determine when and where boat wakes are a physical and/or ecological stressor rather than simply being a disturbance to the peaceful cottage country scene.

    Through these studies, it will be possible to implement appropriate speed limits and no-wake zones, limits to wakeboat use and improve education and awareness as the industry continues to improve hull designs to reduce the wake.

    There is no doubt that the debate over the impact of boat wakes will continue this summer, but hopefully it won’t make our time on the dock this summer too rocky.

    Chris Houser 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. Boat wakes aren’t just a nuisance, they harm freshwater shorelines and wildlife – https://theconversation.com/boat-wakes-arent-just-a-nuisance-they-harm-freshwater-shorelines-and-wildlife-251958

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How rising wages for construction workers are shifting the foundations of the housing market

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bahaa Chammout, Kummer I&E PhD Fellow in Civil Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology

    Construction costs have surged in recent years, pushing homeownership further out of reach for many Americans. But this isn’t a new concern: In 1978, the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned that rising costs were threatening the American dream – at a time when the median home price was just US$44,300, less than three times the median household income. Today, that figure has climbed past $419,000, more than five times what the median American makes.

    One often-overlooked factor behind this surge? Labor costs.

    We are engineering experts, and in our latest study, we analyzed wages and workforce trends across more than 20 occupations in construction from 1999 to 2023. Interestingly, we found that unskilled workers — those in the lowest-paid roles – saw the largest wage gains. And the effects of these gains have rippled across the entire construction industry.

    A changing construction landscape

    A lot can change in 25 years, which is the last time researchers analyzed construction labor trends at this scale. Back then, construction wages were declining, driven in part by the rise of affordable trade schools and in part by falling union membership.

    Today, the landscape looks very different. The construction industry is grappling with a persistent labor shortage, facing an annual shortfall of more than a half-million workers. At the same time, wage dynamics have shifted greatly.

    The biggest gains go to the lowest-paid roles

    Construction projects rely on a wide range of roles – from highly skilled professionals like engineers and electricians to lower-skilled or unskilled workers. Unskilled workers handle physically demanding tasks like trench digging, concrete mixing and site preparation, and earn lower wages. As a result, contractors often hire more of them.

    While contractors tend to focus on expensive skilled labor when estimating project costs, our recent study found that unskilled workers have seen the largest wage gains in recent decades. Their wages rose by 2.75% to 3.5% per year — compared with under 2.5% for most skilled roles.

    The size of the construction workforce is also changing, with 88% of U.S. construction firms reporting difficulty finding workers. The shortage is especially severe among unskilled labor. For example, half as many people work as unskilled helpers now than in 1999.

    Given these trends, to avoid budgeting shortfalls and project risks, we encourage contractors to plan for higher costs for low-skilled workers. Our study also offers a simple method to help forecast wage trends, which contractors can use to estimate future labor costs.

    Wage hikes have a ripple effect

    Interestingly, not only did unskilled occupations see the biggest wage jumps, but they also influenced wage changes in other trades.

    Using econometric models, we analyzed these occupations as part of an interconnected system. We found that trades typically involved early in a project tend to influence wages for trades that come later. In particular, unskilled construction laborers – who handle tasks like site preparation and material handling – emerged as the leading drivers of wage trends across the industry. When their wages rise, others’ tend to follow.

    These insights suggest that contractors should monitor early-stage wage trends closely. When wages start rising among early-trade or unskilled workers, that is often a signal that broader labor costs are about to rise too. Planning ahead can help firms manage costs more effectively.

    Recent world events — such as COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine war and the 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs — brought major challenges to the construction industry, which is still dealing with their aftermath. On top of that, worsening labor shortages, new tariffs and global supply chain disruptions mean the industry will continue to face significant challenges.

    However, tracking market data offers a valuable opportunity to understand emerging trends and develop strategies to respond effectively. Our research team – working closely with major U.S. contractors through the Missouri Consortium for Construction Innovation – is exploring solutions across a range of issues, including construction material costs, cross-border material trade with Canada and Mexico, and persistent labor shortages, among other critical topics.

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

    – ref. How rising wages for construction workers are shifting the foundations of the housing market – https://theconversation.com/how-rising-wages-for-construction-workers-are-shifting-the-foundations-of-the-housing-market-255087

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump seeks to reshape how schools discipline students

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By F. Chris Curran, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, University of Florida

    School discipline has evolved over the years. Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/DigitalVision via Getty Images

    The Trump administration is trying to reshape how schools discipline students – and alter the federal government’s role in the process.

    On April 23, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order suggesting schools have been using racially discriminatory discipline policies. It sets in motion new federal guidance that would reverse policies supported by the Obama and Biden administrations aimed at reducing racial disparities in how Black children and other students of color are disciplined in school.

    I believe the order could have far-reaching consequences and is likely to prompt pushback and legal challenges. As a researcher who studies school discipline, I can explain why this is happening and what it means for schools and students.

    Local control, federal influence

    School discipline has historically been locally controlled, though federal law does mandate a few disciplinary responses, such as expulsion for possessing firearms. School boards create codes of conduct. School principals and teachers make and enforce rules.

    However, federal guidance over the past decade has increasingly shaped these local decisions.

    In 2014, for example, the U.S. departments of Education and Justice issued guidance to reduce racial disparities in school discipline. This Obama-era letter suggested that higher rates of discipline for racial minorities could be evidence of discrimination. The guidance signaled how the U.S. Department of Education would interpret federal law and what might be cause for federal investigation.

    In the following years, schools reduced suspensions and adopted alternatives such as restorative practices, which focus on talking through and repairing harm instead of removing students from the classroom. But some people saw this as a weakening of school discipline. Politicians and policy advocates even claimed that these changes in discipline contributed to school shootings.

    Even though the guidance was rescinded during the first Trump administration, the federal government continued to investigate disparities in discipline. And without alternative guidance, many schools continued practices guided by the Obama-era policies.

    These efforts to reduce disparities in school discipline continued under President Joe Biden, though without reinstating the Obama-era guidance.

    In the return to schooling after COVID-19 shutdowns, however, schools grappled with reports of increasing student misbehavior. Nationally, almost 9 in 10 principals reported negative effects of the pandemic on student behavior.

    At the same time, there were reports that some schools were not properly documenting serious misbehavior – hiding high or disparate rates of discipline. These problems created an opportunity for the Trump administration to push new federal guidance.

    What Trump’s executive order does

    Trump’s new executive order sets the stage for further federal influence over discipline policy and practices. Here’s a breakdown of what it contains.

    First, the executive order states that schools should no longer focus on differences in rates of discipline across subgroups. It contends that doing so has led to schools failing to report incidents and making decisions based on students’ race rather than objective facts.

    Next, the executive order calls on the secretary of education to develop new school discipline guidance for states and schools. It also calls for the secretary of education and attorney general to work with state leaders to reshape how their states can prevent racial discrimination in discipline.

    Finally, the executive order requires a report on “the status of discriminatory-equity-ideology-based” school discipline. The order does not explicitly say what such discipline is, but it presumably includes alternatives to suspension and approaches that focus on considering race in disciplinary decisions.

    The report is to provide model policies that the order claims will uphold “American values and traditional virtues” and provide examples of discipline not based on “equity ideology.”

    Part of the report will also include an evaluation of past federal civil rights investigations and federal funding supporting organizations that promote discipline approaches deemed problematic under the new order. This addresses concerns that the threat of federal investigation over discipline disparities was used to influence schools’ discipline policies.

    In short, the order suggests expanded federal involvement in school discipline. It does so despite noting that it is an “obvious conclusion” that “disciplinary decisions are best left in the hands of classroom teachers and administrators.”

    Meaning of ‘discrimination’ in anti-DEI era

    The executive order claims to provide “protections against racial discrimination” in school discipline. Interestingly, the policies Trump is seeking to undo were similarly intended to reduce racial disparities.

    This seeming contradiction can be understood when the executive order is viewed against the backdrop of current education policy debates. A wide set of policies grounded in efforts of diversity, equity and inclusion and related topics have been at the forefront of debates over schooling in the past five years. From debates around “critical race theory” – the idea that racism is embedded in our social systems – to the content of school libraries, the “culture wars” are at the schoolhouse door.

    It is no coincidence, then, that the executive order uses the term “discriminatory equity ideology” to describe discipline policies it prohibits.

    I argue this reframing of DEI from diversity, equity and inclusion to discrimination illustrates that the new executive order is not just about school discipline. It is part of a bigger debate on the value and impacts of DEI and politicized contention over public schooling.

    What order means for schools and students

    In the short term, I believe educators will face much uncertainty. The executive order is vague. It does not name specific discipline policies that should be avoided or used.

    But in the coming months, the executive order promises increased federal influence over school discipline. The full scope or impact of this is not yet clear. However, it is reasonable to expect that, just like other contested issues in education, there will be legal challenges and pushback in some locales.

    In short, the “common sense” discipline reforms called for in the executive order are unlikely to be seen as common sense for everyone.

    F. Chris Curran has received funding from the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Educational Research Association for research on school discipline and safety.

    – ref. Trump seeks to reshape how schools discipline students – https://theconversation.com/trump-seeks-to-reshape-how-schools-discipline-students-255377

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Bees, fish and plants show how climate change’s accelerating pace is disrupting nature in 2 key ways

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Courtney McGinnis, Professor of Biology, Medical Sciences and Environmental Sciences, Quinnipiac University

    A bee enjoys lunch on a flower in Hillsboro, Ore. HIllsboro Parks & Rec, CC BY-NC-ND

    The problem with climate change isn’t just the temperature – it’s also how fast the climate is changing today.

    Historically, Earth’s climate changes have generally happened over thousands to millions of years. Today, global temperatures are increasing by about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) per decade.

    Imagine a car speeding up. Over time, human activities such as burning fossil fuels have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases trap heat from the Sun. This is like pressing the gas pedal. The faster the driver adds gas, the faster the car goes.

    The 21st century has seen a dramatic acceleration in the rate of climate change, with global temperatures rising more than three times faster than in the previous century.

    The faster pace and higher temperatures are changing habitat ranges for plants and animals. In some regions, the pace of change is also throwing off the delicate timing of pollination, putting plants and pollinators such as bees at risk.

    Some species are already migrating

    Most plant and animal species can tolerate or at least recover from short-term changes in climate, such as a heat wave. When the changes last longer, however, organisms may need to migrate into new areas to adapt for survival.

    Some species are already moving toward higher latitudes and altitudes with cooler temperatures, altering their geographic territory to stay within their optimal climate. Fish populations, for example, have shifted toward the poles as ocean temperatures have risen.

    Pollinators such as bees can also shift their ranges.

    Bumblebees, for example, are adapted for cooler regions because of their fuzzy bodies. Some bumblebee populations have been disappearing from the southern parts of their geographic range and have been found in cooler regions to the north and in more mountainous areas. That could increase competition with existing bumblebee populations.

    Plants and pollinators can get out of sync

    Plants and their pollinators face another problem as the rate of climate change increases: Many plants rely on insects and other animals for seed and pollen dispersal.

    Much of that pollen dispersal is accomplished by native pollinators. About 75% of plant species in North America require an insect pollinator – bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, birds and bats. In fact, 1 in 3 bites of food you eat depend on a pollinator, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    So, even if a species successfully migrates into a new territory, it can face a mismatch of pollination timing. This is known as phenological mismatch.

    Monarch butterflies migrate each year and rely on plants blooming along their path to provide food.
    Clint Wirick/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

    During the winter, insects go into a hibernation known as diapause, migrate or take up shelter underground, under rocks or in leaf litter. These insect pollinators use temperature and daylight length as cues for when to emerge or when to migrate to their spring and summer habitats.

    As the rate of climate change increases, the chances of a timing mismatch between pollinators and the plants they pollinate rise.

    With an increase in temperature, many plants are blooming earlier in the spring. If bees or other pollinators emerge at their “normal” time, flowers may already be blooming, reducing their chance for pollination.

    If pollinators emerge too early, they may struggle to survive if their normal food sources are not yet available. Native bees, for example, rely on pollen for much of the protein they need for growing and thriving.

    Wild bees are emerging earlier

    This kind of shift in timing is already happening with bees in the U.S.

    Studies have shown that the date wild bees emerge in the U.S. has shifted by 10.4 days earlier over the past 130 years, and the pace is accelerating.

    One study found wild bees across species have been changing their phenology, or timing of seasonal activities, and over the past 50 years the emergence date is four times faster. That means wild bees were emerging roughly eight days earlier in 2020 than they did in 1970.

    A bee pollinates an almond tree in an orchard.
    David Kosling/U.S. Department of Agriculture, CC BY

    This trend of earlier emergence is generally consistent across organisms with the accelerating rate of climate change. If the timing mismatches continue to worsen, it could exacerbate the decline of pollinator populations and result in inadequate pollination for plants that rely on them.

    Pollinator decline and inadequate pollination already account for a 3% to 5% decline in global fruit, vegetable, spice and nut production annually, a recent study found.

    Without pollinators, ecosystems are less resilient − they are unable to absorb disturbances such as wildfires, adapt to changes, and recover from environmental stressors such as pollution, drought or floods.

    Managing climate change

    Pollinators face many other risks from human activities, including habitat loss from development and harm from pesticide use. Climate change adds to that list.

    Taking steps to reduce the activities driving global warming can help keep these species thriving and carrying out their roles in nature into the future.

    Courtney McGinnis is affiliated with You Got This Kid Leadership Foundation. She receives funding from Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

    – ref. Bees, fish and plants show how climate change’s accelerating pace is disrupting nature in 2 key ways – https://theconversation.com/bees-fish-and-plants-show-how-climate-changes-accelerating-pace-is-disrupting-nature-in-2-key-ways-255384

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What is a downburst? These winds can be as destructive as tornadoes − we recreate them to test building designs

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Amal Elawady, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Florida International University

    A downburst blasts Bangkok, Thailand, in 2017. Natapat Ariyamongkol/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    From a distance, a downburst can look like a torrent of heavy rain. But at ground level, its behavior can be far more destructive.

    When a downburst’s winds hit the ground, they shoot out horizontally in all directions, sometimes with enough force to shatter windows and overturn vehicles.

    These winds behave in complicated ways, particularly in cities, as our latest research shows. Downburst winds can deflect off tall buildings, increasing the pressure on neighboring buildings’ windows and walls. The result can blow out glass and chip off facade. Even buildings designed to survive hurricanes can suffer major damage in a downburst.

    As engineers, we study downbursts with the goal of designing buildings, components such as solar panels and windows, and infrastructure such as power lines that can stand up to that powerful force. To do this, informed by field measurements, we create our own powerful downbursts using a hurricane simulator known as the Wall of Wind at Florida International University.

    An illustration of how the winds of a downburst fan out in open space. In a city with tall buildings, the wind can deflect off buildings, causing damage in unexpected ways.
    NASA/Wikimedia Commons

    What is a downburst?

    Downbursts can be as destructive as tornadoes, but their winds develop in a very different way.

    A downburst forms when a thunderstorm pulls cooler, heavier air down from high in the atmosphere. As this rain-cooled air rushes downward, it gains speed. Once it slams into the ground, it has nowhere to go but outward, sending strong winds in all horizontal directions.

    Dust in the air shows the curling rotation of a downburst’s winds.
    NOAA

    The wind speed in a downburst can reach over 150 miles per hour. That’s the strength of a Category 4 hurricane and strong enough to knock down trees and power lines, damage buildings and flip vehicles.

    These winds also rotate, but not in the same way tornadoes do. Downburst winds are typically considered straight-line winds, but they rotate around a horizontal axis as the wind curls upward after hitting the ground. Tornadoes, in contrast, spin around a vertical axis.

    Powerful storm systems known as derechos are often made up of multiple downburst clusters, each containing many smaller downbursts, sometimes called microbursts.

    Recreating Houston’s downburst in a warehouse

    On May 16, 2024, a derecho hit Houston with a downburst that was so strong, it blew out windows in several high-rise buildings that had been built to survive Category 4 hurricanes. The winds also pried off chunks of buildings’ facades.

    Two months later, Hurricane Beryl hit Houston with similar wind speeds, yet it left minimal damage to the downtown buildings.

    When a downburst hit downtown Houston on May 16, 2024, it shattered windows on some sides of buildings but not others, and not always in the line of the storm. The damage offered clues to how downbursts interact with tall buildings.
    Cécile Clocheret/AFP via Getty Images

    To understand how a downburst like this can be so much more destructive – and what cities and building designers can do about it – we simulated both the Houston downburst winds and Hurricane Beryl’s winds in the Wall of Wind.

    The test facility is equipped with a dozen jet fans, each almost as tall as the workers who run them and powerful enough to simulate a Category 5 hurricane. Our team used these fans to recreate powerful downburst winds that hit horizontally with the maximum wind speeds near ground level. Then, we put several models of buildings to the test to see how roofs, windows, facades and the structures of power lines reacted under that force.

    How the Wall of Wind’s fans mimic a downburst’s horizontal force.

    In the Houston derecho, a downburst hit downtown with 100 mph winds. It cracked some lower windows, likely with blowing debris, but it also caused widespread unexpected damage midway up some of the buildings.

    The Chevron Building Auditorium actually suffered the most damage on a side that wasn’t directly in the line of the storm but was facing another tall building. That left some intriguing questions. It suggested that the way the buildings channel the wind may have created a strong suction that blew out windows midway up the tower. Another burning question is whether building design codes are outdated when it comes to how well their cladding can stand up to these localized winds.

    Using the Wall of Wind, we were able to test those pressures on models of the Houston buildings and see how downburst winds increased the pressured on a tall building model with excessive forces near the ground level.

    The ability to simulate these winds is important for improving engineers’ understanding of the differences in how downbursts and other wind events exert force on buildings. The results ultimately inform building standards to help create more resilient and better-protected communities.

    Building better power lines

    Big storms, like downbursts, can also take down power lines.

    Power lines extend hundreds of miles between cities and states, making them more susceptible to a hit from a localized severe storm, such as a downburst. If one of the towers falls, it can cause a chain reaction, like dominoes falling one after another. That can knock out power for large numbers of people.

    The derecho that hit Houston with a downburst also crumpled transmission towers in Texas.
    AP Photo/David J. Phillip

    With colleagues, we have been testing transmission towers and multispan power-line systems under downburst and hurricane winds to understand how these structures respond, with the goal of developing better construction techniques. That work has helped to update the American manual for the design of power lines, which engineers use for designing safer, more storm-resilient transmission towers.

    What’s next

    Low-rise and mid-rise buildings are also vulnerable to downbursts, but the effects are less well understood. Downburst winds are most intense between 10 and 300 feet above the ground, meaning the roofs and walls of some low-rises can be hit with intense horizontal wind.

    Recent building codes have offered design guidelines to help ensure these buildings can withstand tornadoes. However, the way downbursts rotate in a short time around a building or a community of buildings puts pressure on the walls and the roof in different ways. Similar to straight-line winds, we expect high suction on the roof. Due to their short duration, varying wind direction and intense wind speed, downbursts may also cause excessive vibrations and varying pressure distribution on the roof components.

    How microbursts form.

    We’re now testing downburst damage to low- and mid-rise buildings to better understand the risks and help highlight changes that can make buildings more resilient.

    As populations grow, cities are adding more buildings. At the same time, powerful storms are becoming more frequent and more intense. Understanding the effects of different types of storms will help engineers construct high-rises, low-rises and power lines that are better able to withstand extreme weather.

    Amal Elawady receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

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

    – ref. What is a downburst? These winds can be as destructive as tornadoes − we recreate them to test building designs – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-downburst-these-winds-can-be-as-destructive-as-tornadoes-we-recreate-them-to-test-building-designs-254931

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How a reading group helped young German students defy the Nazis and find their faith

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Peter Nguyen, SJ, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross

    A copy of the sentences against, left to right, Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst is displayed at the White Rose Memorial in Munich. Johannes Simon/Getty Images

    For three weeks in April 2025, my “Theology of Christian Martyrdom” class studied how a group of German students and professors from Munich and Hamburg formed a resistance movement from 1942 to 1943 known as the “White Rose.” These individuals defied Nazi tyranny, they were imprisoned, and many were executed.

    At the movement’s center were Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst and Willi Graf, who were all in their 20s, and Professor Kurt Huber. The Scholl siblings, their friends and their professor were beheaded for urging students at the University of Munich to oppose the Nazi regime.

    On the surface, the White Rose’s “crime” was the writings, printings and distribution of six anti-Nazi pamphlets urging Germans to resist Adolf Hitler and work to end World War II. However, a closer examination of their pamphlets, along with excerpts from their diaries and letters, reveals that their resistance was rooted in something deeper – a faith anchored in friendship and a humanistic learning. Their time together reading and discussing theological texts deepened their Christian faith.

    Teaching this class taught me that teachers can inspire students to improve their country’s social and political landscape through the study of literature, history and theology. Teachers can help students form their consciences and empower them to act against falsehood and injustice.

    The White Rose movement

    These young people came from a variety of Christian backgrounds, including Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox traditions. Some had been members of the Hitler Youth as teenagers, while others had served as medical assistants in the German army. They formed strong bonds and underwent personal transformations as students at the University of Munich, where they were mentored by a couple of philosophers, especially Kurt Huber, who was a devout Catholic.

    The students met regularly and secretly with their professors to study literature, philosophy and theology from the Catholic intellectual tradition, banned by the Nazi regime as part of Hitler’s strategy to first stifle and then strangle the Catholic Church in Germany. Based on the students’ correspondence and diaries, their covert engagement with Catholic thought became a cornerstone of the White Rose’s rejection of Nazi tyranny.

    In the works of the fifth-century North African theologian Augustine, the 20th-century novelist and playwright Georges Bernanos, and the 20th-century philosopher Jacques Maritain, these students encountered a Catholic intellectual tradition that was responsive to the urgent questions of their time.

    From Augustine they learned the importance of cultivating an interior life grounded in prayer. Bernanos stressed the importance of embracing one’s humanity to confront evil. Maritain emphasized the need to strive for a free democratic society.

    Importance of prayer

    The White Rose movement was concerned not only with the present state of humanity but also with its future, and not only with the individual but also with the communal. In their clandestine meetings and correspondence, they wrestled with the relationship between faith and reason, goodness in the face of evil, the meaning of tyranny, the nature of a just state, and the foundations of genuine liberty. Addressing these serious issues not only matured their intellects but also deepened their hearts; it taught them the importance of prayer.

    Hans Scholl, left, and his sister Sophie in 1940.
    Authenticated News/Archive Photos/Getty Image

    “Better to suffer intolerable pain than to vegetate insensibly. Better to be parched with thirst, better to pray for pain, pain, and more pain, than to feel empty, and to feel so without truly feeling at all. That I mean to resist,” Sophie wrote in her diary in the early summer of 1942.

    The personal writings of the White Rose reflect a religious passion, akin to the prayers of saints.

    For example, in his imprisonment, Graf stated: “I know my Redeemer liveth. This faith alone strengthens and sustains me.” The impact of Christianity on the inner lives of these young people is a crucial part of their narrative and resistance.

    Their circle of friendship became a haven in a totalitarian state that sought to isolate individuals, instill fear and transform these estranged and fearful people into part of a mass society. “We negated the many, and built on the few, and believed ourselves strong,” Traute Lafrenz, the last surviving member of the White Rose and a member of the Hamburg circle, later stated.

    The most significant intellectual influence on the group may have been John Henry Newman, a 19th-century Catholic convert and theologian who emphasized the primacy of a “well-formed” conscience. His writings helped them recognize what Catholics like myself see as a moral truth that transcended Nazi propaganda – that each person bears within them the voice of the living God. This voice could not be silenced by state power.

    Newman’s philosophy

    Newman insisted that conscience is not merely intuitive but is shaped through learning – from conversations, books and lived experience. With their professors’ guidance, the White Rose students were able to cultivate their conscience.

    The annual 2023 Newman lecture while commemmorating the 80th anniversary of the White Rose.

    If Newman were addressing college students today, I like to believe he would emphasize the significance of their conversations with friends on campus, the discussions held with classmates and professors in the classroom, the newspapers they read, the retreats they participated in, the novels they savored during the holidays, their road trips across the country, and their studies abroad. All of these experiences contribute to shaping their conscience.

    Newman’s defense of broad, active and serious learning offered an appealing counterpoint to Nazi ideology, which sought not only to deprive individuals of their civil rights but also to crush their inner lives and capacity to form meaningful relationships through terror and fear.

    The power of a well-formed conscience is perhaps best illustrated by Sophie Scholl, who shared Newman’s sermons with her boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel, a Wehrmacht officer who fought for Germany during World War II.

    In the summer of 1942, horrified by the brutality he witnessed, Hartnagel wrote to Scholl that Newman’s words were like “drops of precious wine.” In another letter, he wrote: “But we know by whom we are created, and that we stand in a relationship of moral obligation to our Creator. Conscience gives us the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.” After the war, Hartnagel became active in the peace movement and supported conscientious objectors. To the members of the White Rose, conscience was a spiritual stronghold – one the state could not breach.

    Truth-seeking and challenges today

    I believe that while my students today face different challenges – a society shaped by what I regard as the nihilistic presence of technological power and populism, rather than full-blown totalitarianism – they also aspire to act with clarity and conviction. Newman’s view on the formation of conscience resonated with my students as well.

    What my students share with those young dissidents from over 80 years ago is a commitment to cultivating an inner life, fostering a community of friends and engaging in a vibrant intellectual tradition.

    They are drawn to the writings that animated Hans Scholl, who, drawing inspiration from the Catholic playwright Paul Claudel, wrote the following just two days before his arrest.

    “Chasms yawn and darkest night envelops my questing heart, but I press on regardless. As Claudel so splendidly puts it: Life is one great adventure into the light.”

    As a teacher, I believe that young people want to engage with an intellectual tradition that helps them discover their vocation and live with integrity, similar to Scholl.

    They seek to act with a clear conscience amid the uncertainties of their own times. This approach serves as a powerful contrast to any hollow, anti-intellectual and culturally bankrupt tyranny.

    Peter Nguyen, SJ 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 a reading group helped young German students defy the Nazis and find their faith – https://theconversation.com/how-a-reading-group-helped-young-german-students-defy-the-nazis-and-find-their-faith-254774

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘Agreeing to disagree’ is hurting your relationships – here’s what to do instead

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lisa Pavia-Higel, Assistant Teaching Professor of English and Technical Communication, Missouri University of Science and Technology

    Conversational tools like ‘looping’ and ‘reframing’ can help move a conversation away from confrontation. Candra Ritonga/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    As Americans become more polarized, even family dinners can feel fraught, surfacing differences that could spark out-and-out conflict. Tense conversations often end with a familiar refrain: “Let’s just drop it.”

    As a communications educator and trainer, I am frequently asked how to handle these conversations, especially when they involve social and political issues. One piece of advice I give is that “agree to disagree,” or any other phrase that politely stands in for “stop talking,” will not restore harmony. Not only that, but it could also do permanent harm to those important family bonds.

    ‘No-go’ topics

    Conversation is the currency of relationships. When families talk about anything – from “What are your top five favorite movies?” to “What possessed you to load the dishwasher like that?” – they are not just exchanging information. They are building trust and creating a shared story that deepens the relationships within the family unit.

    According to communication researcher Mark L. Knapp’s model of relationship development, all relationships have a life cycle. People come together and solidify their connection through five stages, from “initiation” to “bonding.” But many relationships eventually come apart, going through five stages of breakdown.

    Mark L. Knapp’s model breaks relationships into 10 stages.

    No relationship is as linear as the model assumes, but it can help pinpoint potential danger zones – moments when a bond is at risk of coming apart. One stage, in particular, illustrates why avoiding these hard conversations is so dangerous: “circumscribing.”

    Imagine circumscribing topics of conservation with yellow police tape around them – topics that almost instantly trigger conflict. Having a few of these “no-go” topics in a relationship probably will not doom a marriage or cause family estrangement. However, marking too many ideas as off-limits makes it easier for people to avoid conversation altogether.

    Circumscribing is one of the “coming apart” stages in Knapp’s model. If problems aren’t addressed, a relationship can keep sliding down the slope toward the last stage: termination.

    We need to talk

    Sadly, this estrangement from loved ones is not a theoretical problem. In a 2022 poll of 11,000 Americans, more than 1 in 4 people reported that they were now estranged from close family.

    What’s more, these relationships are not always replaced by other close ties. About half of Americans say they only have three or fewer close friends. In 2023, then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared widespread loneliness and isolation an “epidemic.”

    Social connection is a basic human need. Relationships do more than provide support; they play a key role in how people define themselves. According to psychology’s “social penetration theory,” conversation with close family and loved ones deepens relationships while helping people learn to articulate their deepest values.

    So if “agree to disagree” is not the answer, what is?

    There is no one-time process that will fix all conflict over the course of a family dinner. These techniques take time, patience and compassion – all things that can be in short supply amid conflict. However, there are two techniques I not only recommend to others, but I use in my own conflicts: “looping for understanding” and “reframe and pivot.”

    Getting in the loop

    Looping, which was originally developed for legal mediation, helps both people in a conversation understand each other. Feeling misunderstood tends to escalate conflict, so this is a great starting place.

    During a “loop,” each person uses active listening, meaning they pay careful attention to what their partner is saying without judgment or interruptions. Then the listener shows their understanding by using what’s called “empathic paraphrase”: restating what they heard from the speaker, but also what emotions they perceived. Finally, they ask the original speaker for confirmation.

    That might sound something like this:

    So if I understand what you are saying, you think that people should not have to get a flu shot at your office because you are not sure if it’s effective, and you’re frustrated that you are being told what to do by your company. Do I have that right?

    If the speaker says no, then the listener “loops” by asking them to explain what they got wrong, and tries to paraphrase again. The participants keep looping until the answer to “Did I get that right?” is an emphatic “yes.” This practice ensures that both people are sure of the actual issue at hand.

    Looping has other benefits, too. In one study, emphatic paraphrasing not only made participants less anxious but also made the speaker see the paraphraser in a more positive light. Feeling fully heard and understood can go a long way to turning down the heat on difficult conversations.

    The goal of ‘looping’ is to make sure you understand the other person’s perspective – and the real issue at stake.
    FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

    Framing common ground

    However, that understanding may not be enough. Once both parties understand each other, another technique, “reframing,” can help pivot the conversation away from confrontation and move toward resolution.

    In reframing, the speakers find and discuss a single point of agreement. By emphasizing what they agree about, instead of what they disagree about, they look for a starting place to tackle the problem together, instead of facing off.

    For example:

    I think you and I can both agree that we want to keep the family safe. However, I think we disagree about what role having a gun in the house would play in that safety. Is that right?

    Finding a point of agreement is not always possible. However, this reframing presents both communicators as having a key shared value – a starting place for a more constructive discussion. Reframing also moves the conversation away from inflammatory language that could automatically reignite the fight. `

    No magic bullet

    No technique will ever be a perfect, one-size-fits-all solution for every relationship – or a quick fix. Careful communication can be mentally exhausting, and pressing pause is always OK:

    I don’t think we are going to solve our nation’s financial issues tonight, but thank you for talking about it. Let’s keep doing it. But for now, I think there’s pie. Want some?

    It’s also important to accept that not all relationships can or should be saved. However, it is always good to know that the relationship ended for a clear reason, and not over a misunderstanding that was never addressed.

    Hopefully, though, these tactics will help keep communication open and relationships healthy, no matter what topic is brought up at dinner.

    Lisa Pavia-Higel is affiliated with Braver Angels, a non-profit organization that facilitates conversations across the political divide. She is no longer active in the organization but was trained as a workshop facilitator.

    – ref. ‘Agreeing to disagree’ is hurting your relationships – here’s what to do instead – https://theconversation.com/agreeing-to-disagree-is-hurting-your-relationships-heres-what-to-do-instead-252687

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI is giving a boost to efforts to monitor health via radar

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Chandler Bauder, Electronics Engineer, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

    AI-powered radar could enable contactless health monitoring in the home. Chandler Bauder

    If you wanted to check someone’s pulse from across the room, for example to remotely monitor an elderly relative, how could you do it? You might think it’s impossible, because common health-monitoring devices such as fingertip pulse oximeters and smartwatches have to be in contact with the body.

    However, researchers are developing technologies that can monitor a person’s vital signs at a distance. One of those technologies is radar.

    We are electrical engineers who study radar systems. We have combined advances in radar technology and artificial intelligence to reliably monitor breathing and heart rate without contacting the body.

    Noncontact health monitoring has the potential to be more comfortable and easier to use than traditional methods, particularly for people looking to monitor their vital signs at home.

    How radar works

    Radar is commonly known for measuring the speed of cars, making weather forecasts and detecting obstacles at sea and in the air. It works by sending out electromagnetic waves that travel at the speed of light, waiting for them to bounce off objects in their path, and sensing them when they return to the device.

    Radar can tell how far away things are, how fast they’re moving, and even their shape by analyzing the properties of the reflected waves.

    Radar can also be used to monitor vital signs such as breathing and heart rate. Each breath or heartbeat causes your chest to move ever so slightly – movement that’s hard for people to see or feel. However, today’s radars are sensitive enough to detect these tiny movements, even from across a room.

    Advantages of radar

    There are other technologies that can be used to measure health remotely. Camera-based techniques can use infrared light to monitor changes in the surface of the skin in the same manner as pulse oximeters, revealing information about your heart’s activity. Computer vision systems can also monitor breathing and other activities, such as sleep, and they can detect when someone falls.

    However, cameras often fail in cases where the body is obstructed by blankets or clothes, or when lighting is inadequate. There are also concerns that different skin tones reflect infrared light differently, causing inaccurate readings for people with darker skin. Additionally, depending on high-resolution cameras for long-term health monitoring brings up serious concerns about patient privacy.

    Radar sees the world in terms of how strongly objects in its view reflect the transmitted signals. The resolution of images it can generate are much lower than images cameras produce.
    Chandler Bauder

    Radar, on the other hand, solves many of these problems. The wavelengths of the transmitted waves are much longer than those of visible or infrared light, allowing the waves to pass through blankets, clothing and even walls. The measurements aren’t affected by lighting or skin tone, making them more reliable in different conditions.

    Radar imagery is also extremely low resolution – think old Game Boy graphics versus a modern 4K TV – so it doesn’t capture enough detail to be used to identify someone, but it can still monitor important activities. While it does project energy, the amount does not pose a health hazard. The health-monitoring radars operate at frequencies and power levels similar to the phone in your pocket.

    Radar + AI

    Radar is powerful, but it has a big challenge: It picks up everything that moves. Since it can detect tiny chest movements from the heart beating, it also picks up larger movements from the head, limbs or other people nearby. This makes it difficult for traditional processing techniques to extract vital signs clearly.

    To address this problem we created a kind of “brain” to make the radar smarter. This brain, which we named mm-MuRe, is a neural network – a type of artificial intelligence – that learns directly from raw radar signals and estimates chest movements. This approach is called end-to-end learning. It means that, unlike other radar plus AI techniques, the network figures out on its own how to ignore the noise and focus only on the important signals.

    In our study, we used AI to transform raw, unprocessed radar signals into vital signs waveforms of one or two people.
    Chandler Bauder

    We found that this AI enhancement not only gives more accurate results, it also works faster than traditional methods. It handles multiple people at once, for example an elderly couple, and adapts to new situations, even those it didn’t see during training – such as when people are sitting at different heights, riding in a car or standing close together.

    Implications for health care

    Reliable remote health monitoring using radar and AI could be a major boon for health care. With no need to touch the patient’s skin, risks of rashes, contamination and discomfort could be greatly reduced. It’s especially helpful in long-term care, where reducing wires and devices can make life significantly easier for patients and caregivers.

    Imagine a nursing home where radar quietly watches over residents, alerting caregivers immediately if someone has breathing trouble, falls or needs help. It can be implemented as a home system that checks your breathing while you sleep – no wearables required. Doctors could even use radar to remotely monitor patients recovering from surgery or illness.

    This technology is moving quickly toward real-world use. In the future, checking your health could be as simple as walking into a room, with invisible waves and smart AI working silently to take your vital signs.

    Chandler Bauder receives funding from the NSF.

    Aly Fathy receives funding from NSF and work for university of Tennessee

    – ref. AI is giving a boost to efforts to monitor health via radar – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-giving-a-boost-to-efforts-to-monitor-health-via-radar-253325

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From the Chinese Exclusion Act to pro-Palestinian activists: The evolution of politically motivated deportations

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rick Baldoz, Associate Professor of American Studies, Brown University

    New York Tribune of Jan. 3, 1920, announcing massive roundups of ‘aliens’ deemed to be ‘Reds.’ Library of Congress

    The recent deportation orders targeting foreign students in the U.S. have prompted a heated debate about the legality of these actions. The Trump administration made no secret that many individuals were facing removal because of their pro-Palestinian advocacy.

    In recent months, the State Department has revoked hundreds of visas of foreign students with little explanation. On April 25, 2025, the administration restored the legal status of many of those students, but warned that the reprieve was only temporary.

    Because of their tenuous legal status in the U.S., immigrant activists are vulnerable to a government seeking to stifle dissent.

    Critics of the Trump administration have challenged the legality of these removal orders, arguing that they violate constitutionally protected rights, including freedom of speech and due process.

    The administration asserts that the executive branch has nearly absolute authority to remove immigrants. The White House has cited legislation passed during the peak of the nation’s Cold War hysteria, like the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which expanded the government’s deportation powers.

    I’m a historian of immigration, U.S. empire and Asian American studies. The current removal orders targeting student activists echo America’s long and lamentable past of jailing and expelling immigrants because of their race or what they say or believe – or all three.

    The arrest of Turkish graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk by Department of Homeland Security agents in Somerville, Mass., on March 25, 2025.

    Where it began

    The United States’ current deportation process traces its roots to the late 19th century as the nation moved to exercise federal control of immigration.

    The impetus for this shift was anti-Chinese racism, which reached a fever pitch during this period, culminating in the passage of laws that restricted Chinese immigration.

    The influx of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast during the mid-to-late 19th century, initially fueled by the California Gold Rush, spurred the rise of an influential nativist movement that accused Chinese immigrants of stealing jobs. It also claimed that they posed a cultural threat to American society due to their racial otherness.

    The Geary Act of 1892 required Chinese living in the U.S to register with the federal government or face deportation.

    The Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of these statutes in 1893 in the case of Fong Yue Ting v. United States. Three plaintiffs claimed that anti-Chinese legislation was discriminatory, violated constitutional protections prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure, and contravened due process and equal protection guarantees.

    The Supreme Court affirmed the Geary Act’s deportation procedures, formulating a novel legal precept known as the plenary power doctrine that remains a key tenet of U.S. immigration law today.

    Court confirms the law

    The doctrine included two key assertions.

    First, the federal government’s authority to exclude and deport aliens was an inherent and unqualified feature of American sovereignty. Second, immigration enforcement was the exclusive domain of the congressional and executive branches that were charged with protecting the nation from foreign threats.

    The court also ruled that the deportation of immigrants in the country lawfully was a civil, rather than criminal matter, which meant that constitutional protections like due process did not apply.

    The government ramped up deportations in the aftermath of World War I, fueled by wartime xenophobia. American officials singled out foreign-born radicals for deportation, accusing them of fomenting disloyalty.

    The front page of the Ogden Standard, from Ogden City, Utah, on Nov. 8, 1919, announcing the arrest and planned deportation of ‘alien Reds.’
    Library of Congress

    Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who ordered mass arrests of alleged communists, pledged to “tear out the radical seeds that have entangled Americans in their poisonous theories” and remove “alien criminals in this country who are directly responsible for spreading the unclean doctrines of Bolshevism.”

    This period marked a new era of removals carried out primarily on ideological grounds. Jews and other immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were disproportionately targeted, highlighting the cultural affinities between anti-radicalism and racial and ethnic chauvinism.

    ‘Foreign’ agitators

    The campaign to root out so-called subversives living in the United States reached its apex during the 1940s and 1950s, supercharged by figures like anti-communist crusader Sen. Joseph McCarthy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

    The specter of foreign agitators contaminating American political culture loomed large in these debates. Attorney General Tom Clark testified before Congress in 1950 that 91.4% of the Communist Party USA’s leadership were “either foreign stock or married to persons of foreign stock.”

    Congress passed a series of laws during this period requiring that subversive organizations register with the government. They also expanded the executive branch’s power to deport individuals whose views were deemed “prejudicial to national security,” blurring the lines between punishing people for unlawful acts – such as espionage and bombings – and what the government considered unlawful beliefs, such as Communist Party membership.

    While deporting foreign-born radicals had popular support, the banishment of immigrants for their political beliefs raised important constitutional questions.

    Harry Bridges, a West Coast labor leader, and his daughter, Jacqueline, 14, as they listen to proceedings during Bridges’ deportation hearing in San Francisco in July 1939.
    Underwood Archives/Getty Images

    Prosecution or persecution?

    In a landmark case in 1945, Wixon v. Bridges, the Supreme Court did assert a check on the power of the executive branch to deport someone without a fair hearing.

    The case involved Harry Bridges, Australian-born president of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union. Bridges was a left-wing union leader who orchestrated a number of successful strikes on the West Coast. Under his leadership, the union also took progressive positions on civil rights and U.S. militarism.

    The decision in the case hinged on whether the government could prove that Bridges had been a member of the Communist Party, which would have made him deportable under the Smith Act, which proscribed membership in the Communist Party.

    Since no proof of Bridges’ membership existed, the government relied on dodgy witnesses and assertions that Bridges was aligned with the party because he shared some of its political positions. Accusations of “alignment” with controversial political organizations are similar to the charges made against foreign students currently at risk of deportation by the Trump administration.

    The Supreme Court vacated Bridges’ deportation order, declaring that the government’s claim of “affiliation” with the Communist Party was too vaguely defined and amounted to guilt by association.

    As the excesses and abuses of the McCarthy era came to light, they invited greater scrutiny about the dangers of unchecked executive power. Some of the more draconian statutes enacted during the Cold War, like the Smith Act, have been overhauled. The federal courts have toggled back and forth between narrow and liberal interpretations of the Constitution’s applicability to immigrants facing deportation – shifts that reflect competing visions of American nationhood and the boundaries of liberal democracy.

    From union leaders to foreign students

    There are some striking parallels between the throttling of civil liberties during the Cold War and President Donald Trump’s crusade against foreign students exercising venerated democratic freedoms.

    Foreign students appear to have replaced the immigrant union leaders of the 1950s as the targets of government repression. Presumptions of guilt based on hyperbolic claims of affiliation with the Communist Party have been replaced by allegations of alignment with Hamas.

    As in the past, these invocations of national security offer the pretext for the government’s efforts to stifle dissent and to mandate political conformity.

    Rick Baldoz 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. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to pro-Palestinian activists: The evolution of politically motivated deportations – https://theconversation.com/from-the-chinese-exclusion-act-to-pro-palestinian-activists-the-evolution-of-politically-motivated-deportations-254683

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Forensics tool ‘reanimates’ the ‘brains’ of AIs that fail in order to understand what went wrong

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Oygenblik, Ph.D. Student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

    Tesla crashes are only the most glaring of AI failures. South Jordan Police Department via APPEAR

    From drones delivering medical supplies to digital assistants performing everyday tasks, AI-powered systems are becoming increasingly embedded in everyday life. The creators of these innovations promise transformative benefits. For some people, mainstream applications such as ChatGPT and Claude can seem like magic. But these systems are not magical, nor are they foolproof – they can and do regularly fail to work as intended.

    AI systems can malfunction due to technical design flaws or biased training data. They can also suffer from vulnerabilities in their code, which can be exploited by malicious hackers. Isolating the cause of an AI failure is imperative for fixing the system.

    But AI systems are typically opaque, even to their creators. The challenge is how to investigate AI systems after they fail or fall victim to attack. There are techniques for inspecting AI systems, but they require access to the AI system’s internal data. This access is not guaranteed, especially to forensic investigators called in to determine the cause of a proprietary AI system failure, making investigation impossible.

    We are computer scientists who study digital forensics. Our team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has built a system, AI Psychiatry, or AIP, that can recreate the scenario in which an AI failed in order to determine what went wrong. The system addresses the challenges of AI forensics by recovering and “reanimating” a suspect AI model so it can be systematically tested.

    Uncertainty of AI

    Imagine a self-driving car veers off the road for no easily discernible reason and then crashes. Logs and sensor data might suggest that a faulty camera caused the AI to misinterpret a road sign as a command to swerve. After a mission-critical failure such as an autonomous vehicle crash, investigators need to determine exactly what caused the error.

    Was the crash triggered by a malicious attack on the AI? In this hypothetical case, the camera’s faultiness could be the result of a security vulnerability or bug in its software that was exploited by a hacker. If investigators find such a vulnerability, they have to determine whether that caused the crash. But making that determination is no small feat.

    Although there are forensic methods for recovering some evidence from failures of drones, autonomous vehicles and other so-called cyber-physical systems, none can capture the clues required to fully investigate the AI in that system. Advanced AIs can even update their decision-making – and consequently the clues – continuously, making it impossible to investigate the most up-to-date models with existing methods.

    Researchers are working on making AI systems more transparent, but unless and until those efforts transform the field, there will be a need for forensics tools to at least understand AI failures.

    Pathology for AI

    AI Psychiatry applies a series of forensic algorithms to isolate the data behind the AI system’s decision-making. These pieces are then reassembled into a functional model that performs identically to the original model. Investigators can “reanimate” the AI in a controlled environment and test it with malicious inputs to see whether it exhibits harmful or hidden behaviors.

    AI Psychiatry takes in as input a memory image, a snapshot of the bits and bytes loaded when the AI was operational. The memory image at the time of the crash in the autonomous vehicle scenario holds crucial clues about the internal state and decision-making processes of the AI controlling the vehicle. With AI Psychiatry, investigators can now lift the exact AI model from memory, dissect its bits and bytes, and load the model into a secure environment for testing.

    Our team tested AI Psychiatry on 30 AI models, 24 of which were intentionally “backdoored” to produce incorrect outcomes under specific triggers. The system was successfully able to recover, rehost and test every model, including models commonly used in real-world scenarios such as street sign recognition in autonomous vehicles.

    Thus far, our tests suggest that AI Psychiatry can effectively solve the digital mystery behind a failure such as an autonomous car crash that previously would have left more questions than answers. And if it does not find a vulnerability in the car’s AI system, AI Psychiatry allows investigators to rule out the AI and look for other causes such as a faulty camera.

    Not just for autonomous vehicles

    AI Psychiatry’s main algorithm is generic: It focuses on the universal components that all AI models must have to make decisions. This makes our approach readily extendable to any AI models that use popular AI development frameworks. Anyone working to investigate a possible AI failure can use our system to assess a model without prior knowledge of its exact architecture.

    Whether the AI is a bot that makes product recommendations or a system that guides autonomous drone fleets, AI Psychiatry can recover and rehost the AI for analysis. AI Psychiatry is entirely open source for any investigator to use.

    AI Psychiatry can also serve as a valuable tool for conducting audits on AI systems before problems arise. With government agencies from law enforcement to child protective services integrating AI systems into their workflows, AI audits are becoming an increasingly common oversight requirement at the state level. With a tool like AI Psychiatry in hand, auditors can apply a consistent forensic methodology across diverse AI platforms and deployments.

    In the long run, this will pay meaningful dividends both for the creators of AI systems and everyone affected by the tasks they perform.

    Brendan Saltaformaggio’s research group receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our sponsors and collaborators.

    David Oygenblik 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. Forensics tool ‘reanimates’ the ‘brains’ of AIs that fail in order to understand what went wrong – https://theconversation.com/forensics-tool-reanimates-the-brains-of-ais-that-fail-in-order-to-understand-what-went-wrong-247769

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: In the $250B influencer industry, being a hater can be the only way to rein in bad behavior

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jessica Maddox, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Creative Media, University of Alabama

    Influencer Alix Earle, a self-described ‘hot mess,’ has legions of online haters. Greg Doherty/Getty Images for Revolve

    Since 2020, content creator Remi Bader had accumulated millions of TikTok followers by offering her opinions on the fits of popular clothing brands as a plus-size woman.

    In 2023, however, Bader appeared noticeably thinner. When some fans asked her whether she’d undergone a procedure, she blocked them. Later that year, she announced that she would no longer be posting about her body.

    Enter snark subreddits. On Reddit, these forums exist for the sole purpose of calling out internet celebrities, whether they’re devoted to dinging the late-night antics of self-described “hot mess” Alix Earle or venting over Savannah and Cole LaBrant, a family vlogging couple who misleadingly implied that their daughter had cancer.

    While the internet is synonymous with fan culture, snark subreddits aren’t for enthusiasts. Instead, snarkers are anti-fans who hone the art of hating.

    Remi Bader attends New York Fashion Week on Feb. 10, 2025.
    Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Tory Burch

    After Bader’s refusal to talk about her weight loss, the Remi Bader snark subreddit blew up. Posters weren’t upset that Bader had lost weight or had stopped posting about her body size. Instead, they believed Bader the influencer, who’d built her brand on plus-size inclusion in fashion, wasn’t being straight with her fans and needed to be taken to account.

    It worked. During a March 2025 appearance on Khloe Kardashian’s podcast, Bader finally revealed that she had, in fact, had weight-loss surgery.

    Some critics see snarkers as a big problem and understandably denounce their tendency to harass, body shame and try to cancel influencers.

    But completely dismissing snark glosses over the fact that it can serve a purpose. In our work as social media researchers, we’ve written about how snark can actually be thought of as a way to call out bad actors in the largely unregulated world of influencing and content creation.

    Grassroots policing

    Before there were influencers, there were bloggers. While bloggers covered topics that ranged from entertainment to politics to travel, parenting and fashion bloggers probably have the closest connection to today’s influencers.

    After Google introduced AdSense in 2003, bloggers were easily able to run advertising on their websites. Then brands saw an opportunity. Parenting and fashion bloggers had large, loyal followings. Many readers felt an intimate connection to their favorite bloggers, who seemed more like friends than out-of-touch celebrity spokespersons.

    Brands realized they could send bloggers their products in exchange for a write-up or a feature. Furthermore, advertisers understood that parenting and fashion bloggers didn’t have to adhere to the same industry regulations or code of ethics as most news media outlets, such as disclosing payments or conflicts of interest.

    This changed the dynamic between bloggers and their fans, who wondered whether bloggers could be trusted if they were sometimes being paid to promote certain products.

    In response, websites emerged in 2009 to critique bloggers. “Get Off My Internets,” for example, fashioned itself as a “quality control watchdog” to provide constructive criticism and call out deceptive practices. As Instagram and YouTube became more popular, the subreddit “r/Blogsnark” launched in 2015 to critique early influencers, in addition to bloggers.

    Few guardrails in place

    Today the influencer industry has a valuation of over US$250 billion in the U.S. alone, and it’s on track to be worth over $500 billion by 2027.

    Yet there are few regulations in place for influencers. A few laws have emerged to protect child influencers, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has established legal guidelines for sponsored content.

    That said, the influencing industry remains rife with exploitation.

    It goes both ways: Corporations can exploit influencers. For example, a 2021 study found that Black influencers receive below-market offers compared with white influencers.

    Savannah and Cole LaBrant came under fire for implying that their daughter had cancer, in what their critics called a ploy for attention.
    Danielle Del Valle/Getty Images for Lionsgate

    Likewise, influencers can deceive or exploit their followers. They might use unrealistic body filters to appear thinner than they are. They could hide who’s paying them. They may promote health misinformation such as the controversial ParaGuard cleanse, a fake treatment pushed by wellness influencers that claimed to rid its users of parasites.

    Or, in the case of Remi Bader, they might gain a huge following by promoting body positivity, only to conceal a weight-loss procedure from their fans.

    For disappointed fans or followers who feel burned, snark can seem like the only regulatory guardrail in an industry that has gone largely unchecked. Think of snark as a Better Business Bureau for the untamable world of influencing – a form of accountability that brings attention to the scammers and hustlers.

    Keeping it real

    Todays’s snark exists at the intersection of gossip and cancel culture.

    Though cancel culture certainly has its faults, we approach cancel culture in our writing as a worthy tool that allows audiences to hold the powerful accountable. For example, communities of color have joined forces to call out racists, as they did in 2024 when they exposed lifestyle influencer Brooke Schofield’s anti-Black tweets.

    Influencers build trust with their audiences based on being “real” and relatable. But there’s nothing preventing them from breaking that trust, and snarkers can swoop in to point out bad behavior or hypocrisy.

    Within the competitive world of family vlogging, snarkers see themselves as doing more than stirring the pot. They’re truth-tellers who bring injustices to light, such as abuse and child labor exploitation. Some of this exposure is paying off, with more and more states introducing and passing family vlogger laws that require children to one day receive a portion of their parents’ earnings or restrict how often children can appear in their parents’ videos.

    Yes, snark can veer into cyberbullying. But that shouldn’t discount its value as a tool for transparency. Influencers are ultimately brands. They sell audiences ideas, lifestyles and products.

    When people feel as if they’ve been misled, we think they have every right to call it out.

    Jess Rauchberg receives funding from Microsoft Research.

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

    – ref. In the $250B influencer industry, being a hater can be the only way to rein in bad behavior – https://theconversation.com/in-the-250b-influencer-industry-being-a-hater-can-be-the-only-way-to-rein-in-bad-behavior-253010

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Local elections: what would a good night look like for Nigel Farage’s Reform?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hannah Bunting, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative British Politics and Co-director of The Elections Centre, University of Exeter

    English local elections on May 1 mark the first time widespread voting has happened in the UK since last year’s general election. They are therefore the first big test for the Labour government – but also for Reform’s Nigel Farage. Farage has led his party into elections before but not since becoming an MP.

    Reform achieved 14.3% of the vote in July 2024 and opinion polls put them at around 25% now. Farage has declared his party is therefore the “opposition to the Labour government”.

    These elections in 23 English local authorities are about selecting the representatives that will serve communities, both in day-to-day essential operations, and during council reorganisations amid plans for decentralisation of British democracy. Yet attention is also being paid to the challenge Reform have set themselves – can they continue the transition from anti-establishment outsiders to a winning party engine?

    There are 1,641 local councillor vacancies up for election this week, in 1,401 wards. Reform are contesting more seats than any other party. In fact, there’s only a handful without their candidate on the ballot, amounting to 99.3% coverage. This is a major step forward for the party. Ukip contested 80% of this set of seats near the height of its popularity 12 years ago.

    The Conservatives are contesting 97.2%, Labour 94%, the Liberal Democrats 85.1% and the Greens 72.2%. There are candidates from others and independents, including local parties, also standing in every local authority.

    This year’s elections see the Conservative heartlands up for grabs. Known as the shire counties, some of these local authorities, such as Devon and Leicestershire, have been solidly Conservative for over 20 years. So if Reform see themselves as replacing the Tories, then these are the contests Farage’s party should be winning.

    Notably, these seats also have the lowest female representation, which has partly been driven by the Conservative dominance. Analysis of this year’s candidates shows that Reform is fielding the fewest women, meaning this gender disparity could be about to get worse.

    The gender distribution of candidates per party, with women represented in the lighter shades and men in the darker.
    H Bunting, CC BY-ND

    Recent successes

    There have been 241 vacancies in council byelections across Britain since the general election. Reform has won 15 of them. Where it fielded candidates, they’ve generally received significant vote shares, taking seats from both the Conservatives and Labour and gaining momentum. In the six-month period between October and March, Reform contested 64 of 78 council byelections (82%) and either won or came second in half of them.

    This shows that Reform can be successful – and usually on the low turnouts generally seen in byelections. With turnout being less than a third at the last two local election cycles, followed by the second lowest ever general election turnout, it’s these dedicated voters who will be affecting change this week.

    The seats up for election now were last contested in 2021 – when a “vaccine bounce” for Boris Johnson delivered the Conservatives their best local results since 2008. Now they are bracing for a bad night. If Reform and the Liberal Democrats wipe out the Tories in different areas but to the same degree, there may be no Conservative heartlands left in the country.

    Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

    Sign up for our weekly politics newsletter, delivered every Friday.

    Labour, meanwhile, did so badly in 2021 that it could even make gains due to the areas up for election. In council byelections, Reform has taken seats from Labour in some of the areas that are up now (Lancashire and Kent) but overall these locals are in Tory heartlands. Labour is defending 287 of the seats up this time – and at least 25 are vulnerable.

    How will Reform fare?

    However, local elections are often fought on local issues, which puts Reform in a difficult spot. On one hand, they could position the new faces they are putting forward for councils as members of the community.

    On the other, the party is often seen as a national entity whose main messages are on immigration and the economy, which councils don’t control. And while Farage has set his sights on damaging the two main parties in a continuation of anti-establishment sentiment, he is now trying to do so as a semi-establishment figure.

    In similar local elections in 2013, Ukip received more than a fifth of votes but only ended up with a tenth of the seats. Therein lies the biggest hurdle for new entrants to the British voting system.

    Farage’s parties have often polled well but failed to gain the concentrated pockets of support needed to win representatives. This was most recently in evidence at the general election, where Reform received a higher vote share than the Liberal Democrats but only came away with five seats, compared to Ed Davey’s 72.

    This is a particularly difficult set of elections to call for a number of reasons. Boundary changes in more than 42% of seats are confusing the picture, for one thing, and the fact that such a small number of areas are voting makes projections more difficult. Reform is also so new to these races that there aren’t past comparisons to draw on.

    But as an indicator, there are around 200 seats with no boundary changes that are particularly vulnerable to a challenger win. Of these, 60% are defended by the Conservatives, and it’s feasible that Reform could take a chunk of them. More than 900 seats are considered a Tory defence (when boundary changes are taken into consideration), but at least 400 of them are relatively safe.

    Some local authorities sit in areas that returned a Reform MP in July, such as Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire, and many of them house constituencies that saw Reform come in second place. However, there are also areas like Cornwall where the Liberal Democrats are a strong challenger.

    What it may come down to is the strength of the party engine. Reform has found the candidates, but the test is whether its campaign has built on a growing base of support. If Reform wins are in the hundreds, they’ll be able to claim they’re on track.

    But Reform candidates then have to start the hard work of being councillors. They’ll need to adapt their “Britain is broken” slogan to start evidencing that they’re fixing it. That takes more than words.

    Hannah Bunting receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

    – ref. Local elections: what would a good night look like for Nigel Farage’s Reform? – https://theconversation.com/local-elections-what-would-a-good-night-look-like-for-nigel-farages-reform-255641

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tesla sales fall while its stock rallies – what this tells us about perceptions of Elon Musk

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Akhil Bhardwaj, Associate Professor (Strategy and Organisation), School of Management, University of Bath

    bluestork/Shutterstock

    Electric vehicle maker Tesla recently shared the news of disappointing first-quarter results when its earnings report was weaker than most Wall Street analysts had expected. Tesla’s revenue had tumbled 9% and its profit was down 71%.

    Typically, this would result in a sharp decline in investor confidence and share prices. Tesla’s share prices have indeed dropped over 40% this year. But after the earnings report, Tesla’s stock rallied when CEO Elon Musk vowed to scale back his involvement with the US Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and focus on Tesla instead.

    He said that he would spend a day or two a week on government matters at president Donald Trump’s request. In any case, Musk is a “special government employee”, which means he can work in that role for 130 days in a year. Assuming his role started on January 20 – Trump’s inauguration day – it would need to be terminated by the end of May had he continued to work five days a week.

    Tesla maintains that the slump in its earnings can be attributed to many factors, including concerns about supply chains and tariffs, as well as energy prices.

    But Musk’s unpopularity has probably affected sales, with his approval among consumers souring. There will be a multitude of factors at play that can explain Tesla’s decline. What is less ambiguous is the response of the market to Musk – just the fact that he said that he would devote time to Tesla rallied the investors.

    Apparently, the boss’s attention is highly valuable. To some extent, this is not surprising – what a CEO (or leader) chooses to focus on and what they ignore sets the tone within a firm.

    That said, it hardly seems to be the case that this is about setting a tone. Rather, the market (or the investors) seems to trust Musk. This is no mean feat for a CEO prone to engage in bluster. This investor trust contrasts with consumer trust and goodwill, which seem to be eroding at the same time.

    Musk has been called an absent CEO and analysts have noted that the demands on his time imply that he cannot be very active in running Tesla. Perhaps that is true.

    Or perhaps Musk thinks that Tesla is too big to fail and will be protected by the US government. Short-term bumps are less relevant for a firm that is pivoting away from its core business, as Tesla now appears to be doing.

    The future for Tesla

    Musk has stated that Tesla is increasingly an AI and robotics company, saying this is where the firm believes the “future lies”.

    Setting aside energy, data is one of the most important resources powering AI. It is the key input for training large language models (LLMs) and machine algorithms.

    The quality of an AI algorithm is directly correlated with the data it trains on. The larger and more diverse the data set, the better (and more lucrative) the AI agent is likely to be. There seems to be substaintial overlap in the data that AI has been trained on, although details are closely guarded.

    In addition, there is a possibility of training data running out, which makes it an even more precious resource.

    Companies from OpenAI to Meta seem to be scraping the internet for the same publicly available information (while apparently ignoring copyright issues). Now Musk seems to have access to an unprecedented amount of data that is not available to his competitors.

    His department at Doge has reportedly pushed for access to sensitive social security information, for example, that includes dates of birth, citizenship status, income, addresses, other tax-related information.

    Musk-owned company xAI launched chatbot Grok in 2023.
    bella1105/Shutterstock

    Musk-owned interests have also developed an LLM chatbot called Grok. And while Musk and his spokespeople deny that they have siphoned data for training AI models, there seems to be some indicators that this could potentially be done.

    It appears that Musk has manoeuvred himself into a position where, despite his unpopularity among car buyers, he can still ensure that his companies will thrive.

    But what does Trump get in return? After all, the president of the US considers himself a dealmaker. At least one analyst has suggested that Musk is the “fall guy” to take the hit when the Doge cuts begin to bite ordinary Americans.

    Regardless, it does appear that some sort of bargain has been struck between Musk and Trump. And it seems to be paying off for Musk – regulations around self-driving cars have been slashed, leading to another surge in the price of Tesla stock.

    Trump has also signed an executive order for AI education in primary and secondary schools. This is sure to increase the size of the market, which is clearly good news for companies in the AI sector.

    It would be foolish to underestimate the world’s richest man or to bet against him. But it’s important not to lionise CEOs to the extent that they become cult figures.

    In the Wealth of Nations, 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith made the point that the butcher, brewer and baker do not act from altruism. Instead, it is their own self-interest that puts food and drink on people’s tables. We are far better served keeping that in mind to make sense of the actions of Musk – or the investors in Tesla.

    Akhil Bhardwaj 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. Tesla sales fall while its stock rallies – what this tells us about perceptions of Elon Musk – https://theconversation.com/tesla-sales-fall-while-its-stock-rallies-what-this-tells-us-about-perceptions-of-elon-musk-255469

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: As a neuroscientist, I’ve seen the impact of harsh words on children’s brains. We need to prevent childhood verbal abuse

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eamon McCrory, Professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology, UCL

    21March/Shutterstock

    Harsh words can wound – and when directed at children, they can have a lifelong impact.

    Research has shown that when words are routinely used by the adults in their lives to humiliate, shame or control children, they can alter the developing brain. A 2023 study of over 20,500 UK adults found that one in five reported having been verbally abused as children.

    Definitions of verbal abuse vary, but it is generally characterised by a sustained pattern of behaviour where criticism, threats or rejection of the child leads them to feel routinely belittled, blamed, threatened, frightened or ridiculed. This is not the same as occasionally losing your temper with your children and saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment.

    I and colleagues believe this shapes how a child sees the world, others, and themselves. Exposure to abuse, including verbal abuse, leads to an increased risk of anxiety, depression, suicide attempts and drug use in later life.

    It has an impact on forming trusting relationships as an adult. Yet despite its devastating consequences, verbal abuse remains largely overlooked in public debate and policy.

    Preventing verbal abuse – along with all forms of child abuse and neglect – is more than just a moral imperative. It is essential for healthy brain development and lifelong wellbeing.

    Changes in the brain

    I was among the experts brought together by Jessica Bondy, founder of the Words Matter charity, in the House of Commons in April 2025 to discuss the prevention of childhood verbal abuse.

    As a neuroscientist, I have spent decades using brain imaging to understand how early adversity and trauma, including verbal abuse, can shape a young person’s development. We now know that emotional abuse, including consistently hostile or demeaning language from adults, can significantly alter the way a child’s brain perceives and reacts to the world.

    Several key brain systems are affected. For example, our threat system normally helps us stay safe by detecting danger and triggering a quick response – the well-known “fight or flight” reaction.

    But in children subjected to frequent abuse, including verbal abuse, this system becomes hyperactive. Even neutral social cues – a facial expression, or a joke or well-meaning comment – can be misinterpreted as threatening.

    Verbal abuse also affects how children form relationships. In healthy development, warm verbal and non-verbal exchanges with caregivers – praise, compliments, thoughtful understanding – help teach children how to establish secure and healthy relationships. They also help them build self-worth and social confidence.

    Warm exchanges help children build healthy relationships.
    fizkes/Shutterstock

    But verbal abuse, along with other forms of childhood maltreatment, can blunt the brain’s reward system. The brain becomes less responsive to positive experiences.

    We believe that these brain adaptations can alter how a maltreated child builds their social world. They may help the child survive in an adverse social environment, but over time they accrue long-term costs. It becomes harder to trust others; harder to navigate relationships; harder to believe you are of real value and truly lovable.

    Lifelong consequences

    By adulthood, the risk is that a repeated cycle of interpersonal stress and rupture is established. Romantic relationships can be destabilised by deep-seated fears of abandonment or rejection.

    Those early wounds fold into our sense of self, creating an enduring lens through which the world is perceived. It can be a struggle to feel at ease in one own’s mind, or safe in the mind of another.

    In addition to my research work at UCL, I am CEO of Anna Freud, a charity dedicated to transforming mental health support through evidence-based care, cutting-edge research, professional training and accessible resources. In our clinical work at Anna Freud, we have seen countless young people and adults struggle with the verbal messages they have received growing up.

    Harsh language sticks because we are biologically wired to privilege negative and threatening information for our own protection. These verbal wounds underpin so much later anxiety, pain and distress. Adults can spend decades trying to compensate to prove those words wrong.

    We need to shine a light on the impact of verbal abuse, helping parents, carers, teachers and all adults in a child’s life understand the power of their words. This does not imply that poor behaviour should go unchecked; children still need clear limits and honest corrective feedback. However, it does mean creating environments – at home, at school, in communities – where children are spoken to with respect, encouragement and care.

    Verbal abuse is not an inevitable part of growing up. It is preventable. And the science is clear: ending it is essential to safeguarding healthy brain development and improving life-long mental health outcomes. Society as a whole will benefit, with a new generation more likely to thrive in education and employment.

    We need to ensure every child is nurtured by words that build them up, not tear them down.

    Eamon McCrory has received funding from ESRC, MRC and NSPCC.

    – ref. As a neuroscientist, I’ve seen the impact of harsh words on children’s brains. We need to prevent childhood verbal abuse – https://theconversation.com/as-a-neuroscientist-ive-seen-the-impact-of-harsh-words-on-childrens-brains-we-need-to-prevent-childhood-verbal-abuse-255533

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ventotene manifesto: why European politicians are arguing over a 1941 document written by a group of imprisoned Italian antifascists

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Edoardo Vaccari, PhD candidate in International History, London School of Economics and Political Science

    The Trump administration’s decision to distance itself from Nato obligations signals a potential dismantling of the historical transatlantic order – and not merely in military terms. As the United States disengages from European affairs and cuts ties with what secretary of defense Pete Hegseth called Nato’s “pathetic” freeloaders, it is abandoning the principle of international solidarity that had defined American leadership since the second world war and the signing of the Atlantic charter in 1941.

    European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen responded by declaring that “we urgently have to rearm Europe”. Her plan is to enable European Union member states to spend more on their militaries. This turn towards rearmament has revived a debate over the meaning of the European Union, with parties clashing over its foundational commitment to peace and cooperation.

    In Italy, a group of prominent leftwing intellectuals and activists recently organised a pro-European rally in Rome warning against the prioritisation of military rearmament over deeper political integration. The initiative drew around 30,000 people to the capital, with parallel demonstrations held in cities across the country.

    A recurring theme of the day was the invocation of a document published at the same time as the Atlantic charter and long symbolic of European internationalism: the 1941 Ventotene manifesto. Originally titled For a Free and United Europe, the manifesto was written by anti-fascist prisoners Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi. Contributions came from from fellow anti-fascists Ernesto Colorni and his wife, Ursula Hirschmann, during their internment on the island of Ventotene in the southern Tyrrhenian sea.

    The manifesto called for the creation of a supranational federal state. This, it asserted, was the only way to address the causes of fascism and prevent future wars. It condemned the nation-state system, urged a decisive break with existing political traditions and proposed a revolutionary vanguard to lead Europe toward a new constitutional order. Its authors saw political unification not as a distant ideal but as an urgent necessity in the aftermath of continental collapse.

    Although the postwar European project followed a more incremental path than that envisioned by Rossi and Spinelli, the Ventotene manifesto quietly endured as a touchstone for political federalism and as a seminal text for European integration. It has been invoked by EU leaders such as von der Leyen and former European Commission vice-president Josep Borrell as an ideological compass for the union’s identity.

    For the Italian left, the manifesto holds a dual symbolic significance. It is both a founding document of Europeanism and a symbol of anti-fascist resistance, whose memory is under attack from the right.

    A monument to Altiero Spinelli, author of the Ventotene manifesto, forms part of the the European Union Founders’ Monument in Bucharest.
    Shutterstock/brunocoelho

    This layered significance helps explain the repeated invocation of the manifesto at the Rome rally. Calls for a federal Europe were intertwined with a broader defence of the historical legacy of anti-fascism.

    In a flourish of nostalgic symbolism, the left-leaning newspaper La Repubblica even distributed free copies of the text. Days later, rightwing prime minister Giorgia Meloni denounced the document in parliament as an undemocratic, socialist relic incompatible with her vision of Europe.

    The backlash was swift and theatrical. The left erupted in defence of the manifesto and the president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, rushed to cement its place as a foundational text of the EU.

    The debate has taken a curiously historiographical turn. After years of vague and reverential invocation, Meloni’s intervention compelled members of the Italian parliament to publicly discuss the meaning of specific passages from the manifesto, probing their historical context and continued relevance.

    A flood of commentary followed from scholars and public intellectuals. Even oscar-winning director, Roberto Benigni chimed in and meanwhile proclaimed that the EU was “the greatest institutional, political, social, and economic construction of the last five thousand years”.

    However, both sides are getting it wrong. The left, cushioned by EU mythmaking, treats the manifesto like sacred scripture. This reading sidelines its radical ambitions, which went far beyond a generic pro-European stance. Rossi and Spinelli drew on Jacobin and Leninist revolutionary traditions and envisioned a vanguard party of committed federalists to lead a European revolution.

    Meloni, for all her opportunism, wasn’t wrong to highlight that. But she also distorts the manifesto. Her approach is to tear it from its wartime context in order to frame it as authoritarian and anti-democratic. This is part of a broader, ongoing effort to delegitimise the legacy of anti-fascism. Both camps weaponise history in service of their political concerns.

    Europe’s past and future

    The truth is both simpler and more inconvenient. The Ventotene manifesto was a product of its time. It was conceived in near-total isolation and drafted in secrecy on a remote detention island. Rossi and Spinelli envisioned a Europe on the brink of collapse, crushed under the machinery of the Axis powers. They believed that this destruction would create a “revolutionary situation” in which a complete political rebirth could be rapidly enacted.

    As the war drew to a close and the old parties reemerged, Rossi and Spinelli recognised that a swift revolutionary coup was unfeasible. They set the manifesto aside and instead launched the European Federalist Movement as an advocacy platform. What they did not renounce, however, was their ultimate goal: the creation of the “United States of Europe”. Spinelli, in particular, devoted the rest of his life to campaigning for this vision.

    Democracy in decline? The risk and rise of authoritarianism

    Democracy is under pressure around the world in 2025. But is this part of a larger historical cycle or does it signal a deeper, more fundamental shift? Join us for a free event in central London on May 8 to discuss these important questions. Come for a panel discussion and stay for food, drinks and conversation.

    Get tickets here

    Europe has moved toward deeper integration but not towards a full realisation of Spinelli’s federal dream. Leaders like von der Leyen and Borrell invoke the manifesto more for its symbolic weight than its ideas, repurposing it to suit current agendas.

    As a result, the manifesto is being diluted of its historical significance. Rather than continue to mythologise it, we should allow the manifesto to take its place alongside other historically significant texts. We should shift focus to actionable plans for the political challenges that lie ahead.

    This matters because the debate won’t stay in Italy. As Europe inches into a new era of rearmament, political unity is increasingly urgent. Beneath the quarrel lies a deeper question: should European rearmament proceed as a pragmatic response to security challenges, with individual nations acting alone, or should it be guided by a more ambitious internationalist vision?

    The Ventotene manifesto, for all its historical relevance and foresight, offers no roadmap for this moment. Paths to integration exist, from technical treaty reform to a more ambitious constitutional overhaul. That could involve drafting a new foundational charter for a federal union. But these paths require clarity, courage, and honesty – qualities Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi had in abundance.

    Edoardo Vaccari 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. Ventotene manifesto: why European politicians are arguing over a 1941 document written by a group of imprisoned Italian antifascists – https://theconversation.com/ventotene-manifesto-why-european-politicians-are-arguing-over-a-1941-document-written-by-a-group-of-imprisoned-italian-antifascists-255237

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why losing belly fat with PCOS can be difficult – and what helps

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

    ivan_kislitsin/Shutterstock

    Tried a dozen different ways to shift that stubborn belly and still no luck? You’re not alone. For some women, losing belly fat can be especially difficult – and there may be a medical reason why.

    Search the term “PCOS belly” on TikTok and you’ll find a flood of content promising ways to get rid of it. From low to high intensity workouts, eating more protein, apple cider vinegar and natural supplements, the list of so-called solutions is endless. But what actually is a PCOS belly – and are these TikTok tips grounded in science?

    Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common hormonal disorder that affects around one in ten women of childbearing age, according to the NHS. However, more than half of these women may show no obvious symptoms.

    Women with PCOS produce abnormally high levels of androgens – male hormones like testosterone that are usually present in small amounts. This hormonal imbalance can lead to symptoms such as irregular periods, infertility, acne, excess facial and body hair, and in some cases, multiple cysts on the ovaries.

    The exact cause of PCOS is still unknown, but it’s believed to be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors – it often runs in families.

    ‘PCOS belly’

    While not a clinical term, “PCOS belly” is commonly used on social media to describe the accumulation of fat around the abdominal area, which is often seen in women with PCOS. This is frequently linked to insulin resistance, a condition where the body’s cells don’t respond properly to insulin – a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels. When insulin isn’t used effectively, excess glucose is stored as fat, particularly around the midsection.

    In response, the body may produce even more insulin, which can stimulate the production of testosterone, further exacerbating PCOS symptoms. Women with PCOS often store more visceral fat – the deeper, more dangerous fat that wraps around internal organs – compared to women without the condition. One study found that women with PCOS had significantly more visceral fat, even if their weight was in the normal range. Up to 80% of PCOS cases show evidence of insulin resistance, but not all women have a PCOS belly or are overweight.

    Women with PCOS are also more likely to experience chronic low-grade inflammation, which can contribute to weight gain and insulin resistance. Additionally, elevated cortisol levels – the body’s main stress hormone – are often found in PCOS and are linked to abdominal fat.

    Some research also suggests that women with PCOS may have imbalanced gut microbiomes, which can lead to bloating and digestive issues. A 2024 study confirmed that women with PCOS are more prone to gastrointestinal problems like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), with bloating as a key symptom.

    Challenging but not impossible

    PCOS belly isn’t just a cosmetic concern – it’s associated with higher risks of serious health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart diseases and metabolic syndrome (which includes high blood pressure, high cholesterol and elevated blood sugar).

    Increased abdominal fat also raises inflammatory markers, worsening insulin resistance and perpetuating a vicious cycle of hormonal imbalance.

    And it’s not just physical health. PCOS has a profound effect on mental health, with studies showing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and body image issues among women with the condition.

    Losing weight with PCOS is challenging, but not impossible. While you can’t spot-reduce belly fat, losing overall body fat can help shrink your midsection and reduce health risks.

    There’s no one-size-fits-all “PCOS diet”, but many women benefit from eating a balanced diet that focuses on whole foods, lean proteins, healthy fats and low-glycaemic index carbs that don’t spike blood sugar.

    A balanced diet can also reduce inflammation and help curb cravings between meals. Research shows that walking after meals can help lower blood glucose, making fat storage less likely.

    Despite TikTok warnings about cortisol and high-intensity workouts, studies show both Hiit (high-intensity interval training) and Mict (moderate-intensity continuous training) can improve insulin sensitivity and lower testosterone levels in women with PCOS. Exercise can also lift your mood and reduce stress. The NHS recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise weekly and strengthening activities at least two days a week.

    Chronic stress increases cortisol, which can worsen PCOS symptoms. Yoga, meditation and deep breathing can all help. Quality sleep is also crucial, both for hormone regulation and overall weight management. Women with PCOS are more prone to sleep issues like obstructive sleep apnoea.

    Some TikTok influencers recommend natural remedies – but always read the label and speak to a healthcare professional before starting taking any herbal medicines or alternative therapies.

    Supplements that show some promise include inositol, coenzyme Q10, vitamin D and curcumin. Berberine and L-carnitine may also be helpful. Research suggests these may improve insulin resistance or reduce inflammation, but more high-quality studies are needed to confirm their effectiveness and safety. Doctors may also prescribe metformin, to improve insulin sensitivity, or hormonal contraceptives to regulate periods and hormonal imbalances.

    PCOS belly is real, but so are the solutions. Every woman’s experience with PCOS is unique, and what works for one person might not work for another.

    Managing PCOS belly requires a holistic approach including diet and nutrition, regular exercise, stress management, sleep hygiene and possibly medication or supplements. If you’re struggling, speak with a GP or registered dietitian and always check with a pharmacist or doctor before starting any new supplements.

    You deserve support that’s based on science – not social media trends.

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

    – ref. Why losing belly fat with PCOS can be difficult – and what helps – https://theconversation.com/why-losing-belly-fat-with-pcos-can-be-difficult-and-what-helps-254519

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: William Morris: new exhibition reveals how Britain’s greatest designer went viral

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marcus Waithe, Professor of Literature and the Applied Arts, University of Cambridge

    Hadrian Garrard, the curator of Morris Mania – an innovative exhibition now showing at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, east London – tells the story of being in King’s Cross Station and spotting someone wheeling a shopping trolley covered in a plasticised Morris pattern. It reminded me of the time when a student thanked me for my teaching with a pair of Morris-themed flip-flops.

    Mugs, tea towels, notepads, handbags and all manner of other incongruous objects make up this world of Morris merchandise. Much of it is made in China and remote from the purposes William Morris had in mind. How did this Victorian designer and socialist, known for championing craftsmanship and preferring substance over style, become an icon of consumer culture?

    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 exhibition’s tagline – How Britain’s Greatest Designer Went Viral – makes good sense. It’s not just that Morris stages an escape from the Victorian decorative world, but that his art proliferates in uncontrolled ways. The walk from Walthamstow station lays the groundwork in this regard: exhibition posters in shop windows, end-of-terrace murals and even the civic architecture, speak of something leaking from the gallery walls.

    The first display in the exhibition tell the story of how we got here. Morris began spreading thanks to the commissions he received from aristocratic and royal clients. They were drawn to the medieval ethos of his work, and its rejection of industrialism in the arts. An important early contract was for the interiors at St James’s Palace.

    But these establishment associations soon morphed and mutated, first among the English middle classes, who welcomed Morris’s designs into their suburban villas despite his new fondness for revolution, and then more remotely: one photograph shows Morris-patterned walls at St Peterburg’s Winter Palace, taken shortly after the Bolsheviks stormed the building. The socialism as it were, is turned inside out.

    The earliest Morris merchandise was printed for a centenary exhibition at the V&A Museum in 1934. One of its patterned postcards appears in a display case, the souvenir of Morris’s own daughter, May, whose handwriting is on the back. In 1966, Morris’s designs went out of copyright, marking a watershed. Pop Victoriana and Laura Ashley floral dresses depended on it for their reproductive freedoms.

    George Harrison’s “golden lily” jacket, from the Chelsea boutique Granny Takes a Trip, stands out as a poignant example of the ways in which Morris was recut and repurposed for the counterculture.

    Morris’s “rose” pattern proves a particularly intrepid traveller, as the design chosen for the officers’ cushions on HMS Valliant, an early nuclear-powered submarine. Its onboard domesticity blends curiously with the menace of its mission.

    Three turning points prepare us for the newest forms of Morris mania. The V&A’s 1996 exhibition repopularised Morris’s work, and thanks to new digital technology, its merchandise included printed mugs.

    Then, in 2001, the British government instructed public collections to open their doors for free. In search of new income streams, museums turned to selling themed objects through their shops. The rise of China as a manufacturing hub complemented this emphasis – less by revolutionising working conditions and democratising design, as Morris had hoped, than with a flood of cheaply produced goods.

    Beyond this revealing timeline, what really impresses is the exhibition’s care in preserving distinctions. It’s particularly careful to show that going viral need not mean selling out. From Nanjing – a major centre of Chinese manufacturing – comes a poster for the 2023 exhibition Beyond William Morris at the Nanjing Museum. It attracted over a million visitors, reminding us that behind the merchandise are new wells of love and respect.

    Something similar applies at the level of making. For every sweatshop Hello Kitty, the same character appears in a beautifully crafted yukata (a casual kimono) in Liberty fabrics made in Japan.

    A Brompton Bike hangs from the wall – manufactured in London, and sporting a handsome “willow bough” livery. Likewise, a neon “strawberry thief” motif, made at Walthamstow’s God’s Own Junk Yard, rekindles the embers of local production. This emphasis extends to the exhibition’s own making. A film documents the weaving of the Axminster carpet that furnishes the main room. Even the labels were dyed by hand with weld, a natural pigment whose use Morris revived.

    In these ways, the exhibition champions ethical and bespoke production, while confronting the darker currents that move objects around our world. It also stays curious enough to push further by exploring the kitsch new frontier of “Morris” patterns generated by AI, or by populating a Victorian dresser with “crowdsourced” Morris bric-a-brac.

    There might have been more space to consider why the surface effects of pattern travel so readily, and to quote Morris’s writings on the subject. But much of that is implicit and there for audiences to follow up.

    Morris Mania excels by nurturing the joy behind all this promiscuous growth. Most pleasingly, that trolley from King’s Cross makes a reappearance, dressed here in an AI-adapted “strawberry thief”, courtesy of Sholley Trolleys, Clacton-on-Sea. Just like Morris himself, it was made in Essex.

    Morris Mania: How Britain’s Greatest Designer Went Viral is at the William Morris Gallery until September 21 2025.

    Marcus Waithe 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. William Morris: new exhibition reveals how Britain’s greatest designer went viral – https://theconversation.com/william-morris-new-exhibition-reveals-how-britains-greatest-designer-went-viral-254761

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Did ‘induced atmospheric vibration’ cause blackouts in Europe? An electrical engineer explains the phenomenon

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian, Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

    The lights are mostly back on in Spain, Portugal and southern France after a widespread blackout on Monday.

    The blackout caused chaos for tens of millions of people. It shut down traffic lights and ATMs, halted public transport, cut phone service and forced people to eat dinner huddled around candles as night fell. Many people found themselves trapped in trains and elevators.

    Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said the exact cause of the blackout is yet to be determined. In early reporting, Portugal’s grid operator REN was quoted as blaming the event on a rare phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”. REN has since reportedly refuted this.

    But what is this vibration? And how can energy systems be improved to mitigate the risk of widespread blackouts?

    How much does weather affect electricity?

    Weather is a major cause of disruptions to electricity supply. In fact, in the United States, 83% of reported blackouts between 2000 and 2021 were attributed to weather-related events.

    The ways weather can affect the supply of electricity are manifold. For example, cyclones can bring down transmission lines, heatwaves can place too high a demand on the grid, and bushfires can raze substations.

    Wind can also cause transmission lines to vibrate. These vibrations are characterised by either high amplitude and low frequency (known as “conductor galloping”), or low amplitude and high frequency (known as “aeolian vibrations”).

    These vibrations are a significant problem for grid operators. They can place increased stress on grid infrastructure, potentially leading to blackouts.

    To reduce the risk of vibration, grid operators often use wire stabilisers known as “stock bridge dampers”.

    What is ‘induced atmospheric vibration’?

    Vibrations in power lines can also be caused by extreme changes in temperature or air pressure. And this is one hypothesis about what caused the recent widespread blackout across the Iberian peninsula.

    As The Guardian initially reported Portugal’s REN as saying:

    Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.

    In fact, “induced atmospheric vibration” is not a commonly used term, but it seems likely the explanation was intended to refer to physical processes climate scientists have known about for quite some time.

    In simple terms, it seems to refer to wavelike movements or oscillations in the atmosphere, caused by sudden changes in temperature or pressure. These can be triggered by extreme heating, large-scale energy releases (such as explosions or bushfires), or intense weather events.

    When a part of Earth’s surface heats up very quickly – due to a heatwave, for example – the air above it warms, expands and becomes lighter. That rising warm air creates a pressure imbalance with the surrounding cooler, denser air. The atmosphere responds to this imbalance by generating waves, not unlike ripples spreading across a pond.

    These pressure waves can travel through the atmosphere. In some cases, they can interact with power infrastructure — particularly long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines.

    These types of atmospheric waves are usually called gravity waves, thermal oscillations or acoustic-gravity waves. While the phrase “induced atmospheric vibration” is not formally established in meteorology, it seems to describe this same family of phenomena.

    What’s important is that it’s not just high temperatures alone that causes these effects — it’s how quickly and unevenly the temperature changes across a region. That’s what sets the atmosphere into motion and can cause power lines to vibrate. Again, though, it’s still unclear if this is what was behind the recent blackout in Europe.

    Atmospheric waves can sometimes be seen in clouds.
    Jeff Schmaltz/NASA

    More centralised, more vulnerable

    Understanding how the atmosphere behaves under these conditions is becoming increasingly important. As our energy systems become more interconnected and more dependent on long-distance transmission, even relatively subtle atmospheric disturbances can have outsized impacts. What might once have seemed like a fringe effect is now a growing factor in grid resilience.

    Under growing environmental and electrical stress, centralised energy networks are dangerously vulnerable. The increasing electrification of buildings, the rapid uptake of electric vehicles, and the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources have placed unprecedented pressure on traditional grids that were never designed for this level of complexity, dynamism or centralisation.

    Continuing to rely on centralised grid structures without fundamentally rethinking resilience puts entire regions at risk — not just from technical faults, but from environmental volatility.

    The way to avoid such catastrophic risks is clear: we must embrace innovative solutions such as community microgrids. These are decentralised, flexible and resilient energy networks that can operate independently when needed.

    Strengthening local energy autonomy is key to building a secure, affordable and future-ready electricity system.

    The European blackout, regardless of its immediate cause, demonstrates that our electrical grids have become dangerously sensitive. Failure to address these structural weaknesses will have consequences far worse than those experienced during the COVID pandemic.

    Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian 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. Did ‘induced atmospheric vibration’ cause blackouts in Europe? An electrical engineer explains the phenomenon – https://theconversation.com/did-induced-atmospheric-vibration-cause-blackouts-in-europe-an-electrical-engineer-explains-the-phenomenon-255497

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Young bats learn to be discriminating when listening for their next meal

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Logan S. James, Research Associate in Animal Behavior, The University of Texas at Austin

    A frog-eating bat approaches a túngara frog, one of its preferred foods. Grant Maslowski

    It is late at night, and we are silently watching a bat in a roost through a night-vision camera. From a nearby speaker comes a long, rattling trill.

    Cane toad’s rattling trill call.

    The bat briefly perks up and wiggles its ears as it listens to the sound before dropping its head back down, uninterested.

    Next from the speaker comes a higher-pitched “whine” followed by a “chuck.”

    Túngara frog’s ‘whine chuck’ call.

    The bat vigorously shakes its ears and then spreads its wings as it launches from the roost and dives down to attack the speaker.

    Bats show tremendous variation in the foods they eat to survive. Some species specialize on fruits, others on insects, others on flower nectar. There are even species that catch fish with their feet.

    The calls male frogs use to attract mates also attract eavesdropping predators. Here, a frog-eating bat consumes an unlucky male túngara frog.
    Marcos Guerra, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

    At the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, we’ve been studying one species, the fringe-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosus), for decades. This bat is a carnivore that specializes in feeding on frogs.

    Male frogs from many species call to attract female frogs. Frog-eating bats eavesdrop on those calls to find their next meal. But how do the bats come to associate sounds and prey?

    We were interested in understanding how predators that eavesdrop on their prey acquire the ability to discriminate between tasty and dangerous meals. We combined our expertise on animal behavior, bat cognition and frog communication to investigate.

    How do bats know the sound of a tasty meal?

    There are nearly 8,000 frog and toad species in the world, and each one has a unique call. For instance, the first rattling call that we played from our speaker came from a large and toxic cane toad. The second “whine chuck” came from the túngara frog, a preferred prey species for these bats. Just as herpetologists can tell a frog species by its call, frog-eating bats can use these calls to identify the best meal.

    Over the years, our research team has learned a great deal from frog-eating bats about how sound and echolocation are used to find prey, as well as the role of learning and memory in foraging success. In our newly published study, we focused on how associations between the sounds a bat hears and the prey quality it expects arise within the lifespan of an individual bat.

    Adult bats like the one pictured have extensive acoustic repertoires and remember specific frog calls year after year. Young bats must learn which calls to respond to – and, critically, which to ignore – over time through experience.
    Grant Maslowski

    We considered whether the associations between sound and a delicious meal are an evolved specialty that bats are born with. But this possibility seemed unlikely because the bat species we study has a large geographic distribution across Central and South America, and the species of frogs found across this range vary tremendously.

    Instead, we hypothesized that bats learn to associate different sounds with food as they grow up. But we had to test this idea.

    First, we and our collaborators spent time in the forest and at ponds to record the mating calls from 15 of the most common frog and toad species in our study area in Panama.

    Rachel Page, one of the lead authors on the study, takes a bat out of a mist net in Panama.
    Jorge Alemán, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

    Then, we set up mist nets along streams in Soberanía National Park to capture wild bats for the study.

    Frog call, bat response

    For the testing, each bat was housed individually in a large, outdoor flight chamber. From a speaker on the ground in the center, we played calls from one frog species on loop for 30 seconds and measured the behavior of the bat, which was hanging from a cloth roost. As we expected, adult bats were generally uninterested in the sounds of species that were unpalatable, such as those with toxins or those that are too large for the bat to carry.

    But it was a different story for young bats. Juveniles responded with significantly more predatory behaviors in response to the calls of toxic toads compared with the adults. They also responded more weakly than adults to the sounds of túngara frogs, a palatable, abundant prey that adult bats prefer.

    Thus it seems that juvenile bats must learn the associations between sounds and food over the course of their lives. As they grow up, we believe they learn to ignore the calls of frogs that aren’t worth the trouble and zero in on the calls of frogs that will be a good meal.

    To better understand how sounds drive prey associations, we measured the acoustic properties of the different calls. We found that some of the most noticeable features of the calls correlated with body size: Larger frogs produce lower-frequency calls – that is, their voices are deeper. Both the adult and juvenile bats responded more strongly to larger species, which would provide larger meals.

    However, there was a clear exception in the responses of adults, where the toxic toads and very large frogs elicited much weaker responses than expected for their body size. This finding led us to hypothesize that bats have early biases to pay attention to sounds associated with larger body size. Then they must learn through experience that meal quality is not only about size. Some large meals are toxic or impossible to carry, making them unpalatable.

    Once the researchers have studied each frog-eating bat for a few days, they safely release it where it was originally captured. Footage courtesy of Léna de Framond-Bénard and Eric de Framond-Bénard, compiled by Caroline Rogan.

    After the bats spent a few days with us, we released each one back at its original site of capture. The bats departed, taking with them a small RFID tag, just like the ones pet owners use to identify their dogs and cats, in case we meet again as part of a future study.

    As the bats go on with their lives in the wild, we continue our quest to deepen our understanding of the subtleties of information discrimination. How do individuals weed through information overload to make choices that make sense and benefit them? That’s the same challenge we all face each day.

    Logan S. James receives funding from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, McGill University, and the Earth Species Project.

    Rachel Page receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

    Ximena Bernal receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

    – ref. Young bats learn to be discriminating when listening for their next meal – https://theconversation.com/young-bats-learn-to-be-discriminating-when-listening-for-their-next-meal-253321

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –