Category: Science

MIL-OSI United Kingdom: New UK-Japan partnership to boost economic growth and cultural exchanges
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

Press release

New UK-Japan partnership to boost economic growth and cultural exchanges

Boost for UK businesses and growth as new Musubi Initiative strengthens UK-Japan connections
Innovative public-private partnership to encourage investment and grow the next generation of UK and Japanese leaders, while creating new opportunities for sports programmes, youth scholarships and cultural exchanges

Backed by major partners including UCL, Liverpool FC International Academy, SSE Pacifico and Hello Kitty presented by Sanrio

Current and future business leaders across the UK and Japan will benefit from a range of new opportunities thanks to the innovative Musubi Initiative launched at the World Expo in Osaka by UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy today.

The initiative, which begins a new phase of UK-Japan cooperation, will draw in private funding to support a diverse range of programmes to create lasting connections spanning youth scholarships, sport, cultural exchanges, science, innovation and opportunities for women in business in both countries. It builds upon the UK and Japan’s increasingly strong relationship, reflected in collaboration on defence, security, digital innovation and expanding trade through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Hiroshima Accord.

Named after the Japanese word for ‘connection’, the Musubi Initiative is a first-of-its-kind for the UK-Japan partnership and will strengthen ties and grow the international talent pool needed to grasp future opportunities.

Unveiled as part of the UK National Day celebrations at World Expo 2025 Osaka, it represents another step forward in delivering the Government’s Plan for Change by fostering international relationships that drive economic growth and opportunity.

UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy said:

The UK’s vibrant display in Osaka demonstrates the breadth of creativity and innovation from across our four nations and our strong partnership with Japan. From BBC Planet Earth and Paddington to our world-famous musicians, the UK’s creative industries are a truly global hit, worth £125 billion to our economy and vital to our Plan for Change – it’s great to see them in the spotlight today as part of UK National Day.

I am delighted that we have deepened our relationship with Japan further through this new Musubi Initiative, which will create even more opportunities for businesses in both the UK and Japan now and in the future.

Pioneer Partners

The Culture Secretary announced the first group of Musubi Pioneer Partners, who will help deliver the initiative’s vision, including:

Sports programmes:

Liverpool Football Club International Academy sports programme supported by Musubi developing young players and providing opportunities to build leadership qualities.

The UK Ekiden, inspired by Japan’s famous relay race, with UK and Japanese university students participating.

Educational programmes:

A new Musubi Scholarship with University College London supported by Amano Enzyme Inc. for Japanese students, building on an over 160-year relationship between the university and Japan.

A Youth Offshore Wind Scholarship Programme with SSE Pacifico to foster future talent in the offshore wind sector, including study abroad opportunities in Scotland.

The Robert Walters career development programme to help bright young people, including Chevening Scholars, reach their full potential.

Leadership programmes:

An event focussed on Women’s Economic Empowerment and strengthening relationships between female exporters in Japan and the UK, co-hosted by the UK and Japan at Osaka Expo.

The Musubi Alumni programme will bring together the talent and potential of alumni across our programmes.

Representing the strong links between the UK and Japan, Hello Kitty presented by Sanrio, the globally popular Japanese brand, will be the Musubi Friendship Ambassador, while Japanese firm Dentsu PR Consulting Inc. will be providing PR advisory services.

The programmes under the Musubi Initiative will be delivered with an ambition to create a long-lasting legacy and network of alumni that will become champions of their communities, their country and of UK-Japan relations.

The Culture Secretary has also been in Japan to promote Britain’s creative industries overseas, push British brands within Japanese markets, and attract trade and investment into the UK that can be redistributed across the country to the places where it is needed the most.

Yesterday (21 May) the Culture Secretary met with Minoru Kiuchi, a senior Japanese minister with responsibility for the Cool Japan Strategy, in Tokyo to discuss strengthening creative industries collaboration. She also met with executives from major video games organisations, including Bandai Namco and Nintendo, as well as the Japanese cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Japan is currently the UK’s 6th largest investor, with an inward Foreign Direct Investment stock of more than £86 billion at the end of 2023, and with bilateral trade worth £31 billion in 2024. Japanese investment into the UK has already roughly doubled over the last decade, with nearly 1,000 Japanese companies sustaining 200,000 UK jobs.

Exports Minister Gareth Thomas said:

The UK and Japan enjoy a dynamic and enduring trading relationship, with £86 billion in investment to the UK economy.

As part of the Government’s Plan for Change, initiatives like the Musubi Initiative and Expo 2025 are helping to strengthen our ties with key economic partners, creating new opportunities for businesses and deepening people-to-people connections across the world.

Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said:

It is connections between people that develop our societies and serve as a foundation for exchanges between countries.

In the Japan-UK Hiroshima Accord, issued by the leaders of Japan and the UK in 2023, we also confirmed our cooperation in revitalising people-to-people exchanges, including in the key areas of tourism, studying abroad, culture, and the working holiday programme.

I hope this initiative will strengthen our “Musubi (bonds)” especially among the younger generation and that our partnership, now stronger than ever, will continue to grow.

The UK’s presence at World Expo 2025 is providing a global showcase for British companies and creative talent.

To mark UK National Day (22 May), there were musical performances from all four UK nations featured across Yumeshima Island, from bagpipes to bass guitars. This was followed by the Japanese premiere of BBC’s ‘Planet Earth III Live in Concert’.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

Supporting VisitBritain’s new Starring GREAT Britain campaign, beloved characters including Paddington, Peter Rabbit and Shaun the Sheep made appearances outside the UK Pavilion, delighting visitors as the campaign trailer played across the Expo site.

UK National Day highlighted creative collaborations between British and Japanese performers, with Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo performers joined by traditional Japanese Taiko Drummers, music from BBC Planet Earth III performed by the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra, and British rapper Shao Dow performing in Japanese.

The British Ambassador to Japan, Julia Longbottom, said: “We want Musubi to live up to its name, creating and supporting the leaders of tomorrow by fostering long-term, meaningful connections between people in the UK and Japan. The relationship between the UK and Japan is stronger than ever, and we want to invite as many even more businesses and organisations to join us as we look to build the shared leadership needed to grasp future opportunities and tackle future challenges.”

UK Commissioner General for Expo 2025, Carolyn Davidson said: “With an estimated audience of over 28 million expected Japanese and international visitors and more than 150 countries represented, Expo 2025 Osaka offers a unique platform to raise awareness of the UK as a dynamic and innovative country on the world stage. Our National Day is a representation of the best of British and Japanese fusion from across our creative industries, and I am delighted that our countries’ close partnership will be further enriched through Project Musubi, boosting our people-to-people connections and delivering projects that invest in the next generation of UK and Japanese leaders.”

Images and b-roll from UK National Day: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCeHb4

Musical Performances at UK National Day included:

o The Japanese premiere of BBC Planet Earth III Live in Concert with music performed by the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra, conducted by British conductor Matthew Freeman, featuring a score by Oscar winner Hans Zimmer, Jacob Shea and Sara Barone

o The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, accompanied by Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten Taiko drummers

o Shao Dow (England), :Panic :Over (Northern Ireland), Nina Nesbitt (Scotland), and Strawberry Guy (Wales) – all former recipients of the UK’s Music Export Growth Scheme Awards

World Expo 2025 Osaka runs from 13 April – 13 October 2025, and is expected to attract 28 million visitors. For more information: https://www.ukatexpo2025.uk/

The “Starring GREAT Britain” campaign launched by VisitBritain in January 2025 promotes UK tourism through iconic film and TV locations.

The UK’s presence at Expo 2025 forms part of the UK Government’s GREAT Campaign, which promotes the UK internationally and has delivered billions in economic returns.

Notes to Editors on the Musubi Initiative:

The Musubi Friendship Ambassador – Hello Kitty presented by Sanrio. We are grateful to Sanrio for providing Hello Kitty as the Friendship Ambassador for the Musubi Initiative. Sanrio’s vision of “One World, Connecting Smiles” aligns with Musubi’s objective to build positive people-to-people relationships and we look forward to working with Sanrio’s world-famous characters to achieve this. Hello Kitty was born and raised in London as a schoolgirl and now an iconic Japanese character, she is not only a great representative for our two countries, but she also represents the deep desire among our people to feel joy and happiness. We look forward to working with her to reinforce connections between people of the UK and Japan. 

We are grateful to the Japanese firm Dentsu PR Consulting Inc. for joining the Musubi Initiative as a Pioneer Partner providing PR advisory services. We welcome their support as we work to showcase the best of Musubi – and UK-Japan – connections.

Full details of the initial programmes to be supported through the Musubi Initiative include:

Educational programmes:

Musubi UCL scholarship: The Musubi scholarship with University College London, supported by Amano Enzyme Inc., gives Japanese students the opportunity to study a one-year Masters programme at UCL. The scholarship will form part of UCL’s Global Scholarships targeting students from various background with the aim of increasing diversity.

SSE Pacifico Offshore Wind Scholarship Programme supported by Musubi: With a focus on fostering future talent in the dynamic offshore wind sector, SSE Pacifico, in collaboration with Musubi, will launch a scholarship programme to support young students from Japan. This initiative will offer short-term study opportunities in the UK, with the goal of upskilling and empowering the next generation of young leaders.

Musubi Robert Walters career development programme: Robert Walters Japan, a Specialist Recruitment & Talent Advisory firm with roots in the UK and 25 years of expertise in Japan, will deliver a tailored career development programme for the 2025-26 recipients of the UK Government’s Chevening scholarship, with a view to extending this to future Musubi scholars.

Sports programmes:

Liverpool Football Club International Academy sports programme supported by Musubi: With a commitment to empowering disadvantaged young people, 2025 Premier League winners Liverpool Football Club offer their LFC International Academy Japan soccer programme in connection to the Musubi initiative. Drawing on the power of sport to build connections and confidence, this will focus on developing young players and providing opportunities to learn new skills and build leadership qualities.

UK Ekiden: Musubi is proud to be connected to the UK Ekiden – a team relay race inspired by Japan’s beloved running tradition. With university students leading the main event and school children joining through the Mini Ekiden programme, it brings people together across generations. More than a race, it’s a celebration of teamwork, connection, and the growing friendship between the UK and Japan. Like the Musubi initiative, the UK Ekiden builds personal connections and unites different cultures.

Leadership programmes:

Women’s Economic Empowerment: British Embassy Tokyo and Japan will host a joint Women’s Economic Empowerment Forum at the UK Expo Pavillion. This will focus on strengthening relationships between female exporters in Japan and the UK and is the first in-person event the UK and Japan have run under the Women’s Economic Empowerment chapter in the UK-Japan Free Trade Agreement. We hope that this event will be the first of many Musubi activities investing in female leaders of the future.

Musubi Alumni: Our Alumni programme will bring together the talent and potential of Alumni across our programmes. This Network will give our Alumni the connection, inspiration and empowerment to help realise their ambitions of building a better world.

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Published 22 May 2025
MIL OSI United Kingdom –
May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Hay fever: why symptoms are so bad this year – and what to do if your usual remedies aren’t working

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samuel J. White, Associate Professor & Head of Projects, York St John University

Birch pollen affects around a quarter of hay fever sufferers in the UK. Dragana Gordic/ Shutterstock

Hay fever can be annoying at the best of times. But this year, many people are reporting their usual symptoms are worse than ever before – with their normal go-to remedies doing little to provide relief.

Here’s what you can do if you’re finding that nothing seems to be helping your itchy eyes, sneezing and runny nose this year.

There are several reasons why hay fever is so bad right now. Climate change and pollution have lengthened and intensified pollen seasons, so trees and grasses now release allergens earlier and for longer. Urban smog may even make pollen grains more potent.

In the UK, 2025’s unusually dry and warm spring has worsened conditions, leading to earlier and more intense tree pollen release. Birch pollen, which affects around 25% of UK hay fever sufferers, peaked sharply this year due to the high temperatures and low rainfall – two factors which increase pollen production and dispersal. The lack of rain has also prevented pollen from being cleared from the air, prolonging exposure and symptom severity.

Another issue is timing. For full relief from hay fever symptoms, allergy medicines (especially steroid nasal sprays) should be started one to two weeks before pollen appears. So in the UK, steroid nasal sprays should ideally be started in early March for tree pollen or late April for grass pollen. Starting them late can make them seem ineffective.

You can also develop new sensitivities, even as an adult. Pollen that didn’t bother you years ago might start causing symptoms now. Grass and birch pollen are among the most common types of seasonal pollen that start bothering people in adulthood.

Managing symptoms

If you’re finding allergy pills alone just aren’t cutting it this year, the best thing you can do to reduce symptoms is cut your pollen exposure wherever possible.

Before going outdoors, check the local pollen forecast. Avoid exercising outside during peak pollen hours (usually mid-morning on dry, windy days).

If you do go outside, wear a face mask (such as an N95 mask) when pollen counts are high. After coming inside, remove your shoes at the door, change your clothes and take a shower to wash off pollen.

Inside, you can use a HEPA air purifier or high-MERV filters in your heating or cooling system. These will capture airborne pollen particles, which may help to reduce the severity of your symptoms during high-pollen seasons. On high-pollen days, keep windows and doors closed. You might also want to vacuum with a HEPA-filter vacuum and wash bedding often to remove any pollen.

While these steps won’t cure allergies, they can sharply reduce your total exposure. This gives medications a better chance to work.

Wearing a face mask while outdoors may help reduce symptoms.
Blue Titan/Shutterstock

While non-drowsy antihistamines such as loratadine, cetirizine and fexofenadine are common first-line treatments, research suggests fexofenadine may provide more consistent symptom relief for people with moderate to severe seasonal allergies compared to other types of antihistamines. However, each person will respond differently – so use whichever type provides you the most relief. Allergy tablets work best when taken daily and pre-emptively, ideally before peak exposure each morning.

Nasal steroid sprays, such as fluticasone, are often more effective than antihistamines for nasal congestion. These should be started one to two weeks before the allergy season begins and used consistently.

Allergy wipes and saline nasal rinses may also help reduce pollen exposure – though evidence of their benefit have only been shown in small studies, so larger, high-quality trials confirming their effectiveness are still needed.

Some people may also decide to try at-home remedies for their symptoms. However, the science behind whether they really work is mixed.

Take local honey, for example. The idea is that it exposes you to local pollen and helps build tolerance. In reality, the pollen that triggers hay fever is usually windborne and not present in honey. Studies haven’t shown eating it reduces allergy symptoms. At best, it may soothe a sore throat, but it’s not a proven remedy.

You may have better luck by targeting your gut. Some research suggests a more diverse gut microbiome may help moderate allergic reactions. A recent meta-analysis also found that probiotic supplements can offer a small but measurable improvement in hay fever symptoms. Still, results vary by probiotic strain and treatment length. Probiotics should be seen as a complement to – not a replacement for – conventional allergy management.

Longer-term fixes

When symptoms stay severe, allergy immunotherapy – which helps desensitise a hay fever sufferer to pollen – can help. This works like an allergy “vaccine”. You receive tiny, gradually increasing doses of your specific allergen either by regular injection or as a daily under-the-tongue tablet or drop. This trains your immune system to tolerate the pollen and shifts your immune response by making your body better able to block allergens while simultaneously dampening the allergic response.

In one study, around 90% of patients who underwent a full course of immunotherapy had major relief from symptoms – and this effect often lasted many years. The trade-off with immunotherapy is commitment: a typical course lasts 3–5 years under a specialist’s guidance. But for people with chronic hay fever, immunotherapy can dramatically improve their quality of life.

Researchers are also refining immunotherapy to make it faster and more efficient. One method, which only requires a few small injections into a lymph node, can reduce symptoms by up to 40% within a season.

Technology is also reshaping allergy care. Smart monitors and mobile apps can now track pollen and pollution in real time, while AI tools are being developed to identify specific pollen types from air samples. These tools could soon provide personalised alerts to help people avoid triggers before symptoms start.

Pollen seasons are getting longer and stronger, so allergies can feel worse than in the past. But the good news is that science is keeping pace. By combining smart exposure-reduction strategies with the right medical treatment, most people can significantly reduce their hay fever misery.

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

– ref. Hay fever: why symptoms are so bad this year – and what to do if your usual remedies aren’t working – https://theconversation.com/hay-fever-why-symptoms-are-so-bad-this-year-and-what-to-do-if-your-usual-remedies-arent-working-256751

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Just three nights of poor sleep might harm your heart – new study

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Annie Curtis, Professor (Assoc), School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences (PBS), RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences

Prostock studio/Shutterstock

We’ve long known that a lack of sleep is bad for the heart – but scientists are now starting to understand exactly how it causes harm.

In a new study from Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers found that just three nights of restricted sleep – around four hours a night – triggered changes in the blood linked to a higher risk of heart disease.

The researchers looked at inflammatory proteins in the blood. These are molecules the body produces when it is under stress or fighting off illness. When these proteins stay high for a long time, they can damage blood vessels and raise the risk of problems like heart failure, coronary heart disease and atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat).

The study involved 16 healthy young men who spent several days in a lab, where everything from their meals to their activity levels and light exposure was carefully controlled.

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

The participants followed two routines: three nights of normal sleep (8.5 hours) and three night of sleep restriction (4.25 hours). After each sleep phase, the men completed a short, high-intensity cycling workout, and their blood was tested before and after.

Researchers measured almost 90 different proteins in the blood samples. They found that sleep deprivation caused a clear rise in inflammatory markers linked to heart disease. And while exercise usually boosts healthy proteins such as interleukin-6 and BDNF (which support brain and heart health), these responses were weaker after poor sleep.

The researchers looked at 90 protein markers in the blood of healthy volunteers.
Dusan Petkovic/Shutterstock

Even young adults

Strikingly, the changes happened even in young, healthy adults, and after only a few nights of bad sleep. That’s worrying given how common it is for adults to experience poor sleep from time to time – and around one in four people work shifts that disrupt sleep patterns.

The researchers also discovered that the time of day blood was taken mattered: protein levels varied between morning and evening, and even more so when sleep was restricted. This suggests that sleep affects not only what’s in your blood, but when those changes are most visible.

Although modern life often encourages us to trade sleep for productivity, socialising or screen time, studies like this remind us that the body keeps score – quietly, chemically and without compromise.

Annie Curtis 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. Just three nights of poor sleep might harm your heart – new study – https://theconversation.com/just-three-nights-of-poor-sleep-might-harm-your-heart-new-study-256534

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Welch, Sanders, Gillibrand: “We have a responsibility to expand federal support for Lake Champlain”

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) today led U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in sending a letter to bipartisan leadership of the Senate Appropriations Committee urging Congress to provide robust federal funding for programs supporting the Lake Champlain basin. In their letter, the lawmakers emphasized the importance of federal programs to Lake Champlain that support critical work in the basin, from fostering a climate-resilient watershed to promoting outdoor recreation and wildlife conservation.
“As Congress considers the Fiscal Year 2026 Bills for Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, Energy and Water Development, State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, and Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, we ask you to continue to provide robust federal funding for programs supporting the Lake Champlain basin,” wrote the Senators. “Lake Champlain provides significant environmental, recreational, historic, and educational value to our region. We have a responsibility to expand federal support for the lake so our constituents can benefit from these opportunities for generations to come.”
The Lake Champlain Basin Program was first created in 1990 and long-championed by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) in a landmark effort to protect the lake’s unique ecological, economic, and cultural significance. In 2022, the program was formally renamed the Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program.
The lawmakers requested financial support for the following programs:

Lake Champlain Basin Program
Heritage Partnership Program
Lake Champlain Sea Lamprey Control Program
Great Lakes Fishery Commission
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Aquatic Plant Control Laboratory
Sea Grant National College Program (Lake Champlain Sea Grant)

Senator Welch has championed efforts to support the Lake Champlain Basin in the Senate. Last Congress, Sens. Welch, Sanders, and Gillibrand sent a letter to the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Appropriations Committee urging Congress to provide robust federal funding for programs supporting the basin, including the LCBP.
Last year, Senator Welch led Sens. Sanders, Gillibrand, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) in introducing the bicameral Lake Champlain Basin Program Reauthorization Act, legislation that would reauthorize the Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP) for ten years at $55 million to support interstate conservation and the health of the Lake Champlain Basin.
Read the full text of the letter.

MIL OSI USA News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Government reaffirms commitment to water security

Source: South Africa News Agency

Water and Sanitation Deputy Minister, David Mahlobo, has reaffirmed government’s unwavering commitment to ensuring long-term water security and sustainability for all South Africans, highlighting the urgent need for cross-sectoral collaboration, innovation, and inclusive development.

Speaking at the Water Security Africa Conference, held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, on Wednesday, Mahlobo emphasised that addressing water security challenges requires a unified, evidence-based approach grounded in science, technology, and innovation.

“Siloed thinking must be left behind, and an integrated, multi-sectoral response is essential to ensure equitable water access and effective water management,” Mahlobo said.

The Deputy Minister underscored the significance of unlocking the full water value chain in alignment with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which seeks to ensure universal access to clean water and sanitation.

He also called for the adoption of a circular water economy, where every drop of water is seen as a valuable resource.

The Deputy Minister further called for a shift in mindset, urging South Africans to see all water, whether rainwater, stormwater, or wastewater, as a valuable resource.

“There is no such thing as wastewater, only wasted water. The ‘One Water’ (reduce, reuse, and recycle) approach challenges us to manage all water sources in a holistic and sustainable way. We must embrace reuse, recycling, regeneration, and water-sensitive design as core principles,” Mahlobo said.

Addressing the pressing need for increased water availability, Mahlobo highlighted the importance of groundwater use and rainwater harvesting, particularly in underserved communities.

However, he warned of the risks posed by pollution and inadequate sanitation, which threaten these vital sources.

The Deputy Minister called on stakeholders across all sectors, including government, private sector, academic, and civil society sectors, to join forces and invest in transformative solutions.

“Water security is not just a national issue; it is a global imperative. We cannot meet today’s challenges with yesterday’s methods. Our National Water and Sanitation Master Plan outlines the way forward driven by technology, innovation, and skilled professionals.

“This is not a task for the government alone. It demands collective ownership, bold ambition, and strategic investment. This forum is a key step toward building a water-secure future for all South Africans,” he said.

The Water Security Africa Conference, taking place from 20-21 May 2025, is a focal point for commercial, industrial and public sector operations, bringing together key stakeholders, industry leaders and innovators to address the pressing need for clean, reliable, and sustainable water supply.

The event is being held under the theme: “Delivering Water Security and Sustainability For All; A Vision of Inclusive Development”. – SAnews.gov.za

MIL OSI Africa –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: SA’s G20 legacy will be measured by lives changed, Chikunga

Source: South Africa News Agency

Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, says the legacy of South Africa’s G20 Presidency will not be defined by the number of meetings held, or the elegance of its communiqués, but by “lives changed, systems reformed, and the power redistributed.”

Chikunga made the remarks at the opening plenary of the Women20 (W20) South Africa Inception Meeting, currently underway in Cape Town.

The W20 is the official G20 engagement group focused on promoting gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

The 2025 Inception Meeting, hosted under the theme: “Women in Solidarity”, marks 10 years of W20. The meeting brings together over 100 global delegates representing government, business, academia, and civil society.

The two-day Inception Meeting, which started on Wednesday, convenes thought leaders, including policymakers and change-makers from across the globe to explore high-level interventions and innovative solutions to the challenges facing women today.

In her address, Chikunga said the gathering is not an endpoint, but a beginning of a call to mobilise transformative change for women around the world.

She said the region stands at a pivotal moment, where the African continent has the opportunity to shape the course of global recovery, and where the Global South can reimagine the social contract.

“We stand at a pivotal moment, where we can prove that leadership from our regions is not only possible—it is indispensable. Let us leave this space with a shared resolve: to structure women’s voices into the heart of public policy, budgets, institutions, and outcomes,” the Minister said.

Chikunga invoked the legacy of South African heroines, like Charlotte Maxeke, Ruth Mompati, and Albertina Sisulu, saying their fight for freedom serves as a reminder that “freedom without equality is fiction.”

As part of Chairship of the G20 Empowerment of Women Working Group, Chikunga said South Africa has conceptualised several empowerment programmes intended to advance, through sustained partnerships, and beyond G20 term.

These include the transformative emerging industrialists accelerator, and the disability Inclusion Initiative (DII).

The transformative emerging industrialists accelerator is designed to support emerging women entrepreneurs in priority sectors such as energy, maritime, defence and aerospace, platform economies, and agriculture.

Participants will receive end-to-end support, from ideation and product development to financing, market access, and commercialisation, in collaboration with SOEs [State Owned Entities], private companies, and industry associations.

The DII is South Africa’s flagship programme to embed disability rights and inclusion across policy, institutions, and society.

Anchored by the establishment of a Disability Inclusion Nerve Centre, the DII initiative will drive:
•    Research on inclusion across the care economy, AI, financial access, and climate adaptation;
•    The establishment of a National Disability Data Observatory to strengthen decision-making;
•    Development of early childhood disability screening protocols;
•    Capacity-building through disability focal points; and
•    Support for inclusive schooling and access-enhancing technologies.

“These are not once-off initiatives. They are long-term structural interventions designed to outlive the Presidency,” Chikunga said.

Addressing systemic gaps

Highlighting the importance of data in informing inclusive policy, Chikunga said the country is stands ready to engage the private sector, development partners, and multilateral institutions to take them forward.

“Our observatory will not only collect data, but it will also shape decision making, drive accountability, and support delivery,” the Minister said.

She noted the findings from the Human Sciences Research Council, which showed that women with disabilities remain among the most marginalised and invisible in society, despite facing disproportionate levels of violence and exclusion.

“That is not just a gap. It is a systemic failure.” – SAnews.gov.za

MIL OSI Africa –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Vice Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China Liu Guozhong visited Belarus and held a meeting of the China-Belarus Intergovernmental Committee on Cooperation

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –

Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

MINSK, May 22 (Xinhua) — Member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China Liu Guozhong visited Belarus on May 21-22. During the visit, he met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, held talks with First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Nikolai Snopkov and jointly chaired the 6th meeting of the China-Belarus Intergovernmental Cooperation Committee.

Liu Guozhong conveyed cordial greetings from Chinese President Xi Jinping to A. Lukashenko and noted that under the strategic leadership of the leaders of the two countries, the China-Belarus all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership continues to develop at a high level, and cooperation in various fields bears rich fruit. According to the Vice Premier of the State Council, the Chinese side is ready to work with Belarus to implement the important agreements reached by the leaders of the two countries, provide firm mutual support on issues related to the fundamental interests of the parties, and promote high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road for the benefit of the peoples of both countries.

A. Lukashenko asked Liu Guozhong to convey sincere greetings to Chairman Xi Jinping and stressed that Belarusian-Chinese relations are a model of mutually beneficial cooperation. As he noted, the Belarusian side firmly adheres to the one-China principle, opposes political manipulation in the issue of tracking the source of COVID-19 and is ready to jointly implement key projects within the framework of the Belt and Road initiative with China, develop productive forces of new quality, and promote the development and rise of the two states.

The two sides reaffirmed their firm commitment to upholding the outcome of World War II and international justice, opposed hegemonism, bullying and unilateral sanctions, and agreed to jointly advance the three global initiatives and promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

On May 21, the 6th meeting of the China-Belarus Intergovernmental Cooperation Committee was held, during which the parties exchanged views and outlined plans for cooperation in key areas such as economy and trade, science and technology, security, education, culture, customs control and quarantine supervision, and industry. The minutes of the meeting were signed, as well as documents on cooperation in the areas of digital economy, science and technology. In addition, the parties agreed to establish a new subcommittee on industrial cooperation.

Liu Guozhong also visited a number of sites, including the China-Belarus Industrial Park “Great Stone.” –0–

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: “Eternal Deposits”: Development of Endowments in Russia Discussed at Polytechnic University

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

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

The Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University hosted the Eternal Deposits Assembly and the Endowment EXPO exhibition, organized by the National Endowment Association with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.

The plenary session was opened by the Vice-Rector for Youth Policy and Communication Technologies of SPbPU Maxim Pasholikov.

“The topic of endowments is in demand now, in recent years we have seen its rebirth, and the issues that the National Endowment Association raises, initiating various sessions and events, certainly influence the development and promotion of endowments,” Maxim Aleksandrovich noted in his welcoming speech. “These issues are related to motivational co-financing, and to the attraction of state corporations, and to the involvement of society as a whole in charity. I think many of you will agree that there is romance in the topic of endowments, because we are talking about eternal capital, about the fact that the result may appear not in a year or two, but in fifty or a hundred years, and our descendants will receive it. That is why our business seems so romantic and especially valuable to me.”

Svetlana Lavrova, Chairperson of the Board of the National Endowment Association, agreed that there is a certain romanticism in the fact that an endowment, on the one hand, is important for the financial market, and on the other hand, it supports the non-profit sector, ensuring its sustainability and independence.

“The financial sector is interested in finances, and the beneficiaries of all this are simply people,” Svetlana Nikolaevna explained. “The development of endowments balances the interests of business and society.”

Director of NAE Alexey Anisin presented statistics on the endowment industry for 2024 and the dynamics of its development since 2011. Targeted capital is created to support universities, schools, sports associations, and cultural institutions. Today, there are already 407 of them, 360 are registered, and the volume of funds in endowments, according to management companies, amounted to 155.5 billion rubles.

Alexey Anisin noted that this year the number of Assembly participants and partners has increased significantly: We held the First Assembly “Eternal Deposits” in 2023. Last year we decided to make exhibition “Endowment EXPO”. We invited not only endowment funds, but also management companies, universities, schools, museums. We realized that those people who, especially in the regions, are engaged in this topic, lack a community, communication, because if in Moscow, in St. Petersburg there are many endowments, there is a certain professional circle where people communicate, then in the regions it is much more difficult. The industry itself is not yet sufficiently represented in the media field. An important function of such an exhibition is to tell the widest possible circle of people, including donors, about the endowment.

The plenary session was also attended by the co-founder and president of the Rybakov Foundation Ekaterina Rybakova, the general director of the Potanin Foundation Oksana Oracheva, the director of the Federal Center for Cultural Heritage Our Norilsk, and a member of the board of the National Association of Ecologists Anna Makukha.

On the first day of the assembly, discussions were held on the tracks “Basics and Reviews”, “Consultations and Special Events” and “Special Sessions”, where participants discussed issues of investing and developing endowments in various fields.

Maxim Pasholikov, Vice-Rector for Youth Policy and Communication Technologies at SPbPU, gave a presentation at the “University Endowment Review” track. He shared his experience of attracting funds to the Polytechnic’s endowment funds (there are currently six of them), and then the audience exchanged examples and ideas for filling their endowments. Maxim Pasholikov separately said that since this year, the monitoring system of the Ministry of Education and Science’s “Priority-2030” program has included an indicator of the effectiveness of attracting funds to endowment funds, so the universities participating in the program have an additional incentive to develop alumni communities, partnerships and other mechanisms for increasing endowment funds.

At the end of the first day of the Assembly, the winners and prize winners of the Eternal Contribution Prize were awarded. The ceremony was hosted by Associate Professor of the Higher School of Law and Forensic Science of the Humanitarian Institute of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, winner of the competition and recipient of the Eternal Contribution-2022 Prize Artem Klinitsky.

In 2025, the special prize of the organizing committee of the award was received by a team of authors, which included Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Higher School of International Relations and the Higher School of Social Sciences of the Humanities Institute of SPbPU Ilya Sidorchuk, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of St. Petersburg State University Evgeny Rostovtsev and a student of the Humanities Institute of the Polytechnic University Svetlana Danilova.

The study by the co-authors is dedicated to the Society for Assistance to Students of the Imperial St. Petersburg University and the importance of endowment capital in its activities.

“The society was founded in 1873 and up until the revolution it successfully coped with its tasks,” said Ilya Viktorovich. “We came to the conclusion that there were many ways to support the society and raise funds, for example, membership fees, charity concerts. But, as practice has shown, the most effective was the use of perpetual deposits. It was thanks to them that it became possible to implement such projects as the construction of a sanatorium in Yevpatoria and the organization of a student canteen, which fed many needy young people for free.”

“As they said today on one of the tracks, time goes by, but many students are still forced to look for money for clothing, food, housing, education, especially in the humanities, where there are fewer and fewer budget places every year,” added Svetlana Danilova. “That is why our work is relevant, and this historical experience can be useful.”

Photo archive

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

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI: Rhino Federated Computing Raises $15M Series A to Scale Federated AI Across Regulated Industries

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

BOSTON, May 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rhino Federated Computing, the leading platform for federated AI collaboration, today announced the close of an oversubscribed $15 million Series A funding round led by AlleyCorp. All existing institutional investors participated, including LionBird, Fusion Fund, Arkin Digital Health, Qiming Venture Partners USA, Telus Global Ventures and Keren Maccabi, as well as new investors Wilson’s Bird Capital, Mr. Frank Sica, and Gaingels. The round brings Rhino FCP’s total funding to over $30 million to-date.

Founded in 2020 by Dr. Ittai Dayan (who led AI development and deployment at Mass General Brigham and was a researcher at Harvard Medical School) and Yuval Baror (serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building AI based production systems), Rhino FCP enables enterprises to work together on AI and data science initiatives without centralizing data—fueling a new era of federated AI that protects data ownership, complies with regulation, and accelerates innovation. The company is already powering major use cases, including:

With this new capital, Rhino will scale these capabilities across more customers and regulated sectors, bringing to market a robust, enterprise-grade solution for organizations looking to collaborate with data at scale.

“Federated AI is the future of innovation in regulated industries,” said Dr. Ittai Dayan, CEO and co-founder of Rhino Federated Computing. “We’re helping organizations unlock the power of their data—not in isolation, but as part of an interconnected, secure network. This investment allows us to accelerate that mission and expand the reach of our platform.”

Dr. Alexi Nazem, General Partner head of healthcare at AlleyCorp, added: “In the rapidly advancing era of artificial intelligence, unique data is becoming incredibly valuable. But often that data is private and proprietary, so private, secure, and effective collaboration tools are necessary to activate and realize the true value of that data. It’s a difficult challenge, especially in highly sensitive fields like healthcare and financial services, and Rhino’s federated AI platform is the most compelling foundation we’ve seen for making that possible.”

About Rhino Federated Computing
Headquartered in Boston, MA, with an R&D center in Tel Aviv, Rhino has built the trusted end-to-end tech stack for federated AI in regulated industries. Rhino FCP enables data-driven collaboration across institutional and geographic boundaries—without requiring data centralization—empowering enterprises to safely scale AI and analytics across increasingly large networks. Rhino is committed to delivering scalable, secure, and compliant data collaboration without sacrificing speed or control.

Media Contact
media@rhinofcp.com
www.rhinofcp.com

The MIL Network –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI: Regula Earns Double Recognition at 2025 Global InfoSec Awards—for the Third Year Running
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

RESTON, Va., May 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Regula, a global developer of forensic devices and identity verification solutions, earned two prestigious Global InfoSec Awards from Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM): one for the Best Identity Verification Solution and another for the Most Innovative Cybersecurity Blog. It’s the third year in a row that Regula has earned recognition from CDM, reflecting the company’s sustained excellence in innovation and industry leadership.

Cyber Defense Magazine, a respected voice in the cybersecurity sphere, for over a decade honors forward-thinking companies and leaders in its annual Global InfoSec Awards. This year, the expert jury selected only about 10% out of more than 3,000 contenders worldwide. According to CDM, winners stood out by “delivering tomorrow’s cybersecurity solutions today.”

Global InfoSec Awards 2025 for Regula

Benchmark innovation

In 2025, Regula was repeatedly awarded for its complete identity verification (IDV) solution built around Regula Document Reader SDK and Regula Face SDK. Together, these solutions cover every step of the identity verification journey—from authenticating physical documents to verifying a person’s presence and identity through biometric analysis.

Regula’s technology doesn’t rely on static scans or uploaded photos. As the only technology that verifies all dynamic security features in IDs, it analyzes real documents and thus is able to detect even the most sophisticated forgeries. Also, Regula’s biometric solution uses advanced liveness detection techniques to verify live facial data and stop presentation attacks like video injections, deepfakes, synthetic identities, or screen replays.

With support for 15,000+ identity document templates from 251 countries and territories, Regula offers a truly global solution trusted by more than 1,000 organizations and 80 border control authorities.

“Regula embodies three major features we judges look for to become winners: understanding tomorrow’s threats today, providing a cost-effective solution, and innovating in unexpected ways that can help mitigate cyber risk and get one step ahead of the next breach,” said Gary S. Miliefsky, Publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine.

This year’s Global InfoSec Award joins a growing list of accolades for Regula’s innovative technology. Earlier in 2025, Regula earned Gold in the Globee Awards for Cybersecurity in the Identity Proofing and Corroboration category, marking an advancement over the Silver award of the previous year.

A trusted source for cybersecurity knowledge

Regula’s second award recognizes the Regula Blog as the Most Innovative Cybersecurity Blog. With over 18,000 unique readers each month, the blog has become a valuable resource for IDV and forensic professionals worldwide, bridging technical expertise with real-world application.

What makes the Regula Blog stand out is its ability to combine:
- Original insights and expert analysis, offering research-backed content on topics like deepfake detection, identity fraud, and document verification.
- Visual storytelling, with infographics, case studies, and document samples that help readers better understand complex concepts.
- External expertise, featuring exclusive articles from industry professionals alongside Regula’s own thought leadership.
Earlier this year, Regula’s blog won the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards for Best Cybersecurity Blog. The jury recognized its expert insights, authoritative opinions, real-world fraud case analyses, practical guides, and forward-looking discussions of evolving security challenges.

“Winning two Global InfoSec Awards for the third year in a row speaks to the depth and consistency of our innovation. At Regula, we don’t chase trends—we solve real problems. Whether it’s protecting against deepfakes or helping professionals make sense of complex identity documents, our focus remains the same: provide secure, science-driven tools and insights our customers can trust,” says Ihar Kliashchou, Chief Technology Officer at Regula.

About Regula

Regula is a global developer of forensic devices and identity verification solutions. With our 30+ years of experience in forensic research and the most comprehensive library of document templates in the world, we create breakthrough technologies for document and biometric verification. Our hardware and software solutions allow over 1,000 organizations and 80 border control authorities globally to provide top-notch client service without compromising safety, security, or speed. Regula has been repeatedly named a Representative Vendor in the Gartner® Market Guide for Identity Verification.

Learn more at www.regulaforensics.com.

Contact:
Kristina – ks@regulaforensics.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/68912dec-fc11-4997-be48-bc587b81ada9

The MIL Network –
May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: A representative of SPbGASU spoke about the use of artificial intelligence in course design at a conference in China

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Andrey Surovenkov at the conference

Head of the Department of Architectural Design, Associate Professor of SPbGASU Andrey Surovenkov spoke at the forum of the International Alliance of Architectural and Technological Universities of the Silk Road (SRIAATU) at Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology (China). As reported by the Head of the International Activities Department of SPbGASU Shuainat Akhmadulaeva, our university is a partner of this university and a member of the alliance, which opens up new opportunities for interaction in the field of education and science.

“The annual international conference attracts employees of universities from many countries with its relevant agenda: the topics raised are understandable and close to all participants. Our university is interested in exchanging experience and discussing important aspects, so it is participating in the conference for the second year in a row,” explained Shuainat Akhmadulaeva.

This year, the conference “Joint Construction and Innovation along the Silk Road: Writing a New Chapter in Green Architecture of the Silk Road” discussed priority areas of cooperation between universities of the Silk Road countries in the field of construction science and technology, integration and development of educational innovations. In his speech, Andrey Surovenkov considered the advantages and risks of using artificial intelligence in the development of course projects in the discipline “Architectural Design”.

“New tools are increasingly coming into architectural design, greatly accelerating and simplifying the work of an architect. But they come to education much later – only after they have become firmly established in business. For example, the computer-aided design system (CAD) came to the university only in the 2002/2003 academic year, when it was already fully used in real design. On the one hand, this is logical, since students begin to use only those design tools that have received recognition from business and have been tested in practice. On the other hand, without an understanding of how to work with new tools needed by a modern specialist, competencies are not fully acquired. At the same time, students are quite actively mastering new technologies and are already beginning to use AI when creating course projects. It is difficult to prohibit this, and it is also unnecessary. Therefore, it is better to identify possible areas of application of AI in course design and the boundaries within which this technology can be used in a dialogue with students, so as not to harm the acquisition of other important competencies. At the same time, it is already important for teachers to understand the principles of neural networks: what they are most often used for, and how it is possible to distinguish a picture drawn by a neural network from a picture made by a specialist,” explained Andrey Surovenkov.

Andrey Viktorovich prepared his report with a team of students and identified a fairly large number of neural networks that are already successfully used in developing ideas and refining three-dimensional images. Seven neural networks were selected that were tested by students during design or received positive feedback in professional communities. The main options for using these neural networks in developing course projects were also identified: editing and improving three-dimensional images, selecting materials, searching for possible ideas during design.

“This technology can facilitate and speed up the design process. Especially since it is developing very quickly. Currently, the neural network “operator” has to form the correct request to get a more or less suitable solution, but in two or three years, neural networks will learn to fully communicate with a person, understanding what he wants to get. However, as futurologists wrote, AI will free people from routine, giving them time for creativity. It seems that it is the creativity of the neural network that they are trying to take away from us. Therefore, the main danger for students is to become not a full-fledged specialist, but simply an operator of the neural network. To prevent this from happening, it is important to learn to design independently,” Andrey Surovenkov summed up.

It should be noted that Andrey Surovenkov is participating in this conference for the second time. The topics he raises find a wide response from colleagues from different countries.

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

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI: NorthStrive Biosciences Announces Completion of Phase I Strategic Review for EL-22 Targeting Muscle Loss Associated with GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs and Age-Related Sarcopenia
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., May 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Northstrive Biosciences Inc. (“Northstrive”), a subsidiary of PMGC Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ELAB) (the “Company,” “PMGC,” “we,” or “our”), today announced the completion of a Phase I strategic research and literature synthesis for EL-22 (formerly BLS-M22), its first-in-class oral myostatin-engineered probiotic. The analysis, conducted in collaboration with Yuva Biosciences and supported by AI-based scientific review technology from Yuva Biosciences’ MitoNova™, provided valuable insights into EL-22’s proposed mechanism of action and will help guide further exploration into its potential to address critical unmet needs in muscle-wasting conditions, including GLP-1-associated atrophy and age-related sarcopenia.

EL-22 is leveraging a myostatin-engineered probiotic approach to address obesity’s pressing issue of preserving muscle while on weight loss treatments, including GLP-1 receptor agonists. The oral biologic is designed to induce a targeted immune response against myostatin, a key negative regulator of muscle growth. Unlike traditional injectable antibodies, EL-22 leverages genetically engineered Lactobacillus casei to stimulate the gut immune system, offering a convenient, patient-friendly oral delivery method with potential safety and efficacy advantages.

Key Highlights from the Report:
- Strong Preclinical Rationale: Synthesized findings from published peer-reviewed literature, highlight noteworthy effects of EL-22 in mdx mice on antibody production, serum CK, body weight, motor function, and muscle histology.
- Unique Oral Vaccine Approach: EL-22 is distinct from the more common systemic administration of antibodies or gene therapy vectors. Utilizing Lactobacillus casei as a delivery vehicle to stimulate mucosal and systemic immunity against myostatin is a novel immunological strategy for a muscle-wasting disorder.
- Targeting GLP-1-Associated Muscle Loss: With the rapid expansion of GLP-1 receptor agonists in obesity and diabetes, EL-22 is well-positioned to address the growing concern of associated muscle loss. The company is prioritizing this indication for its next clinical development milestone.
- Strategic Next Steps: NorthStrive intends to launch a Phase 2 proof-of-concept trial targeting GLP-1 users and begin regulatory engagement to advance EL-22 toward an IND filing in the United States.
About Northstrive Biosciences Inc.

Northstrive Biosciences Inc., a PMGC Holdings Inc. company, is a biopharmaceutical company focusing on the development and acquisition of cutting-edge aesthetic medicines. Northstrive’s lead asset, EL-22, leverages an engineered probiotic approach to address obesity’s pressing issue of preserving muscle while on weight loss treatments, including GLP-1 receptor agonists. For more information, please visit www.northstrivebio.com.

About Yuva Biosciences, Inc.

Yuva Biosciences is a longevity company harnessing the cutting edge of mitochondrial science to address the root cause of aging. By partnering with consumer brands and biotech innovators, Yuva Biosciences develops solutions for aging-related concerns including hair loss, skin wrinkles, and several other conditions driven by a decline in mitochondrial function. The company is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. For more information, please visit www.yuvabio.com.

About PMGC Holdings Inc.

PMGC Holdings Inc. is a diversified holding company that manages and grows its portfolio through strategic acquisitions, investments, and development across various industries. Currently, our portfolio consists of three wholly owned subsidiaries: Northstrive Biosciences Inc., PMGC Research Inc., and PMGC Capital LLC. We are committed to exploring opportunities in multiple sectors to maximize growth and value. For more information, please visit https://www.pmgcholdings.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Words such as “believes,” “expects,” “plans,” “potential,” “would” and “future” or similar expressions such as “look forward” are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Instead, they are based only on our current beliefs, expectations and assumptions regarding the future of our business, future plans and strategies, projections, anticipated events and trends, the economy, activities of regulators and future regulations and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that such expectations will turn out to be correct, and the Company cautions investors that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described more fully in PMGC’s filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including the “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the SEC on March 28, 2025, and its other documents subsequently filed with or furnished to the SEC. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC’s web site at www.sec.gov. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made. Except to the extent required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

IR Contact:

IR@pmgcholdings.com

The MIL Network –
May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Goodbye, school: the last bell rang at the Pre-University of the State University of Management

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: State University of Management – Official website of the State –

On May 21, 2025, the last bell rang for 11th grade students of the Pre-University of the State University of Management.

This year, the theme of the holiday was a train journey. And before departure, the rector of the State University of Management Vladimir Stroyev addressed the assembled students, their parents and teachers with a welcoming speech.

“Two years have flown by and today you are already standing on the threshold of a new adult life. But the path of a graduate is not over yet, the most important thing is ahead – passing the Unified State Exam. As a parent, I myself went through this exciting stage and I want to wish you to worry less, because it is definitely impossible not to worry at all. Believe in your children, our Pre-University provides one of the best educations that Moscow has at the high school level. I am sure that the children will cope with all the tests with dignity and in a month we will award them with prizes and medals. I wish you all to pass the Unified State Exam with a hundred points and enter the State University of Management, because the guys from the Pre-University are already familiar with the university, know the basics of the first year and will be able to easily adapt to study,” concluded Vladimir Stroyev.

The students of the Pre-University themselves prepared a festive concert, where they performed large-scale dance numbers, humorous skits, live performances of songs by groups and a choir, as well as live playing of musical instruments. In addition, the guys prepared several videos about their life during their studies at the Pre-University and humorous questions about teachers.

The class teachers also came up on stage with their wishes and congratulations in return, which they read out without hiding their tears.

Marina Grigorieva, Director of the Pre-University of the State University of Management, also congratulated the graduates.

“I am very touched by your performance, I want to say that I love you very much too. I wish all your dreams come true: from little unicorns to presidents of large holding companies,” Marina Yuryevna admitted.

The GUU Pre-University started working in 2020. The training is free of charge in the following term profiles: socio-economic, humanitarian and technical (IT-oriented). Depending on the choice, schoolchildren study in depth mathematics, English, computer science, information technology, social studies, economics, law, which in the future allows them to easily and successfully enter the GUU or any university in the country.

More photos from the event in our VK community.

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

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Australia: Townsville man fined for illegal dumping

Source: Tasmania Police

Issued: 22 May 2025

The man received a hefty fine for unlawfully dumping the rubbish.

DETSI investigates every case of illegal dumping.

A man has received a hefty fine for unlawfully dumping rubbish in bushland in the Townsville Town Common Conservation Park.

Remote cameras captured a ute with rubbish in the tray entering the conservation park on 16 March 2025. The vehicle was later captured leaving the conservation park with an empty tray.

Rangers from the Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI) conducted a site inspection and discovered the waste, which included air-conditioning units, empty boxes and other general waste.

Executive Director Waste and Enforcement Jackie McKeay said officers from DETSI’s Litter and Illegal Dumping Compliance Operations issued a show cause notice to the driver of the vehicle.

“The man admitted that he dumped the waste in the conservation park, and he went back to clean it up,” Ms McKeay said.

“He was issued with a Penalty Infringement Notice for $2,580. This fine is a reminder to Queenslanders that our remote cameras can be anywhere at any time.

“We take a zero-tolerance approach to illegal dumping, and we investigate every report we receive.

“Recently, the Queensland Government made it easier for people to report illegal dumping with the new Litter and Illegal Dumping Online Reporting System.

“Unlawfully dumping waste is a pollution risk and a fire hazard, and it can harm our native animals.”

People can report littering and illegal dumping to their local council or via the online reporting tool: Report it.

MIL OSI News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Australia: $2 million to extinguish battery fire risk in Queensland

Source: Tasmania Police

Issued: 22 May 2025

Sparked by the recent spike in battery fires, the Queensland Government has committed $2 million to put out the battery fire risk in Queensland by expanding collection points.

With more than 200 battery-related fires in Queensland in the past year, the Local Government Battery Collection Program is part of the Queensland Government’s three-point plan to tackle battery safety.

Grants of up to $100,000 are available for Queensland councils or groups of councils to expand battery collection points and provide safer and more convenient disposal of problem batteries that currently have limited options for disposal.

By supporting Queensland councils to expand the number of collection points, this funding will not only make it safer and easier to properly dispose of batteries; but environmental risks and fires caused by battery combustion in council waste collection trucks and facilities will also be reduced.

Executive Director at the Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation Claire Andersen said the three-point plan addresses risks to human safety, council infrastructure and the environment.

“Lithium-ion batteries power our everyday lives – from simple AA batteries to e-scooters to rechargeable toothbrushes.

“But when disposed of incorrectly they can spark dangerous fires that put lives at risk, shut down essential services and leave councils and ratepayers footing the bill of costly damage and repairs.

“With the increase in battery fires over the past year, it was clear that urgent action was needed – so we quickly established our three-point plan which is rolling out now.

“This is an integral aspect of this plan; these grants are available to all Queensland councils or groups of councils to expand their battery collection points.

“Not only are we funding battery collection expansion, but we are also working with industry to implement strategies and powering up public awareness and education.

“Our message is simple: don’t bin your batteries.”

To find your nearest battery collection point visit: www.recyclemate.com.au

For more information on the Local Government Battery Collection Program or to make an application, click here.

Media contact: DETSI Media Unit on (07) 3339 5831 or media@des.qld.gov.au

MIL OSI News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI: Brag House, Florida Gators Athletics, and Learfield Successfully Launch Inaugural Brag Gators Gauntlet at University of Florida

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

NEW YORK, May 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Brag House Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: TBH), the Gen Z engagement platform at the intersection of gaming, college sports, and digital media, announced the successful launch of the inaugural Brag Gators Gauntlet series. The first activation of this series, in partnership with Florida Gators Athletics and Learfield’s Florida Gators Sports Properties, took place online on Saturday, May 17, 2025, ahead of the Gators’ 9–3 college baseball victory over Alabama at Condron Family Ballpark.

The Brag Gators Gauntlet: Baseball Edition featured a Fortnite (private lobbies, no-build) solos tournament and a baseball-inspired scoring format. Open to current students and alumni of both the University of Florida and the University of Alabama, the activation served as a digital gaming tailgate leading into the Florida–Alabama baseball game. The activation, which had capacity for 100 competitors, received nearly 300 gamer registrations ranging from freshman to alumni.

“It was exciting to see so many UF students and alumni participate,” said Lavell Juan Malloy II, CEO and Co-Founder of Brag House. “The activation created a gamified digital tailgate, where they came together around school pride and competition in a Fortnite tournament designed with baseball-themed rules. It added a new layer to game day, especially as the Gators took the series with a commanding 9–3 win.”

Michael Yencik, a third-year student at University of Florida on a pre-med track studying nutritional sciences, was crowned champion of the Brag Gators Gauntlet: Baseball Edition. Competing under the gamertag MrGittyGut, Yencik secured the top spot after consistently high placements across all heats and a standout performance in the final heat. “It was a surreal experience,” said MrGittyGut, when asked about this activation and how it ties into the Gators spirit and college baseball. He added “Gators all the way! We’ve had an unbelievable season, from playing well in football to a National Championship in Basketball. You can’t go wrong with the Gators no matter what.”

The Gauntlet series also reflects Brag House’s broader strategy of integrating Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities, loyalty-driven engagement, and scalable digital experiences tailored to Gen Z audiences. This first activation at the University of Florida is what Brag House envisions as the first step in a larger series of campus experiences being planned in collaboration with Learfield, with more activations in the series being planned for select universities across the country in 2025.

“This is the foundation of a broader initiative,” said Lavell Juan Malloy II, CEO and Co-Founder of Brag House. “By merging college sports with interactive digital gaming formats, we’re building a new layer of fan engagement that serves students, alumni, schools, and brand partners alike.”

About Brag House

Brag House is a leading media technology gaming platform dedicated to transforming casual college gaming into a vibrant, community-driven experience. By seamlessly merging gaming, social interaction, and cutting-edge technology, the Company provides an inclusive and engaging environment for casual gamers while enabling brands to authentically connect with the influential Gen Z demographic. The platform offers live-streaming capabilities, gamification features, and custom tournament services, fostering meaningful engagement between users and brands. For more information, please visit www.braghouse.com.

About Learfield

Learfield is the leading media and technology company powering college athletics. Through its digital and physical platforms, Learfield owns and leverages a deep data set and relationships in the industry to drive revenue, growth, brand awareness, and fan engagement for brands, sports, and entertainment properties. With ties to over 1,200 collegiate institutions and over 12,000 local and national brand partners, Learfield’s presence in college sports and live events delivers influence and maximizes reach to target audiences. With solutions for a 365-day, 24/7 fan experience, Learfield enables schools and brands to connect with fans through licensed merchandise, game ticketing, donor identification for athletic programs, exclusive custom content, innovative marketing initiatives, NIL solutions, and advanced digital platforms. Since 2008, it has served as title sponsor for the acclaimed Learfield Directors’ Cup, supporting athletic departments across all divisions.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the execution and prospects of the Brag Gators Gauntlet and Brag House’s and Learfield’s plan to expand the Brag Gauntlet model. For a full discussion of these risks, please refer to Brag House’s SEC filings.

Media Contact:
Fatema Bhabrawala
Director of Media Relations
fbhabrawala@allianceadvisors.com

Investor Relations Contact:
Adele Carey
VP, Investor Relations
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The MIL Network –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Three Students Earn National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships

Source: US State of Connecticut

Three students with ties to the University of Connecticut have recently earned National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (NSF-GRFP). The trio includes one current graduate student and two recent alumni, one of whom is currently enrolled in UConn’s Research and Mentoring for Postbaccalaureates Program (RaMP).

The oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the NSF-GRFP was first awarded in 1952. The program recognizes and supports outstanding students in NSF-supported disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited institutions in the United States. In addition to a three-year annual stipend of $37,000, plus another $16,000 paid to the student’s home institution, fellows have access to a wide range of professional development opportunities over the course of their graduate careers.

The Graduate Research Fellowships, always highly competitive, became even more so this year as the NSF drastically reduced the number of fellowships it awarded. Over the past decade, the NSF awarded approximately 2,100 fellowships per year out of an annual pool of nearly 14,000 applications – an acceptance rate of about 15%. In 2025, the NSF awarded just 1,000 fellowships.

“Nearly three quarters of a century after its creation, the NSF-GRFP remains the gold standard of graduate fellowships supporting advanced study in STEM disciplines,” says Vin Moscardelli, director of UConn’s Office of National Scholarships and Fellowships. “Fellows are recognized not only for their academic and scholarly promise but for their demonstrated commitment to making an impact beyond their research endeavors. Earning an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship this year – when the total number of awards was reduced by more than half – is a testament to the remarkable promise shown by all three of these future scientists.”

UConn’s 13 combined recipients in 2024 and 2025 lead all New England public universities. The school also had three undergraduate students, four graduate students, and nine recent alumni who earned Honorable Mention in this cycle.

UConn’s most recent National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awardees Savanna Brown and Hailey Baranowski along with their faculty mentor ecology and evolutionary biology professor Elizabeth Jockusch. (Contributed photo)

The two students currently at UConn are:

Hailey Baranowski ’24 (CAHNR, CLAS) was a member of the RaMP program and worked in the lab of ecology and evolutionary biology professor Elizabeth Jockusch. There they researched the developmental and morphological function of novel genes in red flour beetles.

Baranowski will begin doctoral studies at the University of Illinois this fall and will continue research on bee health while pursuing a doctorate in entomology.

“Bees are vital to food security and the beauty of our world,” says Baranowski. “This fellowship allows me to pursue the questions that need to be answered to help save them and us.

“The support I received from my connections at UConn made this possible. As an undergraduate, I completed my first research project using a SURF grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research and worked with a wide variety of faculty and external collaborators who have continued to support me beyond graduation.”

Savanna Brown is a second-year graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology and is also mentored by Jockusch. Her research focuses on treehoppers and leafhoppers – a group of charismatic and morphologically captivating insects that thrive in nearly every corner of the world.

“Being awarded the NSF-GRFP is an incredible honor, especially during a time when the value of science and our work at research institutions is doubted by many,” says Brown. “As a first-generation college student who has faced significant obstacles in my journey through academia, I feel profoundly grateful that this fellowship recognizes me not only for the value of my research, but more holistically as a human whose contributions to the scientific community go beyond intellectual merit alone.”

Jockush, who is currently department head in ecology and evolutionary biology, described Baranowski and Brown as “a dynamic duo in the lab this year.”

“Savanna is intellectually voracious. She is also a keen observer, self-starter and quick learner who embraces opportunities to be mentored and to serve as a mentor,” says Jockush. “I’m sure I have already learned as much from Savanna as she has from me. Savanna would probably say the same about Hailey, whom she mentors.

“Little about Hailey’s UConn journey has been predictable. She’s been a beekeeper, a student farmer, and a host of a WHUS radio show ‘the Hive,’ which features fun facts about bees along with music. Hailey’s outsized enthusiasm for bees, along with their seemingly effortless ability to connect with people, makes them the glue of multiple communities, including this year’s post-baccalaureate research cohort.

“In different ways, Savanna and Hailey have both earned this honor and the freedom it brings to pursue their curiosity.”

In addition to Baranowski and Brown, Abigail Yu ’20 (CLAS), who earned her undergraduate degree in physiology and neurobiology, also received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She is currently a graduate student at UCLA in the school’s interdepartmental doctorate program for neuroscience.

The Office of National Scholarships & Fellowships (ONSF) is a resource for students interested in learning more about the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and other prestigious scholarships and fellowships that support graduate study in all fields. ONSF is part of Enrichment Programs and is open to all graduate and undergraduate students at the University, including students at the regional campuses. For more information contact Vin Moscardelli, Director of UConn’s Office of National Scholarships and Fellowships.

MIL OSI USA News –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: At Cannes, decency and dress codes clash with fashion’s red carpet revolution

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén, Research Fellow at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California

Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson appear on the red carpet prior to the screening of ‘Die, My Love’ at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2025. Kristy Sparow/Getty Images

Ahead of the Cannes Film Festival, the spotlight moved from movie stars and directors to the festival’s fashion rules.

Cannes reminded guests to follow the standard black-tie dress code for evening events at the Grand Theatre Lumière – “long dresses and tuxedos” – while highlighting acceptable alternatives, such as cocktail dresses and pantsuits for women, and a black or navy suit with a tie for men.

The real stir, however, came from two additions to the formal guidelines: a ban on nudity “for decency reasons” and a restriction on oversize garments.

The new rules caught many stylists and stars by surprise, with some decrying the move as a regressive attempt to police clothing.

It’s hard not to wonder whether this is part of some broader conservative cultural shift around the world.

But I study the cultural and economic forces behind fashion and media, and I think a lot of the criticism of Cannes is unfounded. To me, the festival isn’t changing its identity. It’s reasserting it.

Red carpet control

Concerns about indecency on the red carpet have appeared before – most notably during the first televised Academy Awards in 1953.

In 1952, the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters adopted a censorship code in response to concerns about television’s influence on young audiences. Among its rules for “decency and decorum” were guidelines against revealing clothing, suggestive movements or camera angles that emphasized body parts – all to avoid causing “embarrassment” to the viewers.

Actress Inger Stevens at the 39th Academy Awards in 1967, a year before she was reprimanded for her skimpy attire.
Bettmann/Getty Images

To ensure that no actress would break the decency dress code, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hired acclaimed costume designer Edith Head as a fashion consultant for the show in 1953.

In my book “Fashion on the Red Carpet,” I explain how Head equipped backstage staff with kits to deal with any sartorial emergencies that might arise. That same year, the balcony cameras at the Pantages Theatre accidentally peeked down into the actresses’ cleavage as they walked to the stage. From then on, a supply of tulle – a type of versatile fabric that can easily cover revealing openings that expose too much skin – was kept backstage.

The 1960s posed new challenges. Youth fashion trends clashed with traditional dress codes and television censorship. In 1968, after actress Inger Stevens appeared on the red carpet wearing a mini skirt, the Academy sent a letter reminding attendees of the black-tie – preferably floor-length – dress code. When Barbra Streisand’s Scaasi outfit accidentally turned see-through under the lighting in 1969, Head again warned against “freaky, far-out, unusual fashion” ahead of the 1970 ceremony.

However, in the 1970s, the Oscars eliminated Head’s fashion consultant position. Despite maintaining its black-tie dress code, the absence of a fashion consultant opened the door to some provocative attire, ranging from Cher’s see-through, sheer outfits, to Edy Williams’ provocative, barely-there getups.

Once the fashion consultant position was eliminated for the Oscars, many attendees – like actress Edy Williams – tried to stand out from the crowd with provocative attire.
Fotos International/Getty Images

Old rules in a new era

Racy red carpet appearances have since become a hallmark of awards shows, particularly in the digital age.

Extravagance and shock are a way for celebrities and brands to stand out amid a glut of social media content, especially as brands increasingly pay a fortune to turn celebrities into walking billboards.

And in an era when red carpet looks are carefully curated ahead of time through partnerships with fashion brands, many celebrities expressed frustration about being unable to sport the outfits they had planned to wear at Cannes.

Stylist Rose Forde lamented the restrictions, saying, “You should be able to express yourself as an artist, with your style however you feel,” while actress Chloë Sevigny described the code as “an old-fashioned archaic rule.”

But I still can’t see the Cannes rules as part of any sort of broader conservative backlash.

Whether at the Oscars or the MTV Video Music Awards, backlash over celebrities baring too much skin has gone on for decades. Cannes hasn’t been spared from controversy, either: There was Michelle Morgan’s bikini in 1946, La Cicciolina’s topless look in 1988, Madonna’s Jean Paul Gaultier lingerie in 1991, Leila Depina’s barely-there pearl outfit in 2023 and Bella Hadid’s sheer pantyhose dress in 2024, to name just a few.

Cape Verdean model Leila Depina arrives for the screening of the film ‘Asteroid City’ during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
Christophe Simon/AFP via Getty Images

The festival has routinely reminded guests of its dress code, regardless of the cultural zeitgeist.

The “decency” rule, for example, is actually required by French law. Article 222-32 of the French Criminal Code classifies showing private parts in public as a sexual offense, and can lead to a year in prison and a fine. While the legal definition hinges on intent and setting, the festival, as a public event, technically has to operate within that framework.

Compared to white-tie events like the Nobel Prize award ceremony or a state banquet, Cannes’ black-tie requirement is relatively flexible. It allows for cocktail-length dresses and even accommodates pants and flat sandals for women.

Meanwhile, the worry about voluminous clothes points to a practical issue: the movement of bodies in tight spaces.

Unlike the Met Gala – where the fashion spectacle is the focus, and its red carpet is a stage for photo-ops – Cannes is a film festival. The red carpet is the main path thousands of people use to enter the theater.

A dramatic gown – like the one worn at the Met Gala by Cardi B in 2024 – could block others and cause delays. While a photo-op may be the primary goal for celebrities and the brands they promote, the festival has a screening schedule to stick to, and attendees must be able to easily access the venue and their seats.

Red carpet rules are fluid. Sometimes they adapt to cultural shifts. Sometimes they resist them. And sometimes, they’re there to make sure you can fit in your seat in the movie theater.

Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén received funding from Fulbright (2023-2024)

– ref. At Cannes, decency and dress codes clash with fashion’s red carpet revolution – https://theconversation.com/at-cannes-decency-and-dress-codes-clash-with-fashions-red-carpet-revolution-256948

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Work requirements are better at blocking benefits for low-income people than they are at helping those folks find jobs

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anne Whitesell, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Miami University

Meeting work requirements to get government benefits can lead to burdensome paperwork. JackF/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Republican lawmakers are battling over a bill that includes massive tax and spending cuts. But they’re having trouble agreeing on provisions intended to reduce the cost of Medicaid.

The popular health insurance program, which is funded by both the federal and state governments, covers about 78.5 million low-income and disabled people – more than 1 in 5 Americans.

The House is getting ready to vote on a budget bill designed to reduce federal Medicaid spending by requiring anyone enrolled in the program who appears to be able to get a job to either satisfy work requirements or lose their coverage. It’s still unclear, however, whether Senate Republicans would support that provision.

Although there are few precedents for such a mandate for Medicaid, other safety net programs have been enforcing similar rules for nearly three decades. I’m a political scientist who has extensively studied the work requirements of another safety net program: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

As I explain in my book, “Living Off the Government?
Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare,” work requirements place extra burdens on low-income families but do little to lift them out of poverty.

Work requirements for TANF

TANF gives families with very low incomes some cash they can spend on housing, food, clothing or whatever they need most. The Clinton administration launched it as a replacement for a similar program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in 1996. At the time, both political parties were eager to end a welfare system they believed was riddled with abuse. A big goal with TANF was ending the dependence of people getting cash benefits on the government by moving them from welfare to work.

Many people were removed from the welfare rolls, but not because work requirements led to economic prosperity. Instead, they had trouble navigating the bureaucratic demands.

TANF is administered by the states. They can set many rules of their own, but they must comply with an important federal requirement: Adult recipients have to work or engage in an authorized alternative activity for at least 30 hours per week. The number of weekly hours is only 20 if the recipient is caring for a child under the age of 6.

The dozen activities or so that can count toward this quota range from participating in job training programs to engaging in community service.

Some adults enrolled in TANF are exempt from work requirements, depending on their state’s own policies. The most common exemptions are for people who are ill, have a disability or are over age 60.

To qualify for TANF, families must have dependent children; in some states pregnant women also qualify. Income limits are set by the state and range from US$307 a month for a family of three in Alabama to $2,935 a month for a family of three in Minnesota.

Adult TANF recipients face a federal five-year lifetime limit on benefits. States can adopt shorter time limits; Arizona’s is 12 months.

An administrative burden

Complying with these work requirements generally means proving that you’re working or making the case that you should be exempt from this mandate. This places what’s known as an “administrative burden” on the people who get cash assistance. It often requires lots of documentation and time. If you have an unpredictable work schedule, inconsistent access to child care or obligations to care for an older relative, this paperwork is hard to deal with.

What counts as work, how many hours must be completed and who is exempt from these requirements often comes down to a caseworker’s discretion. Social science research shows that this discretion is not equally applied and is often informed by stereotypes.

The number of people getting cash assistance has fallen sharply since TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In some states caseloads have dropped by more than 50% despite significant population growth.

Some of this decline happened because recipients got jobs that paid them too much to qualify. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan office that provides economic research to Congress, attributes, at least in part, an increase in employment among less-educated single mothers in the 1990s to work requirements.

Not everyone who stopped getting cash benefits through TANF wound up employed, however. Other recipients who did not meet requirements fell into deep poverty.

Regardless of why people leave the program, when fewer low-income Americans get TANF benefits, the government spends less money on cash assistance. Federal funding has remained flat at $16.5 billion since 1996. Taking inflation into account, the program receives half as much funding as when it was created. In addition, states have used the flexibility granted them to direct most of their TANF funds to priorities other than cash benefits, such as pre-K education.

Many Americans who get help paying for groceries through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are also subject to work requirements. People the government calls “able-bodied adults without dependents” can only receive SNAP benefits for three months within a three-year period if they are not employed.

A failed experiment in Arkansas

Lawmakers in Congress and in statehouses have debated whether to add work requirements for Medicaid before. More than a dozen states have applied for waivers that would let them give it a try.

When Arkansas instituted Medicaid work requirements in 2018, during the first Trump administration, it was largely seen as a failure. Some 18,000 people lost their health care coverage, but employment rates did not increase.

After a court order stopped the policy in 2019, most people regained their coverage.

Georgia is currently the only state with Medicaid work requirements in effect, after implementing a waiver in July 2023. The program has experienced technical difficulties and has had trouble verifying work activities.

Other states, including Idaho, Indiana and Kentucky, are already asking the federal government to let them enforce Medicaid work requirements.

Then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson speaks during a news conference in 2017, in Little Rock, Arkansas, calling for Medicaid work requirements.
AP Photo/Andrew DeMillo

What this may mean for Medicaid

One version of the Republican budget bill floated in 2025 would introduce Medicaid work requirements nationwide for childless adults age 19 to 64, with some exemptions.

But most people covered by Medicaid in that age range are already working, and those who are not would likely be eligible for work requirement waivers. An analysis by KFF – a nonprofit that informs the public about health issues – shows that in 2023, 44% of Medicaid recipients were working full time and another 20% were working part time. In 2023, that was more than 16 million Americans.

About 20% of the American adults under 65 who are covered by Medicaid are not working due to illness or disability, or because of caregiving responsibilities, according to KFF. This includes both people caring for young children and those taking care of relatives with an illness or disability. In my own research, I read testimony from families seeking work exemptions because caregiving, including for children with disabilities, was a full-time job.

The rest of the adults under 65 with Medicaid coverage are not working because they are in school, are retired, cannot find work or have some other reason. It’s approximately 3.9 million Americans. Depending on what counts as “work,” they may be meeting any requirements that could be added to the program.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that introducing Medicaid work requirements would save around $300 billion over a decade. Given past experience with work requirements, it is unlikely those savings would come from Americans finding jobs.

My research suggests it’s more likely that the government would trim spending by taking away the health insurance of people eligible for Medicaid coverage who get tangled up in red tape.

Anne Whitesell is a 2024-2025 PRRI Public Fellow.

– ref. Work requirements are better at blocking benefits for low-income people than they are at helping those folks find jobs – https://theconversation.com/work-requirements-are-better-at-blocking-benefits-for-low-income-people-than-they-are-at-helping-those-folks-find-jobs-256839

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Empathy can take a toll – but 2 philosophers explain why we should see it as a strength

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Emad H. Atiq, Professor of Law and Philosophy, Cornell University

Empathy isn’t just about feelings. It’s also an aspect of knowledge. AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo

In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk offered his thoughts about what motivates political progressives to support immigration. In his view, the culprit was empathy, which he called “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.”

As shocking as Musk’s views are, however, they are far from unique. On the one hand, there is the familiar and widespread conservative critique of “bleeding heart” liberals as naive or overly emotional. But there is also a broader philosophical critique that raises worries about empathy on quite different and less political grounds, including findings in social science.

Empathy can make people weaker – both physically and practically, according to social scientists. Consider the phenomenon known as “empathy fatigue,” a major source of burnout among counselors, nurses and even neurosurgeons. These professionals devote their lives to helping others, yet the empathy they feel for their clients and patients wears them down, making it harder to do their jobs.

As philosophers, we agree that empathy can take a toll on both individuals and society. However, we believe that, at its core, empathy is a form of mental strength that enables us to better understand the impact of our actions on others, and to make informed choices.

The philosophical roots of empathy skepticism

The term “empathy” only entered the English language in the 1890s. But the general idea of being moved by others’ suffering has been a subject of philosophical attention for millennia, under labels such as “pity,” “sympathy” and “compassion.”

One of the earliest warnings about pity in Western philosophy comes from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. In his “Discourses,” he offers general advice about how to live a good life, centered on inner tranquility and freedom. When it comes to emotions and feelings, he writes: “He is free who lives as he wishes to live … And who chooses to live in sorrow, fear, envy, pity, desiring and failing in his desires, attempting to avoid something and falling into it? Not one.”

Feeling sorry for another person or feeling pity for them compromises our freedom, in Epictetus’s view. Those negative feelings are unpleasant, and nobody would choose them for themselves. Empathy would clearly fall into this same category, keeping us from living the good life.

A similar objection emerged much later from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche framed his discussion in terms of “Mitleid” – a German term that can be translated as either “pity” or “compassion.” Like Epictetus, Nietzsche worried that pity or compassion was a burden on the individual, preventing them from living the good life. In his book “Daybreak,” Nietzsche warns that such feelings could impair the very people who try to help others.

Epictetus’s and Nietzsche’s worries about pity or compassion carry over to empathy.

Recall, the phenomenon of empathy fatigue. One psychological explanation for why empathic people experience fatigue and even burnout is that empathy involves a kind of mirroring of other people’s mental life, a mirroring that can be physically unpleasant. When someone you love is in pain, you don’t just believe that they are in pain; you may feel it as if it is actually happening to you.

From a philosophical standpoint, empathy is intimately related to the domain of knowledge.
AP Photo/Elise Amendola

Results from neuroscience and cognitive psychology research indicate that there are different brain mechanisms involved in merely observing another’s pain versus empathizing with it. The latter involves unpleasant sensations of the type we experience when we are in pain. Empathy is thus difficult to bear precisely because being in pain is difficult to bear. And this sharpens the Stoic and Nietzschean worries: Why bother empathizing when it is unpleasant and, perhaps, not even necessary for helping others?

From understanding knowledge to appreciating empathy

The answer for why one should see empathy as a strength starts with a key insight from 20th century philosophy about the nature of knowledge.

That insight is based on a famous thought experiment by the Australian philosopher Frank Jackson. Jackson invites us to imagine a scientist named Mary who has studied colors despite having lived her entire life in a black and white room. She knows all the facts about the spectrum distribution of light sources and vision science. She’s read descriptions of the redness of roses and azaleas. But she’s never seen color herself. Does Mary know everything about redness? Many epistemologists – people who study the nature of knowledge – argue that she does not.

What Mary learns when she sees red for the first time is elusive. If she returns to her black and white room, never to see any colored objects again, her knowledge of the colors will likely diminish over time. To have a full, rich understanding of colors, one needs to experience them.

Bertrand Russell was actively involved in political activism on behalf of the experiences of others.
Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images

Thoughts like these led the philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell to argue that experience delivers a special kind of knowledge of things that can’t be reduced to knowledge of facts. Seeing, hearing, tasting and even feeling delivers what he called “knowledge by acquaintance.”

We have argued in a book and recent articles that Jackson’s and Russell’s conclusions apply to pain.

Consider a variation on Jackson’s thought experiment: Suppose Mary knows the facts about pain but hasn’t experienced it. As before, it would seem like her understanding of pain is incomplete. In fact, though Mary is a fictional character, there are real people who report having never experienced pain as an unpleasant sensation – a condition known as “pain asymbolia”.

In Russell’s terminology, such people haven’t personally experienced how unpleasant pain can be. But even people without pain asymbolia can become less familiar with pain and hardship during times when things are going well for them. All of us can temporarily lose the rich experiential grasp of what it is like to be distressed. So, when we consider the pain and suffering of others in the abstract and without directly feeling it, it is very much like trying to grasp the nature of redness while being personally acquainted only with a field of black and white.

That, we argue, is where empathy comes in. Through experiential simulation of another’s feelings, empathy affords us a rich grasp of the distress that others feel. The upshot is that empathy isn’t just a subjective sensation. It affords us a more accurate understanding of others’ experiences and emotions.

Empathy is thus a form of knowledge that can be hard to bear, just as pain can be hard to bear. But that’s precisely why empathy, properly cultivated, is a strength. As one of us has argued, it takes courage to empathically engage with others, just as it takes courage to see and recognize problems around us. Conversely, an unwillingness to empathize can stem from a familiar weakness: a fear of knowledge.

So, when deciding complex policy questions, say, about immigration, resisting empathy impairs our decision-making. It keeps us from understanding what’s at stake. That is why it is vital to ask ourselves what policies we would favor if we were empathically acquainted with, and so fully informed of, the plight of others.

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. Empathy can take a toll – but 2 philosophers explain why we should see it as a strength – https://theconversation.com/empathy-can-take-a-toll-but-2-philosophers-explain-why-we-should-see-it-as-a-strength-254554

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: FDA will approve COVID-19 vaccine only for older adults and high-risk groups – a public health expert explains the new rules

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Libby Richards, Professor of Nursing, Purdue University

Older adults will continue to receive yearly COVID-19 shots, but lower-risk groups will not, says the FDA. dusanpetkovic via iStock / Getty Images Plus

On May 20, 2025, the Food and Drug Administration announced a new stance on who should receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

The agency said it would approve new versions of the vaccine only for adults 65 years of age and older as well as for people with one or more risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes. These risk factors include medical conditions such as asthma, cancer, chronic kidney disease, heart disease and diabetes.

However, healthy younger adults and children who fall outside of these groups may not be eligible to receive the COVID-19 shot this fall. Vaccine manufacturers will have to conduct clinical trials to demonstrate that the vaccine benefits low-risk groups.

FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and the agency’s head of vaccines, Vinay Prasad, described the new framework in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine and in a public webcast.

The Conversation U.S. asked Libby Richards, a nursing professor involved in public health promotion, to explain why the changes were made and what they mean for the general public.

Why did the FDA diverge from past practice?

Until the May 20 announcement, getting a yearly COVID-19 vaccine was recommended for everyone ages 6 months and older, regardless of their health risk.

According to Makary and Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration is moving away from these universal recommendations and instead taking a risk-based approach based on its interpretation of public health trends – specifically, the declining COVID-19 booster uptake, a lack of strong evidence that repeated boosters improve health outcomes for healthy people and the fact that natural immunity from past COVID-19 infections is widespread.

The FDA states it wants to ensure the vaccine is backed by solid clinical trial data, especially for low-risk groups.

Was this a controversial decision or a clear consensus?

The FDA’s decision to adopt a risk-based framework for the COVID-19 vaccine aligns with the expected recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an advisory group of vaccine experts offering expert guidance to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, which is scheduled to meet in June 2025. But while this advisory committee was also expected to recommend allowing low-risk people to get annual COVID-19 vaccines if they want to, the FDA’s policy will likely make that difficult.

Although the FDA states that its new policy aims to promote greater transparency and evidenced-based decision-making, the change is controversial – in part because it circumvents the usual process for evaluating vaccine recommendations. The FDA is enacting this policy change by limiting its approval of the vaccine to high-risk groups, and it is doing so without any new data supporting its decision. Usually, however, the FDA broadly approves a vaccine based on whether it is safe and effective, and decisions on who should be eligible to receive it are left to the CDC, which receives research-based guidance from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Change is coming to COVID-19 vaccine policy.
Rock Obst, CC BY-SA

Additionally, FDA officials point to Canada, Australia and some European countries that limit vaccine recommendations to older adults and other high-risk people as a model for its revised framework. But vaccine strategies vary widely, and this more conservative approach has not necessarily proven superior. Also, those countries have universal health care systems and have a track record of more equitable access to COVID-19 care and better COVID-19 outcomes.

Another question is how health officials’ positions on COVID-19 vaccines affect public perception. Makary and Prasad noted that COVID-19 vaccination campaigns may have actually eroded public trust in vaccination. But some vaccine experts have expressed concerns that limiting COVID-19 vaccine access might further fuel vaccine hesitancy because any barrier to vaccine access can reduce uptake and hinder efforts to achieve widespread immunity.

What conditions count as risk factors?

The New England Journal of Medicine article includes a lengthy list of conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 and notes that about 100 million to 200 million people will fall into this category and will thus be eligible to get the vaccine.

Pregnancy is included. Some items on the list, however, are unclear. For example, the list includes asthma, but the data that asthma is a risk factor for severe COVID-19 is scant.

Also on the list is physical inactivity, which likely applies to a vast swath of Americans and is difficult to define. Studies have found links between regular physical activity and reduced risk of severe COVID-19 infection, but it’s unclear how health care providers will define and measure physical inactivity when assessing a patient’s eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines.

Most importantly, the list leaves out an important group – caregivers and household members of people at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19 infection. This omission leaves high-risk people more vulnerable to exposure to COVID-19 from healthy people they regularly interact with. Multiple countries the new framework refers to do include this group.

Why is the FDA requiring new clinical trials?

According to the FDA, the benefits of multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines for healthy adults are currently unproven. It’s true that studies beyond the fourth vaccine dose are scarce. However, multiple studies have demonstrated that the vaccine is effective at preventing the risk of severe COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death in low-risk adults and children. Receiving multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines has also been shown to reduce the risk of long COVID.

The FDA is moving to risk-based access for COVID-19 vaccines.

The FDA is requiring vaccine manufactures to conduct additional large randomized clinical trials to further evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 boosters for healthy adults and children. These trials will primarily test whether the vaccines prevent symptomatic infections, and secondarily whether they prevent hospitalization and death. Such trials are more complex, costly and time-consuming than the more common approach of testing for immunological response.

This requirement will likely delay both the timeliness and the availability of COVID-19 vaccine boosters and slow public health decision-making.

Will low-risk people be able to get a COVID-19 shot?

Not automatically. Under the new FDA framework, healthy adults who wish to receive the fall COVID-19 vaccine will face obstacles. Health care providers can administer vaccines “off-label”, but insurance coverage is widely based on FDA recommendations. The new, narrower FDA approval will likely reduce both access to COVID-19 vaccines for the general public and insurance coverage for COVID-19 vaccines.

The FDA’s focus on individual risks and benefits may overlook broader public health benefits. Communities with higher vaccination rates have fewer opportunities to spread the virus.

What about vaccines for children?

High-risk children age 6 months and older who have conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 are still eligible for the vaccine under the new framework. As of now, healthy children age 6 months and older without underlying medical conditions will not have routine access to COVID-19 vaccines until further clinical trial data is available.

Existing vaccines already on the market will remain available, but it is unclear how long they will stay authorized and how the change will affect childhood vaccination overall.

Libby Richards has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the American Nurses Foundation, and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute

– ref. FDA will approve COVID-19 vaccine only for older adults and high-risk groups – a public health expert explains the new rules – https://theconversation.com/fda-will-approve-covid-19-vaccine-only-for-older-adults-and-high-risk-groups-a-public-health-expert-explains-the-new-rules-257226

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: WHO is finalizing a new treaty that prepares for the next pandemic − but the US isn’t signing

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nicole Hassoun, Professor of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New York

The 78th World Health Assembly is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 19-27, 2025. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

On March 20, 2025, members of the World Health Organization adopted the world’s first pandemic agreement, following three years of “intensive negotiations launched by governments in response to the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The U.S., however, did not participate, in part because of its intention to withdraw from the WHO.

Global health experts are hailing the agreement as a historic moment.

What does the agreement mean for the world, and how can it make everyone safer and more prepared for the next pandemic?

The Conversation asked Nicole Hassoun, a professor at Binghamton University and executive director of Global Health Impact, to explain the pandemic accord, its prospects for advancing global health, and the significance of the U.S.’s absence from it.

What will the pandemic agreement do?

The accord will bolster pandemic preparation within individual countries and around the world.

Countries signing onto the agreement are committing to improve their disease surveillance and grow their heath care workforces, strengthen their regulatory systems and invest in research and development. It encourages countries to strengthen their health regulations and infrastructure, improve communication with the public about pandemics and increase funding for preparation and response efforts.

It also includes new mechanisms for producing and distributing vaccines and other essential countermeasures. Finally, it encourages countries to coordinate their responses and share information about infectious diseases and intellectual property so that vaccines and other essential countermeasures can be made available more quickly.

The agreement will take effect once enough countries ratify it, which may take several years.

Why isn’t the US involved?

The Biden administration was broadly supportive of a pandemic agreement and was an active participant in negotiations.

Prior to Donald Trump’s reelection, however, Republican governors had signed a letter opposing the treaty, echoing a conservative think tank’s concerns about U.S. sovereignty.

The U.S. withdrew from negotiations when President Trump signed an executive order to withdraw from the WHO on the day he was inaugurated for his second term.

Why could the lack of US involvement be beneficial for the world?

The lack of U.S. involvement likely resulted in a much more equitable treaty, and it is not clear that countries could have reached an agreement had the U.S. continued to object to key provisions.

It was only once the U.S. withdrew from the negotiations that an agreement was reached. The U.S. and several other wealthy countries were concerned with protecting their pharmaceutical industry’s profits and resisted efforts aimed at convincing pharmaceutical companies to share the knowledge, data and intellectual property needed for producing new vaccines and other essential countermeasures.

Other negotiators sought greater access to vaccines and other treatments during a pandemic for poorer countries, which often rely on patented technologies from global pharmaceutical companies.

While most people in wealthy countries had access to COVID-19 vaccines as early as 2021, many people in developing countries had to wait years for vaccines.

How could the agreement broaden access for treatments?

One of the contentious issues in the pandemic agreement has to do with how many vaccines manufacturers in each country must share in exchange for access to genetic sequences to emerging infectious diseases. Countries are still negotiating a system for sharing the genetic information on pathogens in return for access to vaccines themselves. It is important that researchers can get these sequences to make vaccines. And, of course, people need access to the vaccines once they are developed.

Still, there are many more promising aspects of the agreement for which no further negotiations are necessary. For instance, the agreement will increase global vaccine supply by increasing manufacturing around the world.

The agreement also specifies that countries and the WHO should work together to create a mechanism for fairly sharing the intellectual property, data and knowledge needed to produce vaccines and other essential health products. If financing for new innovation requires equitable access to the new technologies that are developed, many people in poor countries may get access to vaccines much more quickly in the next pandemic. The agreement also encourages individual countries to offer sufficient incentives for pharmaceutical companies to extend access to developing countries.

If countries implement these changes, that will benefit people in rich countries as well as poor ones. A more equitable distribution of vaccines can contain the spread of disease, saving millions of lives.

What more should be done, and does the US have a role to play?

In my view, the best way to protect public health moving forward is for countries to sign on to the agreement and devote more resources to global health initiatives. This is particularly important given declining investment and participation in the WHO and the contraction of other international health initiatives, such as USAID.

Without international coordination, it will become harder to catch and address problems early enough to prevent epidemics from becoming pandemics.

It will also be imperative for member countries to provide funding to support the agreement’s goals and secure the innovation and access to new technologies. This requires building the basic health infrastructure to ensure shots can get into people’s arms.

Nicole Hassoun has receive funding from the WHO and worked as a consultant for the UN.

– ref. WHO is finalizing a new treaty that prepares for the next pandemic − but the US isn’t signing – https://theconversation.com/who-is-finalizing-a-new-treaty-that-prepares-for-the-next-pandemic-but-the-us-isnt-signing-256191

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Billions of cicadas are emerging, from Cape Cod to north Georgia – here’s how and why we map them

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Chris Simon, Senior Research Scientist of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut

Three cicadas in North Carolina during the 2003 Brood IX emergence Chris Simon, CC BY-ND

If they’re in your area, you’ll know it from their loud droning, chirping and buzzing sounds. Cicadas from Brood XIV – one of the largest groups of cicadas that emerge from underground on a 13-year or 17-year cycle – are surfacing in May and June 2025 across 12 states. This large-scale biological event reaches from northern Georgia up into Indiana and Ohio and eastward through the mid-Atlantic, extending as far north as Long Island, N.Y. and Massachusetts.

Through mid-June, wooded areas will ring with cicadas’ loud mating calls. After mating, each female will lay hundreds of eggs inside small tree branches. Then the adult cicadas will die. When the eggs hatch six weeks later, new cicada nymphs will fall from the trees and burrow back underground, starting the cycle again.

We are evolutionary ecologists who study periodical cicadas to understand questions about the natural history, genetics and geographic distribution of life. This work starts with mapping where they appear.

We’ve been doing this for decades, updating a process begun by entomologists in the mid-1800s. Our latest maps are published online and searchable.

Periodical cicadas emerge on 13- or 17-year cycles in enormous numbers, which increases their odds of finding mates and avoiding predators long enough to reproduce.

Mapping the presence of such a noisy species might seem straightforward, but it’s actually complex. And accuracy matters because there are seven species of periodical cicadas — four with 13-year life cycles and three with 17-year cycles. Different broods can share boundaries, and some cicadas that emerge this year may be members of broods other than XIV, coming out early or late.

A lot of work goes into verifying the data in our maps so that they show the status of these unique insects as accurately as possible. Here’s a look at the process, and at how you can contribute:

Refining past records

We first started creating our maps on paper by collecting all known specimen records of 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas from past scientific studies and museums large and small across the eastern U.S., where these broods are located. For centuries, museum specimens have been the gold standard for documenting the presence of a species.

But past standards for labeling specimens were different. Many old museum labels simply noted very approximate locations where specimens were collected. Sometimes they just recorded the city, county or state.

Today we collect our records along roads. We listen for species-specific songs and then record the cicada species identity on computers, with their GPS locations. Often we’ll stop to examine a patch of forest. If the cicadas are singing, we note whether the chorus is light, moderate, loud or distant.

If stormy weather damps down the cicada songs, we look for signs of emergence, such as cast-off skins, adult cicadas on plants, or egg scars on branches.

Dozens of small brown cicadas climb grass stems during a Brood VIII emergence in Rector, Pa.
Chris Simon, CC BY-ND

Connecting the data dots

In some regions, such as the U.S. Midwest, roads are arranged on a grid that reflects land survey lines. Networks like these can be ideal for mapping species distributions. Delineating an area that’s occupied by a specific cicada brood may be as simple as connecting the dots that represent our positive sightings.

In other places, such as Appalachia, roads often follow ridges or valleys and miss many areas. Here, it’s harder to infer where cicadas are present between data points, especially when those data points are located on different roads.

Drawing a boundary that contains every data point in a survey area usually will end up overstating the area where periodical cicadas are emerging. We intentionally design our maps to be conservative, so we display our information as point data and do not attempt to draw brood boundaries or generalize our data to counties.

It’s equally important to record absence points – places where no cicadas are present. Otherwise, an area might be blank either because a species is absent or simply because no one looked for cicadas there.

A cicada nymph from Brood X sheds its skin during an emergence in Herndon, Va.
Chris Simon, CC BY-ND

We have been verifying periodical cicada records and updating maps since the late 1980s. Our more recent maps include geographic information for data collection points.

Where our maps show the presence of cicadas, a senior member of our project has verified that cicadas were present at that place and date. The insects may have been just emerging, singing loudly, or on their way out.

Where our maps show the absence of cicadas, that means that one of us or a collaborator visited that location under appropriate conditions and verified that no cicadas were present. Where our maps show no records, we have no information on presence or absence.

Each color on this map represents a different periodical cicada brood. Brood XIV is the darker green extending from the Midwest to eastern Massachusetts.
University of Connecticut, used with permission., CC BY-ND

Crowdsourcing the emergence

In recent years, citizen scientists – members of the public collecting data for scientific research – have revolutionized mapping efforts, using apps and the internet. Apps such as iNaturalist and Cicada Safari allow users to submit geolocated photos, sounds and videos with a few clicks.

When we receive these records, our colleague Gene Kritsky, an emeritus entomologist at Mount St. Joseph University, vets them with his team. Then they are uploaded to a map on Cicada Safari.

Citizen science maps have different biases from those that are created by our expert teams. Members of the public tend to collect their data in areas where residents are familiar with cicadas, there is good internet connectivity and media stories have piqued volunteer reporters’ interest. These maps don’t show absence records or all localities, especially in sparsely populated areas.

Even records supported by sounds or photographs may not be accurate. They may capture “stragglers” from broods that are not part of the current year’s cycle but are emerging one to four years early or late.

This phenomenon may become more commonplace in response to changing climates. Warming temperatures create longer growing seasons, which can enable at least some fraction of a periodical cicada population to develop faster and be ready to emerge earlier.

For this reason, maps based on citizen science reports are most valuable if the same observers report back from the same locations repeatedly over several weeks. The longer-term presence of periodical cicadas indicates that what’s being tallied is a non-straggler population, or a straggler population on its way to permanently shifting the timing of its emergence.

An evolving story

Maps are valuable tools for understanding how species fit into their environment, how they interact with other species and how they respond to change. However, it is important to be aware of any map’s biases and limitations when interpreting it. Research requires dedication and repetition over many years.

Our research suggests that climate warming has resulted in more four-year-early straggling events that are increasingly dense, widespread and likely to leave offspring. The result is a mosaic of broods that makes the jigsaw puzzle of periodical cicada distribution more complicated, but more interesting. Understanding how these four-year shifts are encoded in cicadas’ genes is a mystery that remains to be solved.

Chris Simon has received funding from The National Science Foundation, The National Geographic Society, The Marsden Fund of New Zealand, and the University of Connecticut.

John Cooley has received funding in the past from NSF and National Geographic Society. There are no current grants funding this work.

– ref. Billions of cicadas are emerging, from Cape Cod to north Georgia – here’s how and why we map them – https://theconversation.com/billions-of-cicadas-are-emerging-from-cape-cod-to-north-georgia-heres-how-and-why-we-map-them-255461

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: A decade after the release of ‘The Martian’ and a decade out from the world it envisions, a planetary scientist checks in on real-life Mars exploration

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ari Koeppel, Postdoctoral Scientist in Earth and Planetary Science, Dartmouth College

‘The Martian’ protagonist Mark Watney contemplates his ordeal. 20th Century Fox

Andy Weir’s bestselling story “The Martian” predicts that by 2035 NASA will have landed humans on Mars three times, perfected return-to-Earth flight systems and collaborated with the China National Space Administration. We are now 10 years past the Hollywood adaptation’s 2015 release and 10 years shy of its fictional timeline. At this midpoint, Mars exploration looks a bit different than how it was portrayed in “The Martian,” with both more discoveries and more controversy.

As a planetary geologist who works with NASA missions to study Mars, I follow exploration science and policy closely. In 2010, the U.S. National Space Policy set goals for human missions to Mars in the 2030s. But in 2017, the White House Space Policy Directive 1 shifted NASA’s focus toward returning first to the Moon under what would become the Artemis program.

Although concepts for crewed missions to Mars have gained popularity, NASA’s actual plans for landing humans on Mars remain fragile. Notably, over the last 10 years, it has been robotic, rather than crewed, missions that have propelled discovery and the human imagination forward.

NASA’s 2023 Moon to Mars Strategy and Objectives Development document lays out the steps the agency was shooting for at the time, to go first to the Moon, and from there to Mars.
NASA

Robotic discoveries

Since 2015, satellites and rovers have reshaped scientists’ understanding of Mars. They have revealed countless insights into how its climate has changed over time.

As Earth’s neighbor, climate shifts on Mars also reflect solar system processes affecting Earth at a time when life was first taking hold. Thus, Mars has become a focal point for investigating the age old questions of “where do we come from?” and “are we alone?”

The Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have driven dozens of miles studying layered rock formations that serve as a record of Mars’ past. By studying sedimentary layers – rock formations stacked like layers of a cake – planetary geologists have pieced together a vivid tale of environmental change that dwarfs what Earth is currently experiencing.

Mars was once a world of erupting volcanoes, glaciers, lakes and flowing rivers – an environment not unlike early Earth. Then its core cooled, its magnetic field faltered and its atmosphere drifted away. The planet’s exposed surface has retained signs of those processes ever since in the form of landscape patterns, sequences of layered sediment and mineral mixtures.

Layered sedimentary rocks exposed within the craters of Arabia Terra, Mars, recording ancient surface processes. Photo from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment.
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Arabia Terra

One focus of scientific investigation over the last 10 years is particularly relevant to the setting of “The Martian” but fails to receive mention in the story. To reach his best chance of survival, protagonist Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, must cross a vast, dusty and crater-pocked region of Mars known as Arabia Terra.

In 2022 and 2023, I, along with colleagues at Northern Arizona University and Johns Hopkins University, published detailed analyses of the layered materials there using imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey satellites.

By using infrared imagery and measuring the dimensions of surface features, we linked multiple layered deposits to the same episodes of formation and learned more about the widespread crumbling nature of the terrain seen there today. Because water tends to cement rock tightly together, that loose material indicates that around 3.5 billion years ago, that area had a drying climate.

To make the discussions about this area easier, we even worked with the International Astronomical Union to name a few previously unnamed craters that were mentioned in the story. For example, one that Watney would have driven right by is now named Kozova Crater, after a town in Ukraine.

More to explore

Despite rapid advances in Mars science, many unknowns remain. Scientists still aren’t sure of the precise ages, atmospheric conditions and possible signatures of life associated with each of the different rock types observed on the surface.

For instance, the Perseverance rover recently drilled into and analyzed a unique set of rocks hosting organic – that is, carbon-based – compounds. Organic compounds serve as the building blocks of life, but more detailed analysis is required to determine whether these specific rocks once hosted microbial life.

The in-development Mars Sample Return mission aims to address these basic outstanding questions by delivering the first-ever unaltered fragments of another world to Earth. The Perseverance rover is already caching rock and soil samples, including ones hosting organic compounds, in sealed tubes. A future lander will then need to pick up and launch the caches back to Earth.

Sampling Mars rocks could tell scientists more about the red planet’s past, and whether it could have hosted life.

Once home, researchers can examine these materials with instruments orders of magnitude more sensitive than anything that could be flown on a spacecraft. Scientists stand to learn far more about the habitability, geologic history and presence of any signs of life on Mars through the sample return campaign than by sending humans to the surface.

This perspective is why NASA, the European Space Agency and others have invested some US$30 billion in robotic Mars exploration since the 1960s. The payoff has been staggering: That work has triggered rapid technological advances in robotics, telecommunications and materials science. For example, Mars mission technology has led to better sutures for heart surgery and cars that can drive themselves.

It has also bolstered the status of NASA and the U.S. as bastions of modern exploration and technology; and it has inspired millions of students to take an interest in scientific fields.

A selfie from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover with the Ingenuity helicopter, taken with the rover’s extendable arm on April 6, 2021.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Calling the red planet home?

Colonizing Mars has a seductive appeal. It’s hard not to cheer for the indomitable human spirit while watching Watney battle dust storms, oxygen shortages and food scarcity over 140 million miles from rescue.

Much of the momentum toward colonizing Mars is now tied to SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk, whose stated mission to make humanity a “multi-planetary species” has become a sort of rallying cry. But while Mars colonization is romantic on paper, it is extremely difficult to actually carry out, and many critics have questioned the viability of a Mars habitation as a refuge far from Earth.

Now, with NASA potentially facing a nearly 50% reduction to its science budget, the U.S. risks dissolving its planetary science and robotic operations portfolio altogether, including sample return.

Nonetheless, President Donald Trump and Musk have pushed for human space exploration to somehow continue to progress, despite those proposed cuts – effectively sidelining the robotic, science-driven programs that have underpinned all of Mars exploration to date.

Yet, it is these programs that have yielded humanity’s richest insights into the red planet and given both scientists and storytellers like Andy Weir the foundation to imagine what it must be like to stand on Mars’ surface at all.

Ari Koeppel receives funding from NASA.

– ref. A decade after the release of ‘The Martian’ and a decade out from the world it envisions, a planetary scientist checks in on real-life Mars exploration – https://theconversation.com/a-decade-after-the-release-of-the-martian-and-a-decade-out-from-the-world-it-envisions-a-planetary-scientist-checks-in-on-real-life-mars-exploration-255752

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Lifecycle of a research grant – behind the scenes of the system that funds science

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kelly S. Mix, Associate Dean for Research, Innovation, and Partnerships in the College of Education, University of Maryland

Without grants for salaries, supplies and more, many research labs would be empty. Solskin/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Science funding is a hot topic these days and people have questions about how grants work. Who decides whether a researcher will receive funds? What’s the decision-making process? How is the money spent once a grant proposal has been approved?

As a veteran academic researcher, department chairperson and associate dean for research, I have seen this process play out from multiple perspectives – as a grant recipient, grant reviewer and university administrator.

Research organizations and major federal funders, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), all rely on careful systems of checks and balances to ensure high standards of scholarship and financial integrity at every stage of a grant’s lifecycle. Here’s how it all works.

The birth of a grant application

To receive research funding, scientists submit grant applications to specific programs. A cancer researcher might apply to the Bioengineering Research Grants program at NIH. Someone investigating sustainable fishing in freshwater habitats could seek funding from the Population and Community Ecology program at the NSF.

Applications must be responsive to the funding program’s specific request for proposals, or RFP. The RFP tells researchers what the agency wants to fund. For example, the NSF’s Education Core Research program currently only funds projects focused on STEM learning.

RFPs might have other application requirements, too, like explaining how a project will contribute to the public good, or supporting training for new scientists.

Grant applications have two main parts. First, the researcher presents an extensive literature review to explain why the new project is needed and what it will add to the existing knowledge base. Next, they write up a detailed description of the proposed research plan. This basic two-part structure ensures that funded research will yield important information that is both new and trustworthy.

Reviewers read the grant applications and compare them to the RFP. Applications that don’t address all the topics and research priorities listed there are unlikely to be funded. I once had a proposal rejected without further review because I left out a paragraph addressing one of the items in the agency’s new RFP. This initial review for RFP compliance is called “triage” and, believe me, nobody wants to see their hard work triaged out of the running.

A panel of anonymous content experts carefully reviews applications to see if they’re worth funding.
PeopleImages/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Merit review: How funding decisions are made

Federal funding decisions are made through rigorous merit review.

For each round of funding, agencies assemble a panel of anonymous content experts who will look for strengths and weaknesses in the proposals – anything from innovation in the question posed to logical flaws in the hypotheses or technical problems with the planned data analyses. With a group of experts looking for every possible weakness, having your grant reviewed is a bit like running a gauntlet.

This careful review might help explain why 70% to 80% of grant applications typically go unfunded at agencies like the NIH and the NSF. But this level of scrutiny is necessary to prevent funding poorly designed or low-impact research.

Several safeguards head off bias or unethical influences during merit review.

First, reviewers must disclose any conflicts of interest with the pool of applicants before they can access the applications. Conflicts of interest can include situations like the reviewer having been the student of an applicant, the applicant and reviewer being divorced, or the proposal coming from the reviewer’s current institution.

When conflicts are identified, the reviewer can remain on the panel, but they are completely excluded from decisions related to that application. They cannot even be in the room when it is discussed.

Second, reviewers usually attend a meeting, supervised by program staff from the funding agency, where everyone debates the proposal’s merits before they score it. Sometimes panel members disagree in their initial critiques and use the meeting to hash out their differences. Other times, a reviewer might raise an important concern that others missed.

Group discussion helps ensure a transparent and thorough review. It also stops any single reviewer from dictating the fate of a proposal because everyone hears the discussion and then scores the proposal individually. Whether a reviewer thinks an application is outstanding or fatally flawed, they must convince the rest of the experts in the room for the group’s overall scores to be greatly affected.

Third, these discussions, along with the applications themselves and any written critiques, are strictly confidential. Reviewers sign written confidentiality agreements under penalty of perjury. This practice stops panelists from scoring political points by telling an applicant they defended their proposal, or divulging trade secrets and proprietary information.

Following the meeting, final decisions are made by program staff using the reviewers’ evaluations. Some agencies adhere closely to the reviewers’ numeric scores – like a grade – when making these decisions. Others ask reviewers to sort applications into “fundable” or “non-fundable” piles; program staff then have some discretion on the final decision. But all decisions are rooted in the peer critiques.

Researchers and their institutions keep careful records of where every penny gets spent.
krisanapong detraphiphat/Moment

Spending the funds

Headlines about universities receiving large grants may leave the impression that such funds are simply added to the institution’s general coffers. But research funds are granted to support specific research projects, and agencies have strict rules about spending the money.

For example, if a researcher wants to present their findings at a conference, they can charge the grant for their travel costs, but they may not charge above a certain amount for their lodging or purchase business class airplane tickets. Similarly, if a researcher wants to have more time to devote to a funded project, they can use part of the money to pay their own salary in the summer, but there are precise limits on the amount of funding that can be used for this purpose.

It’s not up to the researcher alone to follow these rules. The organization that employs the researcher, usually a university, enforces the agency rules because it’s the employing organization that controls the grant accounts.

Returning to the conference travel example, a university researcher who wants to attend a conference must request permission and provide a budget for the trip before purchasing tickets. If the travel request is approved by their department chair, dean and the university travel office, they may go ahead with their reservations. However, if they don’t produce receipts when they return, they will not be allowed to charge the grant. The same process applies to buying new computers for the lab, ordering standardized tests for a study or purchasing gift cards for study participants.

Research organizations are highly motivated to enforce spending rules properly, because everyone in the organization is at risk of losing access to federal funds in the future if they let things slide. Funding agencies also require periodic reports and sometimes conduct audits to ensure compliance. These practices help guard against any misuse of funds.

The way agencies issue grants to researchers isn’t perfect. But processes like issuing detailed RFPs, conducting merit reviews and monitoring financial compliance go a long way toward protecting the integrity of the research funding process.

Kelly S. Mix currently receives research funding from the Institute of Education Sciences (U.S. Dept. of Education) and has previously received research funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and various foundations. The opinions and positions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the opinions and positions of these funders. She has volunteered for the Democratic Party.

– ref. Lifecycle of a research grant – behind the scenes of the system that funds science – https://theconversation.com/lifecycle-of-a-research-grant-behind-the-scenes-of-the-system-that-funds-science-255163

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: M&S cyber-attack: how to protect yourself from sim-swap fraud

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alan Woodward, Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Surrey

Our mobile phone numbers have become a de facto form of identification, but they can be hijacked for nefarious purposes. Just such an attack may have been involved in the recent very damaging cyber-attack on Marks & Spencer (M&S).

The hack happened in April and forced M&S to stop taking online orders. It also caused disruption to some of its stores. The company has said that its online business could be disrupted into July and could result in an estimated £300m hit to profits.

The M&S incident is being widely reported as an example of what is known as “sim swap”. It’s a form of fraud that is on the rise and understanding how to protect against it will help limit its impact.

Our mobile numbers are unique and we have them for years. This means that users generally want to keep hold of their number when they change they phones, or lose them. When a user buys a new phone, or just a new sim card for a spare device they might have, they might call their service provider to transfer their longstanding mobile number to the new sim card.

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The problem is that the service provider doesn’t know if it is really them calling to transfer the number. Hence, they launch into a series of questions to make sure they are who they say they are.

But what if someone else has the answers to the questions the service provider asks? Is your mother’s maiden name or that of your first pet really that secret?

Easy pickings

The rise of social media has made it easier than ever for scammers to piece together what was once considered private information. But this might not even be necessary. What if the service provider simply takes pity and falls for a tale of woe as to why you need to transfer the number but cannot remember an answer?

Suddenly, someone else can make and receive calls and SMS messages using your
number. This means they could make calls at your expense. However, it might seem logical that as soon as the service provider is informed of this, the provider should be able to stop it, and is likely to refund any fraudulent charges.

However, there’s a catch. Remember when you created your email, bank account or even online grocery shopping account and you were encouraged to set up two-factor authentication (2FA)? You listened, but the system set your “second factor” as your mobile phone number. You input your username and password, and it asks for a time-limited code that it sends to you as an SMS message.

If someone has managed to obtain your login username and password, typically through a phishing email or even a data breach, and they have control over your phone number, they now have everything they need to login to your account.

This so-called sim-swap fraud is complex to pull off, but it is on the rise. Attacks rose by 1,055% in 2024, according to the National Fraud Database, and it has allegedly been used in many high-profile hacks such as that of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019.

Effective counter-measures

It is often used to target users who have high system privileges that gives them to access to systems that most users don’t have permissions for. Imagine such a sim swap was carried out on a system administrator. These are the very people who set and reset passwords, grant access to computer systems and, most dangerously, can upload further software to the network and its attached systems.

This has proved such a useful hack that some services are switching to sending that time-limited code to you to messaging services such as WhatsApp. However, this approach is not foolproof, and so there is a rising adoption of authentication apps, which display a synchronised code that matches one held by the service to ensure authenticity.

Nothing is 100% secure, and the security of authentication apps, assumes that you have a separate, strong password to prevent those who have stolen your phone number from accessing these authentication checks.

Efforts to improve login security have led to the rise of what are known as passkeys, which are long sequence of random digits called cryptographic keys that are stored on your device, such as a smartphone or computer. It is only shown to your online account when you unlock your phone.

A key step in authentication is therefore the method the person uses to access their device. This could be a biometric authenticator like a fingerprint or face scan, or a screen lock pin number. Passkeys are more resistant to phishing attacks and data breaches than traditional passwords.

So, the next time you phone your mobile service provider and they insist on asking a host of questions to prove your identity, don’t complain, just think what could happen if they didn’t do sufficient checks and someone carried out a sim-swap scam on your number.

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

– ref. M&S cyber-attack: how to protect yourself from sim-swap fraud – https://theconversation.com/mands-cyber-attack-how-to-protect-yourself-from-sim-swap-fraud-256611

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Anti-environmentalism is on the rise but it’s full of contradictions

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alastair Bonnett, Professor of Geography, Newcastle University

Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock

Anti-environmentalism is gaining ground. Attacks on the net zero goal and hostility to conservation measures and anti-pollution targets are becoming more common. And, as recent election results have shown, these tactics are reshaping politics in Britain and across the west.

Anti-environmentalism is a rejection of both environmental initiatives and activism. But despite its sudden rise and bold rhetoric, it is built on shaky foundations. The messages it offers are often contradictory and row against the tide of everyday experience.

Take the US president, Donald Trump. He dismantled many environmental protections in his last term of office, and is now removing those that are left – including support for research that even mentions the word climate. Yet he told a rally in Wisconsin in 2024: “I’m an environmentalist. I want clean air and clean water. Really clean water. Really clean air.”

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Some of the contradictions of anti-environmentalism reflect its departure from traditional conservatism. Although routinely identified as “conservative”, the populist anti-green politics of Republicans in the US and Reform in the UK, along with the AfD in Germany and National Rally in France, represent a radical challenge to the ideals of continuity and conservation that were once at the heart of conservatism.

The Conservative Environment Network is an organisation which pitches itself as an “independent forum for conservatives in the UK and around the world who support net zero, nature restoration and resource security”. Much of this network’s work involves reminding people that important environmental protections, from America’s national parks to controls on pollution and climate change in Britain and elsewhere, were introduced by conservatives.

But few on the right appear to be listening. A populist tide is washing this conservative tradition away, despite the fact that support for environmental protection remains very popular.

Polling indicates that 80% of people in the UK worry about climate change. Public backing for the work of the US Environmental Protection Agency is also overwhelming, including among Republican voters.

In part, this support reflects the fact that environmental damage is an everyday reality: unpredictable weather, the collapse of animal and insect populations, and a range of other challenges are not just on the TV, they are outside the window.

In my research for a forthcoming book on environmental nostalgia across the world, I keep bumping into an irony. In western nations, voices from the right say they want their country back, yet appear hostile to environmental policies that would protect their country and ensure its survival.

There are many reasons for this disconnect, including resentment against initiatives that require lifestyle and livelihood changes. However, the enmity and disengagement is more complicated than a simple rejection of nature.

Many people – including Trump himself – claim they are environmentalists even when the evidence suggests otherwise. The signs and symbols of environmental care are knitted into every aspect of our commercial and cultural life: if wildlife could sue for copyright, there would a lot of rich bears.

I argue that a distinction can be made between what I call “cold” and “hot” forms of environmentalism. The former values and mourns the loss of nature, but as a spectacle to be observed – a set of appealing images of flora and fauna – while the latter feels implicated and anxious.

The former position allows people to claim they love nature yet be indifferent or even hostile to initiatives to save it. However, the line between cold and hot, or between anti- and pro-environmentalist, is neither fixed nor hard.

Another quality of anti-environmentalism is that its beliefs are changeable, even quixotic. Climate change is an example.

Reform’s leaders have long flirted with climate change denial. “Climate change has happened for millions of years,” explained former Reform UK leader Richard Tice in 2024, adding that “the idea that you can stop the power of the Sun or volcanoes is simply ludicrous”. Tice has not changed his views but later the same year, the party’s new leader, Nigel Farage, told the BBC that he was “not arguing the science”.

Like other populist parties, Reform adopts a mobile position on the environment, moving between denying that climate change is happening or that humans are causing it, and the very different contention that anthropogenic climate change is real but that environmental targets are unreachable and unfair, given that other nations (China is often mentioned) supposedly do so little.

A post-western paradox

Researchers are only just starting to think about anti-environmentalism. One key analysis is environmental politics researcher John Hultgren’s The Smoke and the Spoils: Anti-Environmentalism and Class Struggle in the United States. This new book explains how Republicans managed to convince working-class voters that there is “zero-sum dichotomy between jobs and environmental protection, workers and environmentalists”.

This kind of binary has also been found by contributors to The Handbook of Anti-Environmentalism, who identify and critique the stereotyping of environmentalism as middle-class and elite in several western countries.

Yet the geographical focus of these pioneering works misses yet another of the paradoxes of anti-environmentalism: that although its rhetoric often accuses China and other non-western countries of doing little, there has been a significant environmental turn in both policy and public attitudes beyond Europe and the US.

Environmentalism is becoming post-western. This is partly because the realities of environmental damage are so stark across much of Asia and Africa.

Extreme temperatures and unpredictable rainfall are leading to food insecurity and community displacement. Environmentalism in the African Sahel and south Asia might better be called “survivalism”.

And despite its continuing reliance on fossil fuels, China’s state-led vision of a transition to a conservationist and decarbonised “ecological civilisation” is positioning it as a global environmental leader.

Stereotypes of environmentalism being primarily a western concern are crumbling. Because of this, along with the many contradictions that beset it, the rise of anti-environmentalism appears not only complex, but curious and unsustainable.

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Alastair Bonnett 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. Anti-environmentalism is on the rise but it’s full of contradictions – https://theconversation.com/anti-environmentalism-is-on-the-rise-but-its-full-of-contradictions-256911

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Why gait quality matters as you age

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Dawes, Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation, College of Medicine and Health, University of Exeter

Studio Romantic/Shutterstock

Walking is one of the most important things we do for our quality of life. In fact, research shows it contributes more than any other physical activity to how well we live day to day. Yet one in three people over the age of 60 report having some difficulty walking.

As we age, gradual changes in our bodies and health can alter how we walk, often without us realising. But the way we walk, known as our gait pattern, matters more than we might think. Poor gait doesn’t just make walking harder and more tiring; it can lead to joint strain, instability, and a greater risk of falls.

Think of your gait like a heart rhythm. Just as an electrocardiogram (ECG) shows whether your heart is functioning properly, your gait also has a rhythm. When that rhythm is off, it may be one of the earliest signs that you’re not ageing as well as you could be.

Thanks to new technology, we can now measure gait quality more easily and precisely. One promising tool is the Heel2Toe wearable sensor. This small device attaches to your shoe and tracks the movement of your ankle as you walk, capturing your gait cycle in real time.

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A healthy step begins with a strong heel strike. Your weight then rolls across the sole of your foot, ending with a push-off from the toes. As your foot lifts, it swings forward cleanly – no dragging or scuffing. This smooth sequence creates a rhythm in your ankle movements, one that, when consistent, resembles a kind of “walking ECG”.

But over time, many people unconsciously adopt less efficient movement patterns. These altered gaits may feel normal, but they’re often unstable, tiring or unsafe.

Poor gait can increase the risk of falls.
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/asian-senior-male-falling-on-ground-2147078055

Poor gait reduces confidence, increases fall risk, and can discourage people from walking at all. And the less we walk, the weaker our muscles become – making the problem worse. It’s a vicious cycle.

Relearning to walk well

The good news is that we can retrain our gait.

The Heel2Toe sensor doesn’t just monitor your movements – it also encourages better walking. When it detects a good step (one that begins with a strong heel strike), it delivers an audio cue as positive feedback. Over time, these cues help you rediscover a stronger, steadier walking pattern. Good gait becomes your new normal. Tools like Heel2Toe help people tune in to their body’s signals and make sustainable progress.

The goal isn’t just to move more – it’s to move better.

Of course, being physically active is only one aspect of what it means to live well as we grow older.

To get a more complete picture of healthy ageing researchers have developed a tool that measures how often older adults experience key aspects of wellbeing. This tool – the Opal measure (Older Persons for Active Living) – goes beyond tracking what people do. It asks how they feel about their lives.

Opal can help people understand their own wellbeing and it offers policymakers and communities a way to evaluate how well their services support older citizens – not just physically, but socially and emotionally too.

For people, this means that even small improvements, like better gait, can lead to meaningful changes in how you feel: more confident, more mobile and more independent.

For communities, it’s a reminder that promoting physical activity is important – but not enough. We also need programs, spaces and services that foster connection, purpose, creativity and joy.

What does ‘active living’ really mean?

In a 2024 international study, older adults in Canada, UK, US and the Netherlands shared what “active living” means to them – across four languages and cultural contexts.

They identified 17 distinct “ways of being” that contribute to feeling active. Physical health was just one part. Others included feeling: confident, connected, creative, energised, encouraged, engaged, happy, mentally healthy, independent, interested, mentally sharp, motivated, resilient and self-sufficient.

In other words, active living isn’t just about taking (or counting) steps, it’s about how you feel while taking them.

Ageing is inevitable. But ageing well? That’s something we can shape – step by step.

Helen Dawes is Director of International Affairs of PhysioBiometrics Inc. she receives funding from NIHR Exeter Biomedical Resarch Council and NIHR Exeter Sustainable Health Technology Centre.

Nancy Mayo is co-founder and President of PhysioBiometrics Inc. a company that commercializes the Heel2Toe sensor to make it available for all. She has received funding from Healthy Brains for Health Lives (HBHL), McGill University, to develop and test the Heel2Toe sensor.

– ref. Why gait quality matters as you age – https://theconversation.com/why-gait-quality-matters-as-you-age-256636

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 27, 2025
VP calls for evidence-based validation, digitisation, translations, and cross-disciplinary studies of ancient texts

Source: Government of India

Source: Government of India (2)

lign=”center”>Focus on alternative medicine, says VP
VP lauds global centre for traditional medicine in Jamnagar
Belief that anything Indic or ancient is regressive has no place in modern India-VP
VP commissions the statue of “Charaka -Father of Ayurveda” and Statue of “ Sushruta- Father of Surgery” at Raj Bhavan, Goa

The Vice-President, Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar today called for focussing on alternative medicine and for evidence based validation of our ancient texts to make them accessible and applicable to contemporary challenges. Speaking at an event in RajBhavan, Goa he said, “ We are a nation with a difference….We are rediscovering our roots, and we will get rooted in our roots. I strongly focus on alternative medicine because India is the home of alternative medicine. It is being practiced now very extensively….Let us not confine our ancient texts to libraries. They are not meant for shelf of library. They are meant to be widely disseminated. Let us bring timeless ideas to life through research, innovation, and reinterpretation using modern scientific tools. Let us pursue evidence-based validation, digitisation, translations, and cross-disciplinary studies to make these treasures accessible and applicable to contemporary challenges….. am extremely happy that World Health Organisation has recognised it by establishing a global centre for traditional medicine in Jamnagar, Gujarat. What a powerful recognition of universal relevance of our systems like Ayurveda.”

“Time for us to look back in our Vedas, in our Upanishads, in our Puranas, in our history and time to tell our children from birth about our civilizational depth of knowledge”, he added

https://twitter.com/VPIndia/status/1925442859010036125

Addressing the gathering after commissioning the statutes, Shri Dhankhar stated, “We are celebrating today, those who epitomize knowledge — Charak. Charak was a royal physician in Kushan Kingdom. Charak is known as father of medicine and Charak author Charak Samhita, it is a foundational text for Ayurveda. The other one, Sushrut, father of Surgery, then. I had the occasion to see what you had put in paintings. Surgical instruments during those days, so forward looking and we must always remember. Sushrut was a disciple of Dhanvantari, another celebrated name. ….Let the lives and works of Charaka and Sushruta be a source of inspiration and motivation for all, particularly our impressionable minds.”

https://twitter.com/VPIndia/status/1925425566821621965

Reflecting on the need to take pride in our ancient knowledge, Shri Dhankhar underscored, “ I wish to also focus on, also highlight a particular cultural trait. It is our cultural trait. Within sections of our society, there is a belief. Anything Indic or ancient is a regressive. This trait has no place in modern India. This trait has no place in our times. The world has realised our importance. Time for us also to realise it. We cannot afford a situation to believe West is modern and progressive. Look at the current scenario and you will find it is far from it. India is the center. International Monetary Fund was not wrong and must have said with great difficulty, we are center of excellence. We are a hot spot of golden opportunities, opportunity for investment. That being the situation, let us believe in Indic situations. West is far behind us. In their own mind, they are learning from us.”

https://twitter.com/VPIndia/status/1925445876149100705

Underlining the ancient civilizational knowledge, the Vice-President said, “ The entire West will be stunned if we learn more about our treasure of knowledge…. Charaka, Sushruta, Dhanvantri, Jivaka, renowned Ayurvedic physician. And he was Buddha’s personal doctor…..When it comes to mathematics and astronomy, Aryabhatta, we have named our satellites after him, a great name, and during those times we had Baudhayana, great mathematician, and we have Varahamihira…. He was there when Chandragupta Vikramaditya court was there…..he was one of those. He was having an observatory at Ujjain during those times.”

https://twitter.com/VPIndia/status/1925442964870111623

“We are a unique civilisation….Long before we came to be abreast of the modern surgical situations, 300 surgical procedures, plastic surgery, fracture management, and even caesarean delivery. Just imagine. We need to take great pride in it. At that point of time, what we call super specialty hospitals. The things they transact in medical science, we had it already. And it is not only that. They put it in writing for academicians. Sushruta’s writings reflect not just merely anatomical knowledge, but a profound scientific spirit emphasising accuracy, training, hygiene and patient care”, he added

May 23, 2025
MIL-OSI United Nations: Ocean & Coastal Management (Science Direct)

Source: UNISDR Disaster Risk Reduction

Mission

Ocean & Coastal Management is the leading international journal dedicated to the study of all aspects of ocean and coastal management and governance.

Ocean & Coastal Management aims to advance management, policy and/or governance scholarship related to the sustainable development and conservation of the world’s oceans and coasts.It publishes rigorously peer-reviewed articles on ocean and coastal management and governance from the natural and social sciences, humanities and law, and design professions, and inter-/trans-disciplinary and co-designed research.

MIL OSI United Nations News –

May 23, 2025