NewzIntel.com

Category: Science

  • MIL-OSI Global: Israel allows a ‘limited’ amount of aid back into Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is desperate

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Schiffling, Deputy Director of the HUMLOG (Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management Research) Institute, Hanken School of Economics

    After 11 weeks of blockading the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the Israeli government asked the UN to resume “limited” aid deliveries on May 18. The move came amid growing international outrage over what the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has called a “policy of siege and starvation” in Gaza that “makes a mockery of international law”.

    Israel cleared nine aid trucks on Monday, May 19, only five of which entered Gaza. The Israeli military says closer to 100 trucks were inspected the following day. But, according to the UN, none of this aid has been distributed yet.

    It also goes without saying that even 100 aid trucks per day will not satisfy the desperate needs of Gaza’s 2.1 million inhabitants. The British, French and Canadian leaders have criticised Israel’s decision to allow a “basic amount of food” to enter the territory as “wholly inadequate”.

    The blockade has caused the already desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza to deteriorate further. Food security experts from the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform say the entire territory is now facing crisis levels of food insecurity, with 22% of the population at risk of starvation.

    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 World Food Programme ran out of supplies in Gaza in late April. Other organisations have had the same problem. This has caused 60% of community kitchens, which many Gazans rely on for a daily meal, to close down. Many food items are now unavailable and diets are extremely limited, largely consisting of bread and pulses.

    Prices of what little food is available have also skyrocketed. The price of wheat flour, for example, has risen by more than 4,000% since the start of the 11-week long blockade. And with 90% of households in Gaza experiencing financial hardship, it is impossible for many people to buy essentials.

    Cooking oil is no longer available and firewood has become scarce. The majority of people now burn waste, making cooking unsafe and unhealthy. On top of this, the healthcare system is on the brink of collapse and access to clean drinking water is very limited.

    At the same time, the efforts of humanitarian organisations to combat malnutrition have nearly come to a standstill because they lack necessary supplies. Malnutrition makes people more susceptible to disease.

    Militarising aid delivery

    The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said it was necessary to resume aid to Gaza because Israel’s allies would not tolerate “images of mass starvation”. The move has still been criticised by some Israeli politicians, with hardline defence minister Israel Katz calling it a “grave mistake”.

    For now, aid will enter Gaza through established mechanisms. But the US and Israel are backing a proposal for a new aid delivery system involving private companies. The system will be managed by a newly formed independent American aid organisation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which expects to become operational by the end of May.

    The GHF plans to set up what it is calling “secure distribution sites” in southern and central Gaza. From these sites, it will distribute food, hygiene kits and medical supplies initially to 1.2 million people – eventually scaling-up operations to cover the whole population. The GHF says it will coordinate with the IDF but that its sites will be protected by private military contractors.

    While the GHF claims to have secured funding and be in the process of procuring large amounts of goods, no details are currently available to the public on this massive undertaking. The plan has received widespread criticism and has been rejected by the UN.

    The main criticism of the plan is that it violates so-called humanitarian principles. It is generally accepted that humanitarian action is based upon four main principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.

    The principle of humanity states that suffering must be addressed wherever it is found, with a special focus on the most vulnerable people. Neutrality means that, in an armed conflict, humanitarian aid should not favour any side.

    Impartiality requires that humanitarian aid is provided based solely on need without any discrimination. And independence means that humanitarian objectives should be autonomous of political, economic, military or other objectives.

    Humanitarian bodies argue that the GHF’s plan does not stand up to these principles. It would force people to travel long distances to acquire heavy aid goods, so excludes those who are less mobile and more vulnerable.

    Meanwhile, humanitarian organisations have rejected the plan as a “humanitarian cover for a military strategy of control and dispossession”. They have raised concerns that the limited number of food distribution sites, as well as their location, could encourage the forced displacement of Palestinians from northern Gaza.

    Satellite images showing the construction of sites in Gaza that are expected to be used as aid distribution centres also suggest they will be close to Israeli military bases. While private security contractors will secure the distribution sites, the mere presence of military forces so close by may make people hesitant to approach for fear of being targeted.

    UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations have refused to participate in the proposed plan. Any involvement with a plan that is allegedly aligned with Israel’s military strategy could undermine the ability of the UN to play a meaningful humanitarian role in Gaza in the future. And it would also be seen as an endorsement of the militarisation of aid delivery around the world.

    As humanitarian experts point out, there is already an established system for providing aid to Gaza. Humanitarian organisations have the people, distribution networks and the necessary goods – 160,000 pallets full of them – in place. Almost 9,000 aid trucks are ready to be dispatched across the border as soon as Israel allows it.

    During the ceasefire earlier in 2025, UN agencies and humanitarian organisations demonstrated how quickly they could scale-up a predictable and accountable delivery of aid to those in need all across Gaza. This can be done again.

    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. Israel allows a ‘limited’ amount of aid back into Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is desperate – https://theconversation.com/israel-allows-a-limited-amount-of-aid-back-into-gaza-where-the-humanitarian-situation-is-desperate-257137

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Did humans evolve to prefer religion? Research shows many atheists intuitively favour faith

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will Gervais, Reader in Psychology, Brunel University of London

    Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

    Many atheists consider themselves to be highly rational people who rate evidence and analytical thinking above religion, superstition and intuition. They might even argue that atheism is the most rational worldview.

    But that doesn’t make them immune to having intuitive beliefs themselves. Science suggests the link between rationality and atheism is far weaker than is often assumed.

    A study my colleagues and I conducted, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that even avowed atheists in some of the most secular countries on Earth might intuitively prefer religion to atheism. We argue this new evidence challenges simplistic notions of global religious decline and the beginning of an “atheist age”.

    In his 2007 book, Breaking the Spell, the philosopher Daniel Dennett speculated that, although atheists lack belief in god(s), many of them may retain what he dubbed “belief in belief”. This is the impression that religious belief is a good thing, and the world would be better off with more of it.

    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.

    But is this true? Our research investigated belief in belief among around 3,800 people in eight of the world’s least religious countries: Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. To test for belief in belief, we turned to the “Knobe effect”, a task honed by experimental philosophers for evaluating judgements of morality and intent.

    The classic Knobe effect demonstration goes something like this. Imagine a CEO mulling a new policy for their company that will increase revenue, but will also harm the environment. The CEO declares that they don’t care one way or another about the environment, they care only for the bottom line. They adopt the policy, money is made, environmental harm occurs. Here’s the crucial question: did the CEO intentionally harm the environment?

    Most people (upwards of 80% in Knobe’s first demonstration) report that the CEO did, in fact, intentionally harm the environment. However, if people receive an identical vignette in which the environment is incidentally helped rather than harmed, people’s intuitions entirely reverse, with only around 20% of people thinking the CEO intended to help.

    This reveals a stark asymmetry, whereby people intuitively feel that harmful side effects are intentionally caused, whereas helpful ones are not.

    We presented participants with a modified Knobe effect vignette in which a journalist publishes a story that sells a lot of papers. The story either leads to more atheism in the world, or to more religious faith. Crucially, we asked our participants to rate whether the ensuing religious shifts were intentionally caused by the journalist.

    Vignettes used in experiment.
    Author, CC BY-SA

    So, would our participants view increasing societal atheism as more intentionally caused (like harming the environment) or incidental (like helping the environment)?

    Overall, our participants’ odds of rating the religious outcome as intentionally caused were about 40% higher when the news story created more atheists, as opposed to more believers. This effect persisted across most countries in our sample, and was even evident among participants who were themselves atheists.

    People are more likely to judge that a news story intentionally created atheists (purple) than believers (turquoise)
    Author, CC BY-SA

    Participants in the original Knobe effect studies viewed environmental pollution as an intentionally caused insult. Our participants intuitively viewed creating more atheists as similarly intentionally caused – a spiritual rather than environmental pollution, perhaps.

    This sounds a lot like belief in belief. Dennett illustrated this as suggesting “belief in God is a good state of affairs, something to be strongly encouraged and fostered wherever possible: If only belief in God were more widespread!”

    Why might intuitions favouring religion persist among atheists in some of the world’s least religious societies?

    10,000+ years of religion

    Over the past few decades, markers of religious commitment – self-reported religious attendance, belief in god(s), private prayer – have steadily declined in some parts of the world. This rapid secularisation stands against a backdrop of more than 10,000 years of potent religious influence.

    My recent book Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species asks how a species as historically religious as Homo sapiens could nonetheless have rising numbers of atheists. It ultimately provides important context for our new study’s results.

    A consideration of religion’s deep history gives us hints as to why belief in belief might exist among atheists in secular countries today. One prominent theory holds that religions may have helped unlock our species’ cooperative potential, allowing us to expand from our humble origins to become our planet’s dominant species.

    As religions reshaped our lives to boost cooperation, people increasingly came to view religion and morality as largely synonymous. Over cultural evolutionary time, the association between religious belief and moral goodness has become deeply culturally ingrained. This has left its trace on individual intuitions – as illustrated in the recent study by me and my co-authors and those by other researchers.

    Because religions have exerted tremendous influence on our societies for millennia, it would be genuinely surprising if some latent religious trace didn’t culturally linger as overt expressions of faith decline. Our newest results are consistent with this possibility.

    Belief may be wavering in many countries, but belief in belief persists, complicating any conclusion that we’ve truly entered an “atheist age”.

    Will Gervais has received funding from various organizations over the years, including The Leverhulme Trust and the John Templeton Foundation

    – ref. Did humans evolve to prefer religion? Research shows many atheists intuitively favour faith – https://theconversation.com/did-humans-evolve-to-prefer-religion-research-shows-many-atheists-intuitively-favour-faith-256391

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why the UK government is opposing universities on immigration

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chris Millward, Professor of Practice in Education Policy, University of Birmingham

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    The UK government has announced its plans for controlling immigration, and these include new rules for international students.

    The recent white paper on immigration proposes that most graduates will be allowed to stay in the UK for 18 months after their course finishes. This is six months less than currently permitted.

    There will be a higher bar for universities to sponsor visas, excluding those universities at which higher numbers of students fail to complete their courses. The white paper also proposes a 6% levy on universities’ income from international students.

    Universities think these changes will worsen their financial problems. However, this appears less important to the government than controlling immigration.

    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.

    Universities are one of the UK’s strongest global assets, generating influence alongside export income. After the general election last year, science minister Peter Kyle vowed Labour would end what he termed the “war on universities” conducted by the previous Conservative government. That included a more welcoming approach to international students.

    One reason for the change in tone and policy signalled by the white paper is common to other popular destinations for international students: the rise of nationalist parties opposed to immigration. But there is another reason specific to the UK, which is the government’s aim to reform higher education.

    Politics and immigration

    Two weeks before the release of the immigration white paper, the Reform party secured control of ten local authorities across England, winning 677 seats. The party’s rising popularity will be of increasing concern to the Labour government.

    Reform is concerned about the effects of immigration on communities and wages. This affects international students because they figure within immigration statistics and increasingly stay for work.

    Like nationalist and anti-immigration parties in other countries, Reform also gains more support from voters without a university degree.

    In the US and Netherlands, similar movements have taken steps to reduce university funding and international students once in power. But these policies are not confined to nationalist parties.

    Canada and Australia’s Liberal and Labour governments also signalled caps on international student recruitment before their re-election earlier this year.

    This appears to be the strategy adopted by the UK’s Labour party – that it wants to assure voters who are more concerned about immigration than university finances.

    Higher education policy

    Alongside this, the government thinks employers are too reliant on migrant labour, and universities on international students. It wants them to focus more on developing the UK workforce. That requires employers to invest in skills development, and universities to provide courses that build crucial capabilities for the future.

    The white paper states that “at a time when skills matter more than ever to the economy and people’s employment prospects, there has been a long-term lack of coordination or investment to deliver the skills and capabilities our economy needs”.

    In England, coordinated higher education investment is difficult because most government funding is routed through loans to students. This encourages universities to meet demand from young people, which does not necessarily align with economic and public service priorities.

    After years of anaemic economic and productivity growth but repeated increases to the minimum wage, one-tenth of graduates now earn little more than that threshold.

    Higher education policy is increasingly focused on key skills.
    goodluz/Shutterstock

    In response, the last government encouraged young people to take apprenticeships rather than university degrees. It also allowed student maintenance loans and fees to decline in value in real terms.

    Universities filled the gap in their income with international students – particularly one-year taught postgraduates from Nigeria and India who often bring family members then stay for work. This made universities reliant on short-term income, while increasing immigration statistics.

    Changes to family visa rules, combined with a global economic downturn and geopolitical tensions, have led universities to forecast a 21% reduction in new international student entrants this year. And 44% of universities are expecting to be in financial deficit.

    Unlike its predecessor, the government accepts that UK student fees should increase with inflation, so has allowed this for the first time since 2017. But it wants a change from universities in return. Rather than relying on international students, they should make efficiencies and focus on courses that align with government priorities.

    In a system mostly financed by student fees, there are few levers for influencing this. The Office for Students, which regulates higher education, has been asked to focus on managing quality and financial risks rather than policy.

    Its funding for strategic priorities has been reduced. There are, though, three measures highlighted within the white paper that could become influential.

    First, the government is reforming the apprenticeships levy, so it can be used more flexibly for workforce development priorities. Second, the tightening of sponsorship rules aims to drive international recruitment towards courses supplying the highest levels of skills and knowledge. Third, the proposed levy on international student income equips the government to invest in priority courses, rather than relying on student choice.

    The first measure is already being implemented. A new organisation, Skills England, has been established to determine priorities for investment.

    This may include funds from the proposed levy on international student income, though the precedent of Australia suggests that may be difficult. Regardless, there is a mood in government for higher education reform.

    Chris Millward is a member of staff at the University of Birmingham. He is also a board member of MEDR, the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research in Wales, and a Trustee of the Academy of Social Sciences. All of these organisations are affected by the issues addressed in this article.

    – ref. Why the UK government is opposing universities on immigration – https://theconversation.com/why-the-uk-government-is-opposing-universities-on-immigration-256526

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Continuing to seek Chinese investment in the UK comes at a heavy political price

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeffrey Henderson, Professor Emeritus of International Development, University of Bristol

    Steel blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, UK. Baxter Media/Shutterstock

    One major consequence of the UK government’s resistance to rejoining the European single market is that it is forced to go around the world seeking trade deals and investment.

    Recently, the government has boasted of successful arrangements with India, the US, and some new agreements with the EU. But it has also found itself courting one highly dubious suitor.

    Since the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, went to Beijing in January 2025, the government has been focusing much of its attention on China. And while investment from the world’s second-largest economy is fairly unproblematic in a few sectors (some services and domestic real estate, for example), other areas are a cause for concern.

    Relying on Chinese money to support key sectors such as steel, telecommunications, advanced electronics, power and transport – all vital for Britain’s economic and geopolitical security – is potentially dangerous.

    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.

    Yet it has been going on for years. Efforts to secure funding by a previous Conservative government even allowed state-owned Chinese companies to invest in the UK’s nuclear future, despite considerable criticism from the likes of MI5 and the British military.

    Then there was the 2017 acquisition by a Chinese state-backed private equity firm of cutting-edge semi-conductor company, Imagination Technologies. Subsequent concerns over the leaking of its intellectual property prompted a parliamentary enquiry into foreign corporate asset-stripping.

    British Steel was also a target. Sold in 2019, it is now owned by a private company, Jingye, which in April 2025 moved to shut down operations at its Scunthorpe site by not supplying the raw materials required for its blast furnaces.

    In response, the UK government took emergency control of production in a scramble to stop the furnaces from going cold.

    That incident should have served as an urgent reminder to the government that it needs to be wary of the effect Chinese companies can have on the UK.

    Early signs, however, are not reassuring. Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds commented that Jingye was not acting in the “rational way” he would expect of a company in a market economy.

    But the government should know that when it comes to strategic decision-making, Chinese companies do not operate in ways that others consider rational. Put simply, they are not comparable to their equivalents in Britain or other liberal-market economies – because they are effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    According to the CCP’s data, by 2017 it had established a formal presence inside 92% of larger private companies and 73% of all private companies in China. Those figures will certainly be higher now. And, as with the digital-technology firm Huawei, senior CCP members are often on a company’s boards of directors.

    So, while Jingye almost eliminated British Steel as a viable company, it can be reasonably assumed that a decision of such strategic and geopolitical importance would not have been taken by Jingye’s executives alone. They would have been “guided” by the CCP.

    Influence and infrastructure

    And of course, it’s not just steel production the UK should be concerned about. Chinese ownership now extends across many vital sectors.

    There’s the Chinese state-owned company, Beijing Construction Engineering helping to build a new science and innovation park next to Manchester airport. And the private Hong Kong company, CK Infrastructure which owns water companies serving north-east England, Essex and Suffolk.

    China Investment Corporation (state-owned) owns part of Heathrow, while China Huaneng (state-owned) operates Europe’s largest battery storage facility in Wiltshire. Meanwhile, wind turbine producer Mingyang (privately owned and reputedly linked to the Chinese military) is the preferred bidder for a new Scottish wind farm, despite being barred from a similar Norwegian development.

    All of these companies, irrespective of formal ownership, are likely to be subject to varying degrees of CCP influence and control (comment on the issue from Chinese companies is rare). And successive UK governments have either failed to appreciate the implications of this, or have accepted it as the price of gaining greater access to the Chinese market – especially for London’s financial sector.

    This was almost certainly a factor behind China’s involvement in the building of Hinkley Point’s new nuclear power station, and was at the forefront in Rachel Reeves’s discussions with the Chinese government earlier this year.

    Separately, Chinese investment in non-strategic sectors is much less controversial. One private conglomerate (Fosun) owns the Premier League side Wolverhampton Wanderers and formerly owned Thomas Cook.

    But the lesson from the British Steel fiasco is clear. We are now in a world where the political interests of major states trump the economic interests of their business corporations. Geopolitics takes precedence over geoeconomics.

    Consequently, Chinese firms – regardless of ownership status – should be barred from industries vital to the UK’s economic and political security. Anything less risks subordinating British interests to those of the Chinese Communist Party.

    Funding from European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), for the China in Europe Research Network, contributed to the research on which this article is based.

    – ref. Continuing to seek Chinese investment in the UK comes at a heavy political price – https://theconversation.com/continuing-to-seek-chinese-investment-in-the-uk-comes-at-a-heavy-political-price-255340

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Revitalizing Public Spaces in New York City

    Source: US State of New York

    overnor Kathy Hochul today announced awards for a total of 13 transformational projects for New York City as part of two economic development programs: the Downtown Revitalization Initiative and NY Forward. Seven projects were announced for Long Island City, the Round 7 winner of a $10 million DRI award; and six projects were announced for Hudson Square, a Round 2 winner of a $4.5 million NY Forward award.

    “New York City is writing one of the greatest comeback stories in its history, and it’s happening with groundbreaking investments in projects that will endure decades into the future,” Governor Hochul said. “These projects will make our neighborhoods stronger and more vibrant — opening up doors of opportunity and ingenuity for the New Yorkers that call them home.”

    New York Secretary of State Walter T. Mosley said, “When we invest in our downtowns, we’re investing in the heart of our communities. Through the Downtown Revitalization Initiative and NY Forward program, we’re not just funding projects – we’re fostering vibrant, walkable neighborhoods that spur economic growth, enhance quality of life for residents and preserve the unique character of each municipality and region. These signature programs exemplify our commitment to ensuring that every New Yorker, in every corner of our State, has the opportunity to succeed and thrive.”

    Long Island City

    Long Island City, located at a geographic and transportation center of New York City, is an important economic generator for the region. It is uniquely defined with a diverse set of industries and as a mixed-used district, with one of the fastest growing residential populations. The neighborhood has new advanced manufacturing, tech and life science sectors, an expanded Business Improvement District, large and highly productive Industrial Business Zones and a lively cultural and arts community. The DRI projects will be used to maximize Long Island City’s burgeoning community assets and encourage private investment to create a livable, inclusive, mixed-use community and downtown destination.

    The 7 Long Island City DRI projects, totaling $9.7 million, include:

    • Redevelop the Metropolitan Building into a Creative Hub ($1,400,000): Implement interior fit outs on several floors of the now vacant historic Metropolitan Building, located at 44-01 11th Street, to create affordable workspace for artists and small businesses.
    • Construct the New Queens Public Library Branch ($1,583,617): Implement interior fit out of a 4,525 sq. ft. space on the second floor of a new residential building located at 22-42 Jackson Avenue, to re-establish the Queens Public Library from its former Court Square location.
    • Reconstruct the 46th Avenue Pedestrian Plaza ($2,500,000): Reconstruct the temporary pedestrian plaza, located at the intersection of Jackson Avenue and 46th Avenue, into a permanent open space with new plantings, furnishings, paving and artwork.
    • Enhance the 12th Street Pedestrian Plaza ($695,000): Upgrade the existing pedestrian space, located on 12th Street between 43rd Road and 44th Avenue, with new surface treatments, trees, plant beds, shade structures, bike racks and street furniture.
    • Construct the Underline Open Space at Dutch Kills ($2,425,000): Construct a playground and dog run to complement other planned amenities in the new public open space along the south side of Dutch Kills Street between Jackson Avenue and Sunnyside Yards.
    • Renovate and Connect SculptureCenter to the Underline Open Space ($600,000): Construct a new entryway plaza and ADA-accessible ramp to enhance visibility and navigate the grade change between the SculptureCenter and the adjacent Underline open space.
    • Greening and Cleaning LIC ($496,383): Improve streetscape throughout the DRI investment area by planting new trees, installing new tree pits, tree guards, rain gardens, planters, trash receptacles, container signage and dog bag dispensers, as well as upgrading existing tree pits.

    Hudson Square

    Hudson Square is a roughly 33-square block neighborhood located on lower Manhattan’s west side. The neighborhood is primarily commercial in use, with over 12 million square feet of office space. The neighborhood has a long industrial history and has also been historically disconnected from neighboring parts of lower Manhattan, including SoHo, the West Village and Tribeca. The NY Forward projects will assist in growing local businesses; creating a sense of place; establishing engaging public spaces; and connecting the district with its adjacent communities.

    The 6 Hudson Square NY Forward Projects, totaling $4.5 Million, include:

    • Build A Signature Open Space at Hudson-Houston Plaza ($867,000): Establish an interactive, engaging and welcoming new public space at the corner of West Houston Street and Hudson Street to activate an underutilized City parcel and provide critical green space along the active pedestrian corridor.
    • Expand Spring Street Park with Little 6th Avenue Plaza ($744,000): Establish a permanent plaza on Little 6th Avenue between Spring Street and Dominick Street to expand the impact of the well-loved Spring Street Park, create space for community programs and establish an inviting entrance to the Hudson Square community from the east.
    • Upgrade Film Forum’s Lighting ($75,000): Upgrade lighting throughout the Film Forum’s lobby, concession stand, offices and projection booth to reduce the organization’s energy consumption and costs while ensuring a high-quality customer experience.
    • Create a Hudson Square Color Walk ($600,000): Create an interactive scavenger hunt, called the Color Walk, throughout Hudson Square that highlights local businesses, institutions and public spaces with colorful installations and a map. Install a public sculpture that relates to all color walk stations and serves as a starting point for visitors.
    • Install a Jackie Robinson Statue in the Museum ($227,000): Install an 8-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Jackie Robinson in the Jackie Robinson Museum space on the corner of Canal and Varick Streets to honor the legacy of Jackie Robinson, activate the ground floor of the Museum and create a point of interest that is visible from the prominent intersection.
    • Renovate the NYC Fire Museum Event Space ($1,987,000): Renovate the NYC Fire Museum’s third-floor event space with new floors and ceilings, A/V equipment and HVAC system, allowing it to host fire safety classes, community events and private events that would help financially sustain the Hudson Square institution.

    Empire State Development President, CEO, and Commissioner Hope Knight said, “The Downtown Revitalization Initiative and NY Forward programs are transforming communities across New York State by turning local visions into bold investments to generate place-based economic development. These projects will create new opportunities for businesses, support vibrant public spaces, and attract residents and visitors alike – laying the foundation for sustainable growth and stronger regional economies.” 

    New York State Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas said, “All across this State, the Downtown Revitalization Initiative and NY Forward programs are strategically prioritizing communities, growing economies with targeted awards, creating more housing opportunities that improve affordability for New Yorkers where it is most needed, and building on the diverse character of our neighborhoods. By working with local and municipal partners, these awards continue Governor Hochul’s commitment to developing the full potential of our downtowns as economic drivers and attractive places to live.”

    NYCREDC Co-Chairs Félix V. Matos Rodríguez and William D. Rahm said, “Long Island City and Hudson Square are vital engines of economic and cultural activity for New York City. Through the DRI and NY Forward programs, we’re transforming vacant historic buildings into creative hubs, developing signature public spaces, enhancing pedestrian connections, and supporting cultural institutions that reflect each neighborhood’s unique identity. These strategic investments are creating vibrant, inclusive communities that connect residents with opportunity while celebrating what makes each area distinct.”

    State Senator Brian Kavanagh said, “I’m proud to support funding for these programs in our State budget. This $4.5 million investment will deliver transformative projects that will reconnect Hudson Square with its vibrant surroundings while creating dynamic public spaces, supporting local businesses and community organizations, and honoring cultural icons like Jackie Robinson. From the new Hudson-Houston Plaza to the Fire Museum’s revitalized event space, these initiatives reflect the community’s vision for a more accessible, sustainable, and thriving district. I applaud Governor Hochul, Secretary Mosley, Samara Karasyk and her colleagues at the Hudson BID, and the tireless local advocates whose collaboration and commitment to this community have made this possible. As with the ongoing Chinatown DRI initiative, this is exactly the kind of targeted effort we need – one that uplifts overlooked corners of our city while celebrating their unique character and potential.”

    State Senator Kristen Gonzalez said, “These investments are a victory for our neighbors in Long Island City. I want to thank the Governor, the Downtown Revitalization Initiative and the NY Forward Program for bringing these vital resources to our community. These projects reflect what our communities have been fighting for: public infrastructure that is equitable, sustainable, and accessible to all. I’m proud to see public dollars going toward projects that uplift our working families, support small businesses, and strengthen the cultural fabric of our district.”

    Assemblymember Claire Valdez said, “I’m thrilled to see major investments in Long Island City, a powerful driver of economic activity, and home to vibrant cultural institutions and thousands of Queens residents. These awards will make LIC more walkable, safer, and cleaner, and give us even greater access to our wonderful Queens Public Library system. I’m grateful to Gov. Hochul for investing in our district, one of the fastest-growing in New York City.”

    Hudson Square BID President & CEO Samara Karasyk said, “This is a transformative and exciting moment of growth for Hudson Square and these projects reflect a shared commitment to creating a more vibrant neighborhood that meets that moment. We are deeply grateful to Governor Hochul and Secretary Mosley for investing in Hudson Square’s future. We’re especially excited to lead the way on the creation of a new public plaza at Hudson and Houston Streets and to expand the footprint of Spring Street Park. These new projects will bring even more green and gathering spaces to the neighborhood, building on the BID’s continued efforts to enhance the street-level experience for all who live in, work in, and visit Hudson Square.”

    DRI and NY Forward communities developed Strategic Implementation Plans (SIPs), which create a vision for the future of their downtown and identify and recommend a slate of complementary, transformative and implementable projects that support that vision. The SIPs are guided by a Local Planning Committee (LPC) comprised of local and regional leaders, stakeholders and community representatives, with the assistance of an assigned consultant and DOS staff, all of whom conduct extensive community outreach and engagement when determining projects. The projects selected for funding from the SIP were identified as having the greatest potential to jumpstart revitalization and generate new opportunities for long-term growth.

     About the Downtown Revitalization Initiative

    The Downtown Revitalization Initiative was created in 2016 to accelerate and expand the revitalization of downtowns and neighborhoods in all ten regions of the state to serve as centers of activity and catalysts for investment. Led by the Department of State with assistance from Empire State Development, Homes and Community Renewal and NYSERDA, the DRI represents an unprecedented and innovative “plan-then-act” strategy that couples strategic planning with immediate implementation and results in compact, walkable downtowns that are a key ingredient to helping New York State strengthen its economy, as well as to achieving the State’s bold climate goals by promoting the use of public transit and reducing dependence on private vehicles. Through nine rounds, the DRI has awarded a total of $900 million to 91 communities across every region of the State.

    About the NY Forward Program

    First announced as part of the 2022 Budget, Governor Hochul created the NY Forward program to build on the momentum created by the DRI. The program works in concert with the DRI to accelerate and expand the revitalization of smaller and rural downtowns throughout the State so that all communities can benefit from the State’s revitalization efforts, regardless of size, character, needs and challenges.

    NY Forward communities are supported by a professional planning consultant and team of State agency experts led by DOS to develop a Strategic Investment Plan that includes a slate of transformative, complementary and readily implementable projects. NY Forward projects are appropriately scaled to the size of each community; projects may include building renovation and redevelopment, new construction or creation of new or improved public spaces and other projects that enhance specific cultural and historical qualities that define and distinguish the small-town charm that defines these municipalities. Through three rounds, the NY Forward program has awarded a total of $300 million to 60 communities across every region of the State.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Exclusive: Russia and China have made significant progress in bilateral cooperation in recent years – Russian businessman O. Deripaska

    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

    Moscow, May 21 /Xinhua/ — Russia and China have made significant progress in bilateral cooperation in recent years, and the countries have established a deep level of cooperation in many areas, Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

    “We have made serious progress over the past four years. In general, this is a large, deep, large-scale cooperation in many areas: energy, transport, logistics, mechanical engineering, joint developments in aviation, space, nuclear energy. The countries share experience, organize joint design, develop engineering. This is already a fairly deep level of cooperation,” he noted.

    According to O. Deripaska, the countries are taking important steps to develop transport and logistics infrastructure. “The Russian side is modernizing railways, transport crossings, pipelines, power lines, communication lines, and ports. The Chinese and Russian sides are stimulating trade turnover by providing subsidies for transportation,” the businessman said, emphasizing that increasing the speed of cargo delivery improves trade.

    Another important area for further deepening trade and economic cooperation between the two countries, he believes, is improving financial conditions. This is not only about settlements in national currencies, but also about developing project financing mechanisms. “Our companies are already opening enterprises in China to produce modules that are needed for use in Russian production. In the same way, Chinese companies should invest in creating joint production facilities in Russia,” the Xinhua source believes.

    Speaking about cooperation between China and Russia in the field of science and education, O. Deripaska emphasized that in the next two years this issue will be given special attention, because joint educational projects not only bring the peoples of the two countries closer together, but also allow building a foundation for the future.

    As an example of such cooperation, the Russian entrepreneur cited the Chinese-Russian University PPI-MSU in Shenzhen /Guangdong Province, South China/. With the support of O. Deripaska’s funds, the university has created several educational programs for Chinese and Russian students. “Science is a source of progress, that is, all innovations begin with scientific developments, and this is important for us. Our investments create the opportunity for joint education in Russia and China,” he explained, adding that joint programs are being developed between universities in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and universities in Harbin /the administrative center of Heilongjiang Province, Northeast China/ and Xi’an /the administrative center of Shaanxi Province, Northwest China/.

    The businessman praised the level of development of science, technology and engineering knowledge in China, noting significant successes in such high-tech areas as renewable energy, space programs, electronics, and electric vehicle production. “China has focused on education and building a system of scientific universities and research centers. A lot has been spent on training Chinese specialists abroad. Now many of them have returned. We see this progress,” he added.

    According to O. Deripaska, the deep level of cooperation between China and Russia allows us to hope that all the development goals set for the two countries will be achieved. –0–

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Scientists design gene delivery systems for cells in the brain and spinal cord

    Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

    News Release
    Wednesday, May 21, 2025

    NIH-funded breakthrough could enable targeted therapies for many neurological disorders.

    Research teams funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have created a versatile set of gene delivery systems that can reach different neural cell types in the human brain and spinal cord with exceptional accuracy. These delivery systems are a significant step toward future precise gene therapy to the brain that could safely control errant brain activity with high precision. In contrast, current therapies for brain disorders mostly treat only symptoms.
    The new delivery systems carry genetic material into the brain and spinal cord for targeted use by specific cell types. This platform has the potential to transform how scientists can study neural circuits. It provides researchers with gene delivery systems for various species used in research, without the need for genetically modified, or transgenic, animals. Examples include illuminating fine structures of brain cells with fluorescent proteins and activating or silencing circuits that control behavior and cognition.
    “Imagine this new platform as a delivery truck dropping off specialized genetic packages in specific cell neighborhoods in the brain and spinal cord,” said John Ngai, Director of the NIH’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative®. “With these delivery systems, we can now access and manipulate specific cells in the brain and spinal cord – access that was not possible before at this scale.”
    The new delivery tools, which use a small, stripped-down adeno-associated virus (AAV) to deliver DNA to target cells, can be broadly applied across many species and experimental systems, including small tissue samples removed during human brain surgeries. The delivery systems have been tested, or validated, in intact living systems, which is an important step for introducing new tools for widespread use. The newly published toolkit includes:

    Dozens of delivery systems that selectively target key brain cell types, including excitatory neurons, inhibitory interneurons, striatal and cortical subtypes, brain blood vessel cells, and hard-to-reach neurons in the spinal cord that control body movement and are damaged in several neurological diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal muscular atrophy
    Computer programs powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can identify genetic “light switches,” known as enhancers, that turn genes on in specific brain cell types, using data from many different species – cutting considerable time and effort for scientists looking for these genetic switches.

    Overall, this collection of research tools will significantly accelerate understanding of the human brain. Importantly, the toolkit enables access to specific brain cell types in the prefrontal cortex, an area that’s critical for decision-making and uniquely human traits. With other tools in the collection, scientists can better study individual cells and communication pathways known to be affected in several neurological diseases. These include seizure disorders, ALS, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Huntington’s disease – as well as various neuropsychiatric conditions.
    AAV-based treatments are already approved for some conditions, such as spinal muscular atrophy for which a 2016 approval of a gene therapy known as Zolgensma transformed the lives of infants and young children who once faced severe disability or early death. The new collection of gene delivery resources lays the groundwork for more precise treatments that target only affected cells in the brain, spinal cord, or brain blood vessels.
    The toolkit is available at distribution centers including Addgene, a global supplier of genetic research tools. This collection of publications offers researchers standard operating procedures and user guides for these tools.
    The work is supported by the NIH’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative®. Funding issued less than four years ago launched a large-scale, team-run project to design new molecular tools that can be useful to many research laboratories. The Armamentarium for Precision Brain Cell Access aims to develop precise and reproducible access to cells and circuits in experimental research models of the brain and spinal cord. The large-scale project brings together experts in the field of molecular biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence (AI). The eight papers appear in the May 21 issue of the journals Neuron, Cell, Cell Reports, Cell Genomics, and Cell Reports Methods.
    Grants: UF1MH130701, UH3MH120096, U24MH133236, UF1MH128339, UM1MH130981, R01MH123620, U19MH114830, P510D010425, U420D011123, S10MH126994, UH3MH120094, UF1MH130881, F30DA053020, R01FD007478, U01AG076791, R35GM127102, RF1MH114126, UH3MH120095, RF1MH121274, R01MH113005, UH3MH120095
    The Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® Initiative and The BRAIN Initiative® are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
    The NIH BRAIN Initiative, a multidisciplinary collaboration across 10 NIH Institutes and Centers, is uniquely positioned for cross-cutting discoveries in neuroscience to revolutionize our understanding of the human brain. By accelerating the development and application of innovative neurotechnologies, The BRAIN Initiative® is enabling researchers to understand the brain at unprecedented levels of detail in both health and disease, improving how we treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders. The BRAIN Initiative involves a multidisciplinary network of federal and non-federal partners whose missions and current research portfolios complement the goals of The BRAIN Initiative. 
    About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
    NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Pushing Boundaries and Becoming Beacons for Positive Change

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    The Academy of Distinguished Engineers, class of 2025, gathered for this year’s induction ceremony last week on the UConn Storrs campus. The annual event featured comments from JC Zhao, dean of the College of Engineering (CoE), and was emceed by 2024 inductees Rashi Akki, and Mark Raymond. Attendees included new Academy inductees and GOLD Rising Star recipients, their friends and family, as well as past Academy members.

    Zhao praised the class of 2025 for its accomplishments and contributions to engineering research, leadership and societal impact.

    “This was my first Academy of Distinguished Engineers awards ceremony since becoming dean of the College of Engineering,” Zhao says. “I take great pride in recognizing and celebrating the amazing achievements of our Academy inductees and Rising Stars.  It was also a pleasure meeting these CoE graduates, their families and the previous awardees who joined us.

    Dean JC Zhao (left) and He Li, Academy 2025 GOLD Rising Star (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

    “These highly accomplished men and women are a testament to the overall quality of education we offer here at UConn, as well as recognition for the many CoE faculty and mentors who helped guide them. We are proud of their achievements and look forward to hearing about their continued successes and their positive impact on our society.”

    Induction into the Academy recognizes CoE alumni for their exemplary contributions to the engineering profession through research, practice, education, policy or service, says Kylene Perras, assistant dean, Operations and Strategic Initiatives. The GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Rising Star awards recognize graduates over the past decade who inspire the world around them through their contributions to engineering and society.

    “The Academy’s members are considered to be among the most successful and distinguished engineers in their respective fields,” Perras adds. “They each represent UConn Engineering, with distinction and strong leadership, and inspire current and future CoE students. And while they may not have been in the field for as many years, our Rising Stars also are making their mark and cutting successful professional trails.”

    Academy inductee Erika Lindeberg (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

    One of this year’s inductees, Erika Lindeberg, earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering at UConn. She is a senior project manager and group leader at Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., a global leader in advanced manufacturing, energy, environmental, life sciences, transportation and more. Prior to joining Jacobs, she worked for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, including five years spent as principal engineer in their Division of Traffic Engineering.

    “Both of my parents are UConn alumni and taught me the importance of mentoring and of working for the common good,” Lindeberg says. “As engineers, we have a profound responsibility to ensure that the effective application of engineering and science serve a higher purpose and improve the comfort and safety of human life. To that end, sharing our knowledge, which includes mentoring others, is a critical responsibility and obligation.”

    JC Zhao (left) and Academy inductee Nasir Mannan (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

    Another inductee, Nasir Mannan, earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering in 2007 at the then School of Engineering at UConn. Mannan is the principal engineer at the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology’s Advanced Design Automation and Metrology lab, where he leads the integration of 4.0 technologies to help strengthen the U.S. supply chain. Like Lindberg, he shared similar sentiments about the need to help others and to become beacons for positive change.

    “In addition to building things, we create, innovate, discover and connect. All society is one human race, and the work we’re doing can push the boundaries of what’s possible, as well as what’s needed,” Mannan says. “I’m grateful for this recognition, and excited about the future and the opportunities we share to greatly improve the quality of life on earth for all beings through the technology we create and help implement as engineers.”

    This year’s inductees are:

    • James Bosse: B.S., M.S., and Ph.D., Materials Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut (’09, ’12, ’14)
    • Marat Kulakhmetov: B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut (’09), M.S. and Ph.D., Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University (’11, ’16)
    • Michael Lamont: B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Connecticut (’91)
    • John Leonard: B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut (’89), M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Arizona State University (’94)
    • Erika Lindeberg: B.S. and M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Connecticut (’94, ’04)
    • Nasir Mannan: B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut (’07)
    • Steven Naboicheck: B.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut (’81)
    • Frederick Sporck: B.S., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Connecticut (’78), M.S., Physics, University of Vermont (’84)
    • Adrian Weidmann: B.S., Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut (‘02)
    • Peyman Zamani: B.S., Computer Science and Engineering, Master of Business Administration, University of Connecticut (’95, ’06)

    This year, the GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Rising Star recipients are: 

    • Yongduk Lee: B.S., M.S., Hankyong National University (’06, ’08), Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of Connecticut (’15) 
    • He Li: B.S., Beijing University of Technology (’05), M.S., University of Saskatchewan (’08), Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut (’15) 
    • Qin Lu: B.S., University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (’13), Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut (’18) 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Reps. Young Kim, Dave Min Lead Bipartisan Wildfire Prevention Bill

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Young Kim (CA-39)

    Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Representatives Young Kim (CA-40) and Dave Min (CA-47) introduced the Building Resiliency and Understanding of Shrublands to Halt (BRUSH) Fires Act. Elex Michaelson with Fox 11 News first reported on the bipartisan effort. Watch here. 

    This bipartisan bill aims to evaluate and boost wildfire mitigation efforts in shrubland ecosystems and ensure land managers and first responders have the tools necessary to combat extreme brush fires. 

    “My community faced the wrath of the Airport Fire that burned nearly 24,000 acres less than a year ago. The more we fact find from past wildfires, the better we can ensure our first responders are prepared for future wildfires,” said Congresswoman Kim, who represents the canyon communities under U.S. Forest Service – Cleveland National Forest. “We must do all we can to support our first responders running into harm’s way to keep us safe, which is why I’m proud to join fellow Orange County Rep. Dave Min to lead the BRUSH Fires Act.” 

    “The recent LA wildfires illustrated the massive and unique wildfire risks that Southern California communities face,” said Rep. Min. “As climate change has accelerated, the annual Santa Ana winds are blowing more fiercely and the foliage is drier than it’s ever been, creating the conditions every year for ever more intense wildfires. I’m pleased to be leading this bipartisan effort to make Orange County safer.” 

    “We appreciate the leadership of Representatives Min and Kim in the introduction of the BRUSH Fires Act,” said Scott Morrson, California State Director of the Nature Conservancy. “Shrubland ecosystems are different than forests. Therefore, they require different strategies to mitigate the risk that wildfires pose. These strategies should be based in science. In California, shrubland ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots and home to millions of people, and to plants and animals that exist nowhere else on earth. Human-caused ignitions are now the leading cause of fires, with wind-driven embers starting fires far ahead of the fire front, damaging ecosystems while putting millions of lives at risk. To be effective, any approach to mitigating the risk of fire to people and structures must be based on sound science and will require collaboration between agencies at different levels of government.”   

    Specifically, the BRUSH Fires Act would direct the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to: 

    • Evaluate the effectiveness of its wildfire mitigation methods in shrubland ecosystems; and, 
    • Submit and make publicly available a report to Congress that summarizes findings, identifies steps that USFS is taking to update its operational practices and protocols, and evaluates opportunities to improve coordination with non-federal entities in highest-risk areas. 

    The bill is endorsed by the Nature Conservancy, the California Fire Chiefs Association, Endangered Habitats League, California Chaparral Institute, and Irvine Ranch Conservancy.  

    Bill text and additional background can be found here.  

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Eldest daughters often carry the heaviest burdens – insights from Madagascar

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Claire Ricard, Research Fellow at CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA)

    In recent years, the term “eldest daughter syndrome” has gained traction on social media, as many firstborn daughters share how they had to grow up faster. They often took on caregiving and supportive roles in their families.

    In high-income countries, research shows that these responsibilities often bring long-term benefits. Firstborn daughters – and sons – tend to have higher educational attainment and stronger cognitive skills. They also enjoy better job prospects and salaries.

    Some studies in low- and middle-income countries have found similar positive effects of being the eldest. But others have found the opposite.

    In low-income contexts, economic constraints, cultural practices – such as the involvement of extended families in child-rearing – and inheritance norms may produce very different effects.

    Our research brings new insights by examining these dynamics in Madagascar. It is one of the world’s poorest countries. Birth order there strongly shapes the transition to adulthood, especially for firstborn children.

    Progress in understanding birth order effects in low-income countries is held back by the lack of detailed, sibling-level data. Our study used a dataset that followed individuals from the ages of 10 to 22, capturing their transition from adolescence to adulthood. It collected detailed information on education, work, health, marriage, and migration. The dataset also captured key demographic and educational details for all living full siblings of each respondent.

    We found that firstborns in Madagascar transition into adulthood earlier than their younger siblings. They are more likely to leave school early. They enter the workforce sooner and marry at younger ages. For example, fourth-born children are 1.5 percentage points less likely than firstborns to have never attended school, and 1.1 percentage points more likely to complete post-secondary education.
    Or, third-borns are 23% less likely to marry at age 19 than firstborns.

    Our findings suggest that later-born children benefit from greater parental investment in education. This leads to better schooling outcomes and delayed entry into the labour market.

    Birth order and the transition to adulthood

    In Madagascar, early marriage can be a way for families to ease financial pressure. This is especially true since daughters typically join their husband’s household.

    When it comes to marriage, we find that later-born children are less likely to marry early than their firstborn siblings – especially after age 17. This trend holds for both boys and girls. The difference appears earlier for girls, which aligns with their younger average age at marriage.

    Interestingly, second-born girls are not significantly less likely to marry than their older sisters. This suggests that the eldest daughter does not always bear the full brunt of early marriage risk.
    Firstborn daughters often take on caregiving and household roles. These responsibilities may delay their marriage slightly, as families rely on them for day-to-day support.

    What explains these birth order effects?

    We did not observe significant differences in cognitive skills (like reasoning) or non-cognitive traits (like personality) between firstborns and their younger siblings. Cognitive abilities were assessed through oral and written math and French tests administered at home. These findings contrast with evidence from wealthier countries, where firstborns often outperform their siblings in both cognitive and non-cognitive domains. This may result from greater early parental investment.

    In Madagascar, child development may rely less on direct parental input and more on interactions within the extended family. This is consistent with the concept of fihavanana, a cultural principle that emphasises solidarity and mutual support within the extended family.
    Rather than benefiting mostly from parental quality time, children – especially later-borns – may develop their cognitive and non-cognitive skills through broader social networks. These include relatives and older siblings.

    We also explored whether gender preferences might help explain the differences in outcomes. For instance, if later-born children were disproportionately boys, it could suggest that parents continued having children in hopes of having a son. This could lead to more resources being allocated to that later-born boy. However, our data show an even distribution of boys and girls among later-born children. This suggests that gender-based stopping rules are unlikely to explain the patterns we observe.

    Instead, our findings point to economic constraints as the main driver for firstborns transitioning into adulthood earlier than their younger siblings.

    In poorer households, particularly in rural areas, firstborn children are often asked to help out financially. This often comes at the cost of their own education. Later-born children, by contrast, receive more investment in their schooling. This may compensate for their limited access to other resources, such as land.

    We find no birth order advantage in wealthier households or among families where parents have some education. This again highlights poverty as a key factor shaping these patterns.

    The double burden of being firstborn

    To sum up, our research shows that, in Madagascar, both male and female firstborns face an earlier transition into adulthood. They leave school and enter the labour market sooner. They marry earlier, although firstborn girls may be at slightly lower risk of early marriage than their younger sisters.

    This suggests that, in poor countries, the eldest daughter syndrome is not just about emotional and care-giving responsibilities. It may also come with fewer educational opportunities, greater economic pressure, and an earlier end to childhood. A true double burden for disadvantaged girls. Economic constraints within households largely explain this pattern.

    But the story is not only one of constraint. The absence of differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills suggests that broader community ties, rooted in fihavanana and extended kinship networks, help cushion the impact of early responsibility. These collective structures may not erase inequality, but they offer a vital source of resilience.

    As policymakers and practitioners look for ways to promote educational equity, it’s worth remembering that some of the most overlooked trade-offs happen within households. Reducing the weight of those trade-offs – through financial support, community-based programmes, or school retention efforts – could help ensure that the future of one child doesn’t come at the expense of another.

    Claire Ricard receives funding from the program “Investissements d’avenir” (ANR-10-LABX-14-01). She’s affiliated to Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, IRD, CERDI, F-63000, Clermont-Ferrand and works as an Economist at IDinsight, Rabat, Morocco.

    Francesca Marchetta receives funding from the program “Investissements d’avenir” (ANR-10-LABX-14-01).
    She’s affiliated to Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, IRD, CERDI, F-63000, Clermont-Ferrand and with PEP (Partnership for Economic Policy).

    – ref. Eldest daughters often carry the heaviest burdens – insights from Madagascar – https://theconversation.com/eldest-daughters-often-carry-the-heaviest-burdens-insights-from-madagascar-255785

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: HSE students win gold medals at international mathematical Olympiad in Ashgabat

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –

    In Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) was held V Open Mathematical Olympiad for Students OMOUS-2025 (Open Mathematical Olympiad for University Students), which brought together teams from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Iran, Romania, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and India. In total, about 500 students joined the event.

    Four undergraduate students from HSE took part in the competition.Applied Mathematics and Computer Science” Faculty of Computer Science (FKN) Vasily Silvestrov, Bogdan Butyrin, Daniil Soulnov and Anastasia Salimova, as well as the team coach, expert Center for Student Olympiads Igor Vorontsov.

    The Olympiad consisted of two rounds: individual and team. The individual round lasted four hours, the participants were asked to solve six problems. In this competition, the students of the Faculty of Computer Science showed excellent results, winning gold medals.

    The team round of the Olympiad took place the next day and lasted two hours, during which ten problems had to be solved. Here, the FKN team took second place, scoring 69 points out of 100.

    Vasily Silvestrov

    — Preparing for the problems of previous years, we understood that the Olympiad is not easy, but we have a good chance of winning gold medals. For me, this was the first international Olympiad, which added reasons to be nervous. We got a lot of points on the appeal. We prepared for it for two nights: we wrote alternative solutions and prepared criteria for them. Overall, it was an unforgettable experience: interesting culture, a beautiful city, delicious food. I would like to thank the organizers of the Olympiad for choosing and preparing the problems. We hope that next year, our university teams will also achieve excellent results.

    Text: Maria Vorontsova

    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 –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Eldest daughters often carry the heaviest burdens – insights from Madagascar

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Claire Ricard, Research Fellow at CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA)

    In recent years, the term “eldest daughter syndrome” has gained traction on social media, as many firstborn daughters share how they had to grow up faster. They often took on caregiving and supportive roles in their families.

    In high-income countries, research shows that these responsibilities often bring long-term benefits. Firstborn daughters – and sons – tend to have higher educational attainment and stronger cognitive skills. They also enjoy better job prospects and salaries.

    Some studies in low- and middle-income countries have found similar positive effects of being the eldest. But others have found the opposite.

    In low-income contexts, economic constraints, cultural practices – such as the involvement of extended families in child-rearing – and inheritance norms may produce very different effects.

    Our research brings new insights by examining these dynamics in Madagascar. It is one of the world’s poorest countries. Birth order there strongly shapes the transition to adulthood, especially for firstborn children.

    Progress in understanding birth order effects in low-income countries is held back by the lack of detailed, sibling-level data. Our study used a dataset that followed individuals from the ages of 10 to 22, capturing their transition from adolescence to adulthood. It collected detailed information on education, work, health, marriage, and migration. The dataset also captured key demographic and educational details for all living full siblings of each respondent.

    We found that firstborns in Madagascar transition into adulthood earlier than their younger siblings. They are more likely to leave school early. They enter the workforce sooner and marry at younger ages. For example, fourth-born children are 1.5 percentage points less likely than firstborns to have never attended school, and 1.1 percentage points more likely to complete post-secondary education. Or, third-borns are 23% less likely to marry at age 19 than firstborns.

    Our findings suggest that later-born children benefit from greater parental investment in education. This leads to better schooling outcomes and delayed entry into the labour market.

    Birth order and the transition to adulthood

    In Madagascar, early marriage can be a way for families to ease financial pressure. This is especially true since daughters typically join their husband’s household.

    When it comes to marriage, we find that later-born children are less likely to marry early than their firstborn siblings – especially after age 17. This trend holds for both boys and girls. The difference appears earlier for girls, which aligns with their younger average age at marriage.

    Interestingly, second-born girls are not significantly less likely to marry than their older sisters. This suggests that the eldest daughter does not always bear the full brunt of early marriage risk. Firstborn daughters often take on caregiving and household roles. These responsibilities may delay their marriage slightly, as families rely on them for day-to-day support.

    What explains these birth order effects?

    We did not observe significant differences in cognitive skills (like reasoning) or non-cognitive traits (like personality) between firstborns and their younger siblings. Cognitive abilities were assessed through oral and written math and French tests administered at home. These findings contrast with evidence from wealthier countries, where firstborns often outperform their siblings in both cognitive and non-cognitive domains. This may result from greater early parental investment.

    In Madagascar, child development may rely less on direct parental input and more on interactions within the extended family. This is consistent with the concept of fihavanana, a cultural principle that emphasises solidarity and mutual support within the extended family. Rather than benefiting mostly from parental quality time, children – especially later-borns – may develop their cognitive and non-cognitive skills through broader social networks. These include relatives and older siblings.

    We also explored whether gender preferences might help explain the differences in outcomes. For instance, if later-born children were disproportionately boys, it could suggest that parents continued having children in hopes of having a son. This could lead to more resources being allocated to that later-born boy. However, our data show an even distribution of boys and girls among later-born children. This suggests that gender-based stopping rules are unlikely to explain the patterns we observe.

    Instead, our findings point to economic constraints as the main driver for firstborns transitioning into adulthood earlier than their younger siblings.

    In poorer households, particularly in rural areas, firstborn children are often asked to help out financially. This often comes at the cost of their own education. Later-born children, by contrast, receive more investment in their schooling. This may compensate for their limited access to other resources, such as land.

    We find no birth order advantage in wealthier households or among families where parents have some education. This again highlights poverty as a key factor shaping these patterns.

    The double burden of being firstborn

    To sum up, our research shows that, in Madagascar, both male and female firstborns face an earlier transition into adulthood. They leave school and enter the labour market sooner. They marry earlier, although firstborn girls may be at slightly lower risk of early marriage than their younger sisters.

    This suggests that, in poor countries, the eldest daughter syndrome is not just about emotional and care-giving responsibilities. It may also come with fewer educational opportunities, greater economic pressure, and an earlier end to childhood. A true double burden for disadvantaged girls. Economic constraints within households largely explain this pattern.

    But the story is not only one of constraint. The absence of differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills suggests that broader community ties, rooted in fihavanana and extended kinship networks, help cushion the impact of early responsibility. These collective structures may not erase inequality, but they offer a vital source of resilience.

    As policymakers and practitioners look for ways to promote educational equity, it’s worth remembering that some of the most overlooked trade-offs happen within households. Reducing the weight of those trade-offs – through financial support, community-based programmes, or school retention efforts – could help ensure that the future of one child doesn’t come at the expense of another.

    – Eldest daughters often carry the heaviest burdens – insights from Madagascar
    – https://theconversation.com/eldest-daughters-often-carry-the-heaviest-burdens-insights-from-madagascar-255785

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: New Chair and members of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee appointed

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    News story

    New Chair and members of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee appointed

    Dr David Cooper named as new Chair; Professor Tom Meagher reappointed and Professor Julia Jones confirmed as new member

    Dr David Cooper has been appointed as the Chair of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). The appointment was made in conjunction with the devolved governments and is for a three-year term from 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2028.

    Professor Tom Meagher has been reappointed as an independent member of the Committee. Tom’s term will run for four years until 3 April 2029. 

    Furthermore, Professor Julia Jones has been appointed as an independent member of the Committee. Julia’s term will run for three years until 31 May 2028.

    The new appointments have been made on merit and in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.

    As the UK’s statutory advisor on nature, the JNCC provides scientific evidence and advice to the devolved governments of the UK, the UK government, and the UK’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, to help policymakers turn science into action for nature.

    Biographical details

    Dr David Cooper

    • David Cooper is Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School and Honorary Researcher of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at the University of Oxford.
    • David has more than 30 years’ experience in international science and policy, including at the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. As CBD Deputy Executive Secretary and Acting Executive Secretary, he was instrumental in facilitating the development and adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and related agreements.
    • David has contributed to the work of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services among other scientific reports and assessments.
    • He has chaired a number of bodies including the Collaborative Partnership on Sustainable Wildlife Management, the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership, and the Inter-agency liaison group on Invasive Alien Species.

    Professor Tom Meagher

    • Tom Meagher has been a member of the JNCC since April 2021. He is Professor of Plant Biology at the University of St Andrews and served as Director of the St Andrews Global Challenges Forum. He was previously a member of the Defra Science Advisory Council and the Natural Environment Research Council.
    • Tom leads an international and interdisciplinary initiative developing novel remote sensing technology to aid the assessment and conservation of plant biodiversity. He has also worked with the British Council, the British Embassy Lima, and government agencies in Peru to promote the establishment of a national botanic garden and plant biodiversity initiative.
    • He has been an active contributor to the Scottish Government’s environmental and conservation science strategy, following his former role as a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

    Julia Jones

    • Julia Jones is Professor in Conservation Science at Bangor University and currently holds the Prince Bernhard Chair of International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University.
    • She is a trustee of WWF-UK and is a member of the British Ecological Society and the Society for Conservation Biology. She serves on the advisory board of the Sounds Right initiative, a collaboration between the Museum for the United Nations and the music industry to allow nature to collect royalties from her sounds.
    • She has previously served as the Director of the Low Carbon Energy and Environment Research Network Wales, and on the Welsh committee of the RSPB.

    Updates to this page

    Published 21 May 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI China: China releases plan to protect rivers, lakes

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

    BEIJING, May 21 — China has unveiled an action plan to protect and create beautiful rivers and lakes from 2025 to 2027, with a focus on improving the quality of aquatic ecosystems.

    The plan, jointly released by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and other government organs on Wednesday, set the goals of achieving notable progress in creating beautiful rivers and lakes by 2030 and completing the initiative by 2035.

    The plan aims to promote targeted, science-based, and lawful pollution control, coordinate the management of water resources, aquatic environments, and water ecologies, and build an integrated ecological governance system across upstream and downstream areas in key river basins to improve the health of aquatic ecosystems.

    A total of 2,573 water bodies have been included in the national list for protecting and creating beautiful rivers and lakes, covering major river trunks, key tributaries, and important lakes and reservoirs with critical ecological functions, fragile environments, or significant public interest.

    The plan outlines 19 specific measures, focusing on consolidating and deepening water environment management, guaranteeing basic ecological water use, and comprehensively advancing protection and construction efforts.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI China: China to intensify financing support for small, micro firms

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

    BEIJING, May 21 — China will further step up financing support for small and micro enterprises by increasing financing supply, lowering financing costs, and enhancing the precision of supportive measures, according to a guideline issued Wednesday by eight departments.

    The document — jointly issued by the National Financial Regulatory Administration, the People’s Bank of China, the National Development and Reform Commission and other authorities, proposes 23 concrete measures to boost financing for small and micro firms.

    To increase financing supply for these companies, the country will strengthen the issuance of first-time loans, credit loans, medium- to long-term loans, corporate loans and loans to private enterprises, the guideline revealed.

    Financing support for small and micro firms in the agricultural sector will be strengthened by leveraging structural monetary tools including re-lending, the document said.

    China will also support small and micro enterprises in pursuing equity financing, the guideline stated.

    To reduce the financing costs of small and micro companies, the country will guide banks to determine their lending rates for such enterprises reasonably while lowering additional loan-related fees.

    China will also guide banks to improve their financing efficiency, streamline application materials and optimize approval procedures, said the document, while adding that more support will be channeled to science and technology-oriented, innovation-driven small and micro firms as well as those engaged in new business models regarding foreign trade.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Morabo Morojele: Lesotho’s swinging jazz drummer who became a literary star

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria

    We use the term “Renaissance man” very loosely these days, for anybody even slightly multi-talented. But Lesotho-born jazz drummer, novelist and development scholar Morabo Morojele was the genuine article.

    He not only worked across multiple fields, but achieved impressively in all. Morojele died on 20 May, aged 64.

    As a researcher into South African jazz, I encountered him initially through his impressive live performances. I was surprised to hear about his first novel and then – as a teacher of writing – bowled over by its literary power.

    Celebrating a life such as Morojele’s matters, because a pan-African polymath like him cut against the grain of a world of narrow professional boxes, where borders are increasingly closing to “foreigners”.

    This was a man who not only played the jazz changes, but wrote – and lived – the social and political ones.

    The economist who loved jazz

    Born on 16 September 1960 in Maseru, Lesotho, Morojele schooled at the Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Swaziland (now Eswatini) before being accepted to study at the London School of Economics.

    In London in the early 1980s the young economics student converted his longstanding jazz drumming hobby into a professional side gig. There was a vibrant African diasporic music community, respected by and often sharing stages with their British peers. Morojele worked, among others, in the bands of South African drummer Julian Bahula and Ghanaian saxophonist George Lee. With Lee’s outfit, Dadadi, he recorded Boogie Highlife Volume 1 in 1985.

    Studies completed and back in Lesotho, Morojele founded the small Afro-jazz group Black Market and later the trio Afro-Blue. He worked intermittently with other Basotho music groups including Sankomota, Drizzle and Thabure while building links with visiting South African artists. For them neighbouring Lesotho provided less repressive stages than apartheid South Africa.

    Morojele relocated to Johannesburg in 1995 and picked up his old playing relationship with Lee, by then also settled there. His drum prowess caught the eye of rising star saxophonist Zim Ngqawana. With bassist Herbie Tsoaeli and pianist Andile Yenana, he became part of the reedman’s regular rhythm section.



    Read more:
    Zakes Mda on his latest novel, set in Lesotho’s musical gang wars

    The three rhythm players developed a close bond and a distinctive shared vision, which led to their creating a trio and an independent repertoire. Later they were joined by saxophonist Sydney Mnisi and trumpeter Marcus Wyatt to form the quintet Voice.

    Voice was often the resident band at one of Johannesburg’s most important post-liberation jazz clubs: the Bassline. Although the 1994-founded venue was just a cramped little storefront in a bohemian suburb, it provided a stage for an entire new generation of indigenous jazz and pan-African music in its nine years. Voice was an important part of that identity, audible on their second recording.

    Morojele on drums for Andile Yenana.

    Morojele also recorded with South African jazz stars like Bheki Mseleku and McCoy Mrubata. He appeared on stage with everyone from Abdullah Ibrahim to Feya Faku.

    His drum sound had a tight, disciplined, almost classical swing, punctuated visually by kinetic energy, and sonically by hoarse, breathy vocalisations. Voice playing partner Marcus Wyatt recalls:

    The first time I played with you, I remember being really freaked out by those vocal sound effects coming from the drum kit behind me, but the heaviness of your swing far outweighed the heaviness of the grunting. That heavy swing was in everything you did – the way you spoke, the way you loved, the way you drank, the way you wrote, the way you lived your life.

    Wyatt also recalls a gentle, humble approach to making music together, but spiced with sharp, unmuted honesty – “You always spoke your mind” – and intense, intellectual after-show conversations about much more than music.

    Because Morojele had never abandoned his other life as a development scholar and consultant. He was travelling extensively and engaging with (and acutely feeling the hurt of) the injustices and inequalities of the world. Between those two vocations, a third was insinuating itself into the light: that of writer.

    The accidental writer

    He said in an interview:

    I came to writing almost by accident … I’ve always enjoyed writing (but) I never grew up thinking I was going to be a writer.

    In 2006, after what he described in interviews as a series of false starts, he produced a manuscript that simply “wrote itself”, How We Buried Puso.

    Starting with the preparations for a brother’s funeral, the novel – set in Lesotho – reflects on the diverse personal and societal meanings of liberation in the “country neighbouring” (South Africa) and at home. How new meanings for old practices are forged, and how the personal and the political intertwine and diverge. All set to Lesotho’s lifela music. The book was shortlisted for the 2007 M-Net Literary Award.

    There was an 18-year hiatus before Morojele’s second novel, 2023’s The Three Egg Dilemma. Now that he was settled again in Lesotho, music was less and less a viable source of income, and development work filled his time. “I suppose,” he said, “I forgot I was a writer.” But, in the end, that book “also wrote itself, because I didn’t have an outline … it just became what it is almost by accident.”

    In 2022, a serious health emergency hit; he was transported to South Africa for urgent surgery.

    The Three Egg Dilemma, unfolding against an unnamed near-future landscape that could also be Lesotho, broadens his canvas considerably.

    The setting could as easily be any nation overtaken by the enforced isolation of a pandemic or the dislocation of civil war and military dictatorship, forcing individuals to rethink and re-make themselves. And complicated by the intervention of a malign ghost: a motif that Morojele said had been in his mind for a decade.

    For this powerful second novel, Morojele was joint winner of the University of Johannesburg prize for South African writing in English.

    He was working on his third fiction outing – a collection of short stories – at the time of his death.

    The beauty of his work lives on

    Morojele’s creative career was remarkable. What wove his three identities – musician, development worker and writer – together were his conscious, committed pan-Africanism and his master craftsman’s skill with sound: the sound of his drums and the sound of his words as they rose off the page.

    Through the books, and the (far too few) recordings, that beauty lives with us still. Robala ka khotso (Sleep in peace).

    Gwen Ansell 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. Morabo Morojele: Lesotho’s swinging jazz drummer who became a literary star – https://theconversation.com/morabo-morojele-lesothos-swinging-jazz-drummer-who-became-a-literary-star-257256

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Rethinking engineering education: Why focusing on learning preferences matters for diversity

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sharon Tettegah, Professor of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

    Retention and recruitment efforts designed to boost diversity in engineering programs often fall short of their goals. gorodenkoff/Getty Images

    For decades, colleges, government agencies and foundations have experimented with recruitment and retention efforts designed to increase diversity in engineering programs.

    However, the efforts have not significantly boosted the number of women, students of color, individuals with disabilities and other underrepresented groups studying and earning degrees in STEM and engineering fields.

    Latino, Black, Native American and Alaska Native students are underrepresented among science and engineering degree recipients at the bachelor’s degree level and above. The groups are also underrepresented among STEM workers with at least a bachelor’s degree.

    Women are also underrepresented in the STEM workforce and among degree recipients in engineering and computer and information sciences.

    I study equity and social justice in STEM learning. In my recent study, I found that more students from diverse backgrounds could excel in engineering programs if course content were tailored to a wider variety of learning preferences.

    Why it matters

    Focusing on learning preferences could boost diversity in engineering courses and careers.
    Morsa Images/Getty Images

    During my time as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering, I reviewed plenty of research focused on broadening participation and diversifying student enrollment in STEM fields.

    Progress can stall on efforts to boost diversity because college instructors do not consider the synergistic relationship between the content and the learner.

    Teachers are the mediators, and it is students’ experiences with the curriculum that matter.

    It was long a common belief that students have different learning styles. These included kinesthetic, learning through hands-on experiences and physical activity; auditory, learning by listening to information; and visual, learning by seeing information.

    More recent research does not support the idea that teaching students according to their learning style leads to improved learning.

    That’s why I prefer the term “learning preferences” rather than learning styles. We all have preferences – whether for ice cream flavors, home decor or how we receive information, including how we learn.

    Learning preferences are broader and more flexible, allowing multiple ways of engaging with content.

    For example, let’s say a teacher always presented equations in a classroom and the student just could not get it. However, it was the only way the information was presented. To the individual learner, they have failed. Some people would say, “These kids can’t learn,” and subsequently counsel the student out of the class.

    Then, years are spent repeating the same cycle.

    Students should have opportunities to connect with engineering content in multiple ways.
    10’000 hours/Getty Images

    However, educators can broaden their viewpoints if they look at the students as customers. If a customer is shopping for a shirt, they look for one that catches their eye. Ultimately, they find one they like.

    Instructors need to take the same approach when trying to help students understand what is happening in class. For instance, if I have trouble with equations, I should be provided with options to engage with the lesson in ways that align with my learning preferences.

    What’s next?

    Learning styles have been heavily researched. However, content preferences have not been well explored.

    In a truly democratic education system, curriculum design should reflect the voices of all stakeholders and not just those in positions of power, namely instructors.

    Using data mining and artificial intelligence, educators have a variety of options for creating content for the various preferences a learner may want or need. For example, if a student prefers other representational content, such as word problems, graphics or simulations, AI can create diverse representations so that the learner is exposed to a variety of representations.

    I argue that future studies need to consider the use of technologies such as adaptive learning applications to understand students’ learning preferences.

    Prioritizing diverse learning perspectives in STEM could help create a more inclusive and responsive learning environment.

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

    Sharon Tettegah received funding from the National Science Foundation for this work. Award Abstract # 1826632
    Coordinating Curricula and User Preferences to Increase the Participation of Women and Students of Color in Engineering

    – ref. Rethinking engineering education: Why focusing on learning preferences matters for diversity – https://theconversation.com/rethinking-engineering-education-why-focusing-on-learning-preferences-matters-for-diversity-251095

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Too much sitting increases risk of future health problems in chest pain patients – new research

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Keith Diaz, Associate Professor of Behavioral Medicine, Columbia University

    Chest pain could be a symptom of angina or a heart attack. Moyo Studio/E+ via Getty Images

    For patients hospitalized with chest pain, the amount of time they spend sedentary afterward is linked to a greater risk for more heart problems and death within a year. That’s the key finding of a new peer-reviewed study my colleagues and I published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

    We asked 609 emergency room patients experiencing chest pain — average age of 62 — to wear a physical activity monitor for 30 days after leaving the hospital. The monitor measured movements, sitting time and sleep throughout the day. We then followed patients for one year to track whether they had additional heart problems or died.

    We found that patients who averaged more than 15 hours of sedentary behavior daily — which does not include sleep — were more than twice as likely to experience more heart problems or die in the year after discharge than patients who accrued a daily average of 12 hours of sedentary time.

    But our goal wasn’t just to document that sitting is harmful. It was also to figure out what patients should do instead to lower their risk.

    We found that replacing 30 minutes of sedentary time with moderate or vigorous movement, like brisk walking or running, was most beneficial. It was associated with a 62% lower risk of experiencing more heart problems or dying in the year after discharge. But we also found that replacing 30 minutes of sedentary time with just light movement, such as slow walking or housework, lowered the risk of heart problems and death by 50%.

    Sleep was also a healthier option. Replacing 30 minutes of sedentary time with sleep lowered the risk of heart problems and death by 14%.

    Clogged arteries could lead to a heart attack.
    Veronica Zakharova/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

    Why it matters

    Over 8 million people in the U.S. are admitted to the hospital with chest pain suggestive of acute coronary syndrome. annually. This covers a range of conditions involving reduced blood flow to the heart, including angina and heart attack.

    Patients with acute coronary syndrome remain at high risk of having another heart problem even with optimal medical treatment.

    The risk also remains high for patients with chest pain who are discharged without a diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome, as their unexplained chest pain may be a precursor to more serious heart problems. Given this risk, there is a need to identify risk factors that can be modified to improve a patient’s prognosis after hospitalization for chest pain.

    In previous research, we found that patients with acute coronary syndrome had a fear of exercise and were sedentary, spending over 13 hours a day sitting.

    Given that sedentary behavior has been linked to poor heart health in the general population, we were concerned that patients were unknowingly increasing their risk of having another heart problem.

    Our latest findings confirm that sedentary time is a harmful behavior for these patients. But beyond telling patients to stop sitting so much, our work provides important guidance: Any movement, regardless of how intense, can be beneficial after hospitalization. This is especially relevant for people recovering from heart problems who may find exercise difficult or scary.

    While exercise provides the best “bang for your buck” in terms of health benefits, our findings are good news for patients who may not have the time, ability or desire to exercise. And for those unable to fit in more movement, just getting an extra half hour of sleep is a small, doable step that can make a meaningful difference for your health after hospitalization.

    What still isn’t known

    Researchers don’t fully understand why sedentary time is harmful. Muscles help regulate blood sugar and lipid levels. It is thought that when muscles aren’t used, such as when patients sit for hours, this can lead to harmful elevations in blood sugar and lipids.

    In turn, this can cause inflammation, plaque buildup in the arteries and organ damage. More research is needed to understand the biological mechanisms so that we can determine just how much movement is needed in a day.

    What’s next

    While our study highlights the potential risks of sedentary behavior after being hospitalized for chest pain, it was an observational study. Clinical trials are needed to confirm that replacing sedentary time with activity or sleep can improve prognosis.

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

    Keith Diaz receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

    – ref. Too much sitting increases risk of future health problems in chest pain patients – new research – https://theconversation.com/too-much-sitting-increases-risk-of-future-health-problems-in-chest-pain-patients-new-research-257089

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump treats laws as obstacles, not limits − and the only real check on his rule-breaking can come from political pressure

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrew Reeves, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Weidenbaum Center, Washington University in St. Louis

    At his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, Donald Trump swore to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ Morry Gash/POOL/AFP, Getty Images

    Lately, the headlines have been clear: President Donald Trump is headed for a showdown with the courts. If he ignores their rulings, the courts have few tools and limited power to make him comply.

    But the real contest is not legal. It is political.

    As a political scientist who studies presidential behavior and public responses to unilateral action, I have spent my career examining the boundaries of executive power.

    Those limits, aimed at constraining the president, are set in law.

    The Constitution outlines the powers of Congress and the president in articles 1 and 2. It formally gives Congress the power of the purse and requires the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

    Statutes dictate how agencies operate, how appointments are made and how funds must be spent. Courts interpret and enforce these rules.

    These legal constraints reflect the founders’ concern with unchecked executive power. That concern is embedded in the country’s political origins – the Declaration of Independence was a direct rebuke to royal overreach.

    But law alone has never been enough to prevent presidents from abusing their power. The law’s force depends on political will. Presidents often follow the law not simply because they must, but to avoid backlash from Congress, the media or the public.

    What the United States is witnessing in 2025 is not just a president testing the system. It is a transformation of the presidency into a fully political institution. The president acts until political resistance becomes strong enough to stop him.

    President Donald Trump criticizes judges whose decisions he doesn’t like.

    Testing the limits

    These political constraints are informal and fluid.

    They arise from public opinion, media scrutiny, pressure from party leaders and other elected officials, and the threat of electoral consequences. While legal rules rely on institutions, political limits depend on reputation, norms and the willingness of others to resist.

    Trump’s presidency operates within this second framework. Legal boundaries are still present, but they are often treated by his administration as optional and without deference.

    Trump, for example, has sidelined the Office of Legal Counsel, the executive branch’s source of legal guidance. His focus appears to be not on legality, process or constraint, but on headlines, polling and control of the narrative.

    Courts still issue rulings, but their power depends on a broader political culture of compliance, and that culture is weakening.

    Trump is not the first president to test the limits of authority. But the pace and scale of his defiance are without precedent. He appears to be betting that pushing boundaries will continue to pay off.

    Lag between law and action

    The legal challenges facing Trump are real.

    In his first 100 days back in office, he took aggressive steps on federal spending, appointments to key executive branch positions, tariffs and deportations. Trump has announced he will not enforce legislation that the Supreme Court confirmed was constitutional. Many of these actions have already triggered legal challenges.

    These are not isolated incidents. Taken together, they reveal a broader pattern.

    Trump appears to treat legal rules not as limits but as obstacles to be negotiated or ignored. One recent scholarly paper has described Trump’s approach as “legalistic noncompliance,” where the administration uses the language of law to give the appearance of compliance while defying the substance of court orders.

    The executive branch can move quickly. Courts cannot. This structural mismatch gives Trump a significant advantage. By the time a ruling is issued, the political context may have changed or public attention may have moved on.

    Judges have begun to notice. In recent weeks, courts have flagged not only legal violations but also clear signs of intentional defiance.

    Still, enforcement is slow, and Trump continues to behave as though court rulings are little more than political talking points.

    Politics the only real check

    Trump is not guided by precedent or legal tradition. If there is a limit on presidential power, it is political. And even that constraint is fragile.

    In a February 2025 national survey by the Weidenbaum Center, a research institute that I head at Washington University, just 21% of Americans said the president should be able to enact major policy without Congress. The public does not support unchecked presidential power: A further 25% of respondents, including more than one-third of Republicans, neither agreed nor disagreed that a president should have this type of unchecked power. Of those with an opinion, a solid 72% of Americans oppose unilateral presidential action, including 90% of Democrats, 76% of independents and 42% of Republicans.

    These findings align with nine earlier national surveys conducted during the Obama and Trump administrations. Jon Rogowski and I report these results in our book, “No Blank Check.”

    But one important shift stands out in the recent survey. Support for unilateral executive action among the two-thirds of Republicans who expressed an opinion has reached an all-time high, with 58% of them endorsing presidential action without Congress. That is more than 16 points higher than in any previous wave.

    Despite that rise in partisan support, Trump’s broader political position remains weak.

    His approval ratings remain underwater. His policies on tariffs and federal spending cuts are unpopular. Consumer confidence is falling.

    Congressional Republicans continue to offer public support, but many are watching their own polling numbers closely as the midterms approach.

    If the economy falters and public opinion turns more sharply against the president, political resistance could grow. I believe that’s when legal rules may begin to matter again – not because they carry new force, but because violating them would carry higher political costs.

    Real test still ahead

    So far, no judge has held the Trump administration in contempt of court. But the signs of erosion are unmistakable. Trump recently accused the Supreme Court of “not allowing me to do what I was elected to do” after it temporarily blocked his administration’s effort to deport migrants with alleged ties to Venezuelan gangs. Treating the judiciary as just another political adversary and ignoring its rulings risks an even deeper constitutional crisis.

    The most meaningful check on presidential power will be political.

    Courts rely on the broader political system for enforcement. That support can take many forms: elected officials speaking out in defense of the rule of law; Congress using its oversight and funding powers to uphold court rulings; bureaucrats refusing to implement unlawful directives; and a press and public that demand compliance. Without that support, even the clearest legal decisions may be ignored.

    The legal fights unfolding today are serious and must be watched closely. But Trump is not focused on the courts. He is focused on politics – on how far he can go, and whether anyone will make him stop.

    Andrew Reeves is affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis and the Hoover Institution.

    – ref. Trump treats laws as obstacles, not limits − and the only real check on his rule-breaking can come from political pressure – https://theconversation.com/trump-treats-laws-as-obstacles-not-limits-and-the-only-real-check-on-his-rule-breaking-can-come-from-political-pressure-255834

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Flies, crossbows and comics: novel counter terrorism innovation

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Case study

    Flies, crossbows and comics: novel counter terrorism innovation

    Nine projects, ranging from whether flies can detect explosives to how comics can reduce radicalism and how much of a risk crossbows are, were showcased.

    More than 100 people attended the third University Innovation Concept event exploring ways in which cutting-edge research, often in unexpected areas, can help fight terrorism. 

    Nine fascinating and thought-provoking projects, ranging from whether flies can detect explosives (yes!) to how comics can reduce radicalism, and how much of a terrorism risk crossbows are, were on display at a showcase at the Open University in Milton Keynes, in which the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) was a proud partner. 

    Researchers and delegates were welcomed by Inspector Liam Cahill, Innovation Domain Lead at the Counter Terrorism Research Lab (CTRL), and Open University professors Arosha K Bandara and Eleanor Crabb. Annette Southgate, Head of ACE, then took to the stage to stress the importance of work and innovative collaboration such as this to “getting ahead of some of the people that are trying to cause us harm”. 

    Iain Harrison, Director of Digital, Data, Analysis & Technology at Counter Terrorism Policing, explained the rigorous process, supported by ACE, that began with 62 proposals from 28 different universities, which were then reviewed and whittled down to the nine stimulating ideas on display at the showcase event. 

    Bringing academia and Counter Terrorism Policing together 

    The projects that had been explored over 12 weeks of intensive research were showcased across three themes: 

    THEME ONE: Radicalisation and Interventions 

    First to present were a team from Anglia Ruskin University, on the topic of Exploring the Impact of Critical World Events on Extremist Misinformation Network (2020-24). This involved analysing 240 posts from four major platforms to understand how extremist groups exploit global crises on popular social media platforms, using hashtags and multiple forms of misinformation to amplify uncertainty and try and recruit new audiences. It also looked to pinpoint potential novel ways to intervene in this process. 

    Next up were a team from Cranfield University, analysing how social media content algorithms respond to user interactions within specific topics, to answer the question of Can Social Media Algorithms Radicalise? This pilot was designed to quantify if user behaviours such as watching or liking videos influenced a popular platform’s algorithm, and to what extent. The conclusion was that the algorithm could be influenced to provide more content around a particular theme, but it is not yet clear how long this influence lasts. 

    The final presentation in this first session was from the University of Liverpool, exploring the topic of Graphic Novels to Enable Discussion and Promote Critical Thinking. This project involved creating a 46-page book containing four graphic novels on the topic of radicalisation, supported by front-line intervention practitioners, for use in educational strategies to encourage critical thinking. Comics were chosen because they are already popular worldwide, accessible and engaging as a format, and cheap to produce. 

    THEME TWO: Current Threats, Biosensors and Human Networks 

    After a break, another team from Cranfield University, that had been drawing big crowds in the breakout sessions for the four crossbows on display at their stand, spoke on their research into Crossbows: A Real and Current Threat. Against a background of increasing use of crossbows, which can legally be bought by anyone over the age of 18, in targeted incidents, this set out to examine the hit probability and wounding potential of four different systems, their reload times, and how these compared to current policing response times. The conclusions, from a variety of tests including depth of penetration and discharge rate, concluded that crossbows need to be considered a real and present threat for a marauding terrorist attack, because all of those tested have potential to cause significant injury, especially to unprotected organs. 

    Next up was another project that had the audience buzzing – research from a team at The Open University on Fruit Fly Biosensors: Leveraging Olfactory Responses for Detection of Explosives and Toxic Chemicals. This explored if fruit flies, which have exceptional sensitivity, could be used as biosensors to detect toxins, drug precursors and explosives. The answer was potentially yes – experiments with TNT found that exposure to the explosive led to a gradual but clear increase in fly attraction, indicating that fruit flies can detect it. Preliminary lab data also suggests starving the flies may enhance TNT detection speed. 

    The final project in this session was an explanation of a Dynamic Target Indicator Tool (D-TinT) developed by a team at the University of Exeter. This uses techniques from movement pattern analytics and social network analysis to identify the best indicators of links between nodes in a human network based on movement patterns over time. This enables a statistical and spatial mathematical model to be developed. The Tool also identifies what might be flagged as a vulnerable target – either person or place – which could allow counter terrorism stakeholders to test the impact of possible risk-reduction procedures. 

    THEME THREE: Emerging Technologies 

    The final session of a highly enjoyable day started with a team from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen talking the audience through their research on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Identify and Prevent Terrorism in Prisons: Legislative Gaps and Technological Solutions. This analysed AI’s role in situational awareness and radicalisation prevention, explored how it could support existing counterterrorism efforts, evaluated legal and ethical readiness for AI to be deployed in this way, and proposed technical and legal reforms to enable the responsible use of AI technologies in prison settings. The conclusion of the research was that AI offers significant potential to enhance security and counter-radicalisation efforts in UK prisons. 

    Next, a scoping study of Augmented Reality and Terrorism was presented by Dr Richard Jones of Edinburgh Law School, part of the University of Edinburgh. Billing augmented reality as a “technology in search of a purpose”, his research explored both potential law enforcement applications, such as head-up real-time navigation and facial recognition of persons of interest, as well as how terrorists could use the same technology, for example to create video footage for propaganda purposes. It also looked at how this technology could evolve in the public domain. The research concluded that feasibility factors include device cost and availability as well as the level of required technological expertise, which is likely to fall, in addition to utility and whether it solves a problem. 

    The final presentation of the day was by a team from the University of Southampton on Exploiting Vulnerabilities in Autonomous Vehicle Systems for Terrorist Activity – Threats to UK Critical National Infrastructure. This focused on identifying vulnerabilities in autonomous vehicle systems amid increasing reliance on connected and automated vehicles, analysing how terrorists could exploit these to disrupt or control them. This could include by hijacking the vehicle controls or causing collisions via manipulating road signs. The conclusion was that proactive risk mitigation is paramount. 

    Following the event, Inspector Cahill said: “The University Innovation Concept (UIC) was conceived with the intention of bringing Counter Terrorism Policing and academia closer together to ensure operational decisions made by experienced and knowledgeable personnel are backed by science and academic rigour. 

    “The one-day showcase was also a fantastic opportunity for attendees to network, learn about ongoing research and potentially take learning back to their operational roles, and feedback has been extremely positive.”  

    Reflecting on the event, Professor Southgate said: “ACE is proud to support policing colleagues find new and creative ways of solving frontline mission problems through partnership with researchers from across a diversity of backgrounds and institutions.

    “Accessing diversity of thought, approach and experience helps us step back and consider more impactful and enduring ways of tackling existing and sometimes long-standing problems. 

    “We are keen to help identify and shine a light on brilliant academic work that can already help solve today’s mission problems; highlighting the difference this makes, help build relationships and continue encouraging our talented academic community to support frontline policing work.”

    Updates to this page

    Published 21 May 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: GUU and RUDN University open “Horizons of Opportunities” for foreign students

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

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

    On May 20, 2025, a seminar for foreign students was held at the State University of Management. During the seminar, foreign students were introduced to a unique educational initiative – the Horizons of Opportunities project, developed with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.

    “Horizons of Possibilities” is a program of additional education for foreign students of 2-3 years of bachelor’s degree, 1 year of master’s degree, 1-2 years of postgraduate studies of Russian universities. The program is aimed at identifying and supporting the most promising foreign students who, after graduation, plan to develop cooperation with Russia in the political, informational and business fields.

    Alana Zangieva, a specialist at the RUDN International Youth Center, held a presentation of the Horizons of Possibility project, introducing foreign students of the State University of Management to the main areas of the program’s activities and the conditions for participation in it, as well as successful cases of its graduates from previous years.

    Foreign students of the State University of Management have shown interest in the work of the International School of Humanitarian Cooperation, whose students can gain practical skills for implementing their own business projects with Russia and employment in the Russian labor market.

    In conclusion, the students thanked the speaker for the informative information and wished success to the Horizons of Possibilities program.

    The event was organized by the State University of Management and the International Youth Center of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba.

    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 –

  • MIL-OSI Economics: AI multi-agent orchestration drives more personalized cancer care

    Source: Microsoft

    Headline: AI multi-agent orchestration drives more personalized cancer care

    Every year, 20 million people globally are diagnosed with cancer.1 Every patient is unique, with hundreds of distinct tumor sub-types, each demanding treatment protocols involving new drugs, combinations, clinical trials, and device-based therapies. Top cancer centers rely heavily on multidisciplinary tumor boards—dedicated sessions where radiologists, pathologists, surgeons, oncologists, genetic counselors, and other specialists undertake sophisticated analysis of vast patient data and knowledge to align on personalized care plans.  

    Because of the immense preparation and specialization required, less than 1% of these patients have access to these personalized treatment plans, which have demonstrably improved patient outcomes.  

    A recent American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) study highlighted that clinicians spend between 1.5 to 2.5 hours per patient, meticulously reviewing imaging, pathology slides, clinical notes, and genomic data.2 And cancer care is just one example of the complex data analysis healthcare requires. Agentic AI holds the potential to reduce administrative friction and further transform care delivery.

    The healthcare agent orchestrator is available now in the Azure AI Foundry Agent Catalog. It features pre-configured agents with multi-agent orchestration and open-source customization options that allow developers and researchers to build agents that coordinate multi-disciplinary multimodal healthcare data workflows, such as tumor boards, and streamline deployment into healthcare enterprise productivity tools (such as Microsoft Teams and Word). Modular, general reasoners as well as specialized, multimodal AI agents work together to address tasks that would take hours, with the goal to effectively augment clinician specialists with customized cutting-edge agentic AI.  

    Microsoft Build 2025 session: Transform Cancer Care Management with Multimodal AI Agents

    By integrating the latest capabilities from across Microsoft, the healthcare agent orchestrator can manage analysis and reasoning over diverse healthcare data types—ranging from imaging (DICOM files) and pathology (whole-slide images) to genomics data and clinical notes from electronic health records (EHRs). Each agent is equipped with advanced AI models from Azure AI Foundry, combining general-purpose reasoning capabilities with healthcare-specific modality models to drive actionable insights grounded in multimodal clinical data.

    Key capabilities of healthcare agent orchestrator

    • Orchestrating agentic capabilities that can reason over complex EHR data and augment time-consuming tasks like building a chronological patient timeline, determining cancer stage, using specific reference guidelines, reviewing radiology and pathology images, synthesizing current medical literature, referencing treatment guidelines, surfacing relevant clinical trials, and generating customized reports. 
    • Providing tools that connect enterprise healthcare data through Microsoft Fabric and the fast healthcare interoperability resources (FHIR) data service.  
    • Ensuring interoperability and integration into existing workflows, including distribution to familiar tools the majority of healthcare organizations already use—Teams, Word, PowerPoint, and Microsoft 365 Copilot—where users can interact with AI agents. 
    • Providing robust explainability capabilities in agentic AI-generated outputs, such as grounding responses to the source EHR data—critical for validation, trust, and adoption in high-stakes healthcare environments. 

    Researchers and developers at leading cancer care institutions—including Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, Providence Genomics, Mass General Brigham, and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health—are currently exploring the healthcare agent orchestrator to study how agentic AI could deliver value to complex clinical tasks such as cancer care. 

    “Stanford Medicine sees 4,000 tumor board patients a year, and our clinicians are already using foundation model generated summaries in tumor board meetings today (via a PHI safe instance of GPT on Azure). The new healthcare agent orchestrator has the power to streamline this existing workflow by reducing fragmentation (saving time by avoiding copy-pasting) and enables surfacing new insights from data elements that were challenging to search, such as trial eligibility criteria, treatment guidelines, and real-world evidence. Stanford Health Care is excited further research the potential of using the healthcare agent orchestrator to build the first generative AI agent solution used in a production setting for real-world care for our cancer patients.”

    —Dr. Mike Pfeffer, Chief Information Officer, Stanford Health Care and Stanford School of Medicine

    “The vision of the healthcare agent orchestrator is to rapidly surface, summarize, and take action on relevant multimodal medical information for each complex cancer case, so hours of review can become minutes. Collaborating with Microsoft allows us to explore the value of these models for tumor boards and beyond.”

    —Dr. Joshua Warner, Radiologist at UW Health and Assistant Professor of Radiology, UW School of Medicine and Public Health

    Early development collaborations featured the integration of this multi-agent workflow into Teams chats, where, for example, group chats enabled conversations between multiple human experts and specialized healthcare AI agents connected to specific healthcare data. It demonstrated the promise to significantly enhance efficiency and collaboration among clinical providers. This capability is already bringing clinicians and developers together to build the agentic healthcare applications of the future: the catalyst is the powerful combination of healthcare-specific agents using general reasoning models and multimodal healthcare foundation models alongside the ability to interact directly with custom agents using Teams.  

    For example, Johns Hopkins oncologists Dr. Vasan Yegnasubramanian, Dr. Elsa Anagnostou, and Dr. Taxiarchis Botsis and their developer teams in the Johns Hopkins inHealth Precision Medicine program and Molecular Tumor Board are providing their expertise to refine and test the system to ensure it would have high utility if used in their clinical and precision medicine applications.  

    Coordinating collaboration of specialized agents

    The healthcare agent orchestrator builds upon recent research and releases from Microsoft Research and our collaborators. It coordinates collaboration of specialized agents designed explicitly for complex multidisciplinary clinical workflows like cancer care.  

    • The orchestrator leverages Semantic Kernel and Magentic-One to coordinate agents, maintain shared memory, and interact with the human in the loop.  
    • The patient history agent leverages Universal Medical Abstraction to organize patient data chronologically.3 Manual work that can take experts over three hours happens in minutes.   
    • The radiology agent leverages customer fine-tuned models like CXRRepotGen/MAIRA-2 to analyze radiology images for a second read.4  
    • The pathology agent demonstrates how to connect to external agents like Paige.ai’s “Alba” pathology agent to address complex queries related to pathology images (available in preview).5  
    • The cancer staging agent refers to the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) clinical guidelines to support accurate cancer staging. 
    • The clinical guidelines agent refers to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) clinical guidelines to suggest recommended treatment plans.  
    • The clinical trials agent identifies eligible clinical trials by matching patient profiles against databases such as ClinicalTrials.gov. This can result in more than double the recall improvement compared to the publicly available Critera2Query baseline.6  
    • The medical research agent delivers actionable, evidence-based guidance grounded on graph-based knowledge from trusted medical journals.
    • The report creation agent automates comprehensive, integrated, richly formatted reporting that serves as a trusted reference during multidisciplinary meetings. 

    “As we progress towards the routine use of multi-agent systems, the healthcare agent orchestrator demonstrates the power to simplify the integration of various models and agents with productivity tools that clinicians are already using. The flexible orchestration framework will make it easy for us at Paige to continue to focus on our pathology agents while enabling their integration into the larger cancer care workflow and leverage access to multi-modal data.”

    —Razik Yousfi, Chief Executive Officer of Paige.ai

    The orchestrator is intentionally open-ended: any approved agent—including third-party—that exposes an API, tool wrapper, or MCP endpoint can be pulled into a Teams conversational thread. Paige.ai is shipping their Alba agent in preview, the first example of an external agent that can be connected to healthcare agent orchestrator. Built on Paige’s foundation-scale vision models and coupled with a conversational large language model (LLM) front-end, Alba delivers real-time conversational digital pathology insights such as tumor grade, morphology, and biomarker status directly from whole-slide images.  

    “Providence clinical researchers have begun leveraging advanced AI capabilities provided by the healthcare agent orchestrator to quickly and efficiently parse through large sets of publications, clinical trials and electronic health records. We are excited about its potential to enhance our ability to interpret genomics and match clinical trials in the molecular tumor boards, ultimately benefiting patient care by providing more precise and timely treatment options. Its integration into our workflows also will help streamline communication and collaboration among clinical providers, ensuring that critical clinical information is shared promptly and accurately. As we continue to explore new ways to understand the biology of cancer, its capabilities will be instrumental in driving medical discoveries and advancing cancer treatment.”

    —Carlo Bifulco, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Providence Genomics and research faculty at the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute

    Empowering developers to accelerate innovations for care teams

    As clinical care complexity escalates, the healthcare agent orchestrator empowers developers to confidently navigate the accelerating era of agentic AI, collaborate with clinicians, and democratize precision medicine tools by surfacing these capabilities into existing workflows. The initial framework is designed to study the opportunity of assisting tumor boards. The ultimate vision is to empower healthcare and life science developers to research how agentic AI capabilities could impact clinicians and patients more widely by providing real-time support to multidisciplinary care teams across the healthcare ecosystem. 

    Healthcare developers and clinical organizations are invited to explore healthcare agent orchestrator, available through the Azure AI Foundry Agent Catalog. Engage with the next generation of AI-powered healthcare agents today.  

    Contact Microsoft Healthcare AI Team

    1 Global cancer statistics 2022: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, April 4, 2024.

    2 Using an Adapted Tumor Board Evaluation Tool for Quality Assessment of a Thoracic Multidisciplinary Cancer Conference: A Pilot Study, JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, October 5, 2023.

    3 Universal Abstraction: Harnessing Frontier Models to Structure Real-World Data at Scale, February 2, 2025

    4 MAIRA-2: Grounded Radiology Report Generation, June 6, 2024

    5 Nature Medicine, A foundation model for clinical-grade computational pathology and rare cancers detection, July 22, 2024

    6 Scaling Clinical Trial Matching Using Large Language Models: A Case Study in Oncology, August 4, 2023

    Disclaimer

    Healthcare agent orchestrator is intended for research and development use. It is not designed or intended to be deployed in clinical settings as-is nor is it intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health or medical condition, and its performance for such purposes has not been established. You bear sole responsibility and liability for any use of healthcare agent orchestrator, including verification of outputs and incorporation into any product or service intended for a medical purpose or to inform clinical decision-making, compliance with applicable healthcare laws and regulations, and obtaining any necessary clearances or approvals. 

    Matthew Lungren, MD, MPH

    Chief Scientific Officer, Health and Life Sciences

    Dr. Matthew Lungren is the Chief Scientific Officer for Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, where he leads efforts to translate cutting-edge technologies—including generative AI and cloud services—into real-world healthcare applications. He is also a Clinical Associate Professor at UCSF and an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University.

    See more articles from this author

    MIL OSI Economics –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Universities face getting stuck with thousands of obsolete robots – here’s how to avoid a research calamity

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Carl Strathearn, Lecturer in Computer Science, Edinburgh Napier University

    For more than a decade, the French robotics company Aldebaran has built some of the most popular robots used in academic research. Go to most university robotics departments and you’ll find either Pepper, the iconic three-wheeled humanoid robot, or its smaller two-legged sibling, Nao.

    These fast became the robots of choice for many academics for all research into the capabilities and potential of social robots. They are quick to set up and easy to use out of the box, without the need for any programming skills or engineering knowledge.

    With base prices at around £17,000 for Pepper and £8,000 for Nao – typically plus a few thousand pounds more for extras, online training sessions, service plans, warranties and so on – the robots could be purchased via university research grants.

    With Pepper robots also appearing in customer service jobs, for example in HSBC banks across the US, buyers were attracted by the lure of long-term educational and financial benefits from a state-of-the-art tech supplier. Aldebaran says it has sold approximately 37,000 machines worldwide (20,000 Naos and 17,000 Peppers).

    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.

    However, the company stopped developing Pepper robots in 2021, having struggled to sell as many as it had hoped, and was offloaded by long-time Japanese owner Softbank.

    In February of this year, Alderbaran filed for bankruptcy and restructured amid ongoing financial difficulties. Currently looking for a buyer, it has halved its staff numbers, though it is still making Nao (and a serving assistant on wheels called Plato).

    The uncertainty around the company’s future has stoked fears that it will become impossible to get its robots repaired in future, and that Aldebaran could stop supporting the AI cloud network that the machines need to access to be able to function.

    What does this mean for the future of robotics research in universities?

    Besides fears about Aldebaran’s future, there have long been issues with Pepper and Nao’s durability. They both have rigid, fragile plastic shells, and the machines sometimes overheat. This means they have to be left to cool down after 20-30 minutes, which has often interfered with experiments and data-gathering – as documented in this 2022 study of Nao.

    A spokesperson for Aldebaran agreed that motors can overheat, depending on their use and environment. They said the next generation of Nao, currently in development, has taken this into account in its design.

    For repairs, the only option is Aldebaran or an authorised reseller, or you risk voiding your warranty. This typically involves shipping overseas, which can be slow and costly – more so if the replacement parts are out of stock.

    One of us (Emilia) encountered this during the COVID pandemic. Nao’s batteries need to be used regularly to keep functioning, which led the university’s machine to fail because it was inaccessible during lockdowns. Aldebaran couldn’t supply replacement batteries quickly, which halted research projects at the university for many months and meant that important submission deadlines were missed.

    Meanwhile, software upgrades for Pepper stopped when the company halted development in 2021 (sales stopped in 2024). This robot’s limited processing capabilities make it troublesome to run the large language models (LLMs) that power interfaces like ChatGPT (although these can be run in conjunction with a computer with modifications).

    Nao does have an AI edition that can handle LLMs, though this too requires external modifications. Nao’s upgrades also seem to have been limited, which in our experience appears to have made them more error-prone too. Both robots are already considerably less useful for research purposes in our opinion.

    Finally, Nao and Pepper were not built with adaptability in mind. Unlike more recent machines like the 3D-printed InMoov, made by French designer Gael Langevin, there’s no way of customising their components or appearance.

    Their fixed expressions, gestures and plastic body make them difficult to adapt to different user needs or applications, such as helping at home or in healthcare. This again reduces their usefulness from a research point of view.

    Addressing these concerns, the Aldebaran spokesperson said:

    Spare parts availability on Nao is very good, [barring] the normal supply chain issues, and these were exacerbated during COVID like the rest of the commercial world. Pepper is more limited as it has not been in production for some time, but we are generally able to solve any customer issues.

    Nao is still very active as a product, with production continuing along with software upgrades. We recently launched Nao Activities, a major software upgrade that provides generative AI capabilities for Nao.

    The spokesperson added that are were no plans to switch off AI cloud support for Nao or Pepper, and that the robots are not difficult to use in robotics research, “testament of which is the thousands of units being used in that environment”.

    What can be done?

    If Pepper and Nao do become unusable for research, universities will have to either scrap them or try to redevelop them with custom parts and components. It’s possible they could be hacked and gutted, replacement parts could be 3D-printed, new microprocessors installed and the software made local and open source, which may be enough to get the robots back up and working again.

    However, it probably makes sense for researchers to look forwards instead. But towards what? At a time when university finances are very tight, there may be a reluctance to buy new machines with potentially limited shelf lives. Robots from alternative providers such as Futhat and Unitree are supported by similar cloud-based AI systems.

    Some institutions may consider reallocating vital funding to other departments, with a significant impact across robotics research and education. Universities are at the heart of robotics research, upholding high ethical standards and rigorously testing machines without the conflicts of interest that manufacturers can have.

    Universities can also bring together diverse disciplines like computer science, engineering and cognitive science, fostering collaboration that encourages innovation. With the UK number one globally for research quality in this field, these are the training grounds for the next generation of roboticists at a time when there is a growing skills shortage.

    A different way forward would be for universities to start building and programming robots from scratch. For the cost of a new research robot, say £15,000, you could buy several high-spec 3D printers, hardware and components.

    This wouldn’t be about building entire humanoid robots but prototypes of key aspects such as facial expressiveness or skin, human gestures or emotions. This would allow students to gain important hands-on engineering and programming skills, while conducting novel research exploring current gaps in the field.

    It would make personalising them easier and repairing them quicker and cheaper, if you could 3D-print parts or use parts that could be easily replaced off-the-shelf.

    If universities are to remain relevant in this rapidly evolving field, it’s vital that they learn from their difficulties with Pepper and Nao. At a time when robots are starting to be perceived as reliable and cost-effective support for people, this is a cautionary tale for all.

    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. Universities face getting stuck with thousands of obsolete robots – here’s how to avoid a research calamity – https://theconversation.com/universities-face-getting-stuck-with-thousands-of-obsolete-robots-heres-how-to-avoid-a-research-calamity-256829

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Men on social media are cutting their eyelashes to appear more ‘masculine’ – here’s why it’s a bad idea

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

    Eyelashes help protect our us from infections and debris. FCG/ Shutterstock

    Social media is full of bizarre and questionable trends. The latest involves men trimming or shaving off their eyelashes in order to appear more “masculine”.

    This is yet another instance where leaving the body to look after itself is probably for the best. Our lashes aren’t just aesthetic. They play an important role in protecting our eyes. Trimming them could put you at greater risk of experiencing infections.

    Eyelashes are classed as terminal hair. This means they’re present since birth. We have between 90 and 160 eyelahes on our upper eyelid and around 75 to 80 on our lower lids. They also grow pretty quickly too – at a rate of between 0.12-0.14mm a day.

    While most people focus on the aesthetics of the eyelashes – with plenty of products out there claiming to change their colour, length and thickness – eyelashes actually have important functional roles. They keep dirt and particles out of the eyes, and also deflect air away from the cornea.

    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.

    This helps stop the outer surface from drying out – preventing irritation and making it so we don’t have to blink as much to keep our eyes moist. The ideal length of an eyelash is about one-third the width of the eye.

    Trimming your eyelashes is going to increase the risk of infection. There’s even a risk you may catch an infection while trimming the lashes themselves. Since lashes catch particles on them, if a trimmed lash falls back into your eye it could lead to an infection.

    There are cases of this happening even when an eyelash has fallen out naturally, leading to infections and ending up inside compartments of the eye. Rogue eyelashes and the particles on them can cause anything from conjunctivitis (better known as “pink eye”) though to blepharitis (inflammation of the eyelid).

    At the base of the lashes are the meibomian glands. These produce an oily substance rich in fat, called meibum. This substance prevents tears from evaporating quickly, keeping the surface of the eye moist. These secretions also run along the lashes, keeping them healthy and helping to catch small particles so they don’t get into the eye.

    Cutting your eyelashes will reduce the ability to keep particles out of the eye and potentially disturb how well the meibomian glands function, as there’s less eyelash for meibum to sit on and catch particulates. This disruption increases the risk of infections such as keratitis (inflammation of the cornea).

    Other common eyelid infections that can occur are styes or chalazions.

    Styes result from an infection in the base of the eyelash (hair) follicle. It presents as a swollen, tender, red lump that may have yellow discharge coming out of it and crustiness along the eyelid. The most common cause of a stye is a staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that lives on the skin and in the nose of many people.

    A chalazion is the blockage of the meibomian gland, these swellings are usually painless and not tender to touch. They are most commonly seen on the upper eyelid.

    Trimming the lashes could lead to infections, such as styes.
    Tolmachov Vision/ Shutterstock

    Any interference with your eyelashes and their length increases the risk of particles getting into the eye and causing an infection or blocking the glands.

    Our eyelashes and their length also play an important role in closing our eyes when needed to protect the eyeball. This reflex is activated when the lashes “feel” something touch their very sensitive nerve fibres. Trimming your eyelashes reduces the time that this reflex has to go from detection by the eyelashes, to the brain and then back to the muscles of the eyelid to close it and protect the eyeball. If you cut your eyelashes, you may be at greater risk of things getting in your eye – such as bugs or dust.

    Should you ever trim your lashes?

    There are some conditions that cause the eyelashes to grow abnormally. And in some cases, they may need to be removed or trimmed to prevent infections.

    For instance, some people have abnormally long eyelashes – termed trichomegaly. This is considered where length is more than 12mm or the eyelashes are abnormally curly, pigmented or thick.

    It isn’t known if naturally longer lashes increase the chance of eye problems – but extending your lashes artificially increases infection risk due to the chemicals used in the adhesives.

    Certain drugs may also cause eyelashes to grow excessively – such as the anti-epilepsy drug topiramate.

    Some people can have double rows of eyelashes – actress Elizabeth Taylor was one. This condition is typically caused by a rare condition called distichiasis, which affects one in 10,000 people. Some people can even grow a third and fourth row of eyelashes.



    Read more:
    The risks of eyelash extensions aren’t pretty, from cornea erosion to cancer-causing glue

    Distichiasis causes red, watery or irritated eyes, alongside pain, light sensitivity and even scarring of the cornea. Treatment can be anything from plucking the additional lashes through to cryotherapy (freezing the eyelash follicles to prevent future growth) or laser ablation to prevent them growing back entirely.

    Trichiasis causes the eyelashes to grow inwards towards the eye. Inward growing eyelashes can cause irritation of the eyeball and, if untreated, permanent damage. It can also cause blepharitis.

    In this case, a person would need to use epilation to remove the eyelashes (though they will grow back in four to six weeks). A more permanent solution is laser removal to prevent the eyelashes from regrowing.

    Eyelashes play an important part in protecting our eyes. They’re best left alone to do their thing, and should only be removed if a medical condition is causing them to grow abnormally or leading to irritation. But in those instances, it’s best to seek a doctor’s help to avoid causing yourself any harm.

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

    – ref. Men on social media are cutting their eyelashes to appear more ‘masculine’ – here’s why it’s a bad idea – https://theconversation.com/men-on-social-media-are-cutting-their-eyelashes-to-appear-more-masculine-heres-why-its-a-bad-idea-256363

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The psychology of climate traps and how to avoid them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lucrezia Nava, Assistant Professor, Climate Psychology, Carbon Dioxide Removals, Business School, University of Exeter

    Victor Guerrero Diez/Shutterstock

    Each year, the world loses around 5 million hectares of forest, with 95% of this deforestation occurring in tropical regions. South America is a major hotspot, with Brazil in particular facing severe forest loss — much of it driven by cattle ranching, which accounts for more than 70% of all Amazon deforestation.

    Many of these clearings are carried out by farmers, particularly smallholders, who are trying to cope with intensifying drought and other effects of climate change. This leads to a paradox: the people most exposed to climate threats are often pushed by survival pressures to make choices that further degrade the environment.

    Imagine standing in a field of dry, cracked soil, watching the crops you planted with hope fail to grow. It hasn’t rained in months. You know that planting trees could help protect your land and water sources in the long run. But you need food next week.

    So instead, you clear some forest to sell timber and raise a few cows — a choice that might get you through the season, even if it further reduces soil moisture and water retention on your own farm.

    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.

    As one farmer told me: “The problem is: does the agricultural producer die now, or does he die later? Now, he dies of hunger. Later, he dies of thirst. He prefers to die later of thirst.”

    This is what my team of environmental researchers calls a “climate trap”: a vicious cycle where short-term survival decisions deepen long-term climate vulnerability. Our recent study investigates this phenomenon among smallholder cocoa producers in the south of the Brazilian state of Bahia.

    We tracked more than 3,000 farms over four years and conducted dozens of interviews with farmers. One of our most striking findings was that those most affected by droughts were less likely to employ adaptive strategies such as reforestation, and more likely to make environmentally harmful choices such as clearing forest for pasture.

    This contrasts sharply with research from high-income countries, where more exposure to climate risks typically encourages protective action. Why the difference?

    The answer, according to our research, lies in emotion. Many farmers spoke of fear and hopelessness. One told us: “We plant, replant and it dies. Plant, replant, it dies. There’s no rain! Everything we took care of, everything we watered, everything we did with love. It’s no use!”

    These emotions influence decisions. When fear and hopelessness set in, people naturally narrow their focus to the short term — what can I control today?

    Climate shocks such as drought trigger emotional distress, which can lead to environmentally harmful choices that increase vulnerability.
    Scott Book/Shutterstock

    The future becomes too uncertain, too frightening to plan for. As one farmer explained: “Today, I work more in the short term. I’m worried about today’s drought, okay? I’m not starting to think about next year’s drought or in two years’ time.”

    Even when farmers understand that long-term strategies like reforestation would help, those solutions can feel unattainable under emotional and economic stress.

    We call this a maladaptive feedback loop: climate shocks trigger emotional distress, which limits long-term thinking, leading to environmentally harmful choices that further increase vulnerability to future shocks. And the cycle repeats.

    Learning from the loop

    Climate traps are real and probably more widespread than many people realise. Similar dynamics have been reported in parts of Africa, Asia and across the developing world. These are the communities facing the brunt of climate change with the fewest resources to respond.

    To spot climate traps, businesses and governments need to recognise when short-term incentives are driving long-term harm. If a decision solves an immediate problem but increases climate risk over time, it may be part of a trap.

    They need to watch out for indicators such as repeated deforestation after droughts, or a shift from sustainable crops to quick-fix options such as cattle pasture. In areas heavily affected by climate change, these responses often signal a deeper cycle of short-term survival and long-term vulnerability.

    Also, listen out for resignation. Phrases like “there’s no point” and “we just survive however we can” or “there’s nothing we can do except pray for a change” may signal emotional fatigue — which points to a loss of agency and diminished belief in the usefulness of long-term action.

    When people no longer believe their efforts can make a difference, even the best technical solutions are likely to be ignored.

    Climate adaptation is about more than just providing technical solutions. In our study, producers were well aware of the pros and cons of their practices. The real barriers were emotional.

    We believe interventions need to address fear and hopelessness directly — through the use of safety nets, financial buffers and community-led support systems, as well as narratives that rebuild a sense of control and agency. Reducing hopelessness requires not just money but presence. Trusted advisors, peer learning networks and visible examples of successful adaptation can all help.

    Avoiding climate traps isn’t easy. But for climate adaptation to succeed — especially where it’s needed most — we have to stop treating emotions as a side issue. They’re central. The solutions we offer must speak to both the mind and the heart.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

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

    – ref. The psychology of climate traps and how to avoid them – https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-climate-traps-and-how-to-avoid-them-255832

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why your electricity bill is so high and what Pennsylvania is doing about it

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Penn State

    Pennsylvanians can expect 10% to 20% increases in their electricity bills over the next three years. Gregory Rodriguez/iStock via Getty Images

    Americans’ electricity bills tend to tick up each year in line with inflation.

    But upgrades to electric wires, reinforcing and protecting power lines from severe weather, and changing fuel costs – among other factors – are sending rates soaring.

    High electricity consumption from data centers and other sources of rising demand will likely cause further increases in the near future.

    The impact on consumers is particularly dramatic in Pennsylvania, where rate hikes are widespread.

    For example, the monthly bill for a PECO residential customer who uses 700 kilowatt hours of electricity monthly increased 10% – or US$13.58 – in 2025. These bills will go up another $2.70 each month in 2026.

    Retail price adjustments approved by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for most electric distribution utilities effective December 2024 led to higher bills for many customers across the state. In some parts of Pennsylvania, the estimated increases topped an estimated 30%.

    As professors who work in the areas of energy law and electricity markets, we know electricity costs are rising in many parts of the U.S.

    But Pennsylvania faces distinct challenges related to its electric grid – the maze of wires and generators – that drive both the growing demand for electricity and the limited supply.

    PJM and the electric grid

    Pennsylvania power plants produce a lot of electricity. In fact, the Keystone State is the the largest exporter of electricity in the U.S. and has been for many years.

    But the electricity Pennsylvania produces doesn’t always stay in state.

    That’s because Pennsylvania’s electric grid is managed by a company called PJM. PJM coordinates the flow of electricity through all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, and it ensures the wholesale electricity transmission system operates reliably and safely.

    Pennsylvania electric utilities, such as PECO or Duquesne Light, then distribute this wholesale electricity to retail customers, including homeowners and renters.

    PJM requires the utilities to ensure ahead of time that they can meet their customers’ future electricity demands, including during heat waves and winter storms. This requirement is met using a market called a “capacity auction,” in which electricity suppliers bid to provide physical infrastructure that will generate electricity in the future.

    The prices at the 2025-2026 PJM capacity auction were more than 800% higher than the previous year, in part due to the growing demand for electricity within PJM. This amounts to tens of billions of dollars in extra costs.

    Power plants in Pennsylvania can’t simply stop exporting electricity and supply more in-state power because they dispatch their power into the regional grid operated by PJM, and the flow of electricity is dictated by the physical structure of this grid.

    Pennsylvania shares an electric grid with northern Virginia, considered the largest data center market in the world.
    Nathan Howard via Getty Images

    Soaring demand from data centers

    U.S. electricity demand rose 3% in 2024 and is expected to rise even more rapidly in the coming years.

    Much of this new demand comes from data centers, which support everything from AI applications and data storage – think of the thousands of emails and files backed up on our computers – to sports betting, online retailers such as Amazon, and national security applications such as the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

    Pennsylvania is on the same electric grid as Virginia, which hosts about a quarter of all data center capacity in the Americas. New data centers are also being built in Pennsylvania.

    Rising demand is also driven by the increase in electric vehicles and the replacement of gas- and oil-based furnaces with electric heat pumps. These replacements are ultimately more energy efficient but require electricity.

    Bottlenecks in supply

    The increase in electricity demand within PJM is happening at the same time that supply is shrinking.

    Many old generating plants in the PJM grid are retiring as they near the end of their useful lives and become less profitable for plant operators, particularly as natural gas and solar become more affordable. Some of these older power plants also emit a lot of pollution and are costly to retrofit to meet current pollution limits.

    Beyond the challenge of plant retirements, PJM has been slow to allow hundreds of new proposed power plants – most of them solar- and battery-based – to connect to transmission lines.

    This long “interconnection queue” prevents new, needed generation from coming online. This is happening even though companies are eager and ready to build more generation and battery storage.

    Aging infrastructure and growing weather extremes

    One of the primary recent drivers of high consumer electric bills is that the utilities have been slow to upgrade their aging wires.

    Many have recently made major investments in new infrastructure and in some cases are burying or strengthening wires to protect them from increasingly extreme weather.

    Electricity customers are footing the bill for this work.

    Increasing demand, aging power infrastructure and transmission bottlenecks lead to higher electricity rates.
    David Espejo/Moment Collection via Getty Images

    Response from policymakers

    In response to rising electricity prices, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro filed a legal complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission against PJM in December 2024. This complaint blamed PJM’s capacity auction design for creating unnecessary costs for consumers.

    According to the settlement reached after the complaint, PJM’s price caps will be 35% lower at the next major capacity auction. This reduction in wholesale prices could limit retail price increases.

    But this is at best a temporary fix. It doesn’t address the increasing demand, aging power infrastructure battered by extreme weather, or transmission bottleneck.

    In order for Pennsylvania residents to see lower electric bills anytime soon, more changes are needed. For example, many experts previously observed that PJM needs to fix the queue and get online the many power plants that are ready to build and just waiting for a transmission interconnection.

    While PJM has reformed its queue process, the queue is still long. New power plants are not going up fast enough, in part due to additional challenges such as local opposition and supply chain and financing issues.

    Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

    Hannah Wiseman receives or has recently received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Arnold Ventures, U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Center for Rural Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. She is a member of the Center for Progressive Reform.

    Seth Blumsack receives or has recently received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Heising Simons Foundation, U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Center for Rural Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

    – ref. Why your electricity bill is so high and what Pennsylvania is doing about it – https://theconversation.com/why-your-electricity-bill-is-so-high-and-what-pennsylvania-is-doing-about-it-254562

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Windows are the No. 1 human threat to birds – an ecologist shares some simple steps to reduce collisions

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jason Hoeksema, Professor of Ecology, University of Mississippi

    Birds are drawn to the mirror effect of windows. That can turn deadly when they think they see trees. CCahill/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    When wood thrushes arrive in northern Mississippi on their spring migration and begin to serenade my neighborhood with their ethereal, harmonized song, it’s one of the great joys of the season. It’s also a minor miracle. These small creatures have just flown more than 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers), all the way from Central America.

    Other birds undertake even longer journeys — the Swainson’s thrush, for example, nests as far north as the boreal forests of Alaska and spends the nonbreeding season in northern South America, traveling up to 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) each way.

    These stunning feats of travel are awe-inspiring, making it that much more tragic when they are cut short by a deadly collision with a glass window.

    A wood thrush singing. Shared by the American Bird Conservancy.

    This happens with alarming regularity. Two recent scientific studies estimate that more than 1 billion birds – and as many as 5.19 billion – die from collisions with sheet glass each year in the United States alone, sometimes immediately but often from their injuries.

    In fact, window collisions are now considered the top human cause of bird deaths. Due to window collisions and other causes, bird populations across North America have declined more than 29% from their 1970 levels, likely with major consequences for the world’s ecosystems.

    These collisions occur on every type of building, from homes to skyscrapers. At the University of Mississippi campus, where I teach and conduct research as an ecologist, my colleagues and I have been testing some creative solutions.

    Why glass is so often deadly for birds

    Most frequently, glass acts as a mirror, reflecting clear sky or habitat. There is no reason for a bird to slow down when there appears to be a welcoming tree or shrub ahead.

    These head-on collisions frequently result in brain injuries, to which birds often succumb immediately.

    In other cases, birds are stunned by the collision and eventually fly off, but many of those individuals also eventually perish from brain swelling.

    Other injuries, to wings or legs, for example, can leave birds unable to fly and vulnerable to cats or other predators. If you find an injured bird, contact a local wildlife rehabilitator.

    Which windows are riskiest

    Some windows are much worse than others, depending on their proximity to bushes and other bird habitats, what is reflected in them, and how interior lighting exacerbates or diminishes the mirror effect.

    On our campus, some buildings with a great deal of glass surface area kill surprisingly few birds, while other small sets of windows are disproportionately deadly.

    A stunned Swainson’s thrush sits on the ground in front of a window on campus. The bird, which likely hit the window, eventually recovered and flew away.
    Jason Hoeksema/University of Mississippi

    One particular elevated walkway with glass on both sides between the chemistry and pharmacy buildings is a notoriously dangerous spot. The glass kills migratory birds each spring and fall as they try to pass between the two buildings on their way to The Grove, the university’s central-campus park area with large old oak trees.

    During the pandemic in 2020, student Emma Counce did the heart-heavy work of performing a survey of 11 campus buildings almost daily during spring migration. She found 72 bird fatalities in seven weeks. Five years later, my ornithology students completed a new survey and found 62 mortalities over the course of five weeks in 2025, demonstrating that we still have a lot of work to do to make our campus safe for migratory birds.

    Thrushes, perhaps due to their propensity for whizzing through tight spaces in the shady forest understory, have been disproportionately represented among the victims. Others include colorful songbirds – northern parulas, black-and-white warblers, prothonotary warblers, Kentucky warblers, buntings, vireos and tanagers.

    How to make windows less dangerous

    The good thing is that everyone can do something to lower the risk.

    Films, stickers or strings can be added on the exterior of windows, creating dots or lines, 2 to 4 inches apart, that break up reflections to give the appearance of a barrier.

    Exterior screens and blinds work great too. Just adding a few predator silhouette stickers is not effective, by the way – the treatment needs to span the whole window.

    Putting film with dots on windows, like this one at the University of Mississippi, can help birds spot the glass and stop in time. Without the dots, the reflection can look like more trees are ahead instead of glass and a hallway.
    Jason Hoeksema/University of Mississippi

    When applied properly, window treatments can make a huge difference. An inspiring example is McCormick Place in Chicago, the country’s largest convention center, which notoriously killed nearly 1,000 birds in a single night in 2023. After workers applied dot film to an area of the building’s windows equivalent to two football fields, bird mortality at the lakeside building has been reduced by 95%.

    The Bird Collision Prevention Alliance provides information on options for retrofitting home or office windows to make them more bird friendly.

    Options for new windows are also becoming more common. For example, the new Center for Science & Technology Innovation on my campus, which features many windows, mostly used bird-friendly glass with subtle polka dots built into it. This spring, we found that it killed only four birds, despite a very high surface area of glass.

    How you can help

    When trying to make a difference on your home turf, I suggest starting small. Make note of which specific windows have killed birds in the past, and treat them first.

    Use it as an opportunity to learn what approach might work best for you and your building. Either order a product or make something yourself and get it installed.

    How to make your windows safer for birds. Shared by Audubon New York and American Bird Conservancy.

    Then do another, and tell a friend. At the office, talk to people, find others who care and build a team to make gradual change.

    With some creative solutions, anyone can help reduce at least this major risk.

    Jason Hoeksema is affiliated with the University of Mississippi, Delta Wind Birds, and the Mississippi Ornithological Society.

    – ref. Windows are the No. 1 human threat to birds – an ecologist shares some simple steps to reduce collisions – https://theconversation.com/windows-are-the-no-1-human-threat-to-birds-an-ecologist-shares-some-simple-steps-to-reduce-collisions-255838

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Seed sowers sought to explore food potential of Scotland’s underutilised land Nutrition scientists are recruiting an army of seed sowers to help them understand how Scotland could better exploit its underutilised – or “marginal” – lands.

    Source: University of Aberdeen

    Freda Farquharson (left) and Wendy Russell

    Nutrition scientists are recruiting an army of seed sowers to help them understand how Scotland could better exploit its underutilised – or “marginal” – lands.
    Nutrition scientists are recruiting an army of seed sowers to help them understand how Scotland could better exploit its underutilised – or “marginal” – lands.
    Researchers at the university’s Rowett Institute have been very busy filling small packs with dozens of sorrel seeds to send out to participants across the country.
    Now they are appealing for anyone with an interest in taking part in the Wild Edibles Citizen Science project to get in touch and join the community.
    The idea is for as many people as possible to then share their experiences of how they get on nurturing the plants – and then using them in the kitchen.
    A dedicated Facebook group has been set up to share hints and tips and encourage a wider debate about the role wild edibles may play in the future.
    Wild edibles can be cultivated across much of Scotland. They thrive in poorer soils, are more climate resilient than many of our modern crops and have lower water, nutrients and pesticides requirements.
    They are also rich in phytochemicals, compounds that we think help prevent diseases such as cardiovascular disease and some cancers.
    Professor Wendy Russell, who leads the Rowett’s Scottish Government-funded research into sustainable food systems and supply, is spearheading the project.

    Only a small proportion of Scotland can be used to grow mainstream crops, and with increasing urban spread and ambitious plans to protect nature and biodiversity, as well as to reforest and protect our peat bogs, it is important to think about how we use our land.” Professor Wendy Russell

    In an introductory video posted to the Facebook group, Prof Russell said: “We’re really interested in how Scotland uses its underutilised – sometimes called ‘marginal’ – lands.
    “Only a small proportion of Scotland can be used to grow mainstream crops, and with increasing urban spread and ambitious plans to protect nature and biodiversity, as well as to reforest and protect our peat bogs, it is important to think about how we use our land.
    “This citizen science project is an opportunity for us to have a discussion around the use of wild edibles in our food system. Everyone should have a say about these important questions about the way we adapt what we grow and eat in the future and we are looking forward to building a community of seed planters to help grow that conversation.”
    Project co-leader Freda Farquharson told potential recruits: “We are keen to hear as many of your stories as possible – where are you planting the seeds, how are you tending them, how well are they growing, what dishes are you planning to use the sorrel in?”
    The Rowett research led by Prof Russell is showing how nature-based solutions could be pivotal in mitigating and adapting to climate change whilst restoring nature.
    Scotland’s future landscape will look very different, having to accommodate increased urban spread as well as larger areas of afforestation and peatland restoration. There is also an immediate necessity to produce our food in the most efficient and environmentally friendly way possible, but also to be mindful that we restore and enhance important habitats for our precious and unique biota.
    Mainstream agriculture will have to quickly adapt to contribute to meeting Scotland’s climate, biodiversity and heath targets, but we must also identify opportunities for nature-based food solutions as they could be pivotal in mitigating and adapting to climate change whilst restoring nature.
    Participants (UK only) can sign up for their seeds and get more information here: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/rowett/research/wild-edibles/ Or contact the team at: wildedibles@abdn.ac.uk

    Related Content

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Fool’s Gold: A Hidden Climate Stabilizer

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    On our planet, the cycle and balance of carbon from reservoir to reservoir is a matter of life or death. Carbon moves from the atmosphere to the ocean, to carbon-based life forms, to rocks or sediments, and it can be tied up in any of these reservoirs throughout the process.

    Imbalances within the cycle can have dramatic global impacts. For example, too much carbon in the atmosphere leads to the greenhouse effect and global warming, and too much carbon in the ocean leads to ocean acidification, which compromises conditions for marine life. How does the Earth recover from catastrophic conditions like massive volcanic eruptions?

    Researchers look to extremes in the past to study how the system reacts to imbalances. In their paper published in Nature, researchers from the University of Connecticut, University of Victoria, Yale University, University of British Columbia, and Georgia Institute of Technology detail an overlooked mechanism for how the ocean can help stabilize massive releases of carbon into the atmosphere following volcanic eruptions.

    UConn Department of Earth Sciences assistant professor and the paper’s lead author Mojtaba Fakhraee says a simplified way of imagining the global carbon cycle starts with an eruption of volcanic gases that release carbon into the atmosphere. Those forms of carbon like CO2 may remain in the atmosphere, whereas some can react with other elements to produce chemical species like dissolved inorganic carbon, that would be carried via rivers to the ocean.

    “When the oceanic carbon balances out with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, they reach an equilibrium condition where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be proportional to the amount of dissolved carbon species in the ocean,” says Fakhraee.

    However, in times of extreme imbalance, like during climate catastrophes or when huge quantities of CO2 are released into the atmosphere, researchers found that a different type of feedback kicks in.

    “The feedback happens when the ocean loses oxygen, it becomes more basic, and another type of reaction becomes more dominant under low oxygen or anoxic conditions. That reaction is anaerobic respiration, which produces sulfur species,” says Fakhraee.

    The sulfur species formed by the reaction is iron sulfide or pyrite, which is also known as “fool’s gold.” The process has an overall buffering effect that preserves the alkalinity of the water and thus prevents it from becoming more acidic.

    Researchers made this discovery using a coupled global carbon-sulfur cycle model that simulates geochemical processes over the past several hundred million years, including several ocean anoxic events (OAEs) and massive volcanic eruptions that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. They found the production and burial of pyrite during OAEs had a substantial stabilizing effect during times of increased volcanic activity, thus buffering the oceans and playing a significant stabilizing role for millions of years.

    “What it means is, the more you get of this buffering species, the more resistant the ocean becomes to change in pH and ocean acidification. This reaction is important in terms of how the ocean becomes resistant to acidification and changing pH,” says Fakhraee.

    These reactions happen over a very long time, when the oceans of the past periodically experienced huge influxes of volcanic gases, resulting in deoxygenation and anoxic conditions, says Fakhraee, and that is when the models showed the increase in the iron sulfide reaction, increased alkalinity, and climate stabilization.

    “We found it to be quite convincing to see why some of these past oceanic anoxic events were able to recover the way they did,” says Fakhraee. “Anoxic conditions were always thought of as a big problem for the oceans, but on a longer time scale this big problem can actually be a good way for the ocean and the whole earth to survive. Not everything about anoxia and oxygen loss is bad for the Earth system.”

    There are also important implications to the carbon cycle of today, says Fakhraee, when we are seeing deoxygenation in the ocean as atmospheric levels of CO2 increase, but there is a caveat – time.

    “We expect this process of iron sulfide formation to be important as we increase the rate of ocean deoxygenation, which would help regulate and stabilize the CO2 in the atmosphere. But do not make a mistake and think that this will help us with current climate change, because this feedback happens on a longer time scale. Humans would be drastically affected by climate change, but the Earth system has this intriguing feedback that would help the system to recover,” says Fakhraee.

    Although pyrite formation occurs today in some anoxic marine environments, its global impact on ocean alkalinity and carbon sequestration is minimal under current conditions. A significant uptick in this buffering mechanism would require extensive, sustained deoxygenation of the global ocean — conditions that would be catastrophic for most marine life and profoundly disruptive to the Earth’s biosphere.

    “Humans and other life experiencing climate change would be severely impacted over a very short time scale. It’s all about the time scale and then how much oxygen loss happens,” says Fakhraee.

    Another important takeaway from this research that Fakhraee reflects on is the remarkable resilience of the global carbon cycle.

    “All these interconnected processes show where one small change in one part of this whole system would make a large change in another part of the system. It’s intriguing to see how Earth can recover from very severe past experiences that wiped out life on the planet,” says Fahkraee. “Part of the reason that Earth has experienced so many ups and downs in terms of life, and part of the reason there is hope is because there was feedback that helped Earth to recover and allowed for some other life to exist and to evolve. Earth has its own way to survive, but we need to find a way to survive, and we are in danger if we don’t pay enough attention to what’s happening in terms of climate change.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Windows are the No. 1 human threat to birds – an ecologist shares some simple steps to reduce collisions

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Hoeksema, Professor of Ecology, University of Mississippi

    Birds are drawn to the mirror effect of windows. That can turn deadly when they think they see trees. CCahill/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    When wood thrushes arrive in northern Mississippi on their spring migration and begin to serenade my neighborhood with their ethereal, harmonized song, it’s one of the great joys of the season. It’s also a minor miracle. These small creatures have just flown more than 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers), all the way from Central America.

    Other birds undertake even longer journeys — the Swainson’s thrush, for example, nests as far north as the boreal forests of Alaska and spends the nonbreeding season in northern South America, traveling up to 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) each way.

    These stunning feats of travel are awe-inspiring, making it that much more tragic when they are cut short by a deadly collision with a glass window.

    A wood thrush singing. Shared by the American Bird Conservancy.

    This happens with alarming regularity. Two recent scientific studies estimate that more than 1 billion birds – and as many as 5.19 billion – die from collisions with sheet glass each year in the United States alone, sometimes immediately but often from their injuries.

    In fact, window collisions are now considered the top human cause of bird deaths. Due to window collisions and other causes, bird populations across North America have declined more than 29% from their 1970 levels, likely with major consequences for the world’s ecosystems.

    These collisions occur on every type of building, from homes to skyscrapers. At the University of Mississippi campus, where I teach and conduct research as an ecologist, my colleagues and I have been testing some creative solutions.

    Why glass is so often deadly for birds

    Most frequently, glass acts as a mirror, reflecting clear sky or habitat. There is no reason for a bird to slow down when there appears to be a welcoming tree or shrub ahead.

    These head-on collisions frequently result in brain injuries, to which birds often succumb immediately.

    In other cases, birds are stunned by the collision and eventually fly off, but many of those individuals also eventually perish from brain swelling.

    Other injuries, to wings or legs, for example, can leave birds unable to fly and vulnerable to cats or other predators. If you find an injured bird, contact a local wildlife rehabilitator.

    Which windows are riskiest

    Some windows are much worse than others, depending on their proximity to bushes and other bird habitats, what is reflected in them, and how interior lighting exacerbates or diminishes the mirror effect.

    On our campus, some buildings with a great deal of glass surface area kill surprisingly few birds, while other small sets of windows are disproportionately deadly.

    A stunned Swainson’s thrush sits on the ground in front of a window on campus. The bird, which likely hit the window, eventually recovered and flew away.
    Jason Hoeksema/University of Mississippi

    One particular elevated walkway with glass on both sides between the chemistry and pharmacy buildings is a notoriously dangerous spot. The glass kills migratory birds each spring and fall as they try to pass between the two buildings on their way to The Grove, the university’s central-campus park area with large old oak trees.

    During the pandemic in 2020, student Emma Counce did the heart-heavy work of performing a survey of 11 campus buildings almost daily during spring migration. She found 72 bird fatalities in seven weeks. Five years later, my ornithology students completed a new survey and found 62 mortalities over the course of five weeks in 2025, demonstrating that we still have a lot of work to do to make our campus safe for migratory birds.

    Thrushes, perhaps due to their propensity for whizzing through tight spaces in the shady forest understory, have been disproportionately represented among the victims. Others include colorful songbirds – northern parulas, black-and-white warblers, prothonotary warblers, Kentucky warblers, buntings, vireos and tanagers.

    How to make windows less dangerous

    The good thing is that everyone can do something to lower the risk.

    Films, stickers or strings can be added on the exterior of windows, creating dots or lines, 2 to 4 inches apart, that break up reflections to give the appearance of a barrier.

    Exterior screens and blinds work great too. Just adding a few predator silhouette stickers is not effective, by the way – the treatment needs to span the whole window.

    Putting film with dots on windows, like this one at the University of Mississippi, can help birds spot the glass and stop in time. Without the dots, the reflection can look like more trees are ahead instead of glass and a hallway.
    Jason Hoeksema/University of Mississippi

    When applied properly, window treatments can make a huge difference. An inspiring example is McCormick Place in Chicago, the country’s largest convention center, which notoriously killed nearly 1,000 birds in a single night in 2023. After workers applied dot film to an area of the building’s windows equivalent to two football fields, bird mortality at the lakeside building has been reduced by 95%.

    The Bird Collision Prevention Alliance provides information on options for retrofitting home or office windows to make them more bird friendly.

    Options for new windows are also becoming more common. For example, the new Center for Science & Technology Innovation on my campus, which features many windows, mostly used bird-friendly glass with subtle polka dots built into it. This spring, we found that it killed only four birds, despite a very high surface area of glass.

    How you can help

    When trying to make a difference on your home turf, I suggest starting small. Make note of which specific windows have killed birds in the past, and treat them first.

    Use it as an opportunity to learn what approach might work best for you and your building. Either order a product or make something yourself and get it installed.

    How to make your windows safer for birds. Shared by Audubon New York and American Bird Conservancy.

    Then do another, and tell a friend. At the office, talk to people, find others who care and build a team to make gradual change.

    With some creative solutions, anyone can help reduce at least this major risk.

    Jason Hoeksema is affiliated with the University of Mississippi, Delta Wind Birds, and the Mississippi Ornithological Society.

    – ref. Windows are the No. 1 human threat to birds – an ecologist shares some simple steps to reduce collisions – https://theconversation.com/windows-are-the-no-1-human-threat-to-birds-an-ecologist-shares-some-simple-steps-to-reduce-collisions-255838

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –