Last weekFree Pressextolled the Government’s RMA reforms. We thanked ACT and Simon Court for resource management law based on property rights. We think we understated it,Free Presshas campaigned for this for a decade (yes, we are ten). RMA reforms are the best policy change so far this century. If New Zealanders cannot develop the land, we have no advantage as a country. It’s a country saver.
Meanwhile the Greens have gone (more) insane. Last week one Green MP effectively said police patrols are worthless. The Press Gallery finally rounded on them, because young people in Central Wellington know the world can be a dangerous place and a few coppers are a welcome sight at night. Chlöe Swarbrick’s increasingly deranged economics become clearer every week in Question Time. She seems to think profit is a line item that businesses just add on to their customers’ bill. Now there are some serious questions for the Green Party leaders to answer around another one of their MPs’ social media accounts.Free Presspredicts the Greens polling will soften this year.
If it Pleases the Gods
Free Presshas seen correspondence demanding courts must now begin and end with a Karakia, or prayer in English and Māori. Gary Judd KC has written to MPs making (as usual) lucid arguments as to why this is wrong, and there are legal precedents from the Privy Council finding it is wrong for people in public service to be subject to prayers.
Parliament begins with a prayer, but Parliament is a self-Governing political body with rules decided by its members. Besides, there is no requirement to attend it. Judd points out, however, that lawyers are required to arrive before the judge and leave after, so they cannot avoid being present for the Karakia.
They’ll be required to read along because “Large prints of the karakia will be installed in each courtroom for all those present to use to read along to.” Judd points out the Bill of Rights says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.”
Judd goes on to reference precedent from the Privy Council. It found for a Muslim soldier in The Bahamas (a Commonwealth country) who did not want to be part of a Christian prayer during colours parades. The Privy Council relied on The Bahamas’ constitution, which is remarkably similar to New Zealand’s Bill of Rights.
A lot of people might ask, so what, who cares? It’s up to the Court anyway and surely a minute of praying can’t hurt, even if technically it does interfere with some lawyers’ practice of their faith?
Will it harm the impartiality of justice? Probably yes, it chips away at neutrality when the Courts give the nod to some religious or spiritual views but not others. Is that critical? Probably no. Is it the biggest problem we have right now? No.
We’re writing about this because it is such a good example. Such a good example of people’s basic rights being trampled for no reason. The right to think your thoughts and speak your mind, or not, without being hindered and harassed by do-gooders. It could be any organisation, it just happens to be the Courts.
AtFree Press,we often wonder where these people come from. What drives their behaviour? Why can’t they just leave other people alone? Here’s our theory.
For 100,000 years humans lived in tribes, closed societies where a person’s role was decided for them. The instinct to make other people conform to rituals is deep. They reassure you the people partaking are in your tribe. The idea of living as an individual choosing your own adventure in life is WEIRD. Specifically, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic.
Most people in most of history didn’t live weird lives. They lived tribal lives. Much of what is happening in New Zealand today, weird rituals, compulsory courses, demands to be part of a race first and a citizen second, it all comes from deep tribal urges.
Free Pressand friends and allies have to get better at explaining the alternative. A civilised society where each person is treated as a thinking and valuing being, required not to do any violence against anyone else but otherwise free to go about their lives unhindered. It would be a start.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine looks at the effect of 4:3 intermittent fasting on weight loss.
Dr Maria Chondronikola, Principal Investigator and Lead for Human Nutrition, University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Laboratories, University of Cambridge, said:
“This is an intriguing study on a topic that has attracted significant scientific and public interest. The study is of high quality and its conclusion regarding the effect of 3:4 IMF on weight loss is well-supported. The results indicate that the 3:4 IMF group achieved significantly greater weight loss after 12 months, most likely due to a greater reduction in calorie intake during the 12-month intervention. It remains unclear whether the superior improvements in marker of insulin sensitivity observed in the 3:4 IMF group were due to greater weight loss or if they resulted from a direct effect of intermittent fasting.
“The press release does not fully capture the study’s findings with complete accuracy. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in terms of blood pressure, total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, or fasting glucose levels. This is not surprising, as the study was not specifically designed to assess the effects of 3:4 IMF on cardiometabolic health.
“Nonetheless, it is possible that 3:4 IMF, when combined with an intensive behavioural support program led by a dietitian, may lead to superior weight loss outcomes compared to standard caloric restriction.”
Dr Adam Collins, Associate Professor of Nutrition, University of Surrey, said:
Does the press release accurately reflect the science?
“The press release is lifted from the abstract, and so is a faithful summary of the study. However, it does not provide explanations or context for these findings.
Is this good quality research? Are the conclusions backed up by solid data?
“The robustness of this study is in the administration of the two dietary approaches within a supported behavioural programme for weight loss. The authors have also used an interesting objective measure of energy (calorie) deficit achieved across the intervention using estimates of energy expenditure and changes in body composition (fat and lean tissue).
“The study’s main finding was that a 4:3 approach gives more weight loss than conventional calorie restriction, despite participants prescribed the same overall calories. Yet, this is not a magic property of the 4:3 approach per se, but because they achieved a bigger calorie deficit. The dietary intake data reveals some clues as to why this may be the case, based on what wasn’t measured, as much as what was. Those assigned the 4:3 diet were only requested to record their intake on “fast” days, but we know from early studies on intermittent energy restriction (especially alternate day fasting), that there is a tendency for some people to eat less on non fast days too, whether that’s unconscious or subconscious. Hence, measuring intake on fast days only may underestimate true intake. In contrast, adherence to continuous calorie restriction (i.e. every day) can be variable as seen from their dietary intake data. Adherence to any diet over 6-12 months is challenging at the best of times, but this may explain why the 4:3 group were closer to the calorie deficit target overall. Nevertheless, it does support the notion that, in the real world, intermittent energy restriction protocols outperform conventional everyday calorie restriction both in terms of compliance and results (i.e weight loss).
How does this work fit with the existing evidence?
“Studies on this type of intervention are not new but it is interesting to see a recent study published on this 4:3 form of intermittent fasting, or more specifically, intermittent energy restriction (IER). Especially given that interest in intermittent fasting has shifted towards time restricted eating approaches (restricting eating windows to extend the “fast” within each 24 hour period). It reaffirms the fact that IER can be an effective and sustainable weight loss intervention.
When viewed in the round, you could argue that the difference in weight loss between these groups is not that large, given this was over a 12 month intervention. But it does allude to a more interesting feature of intermittent fasting which is the independent metabolic benefits it may provide. Indeed, this has been a focus of our studies in this area. A study we conducted 10 years ago, similarly randomised participants to either continuous or intermittent energy restriction (a 5:2 protocol) of the same overall calorie prescription. Crucially, follow up measurements were taken once participants had a 5% weight loss, to control for differences in weight lost. The study was specifically powered to examine differences in markers of metabolic handling and health and suggested that the intermittent energy restricted approach gave more favourable improvements in metabolic handling of a meal.
Have the authors accounted for confounders? Are there important limitations to be aware of?
“The authors have been careful to caveat their findings within the limitations of their study, and have mainly focussed on the primary outcome of weight loss. They stress that the study was not powered for the secondary outcome measured related to cardiometabolic risk, nor that the findings can be generalised across the whole population, as outcomes may vary by gender, age, ethnicity, disease state, or underlying disorders or eating behaviours.
What are the implications in the real world? Is there any overspeculation?
“The research reaffirms that IER can be an effective and sustainable weight loss intervention, but within each group the extent of weight loss was highly variable, suggesting it may not be the best for everyone. The authors themselves acknowledge this in their conclusion: “Future studies should evaluate biological and behavioural predictors of response to both 4:3 IMF and DCR to provide insight for personalization of dietary recommendations for weight loss”
‘The Effect of 4:3 Intermittent Fasting on Weight Loss at 12 Months’ by Catenacci et al. was published in Annals of Internal Medicine at 22:00 UK time on Monday 31st March.
STMicroelectronics and Innoscience sign GaN technology development and manufacturing agreement
Joint Development Agreement (JDA) on GaN technology to build the future in power electronics for AI datacenters, renewable energy generation and storage, cars and more
Innoscience can make use of manufacturing capacity of ST in Europe while ST can leverage manufacturing capacity at Innoscience in China
Geneva and Suzhou, March 31st, 2025 – STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, and Innoscience (HKEX:02577.HK), the world leader in 8” GaN-on-Si (gallium nitride on silicon) high-performance low-cost manufacturing, announce the signature of an agreement on GaN technology development and manufacturing, leveraging the strengths of each company to enhance GaN power solutions and supply chain resilience.
The companies have agreed on a joint development initiative on GaN power technology, to advance the promising future of GaN power for consumer electronics, datacenters, automotive and industrial power systems and many more applications in the coming years. In addition, the agreement allows Innoscience to utilize ST’s front-end manufacturing capacity outside China for its GaN wafers, while ST can leverage Innoscience’s front-end manufacturing capacity in China for its own GaN wafers. The common ambition is for each company to expand their individual offering in GaN with supply chain flexibility and resilience to cover all customers’ requirements in a wide range of applications.
Marco Cassis, President, Analog, Power & Discrete, MEMS and Sensors of STMicroelectronics declared: “ST and Innoscience are both Integrated Device Manufacturers, and with this agreement we will leverage this model to the benefit of our customers globally. First, ST will be accelerating its roadmap in GaN power technology to complement its silicon and silicon carbide offering. Second, ST will be able to leverage a flexible manufacturing model to serve customers globally.”
Dr. Weiwei Luo, Chairman and Founder of Innoscience, stated “GaN technology is essential to improve electronics, creating smaller and more efficient systems which save electric power, lower cost, and reduce CO2 Emissions. Innoscience pioneered mass production of 8-inch GaN technology and has shipped over 1 billion GaN devices into multiple markets, and we are very excited to move into strategic collaboration with ST. The joint collaboration between ST and Innoscience will further expand and accelerate the adoption of GaN technology. Together the teams at Innoscience and ST will develop the next generations of GaN technology”.
GaN power devices leverage fundamental material properties that enable new standards of system performance in power conversion, motion control, and actuation, offering significantly lower losses, which allows for enhanced efficiency, smaller size, and lighter weight, thus reducing the overall solution cost and carbon footprint; these devices are rapidly being adopted in consumer electronics, data center and industrial power supplies, and solar inverters, and are being actively designed into next-generation EV powertrains due to their substantial size and weight reduction benefits.
About STMicroelectronics
At ST, we are 50,000 creators and makers of semiconductor technologies mastering the semiconductor supply chain with state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. An integrated device manufacturer, we work with more than 200,000 customers and thousands of partners to design and build products, solutions, and ecosystems that address their challenges and opportunities, and the need to support a more sustainable world. Our technologies enable smarter mobility, more efficient power and energy management, and the wide-scale deployment of cloud-connected autonomous things. We are on track to be carbon neutral in all direct and indirect emissions (scopes 1 and 2), product transportation, business travel, and employee commuting emissions (our scope 3 focus), and to achieve our 100% renewable electricity sourcing goal by the end of 2027. Further information can be found at www.st.com.
About Innoscience
Innoscience (HKEX:02577.HK) is the global leader in gallium nitride process innovation and power device manufacturing. Innoscience’s device design and performance set the worldwide standard for GaN, and the culture of continuous improvement will accelerate GaN performance and market adoption. The company’s gallium nitride products are used in multiple low, medium and high voltage applications, with GaN process nodes covering 15V to 1200V. Wafers, discrete devices, integrated power ICs, and modules provide customers with robust GaN solutions. With 800 patents granted or pending, Innoscience’s products are known for reliability, performance, and functionality within the fields of consumer electronics, automotive electronics, data centers, renewable energy and industrial power. Innoscience creates a bright future for GaN. Please visit www.innoscience.com for more information.
Contacts
Media Relations Alexis Breton Group VP Corporate External Communications Tel: +33.6.59.16.79.08 alexis.breton@st.com
Investor Relations Jérôme Ramel EVP Corporate Development & Integrated External Communication Tel: +41.22.929.59.20 jerome.ramel@st.com
The federal government’s 2024 budget shows that Canadian taxpayers have funded over $16 billion in research and development since 2016. Each year, millions of those research dollars flow from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
These publicly funded federal agencies each offer unique grants and programs covering different research disciplines. When they work in unison, such as when setting research guidelines and policies that apply across all three agencies like the one described in this article, they are collectively known as the Tri-Agency. This money is an investment is Canada’s future, and researchers and their institutions rely on Tri-Agency funding to conduct and share their research.
In 2015, the Tri-Agency implemented its open access (OA) policy requiring that most published research articles funded by Tri-Agency grants should be openly available in some format, and free to anyone anywhere, with no sharing or distribution restrictions.
For Canadians and readers around the world, that means no subscription fees or paywalls. This mandate enshrined the principle that publicly funded research should be available to the public. It reached across disciplines by including research supported by all three funding bodies.
Strengthening the open access mandate
Following consultation with researchers, institutions, publishers, libraries, Indigenous advisers and others, the Tri-Agency released a draft revision of its open access policy in February 2025. This update explicitly mentions that Canadians at large are part of the research audience.
Key improvements include eliminating the 12-month embargo period that allowed publishers to delay open access, and requiring researchers to use open copyright licenses (like Creative Commons). Authors must also maintain copyright over their works, including secondary publishing rights. Together these provisions ensure that research can be accessed, shared and used.
The Tri-Agency plans to implement the new policy in January 2026, leaving some time for final revisions. This presents an opportunity to make the mandate even stronger.
There is a need for researchers seeking national funding to commit to reporting on the openness of their research. (Shutterstock)
Creating opportunities from open policy pitfalls
Unfortunately, the revised policy repeats some mistakes from the past. Addressing just two key areas will improve accountability and transparency, and reinforce the commitment to making publicly funded research available to the public.
1. Meaningful monitoring and reporting: A weakness in the existing and revised policy is a lack of effective compliance measures. Research evidence shows that mandating open access reinforces compliance compared to just recommending that authors to make their research open. Many Canadian researchers are meeting this mandate, but overall the Tri-Agency has a significant open access compliance problem.
Even the Tri-Agency itself doesn’t know whether authors are meeting the current mandate.
After a decade, the mandate doesn’t seem to be very effective. And nothing in the proposed revisions empowers authors or institutions to track and report on the open access status of their publications, or demonstrate they’ve met their open access expectations.
Instead of repeating past shortcomings, a commitment to reporting and monitoring at organizational and Tri-Agency levels would help. There’s an opportunity here for collaboration.
The Tri-Agency could commit to monitoring open access outcomes, and researchers seeking national funding could commit to reporting on the openness of their research. This would improve adherence, allow the Tri-Agency to highlight the benefits of public research funding, give Canadian researchers some time in the spotlight and strengthen public trust in our institutions.
Under this model, authors must pay an extra publication fee to the journal to make their article open access, and many researchers are using research funds to pay expensive fees instead of directing that money toward more research. Similar to compliance rates, the Tri-Agency doesn’t know how much of their funding is being redirected to publishers as publication fees.
We have an opportunity to implement real change by requiring free open access in the updated mandate. With nearly 100 open research repositories registered in Canada, and over 13,000 fee-less journals registered in the Directory of Open Journals, paying to publish is unnecessary. The Tri-Agency could also limit the use of agency funding to pay these fees.
Now is the time to act
I am an academic librarian engaged in open publishing, and a researcher subject to the same funding mandate. In my professional opinion the policy updates prove that the Tri-Agency is committed to change.
Now is the time to make the open access mandate stronger, by improved monitoring and by directing researchers toward free open access publishing options.
The power to make these changes and put solutions in place all rests with the Tri-Agency. It’s in their hands. The fact that this policy is being revised right now means it’s the perfect time to explicitly support free and open access to research paid for by Canadians.
As the Tri-Agency weighs feedback from recent public consultations, let us hope that policy-makers, universities, libraries, publishers and individual researchers will come together to make free and open access the norm.
Richard Hayman has received SSHRC funding in the past. The views expressed here are his own and in no way influenced by SSHRC or any other organisation.
Headline: Fueling tomorrow’s AI with new agentic capabilities and security innovations in Fabric
The Microsoft Fabric Community Conference returns to Las Vegas this week—bigger and better than ever. Thank you to our attendees, speakers, customers, and dedicated teams for making FabCon 2025 an event to remember.
Microsoft Fabric is a unified data platform that continues to transform businesses worldwide, with more than 19,000 organizations and 74% of Fortune 500 companies leveraging Fabric. At FabCon, customers from around the world will share how they are pushing the boundaries of data at scale and unlocking new possibilities for business innovation.
The London Stock Exchange (LSEG), for example, is leveraging Fabric to unify their data estates and efficiently process their data:
“Microsoft Fabric has been pivotal in LSEG’s data platform modernization journey. With Fabric Spark as the core engine powering our customer facing enterprise data platform, LSEG manages large volumes of time critical financial markets data that require complex data quality and transformation rules, executed at scale and with consistent service levels. Combining this with the broader Fabric eco-system has opened up new and exciting customer experiences and AI-powered opportunities.”
—Phil Withey, Head of Architecture, LSEG Microsoft Partners
Similarly, International Workplace Group (IWG) is revolutionizing its approach to data integration:
“Microsoft Fabric was a game changer because of its ability to create shortcuts without physically moving data from one place to another. Before, if I had to incorporate three sources, I had to create pipelines to bring in the data. That pipeline had a cost. The data movement had a cost. With Fabric, it’s two clicks and that’s it.”
—José Viegas, Senior Data Architect, IWG
We’re always listening and learning to further enable customer successes like these by delivering the latest innovations across the data estate. See how customers around the world are using Fabric to transform their teams and industries.
New capabilities coming to Microsoft Fabric
Today, we’re enhancing the Fabric experience by unlocking new possibilities through key innovations designed to help strengthen security and harness the power of AI to streamline data workstreams like never before:
Introducing OneLake security—an industry breakthrough in data protection
Managing granular data security across multiple applications and engines is complex, often resulting in excessive restrictions or accidental data exposures. That’s why we’re introducing OneLake security—an industry breakthrough in data protection. OneLake is Fabric’s unified data lake, which seamlessly connects your entire multi-cloud and on-premises data estate. All your teams get a single place to discover, explore, and manage their data—even within apps like Microsoft Teams and Excel.
Now with OneLake security, you can define access permissions once, and Fabric will enforce it consistently across all engines. Data owners can create security roles, refine permissions, and control access at the row and column levels to securely share data. For example, you can grant access to only certain folders, tables, or even rows in a lakehouse—restricting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) while keeping other data available. This security propagates automatically, so whether you query the data in SQL or visualize it in a Power BI report, you can only see what has been authorized. Check out the following demo to see OneLake security in action:
We are thrilled to share that OneLake security will be available in preview within a few months. In the meantime, if you are interested in trying OneLake security on your workspaces and providing feedback, please visit this early access sign-up page.
Empowering agentic AI by integrating Fabric data agents with Azure AI Foundry
Data plays a critical role in agentic AI, enabling AI agents to operate independently, make informed decisions, and take meaningful actions. That’s why we are expanding capabilities and deepening integrations between our data and AI platforms.
Data agents (formerly known as AI skills) in Microsoft Fabric are AI-powered assistants that can learn, adapt, and deliver insights instantly, helping teams make better data-driven decisions. Fabric data agents not only retrieve data from OneLake, but they can reason over and understand the data—what it means, how it’s structured, and when it’s relevant.
Starting today, organizations can use Azure AI Foundry to connect customized, conversational agents, created in Fabric. AI developers can now use Azure AI Agent Service to securely ground AI agent outputs with enterprise knowledge in Fabric data agents, so that responses are accurate, relevant, and contextually aware. By combining Fabric’s sophisticated data analysis over enterprise data with Azure AI Foundry’s cutting-edge GenAI technology, businesses can create custom conversational AI agents leveraging domain expertise.
“Fabric data agents are a powerful and value-adding tool in data environments. Acting as a conversational capability layer, we can use data agents to ‘talk’ to our data, understand it, and derive different insights in support of our daily decision making.”
—Maureen Tan, Head of AI Center of Expertise, NTT DATA
Copilot and AI capabilities in Fabric will be available for all SKUs
We are excited to announce that Copilot and AI capabilities will be enabled for all paid SKUs in Fabric, making these tools accessible to everyone within the coming weeks. This expansion is driven by your feedback about the impact Copilot in Microsoft Fabric has had on your productivity, and how broadening access to Copilot would benefit more teams. With this latest update, customers on F2 and above can use Copilot and AI capabilities, such as Fabric data agents, to streamline workflows, generate insights, and drive impactful decisions.
Seamlessly migrate your data to Fabric
We are excited to announce the preview of a migration experience natively built into the Fabric UI, enabling Azure Synapse Analytics (data warehouse) customers to transition seamlessly to Microsoft Fabric. With a built-in, intelligent assessment, guided support, and AI-powered assistance, this experience simplifies migration of code and data while helping customers unlock Fabric’s unified data foundation, AI-driven analytics, and enhanced performance—without the complexity of traditional migrations.
Microsoft Fabric Community Conference
Join us this year in Las Vegas for FabCon 2025.
Additional Fabric innovations
In addition to the above, we are introducing a series of updates across the Microsoft Fabric platform and its workloads. These advancements will further progress our commitments to our four core Fabric pillars:
A complete, AI-powered data platform.
An open, AI-ready data lake.
Empowering AI-enabled business users.
A mission-critical foundation.
Fabric is a complete AI-powered data platform
Fabric is a unified, AI-powered data platform that fosters seamless collaboration across your organization. Today, we’re sharing new enhancements and capabilities that will further strengthen the Fabric platform and workloads, which will unlock even more possibilities for your data initiatives.
Platform enhancements:
The preview of Command Line Interface(CLI) in Fabric introduces a new terminal that allows users and admins to execute commands across Fabric using interactive prompts or scripts, enabling a seamless, code-first experience without relying on clicks.
The preview of new CI/CD enhancements expands support across the Fabric platform, including variable libraries for workspaces, Service Principal support for GitHub, and Deployment Pipelines Fabric APIs Phase II.
The preview of User Data Functions introduces a way for developers to implement and reuse custom business logic in Fabric data science and data engineering workflows, streamlining development and improving efficiency.
The general availability of the Terraform provider for Fabric, to help customers ensure deployments and management tasks are executed accurately and consistently.
The general availability of Tags, which allows users to optimally describe items they own, and help enhance organization and discoverability of data in Fabric.
Data integration enhancements:
The general availability of Apache Airflow job empowers customers to run their Apache Airflow DAGs in Microsoft Fabric, with a serverless Apache Airflow runtime.
The general availability of the Copy job introduces a new simplified experience for customers who need to move data between different data sources and destinations. It also introduces support for batch and incremental data movement.
The preview of key orchestration enhancements is now available, enabling the creation of metadata-driven pipelines that orchestrate Dataflow Gen2 (CI/CD) parameterized invocation from Data Pipelines
Real-time intelligence enhancements:
The general availability of Fabric Events transforms Fabric into an event-driven platform. Users can leverage the Real-Time hub to discover and subscribe to Fabric Events across OneLake, Fabric jobs, and Workspaces.
The preview of new eventstream connectors which allows users to bring in data from additional non-Microsoft sources, including Weather, Solace PubSub+, ADX Table Streamify, MQTT v5, Event Grid Namespaces, and Confluent with Schema Registry.
Data Engineering and Data Science enhancements:
The preview of Autoscale Billing for Spark helps optimize Spark job costs by offloading Data Engineering workloads to a serverless billing mode. Capacity admins can set a max capacity units (CUs) limit in capacity settings, ensuring Spark jobs use dedicated CUs instead of shared Fabric Capacity.
The preview of AI functions provides powerful capabilities to apply LLM-powered transformations, such as summarization, classification, and text generation to your OneLake data—all with a single line of code.
Partner/ISV integrations
At Ignite, we announced the general availability of the Workload Development Toolkit (WDK) and introduced ISV workloads that bring new capabilities and value to our joint customers. We are excited to now announce the general availability of Fabric workloads from Osmos, Profisee, and PowerBI.tips, along with public previews of new workloads from Celonis, CluedIn, Neo4j, Lumel, Statsig, and Striim in the Fabric Workload Hub. In addition, CluedIn also announced a public preview of its integration with Open Mirroring in Fabric.
Fabric is open with an AI-ready data lake
In addition to OneLake Security, we are also making enhancements to OneLake, including:
A modern get-data experience with OneLake catalog integration in Microsoft Excel (in Office Insiders Fast) enables users to explore the OneLake catalog directly from Excel, expanding accessibility beyond the existing Microsoft Teams integration.
Coming soon, we are releasing the general availability of on-premises data gateways support for Amazon S3, S3-compatible sources, and Google Cloud Platform allows users to create shortcuts to on-premises data sources hosted behind a firewall or within a Virtual Private Cloud.
The enhancements for cross-tenant sharing, including the ability to share multiple tables at once, Lakehouse schemas, as well as tables from Fabric SQL databases, KQL databases, and OneLake shortcuts (coming soon). This shared data can now be accessed via SQL analytics endpoints and semantic models.
An updated version of the Fabric Link to Dataverse preview enables even faster and more secure data virtualization from Dataverse, the data platform for the Power Platform and Dynamics 365, thanks to back-end improvements. We are also announcing a new Mirrored Dataverse option in Fabric. Learn more about both announcements.
Fabric empowers every business user with AI capabilities
Fabric empowers business users to quickly uncover key insights in a Power BI report by simply asking Copilot. With AI-enhanced Q&A and intuitive visuals seamlessly embedded in Microsoft 365 apps, everyone can better understand and act on their data with ease. To further empower this mission, we’re announcing that:
The preview of Direct Lake semantic models in Power BIdesktop, which allows users to build Power BI semantic models for lightning-fast reports that query data directly from OneLake without scheduling refreshes and without data duplication. This feature will also enable users to add in tables from multiple Fabric artifacts in the same Direct Lake semantic model for ultimate reusability of OneLake data.
Fabric provides a mission-critical foundation
Our final promise is that you can confidently deploy and manage Microsoft Fabric with category-leading performance, instant scalability, shared resilience, and built-in security, governance, and compliance. To further that mission, we’re excited to introduce several enhancements to our mission-critical promise, including:
Mission-critical foundation enhancement with Microsoft Purview:
Coming soon, the preview of Microsoft Purview for Copilot in Power BI. The integration will enable discovery of data risks such as sensitive data in user prompts and responses, protect sensitive data with Insider Risk Management to identify and investigate risky AI usage, and govern AI usage with audit, eDiscovery, retention policies, and non-compliant usage detection.
Coming soon, we are expanding Purview Data Loss Prevention policies Fabric coverage beyond lakehouses and semantic models, to now also include Fabric KQL databases and mirrored databases. This will allow security admins to detect sensitive data uploads, such as SSNs, and trigger automated actions in more sources.
The preview of Data Observability within the Unified Catalog to investigate the relationship between data products and any assets (including Fabric assets) associated with them to identify the root cause of quality issues.
Getting started with Microsoft Fabric
New customers can try out everything Fabric has to offer by signing up for a free 60-day trial—no credit card information required. Learn how to start your free trial.
If you’re considering purchasing Fabric and need help choosing a SKU, we’re excited to share that a new Fabric SKU Estimator will soon be available in public preview. Stay tuned.
Watch the action at the Fabric Conference
To see these announcements in action, register and secure your spot today through Wednesday April 2, 2025. With over 200 expert-led sessions, you can join thousands of attendees who are diving deep into Microsoft Fabric, exploring innovations in AI, databases, analytics, business intelligence, and more.
Join us at FabCon 2025
Explore additional resources for Microsoft Fabric
To learn more about Fabric:
Read additional blogs by industry-leading partners:
Arun Ulagaratchagan
Corporate Vice President, Azure Data–Microsoft
Arun leads product management, engineering, and cloud operations for Azure Data, which includes databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging, and business intelligence. The products in his teams’ portfolio include Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure MySQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, Power BI, and Microsoft Fabric.
Every NASA mission represents a leap into the unknown, collecting data that pushes the boundaries of human understanding. But the story doesn’t end when the mission concludes. The data carefully preserved in NASA’s archives often finds new purpose decades later, unlocking discoveries that continue to benefit science, technology, and society. “NASA’s science data is one of our most valuable legacies,” said Kevin Murphy, NASA’s chief science data officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It carries the stories of our missions, the insights of our discoveries, and the potential for future breakthroughs.”
NASA’s science data is one of our most valuable legacies.
Kevin Murphy Chief Science Data Officer, NASA Science Mission Directorate
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate manages an immense amount of data, spanning astrophysics, biological and physical sciences, Earth science, heliophysics, and planetary science. Currently, NASA’s science data holdings exceed 100 petabytes—enough to store 20 billion photos from the average modern smartphone. This volume is expected to grow significantly with new missions. This vast amount of data enables new discoveries, connecting scientific observations together in meaningful ways. Over 50% of scientific publications rely on archived data, which NASA provides to millions of commercial, government, and scientific users.
Managing and stewarding such massive volumes of information requires careful planning, robust infrastructure, and innovative strategies to ensure the data is accessible, secure, and sustainable. Continued support for data storage and cutting-edge technology is key to ensuring future generations of researchers can continue to explore using science data from NASA missions. Modern technology, such as image processing and artificial intelligence, helps unlock new insights from previous observations. For example, in 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft conducted a historic flyby of Uranus, capturing detailed data on the planet and its environment. Decades later, in the early 2000s, scientists used advanced image processing techniques on this archival data to discover two small moons, Perdita and Cupid, which had gone unnoticed during the initial analysis. In 2024, researchers revisited this 38-year-old archival data and identified a critical solar wind event that compressed Uranus’s magnetosphere just before the Voyager 2 flyby. This rare event, happening only about four percent of the time, provided unique insights into Uranus’s magnetic field and its interaction with space weather.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched in 2009, continues to provide data that reshapes our understanding of the Moon. In 2018, scientists analyzing the LRO’s archival data confirmed the presence of water ice in permanently shadowed regions at the Moon’s poles. In 2024, new studies out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, showed widespread evidence of water ice within the permanently shadowed regions outside the lunar South Pole, further aiding lunar mission planners. This discovery not only holds implications for lunar exploration but also demonstrates how existing data can yield groundbreaking insights.
NASA’s data archives uncover the secrets of our own planet as well as others. In 2024, archaeologists published a study revealing a “lost” Mayan city in Campeche, Mexico that was previously unknown to the scientific community. The researchers identified the city in archival airborne Earth science data, including a 2013 dataset from NASA Goddard’s LiDAR Hyperspectral & Thermal Imager (G-LiHT) mission. The Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project provides frequent high-resolution observations of Earth’s surface. Data from HLS has been instrumental in tracking urban growth over time. By analyzing changes in land cover, researchers have used HLS to monitor the expansion of cities and infrastructure development. For example, in rapidly growing metropolitan areas, HLS data has revealed patterns of urban sprawl, helping planners analyze past trends to predict future metropolitan expansion.
These discoveries represent only a fraction of what’s possible. NASA is investing in new technologies to harness the full potential of its data archives, including artificial intelligence (AI) foundation models—open-source AI tools designed to extract new findings from existing science data. “Our vision is to develop at least one AI model for each NASA scientific discipline, turning decades of legacy data into a treasure trove of discovery,” said Murphy. “By embedding NASA expertise into these tools, we ensure that our scientific data continues to drive innovation across science, industry, and society for generations to come.” Developed under a collaboration between NASA’s Office of the Chief Science Data Officer, IBM, and universities, these AI models are scientifically validated and adaptable to new datasets, making them invaluable for researchers and industries alike. “It’s like having a virtual assistant that leverages decades of NASA’s knowledge to make smarter, quicker decisions,” said Murphy.
The team’s Earth science foundation models—the Prithvi Geospatial model and Prithvi Weather model—analyze vast datasets to monitor Earth’s changing landscape, track weather patterns, and support critical decision-making processes. Building on this success, the team is now developing a foundation model for heliophysics. This model will unlock new insights about the dynamics of solar activity and space weather, which can affect satellite operations, communication systems, and even power grids on Earth. Additionally, a model designed for the Moon is in progress, aiming to enhance our understanding of lunar resources and environments. This investment in AI not only shortens the “data-to-discovery” timeline but also ensures that NASA’s data archives continue to drive innovation. From uncovering new planets to informing future exploration and supporting industries on Earth, the possibilities are boundless. By maintaining extensive archives and embracing cutting-edge technologies, the agency ensures that the data collected today will continue to inspire and inform discoveries far into the future. In doing so, NASA’s legacy science data truly remains the gift that keeps on giving. By Amanda Moon AdamsCommunications Lead for the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer
Technologists are professionals who research, develop, and test emerging technologies. They also find useful ways to put new technologies to work. A technologist is an expert in a specific type of technology, often within a specific field. Many industries rely on innovations developed by technologists. Some of these include aerospace, research, manufacturing, healthcare, and information technology. NASA technologists make use of technological advancements to improve NASA’s capabilities and better meet the needs of its missions. They also oversee how technologies developed by NASA can improve life on Earth through commercial products. These products are called spinoffs. For examples of how NASA shows up in your everyday life, visit: https://spinoff.nasa.gov.
Instrument scientist: Works to improve or develop instruments that collect data. In aerospace, an instrument is a sensor or other device that takes measurements or gathers scientific information. This role may include working with other specialties to design, create, and test scientific instruments. Data scientist: Uses computer science to create tools that manage data. Some of the tasks a data scientist might perform include developing predictive models, machine learning algorithms, or software to extract useful information from large sets of data. Information technology (IT) specialist: Designs, maintains, implements, and protects IT systems across the agency. Develops software, manages IT projects, and develops applications to support both organizational and mission operations.
There are many different types of careers in technology, and the requirements vary. While you’re in high school, explore the possibilities and learn about the specialties and roles that will fit your interests. Then, investigate the academic path and experience you’ll need to eventually be hired into those roles. Current job openings, guidance counselors, and mentors can shed light on the types of certifications or degrees required. With this information, you can begin planning for the skills and education you’ll need. It’s important to remember that technology is always advancing. Even after you’ve launched your technologist career, a “lifelong learning” mindset will help you keep up with new innovations and skills.
Start growing your technology skills today with hands-on activities created by NASA STEM. Looking for something more involved? Many of NASA’s student challenges, competitions, and activities offer authentic experience in aerospace technology, computer science, and more. Students aged 16 and up who are U.S. citizens are eligible to apply for a paid NASA internship. Interns work on real projects with the guidance of a NASA mentor. Internship sessions are held each year in spring, summer, and fall; visit NASA’s Internships website to learn about important deadlines and current opportunities.
“Think about your personal interests and passions, and also the impact you’d like your work to have. What do you feel personally interested in when it comes to science and technology? Is there a problem that you think is very important for our society to solve? Often there is a research or technology field that can combine those two things!” – Olivia Tyrrell, NASA research engineer
Olivia Tyrrell NASA Research Engineer
“If you like to create things or find solutions to problems, working in technology is a great choice. Scientists identify problems, engineers solve problems, but ultimately, we need to create new technologies, new things, new gadgets. Technologists are building the next generation toolbox for engineers and scientists to pull from, enabling everyone to solve problems in more effective and innovative ways. (Technologists invent things… what’s cooler than that?!)” – Kristen John, technical integration manager for lunar dust mitigation
NASA Data Science, Cybersecurity, and IT Careers NASA Space Technology Technology | NASA+
Science is about exploring answers to questions. A scientist uses research and evidence to form hypotheses, test variables, and then share their findings. NASA scientists conduct groundbreaking research to answer some of humanity’s most profound questions. Most scientists start as project scientists in their early careers. They spend a lot of time publishing their peer-reviewed literature and presenting scientific research. Senior-level scientists provide leadership in the NASA community, actively publish research group work, and take on management roles.
Many types of scientists work at NASA to support its wide variety of missions. The agency’s scientists research the foods we send to space, the habitability of other planets, the weather in space, and so much more. Here are a few examples of types of scientists at NASA. Planetary scientist: Discovers and studies the planetary objects in our solar system. These efforts shed light on the history of the solar system and the distribution of life within it. Astrobiologist: Studies the origins of life, how life evolves, and where it might be found in the universe. Astrophysicist: Studies the physical and chemical structures of stars, planets, and other natural objects found in space. Biological/physical scientist: Studies how biological and physical processes work in challenging environments like space. This information helps NASA design longer human space missions and also benefits life on Earth. Earth scientist: Uses observations and data from satellites and other sources to study Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land cover, and land use. Heliophysicist: Studies the Sun and its behaviors, such as magnetic fields, solar wind, and space weather. This knowledge helps us better understand and predict the Sun’s effects on Earth and in space.
Focus on building your scientific knowledge and skills. You can do this by taking challenging academic courses, participating in science fairs, and joining extracurricular activities that have a scientific focus. This is also a good time to research what types of sciences you’re most interested in, possible careers in those fields, and academic degrees required for those jobs. Scientists typically need at least a four-year degree. Most pursue a master’s degree or even a doctorate (Ph.D.) to become experts in their field.
Interested in applying some science skills right away? NASA provides a variety of hands-on activities for a range of skill levels. The space agency also offers student challenges, competitions, and activities that provide authentic experience in a variety of science fields. For up-to-date opportunities, visit:
NASA also offers paid internships for U.S. citizens aged 16 and up. Interns work on real projects with the guidance of a NASA mentor. Internship sessions are held each year in spring, summer, and fall; visit NASA’s Internships website to learn about important deadlines and current opportunities.
“Take advantage of opportunities in different fields like attending summer classes, volunteering on the weekends, visiting museums, attending community lectures, and reading introductory books at the library. These are a few ways to expand your scope of possibility within the sciences, while simultaneously narrowing your focus in a field.” – Angela Garcia, exploration geologist
Nicola Fox NASA Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate
“One general skill that is often overlooked is the ability to write well and clearly. There’s a misconception that being a scientist means using big words and writing in ways that no one understands, when it’s actually the opposite. The ability to communicate your thoughts and ideas so that a child can understand is not easy, but it’s essential for good scientific writing.” – Matt Mickens, NASA horticulturist
Careers in Science and Research NASA Science Career Path Navigator NASA Science Mission Directorate People of NASA Science Explore NASA+ Scientist Resources
The ice-giant planet Uranus, which travels around the Sun tipped on its side, is a weird and mysterious world. Now, in an unprecedented study spanning two decades, researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered new insights into the planet’s atmospheric composition and dynamics. This was possible only because of Hubble’s sharp resolution, spectral capabilities, and longevity. The team’s results will help astronomers to better understand how the atmosphere of Uranus works and responds to changing sunlight. These long-term observations provide valuable data for understanding the atmospheric dynamics of this distant ice giant, which can serve as a proxy for studying exoplanets of similar size and composition. When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it provided a close-up snapshot of the sideways planet. What it saw resembled a bland, blue-green billiard ball. By comparison, Hubble chronicled a 20-year story of seasonal changes from 2002 to 2022. Over that period, a team led by Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona, and Larry Sromovsky and Pat Fry from the University of Wisconsin used the same Hubble instrument, STIS (the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph), to paint an accurate picture of the atmospheric structure of Uranus. Uranus’ atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of methane and traces of water and ammonia. The methane gives Uranus its cyan color by absorbing the red wavelengths of sunlight. The Hubble team observed Uranus four times in the 20-year period: in 2002, 2012, 2015, and 2022. They found that, unlike conditions on the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, methane is not uniformly distributed across Uranus. Instead, it is strongly depleted near the poles. This depletion remained relatively constant over the two decades. However, the aerosol and haze structure changed dramatically, brightening significantly in the northern polar region as the planet approaches its northern summer solstice in 2030.
Uranus takes a little over 84 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the Sun. So, over two decades, the Hubble team has only seen mostly northern spring as the Sun moves from shining directly over Uranus’ equator toward shining almost directly over its north pole in 2030. Hubble observations suggest complex atmospheric circulation patterns on Uranus during this period. The data that are most sensitive to the methane distribution indicate a downwelling in the polar regions and upwelling in other regions. The team analyzed their results in several ways. The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that STIS observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, the researchers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region (left) darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region (right) brightened as it began to come into a more direct view as northern summer approaches. The top row, in visible light, shows how the color of Uranus appears to the human eye as seen through even an amateur telescope. In the second row, the false-color image of the planet is assembled from visible and near-infrared light observations. The color and brightness correspond to the amounts of methane and aerosols. Both of these quantities could not be distinguished before Hubble’s STIS was first aimed at Uranus in 2002. Generally, green areas indicate less methane than blue areas, and red areas show no methane. The red areas are at the limb, where the stratosphere of Uranus is almost completely devoid of methane. The two bottom rows show the latitude structure of aerosols and methane inferred from 1,000 different wavelengths (colors) from visible to near infrared. In the third row, bright areas indicate cloudier conditions, while the dark areas represent clearer conditions. In the fourth row, bright areas indicate depleted methane, while dark areas show the full amount of methane. At middle and low latitudes, aerosols and methane depletion have their own latitudinal structure that mostly did not change much over the two decades of observation. However, in the polar regions, aerosols and methane depletion behave very differently. In the third row, the aerosols near the north pole display a dramatic increase, showing up as very dark during early northern spring, turning very bright in recent years. Aerosols also seem to disappear at the left limb as the solar radiation disappeared. This is evidence that solar radiation changes the aerosol haze in the atmosphere of Uranus. On the other hand, methane depletion seems to stay quite high in both polar regions throughout the observing period. Astronomers will continue to observe Uranus as the planet approaches northern summer. The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
The annual regional event puts students’ knowledge of ocean-related science to the test in a fast-paced academic competition. A team of students from University High School in Irvine earned first place at a fast-paced regional academic competition focused on ocean science disciplines and hosted by NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Eight teams from Los Angeles and Orange counties competed at the March 29 event, dubbed the Los Angeles Surf Bowl. It was the last of about 20 regional competitions held across the U.S. this year in the lead-up to the virtual National Ocean Sciences Bowl finals event in mid-May. Santa Monica High School earned second place; Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles came in third. With its victory, University repeated its winning performance from last year. The school also won the JPL-hosted regional Science Bowl earlier this month.
For the Ocean Sciences Bowl, teams are composed of four to five students and a coach. To prepare for the event, team members spend months answering multiple-choice questions with a “Jeopardy!”-style buzzer in just five seconds. Questions come in several categories, including biology, chemistry, geology, and physics along with related geography, technology, history, policy, and current events topics. A question in the chemistry category might be “What chemical is the principal source of energy at many of Earth’s hydrothermal vent systems?” (It’s hydrogen sulfide.) Other questions can be considerably more challenging. When a team member buzzes in and gives the correct answer to a multiple-choice question, the team earns a bonus question, which allows teammates to consult with one another to come up with an answer. More complicated “team challenge questions” prompt students to work together for a longer period. The theme of this year’s competition is “Sounding the Depths: Understanding Ocean Acoustics.” University High junior Matthew Feng, a return competitor, said the team’s success felt like a payoff for hours of studying together, including on weekends. He keeps coming back to the competition partly for the sense of community and also for the personal challenge, he said. “It’s nice to compete and meet people, see people who were here last year,” Matthew added. “Pushing yourself mentally — the first year I was shaking so hard because I wasn’t used to that much adrenaline.” Since 2000, JPL’s Public Services Office has coordinated the Los Angeles regional contest with the help of volunteers from laboratory staff and former Ocean Sciences Bowl participants in the local community. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech. The National Ocean Sciences Bowl is a program of the Center for Ocean Leadership at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of colleges and universities focused in part on Earth science-related education. News Media Contact Melissa PamerJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.626-314-4928melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov 2025-044
Based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, or ARES, curates the most extensive collection of extraterrestrial materials on Earth, ranging from microscopic cosmic dust particles to Apollo-era Moon rocks. Soon, ARES’ team of world-leading sample scientists hopes to add something new to its collection – lunar samples from the Moon’s South Pole region. As the Artemis campaign sample curation lead, Dr. Juliane Gross is helping ARES and NASA prepare to collect and return those samples safely. “I’m responsible for representing the voice of the Moon rocks and advocating for their protection, preservation, and maintaining their integrity during the planning and execution of all stages of the different Artemis sample return missions,” she said.
Her multifaceted role includes preparing the Johnson facility that will receive new lunar samples, developing curation strategies, and collaborating with mission teams to plan sampling operations, which encompass collection, handling, transport, and storage processes for all stages of Artemis missions. She trains program managers and engineers on the importance of sample return and teaches crew members how to identify lunar samples and collect them without contamination. She also works with the different programs and teams that oversee the vehicles used at different stages of lunar missions – collaborating with the human landing system team around tool storage and delivery to the lunar surface, the Orion Program to coordinate sample stowage for the return to Earth, and Exploration Ground Systems to plan sample recovery after splashdown. Once samples are returned to Earth, Gross and the ARES curation team will conduct a preliminary examination of the materials and release a sample catalog from which members of the global scientific community may request loans to carry out their respective research. Working across Artemis teams raised an unexpected but fun challenge for Gross – learning to communicate effectively with colleagues who have different academic and professional backgrounds. “Scientists like me speak a different language than engineers, and we all speak a different language than managers or the general public,” she said. “I have worked hard to find common vocabulary and to ‘translate’ science needs into the different types of languages that exist within the Artemis campaign. I’m trying to use our differences as strengths to enable mission success and to connect and build relationships with all these different teams through my love and passion for the Moon and rocks from the Moon.” That passion emerged shortly after Gross completed her Ph.D. in geology, while working on lunar samples with the Lunar and Planetary Institute. She went on to become a research scientist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and then a tenured professor of planetary sciences at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. In 2019, NASA asked Gross to join the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program. Under the program, NASA preserved some of the 382 kilograms of lunar samples returned by Apollo missions, keeping them sealed for future generations to open and analyze. “NASA had the foresight to understand that technology would evolve and our level of sophistication for handling and examining samples would greatly increase,” Gross said. She and two other scientists had the incredible opportunity to open and examine two samples returned by Apollo 17. Their work served as a practice run for Artemis sample returns while building upon the fundamental insights into the shared origin and history of Earth and the Moon that scientists previously derived from other Apollo samples. For example, the team extracted gas from one sample that will provide information about the volatiles that future lunar missions may encounter around the Moon’s South Pole. “The Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program linked the first generation of lunar explorers from Apollo with future explorers of the Moon with Artemis,” Gross said. “I’m very proud to have played such an important role in this initiative that now feeds forward to Artemis.”
Gross’ connection with NASA began even earlier in her career. She was selected to join the agency-sponsored Antarctic Search for Meteorites team and lived in the deep ice fields of Antarctica for two months with seven other people. “We lived in tiny two-person tents without any support and recovered a total of 263 space rocks under challenging conditions,” she said. “I experienced the powerful forces of Antarctica and traveled 332 miles on skidoos. My body changed in the cold – I stuffed my face with enough butter, chocolate, and peanut M&Ms to last a lifetime and yet I lost weight.” This formative experience taught Gross to find and celebrate beauty, even in her toughest moments. “I drank tea made with Antarctic glacier ice that is thousands to millions of years old. I will never forget the beautiful bell-like sounds that snow crystals make when being blown across the ice, the rainbow-sparkling ice crystals on a really cold day, the vast expanses of ice sheets looking like oceans frozen in eternity, and the icy bite of the wind on any unprotected skin that made me feel so alive and reminded me how vulnerable and precious life is,” she said. “And I will never ever forget the thrill and utter joy of finding a meteorite that you know no one on this planet has ever seen before you.” Gross ultimately received the Antarctica Service Medal of the United States Armed Forces from the U.S. Department of Defense for her work.
Transitioning from full-time academia to her current position at NASA has been a big adjustment for Gross, but she has learned to love the change and the growth opportunities that come with it. “Being part of this incredible moment in history when we are about to return to the Moon with Artemis, our Apollo of today, feels so special and humbling that it made the transition easier,” she said. The job has also increased Gross’ love and excitement for space exploration and reminds her every day why sample return missions are important. “The Moon is a museum of planetary history,” she said. “It has recorded and preserved the changes that affected the Earth-Moon system and is the best and most accessible place in the solar system to study planet-altering processes that have affected our corner of the universe.” Still, “The Moon is only our next frontier,” she said. “Keep looking up and never give up. Ad astra!” Watch below to learn about NASA’s rich history of geology training and hear how scientists and engineers are getting ready to bring back samples that will help us learn about the origins of our solar system.
The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its 2025 class. The NHFP fosters excellence and leadership in astrophysics by supporting exceptionally promising and innovative early-career astrophysicists. Over 650 applicants vied for the 2025 fellowships. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support at a U.S. institution. Once selected, fellows are named to one of three sub-categories corresponding to three broad scientific questions that NASA seeks to answer about the universe: How does the universe work? – Einstein Fellows How did we get here? – Hubble Fellows Are we alone? – Sagan Fellows “The 2025 class of the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program is comprised of outstanding NASA Astrophysics researchers,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This class of competitively-selected fellows will inspire future generations through the products of their research, and by sharing the results of that work with the public. Their efforts will help NASA continue its worldwide leadership in space-based astrophysics research.”
The list below provides the names of the 2025 awardees, their fellowship host institutions, and their proposed research topics. The 2025 NHFP Einstein Fellows are:
Shi-Fan Chen, Columbia University, Galaxies, Shapes and Weak Lensing in the Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure Nicolas Garavito Camargo, University of Maryland, College Park, Local Group Galaxies in Disequilibrium; Building New Frameworks to Constrain the Nature of Dark Matter Jason Hinkle, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Nuclear Transients in the Golden Era of Time-Domain Astronomy Itai Linial, New York University, Repeating Nuclear Transients – Probes of Supermassive Black Holes and Their Environments Kenzie Nimmo, Northwestern University, From Glimmering Jewels to Cosmic Ubiquity: Unraveling the Origins of FRBs Massimo Pascale, University of California, Los Angeles, The Universe Seen Through Strong Gravitational Lensing Elia Pizzati, Harvard University, The Missing Link: Connecting Black Hole Growth and Quasar Light Curves in the Young Universe Jillian Rastinejad, University of Maryland, College Park, Illuminating the Explosive Origins of the Heavy Elements Aaron Tohuvavohu, California Institute of Technology, Ultraviolet Space Telescopes for the new era of Time Domain and Multi-Messenger Astronomy
The 2025 NHFP Hubble Fellows are:
Aliza Beverage, Carnegie Observatories, Revealing Massive Galaxies Formation Using Chemical Abundances Anna de Graaff, Harvard University, Early giants in context: How could galaxies in the first billion years grow so rapidly? Karia Dibert, California Institute of Technology, Superconducting on-chip spectrometers for high-redshift astrophysics and cosmology Emily Griffith, University of Colorado, Boulder, Beyond Mg and Fe: Exploring Detailed Nucleosynthetic Patterns Viraj Karambelkar, Columbia University, The Anthropology of Merging Stars Lindsey Kwok, Northwestern University, Determining the Astrophysical Origins of White-Dwarf Supernovae with JWST Infrared Spectroscopy Abigail Lee, University of California, Berkeley, AGB Stars in the Era of NIR Astronomy: New Probes of Cosmology and Galaxy Evolution Aaron Pearlman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pinpointing the Origins of Fast Radio Bursts and Tracing Baryons in the Cosmic Web Dominick Rowan, University of California, Berkeley, Fundamental Stellar Parameters Across the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram Nicholas Rui, Princeton University, A seismic atlas of the stellar merger sky Nadine Soliman, Institute for Advanced Study, Micro Foundations, Macro Realities: Modeling the Multi-scale Physics Shaping Planets, Stars and Galaxies Bingjie Wang, Princeton University, Inference at the Edge of the Universe
The 2025 NHFP Sagan Fellows are:
Kyle Franson, University of California, Santa Cruz, Mapping the Formation, Migration, and Thermal Evolution of Giant Planets with Direct Imaging and Astrometry Caprice Phillips, University of California, Santa Cruz, Aging in the Cosmos: JWST Insights into the Evolution of Brown Dwarf Atmospheres and Clouds Keming Zhang, Institute for Advanced Study, Understanding the Origin and Abundance of Free-Floating Planets via Microlensing and Machine Learning
The class of 2025 NHFP Fellows are shown in this photo montage (left to right, top to bottom): The Einstein Fellows (seen in the blue hexagons) are: Shi-Fan Chen, Nicolas Garavito Camargo, Jason Hinkle, Itai Linial, Kenzie Nimmo, Massimo Pascale, Elia Pizzati, Jillian Rastinejad and Aaron Tohuvavohu. The Hubble Fellows (seen in the red hexagons) are: Aliza Beverage, Anna de Graaff, Karia Dilbert, Emily Griffith, Viraj Karambelkar, Lindsey Kwok, Abigail Lee, Aaron Pearlman, Dominick Rowan, Nicholas Rui, Nadine Soliman, Bingjie Wang. The Sagan Fellows (seen in green hexagons) are: Kyle Franson, Caprice Phillips, and Keming Zhang. For short bios and photos, please visit the link at the end of the article. An important part of the NHFP is the annual Symposium, which allows Fellows the opportunity to present results of their research, and to meet each other and the scientific and administrative staff who manage the program. The 2024 symposium was held at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) in Pasadena, California. Science topics ranged through exoplanets, gravitational waves, fast radio bursts, cosmology and more. Non-science sessions included discussions about career paths and developing mentorship skills, as well as an open mic highlighting an array of talents other than astrophysics. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, administers the NHFP on behalf of NASA, in collaboration with the Chandra X-ray Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California. Short bios and photos of the 2025 NHFP Fellows can be found at:https://www.stsci.edu/stsci-research/fellowships/nasa-hubble-fellowship-program/2025-nhfp-fellows
Jefferson City — Today, Governor Mike Kehoe announced six appointments to various boards and commissions and the appointment of the Andrew County Circuit Clerk.
Tannah Buhman, of St. Joseph, was appointed as the Andrew County Circuit Clerk.
Ms. Buhman is currently serving as the interim circuit clerk for the Andrew County Circuit Court having been appointed by the Presiding Judge after a year as deputy court clerk. She previously worked as a patient care representative for Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph, Missouri, and holds certifications as a Certified Nurse Assistant and Certified Medication Technician.
Paul Fitzwater, of Potosi, was appointed to the MissouriSentencing Advisory Commission.
Mr. Fitzwater currently serves as a member of the Board of Probation and Parole and is a former state representative for Iron, Washington, Wayne, and Reynolds counties. Before entering public service, he owned and operated Fitzwater and Son Concrete Contracting. Fitzwater is also a retired teacher and coach with nearly 30 years of experience in education. He is an active member of several organizations including the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Fitzwater earned his bachelor’s degree in education from Tarkio College.
Matthew Haase, of Kansas City, was appointed to the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.
Mr. Haase is currently the director of strategic relations for Kansas City University, having previously served as the senior director of external relations at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Haas dedicated 18 years to public service under the leadership of former U.S. Senator Roy Blunt as a senior legislative assistant in his congressional office and later as a state director in his Senate office. He was appointed to the 16th Circuit Judicial Commission by Governor Parson and currently serves on the Local Investment Commission. Mr. Haase earned his Bachelor of Science in Economics from Missouri State University in Springfield.
Steven Oslica, of St. Louis, was appointed to the Missouri Community Service Commission.
Mr. Oslica is a business consultant based in St. Louis. He previously served as executive director of the Hawthorn Foundation for Missouri, which helps to fund the sitting governor’s economic development priorities and assists in improving state operation efficiencies. His career includes over 30 years in oil and gas construction materials as a global marketing director for Pittsburgh Corning Corporation and the director of international business for H.B. Fuller. Osclica currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Culver-Stockton College and Board of Advisors for Love the Lou. Mr. Oslica earned his bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Culver-Stockton College.
Victor Pasley, of Columbia, was reappointed to the Lincoln University Board of Curators.
Mr. Pasley retired from Xerox Corporation in 2010 after a 32-year career as a member of its executive team. Prior to his corporate career, he worked as an instructor and assistant principal in Elgin Public Schools and served as a Captain in the United States Army, including a tour of duty in Vietnam. He has served on the Lincoln University Board of Curators since 2019. Mr. Pasley earned a Bachelor of Science in Education from Lincoln University, a Master of Science in Education from Northern Illinois University, and completed the Professional Management Development Program at Harvard Business School.
Richard Popp, of Tebbetts, was reappointed to the Lincoln University Board of Curators.
Mr. Popp is a retired Executive Vice President of Central Bank, where he was employed for 37 years. He is a member of the Missouri Bar Association and Jefferson City Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Popp has served as a member of the Lincoln University Board of Curators for six years. He holds two degrees from the University of Missouri: accounting and plant science. He also earned his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1977.
John M. Raines, of Senath, was appointed to the University of Missouri Board of Curators.
Mr. Raines’ leadership in agriculture and food spans nearly four decades, most recently retiring as president of TELUS Ag & Consumer Goods. Prior to TELUS, Raines served as the chief commercial officer at The Climate Corporation, now part of Bayer, a leading global provider of agricultural products. Raines serves on the board of directors for several companies including FMC Corporation, Sydenstricker Nobbe Partners, and TPNB Bank, as well as the advisory board for the University of Missouri Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Missouri in Columbia.
AUSTIN, Texas, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ESO, a leading data services and software provider for EMS, fire departments, hospitals, and state and federal agencies, today announced it is one of the first software providers to earn the compatibility badge for the National Emergency Response Information System V1 (NERIS) through the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI).
As one of the first software providers to earn the NERIS V1 Compatible Badge, ESO’s Fire Incident application meets all new compliance requirements under NERIS while maintaining its focus on ease of use, data accuracy and intuitive reporting. Rolling out in 2026, NERIS is set to replace the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) and marks the most significant update to national standardized reporting for fire departments in decades.
“NERIS represents a tremendous opportunity to unite fire incident reporting under a newer, more modern data standard,” said Tom Jenkins, senior advisory and research manager at FSRI. “Fire departments’ ability to easily collect, report and gather insights from incident data is as important to their own decision-making as it is to overall community safety. Compliant third-party technology providers play a critical role in making that possible.”
As part of its ongoing commitment to empower fire departments with industry-leading data and software tools, ESO has been working closely with FSRI for more than a year to provide the documentation and technical specifications required to earn NERIS compliance and demonstrate compatibility.
“The impending NERIS rollout has left fire departments unsure of how to best prepare. That’s why we’ve made it a core focus to support them with the resources and technology to ensure a seamless transition,” said Sam Brown, chief operating officer at ESO. “With this NERIS-compliant update, fire departments using ESO’s Fire Incident application will gain all the benefits of a truly interoperable data platform—without the implementation headaches that come from such a comprehensive migration.”
The NERIS update comes at no additional cost to ESO Fire Incident application customers, who will have access to onboarding and training resources as limited and general availability open throughout 2025. The application will also feature new compliant workflows and full permission sets for system administrators, while maintaining CAD file integrity and archived incident search pages.
About ESO ESO (ESO Solutions, Inc.) is dedicated to improving community health and safety through the power of data. Since its founding in 2004, the company continues to pioneer innovative, user-friendly software to meet the changing needs of today’s EMS agencies, fire departments, hospitals, and state and federal offices. ESO currently serves thousands of customers across the globe with a broad software portfolio, including the industry-leading ESO Electronic Health Record (EHR), the next-generation ePCR; ESO Health Data Exchange (HDE), the first-of-its-kind health care interoperability platform; ESO Fire RMS, the modern fire Record Management System; ESO Patient Registry (trauma, burn and stroke registry software); and ESO State Repository. ESO is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit www.eso.com.
About Fire Safety Research Institute Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), part of UL Research Institutes, strives to advance fire safety knowledge and strategies in order to create safer environments. Using advanced fire science, rigorous research, extensive outreach and education in collaboration with an international network of partners, the organization imparts stakeholders with knowledge, tools, and resources that enable them to make better, more fire safe decisions that ultimately save lives and property. To learn more, visit fsri.org. Follow FSRI on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Victor Orbán to host Benjamin Netanyahu in Hungary on Wednesday
Following an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant
‘Powerful leaders, like Netanyahu, accused by the ICC of war crimes and crimes against humanity, must no longer enjoy the prospect of perpetual impunity’ – Erika Guevara-Rosas
Responding to reports that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán plans to host Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hungary on Wednesday, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Head of Global Research, Advocacy and Policy, said:
“Prime Minister Netanyahu is an alleged war criminal, who is accused of using starvation as a method of warfare, intentionally attacking civilians and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
“As a member state of the ICC, Hungary must arrest Netanyahu if he travels to the country and hand him over to the Court. Any trip he takes to an ICC member state that does not end in his arrest would embolden Israel to commit further crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“Netanyahu’s reported visit should be seen as a cynical effort to undermine the ICC and its work and is an insult to the victims of these crimes who are looking to the Court for justice. Hungary’s invitation shows contempt for international law and confirms that alleged war criminals wanted by the ICC are welcome on the streets of a European Union member state.
“Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary must not become a bellwether for the future of human rights in Europe. European and global leaders must end their shameful silence and inaction, and call on Hungary to arrest Netanyahu during a visit which would make a mockery of the suffering of Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its war crimes in other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and its entrenched system of apartheid against all Palestinians whose rights it controls.
“Amnesty International calls on the ICC Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute all Israel’s crimes. Hungary should equally do so by applying universal jurisdiction principles. Powerful leaders, like Netanyahu, accused by the ICC of war crimes and crimes against humanity, must no longer enjoy the prospect of perpetual impunity.
“The ICC was established to ensure accountability for victims of genocide and other crimes under international law, and so that crimes which shock the human conscience would ‘never again’ be accompanied by impunity. In ‘bringing power to justice’, the ICC is now facing a global backlash from powerful leaders seeking to undermine the international rule of law and stamp out the prospect of accountability for the most powerful.”
ICC arrest warrants
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as al-Qassam brigades commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since then, leaders from ICC member states France, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland have stated or implied that they would not arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he travelled to their respective countries. The United States has also enacted sanctions against the ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan.
A cornerstone principle of the ICC’s founding Rome Statute is that all individuals subject to ICC arrest warrants must be arrested and surrendered to the Court without recourse to immunity when they are within the jurisdiction of ICC member states, including on their territory.
Responding to reports that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has invited and plans to host Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hungary on Wednesday, Erika Guevara-Rosas the head of Global Research, Advocacy and Policy of Amnesty International said:
“Prime Minister Netanyahu is an alleged war criminal, who is accused of using starvation as a method of warfare, intentionally attacking civilians and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. As a member state of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Hungary must arrest him if he travels to the country and hand him over to the Court. Any trip he takes to an ICC member state that does not end in his arrest would embolden Israel to commit further crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“Netanyahu’s reported visit should be seen as a cynical effort to undermine the ICC and its work, and is an insult to the victims of these crimes who are looking to the Court for justice. Hungary’s invitation shows contempt for international law and confirms that alleged war criminals wanted by the ICC are welcome on the streets of a European Union member state.
“Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary must not become a bellwether for the future of human rights in Europe. European and global leaders must end their shameful silence and inaction, and call on Hungary to arrest Netanyahu during a visit which would make a mockery of the suffering of Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its war crimes in other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and its entrenched system of apartheid against all Palestinians whose rights it controls.
“Amnesty International calls on the ICC Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute all Israel’s crimes. Hungary should equally do so by applying universal jurisdiction principles. Powerful leaders, like Netanyahu, accused by the ICC of war crimes and crimes against humanity, must no longer enjoy the prospect of perpetual impunity.”
“The ICC was established to ensure accountability for victims of genocide and other crimes under international law, and so that crimes which shock the human conscience would “never again” be accompanied by impunity. In ‘bringing power to justice’, the ICC is now facing a global backlash from powerful leaders seeking to undermine the international rule of law and stamp out the prospect of accountability for the most powerful.”
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jonathan P. Stewart, Professor of Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles
The 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake near San Francisco in 1989 caused about $6.8 billion in damage and 63 deaths.J.K. Nakata/U.S. Geological Survey
Earthquakes and the damage they cause are apolitical. Collectively, we either prepare for future earthquakes or the population eventually pays the price. The earthquakes that struck Myanmar on March 28, 2025, collapsing buildings and causing over 2,000 deaths, were a sobering reminder of the risks and the need for preparation.
In the U.S., this preparation hinges in large part on the expertise of scientists and engineers in federal agencies who develop earthquake hazard models and contribute to the creation of building codes designed to ensure homes, high-rises and other structures won’t collapse when the ground shakes.
Local communities and states decide whether to adopt building code documents. But those documents and other essential resources are developed through programs supported by federal agencies working in partnership with practicing engineers and earthquake experts at universities.
First, seismologists and earthquake engineers at the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, produce the National Seismic Hazard Model. These maps, based on research into earthquake sources such as faults and how seismic waves move through the earth’s crust, are used to determine the forces that structures in each community should be designed to resist.
A steering committee of earthquake experts from the private sector and universities works with USGS to ensure that the National Seismic Hazard Model implements the best available science.
In this 2023 update of the national seismic risk map, red areas have the greatest chance of a damaging earthquake occurring within 100 years. USGS
Second, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, supports the process for periodically updating building codes. That includes supporting the work of the National Institute of Building Sciences’ Provisions Update Committee, which recommends building code revisions based on investigations of earthquake damage.
More broadly, FEMA, the USGS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation work together through the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program to advance earthquake science and turn knowledge of earthquake risks into safer standards, better building design and education. Some of those agencies have been threatened by potential job and funding cuts under the Trump administration, and others face uncertainty regarding continuation of federal support for their work.
It is in large part because of the National Seismic Hazard Model and regularly updated building codes that U.S. buildings designed to meet modern code requirements are considered among the safest in the world, despite substantial seismic hazards in several states.
This paradigm has been made possible by the technical expertise and lack of political agendas among the federal staff. Without that professionalism, we believe experts from outside the federal government would be less likely to donate their time.
These programs and the federal agencies supporting them have benefited from a high level of staff expertise because hiring and advancement processes have been divorced from politics and focused on qualifications and merit.
This has not always been the case.
For much of early U.S. history, federal jobs were awarded through a patronage system, where political loyalty determined employment. As described in “The Federal Civil Service System and The Problem of Bureaucracy,” this system led to widespread corruption and dysfunction, with officials focused more on managing quid pro quo patronage than governing effectively. That peaked in 1881 with President James Garfield’s assassination by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled supporter who had been denied a government appointment.
The passage of the Pendleton Act by Congress in 1883 shifted federal employment to a merit-based system. This preference for a merit-based system was reinforced in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. It states as national policy that “to provide the people of the United States with a competent, honest, and productive workforce … and to improve the quality of public service, Federal personnel management should be implemented consistent with merit system principles.”
The shift away from a patronage system produced a more stable and efficient federal workforce, which has enabled improvements in many critical areas, including seismic safety and disaster response.
Merit-based civil service matters for safety
While the work of these federal employees often goes unnoticed, the benefits are demonstrable and widespread. That becomes most apparent when disasters strike and buildings that meet modern code requirements remain standing.
A merit-based civil service is not just a democratic ideal but a proven necessity for the safety and security of the American people, one we hope will continue well into the future. This can be achieved by retaining federal scientists and engineers and supporting the essential work of federal agencies.
Jonathan P. Stewart has received funding from NSF and USGS. He is the chair of the Steering Committee for the National Seismic Hazard Model, a member of the National Institute of Building Sciences’ Provisions Update Committee, and a member of the federal Advisory Committee for Earthquake Hazard Reduction (ACEHR). His contributions to this article draw upon his experience and do not reflect the views of the Steering Committee, Provisions Update Committee, or ACEHR.
Lucy Arendt has received funding from NSF and the Applied Technology Council. She is a member and current chair of the federal Advisory Committee for Earthquake Hazard Reduction (ACEHR). Her contributions to this article reflect her professional expertise and do not reflect the views of ACEHR.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a top contender for the title of Great American Novel, turns 100 on April 10.
A century later, it is invoked to help make sense of a world that still confuses “material enterprise with moral achievement” – as critic Sarah Churchwell wrote in the foreword to Gatsby’s centennial edition.
A Meta insider’s memoir takes its title, Careless People, from Fitzgerald’s novel. The same phrase circulated on social media and in The New York Times during Donald Trump’s first presidency, referring to his administration’s downplaying of COVID-19.
In 2018, The Atlantic compared Trump to Tom Buchanan, one of Fitzgerald’s “careless people”, describing “an eerie symmetry […] as if the villain of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel had been brought to life in a louder, gaudier guise for the 21st century”. More recently, others have compared Trump to Gatsby himself.
The Great Gatsby tells the tale of a lovesick man striving for social acceptance, believing personal reinvention and riches can help to rewrite the past. It is a story of longing: not just for lost love, but for an unattainable ideal.
The centenary couldn’t be more timely for this literary masterpiece, preoccupied by the same things we are: immense affluence, privilege, the limits of social mobility and the hidden underbelly of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby, while a relative literary failure in Fitzgerald’s lifetime, is enduringly popular today, with at least 25 million copies sold to date, numerous film and stage adaptations (and literary riffs), and a staple position on school and university reading lists.
“What we think about Gatsby illuminates what we think about money, race, romance and history,” wrote The New York Times’ A.O. Scott recently. “How we imagine him has a lot to do with how we see ourselves.”
The Great Gatsby is set against the backdrop of Roaring Twenties America: an era Fitzgerald famously dubbed the Jazz Age.
Fuelled by the infectious rhythms of jazz, driven by the economic forces of market prosperity and mass consumerism, and heady on the alcoholic vapours and illicit thrills associated with Prohibition-era nightlife, the 1920s were a decade where American fortunes were made and lost.
It was also, as Fitzgerald’s novel outlines, a period where individual ambition burned as fiercely as desire.
Picryl
The plot follows the enigmatic Jay Gatsby, a spotlight-eschewing, self-made millionaire whose seemingly breezy approach to life masks a singular obsession: the rekindling of a lost romance with a beautiful woman from his past.
Born James Gatz, Fitzgerald’s charismatic protagonist reinvents himself in the hope of winning back the love of his life, wealthy socialite Daisy Buchanan. Taken at face value, Gatsby’s world is one of incredible luxury and dazzling excess – lavish parties, fast cars and ostentatious attire – all designed to lure Daisy back into his arms.
But as we begin to scratch beneath the surface, the glittering facade Gatsby has constructed gives way to something far more fragile and tragic: an impossible fantasy driven by jealously, obsession and self-deception.
As the reader comes to appreciate, Gatsby’s accumulated gains may grant him partial access to the world of old money, but he will never truly be accepted by America’s elite. No matter how hard he might try, he cannot surmount the barriers of class and entitlement.
Ultimately, Gatsby’s misguided belief that he can somehow crowbar his way into the upper echelons of high society while simultaneously turning back the hands of time leads to his downfall. In Fitzgerald’s words, he ends up paying “a high price for living too long with a single dream”.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is still invoked to help make sense of a world that often confuses ‘material enterprise with moral achievement’. Nickolas Muray/Picryl
F. Scott Fitzgerald, literary celebrity
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24 1896. The son of middle-class Catholic parents, he spent much of his youth living in upstate New York. In 1913, he enrolled at Princeton University, where he formed a lasting friendship with future literary critic Edmund Wilson.
More absorbed in literary and dramatic endeavours than his studies, Fitzgerald’s grades suffered and he dropped out in 1917 – though not before falling deeply in love with Ginevra King, an heiress who would leave an indelible imprint on his writing. She would inspire many of his fictional female characters, including Daisy Buchanan.
Fitzgerald first encountered King during a winter vacation in St. Paul in January 1915. The debutante daughter of a wealthy Chicago stockbroker, she quickly became the object of Fitzgerald’s intense devotion (much to the disapproval of her family, who thought him beneath her).
In the wake of his heartbreak after the relationship broke down, Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army, earning a commission as a second lieutenant. During his military service, he met Zelda Sayre, the woman he would eventually marry. Meanwhile, he began work on his first novel, This Side of Paradise.
Released in 1920, Fitzgerald’s formally adventurous debut was a critical success and cultural sensation, capturing the restless energy and shifting moral landscape of a cohort coming of age in the wake of World War I.
The novel’s transparently autobiographical narrative centres on Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner whose intellectual and romantic adventures at Princeton – especially a doomed affair with the beautiful, elusive Isabelle Borgé – struck a chord with readers. It turned Fitzgerald into a media celebrity and unofficial spokesman for his generation.
Two years later, Fitzgerald published The Beautiful and Damned. It details the disintegration of a wealthy, aimless couple – Anthony and Gloria Patch – whose hedonistic lifestyle and misplaced belief in their own brilliance leads to ruin.
Fitzgerald’s tonally pessimistic second novel was again shaped by his own experiences, drawing heavily on his tempestuous marriage to Zelda, who was exhibiting symptoms of profound mental instability.
However, in stark contrast to This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned sold well, but received a lukewarm reception from reviewers. Some found its characters unappealing and its plot depressing.
By then, the Fitzgeralds had grown accustomed to the finer things in life. Which meant they needed money. Lots of it. To keep up with their lavish spending, Fitzgerald started to churn out short stories for popular magazines at a rapid pace. While this move provided him with a degree of financial security, some critics and contemporaries questioned whether he was squandering his literary gifts. Ernest Hemingway, for one, was “shocked” by his friend’s willingness to pander to commercial tastes and imperatives.
‘I want to write something new’
That said, while he was generating copy for mass-market publication, Fitzgerald was also hard at work on The Great Gatsby. In July 1922, he declared:
I want to write something new – something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned.
Determined to prove his worth as an artist, Fitzgerald, who wanted “to write a novel better than any ever written in America”, began to play with “form and emotion”. As his ideas for the new novel – which at one point bore the working title Trimalchio – took shape, Fitzgerald set up shop in Great Neck, Long Island. This location became the inspiration for East and West Egg, the fictionalised island communities that are the novel’s primary setting.
Fitzgerald, clearly not lacking in confidence, set his sights high for his third novel, taking inspiration from James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Departing from conventional realism, Fitzgerald experimented with modernist techniques, layering his narrative with symbolic depth, synesthetic imagery, fragmented storytelling and complex characterisation.
The result was a work both lyrical and impressionistic. Here’s a vivid, illustrative excerpt:
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. […] The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.
Fitzgerald’s Midwestern narrator, Nick Carraway, is describing one of Gatsby’s legendary West Egg parties. He is renting the house next to Gatsby’s mansion,
“a colossal affair by any standard”, with “a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden”.
At first, Nick is fascinated by his enigmatic neighbour, drawn in by the sheer force of Gatsby’s optimism and his unrelenting faith in the transformative power of love and the trappings of wealth. But as the novel progresses, events lead Nick to reevaluate. He describes his charming friend as possessing “one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life”.
He continues, outlining attributes essential to a good confidence man:
It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
When he isn’t with Gatsby, Nick is often with his cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom, the embodiment of American aristocracy and snobbery. They are, in Nick’s damning estimation, “careless” and “rotten” people.
An unreconstructed white supremacist prone to casual displays of extreme prejudice and physical violence, the adulterous Tom – who wouldn’t be out of place in the more dismal real-world and online recesses of today – is, in particular, deeply suspicious of Gatsby, regarding him as an interloper with dubious intentions.
The Atlantic wrote that Tom, “the Yale man, the football star, the spender of old money, the scion of what he calls the Nordic race – embodies the peak of social status in his century”. And that “Trump – the former Playboy-cover subject, the billionaire celebrity, the most powerful man in America – does the same for his”.
And their shared personality traits are the product of their shared relationship to power – the casual unreflective certainty that comes from inheritance, and enables its holders to wield its blunt force as both a weapon and a shield.
Tom’s “little investigation” into Gatsby’s background and finances reveals they are not what they seem. This leads to unintended, disastrous consequences.
Nick, our disillusioned observer, doesn’t quite know what to make of it all. We take leave of him at the end of the novel, on “the beach and sprawled out on the sand”, reminiscing about “Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock”.
‘A flying leap into the future’
Fitzgerald knew he had achieved something special with The Great Gatsby. His peers did too. T.S. Eliot considered it “the first step” forward “American fiction has taken since Henry James”. Edith Wharton concurred, calling it “a flying leap into the future.”
Yet, for all this critical acclaim, The Great Gatsby failed to resonate with the reading public – much to Fitzgerald’s dismay. By October, the book had sold less than 20,000 copies. (By comparison, This Side of Paradise had sold nearly 50,000 copies, across multiple printings.) As his biographer Arthur Mizener observed, by February 1926, “a few thousand more copies had been sold and the book was dead”. It was a blow the writer never really recovered from.
Fitzgerald’s personal life was tumultuous, marred by alcoholism, Zelda’s mental health issues and financial debt. This had a negative effect on his work. While he completed one more novel in 1934 – the excellent, darkly romantic Tender is the Night, arguably his best book – Fitzgerald struggled to be productive.
Following several failed suicide attempts, in 1940 he died of a heart attack, believing himself an abject failure and his career a total write-off. His most recent royalty cheque had been for $13.13. He was 44.
In the immediate aftermath of his death, writers and critics began to reassess Fitzgerald’s accomplishments. This effort was initially spearheaded by his friends, notably Edmund Wilson, who, in 1941, organised a series of tributes to be published in The New Republic.
In 1945, Viking Press released The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Dorothy Parker, which brought Fitzgerald to the attention of a new generation of readers. At the same time, the US military distributed 150,000 copies of The Great Gatsby to American servicemen during World War II as part of their Armed Services Editions.
Before long, The Great Gatsby made its way into the classroom, where it remains a staple of countless high school and university syllabuses. It continues to inspire readers, many of whom encounter it at a formative stage in their lives.
Amazon
It has been adapted for the screen on multiple occasions – with mixed results. Jack Clayton’s 1974 version, starring Robert Redford as the eponymous Gatsby, was faithful to Fitzgerald’s vision, but utterly lifeless, while Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation, a hollow exercise in audiovisual bluster, failed to do justice to the novel’s subtleties. For all their shortcomings, these films helped cement Gatsby’s place in the popular imagination.
An ‘uncannily prescient’ enduring classic
Novelist Jesmyn Ward suggests Fitzgerald’s novel is
a book that endures, generation after generation, because every time a reader returns to The Great Gatsby, we discover new revelations, new insights, new burning bits of language.
I agree – and I think Fitzgerald would have had rich material to work with, had he been alive today. Ours, lest we forget, is a world where ersatz robber barons hoard nearly all our shared available assets and resources, where racist discourse resounds, and where rampant consumerism remains unchecked.
Last year America magazine argued Gatsby himself “gives the greatest insight into why Mr. Trump is still popular”, comparing Trump’s “fraudulent real estate deals” to Gatsby’s nefarious way of making his money, and Gatsby’s huge parties to Trump’s rallies. Both, the writer argued, are nouveau riche outsiders, “hell-bent on being accepted by the Manhattan set”, and scorned by the elites. (Though Trump’s second presidency seems to be ushering in a new elite.)
Thinking aloud, perhaps it’s more accurate to say Trump is a weird combination of characters. On one hand, he resembles Gatsby: a self-mythologising social climber, nostalgic for a past that never really existed. On the other, he shares much with Tom Buchanan: unscrupulous, self-interested and protected by his wealth.
In a historical moment that mirrors his own in many ways, Fitzgerald’s essentially tragic masterwork, which ends suggesting we are all forever “borne back ceaselessly into the past”, strikes me as uncannily prescient and relevant today.
Alexander Howard 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.
European Parliament resolution on targeted attacks against Christians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – defending religious freedom and security
–having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966,
–having regard to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, in particular Article 10 thereof on freedom of thought, conscience and religion,
–having regard to its previous resolutions on the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
–having regard to the statements by the European External Action Service on the security and human rights situation in the DRC,
–having regard to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights,
–having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,
A.whereas the DRC is experiencing an escalation of violence, particularly in the eastern regions, where armed groups such as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have targeted Christian communities;
B.whereas between 12 and 15 February 2025, more than 70 Christians were found dead in a Protestant church near Kazanga, North Kivu province in the DRC; whereas the victims had been beheaded by the Islamist ADF, an affiliate militia of Islamic State Central Africa Wilayat (ISCAP);
C.whereas according to BBC Monitoring analysis, ISCAP is now the deadliest armed group in the DRC; whereas from 1 January to 30 June 2024, Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing a total of 698 African Christians; whereas ISCAP claimed responsibility for killing 639 Christians;
D.whereas the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO) has amplified Pope Francis’s appeals for an end to the violence and has initiated discussions between the government and rebel groups, with consultations ongoing; whereas CENCO and the Church of Christ in Congo have launched an appeal for 2025 to be a ‘Year of Peace and Good Coexistence’ to address the ongoing violence;
E.whereas churches and Christian institutions have increasingly become targets of violence and persecution by terrorist groups, including the ADF, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State; whereas the ADF, originally an armed Ugandan rebel movement, has evolved into a jihadist terrorist group operating in the eastern DRC, conducting mass killings, attacking civilian populations and disrupting agricultural and economic activities; whereas despite military operations by Congolese and Ugandan forces, the ADF continues to perpetrate violence and instability in the region;
F.whereas ISIS-DRC continues to pose a severe threat in the region, carrying out deadly attacks against civilians, including the January 2025 massacre in Makoko, North Kivu, and the December 2024 attack in Batangi-Mbau; whereas recent operations by Interpol and Afripol have led to the arrest of 37 suspected terrorists across East Africa, yet ISIS-DRC remains active, exploiting instability and weak governance to sustain its violent campaign;
G.whereas the appointment of a new EU Special Envoy for religious freedom by the Commission on 7 December 2022 followed a three-year standstill, during which the former Special Envoy who had been appointed in 2021 returned his mandate after a few months to assume another position in a national government;
H.whereas in 2016 the Hungarian Government set up a special department for persecuted Christians around the world; whereas the State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians supports, through its ‘Hungary Helps’ programme, faith-based initiatives in more than 50 countries, with hundreds of humanitarian and development projects; whereas in 2019 the Italian Government established a fund for persecuted Christian communities; whereas in May 2022 the Italian Government led by Mario Draghi appointed a special envoy for the protection of religious freedom and interreligious dialogue; whereas in 2023 the Italian Government led by Giorgia Meloni appointed a special envoy attached to the foreign ministry to protect Christian communities around the world;
I.whereas over the past decade, the EU has provided significant financial assistance to the DRC, including over EUR 272 million in humanitarian aid between 2023 and 2025 to address urgent needs such as shelter, clean water, food and education for vulnerable populations; whereas the EU allocated EUR 584 million through the European Development Fund for the period 2008-2013 to support stability and development projects; whereas the EU has also been involved in security and peacekeeping efforts, deploying missions such as the EU Security Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (EUSEC) and the EU Police Mission for the DRC (EUPOL RD Congo) to assist in rebuilding the Congolese security forces;
L.whereas the DRC has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world, scoring 20 out of 100 in the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International and ranking 162nd out of 180 countries; whereas a conservative estimate of 30 % of the approximately EUR 1.2 billion in aid funded with EU taxpayers’ money, provided between 2008 and 2024, suggests that at least EUR 360 million may have been misappropriated by corrupt officials, seriously undermining efforts to enhance governance, stability, safety and living conditions in the DRC;
M.whereas the EU and Rwanda signed a memorandum of understanding on sustainable raw materials value chains in February 2024, granting the EU access to sources of raw materials and rare earth elements in Rwanda; whereas several UN reports state that Rwanda supports the M23 group as a means of extracting and exporting minerals from the DRC; whereas the US Embassy in the DRC confirmed that Congolese minerals are being transported, with the support of armed groups, to Rwanda, where they are subsequently sold to international buyers;
N.whereas this conflict has been overshadowed by global attention focused on crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, despite over 10 million lives lost in years of violence and an estimated 3 000 people killed in just a few days;
1.Strongly condemns the murder of Christians in the DRC, and all acts of violence targeting them, and expresses its solidarity with the victims;
2.Notes that the DRC ranks 35th on the Open Doors’ World Watch List 2025 of countries where Christians are persecuted because of their faith; emphasises that Christians face severe persecution and violence especially from Islamist groups; emphasises that the ADF abduct and kill Christians and attack churches, leading to terror, insecurity and population displacement; emphasises that the M23 group also targets Christian civilians; is concerned about the involvement of the M23 group in the widespread violence in the DRC; takes note of the EU sanctions against people holding leading positions in the Rwanda Defence Force and M23; demands that the Rwandan Government withdraw its troops from the DRC and cease its cooperation with M23; notes that the DRC ranks fourth on Global Christian Relief’s Red List of countries where Christians have been forced to flee their homes due to violence;
3.Is worried about the growing threat posed by ISCAP in Central Africa; notes that the increasing number of violent attacks demonstrates both ISCAP’s willingness and operational capability to intensify its campaign of terror and violent attacks against Christians; is worried that the expansion of Islamic State in Central Africa poses a danger to the security of the whole continent;
4.Is of the opinion that by stalling the process of mandating an EU Special Envoy for religious freedom for almost three years, the Commission signalled to the outside world that the issue of the persecution of Christians worldwide is not one of the EU’s priorities; notes that this reflects its policy in the EU, only appointing a coordinator for combating Muslim hatred, and neglecting the rising violence against Christians in the EU; finds this lack of commitment highly regrettable and problematic in the light of the rising violence against Christians worldwide; is of the opinion that the significant delay in appointing the EU Special Envoy for religious freedom undermines the credibility of the EU’s commitment to protecting religious freedom and belief beyond its borders;
5.Welcomes the ‘Hungary Helps’ programme, which helps Christian communities rebuild after persecution and manages projects, reconstructing institutions and improving education and healthcare after violent persecution by Islamic terrorist groups; emphasises that the Hungarian initiative, enabling people to build their future in their own country, is also an important migration prevention policy; welcomes the fact that the ‘Hungary Helps’ programme and the Reformed Church of Hungary will give donations to help the victims of the Islamist terrorist attacks on Christians in the DRC; welcomes the cooperation between the Hungarian and Italian Governments to undertake joint initiatives in Africa, with a focus on supporting persecuted Christians; hopes that Hungarian and Italian policy will inspire other Member States to follow suit;
6.Calls for the EU and the EU Special Envoy for religious freedom to take all the necessary diplomatic and political initiatives to protect Christians in the DRC;
7.Calls on the DRC and its authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the murders and to ensure that the criminals responsible are brought to justice;
8.Calls on the DRC and its authorities to take immediate and effective action to protect Christian communities and all religious minorities from further violence and persecution;
9.Calls on the DRC and its authorities to provide financial and logistical support for local and international humanitarian organisations assisting the victims of religious persecution in the DRC;
10.Welcomes the efforts of religious leaders to foster peace and dialogue and urges all parties involved to seek constructive solutions rather than resorting to violence;
11.Encourages regional and international African bodies such as the African Union and the East African Community to take the lead in addressing the conflict, as they are the best suited for this task; encourages these African bodies to enhance counter-terrorism cooperation, intelligence-sharing and military coordination against extremist groups operating in the region;
12.Calls strongly for the EU to work with regional and international actors to protect civilians and Christian communities and bring the perpetrators of these criminal acts to justice;
13.Emphasises the need to address these crimes at the African Union level;
14.Calls on the Commission to suspend the implementation of the memorandum of understanding on sustainable raw materials value chains signed with Rwanda in February 2024, in the light of credible reports linking Rwanda to the illicit exploitation and export of minerals from the eastern DRC, including through its support for the M23 armed group; stresses that the continuation of this agreement risks fuelling the ongoing conflict, undermining regional stability and leading to the further killing of Christians in the region;
15.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the EU Special Envoy for religious freedom, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, Degrading and Inhuman Treatment, the African Union Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, the Government and Parliament of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the African Union and the East African Community.
Adam Bielan, Mariusz Kamiński, Sebastian Tynkkynen, Cristian Terheş, Maciej Wąsik, Aurelijus Veryga, Jadwiga Wiśniewska, Małgorzata Gosiewska, Waldemar Tomaszewski, Joachim Stanisław Brudziński on behalf of the ECR Group
B10‑0216/2025
European Parliament resolution on the targeted attacks against Christians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: defending religious freedom and security
–having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as the right to manifest one’s religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance,
–having regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which recognises the right of individuals to freedom of religion, including freedom to worship and observe religious practices,
–having regard to the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which guarantees the right to freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religious worship for all citizens,
–having regard to the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 25 November 1981,
–having regard to the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 9 thereof, which guarantees the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,
–having regard to reports from the UN and various other human rights organisations, detailing the rise in attacks and indiscriminate killings and ongoing violations of the freedom of belief by armed groups, including Islamist militants, against Christian communities in the eastern DRC region,
–having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,
A.whereas the DRC has endured decades of widespread violence and instability in its eastern provinces, exacerbated by armed conflicts that have created fertile ground for the emergence of over 100 extremist groups targeting vulnerable populations, including religious communities;
B.whereas Christians in the DRC’s eastern provinces are facing an increasing number of targeted attacks, killings and abductions as well as the destruction of their property, perpetrated by armed groups with extremist ideologies;
C.whereas, according to local reports, on 13 February 2025, 70 Christians were abducted in the village of Mayba and later found dead in a church in nearby Kasanga; whereas the attack was reportedly committed by militants of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF);
D.whereas the ADF is one of the most prominent extremist groups with explicitly religious objectives, especially since its leader pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2019;
E.whereas in May 2020, the ADF participated in ISIS’s global ‘Battle of Attrition’, specifically targeting Christian communities in seven neighbourhoods throughout north-eastern DRC; whereas in 2021, a prominent local Muslim leader received death threats from the ADF, and he was later gunned down; whereas in 2023, the ADF bombed services at a Pentecostal church in Kasindi, killing 14 people; whereas in January 2024, the ADF killed eight people in Beni during an attack on a Pentecostal church and, in May 2024, ADF assailants reportedly killed 14 Catholics in North Kivu province for refusing to convert to Islam; whereas the ADF also reportedly executed 11 Christians in the village of Ndimo in Ituri province and kidnapped several others;
F.whereas in addition to the ADF, several armed groups in the eastern DRC have politicised religion, targeting religious infrastructure as part of their insurgency strategies;
G.whereas in 2024, 355 people were reportedly killed in the DRC for their faith, compared to 261 in 2023, while an estimated 10 000 people were internally displaced because of their faith, marking a tenfold increase from 2023; whereas houses have been looted and burned down, schools relocated, churches and healthcare facilities closed, and several Christian villages have been abandoned altogether;
H.whereas the attacks on Christians are part of a broader trend of escalating violence and religious intolerance, with religious leaders and communities increasingly finding themselves under threat in areas controlled by armed groups;
I.whereas the recent activities of the March 23 Movement (M23) rebel group have further exacerbated the vulnerability of religious communities in the region;
J.whereas converts to Christianity from Islam and indigenous religions face pressure from their families to revert to their former faiths;
K.whereas local and international human rights organisations have documented numerous instances of religious violence in the DRC, highlighting the failure of the state to provide adequate protection; whereas, while the DRC Government has demonstrated a strong intention to address the impacts of armed group violence in the eastern DRC, other recent developments call into question the government’s commitment to safeguarding religious freedom specifically;
L.whereas the EU has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to the promotion and protection of religious freedom globally, and has taken steps to combat religious persecution and intolerance in various parts of the world; whereas Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world;
M.whereas Parliament has consistently called for the strengthening of international efforts to combat religious persecution and to hold accountable those responsible for attacks on religious communities;
1.Strongly condemns the targeted attacks against Christian communities in the DRC, including killings, abductions and the destruction of religious property, and calls for an immediate halt to such acts of violence;
2.Is deeply concerned about the situation of Christians and Christian converts from Islam and indigenous religions in the region, who are facing a severe and escalating crisis owing to a combination of militant threats, familial pressure and political interference;
3.Expresses its deep concern about the violence committed by the ADF and other extremist groups in the eastern DRC and underlines that the chaos created by the M23 rebel group has further exacerbated the vulnerability of religious communities;
4.Calls for the immediate cessation of all forms of violence and for the commitment of all parties involved in the ongoing conflict in the eastern DRC to respect international humanitarian law;
5.Calls on the DRC Government to counter extremist propaganda and provide armed security at churches and other religious buildings;
6.Calls for the establishment of early warning mechanisms to more effectively prevent and respond to attacks by the ADF and other armed groups against civilians;
7.Stresses the critical importance of supporting the DRC Government in strengthening the rule of law, improving security and ensuring the protection of religious communities at risk, while ensuring that perpetrators of attacks against religious communities are brought to justice;
8.Echoes the calls for international solidarity in defending religious freedom and the protection of religious minorities in conflict zones, particularly in the DRC, while addressing the root causes of violent extremism in the DRC and its neighbourhood;
9.Encourages the establishment of safe zones in the eastern DRC, where religious communities and other civilians who have been targeted can have access to legal services and psychological support;
10.Stresses the need for a comprehensive approach that combines humanitarian aid, peacebuilding initiatives and support for the rule of law so as to ensure lasting protection for all religious communities in the DRC, including Christians; underlines the role of religious communities in the DRC in promoting peace, social cohesion and the well-being of local communities;
11.Urges the EU to uphold its commitment to the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of religious communities, ensuring that the rights of these groups are prioritised in the EU’s external policies;
12.Calls for enhanced cooperation between the EU and the African Union, as well as regional actors, to promote stability and prevent extremist groups from using religion as a tool for violence and division;
13.Notes, with concern, the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Africa, which is a staunch supporter of the Putin regime and its violent, unlawful war in Ukraine; underlines that, on 29 December 2021, the Russian Orthodox Church officially announced the formation of the Patriarchate Exarchate of Africa, which consists of two dioceses: the South African Diocese, encompassing 24 countries, and the North African Diocese, covering 31 countries;
14.Underlines that this move significantly expands the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church across the African continent, encroaching on the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, which holds the official canonical responsibility for the entire African continent; underlines that this development raises significant questions regarding the broader geopolitical and ideological objectives of the Russian Federation in Africa;
15.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the European External Action Service, the African Union, the Joint Council of Ministers and Joint Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the EU, the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Government and Parliament of the DRC.
Board Chair Jessica Buss Appointed Chief Executive Officer
Charles “Chuck” Jehl will Continue to Serve as Interim Chief Financial Officer and a Member of the Board of Directors
Michelle Glasl Appointed Chief Operating Officer
AUSTIN, Texas, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Open Lending Corporation (Nasdaq: LPRO) (the “Company” or “Open Lending”), an industry trailblazer in lending enablement and risk analytics solutions for financial institutions, today announced that its Board of Directors (the “Board”) has appointed Jessica Buss as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Chuck Jehl will continue to serve as Interim Chief Financial Officer and as a member of the Board. The Board also has appointed Michelle Glasl as Chief Operating Officer. The Board is conducting a comprehensive search process to identify a permanent Chief Financial Officer.
“We are thrilled to announce Jessica as our new CEO,” said Thomas Hegge, a member of the Board. “Her extensive experience in the insurance industry will be instrumental in ensuring a seamless and profitable collaboration between Open Lending, our insurance carrier partners, and our automotive lending partners. Our focus remains on enhancing loan performance, minimizing potential loan defaults, and improving our underwriting processes to more accurately price insurance premiums for the risk. We remain committed to serving our near and non-prime consumers alongside our valued partners.”
“We are grateful that Chuck stepped in to lead Open Lending through a challenging and volatile period for our Company and industry,” added Mr. Hegge. “He is passing the baton to Jessica to continue to execute our strategic plan and usher in the next phase of growth. Meanwhile, Chuck will continue to support Open Lending during this transitionary period as Interim Chief Financial Officer and a valued member of the Board.
“In addition to serving on Open Lending’s Board for the last five years, Jessica brings decades of executive experience in the insurance industry,” said Mr. Jehl. “She understands the opportunities and challenges of our industry, and I believe she will continue our legacy of serving our underserved near- and non-prime consumers.”
“I’d like to thank Chuck for his many contributions in various executive leadership roles at Open Lending since 2020, including taking the Company public,” said Ms. Buss. “He has been a critical part of the management team, and I am looking forward to continuing to work with him as a member of our Board.
Jessica Buss previously served as the CEO of Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd. a subsidiary of Brookfield Reinsurance Ltd (NYSE, TSX: BNRE), a leading capital solutions business providing insurance and reinsurance services to individuals and institutions. She was previously the president, U.S. insurance, of Argo prior to its acquisition by Brookfield Re. Prior to joining Argo, she was President and CEO of GuideOne Insurance Company and, prior to that, she was senior vice president – Commercial and Specialty Lines at State Auto Insurance Companies. Jessica held several other positions during her tenure at State Auto, including chief operating officer and chief financial officer of the company’s specialty subsidiary, and senior vice president of Specialty. Prior to joining State Auto, Jessica was a member of a three-person team that raised the capital for the formation and start-up operations of Rockhill Holdings, a niche property and casualty business that was purchased by State Auto in 2009. She was also CFO for Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. In 2016, Jessica was named one of Insurance Business’ Elite Women of the Year. Jessica earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Wisconsin and her Master of Business Administration from the University of Florida.
Michele Glasl also joins Open Lending from Argo Group, where she has served as Head of Operations since 2022. As Head of Operations, she oversaw information technology, security, operations and communications. Glasl previously served as SVP of Strategy and Business Development at Argo Group. Prior to that, she served as Chief Information Officer at GuideOne Insurance from June 2017 to June 2022. She previously served as Vice President of Technology at State Auto from February 2009 to June 2017. Ms. Glasl holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.
Board Changes Jessica Buss will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board but will no longer be a member of the nominating and corporate governance and audit committees of the Board. Thomas Hegge will join the audit committee. Chuck Jehl will continue to serve as a member of the Board.
About Open Lending Open Lending (Nasdaq: LPRO) provides loan analytics, risk-based pricing, risk modeling and default insurance to auto lenders throughout the United States. For over 20 years, we have been empowering financial institutions to create profitable auto loan portfolios with less risk and more reward. For more information, please visit www.openlending.com.
Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes certain statements that are not historical facts but are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements related to the benefits of any leadership transition and future strategic plans. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as “believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect,” “should,” “would,” “plan,” “predict,” “potential,” “seem,” “seek,” “future,” “outlook,” and similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These statements are based on various assumptions and on the current expectations of the Company’s management and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied on by any investor as, a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and will differ from assumptions. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond the Company’s control. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including general economic, market, political and business conditions; applicable taxes, inflation, supply chain disruptions including global hostilities and responses thereto, interest rates and the regulatory environment; the outcome of judicial proceedings to which Open Lending may become a party; and other risks discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. There may be additional risks that the Company presently does not know or that it currently believes are immaterial that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect the Company’s expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this press release. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause its assessments to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements.
While this political climate brings uncertainty at an international level, it comes with fear of job loss for many Canadians at a time when the cost of living is already straining many families’ finances.
These topics may appear to be concerns for adults, but children may also feel the effects. As psychology researchers studying parent-child relationships and child mental health, we believe it is important to consider children’s potential fears and anxiety in the current political climate.
Here, we explain why it’s important to address this topic with children, and how parents can do so in a reassuring and informative manner.
Children’s concerns and emotions
While the economy and politics could seem like topics that children would not really care about, recent research suggests that many children and youth actually worry about these topics.
Studies suggest children worry about issues affecting their families. (Shutterstock)
Similarly, studies elsewhere suggest children and youth worry about issues affecting their families. Based on these numbers, we can assume that many Canadian children also worry about the current Canada-U.S. political climate.
Of course, it’s worth remembering not all families experience political and economic events in the same way. For example, children whose families face economic precarity are likely already living with stressors affecting their households like unemployment or food insecurity. Current tensions may also exacerbate children’s existing concerns.
When children are able to talk about what concerns them with their parents, they learn important emotional regulation and coping skills. For example, they learn how to identify and understand their emotions, and how to regulate those emotions. Discussions between parents and children also help foster a climate of trust, in which children feel like they can rely on their parents in moments of need.
Noticing, tackling children’s anxiety and fears
Children may not always have the words to articulate their concerns in the same way that adults do. Parents should watch for anxiety symptoms in their children, which may manifest in various ways, including having mood changes, being more irritable or sad, having difficulty sleeping, being more clingy than usual, or withdrawing from activities. There are also signs that may be harder to spot.
We present five ways to address the situation with your children:
1. Use direct questions to understand how children feel. Direct questions can help understand how children feel. For example, you may ask: “What have you heard about what’s happening?” or “How do you feel about it?” These questions can help understand what specifically is scary to them.
Children could be worried about no longer seeing family in the U.S., or some may even fear a military clash. (Shutterstock)
This is especially important given that children tend to worry about different things than adults. For example, younger children with family in the U.S. may worry they will no longer be able to see their family members anymore. Older children may be worried about a parent losing a job, the country’s economic instability or environmental impacts. Some children may even fear a military clash.
2. Be sensitive to how the conflict is presented. In the media, it is common to refer to the diplomatic and economic tensions as a “trade war.” While adults understand that trade wars do not involve military attacks, this concept is much more abstract for children.
It’s important to reframe the conflict in ways that children can understand. For example, parents can compare the conflict between two children. Parents might say: “You know when there are two children upset with each other at school, and they have a big disagreement. Sometimes it can take a lot of time to find a solution that works for everyone. The conflict between Canada and the U.S. is a bit like that. It could take a lot of time and trouble to find a solution.”
3. Avoid misinformation. When discussing these topics, parents should seek to clarify any misinformation and provide reassurance. They should also help ensure children receive information from credible sources rather than social media or peers, who may sensationalize or misinterpret events. Providing factual but age-appropriate explanations is a key ingredient in mitigating fear and uncertainty.
4. Focus on co-operation and opportunities instead of boycotting.
Many Canadian families are choosing to boycott American products. In order to ease the emotional burden on children, it can be helpful to reframe the boycott as an opportunity for co-operation. For instance, parents can highlight how they are trying to support local businesses.
Similarly, for families with resources to travel, changes in travel plans can be framed as a way to discover new places. A parent might frame it as: “This year, instead of going to the beach, we’re going to be exploring some incredible places closer to home. We’re going to have so much fun trying new things!” This approach creates curiosity and control, not anxiety. It can also be beneficial for children’s development to learn to be more flexible with change.
5. Create a sense of normalcy and routine. As important as it is to validate children’s fears, it is equally important to help them maintain a sense of normalcy. Families should strive to balance discussions about the trade war and its potential ramifications with more light, mundane topics. Similarly, limiting the time that children watch the news or when it is audible can help limit further concerns from developing.
Routines are also beneficial for children’s development and well-being. Maintaining a predictable schedule, such as a bedtime routine, can help children feel safe and less anxious. Focus on adding fun and soothing activities to the daily routine. This lets children know life goes on.
Navigating turbulent times
As the trade war with the U.S. plays out, parents should consider how it may impact their children’s emotions and sense of safety. Even serious conflicts such as this one don’t last forever, and solutions will come.
In the meantime, parents can help children cope with these challenging times by offering age-appropriate explanations and encouraging resilience.
Jean-François Bureau receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Consortium National de Formation en Santé.
Audrey-Ann Deneault receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Centre de recherche universitaire sur les jeunes et les familles.
Source: United States Senator for Wisconsin Tammy Baldwin
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the Trump Administration plans to reshape the nation’s trade policy, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is leading her Midwest colleagues, U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), in laying out a vision to prioritize American workers in trade policy, re-establish the United States as a world leader in manufacturing, and strengthen national security. Senator Baldwin has long worked against trade deals that undermine American workers, including opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China, and other deals that are a race to the bottom. Since 2001, flawed trade policies have contributed to the loss of 4.3 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
“For too long, the deck has been stacked against workers and has benefited trade cheats like China and the corporate fat cats in board rooms. Workers are the ones who make our economy go around and they are the ones we need to prioritize. Right now, we have a real opportunity to level the playing field for American workers and crack down on trade cheats, grow our Made in America economy, and ensure workers get the pay they deserve to live a good, middle-class life,” said Senator Baldwin.
“We need trade policies that provide a level playing field for American workers to compete and succeed,” said Senator Peters. “For far too long, American businesses and workers have paid the price of a trade landscape that benefits countries like China who blatantly cheat the system and undercut our businesses without being held accountable. Now is the time to take a real, comprehensive look at our trade policies to ensure we are putting American workers first and preventing good-paying jobs from being shipped overseas.”
“For 30 years we’ve been outsourcing our supply chains way too far, and too many Michigan workers have suffered because of it,” said Senator Slotkin. “Democrats, especially in the Midwest, need a vision for a 21st century trade policy. To me, that strategy isn’t rocket science. It should strengthen the Middle Class and protect American manufacturing and jobs, provide certainty for American businesses and farmers, and recognize that the U.S. has powerful economic levers to wield against our adversaries.”
In the letter to President Trump, Baldwin and her colleagues outline the details of a trade agenda that would center workers, stand up to trade cheats like China, and grow the American manufacturing sector, including:
Advocating for a Complete Reimagining of Relationship with People’s Republic of China (PRC): The plan calls for revising our trade relationship with China. By allowing China to join the World Trade Organization, the United States opted to treat China like a market economy. China’s non-market practices, rampant abuses of labor and human rights, and government-sponsored trade cheating call for a complete rethinking of our economic relationship, including Permanent Normal Trade Relations.
Review & Revise Free Trade Agreements: Baldwin calls for reviewing and revising each of the United States’ 14 free trade agreements with 20 countries, including the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), to ensure the best outcomes for American workers.
Strengthen Trade Enforcement Mechanisms: Baldwin looks to strengthen trade enforcement mechanisms to curb cheating and manipulation by foreign countries. Baldwin identifies bipartisan legislation, such as the Leveling the Playing Field 2.0 Act to strengthen trade remedies, Fighting Trade Cheats Act to empower private companies to hold bad actors accountable, and efforts that can be addressed by executive action, like closing the de minimis loophole, which results in lost tariff revenue and the importing of counterfeit products and contraband drugs like fentanyl.
Support for Workers Who Lost Jobs Due to Short-Sighted Policies of the Past: Baldwin also calls for the strengthening and reauthorization of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to provide critical support for American workers who lose their jobs due to the short-sighted policies of the past, so those workers can access job training benefits and quickly return to the workforce.
Full text of the letter can be found here and below.
Dear Mr. President:
Your Administration has announced that it is undertaking a comprehensive review of our nation’s trade policy, an action that is welcome and long overdue. Free trade and globalization have left us with offshored manufacturing, devastated communities, workers out of a job or in jobs with lower wages, and supply chains overly dependent on our adversaries in too many areas. Our states have suffered disproportionately, and we write to share policy solutions informed by that experience and to urge you to implement a pro-American worker trade policy.
The current global and domestic economic landscape is the result of deliberate policy choices. Now is the time to break the cycle and boldly set a new standard for how we design, implement, monitor and enforce our trade policies. Presidents of both parties have failed Americans on trade policy, and Congress has validated their mistakes—often, in close votes. Misguided decisions like granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR), which paved the way for China’s accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO), along with the passage of NAFTA and CAFTA, as well as support of the Trans Pacific Partnership, are part of a misguided narrative that free trade and liberalization would improve economic growth and living standards, which for many communities has proven false. Since 2001, flawed trade policies have contributed to the loss of 4.3 million manufacturing jobs here in the U.S. We have fought for a pro-American worker trade policy, and would strongly support reforms that are reasoned, strategic, and durable. Our goal should be a combined pro-U.S. worker trade agenda and proactive industrial policy and strategic use of tariffs that secures supply chains, revitalizes communities, creates good-paying, union jobs and re-establishes the United States as a leader in world manufacturing.
First and foremost, we must drastically revise our trade relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). By allowing China to join the WTO, the United States opted to treat the PRC like a market economy. Proponents claimed this would bring market reforms. That has proven a naïve and misguided approach. China still embraces a state-directed approach to trade and targets entire sectors and industries for global domination. China’s non-market practices, rampant abuses of labor and human rights, and government-sponsored trade cheating call for a complete rethinking of our economic relationship, including PNTR.
Each of the United States’ 14 free trade agreements with 20 countries, including the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), must be reviewed and revised where necessary, in order to ensure the best outcomes for American workers. While your Administration oversaw the negotiations of the USMCA, which contained the strongest labor standards of any free trade agreement thus far, there are urgent issues to be addressed during the upcoming review. The PRC has increasingly located facilities in Mexico to take advantage of proximity to the United States and preferential treatment of goods under USMCA. It has also failed to fundamentally change a core challenge facing American workers: the continued offshoring of good manufacturing jobs because of wage suppression, union busting and weak regulations in Mexico. There are long-standing challenges to the U.S. economy that USMCA’s dispute mechanism has failed to address, such as Canada’s treatment of the United States dairy sector. Separate from USMCA, the United States is part of agreements about government procurement, through the WTO or negotiated separately, that result in a losing deal for Americans. All such agreements must be thoroughly reviewed and recalibrated to level the playing field.
The ultimate goal of our trade enforcement mechanisms should not be to react to injury, it must be to deter and prevent cheating in the first place. Foreign entities will continue to transship, evade trade remedies, and create new ways to cheat and take advantage of the United States, and stopping problems as they come up in a “whack-a-mole” fashion is a reactive strategy. Strengthening trade enforcement mechanisms will curb cheating and manipulation by foreign countries. There are substantive bipartisan efforts in this area, such as the Leveling the Playing Field 2.0 Act to strengthen trade remedies and the Fighting Trade Cheats Act to empower private companies to hold bad actors accountable. Furthermore, there are some bipartisan efforts that can be addressed by executive action, like closing the de minimis loophole, which your Administration acknowledges results in lost tariff revenue and the importation of counterfeit products and contraband drugs like fentanyl. The loophole also puts American manufacturers and retailers at a disadvantage. In addition, critical support for American workers who lose their jobs due to the short-sighted policies of the past, such as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), must be reauthorized and strengthened as we try to right the ship on trade policy, to allow those workers to access job training benefits and quickly return to the workforce.
Tariffs are important tools for leveling the playing field when they are enacted in a strategic, deliberate, and durable way, but it can take months and years for supply chains to adjust. The positive impact of tariffs and trade policy must be bolstered by a robust industrial policy to create and sustain good-paying jobs with efforts such as investments, Buy America requirements, tax incentives, and other programs like those included in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. To be successful, we must also keep corporations in check with equitable tax rates and strong antitrust laws to prevent price gouging. Critically, we must empower workers to join unions and earn fair wages to support a middle class lifestyle and be able to save for a safe and secure retirement.
Lastly, we want to emphasize this proposal is critical to workers and communities in our states, as well as to our national security and emergency preparedness. Re-evaluating American trade policy and securing supply chains will strengthen our national security and better position the United States to defend itself if faced with conflict. During World War II, United States automakers shifted from producing civilian passenger vehicles to producing military equipment and weapons like tanks, engines, and aircraft. More recently, global events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine exposed the risks of our fragile supply chains. Now is the time to learn from these lessons and prioritize a trade policy that puts American workers first.
Thank you for your consideration of this most important issue.
Effie Kisgeropoulos Discusses Her Early Scientific Inspiration and Journey to Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
As a young girl, Effie Kisgeropoulos dreamed about the endless universe of constellations. Photo from Effie Kisgeropoulos, NREL
Lying on the grass in Canton, Ohio, a young Effie Kisgeropoulos studied constellations with her eyes and later through her telescope, dreaming about the mechanisms of faraway celestial bodies.
Little did the future National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researcher know that her budding scientific gaze would later turn to something closer to home: orbiting subatomic particles in microscopic structures.
The ability to translate perspectives between different worlds might be her superpower—although this superpower has come with its challenges. Yet Kisgeropoulos has persisted through all the uphill climbs, maintaining her joy of learning.
Kisgeropoulos was homeschooled for most of her childhood, and she benefited from a framework that empowered her to absorb knowledge and ask questions. Looking back, the ease with which Kisgeropoulos moved through primary education was perhaps unsurprising given her much later diagnosis with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She thrived in the home setting where learning was fun, engaging, and flexible. But when it was time to begin her university honors program, Kisgeropoulos’ success at home became a struggle to maintain. Her passion for exploring new ideas came under serious doubt.
Although Kisgeropoulos struggled at first, she persevered through trial and error and by embracing new opportunities. Her path at NREL began with a postdoctoral position that employed her passion for using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to decipher the subatomic interactions that dictate our world.
Kisgeropoulos is now a full-time researcher in NREL’s Biosciences Center, responsible for helping manage the Advanced Spin Resonance Facility (ASRF), which houses the EPR equipment. This facility helps illuminate the subatomic workings of chemical reactions, like those that sustain photosynthesis or enable light-driven ammonia production and hydrogen catalysis.
In this interview (edited for length and clarity), Kisgeropoulos discusses her contagious enthusiasm for science, her unique journey to NREL, and her passion for all things EPR.
You have an interesting upbringing that isn’t familiar to many people. Can you talk about that and how it was a factor in your embrace of science?
My mom homeschooled my sister and I until mid-high school. During our elementary years, she taught us for two days and worked the other three, when my dad—who worked midnights—would help.
Around this time, I fell in love with astronomy and spent countless hours poring over star maps and gazing at constellations. I even got a small telescope! It kick-started my obsession with science fiction and, later, theoretical physics.
Kisgeropoulos, as a child, gazes through her new telescope. Photo from Effie Kisgeropoulos, NREL
Homeschooling allowed me a certain freedom in how I assimilated information. I could work on my lessons while barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the floor, make as much noise as I wanted, go at my own pace. I was unencumbered by the classical rules of school.
Later when my parents separated, my mom juggled multiple jobs while still maintaining our education. Watching all this, I also learned a lot about hard work and perseverance. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until 29, so these qualities—and the love of learning I grew up with—were vital to me navigating undergrad and then a Ph.D. without any context for why I had different needs than my peers.
Kisgeropoulos (right) and her sister, Sophia (left), pose in front of their school project—sprouting seeds from plants. Photo from Effie Kisgeropoulos, NREL
Can you tell me about your transition from homeschooling to the university world?
My science obsessions led me to join the honors program at Kent State University with a plan outlined by my guidance counselor: a bachelor’s in physics; grad school for astrophysics. Once classes started, a harsh reality formed. Many students are challenged during the transition to college, but I wasn’t aware of the unique challenges that came with a neurodivergent brain.
Tougher coursework meant I had to study in earnest, but sitting alone for hours in the library to accomplish this was a strange experience. It would take me significant time to clear my mind of distractions before I could fully immerse myself in a task. Although I had experience with self-directed learning, my skills began failing me in this demanding and unfamiliar college environment.
It was a disheartening first couple of years. I had been excellent at math, but I did poorly in calculus. I did okay in Physics I, but I dropped Physics II twice because it wasn’t clicking. The irony is the stuff in Physics II—like circuits, electricity, and magnetism—are foundations to some of what I do now at NREL.
So, how did you adjust?
The end of sophomore year was my worst. I wanted to study the stars, but I just couldn’t make the connections in my coursework. At around the same time, we found out my mom had breast cancer. It really impelled me, and I switched majors to biotech. I thought a more industry-focused degree would help with getting a job, if I needed to take care of my sister, and I hoped it would lead me to work in cancer research to help patients like my mom.
With the switch, I started to excel in my classes again. In Intro Biochem, I learned about enzyme pathways in cells. It was like a puzzle, mapping them all out. In some ways, it felt like mapping out the stars. I was becoming fascinated with microscopic biological and chemical mechanisms that I had no idea about. My fire for learning came back. And as I approached graduation, my mom cleared her cancer!
That’s wonderful. So at that point, you were on the path to a Ph.D. in biochem at The Ohio State University (OSU)?
Yeah. I was thrilled when I was offered a spot. I started with three different lab rotations: mouse models of cancer, yeast genetics, and spectroscopy. Although I was still invested in cancer research, I enjoyed the approach of spectroscopy the most, which was in the lab of a new OSU professor, Hannah Shafaat. And in the end, I was still awarded a fellowship for the connection of my work to cancer research!
My work at OSU involved applying advanced pulse EPR spectroscopy to biological systems. Before even developing these experiments, we needed to characterize the systems using a more common type of EPR: continuous wave (CW). At the time, the EPR capabilities we needed weren’t available at OSU. Instead, we would drive four hours roundtrip to Miami University and collect data for 10, 12 hours.
This was where I became mesmerized by the EPR process. There’s this giant magnet with a sample in the middle that’s cooled to 5 Kelvin, and then microwaves are shot at it. It’s so metal! The resulting data were beautiful. You’re investigating a signal that looks like a child’s drawing and translating it to give information on interactions happening at the electron level.
So, when were you able to work primarily with pulsed EPR?
During my fourth year, we shifted to pulsed EPR techniques, which use microwaves shot in pulses rather than continuously. Using pulses unlocks a whole new dimension of capabilities, especially manipulating electron spins to acquire different, higher-resolution information. But pulsed EPR demands a higher level of theory and understanding to run an experiment, let alone troubleshoot one or customize it to the sample.
I was applying pulsed EPR to proteins to answer questions about their electronic structure and function. This work was like what I do here at NREL in Paul King’s (Physical Biochemistry and Photosynthesis) group, except now I investigate how this reactivity is controlled and tuned into very complex redox enzymes.
Good segue to becoming a postdoc at NREL. I imagine your experience with pulsed EPR had a lot to do with you coming here?
Honestly, I struggled with the motivation to do research or become a professor. When I started EPR, my research interest sparked a bit, but I wasn’t sure how to do EPR at a private company. And then my OSU lab partner, Tasha Manesis, sent me a link for an NREL postdoctoral position in the Physical Biochemistry and Photosynthesis group. I read the job description and was ecstatic they wanted someone to study redox enzymes using pulsed EPR!
Postdoctoral researcher Effie Kisgeropoulos poses in 2022 by an MBraun anaerobic chamber at NREL’s Science and Technology Facility. This type of equipment allows researchers to work with the oxygen-sensitive proteins and enzymes that are involved in many of nature’s important energy conversion reactions and pathways. Photo by Werner Slocum, NREL
Another bit of serendipity. How was the postdoc experience here at NREL?
Right after they hired me, COVID-19 happened. COVID-19 protocols made lab interactions challenging and training and team-building difficult. Once the protocols loosened, this all improved, and we added some new postdocs that quickly became great friends of mine. My relationship with Paul, my group manager and principal investigator, also really began to develop. These working relationships, and the willingness everyone showed to put effort into making them better, were a large reason why I stayed at NREL.
How was the transition from postdoc to full-time researcher?
Getting an NREL staff position doing what I love felt validating, a recognition of my contributions to the team. It also really brought me a sense of permanence. Even though six years in graduate school was a long time, it always had an end date. With this transition, I experienced a sense of investment in my work that I never felt before.
Kisgeropoulos works with cell culture media containing ferredoxin proteins in the Research and Innovation Laboratory at NREL. These proteins are important for understanding the control electron transfer reactions in the photosynthetic cyanobacteria Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 and will be studied using techniques like EPR once they are purified from the media. Photo by Kaylee Weatherly, NREL
What are your responsibilities as a biological EPR spectroscopist?
I continue to build upon my postdoc work, contributing to research projects under Paul on photosynthetic energy transduction and mechanisms of photochemical nitrogen reduction. Both are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Basic Energy Sciences program.
I also took on safety-representative duties for our lab space and have an official role helping David Mulder manage and operate the ASRF, which houses the EPR equipment. David and I developed an approach for scheduling on the CW EPR, helping maintain access for all users amid high demand for instrument time. I also help train new EPR users and advise on project data collection, interpretation, and analysis.
NREL researchers (from left) Paul King, Effie Kisgeropoulos, and David Mulder talk in front of the electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer in NREL’s Advanced Spin Resonance Facility in Golden, Colorado. Photo by Gregory Cooper, NREL
So, why does this new role and the Advanced Spin Resonance Facility at NREL excite you so much?
Most institutions operate one CW EPR at a single microwave frequency (commonly X-band). But at NREL, we have an incredible breadth of EPR capabilities in one place: CW EPR, pulsed EPR, both X-band and Q-band microwave frequencies, equipment to produce shaped pulses, the ability to incorporate radio waves and do EPR-detected nuclear magnetic resonance, and all using helium gas in a cryogen-free system to obtain super cold temperatures. All these capabilities are the perfect playground for me to explore and grow with.
There’s also a tremendous amount of expertise here applying EPR to understand highly complex enzymatic functions, like nitrogen fixation to ammonia or hydrogen generation from protons and electrons. There’s a great foundation to build from and use my understanding of pulsed EPR to advance the research.
Pulsed EPR, and really EPR in general, is such a powerful tool for obtaining targeted information on the movement, properties, and local environments of electrons, whether they exist as radicals, in defects, or on metal clusters. It’s highly applicable across a large swathe of research disciplines, from biology to materials—even brewing beer, although that’s not really in the NREL mission space. I’d like to continue to improve the experience of our core user group and expand the reach of the ASRF across NREL.
Okay, one last question. If you had the power to make one change in the world, what would it be?
Oh, tough, it’s hard to articulate, but I’d make empathy and compassion abundant. Through all my challenges, I’ve come out of it with a different appreciation for people. We’re all flawed, but people are also surprisingly great. I think it’s important to listen to what others are saying and consider how they might be feeling, the milieu that could be contributing to the actions they take.
I try to always remember this, and I would want to make the changes necessary so everyone could feel safe enough and empowered to extend this kind of empathy and compassion to each other. I think it would help the world a lot.
Learn more about NREL’sbioscience researchand theAdvanced Spin Resonance Facility.
Los Angeles, CA, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Credtent, Inc., a leader in ethical AI and content licensing, has independently assessed the AI training value of Studio Ghibli’s intellectual property at $17 to 20 million annually for enterprise AI platforms. This third-party evaluation underscores the importance of fair compensation for creators whose unique styles are often used in generative AI tools without consent or compensation.
Credtent’s Official CVE for Studio Ghibli
The studio is admired the world over for their award-winning and distinctive films like My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. The company’s iconic founder, Hayao Miyazaki, has expressed disdain for AI art before, calling it “an assault on life itself.” With Ghibli-styled memes flooding the Internet this last week, fans have complained about the unauthorized use of the studio’s work.
Credtent’s Director of Creator Outreach, Deborah Drake, emphasized the need for respect and collaboration between artists and AI tools, stating, “Artists and technologists think about creative work differently. What is art to creatives is just data to AI companies. As a neutral utility, we enable them both to find common ground with opt-out options and fair-market license pricing.”
Drawing on more than a decade of experience setting industry standards for the value of content and earned media, Credtent’s team calculates pricing for AI training data based on a cross-section of factors grounded in scientific first principles set by the company’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Galen Buckwalter. Using publicly available data and its expertise in pricing content, Credtent assessed this value to highlight the importance of creative consent.
“The studio could command multi-million dollar pricing from AI companies if they licensed their work for random meme creation,” said Credtent CEO Eric R. Burgess. “But if they feel, as I do, that a gorgeous film like Spirited Away is devalued by random AI slop in its style, their company’s and their artists’ names should be restricted from generative AI prompting.”
Guardrails like these are already in place for many artist names on most Large Language Models (LLMs). They are just not applied to all artists who don’t want their work exploited. “That’s why we built Credtent – to track opt-out requests and licensing across the AI industry for artists and creators of all types,” added Burgess. The company offers creators the ability to opt-out of AI training in one place. Their list is available to all AI companies to ensure respect for creative consent.
Starting in Q2 2025, artists can also license their work to earn revenue through Credtent’s Training Data Marketplace. Thousands of creators have already registered their diverse works, including books, albums, podcasts, music, photos and art, and more to opt-out or for licensing. They will benefit from the highest pay rates in the industry because Credtent is a certified Public Benefit Corporation with plans to deliver 85% of licensing revenue to creators.
“Credtent’s goal is to orchestrate relationships between AI and creative people without stifling innovation,” said Burgess. “We want to support creative people thriving in the Age of AI, while also helping AI companies use credible, licensed content that protects them from lawsuits for copyright infringement and inaccuracy claims.”
Credtent’s commitment to ethical AI is further shown through their certified Ethical Sourcing Badges. These badges are awarded to companies that respect creative rights and undergo regular audits in partnership with Credtent. This initiative helps LLM customers feel confident about using outputs without worrying about copyright violations. Last year, Credtent also introduced Creative Origin Badges to enable creative people to be transparent about their use of AI so audiences can make their own choice about supporting AI-composed content, AI-Assisted work, or creative work that is entirely human-composed.
Open Enrollment for Credtent’s free licensing option is available until July 31st and lifetime Opt-Out requests are free through December 31st. For more information, visit Credtent’s website.
Credtent’s Ethical Sourcing Badges for LLMs that subscribe to the platform.
About Credtent, Inc.
Credtent is a Public Benefit Corporation that enables creators to exclude their work or profit from AI by setting fair licensing terms for responsible companies seeking credible, unbiased training data. We issue Content Origin and Sourcing Badges, and help AI companies make better decisions about the content they use to train their models.
Press inquiries
Credtent, Inc. https://www.credtent.org Carmen Sinata hello@credtent.org 626-600-1226 1822 E. Route 66, Ste. A353 Glendora, CA 91740
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Frew, Lecturer in Mycorrhizal Ecology, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University
If you’re walking outdoors, chances are something remarkable is happening under your feet. Vast fungal networks are silently working to keep ecosystems alive.
These fungi aren’t what you might picture. They are not mushrooms, or brightly coloured growths on tree trunks. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi look like spools of thread wrapped around plant roots.
What makes these fungi remarkable is the deal they struck almost half a billion years ago with another kingdom of life – plants.
AM fungi make threads of hyphae thinner than spider silk and weave them through plant roots. Then, they begin to trade, offering plants water and phosphorus, a vital plant nutrient in soils. In return, plants offer carbon-rich sugars and fats from photosynthesis. Fungi can’t photosynthesise, but plants can.
This symbiotic relationship can help plants survive periods of drought and live in nutrient poor soils. More than 80% of all plant families rely on these fungi, while AM fungi cannot live without plants.
Without these fungi, many of Australia’s plants — and the soil they grow in — would be in real trouble. Our continent is ancient, dry, and nutrient-poor. But while we monitor the fate of plants and animals in response to human impact and climate change, we haven’t been tracking the fungi who support it all. We don’t even know how many species there are, let alone if we’re losing them.
To help fill this gap, I have developed the first dedicated database recording species and distributions of AM fungi in Australia – AusAMF.
The underground economy of roots and filaments
AM fungi deserve to be better known. These essential companions to most of the world’s plants maintain plant diversity, suppress invasive species, store carbon, cycle nutrients and prevent soil erosion.
Here are five remarkable things about AM fungi:
1. They’re older than roots
Incredibly, this fungus-plant symbiosis emerged before plants evolved roots some 360–420 million years ago.
AM fungi have been around for 475 million years, partnering with very early land plants such as the ancestors of today’s liverworts – which have no roots. This ancient alliance actually helped plants colonise land.
2. They can boost native plants and reject invasives
AM fungi do more than transport nutrients, carbon and water. They shape entire plant communities. Some plants benefit more than others, influencing competition and species co-existence. By giving some species a competitive edge, AM fungi allow some plants to survive which might otherwise be lost.
When AM fungal diversity declines, it can lead to a loss of native plants and open the door to invasive plant species.
But with the right management — such as reducing pesticides or reintroducing locally adapted fungi — AM fungi can boost plant nutrition and ecosystem restoration. They can help native vegetation recover and stop invasive species from gaining a foothold.
3. They run an invisible underground economy
The fungi-plant trade is more organised than you might think.
In some instances, plants reward the fungi giving them the most phosphorus with more carbon, while the fungi prioritise plants offering them the most carbon – a bit like a marketplace. Some plants have figured out how to cheat the fungi, taking resources without giving anything in return.
This high-magnification video shows water and nutrients flowing inside the hyphae of the AM fungus Rhizophagus irregularis. Source: Oyarte Galvez et al. (2025) Nature
4. They boost plant defences against pests and disease
Fungi don’t just help plants grow, they help them fight. As AM fungi colonise a plant’s roots, they boost its defences against threats such as diseases and plant-eating insects by strengthening and speeding up chemical responses. My research shows the size of this fungal-defence boost for plants can depend on what AM fungi are present.
And if one plant is attacked, it puts out chemical signals which can move through the fungal network and let other plants know to ready their defences.
5. They take in vast amounts of carbon
Plants take carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their leaves, roots and wood. But AM fungi store carbon from plants too.
Because mycorrhizal fungi are found wherever there are plants, their underground networks are vast – and so is their carbon impact. Recent research estimates the annual figure is more than a third of global fossil fuel carbon emissions.
Vitally important, all but unknown
If AM fungi vanished, many plant species would likely follow suit. Others would become more vulnerable to drought, disease, and pests. Soil would erode more easily, and nutrient and carbon flows would shift dramatically.
Are they in trouble? We don’t know. AM fungi are out of sight, out of mind. No federal or state government agency seem to be tracking them. Our current National Soil Action Plan doesn’t mention fungi at all, despite their importance to soil health.
Other than Antarctica, Australia is the least sampled continent for soil AM fungi, with just 32 sites in global databases. Europe, by comparison, has data from more than 1,200 sites.
AM fungi help plants grow better. On the left is grass in symbiosis with AM fungi with visible white hyphae. On the right is grass without the fungi. Soil Ecology Wiki, CC BY
That’s where I hope the AusAMF database will help. I partnered with landholders and research networks to gather soil samples. So far, the database has data from 610 locations, with about 400 more on the way.
But this is still scratching the surface. AM fungal communities can differ between neighbouring fields or habitats, depending on land management methods and types of vegetation. Virtually all current records are a single snapshot in time — we lack the long-term monitoring needed to track seasonal or annual changes.
It would be a mistake to remain in the dark about AM fungi. The more we learn, the more we see their importance, not only in supporting biodiversity, but in helping our crops and ecosystems cope with a changing world. If they are in decline, we need to know – and set about protecting them.
Adam Frew receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the British Ecological Society.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally ended weeks of speculation and named the election date for the national parliament.
After months of unofficial campaigning, Australians will now be treated to a festival of democracy as promises are made, policies are announced, and the leaders travel the country to rally support.
Much of the campaigning by the parties will be focused on the House of Representatives. This is to be expected as the lower house is where government is formed by the party that wins the majority of seats in this chamber, and the leader of this party becomes prime minister.
While the election for the lower house dominates the campaign, the contest for the Senate is rarely mentioned.
This is a bit unfair as the Senate is an immensely powerful chamber.
The power of the Senate
Barring its inability to initiate or amend supply bills, the Senate has almost the same powers as the House of Representatives. Senators can introduce their own bills, as long as they’re not supply bills.
For any proposed bill to become law, it must be passed by the Senate as well as the House of Representatives.
All states have equal representation in the chamber. Currently, every state is represented by 12 senators, each with six-year terms.
This means half the Senate is up for election at every general election.
The territories are represented by two senators each and they face re-election at every general election. The current number of senators is 76.
Winning a majority in the Senate has no bearing on who forms government (it’s the result of the lower house – the House of Representatives – which determines this). It does, however, make it easier for the government to pass bills to become law if it enjoys a majority in this chamber.
Who wins seats in the Senate?
The voting system in the Senate is very different to the House of Representatives. To win a seat in the House of Representatives, a candidate must win 50% +1 of the votes cast in the district.
In the Senate, however, a candidate must win a proportion (approximately 14.3%) of the state-wide vote.
This makes it a bit easier for minor parties to win representation as they can rely on broad support from across the state to reach the required threshold.
Changes introduced in 2016 mean Australians have choice on how to complete their Senate ballot paper. They can either number six or more candidates of their choice above the black line, or vote below the line by numbering 12 or more candidates.
While parties will organise their own preference deals to benefit them, voters are ultimately in control of where their preferences go.
Thanks to the voting system used in the Senate, it is rare for a government to hold a majority of seats in the upper house. The last time this occurred was in 2004 when the John Howard-led Coalition enjoyed a majority in the chamber.
The current Senate
Following the 2022 election, both major parties lost ground in the Senate. To have a majority in the chamber, a party must have 39 seats. Currently, Labor has 25 representatives, while the Coalition has 30.
The remaining seats are held by the Greens with the third highest number of representatives (11), One Nation (2), Jacqui Lambie Network (1), United Australia Party (1), and six Independents.
Several high-profile senators are up for election in 2025. In Queensland, for example, Malcolm Roberts from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will be up for re-election, Jacqui Lambie will be recontesting in Tasmania, while Independent Senator David Pocock from the ACT will be seeking another term.
There will also be some other prominent senators hoping to be re-elected from established parties.
These include Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (Country Liberal Party) and Senator Malarndirri McCarthy (ALP) from the Northern Territory, Liberal James Paterson from Victoria, Sarah Hanson-Young from the Greens in South Australia, and Jordan Steele-John from the Greens in Western Australia.
The 2025 contest
Fewer people have been voting for the major parties in recent years. In 2022, the vote for non-major party candidates reached a high of 35.7% (which, as Antony Green reminds us, was higher than the primary vote for both the Coalition and Labor).
Since the 1980s, Australians appear to have become open to supporting non-major party candidates contesting the Senate. If this continues as expected in 2025, whoever becomes prime minister will have to deal with the diverse interests and policy demands from those in the upper house.
While the campaign for the Senate may go under the radar over the next few weeks, who is elected to the Senate will have a massive impact on Australian politics for years to come.
Zareh Ghazarian 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.
Good health care depends on evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. They translate the best available research into recommendations that shape diagnosis, treatment, and prevention strategies.
But what happens when the studies underpinning these guidelines are flawed?
Evidence suggests scientific misconduct – from fabricated or manipulated data to methodological errors and ethical concerns – is a growing problem. In some disciplines, estimates suggest as many as 40% of studies included in systematic reviews may have issues with their integrity.
This is not just an academic issue. When flawed studies are used to guide real-world health care, the consequences for health-care providers and ultimately patients can be serious. They include unnecessary or even harmful treatments, delay or denial of other effective treatments, wasted resources and a loss of public trust in science and health care itself.
Yet until recently, there has been no formal method to identify and manage flawed studies, before they make their way into clinical recommendations. We recently helped develop a framework that addresses this crucial gap. Published in The Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine, this framework provides a step-by-step process for evaluating the integrity of studies used in clinical guidelines and systematic reviews.
In an era of increasing concern about research misconduct, it’s a timely and much-needed advance.
Clinical care relies on research integrity
Randomised controlled trials are considered the gold standard in medical research.
Their results often underpin clinical guidelines that shape day-to-day decisions in health care. But what if a randomised controlled trial contains fabricated data? Or is conducted without ethics approval? Or is retracted after being used in a previous guideline?
A 2020 study found 44% of randomised controlled trials submitted to a major medical journal between 2017 and 2020 contained problematic or false data.
Compounding the problem is the fact that journal editors and publishers can be very slow to respond to concerns about research integrity.
For example, between November 2017 and April 2024, a group of researchers wrote to editors and publishers of 891 potentially untrustworthy papers published in 206 different journals. At the time their study was published earlier this year, only 30% of the papers they flagged had received an outcome – 58% of which were retracted.
Notably, it took a median time of 38 months for editors and publishers to make a decision. In only 13% of the flagged cases was a decision made within 12 months.
The ripple effects of this can be enormous. A review by the independent Cochrane Collaboration of nutrition interventions in pregnancy found that removing studies with integrity concerns changed the conclusions of 72% of reviews. One third (33%) needed to be updated because their guidance was no longer reliable.
Despite this, most guideline development tools — including those from the World Health Organization — assess methodological quality, not the trustworthiness or integrity of the studies that are included.
When flawed studies are used to guide real-world medical advice, the consequences for doctors and ultimately patients can be serious. Yuri A/Shutterstock
A practical framework for safeguarding integrity
Our framework features a six-step process for safeguarding research integrity:
Review: conduct a standard systematic review to identify eligible studies
Exclude: remove studies that have been formally retracted or are flagged with serious concerns
Assess: use available tools and checklists to assess the integrity of the remaining studies
Discuss: convene an independent integrity committee to review ratings and vote on each study
Establish contact: reach out to authors of high-risk studies to clarify issues or provide missing information
Reassess: based on responses (or lack thereof), determine whether a study should be included, excluded, or held in limbo.
The integrity committee is central to this approach. It is a multidisciplinary group responsible for assessing studies objectively, without preconceived judgements or biases around which studies to exclude.
Polycystic ovary syndrome is a common hormonal, reproductive and metabolic condition affecting 8–13% of women of reproductive age, depending on the diagnostic criteria used. It can cause irregular menstrual cycles, elevated androgen levels, and an increased number of small follicles in the ovaries, visible on ultrasound. It is a leading cause of infertility.
The guideline was developed with input from diverse professional and consumer groups. It was endorsed by 39 organisations across six continents.
In making recommendations on infertility treatment in polycystic ovary syndrome, 101 studies were initially identified. After applying our framework, 45 studies were not included due to concerns about integrity. Only three authors responded to clarification requests. This illustrates the problem with transparency after publication.
Without our framework, these problematic studies may have directly shaped recommendations and health care for women with polycystic ovary syndrome around the world.
Our framework was incorporated into the National Health and Medical Research Council review process that approved the guidelines. It has since been applied to other guidelines in women’s health. Further scale up is planned.
A 2020 study found 44% of randomised controlled trials submitted to a major medical journal between 2017 and 2020 contained false data. T.Schneider/Shutterstock
Some drawbacks
While our framework offers a much-needed solution, it’s not without drawbacks.
Second, older studies (conducted before trial registries were common) or those from countries with different ethics standards, may be unfairly penalised.
There is also a risk that valid research could be excluded simply because authors do not respond to integrity enquiries.
Implementing the framework can also take time. In resource-limited settings, this may be a barrier.
But failing to assess integrity will likely cost more in the long run. It could lead to flawed recommendations, misplaced public confidence and patient harm.
Aya Mousa receives funding from NHMRC.
Ben W. Mol receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF as well as international competitive grants.
Helena Teede receives funding from NHMRC and MRFF as well as international competitive grants. She is President of International Endocrine Society.
The artifacts found at Longtan, southwest China, were as old as 60,000 years.Qijun Ruan
New technologies today often involve electronic devices that are smaller and smarter than before. During the Middle Paleolithic, when Neanderthals were modern humans’ neighbors, new technologies meant something quite different: new kinds of stone tools that were smaller but could be used for many tasks and lasted for a long time.
Archaeologists like me are interested in the Middle Paleolithic – a period spanning 250,000 to 30,000 years ago – because it includes the first appearance of our species, our arrival into many parts of the world for the first time, and our invention of many new kinds of stone tools.
Illustration of a typical Quina scraper and related tools. The toolmaker would flake pieces of stone off the core to carefully shape the Quina scraper. Pei-Yuan Xiao
In our study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of international collaborators and I describe our discovery in China of the first complete example of a Middle Paleolithic technology previously seen only in Europe and the Middle East.
Archaeologists have thought that ancient people in East Asia completely skipped the Middle Paleolithic. Our discovery challenges the long-standing notion that while ancient people in Europe and Africa were inventing new tools during this period, people of East Asia stuck to only the most basic tools that remained unchanged for thousands of years.
The Quina tool kit from Longtan. (A–D) Quina scrapers. (E–G) Quina cores. (H-J) Resharpening flakes showing Quina retouch at the near end of the top face. (K) Small tool made on resharpening flake. Hao Li
Quina scrapers helped hunters process kills
The tool we’ve identified is called a Quina scraper. This type of stone tool is well known from archaeological sites in Europe and the Middle East.
Quina scrapers are typically quite thick and asymmetrical, with a broad and sharp working edge that shows clear signs of being used and resharpened multiple times. This shape results in durable cutting edges, ideal for long cycles of use followed by resharpening.
People used Quina scrapers to scrape and cut soft materials, such as meat and animal skins, and medium-hard materials, such as wood. We know this from tiny scratches and chips on the scrapers that match traces caused by working these materials in experiments using contemporary stone tools.
European archaeologists believe that Quina scrapers were invented to meet the needs of highly mobile hunters living in cool and dry climates. These hunters were focused on seasonal migratory prey such as reindeer, giant deer, horse and bison. Quina scrapers would have helped them process their kills into food and other resources – for example, to extract marrow.
A. Map showing the location of the discovery of the Quina tool kit in China, at the southern margin of the Hengduan Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. B. View of the landscape showing the Longtan archaeological site. Hao Li, CC BY-ND
First find of a Quina tool in East Asia
Our team, led by Hao Li of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research and Qijun Ruan of the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, excavated Quina scrapers and related stone tools from the Longtan archaeological site in southwest China.
Bo Li collects samples from Longtan for luminescence dating at his laboratory at the University of Wollongong. Qijun Ruan
Our colleague Bo Li at the University of Wollongong used optical luminescence dating methods on the layers of earth that contained the artifacts. This technique can identify how much time has passed since each individual sand grain was last exposed to the Sun. Dating many individual grains in a sample is important because tree roots, insects or other animals can mix younger sediments down into older ones.
After we identified and removed intrusive younger grains, we found the layers containing the artifacts were 50,000 to 60,000 years old. This is roughly the same time Quina scrapers were being used in Europe at Neanderthal sites.
Keliang Zhao from China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology looked at pollen grains from the Longtan excavations. He found that the Middle Paleolithic people of Longtan lived in a relatively open forest-grassland environment and a dry and cool climate. This environment is similar to that of Quina sites in Europe.
Davide Delpiano, Marco Peresani and Marie-Hélène Moncel, experts on European Middle Paleolithic tools, joined our team to help with the comparison of the Chinese and European specimens and confirm their similarities.
Hélène Monod, from Universidad Rovira i Virgili in Spain, looked at our Quina scrapers under the microscope and found traces on them from scraping and scratching bones, antlers and wood. She also found polish from using the tools on meat, hides and soft plants.
Who lived in East Asia during this period?
Our new discovery of Quina scrapers joins another recent find of a different kind of Middle Paleolithic technology in East Asia: Levallois tools from Guanyindong Cave in Guizhou Province in south-central China. Levallois tools result from a distinctive multistep sequence that efficiently produces lots of useful cutting tools, with minimal wasted stone. Taken together, these two finds make a strong case that Middle Paleolithic technologies were present in East Asia.
But why are we only just finding this Quina tool kit now, when it has been known in Europe for such a long time?
One reason is that archaeologists have been looking in Europe for longer than almost anywhere else in the world. Another reason Middle Paleolithic evidence appears rare in East Asia is because what now seem to be less typical variations of the Quina tool kit previously found in China had been overlooked, likely due to archaeologists’ narrow definitions based on European examples.
The Quina tools at Longtan are among the earliest artifacts from that site, which makes it hard for researchers to determine the origins of this new technology. Was it introduced by visitors from Europe? Or did local people in East Asia independently invent it?
The research team shows off the Longtan artifacts. Hao Li
To answer these questions, we hope to find more Quina scrapers at sites with deeper – meaning older – layers than Longtan. If older layers hold what look like the remnants of experiments in stone toolmaking that would eventually result in Quina tools, it suggests Quina tools were invented locally. If deeper layers have dissimilar tools, that suggests Quina technology was introduced from a neighboring group.
We also hope future work will reveal who made these tools. Our excavations at Longtan did not find any human bone or DNA that could help us identify the toolmakers.
During the Middle Paleolithic, there were multiple human species that could make tools like this. It could have been modern humans like us. But it could also have been Neanderthals. Considering that the Quina technology in Europe is directly associated with Neanderthals, this seems likely. But it could also have been Denisovans, an extinct species similar to modern humans found during this time in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau and Laos, or even a new human species that hasn’t been seen before.
Whoever was making and using these Quina scrapers, they were able to be inventive and flexible with their technology, adapting to their changing environment.
Ben Marwick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Protein intake dominates fitness advice. Whether you want to build muscle, improve your fitness or watch your weight, the common advice handed out by everyone from fitness influencers to doctors is that we need more protein.
But while protein does play an essential role in maintaining our muscle mass and overall health, all this increased attention on the importance of protein in the media and fitness circles has sparked a surge in products marketed specifically for their protein content. Some chocolate bars, ice cream, pizza, coffee and even alcoholic beverages now market themselves as protein foods.
But our enthusiasm for protein might have gone too far. While protein is certainly important for our health, most of us don’t need these protein-enhanced foods as a regular feature in our diet. Not to mention that this marketing may lead to a “halo effect,” where consumers mistakenly equate high protein content with overall nutritional value. This effect can lead to the perception of protein-rich foods being inherently nutritious – even though many may not be.
There’s also a strong body of evidence that suggests the amount of protein we need changes depending on our health. For instance, people need to eat more protein when they’re recovering from an illness. Research also shows that older adults should be aiming for at least 1.2g per kg of body weight in order to combat age-related muscle loss.
Athletes also need to eat a greater amount of protein to support their training and recovery. Moreover, with the rising popularity of weight-loss drugs, strategies increasingly emphasise protein intake to minimise muscle loss while losing weight.
But just because protein is good for maintaining muscle mass, that doesn’t mean more is better. In fact, it seems that even when we consume large amounts of protein, only a some of this is actually used by the body.
Most of us probably need a little more protein than current guidelines suggest, but less than is often promoted by wellness influencers on social media (with some even suggesting we need up to 3g of protein per kg of body weight).
Ironically, the necessary amount of protein suggested by emerging evidence (1.2g-1.6g per kg of body weight per day) is close to what the average protein consumption already is in most western countries.
Most people can probably benefit from being more protein aware – not about how much protein they’re consuming, but about the quality and frequency of their protein choices. Ideally, we should aim to consume small amounts of protein-rich foods more often during the day.
Current evidence suggests around 20g-30g of protein (around a handful of a protein source) at each meal supports muscle maintenance alongside physical activity.
In an ideal world, this protein would come from whole foods (such as nuts, seeds, milk, eggs and legumes). But fortified protein products may have their space as a quick and easy snack – especially for those who may struggle to eat this much protein at each meal. It’s important to eat these foods in moderation, however.
Ultra-processed products
Supermarkets are full of “protein-enhanced” products. But while these products may contain additional protein, they may also contain additional sugars or carbohydrates.
For example, protein milk often contains double the protein of regular milk. It does this by removing water or adding dried milk.
Protein bars are another example. But depending on the brand you choose, alongside their additional protein content they may also be high in sugar.
Many protein-fortified products share another common trait: they fall into the category of ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods are commercially made products that include ingredients you wouldn’t typically find in your own kitchen.
Research shows regularly consuming ultra-processed foods is consistently linked with poorer health outcomes – such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Current discussions around ultra-processed foods suggests uncertainty regarding whether it’s the processing itself, the poor nutritional quality of these foods or the combination of both of these factors that contribute to these negative health outcomes.
Another issue with protein-enhanced products is that while they do indeed contain extra protein, some products may lack fibre, vitamins and essential minerals. A lack of fibre in modern diets is currently one of the biggest contributors to population-wide ill-health.
All foods have their place within a balanced diet. But protein is only one component of overall nutritional health. The rise in protein-fortified foods as health foods is concerning.
Protein-enhanced products are occasional foods that might support meeting protein intake, but they should not be mistaken for universally healthy foods. For people looking to reach their protein goals, choose a variety of protein sources, consider the role of convenience foods within the context of whole diet and think about other nutrients like fibre to really maximise health.
Aisling Pigott receives funding from RCBC Wales (as part of Health Care Research Wales)
