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Category: Science

  • MIL-OSI: $HAREHOLDER ALERT: The M&A Class Action Firm Is Investigating the Merger – RSLS, TURN, RDW, NEUE

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Monteverde & Associates PC (the “M&A Class Action Firm”), has recovered millions of dollars for shareholders and is recognized as a Top 50 Firm by ISS Securities Class Action Services Report. We are headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City and are investigating:

    • ReShape Lifesciences Inc. (Nasdaq: RSLS), relating to the proposed merger with Vyome Therapeutics, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, ReShape and Vyome will combine in an all-stock transaction, with ReShape stockholders owning approximately 11.1% of the combined company.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/reshape-lifesciences-inc-rsls/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • 180 Degree Capital Corp. (Nasdaq: TURN), relating to the proposed merger with Mount Logan Capital Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, the estimated post-merger shareholder ownership would be approximately 40% for current 180 Degree Capital shareholders.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/180-degree-capital-corp-turn/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • Redwire Corporation (NYSE: RDW), relating to the proposed merger with Edge Autonomy Ultimate Holdings, LP. Under the terms of the agreement, Redwire will acquire Edge Autonomy using $150M in cash and $775M in shares of Redwire common stock.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/redwire-corporation-rdw/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • NeueHealth, Inc. (NYSE: NEUE), relating to the proposed merger with New Enterprise Associates. Under the terms of the agreement, holders of NeueHealth common stock will receive $7.33 per share in cash.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/neuehealth-inc-neue/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    NOT ALL LAW FIRMS ARE THE SAME. Before you hire a law firm, you should talk to a lawyer and ask:

    1. Do you file class actions and go to Court?
    2. When was the last time you recovered money for shareholders?
    3. What cases did you recover money in and how much?

    About Monteverde & Associates PC

    Our firm litigates and has recovered money for shareholders…and we do it from our offices in the Empire State Building. We are a national class action securities firm with a successful track record in trial and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. 

    No company, director or officer is above the law. If you own common stock in any of the above listed companies and have concerns or wish to obtain additional information free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at jmonteverde@monteverdelaw.com or by telephone at (212) 971-1341.

    Contact:
    Juan Monteverde, Esq.
    MONTEVERDE & ASSOCIATES PC
    The Empire State Building
    350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4740
    New York, NY 10118
    United States of America
    jmonteverde@monteverdelaw.com
    Tel: (212) 971-1341

    Attorney Advertising. (C) 2024 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC (http://www.monteverdelaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: $HAREHOLDER ALERT: The M&A Class Action Firm Is Investigating the Merger – RSLS, TURN, RDW, NEUE

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Monteverde & Associates PC (the “M&A Class Action Firm”), has recovered millions of dollars for shareholders and is recognized as a Top 50 Firm by ISS Securities Class Action Services Report. We are headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City and are investigating:

    • ReShape Lifesciences Inc. (Nasdaq: RSLS), relating to the proposed merger with Vyome Therapeutics, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, ReShape and Vyome will combine in an all-stock transaction, with ReShape stockholders owning approximately 11.1% of the combined company.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/reshape-lifesciences-inc-rsls/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • 180 Degree Capital Corp. (Nasdaq: TURN), relating to the proposed merger with Mount Logan Capital Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, the estimated post-merger shareholder ownership would be approximately 40% for current 180 Degree Capital shareholders.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/180-degree-capital-corp-turn/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • Redwire Corporation (NYSE: RDW), relating to the proposed merger with Edge Autonomy Ultimate Holdings, LP. Under the terms of the agreement, Redwire will acquire Edge Autonomy using $150M in cash and $775M in shares of Redwire common stock.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/redwire-corporation-rdw/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • NeueHealth, Inc. (NYSE: NEUE), relating to the proposed merger with New Enterprise Associates. Under the terms of the agreement, holders of NeueHealth common stock will receive $7.33 per share in cash.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/neuehealth-inc-neue/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    NOT ALL LAW FIRMS ARE THE SAME. Before you hire a law firm, you should talk to a lawyer and ask:

    1. Do you file class actions and go to Court?
    2. When was the last time you recovered money for shareholders?
    3. What cases did you recover money in and how much?

    About Monteverde & Associates PC

    Our firm litigates and has recovered money for shareholders…and we do it from our offices in the Empire State Building. We are a national class action securities firm with a successful track record in trial and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. 

    No company, director or officer is above the law. If you own common stock in any of the above listed companies and have concerns or wish to obtain additional information free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at jmonteverde@monteverdelaw.com or by telephone at (212) 971-1341.

    Contact:
    Juan Monteverde, Esq.
    MONTEVERDE & ASSOCIATES PC
    The Empire State Building
    350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4740
    New York, NY 10118
    United States of America
    jmonteverde@monteverdelaw.com
    Tel: (212) 971-1341

    Attorney Advertising. (C) 2024 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC (http://www.monteverdelaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Amid LA fires, neighbors helped each other survive – 60 years of research shows how local heroes are crucial to disaster response

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Tricia Wachtendorf, Professor of Sociology and Director, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware

    Neighbors fill and pass a bucket of pool water to help extinguish a spot fire in Pacific Palisades, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2025. Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Image

    As wildfires swept through neighborhoods on the outskirts of Los Angeles in January 2025, stories about residents there helping their neighbors and total strangers began trickling out on social media.

    Accounts of Hollywood stars clearing streets for emergency vehicles to get through and raising money for fire victims were widely circulated. But there were many other examples of less-famous people helping older neighbors to safety, and even showing up with trailers to evacuate horses.

    Businesses, including fitness centers, opened their facilities so evacuees could shower or charge their phones. Organizations that routinely work with homeless populations quickly mobilized their members to help ensure people living on the streets and in camps could get to secure, safe locations away from the fires and hazardous air quality.

    Disasters, by definition, overwhelm local resources, making civilian responders like these essential. Sixty years of research at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center and by others examining the social aspects of disaster has repeatedly shown effective disaster management requires mobilizing community resources far beyond official channels.

    Often the response happens through local groups that form in response to a clear need in the community and with shared skills and interests. And this is exactly what we are witnessing in Los Angeles.

    Civilians helping often number in the thousands

    The number of those who step up to help during disasters varies by event, but it can be tremendous.

    Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, over 6,800 volunteers worked with the Red Cross on the response. That same year, volunteers responding to the Kobe earthquake in Japan logged more than 1 million person-days of activity, a measure of the number of people times the hours they contributed.

    People use garden hoses to try to prevent homes from catching fire in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 8, 2025. Neighbors rushed to help neighbors as the wind blew burning embers into neighborhoods.
    Mario Tama/Getty Images

    In an in-depth study of the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks, we interviewed local residents who used their retired fireboat to pump water for the firefighters at ground zero. Operators of tug, ferry and tour boats in and around New York City immediately responded to quickly evacuate 500,000 people in the area from danger. In fact, the majority of the boats involved belonged to private companies. Other volunteers queued evacuees and organized supplies and rides to get people home.

    Over 900 people, most acting in unofficial capacities, were awarded medals or ribbons for their efforts in just the marine response after the World Trade Center attack.

    A survey of residents after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake found that nearly 10% of local residents volunteered in the first three weeks of the response. Following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, in California, a survey of residents in Santa Cruz and San Francisco counties found that two-thirds of the public were involved in response activities.

    Local businesses are often quick to help in disasters. Greg Dulan, center, who runs a soul food restaurant and food truck, hands out hot meals to wildfire evacuees at a church in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 15, 2025.
    Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    However, much of the work local residents contribute during and after disasters goes unaccounted for in official reports.

    There is no mechanism to quantify the full extent to which a neighbor or a complete stranger helps someone flee from peril. Yet when people are trapped and minutes count, research shows it is family, friends and neighbors who are already on the scene and are most likely to save lives. It’s often everyday citizens who also take on immediate tasks such as debris removal. Providing a phone, a car, a place to do laundry, or a little bit of elbow grease can fill a gap and let firefighters and other formal responders focus on critical operations.

    Getting the right help to where it’s needed

    Every study of a large-scale disaster conducted by the Disaster Research Center has revealed some level of emergent, informal helping behavior.

    The lack of public understanding about the large number of local residents already involved, often including disaster victims themselves, can lead to an influx of outsiders eager to help. Their arrival can actually pose challenges for the disaster response.

    When too many people show up, or when people try to operate outside their areas of expertise, they can put themselves and others at further risk. Communities often need supplies, but unsolicited goods of the wrong kind or at the wrong time can create more problems than they solve.

    Local groups such as the Pasadena Community Job Center organize volunteers to send them where help is requested. This group is removing debris from streets in Pasadena, Calif., in the wake of the Eaton Fire on Jan. 14, 2025.
    Zoë Meyers/AFP via Getty Images

    So, what can you do to best support these local efforts?

    Making a financial contribution to a trusted disaster response or local organization can go a long way to providing the support communities actually need. Organizations such as the American Red Cross or Feeding America, or local community-based groups that routinely work in the area, are often best suited to help where it’s needed the most.

    Skilled help will be needed for the long term

    Also, remember that disasters don’t end when the emergency is over. Survivors of the Los Angeles-area fires face years of confusing and frustrating recovery tasks ahead.

    Offering help after the immediate threat has passed – particularly skilled help, such as experience in construction or expertise in managing insurance and FEMA paperwork – is just as important.

    For example, after fires in 1970 destroyed hundreds of homes in the San Diego area, local architects, engineers and contractors donated their time and skills to help people rebuild. Their work was coordinated by a local architect and member of the Chamber of Commerce to ensure projects were assigned to reputable volunteers.

    As we recognize the important ways that neighbors and strangers helped those around them, the broader community can support wildfire victims by responding to offering the right help as recovery needs emerge. Just about every skill that is useful in calm times will be needed in these difficult months and years ahead.

    Tricia Wachtendorf receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Arnold Ventures Foundation.

    James Kendra receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    – ref. Amid LA fires, neighbors helped each other survive – 60 years of research shows how local heroes are crucial to disaster response – https://theconversation.com/amid-la-fires-neighbors-helped-each-other-survive-60-years-of-research-shows-how-local-heroes-are-crucial-to-disaster-response-247660

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Sens Marshall, Welch, McCormick, Fetterman and Reps. Thompson, and Schrier Lead Bipartisan Legislation to Bring Whole Milk Access To All Schools

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Kansas Roger Marshall

    Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Roger Marshall, M.D., Peter Welch (D-VT), Dave McCormick (R-PA), and John Fetterman (D-PA), as well as U.S. Representatives G.T. Thompson (R-PA) and Kim Schrier (D-WA) introduced bipartisan legislation that amends the Richard Russell National School Lunch Act to allow schools participating in the program to serve whole and reduced milk as part of the National School Lunch Program. 
    The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) reports that nearly 90% of Americans do not meet their daily dairy intake recommendations, and includes Calcium and Vitamin D as nutrients of public health concern, which milk is an excellent source of. This legislation expands healthy milk options in schools to improve our students’ nutrition intake and will be a critical step in improving child nutrition health outcomes.
    “Whole and reduced fat milk should never have been excluded from the National School Lunch Program. Now, 13 years after its removal, nearly 75% of children do not receive their recommended daily dairy intake. I believe in a healthier future for America, and by increasing kids’ access to milk in school cafeterias, we will help prevent diet- related diseases down the road, as well as encourage nutrient-rich diets for years to come. Whole milk is an excellent source of 13 essential nutrients for students and adults alike in building strong bones. Plus, it tastes good,” said Senator Marshall.
    “Milk provides growing kids with key nutrients they need. Dairy is also an important part of Vermont’s culture and local economy, which is why our bipartisan bill to expand access to whole milk in our schools is a win for Vermont’s students and farmers. This bill helps provide our next generation grow stronger and helps dairy farmers do what they love–feed our communities,” said Senator Welch. “I’m proud to partner with Senator Marshall and Representative Thompson on this legislation, which will allow our schools to provide students with the healthy, high-quality, and locally-produced whole milk Vermont’s dairy farms have produced for generations.”
    “The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act puts milk back in schools that our growing kids actually want to drink,” said Senator McCormick. “Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers supply this country with an abundant source of milk year-round. Allowing schools to serve whole milk and reduced-fat milk, in addition to low-fat and fat-free milk, in the lunchroom is just commonsense. I’m proud to support our dairy farmers and our students by supplying them with the essential nutrients found in milk to learn and grow.”
    “Kids need wholesome, nourishing food to grow strong and stay healthy, and whole milk is packed with the nutrients they need. Let’s give them the option to enjoy it again in schools—it’s good for them, they’ll actually drink it, and it supports our farmers. This bill is a simple solution that benefits everyone,” said Senator Fetterman.
    “Federal policy, based on flawed, outdated science has kept whole milk out of school cafeterias for more than a decade,” said Rep. Thompson. “Milk provides 13 essential nutrients that supplement growth and health, two key factors contributing to academic success. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025 provides schools the flexibility they need to offer a variety of options, while supporting students and America’s hard-working dairy farmers.”  
    “As a pediatrician, I know how important a balanced and nutritious diet is for children’s health, well-being, and development,” said Congresswoman Schrier. “A healthy diet early in life leads to proper physical growth and improved academic performance, and can set the foundation for lifelong healthy eating habits. Milk is a significant part of many children’s diets and contains essential nutrients such as calcium and vitamin D. This bill simply gives schools the option of providing the types of milk most kids prefer to drink. ”
    “IDFA thanks Reps. G.T. Thompson (R-PA-15) and Kim Schrier (D-WA-8), Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS), Peter Welch (D-VT), John Fetterman (D-PA) and David McCormick (R-PA) and scores of other co-sponsors for their bipartisan, bicameral introduction of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which would allow schools to provide the nutritious milk options that children prefer. Whole milk provides them with milk’s 13 essential nutrients for growth, development, healthy immune function, and overall wellness. A wide majority of parents and medical and nutrition professionals know that offering whole milk increases school meal participation, reduces food waste, and provides nutritionally valuable school meals for children and adolescents.” Michael Dykes, CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association said. 
    “NMPF commends Reps. Thompson and Schrier, and Senators Marshall, Welch, McCormick, and Fetterman for their leadership in boosting students’ access to crucial nutrition with their Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act. Just last month, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee reaffirmed that most Americans under-consume nutrient-dense dairy.  This much-needed bill lets schools offer students the healthful milk options that they are most likely to drink by permitting the serving of nutritious reduced fat and whole milk varieties, critically addressing kids’ under-consumption of milk’s essential nutrients. NMPF is ready to work with the bill’s bipartisan sponsors to move this commonsense, widely supported solution across the finish line this year,” said Gregg Doud, President and CEO, National Milk Producers Federation
    Background: 
    In 2010, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act which amended nutrition standards in the School Lunch Program. Among the changes, the law mandated that flavored milk must be fat-free within the program.
    In May of 2017, the USDA announced a rule that allowed schools to receive waivers for low-fat (1%) flavored milk, rather than only fat-free.
    Last Congress, the Whole MIlk for Healthy Kids Act passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support (330-99). 
    Leading nutritionists have found that whole dairy fats have no negative effect on a diet, and may even reduce risk of heart disease.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: International solar conference celebrates 125 years of solar physics research in India

    Source: Government of India

    Posted On: 24 JAN 2025 11:34AM by PIB Delhi

    More than 200 solar physicists from India and abroad have come together in Bengaluru this week to discuss research in areas like Solar magnetism, Solar-stellar connection and space weather at an international conference. 

    The conference on ‘Sun, Space Weather, and Solar-Stellar Connections’ has been organised by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory. The Observatory has been providing invaluable insights into the Sun’s behaviour and its impact on Earth through its repository of photographic images, and was the harbinger of the birth of solar astrophysics in the country.

    DST Secretary, Prof. Abhay Karandikar, spoke about initiatives like the digitization of KSO’s historic records, IIA’s significant contribution to Aditya-L1 mission through the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph, and underlined upcoming ventures like the National Large Solar Telescope proposed to be built at Merak, on the banks of Pangong Tso in Ladakh, through a video message. He said that the efforts promise to open new frontiers of discovery in solar astrophysics.

    Shri A.S. Kiran Kumar, former ISRO Chairman, and the chair of the Governing Council of IIA, while highlighting the efforts of the solar physics group at IIA during his address at the inaugural, pointed out that ISRO has all the capabilities to help the solar physics research from space and challenged the community to come up with ideas for new instruments that ISRO can launch.

    “This conference celebrates the birth and growth of solar astronomy and solar physics in the country. With experts from across the world, it will discuss all aspects of the Sun as well as space weather”, said Prof. Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of IIA, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

    Prof. Siraj Hasan, former Director IIA, Prof. Dipankar Banerjee, Director IIST Trivandrum, and other eminent solar astronomers of IIA spoke about the history of solar research in India and the legacy of the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory. The international perspectives of the Observatory were presented by Prof. John Leibacher from the National Solar Observatory, USA who is also a former member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of IIA. He emphasized that the KSO is a rare and scientifically unique facility in the world that exemplified studying the entire Sun as a system, and mentioned the international solar community’s strong support for the initiation of the National Large Solar Telescope as well, at a session conducted by the chairperson of the Solar Physics group of IIA and of the Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC), Prof. S.P. Rajaguru.

    The Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KSO) of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, a cornerstone of Indian astronomy, established in 1899, has been at the forefront of solar research. The observatory’s unique location, coupled with its state-of-the-art equipment, has enabled it to make significant contributions to our understanding of sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other solar phenomena.

    The conference is being organized as a testament to KSO’s enduring legacy, between 20–24 January 2025. With a vibrant scientific program put together by the international Scientific Organizing Committee of 20 eminent solar astronomers, with leads from the Solar Physics group of IIA, leading solar physicists from around the globe are discussing the latest advancements in the field and exploring the connections between solar and stellar phenomena. It has attracted 205 participants, half of them being students and a third from outside India.

    With themes like Solar magnetism over long time scales, Solar magnetism in high resolution, Energetic phenomena, Solar-stellar connection, and Heliosphere and space weather, the conference features a diverse program of presentations, discussions, and poster sessions, allowing participants to share their latest findings, exchange ideas, foster collaborations, and strengthen international cooperation. A number of talks were also on new and upcoming solar astronomy facilities, including the proposed National Large Solar Telescope in Ladakh.

    Apart from the various talks, posters and discussions scheduled for the remainder of the week, a public talk on the sun by Prof. Nat Gopalswamy from NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, USA, is being hosted at CHRIST University on 23rd January at 5 PM. This talk is aimed primarily at students and is open to the general public.

    Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, DST, Govt. of India, addressing the inaugural session.

    Shri A.S. Kiran Kumar, former Chairman ISRO, and Chairperson of IIA Governing Council, addressing the inaugural session.

     

     Prof. Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of Indian Institute of Astrophysics, addressing the audience.

     Group photo of the participants of the Conference, with the KSO 125 logo.

    ***

    NKR/PSM

    (Release ID: 2095690) Visitor Counter : 34

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: Text adopted – Need for actions to address the continued oppression and fake elections in Belarus – P10_TA(2025)0002 – Wednesday, 22 January 2025 – Strasbourg

    Source: European Parliament

    The European Parliament,

    –  having regard to its previous resolutions on Belarus,

    –  having regard to the Council conclusions on Belarus of 12 October 2020 and 19 February 2024 and to the European Council conclusions on Belarus of 21 and 22 October 2021,

    –  having regard to the statements by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 1 August 2024 on the release of a number of political prisoners, and of 26 February 2024 on the parliamentary and local elections, and to the statement by the High Representative on behalf of the EU of 8 August 2023 on the third anniversary of the fraudulent presidential elections,

    –  having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other international human rights instruments to which Belarus is a party,

    –  having regard to the report of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) of 25 March 2024 on the situation of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and in its aftermath,

    –  having regard to the resolution of the General Conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO) of 12 June 2023 concerning the measures recommended by the Governing Body under article 33 of the ILO Constitution on the subject of Belarus,

    –  having regard to Rule 136(2) and (4) of its Rules of Procedure,

    A.  whereas the 30-year authoritarian rule of Aliaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus has been characterised by systematic repression of political opponents and dissent, including the enforced disappearance of Lukashenka’s critics; whereas since the fraudulent presidential election of August 2020, the illegitimate Lukashenka regime, with Russian support, has systematically repressed political activists, civil society, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, artists, religious leaders, trade unionists and other groups in Belarus and abroad, arbitrarily detaining tens of thousands of people;

    B.  whereas following the fraudulent 2020 presidential election and the subsequent brutal crackdown, the EU and many of its democratic partners did not recognise the results of the elections or Aliaksandr Lukashenka as legitimate leader and President of Belarus;

    C.  whereas according to the Human Rights Centre ‘Viasna’, over 1 250 political prisoners remain detained in Belarus in conditions that put their lives at risk, and many of these prisoners are in fragile health; whereas several political prisoners have died in custody, four of them in 2024 alone; whereas political prisoners face torture, denial of medical care, restricted access to visits from lawyers and family members, and solitary confinement; whereas since the summer of 2020, 3 697 people have been recognised as political prisoners; whereas in 2024 alone, over 8 800 cases of politically motivated persecution were documented, including arrests, detentions, dismissals and other forms of repression targeting political prisoners, their families and lawyers, activists, journalists, priests, doctors, returning Belarusians and others;

    D.  whereas multiple international organisations, including the OHCHR, have documented systematic human rights violations in Belarus, including torture, arbitrary detentions, imprisonment or other forms of severe deprivation of physical liberty, enforced disappearances, persecution on political grounds and suppression of freedoms, which amount to crimes against humanity under international law; whereas in September 2024, Lithuania referred the situation in Belarus to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate certain crimes against humanity committed by the Lukashenka regime;

    E.  whereas the illegitimate Belarusian regime plans to hold sham presidential elections on 26 January 2025, with Lukashenka seeking a seventh term; whereas Belarus’ Central Election Commission has registered Lukashenka and four other pro forma ‘candidates’; whereas the current presidential election campaign is being conducted in an environment of severe repression which fails to meet even the minimum standards for democratic elections; whereas democratic candidates are barred from participating, media freedom is heavily restricted, voters face intimidation, and the absence of independent election observation further undermines the legitimacy of the electoral process;

    F.  whereas both the parliamentary and local elections held on 25 February 2024 and the upcoming sham presidential election scheduled for 26 January 2025 exemplify the regime’s disregard for democratic norms as elections in Belarus are tightly controlled, with all candidates pre-approved by authorities, democratic parties eliminated and voters offered no real choice; whereas the election campaign has been marked by the detention of individuals involved in the 2020 presidential campaigns of other candidates and a clear readiness to harshly suppress dissent;

    G.  whereas according to the Human Rights Centre ‘Viasna’, at least 360 people were detained between July and September 2024, and many democratic leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ales Bialiatski, Maria Kalesnikava, Viktar Babaryka, Pavel Seviarynets, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Mikalai Statkevich and others remain imprisoned; whereas at least eight political prisoners are currently detained incommunicado;

    H.  whereas the Lukashenka regime has stepped up pressure on the staff of Western diplomatic missions accredited in Belarus as well as other foreigners; whereas Mikalai Khila, a local member of staff of the EU delegation to Belarus, was apprehended by the Belarusian KGB in front of the EU delegation office, held in pre-trial detention from April 2024 and sentenced, in December 2024, to four years of imprisonment; whereas he has been listed as a political prisoner by the Human Rights Centre ‘Viasna’; whereas two Japanese citizens were recently detained on trumped-up charges of ‘agent activities’;

    I.  whereas Lukashenka pardoned over 200 political prisoners in 2024 in an attempt to lift some Western sanctions; whereas political arrests continue despite these pardons, with at least 1 721 individuals convicted on political charges in 2024 alone;

    J.  whereas the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus has long been embedded in the Lukashenka regime’s government structure and is thought to play a significant role in organising the falsification of election results;

    K.  whereas the Belarusian regime employs anti-extremism laws to obstruct media outlets, whereby most independent media have been labelled as ‘extremist’, with at least 45 media representatives detained, around 400 in exile and others facing harassment and mistreatment; whereas independent media, such as Belsat TV, Charter 97, Nexta, Radio Racyja, Radio Svaboda, Nasha Niva and others, play a crucial role in providing essential information and serving as a platform for democratic voices; whereas the Belarusian authorities employ surveillance, online censorship and disinformation, escalating digital authoritarianism and undermining the prospects for free and fair elections in 2025; whereas Belarusian propagandists regularly spread disinformation about EU Member States and their officials and suppress access to information;

    L.  whereas more than 500 000 Belarusians have been forced to flee the country since 2020, with some continuing to face persecution from the Lukashenka regime, including through trials in absentia, threats from the security forces and pressure on relatives, confiscation of property and other restrictions;

    M.  whereas under Lukashenka, more than 250 people sentenced to death have been executed; whereas Belarus remains the only country in Europe and Central Asia to retain the death penalty, with its scope expanded in 2022 to include vaguely defined acts of terrorism and in 2023 to include ‘treason against the state’;

    N.  whereas repressive measures in Belarus have increasingly targeted religious freedom, with the recent adoption of the law on freedom of conscience and religious organisations posing a serious threat to the rights and existence of religious communities; whereas this crackdown has also targeted religious leaders, as seen in the recent sentencing of Catholic priest Reverend Henrykh Akalatovich to 11 years in prison on fabricated high treason charges, the first such case against Catholic clergy in Belarus;

    O.  whereas the Lukashenka regime has proven to be instrumental to Putin by providing Russian forces with access to Belarusian territory from which to mount the full-scale invasion of Ukraine; whereas the Lukashenka regime commits crimes against Ukrainian children, including hosting re-education camps for political indoctrination and militarisation; whereas it assists attempts by Russia and others to destabilise the EU and undermine European aspirations among the EU’s neighbours, notably by weaponising migration at the EU’s borders and legitimising Bidzina Ivanishvili’s autocratic regime in Georgia;

    P.  whereas the EU has imposed targeted sanctions on Belarus in response to the fraudulent 2020 elections, systematic human rights violations, and Belarus’s complicity in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including trade restrictions and sanctions on 287 individuals, among them Lukashenka, and 39 entities;

    Q.  whereas the Lukashenka regime, with Russian assistance, circumvents some of these sanctions through preferential market access and the use of Russian infrastructure; whereas reports indicate that BelAZ, a sanctioned Belarusian producer of trucks, circumvents sanctions by disassembling trucks in Belarus and shipping the parts to the EU for reassembly under different brand names;

    1.  Reiterates its non-recognition of the election of Aliaksandr Lukashenka to the post of President of Belarus; considers the current regime in Belarus to be illegitimate, illegal and criminal; reaffirms its unwavering support for the Belarusian people in their pursuit of democracy, freedom and human rights;

    2.  Denounces the lack of freedom, fairness and transparency ahead of the so called presidential elections in Belarus and calls for the EU, its Member States and the international community to categorically reject the upcoming elections in Belarus and the run-up campaign as a sham, as they do not meet minimum international standards for democratic elections; calls for the EU, its Member States and the international community to continue not to recognise the legitimacy of Aliaksandr Lukashenka as president after 26 January 2025, and calls for free and fair elections to be held in Belarus;

    3.  Deplores the ongoing grave violations of human rights and democratic principles in Belarus, which have further intensified in the run-up to the so-called presidential elections; condemns the systematic repression in Belarus, which includes arbitrary arrests, torture, harassment, ill-treatment of detainees, persistent impunity and a structural lack of respect for due process and fair trials; reiterates its demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all individuals detained in Belarus for their political views, alongside compensation and the restoration of their rights; demands an end to the repression of political opponents and the Belarusian public;

    4.  Reiterates its calls on the Belarusian authorities to respect detainees’ rights, provide medical care and grant access to lawyers, families, and international organisations;

    5.  Expresses grave concern about the situation of political prisoners, including Maria Kalesnikava, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Ales Bialiatski, Mikalai Statkevich, Mikalai Khila, Valiantsin Stefanovich, Maksim Znak, Viktar Babaryka, Ihar Losik, Andrzej Poczobut, Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk, Uladzimir Matskevich, Marfa Rabkova, Uladzimir Labkovich, Aliaksandr Yarashuk, Volha Brytsikava, Aliaksandr Kapshul, Yana Pinchuk, Mikalai Bankou, Andrei Navitski, Henrykh Akalatovich, Uladzimir Kniha Dmitry Kuchuk, Pavel Seviarynets and others, many of whom are facing severe health issues without access to proper medical care, and are enduring isolation, ill treatment and torture;

    6.  Considers the arrest and sentencing on politically motivated charges of Mikalai Khila, a local staff member of the EU Delegation in Minsk, a breach of diplomatic practices towards the EU; calls for the EU and its Member States to swiftly develop a credible response;

    7.  Commends the resilience of Belarusian civil society and democratic forces; reiterates its solidarity with the people of Belarus and its support for their legitimate aspirations for a democratic and European future; expresses solidarity with Belarusian democratic forces and civil society organisations in their efforts to establish a sovereign, democratic and prosperous Belarus; remains committed to working with democratic forces, civil society and independent media to the benefit of the people of Belarus;

    8.  Calls for the EU and its Member States to continue to investigate human rights abuses in Belarus and to support accountability measures, including through universal jurisdiction; calls for the EU and its Member States to investigate, on the basis of universal jurisdiction, the crimes against humanity committed by the Lukashenka regime in Belarus and on EU territory and, following Lithuania’s example, to refer the situation in Belarus to the International Criminal Court for investigation to the extent possible, and to consider the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute the crimes of the Lukashenka regime; calls on the Member States to allow Belarusian lawyers expelled by the regime to practise on EU territory in order to provide legal assistance to persecuted Belarusians;

    9.  Highlights the invaluable work carried out by human rights defenders and civil society representatives in Belarus in monitoring, documenting and reporting the grave human rights violations and crimes against humanity that are taking place in the country, in order to ensure subsequent accountability and justice for the victims;

    10.  Reiterates its call for the EU and its Member States to support political prisoners and their families, including by demanding proof of political prisoners’ whereabouts, requesting their release, simplifying the procedures for those fleeing Belarus to obtain visas and identity documents, and providing rehabilitation and other types of support; calls on the EU Delegation and the Member State embassies in Belarus to continue observing and monitoring the trials of all political prisoners;

    11.  Stresses the importance of protecting exiled Belarusians from persecution by the Lukashenka regime, and of granting them opportunities to legally stay and work in the EU; calls for the EU and its Member States to raise the issue of abuse of international arrest warrants within Interpol and calls on the countries concerned not to extradite Belarusian citizens who have fled the regime and will face persecution upon their return to Belarus;

    12.  Deplores the fact that repressive measures in Belarus have expanded to include attacks on religious freedom, through the adoption of the law on freedom of conscience and religious organisations, which grossly violates the fundamental right to freedom of religion, conscience and belief; urges the Lukashenka regime to immediately halt the persecution of religious communities and churches;

    13.  Calls for the continuation of EU support for Belarusian democratic forces, led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya; reiterates the need to support Belarusian democratic forces, civil society, students, journalists, leaders of trade unions, exiled professionals and others by providing them with visas, scholarships, grants and networking opportunities; encourages the representatives of the democratic forces of Belarus to maintain and promote unity;

    14.  Denounces the Lukashenka regime’s complicity in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and condemns its deliberate subordination of Belarus to Russia in a so-called union state encompassing political, geopolitical, economic, military and cultural spheres; reiterates the need to contribute to strengthening Belarusian national identity and the Belarusian language, and to combat the distortion and manipulation of Belarusian history by the Lukashenka regime as well as by the Kremlin and its proxies;

    15.  Urges the EU and its international partners to broaden and strengthen sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for the repression in Belarus and for Belarus’s participation in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, while closing sanctions loopholes and addressing the main sources of income financing the regime, such as exports of potash and other fertilisers; calls for the EU to sanction Belarusian entities and individuals responsible for the forced labour of political prisoners, as well as the goods produced using such forced labour;

    16.  Urges the EU and international partners to immediately identify, freeze, and find legal pathways for seizing assets of the Belarusian leadership and related Belarusian entities involved in the Russian war effort, as well as assets of entities and individuals leading Lukashenka’s so-called election campaign, including the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus, such as Yury Sianko, Hanna Varfalameyeva and Valery Kursevich; calls on EU and Western companies to cease their activities in Belarus;

    17.  Calls for the EU and its Member States to continue raising the situation in Belarus in all relevant international organisations, in particular the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the UN and its specialised bodies and the ILO, with the aim of enhancing international scrutiny of the human rights violations and international action on the situation in Belarus; calls on the Member States to ensure continued documentation and accountability for international crimes committed by the Lukashenka regime, strengthen the OHCHR’s examination of the human rights situation in Belarus by providing full support to the UN Group of Independent Experts on the Human Rights Situation in Belarus and by preserving the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus to monitor ongoing human rights violations;

    18.  Denounces the illegal transfer of several thousand children, including orphans, from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to so-called recreational camps in Belarus, where they are subjected to Russification and indoctrination; strongly condemns the involvement of the Belarus Red Cross in the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children;

    19.  Strongly condemns the Lukashenka regime’s weaponisation and instrumentalisation of migration to destabilise neighbouring EU Member States through orchestrated irregular flows, violating human rights, exploiting vulnerable individuals and threatening regional stability; calls for the EU and its Member States to work on a coordinated response to counter this hybrid threat while protecting EU external borders and protecting the rights and safety of vulnerable individuals;

    20.  Urges Belarus to commute all death sentences, impose a moratorium on capital punishment and move towards its permanent abolition;

    21.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the relevant EU institutions, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Government of Japan, representatives of the Belarusian democratic forces and the Belarusian de facto authorities.

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: The digital platform CML-Bench of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University is certified for working with commercial secrets

    Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –

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

    The digital platform for the development and application of digital twins CML-Bench®, developed by Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, has received a certificate of compliance with the software security requirements of the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC of Russia) at the sixth level of trust. CML-Bench® is the first digital platform developed by SPbPU to receive a certificate allowing the processing of information with the confidentiality modes “Commercial Secret” and “For Official Use Only”.

    The sixth level of trust allows the platform to be used at significant critical information infrastructure facilities of the third category, in government information systems and as part of automated production and technological process control systems of the third class* of information security, and personal data information systems of the third level** of security.

    *In state information systems, there are three classes of information security, which are determined depending on the level of significance of the information processed in the information system and its scale (federal, regional, facility-based). The first class requires the greatest protection, the third class – the least protection. **When protecting personal data, the third level is the average level of security, which is used for personal data, the leakage of which may harm the data subject, but will not lead to significant risks.

    Thus, in the context of changing legislation in the field of import substitution of software and increasing requirements for software security, the FSTEC of Russia certificate allows using the CML-Bench® digital platform for working with government agencies; government institutions and enterprises; Russian legal entities that own information systems, information and telecommunications networks, automated control systems operating in the field of healthcare, science, transport, communications, energy, as well as state registration of rights to real estate and transactions with it, banking and other areas of the financial market, fuel and energy complex, in the field of nuclear energy, defense, rocket and space, mining, metallurgy and chemical industries.

    To ensure that the CML-Bench® digital platform meets the requirements of the sixth level of trust, specialists from the Advanced Engineering School of SPbPU “Digital Engineering” have developed and implemented a number of microservices in the software that provide protection against unauthorized access to information, implement identification and authentication functions, access control and registration of security events, in accordance with the requirements specified in the document “Information security requirements establishing levels of trust in technical information protection tools and information technology security tools”.

    In particular, authentication services, user rights management, and an LDAP (LDAP) interaction service were implemented. CML-Bench® was also integrated with Keycloak (a program that helps users log into different sites and applications under one account and allows you to manage who has access to what) with CML-Bench®. At the same time, identifiers and object types were output to the log by security event types with the ability to customize the volume of recorded information. Event logging was implemented for all account types. The Circuit Breaker template was successfully implemented and support for CSRF tokens (a security tool in web applications) was added. Healthcheck checks were also added to the new services.

    In March 2023, for the first time in the history of SPbPU, a license was received from the FSTEC of Russia for the development and production of means of protecting confidential information, including software tools for information protection; secure software (software and hardware) means of information processing and software (software and hardware) means of monitoring information security. After that, active work began on the allocation and refinement of the “security module” as part of the Digital Platform for the Development and Application of Digital Twins CML-Bench®. And a year and a half later, an FSTEC certificate was received confirming the compliance of the platform’s security level with the sixth trust level. For us, this is a very important result, since the structural divisions of the Advanced Engineering School of SPbPU “Digital Engineering” implement projects with high-tech companies from various industries that are subjects of critical information infrastructure, – commented Vice-Rector for Digital Transformation of SPbPU, Head of the Advanced Engineering School of SPbPU “Digital Engineering” Alexey Borovkov.

    The refinement of the “security module” as part of the Digital Platform for the Development and Application of Digital Twins CML-Bench® was accompanied by updating the technical documentation and testing.

    Certification tests on a special stand were carried out by the Scientific, Technical and Certification Center for Comprehensive Information Security (JSC Center Atomzashchitainform). As a result of the preparation of the research stand, along with the creation of conditions for testing, the absence of configuration vulnerabilities and signs of malware in the object of assessment, as well as potentially dangerous functional capabilities that appear during the installation and configuration of the object of assessment were checked. As a result, the CML-Bench® digital platform, based on the test results, confirmed the absence of current vulnerabilities and protection against the threat of unauthorized access to information contained in the product; against the threat of unauthorized transfer of information to information and telecommunication networks and other information systems; against the threat of unauthorized receipt of information about the product, as well as its nodes; the threat of denial of service.

    The assessment of the certification test materials for compliance with information security requirements was carried out by the expert commission of the certification body FSTEC of Russia. Based on the expert opinion on the results of comprehensive certification tests of the digital platform for the development and use of digital twins CML-Bench®, a certificate of compliance with information security requirements was issued.

    The certification was carried out on an initiative basis during the implementation of a project to design and create an automated digital engineering system jointly with Greenatom JSC in a subsidiary of TVEL JSC — CentroTech-Engineering LLC for further replication in the structures of TVEL JSC and Rosatom State Corporation.

    For reference:

    The CML-Bench® digital platform is a digital platform for the development and application of digital twins of both high-tech industrial products and goods, as well as technological and production processes for their manufacture, a system for managing activities in the field of system digital engineering. Since 2006, the CML-Bench® digital platform has been developed by employees of the Engineering Center (CompMechLab®) “Computer Engineering Center” of SPbPU and employees of the Computational Mechanics Laboratory LLC (CompMechLab®).

    The CML-Bench® Digital Platform is used to develop projects for high-tech industries: engine building, power engineering, nuclear, oil and gas, special and railway engineering, aircraft and helicopter engineering, including unmanned aerial vehicles, automotive engineering, including electric transport, shipbuilding and shipbuilding, as well as marine engineering, nuclear energy, fuel and energy complex, medicine, high-performance sports, etc.

    At the end of 2022, the CML-Bench® platform was deployed on the servers of Centrotech-Engineering LLC (part of the control circuit of the TVEL fuel company of the Rosatom State Corporation) as part of the project to create an automated digital engineering system. And in 2023, specialists from the Advanced Engineering School “Digital Engineering” of SPbPU developed a software module that allows for the seamless transfer of engineering data from one of the most popular PLM systems (engineering data and production process management systems) Teamcenter by Siemens to the CML-Bench® digital platform. The CML-Bench® digital platform formed the basis for the URANIA data and process management system for computational and experimental scientific research, used at the enterprises of the Rosatom State Corporation.

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

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: IAEA Work Central at World Economic Forum in Davos

    Source: International Atomic Energy Agency – IAEA

    “The work of the IAEA is at the centre of the debates. In particular, the nexus between nuclear energy and artificial intelligence has attracted a lot of attention,” the Director General said in Davos.  

    The IAEA held a session on nuclear’s role in meeting energy demands for artificial intelligence (AI), with experts from Bloomberg and technology venture capitalists DCVC. “Big tech needs nuclear to power energy-intensive AI data centres,” explained Mr Grossi.  

    A major event was also held on tripling nuclear energy, and the need for standardization, regulation, financing and collaboration in scaling up nuclear.  

    The Director General met with multiple world leaders to discuss development, energy and world peace, including Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, Austria’s Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg and Flanders’ Minister-President Matthias Diependaele.  

    Mr Grossi and Mr Mulino engaged on the IAEA’s Atoms4Food programme, as well as improving cancer care with the IAEA’s Rays Of Hope programme. “The IAEA is proud to stand with Panama in building a healthier, more resilient future for its people,” the Director General said. 

    The IAEA’s work on health, food and nutrition was a focus of multiple high-level dialogues. For example, Mr Grossi met with Viet Nam’s Minister of Science and Technology Huynh Thanh Dat to discuss the drought-tolerant, high-yield rice varieties that were developed with IAEA support, and with the CEO of Anglo American, Duncan Wanblad, on progress on a joint research project to fight soil salinity and advance sustainable farming practices. 

    Another key topic for the week was international security, particularly the IAEA’s role in ensuring nonproliferation worldwide. 

    The Director General was a speaker at the World Economic Forum’s Rubik’s Cube of Global Security, where he addressed pressures on nonproliferation amid rising geostrategic tensions, alongside Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid AlDabaiba, the International Crisis Group, Comfort Ero, Harvard Kennedy School’s Meghan O’Sullivan, and Foreign Affairs Magazine’s Dan Kurtz-Phelan. 

    Watch the recording of the session here.  

    The Director General was also active in closed sessions on artificial intelligence and sustainable energy in Latin America with leaders of the region, as well as an event on growing the African economy with leaders from the continent. 

    “The mission and the importance of the IAEA continue to grow. This is why we are here in Davos,” concluded the Director General. 

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI China: Global sci-fi writers celebrate Chinese New Year with original stories

    Source: China State Council Information Office 3

    Sci-fi writers from various countries will debut original stories themed around the number “10” at the 2025 Science Fiction New Year Gala, which will celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year.

    A poster for the 2025 Science Fiction New Year Gala. [Image courtesy of the Future Affairs Administration]

    This year marks the 10th anniversary of the gala, and the theme of “10” was selected to reflect this milestone, according to the Future Affairs Administration, the event’s organizer and a company dedicated to producing and promoting sci-fi works while supporting new writers in China.

    This year is significant as it is the first since UNESCO added the Spring Festival – a traditional celebration of the Chinese New Year – to its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage last December.

    The number 10 is significant for numerous reasons. The organizers point out that both Eastern and Western cultures embrace the ouroboros – a symbol of a serpent eating its own tail that aligns with China’s Year of the Snake in the Chinese Zodiac – suggesting that the number 10 signifies the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Additionally, in decimal notation, 10 is seen as a node, while in binary, the numbers 1 and 0 represent foundational elements of code. The organizers also note that visually, the number 10 resembles a person standing before a stargate, poised to embark on a new journey.

    Twelve authors from four countries have submitted works inspired by the theme of “10.” These stories will be published daily from Jan. 24 to Feb. 4 on new media platforms operated by the Future Affairs Administration, including Xiaohongshu, WeChat, Weibo and Bilibili.

    The participating writers include China’s Han Song, Yang Ping, Jiang Bo, and Cheng Jingbo, as well as Canada’s Derek Künsken and Jiang Ai, Australia’s Samantha Murray and Japan’s Taiyo Fujii. They are a mix of award-winning authors and emerging stars in the global sci-fi literary scene.

    A tribute video is also being produced to commemorate the anniversary of the Science Fiction New Year Gala. Nearly 50 writers, artists, scholars, translators, readers, fans, critics and gala participants will share their memories and congratulations in the video.

    Over the past 10 years, the Science Fiction New Year Gala has invited 63 sci-fi authors from 10 countries across five continents to contribute to 145 novels, amassing an impressive 500 million views within the Chinese sci-fi community. The stories created for the event have garnered multiple awards both domestically and internationally, appearing in multilingual sci-fi collections and top magazines such as Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Lightspeed. Additionally, more than 10 artists have produced over 70 pieces of visual art, while 25 podcasts have collectively featured over 70 hours of programming. More than 150 partners have also given readers Chinese New Year gifts and benefits valued at over 170,000 yuan ($23,300).

    The writings showcased at the gala include sci-fi stories that explore themes such as homeward journeys reflecting the Chinese tradition of family reunions, reimaginings of China’s extensive transportation system, and various social issues. Some stories draw inspiration from the Chinese dragon, a mythical and auspicious creature in Chinese legend and the Zodiac.

    The gala also promotes cultural exchanges, allowing foreign writers to share their perspectives on China while gaining deeper insights into the emotions and experiences of the Chinese people.

    “Why are we celebrating Chinese New Year with sci-fi literature? This idea may seem crazy, but we believe that through sci-fi – a genre that expands human emotions – the atmosphere of the year will become richer between the lines and words,” said Ji Shaoting, founder and CEO of the Future Affairs Administration.

    Ji emphasized the challenge of maintaining focus on one project for 10 years. “The pain involved in pursuing what you love might be the most bearable. Ten years ago, we hoped this could become a fresh New Year tradition for our sci-fi enthusiasts. Perhaps we have achieved that now. However, the road ahead is still long, and we hope that one day everyone will recognize how deeply sci-fi is woven into life and into our very essence,” she said.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: The Science of Music’s Healing Power

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    Music can be so omnipresent in daily life – blasting out of tinny Bluetooth speakers at the beach, wafting through the aisles at the grocery store, filling the background of an ad on TV – that many of us give it little thought. But for neuroscientist Ed Large, director of the Music Dynamics Laboratory at UConn, music and thought are inseparable.

    In November, Large was recognized at the Music Has Power Symposium in New York City, organized by The Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), for his work in understanding the power of music to boost brain function. The symposium, which brought together scientists and musicians alike, was the perfect forum for Large, who went from playing bluegrass to being recognized for his groundbreaking work regarding the ability of musical rhythms to synchronize and train brain rhythms.

    Large’s primary contribution to the field of music cognition is neural synchronization. The neuroscientist – who is also a professor in the departments of Psychological Science and Physics – derived equations that describe how the brain works when it synchronizes to rhythms, and soon enough, experiments began to support his hypotheses.

    In one of those experiments, Large and Psyche Loui, a professor at Northeastern University, based their hypotheses in part on research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that directly stimulated the hippocampus of mice with genetically engineered Alzheimer’s disease. Loui asked whether adding light to Large’s models of synchronization to musical rhythms could create an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s. After four years and $4.5 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), their work has improved memory in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease.  

    The type of music that best activates the brain is music that people pick themselves, Large says. Even compared to music that patients are very familiar with, Large observes, “If they chose the music themselves, it actives certain areas of the brain, more than any other kind of music.”

    Large discovered his passion for the scientific field of music cognition while in graduate school. Large started his undergraduate studies as a math major, but, choosing to follow his dream of being a professional musician, switched to studying classical guitar performance. After earning his degree from Southern Methodist University and performing for a few years, he went to graduate school at Ohio State University to study artificial intelligence and cognitive science. While there, he learned about the field of music cognition and immediately knew it was what he was supposed to be doing.

    “I wasn’t meant to be a performer; I was born to do this,” Large says.  

    The IMNF, which recognized Large’s work in New York this year, was founded by Concetta (Connie) Tomaino, a music therapist, and Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and best-selling author. Large became involved with the IMNF while he was teaching in Florida, and Tomaino asked if he would join their Scientific Advisory Board. Although hesitant at first, he went to New York to learn about the work she had been doing.

    Tomaino had been treating patients with debilitating brain damage, causing aphasia, a disorder that makes it difficult to speak, read, and understand language. Large observed two main types of patients: older adults who had strokes, and younger adults who had survived gunshot wounds to the head. And it was a drum circle among these patients that was a turning point in Large’s thinking about music therapy. An atmosphere of depression and negativity, he recalls, was replaced by a sense of happiness and satisfaction following vigorous participation in the 30-minute drum circle.

    “If that is all music therapy does for patients, that is enough,” Large says. “But it turns out, it can do a lot more.”

    Next for his research is Phase 2 Clinical Trials. In these next trials, Large will expand his research by testing a greater number of Alzheimer’s patients. And Large continues to do basic research in the lab, looking at the synchronization of brain rhythms to musical rhythms. He aims to be able to target specific areas of the brain with specific frequencies of stimulation using music and possibly synchronized light. 

    “If we can do this much with what we know now, there is so much more we can do,” he says. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Wood burning stoves are a serious problem for your health – and the environment

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Asit Kumar Mishra, Research Fellow in School of Public of Health, University College Cork

    Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

    There is something cosy and appealing about settling down next to a roaring fire in winter but, every year, nearly 61,000 premature deaths in Europe are caused by air pollution as a result of people burning wood or coal to heat their homes.

    Wood-burning stoves are often considered safer, cleaner and more attractive than open fires. This may, in part, explain why from 2021 to 2022, sales of wood-burning stoves increased by 40% in the UK.

    However, burning wood is not necessarily a healthier or greener alternative to coal or gas for home heating.

    Wood burning produces a complex chemical mixture of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and gases, which can be breathed deep into the lungs. The specific contents vary based on the type of stove and the type of fuel, but chemicals can include carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and a range of volatile organic compounds, such as cancer-causing formaldehyde and benzene.

    Exposure to wood smoke affects the heart, blood vessels and the respiratory system – and PM2.5 is considered to be the biggest threat. Wood smoke increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes and can exacerbate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Exposure to PM2.5 from wood burning can also cause premature death.

    Exposure to this pollution also leads to loss of work days, reduced productivity, higher expenses on healthcare and increased hospital admissions.

    The risks are higher for people over 65, children, pregnant women and people with existing heart or lung conditions. Chronic wood smoke inhalation has been associated with systemic inflammation, which can make the lungs more vulnerable to infections, such as flu and COVID.

    In the UK and Ireland, solid fuel heating is the main source of outdoor PM2.5 during wintertime. While wood is the dominant solid fuel in the UK, peat burning is regularly found to make the largest contribution to PM2.5 in Ireland.

    Under cold, stagnant weather conditions, air pollution, even in small rural towns, can be as high as that found in very polluted parts of north India.

    Exposure to outdoor air pollution caused by wood burning is an obvious health risk. But the pollution also finds its way into homes, worsening indoor air quality. Also, when lighting or refuelling a wood stove, large quantities of PM2.5 escape into the indoor air. Depending on how effective the home ventilation is, the PM2.5 levels can take hours to reduce.

    Looks aren’t everything

    In surveys carried out in Ireland and the UK, it was found that most people using solid fuel stoves did it for the aesthetics and the “homely feel”. The desire to save money or necessity came next.

    Most people who use indoor wood burning in London are in wealthier neighbourhoods, while those most affected by the consequent air pollution are in poorer areas.

    Educational campaigns regarding the effect of wood-burning stoves on health and the environment can be an important tool to reduce their usage. New initiatives, such as the Clean Air Night held in the UK and Ireland, are valuable in raising awareness and possibly changing long-term heating habits.

    Encouraging users to move to more efficient and renewable heating technologies like heat pumps can reduce emissions and harm to health. This move even works out to be cheaper, except for people who source their own wood.

    Communities can also be provided with information on their local air quality, allowing them to visualise real-time effects of their actions. For example, the PM2.5 sensor network map for Cork is freely accessible to the community and identifies locations and times when PM2.5 pollution is unhealthy.

    If you have a wood burner, you could check that the pollution levels aren’t too high before you fire it up.

    How to reduce emissions

    People who rely on solid fuel stoves as their only source of home heating can adopt the following measures to reduce emissions. Use low-emission labelled stoves that reduce pollution. When burning, have small hot fires, with enough air supply and do not let the fire smoulder.

    Choose carefully what is burnt, in compliance with relevant regulations. Do not burn garbage, plastics, cardboard, treated or painted wood in your stoves. These items increase exposure to toxic pollutants.

    Ensure that stoves are installed and maintained annually by professionals. And, when lighting up or refuelling, make sure that the room the stove is in is well ventilated. This means open windows, no blocked vents, and exhaust fans or kitchen hoods can be used for additional ventilation.

    People who use solid fuel stoves as a secondary source of heating could consider using the stove less or even stopping using it altogether. That really would be a breath of fresh air.

    Asit Kumar Mishra is a DOROTHY co-fund Fellow and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101034345.

    John Wenger has previously received funding from several governmental organisations in Ireland for research into solid fuel burning, including the EPA and Irish Research Council.

    – ref. Wood burning stoves are a serious problem for your health – and the environment – https://theconversation.com/wood-burning-stoves-are-a-serious-problem-for-your-health-and-the-environment-245737

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why peat is a key ingredient in whisky and the climate crisis

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Toby Ann Halamka, Postdoctoral Researcher in Organic Geochemistry, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol

    Kondor83/Shutterstock

    Burnt. Smoky. Medicinal. Each of these represents a subcategory of “peaty” whisky in the Scotch Whisky Research Institute’s brightly coloured flavour wheel.

    A more chemistry-focused flavour wheel might include names like lignin phenols, aromatic hydrocarbons or nitrogen-containing heterocycles. Perhaps less appealing, but these chemicals define the flavours of Scotch whisky and represent just a few of the many types of organic carbon that are stored in peatlands.

    However, when peat is burned for the production of whisky, ancient carbon is released into the atmosphere. Approximately 80% of Scotch whisky is made using peat as a fuel source for drying barley during the malting process. The aromas of the burning peat, or “reek” as it is known in the industry, are steeped into the grains providing the intense smoky flavours associated with many Scotch whiskies.

    Historically, peat was a critical fuel resource for Scotland – a nation famously rich in peatlands with few trees for wood-burning. But as the industry has modernised, peat burning in whisky manufacturing has become less a story of adapting to resource limitations and more one of tradition and distinctive flavouring.

    There is little debate about the importance of peat burning in generating some of the most highly sought-after flavours in the world of whisky. Some enthusiasts identifying as “peat heads” track the parts per million (ppm) of peaty compounds in their favourite brands. The ppm measure represents phenol concentrations (a group of aromatic organic compounds) in the malted barley. But this does not represent how peaty your whisky will taste as much will get lost in subsequent processes. Nor does the ppm represent how much peat was burned in production.

    Most of the peat that is extracted in Scotland is used in horticulture as compost to grow things like mushrooms, lettuce and houseplants. However, both the Scottish and UK governments are making efforts to reduce peat extraction for gardening needs.

    The Scotch whisky industry makes up about 1% of total peat use in Scotland. But, as horticulture practices change, this may represent a larger portion of peat use in the future.

    In 2023, the Scotch whisky industry outlined a long-term sustainability plan that expresses goodwill but lacks clearly defined goals towards peatland restoration.

    Such policies that ban or limit the use of peat in certain industries have followed an increased awareness of how important peatlands are to locking carbon away instead of releasing it into our atmosphere. Despite making up only about 3% of Earth’s land surfaces, peatlands store more carbon than all the world’s forests.

    So, should you worry about the climate consequences of peat use in Scotch whisky?

    No matter how you slice it, harvesting peat is not good for the environment – and getting your hands on a nice dry slab of peat to extract those smoky flavours is no easy task. Peat is formed by waterlogged, oxygen-poor conditions that slow the natural breakdown process of plant material.

    While it is critical for healthy peatlands, excess water is not ideal for burning or transporting peat. Hence, peat extraction usually involves the extensive draining of peatlands. This halts the natural peat accumulation process and releases greenhouse gases from the now-degraded peats into the atmosphere.

    More than 80% of Scotland’s peatlands are degraded.

    Some recovery efforts are being made, and it has been suggested that the whisky industry can offset their peat degradation by investing in peat restoration. But, peatland restoration is a long-term and imprecise solution that might take decades to properly assess, while existing peatlands are needed as a natural carbon sink now.

    Flavour innovations

    There are reasons for “peat heads” (both whisky fans and climate warriors) to feel optimistic about the future of this industry.

    For decades, the barley malting industry has focused on extracting the most flavour out of the least peat. Innovations in enhanced peat burning efficiency and investigations into peat flavouring alternatives are just some of the ways that the whisky industry is decreasing its peat footprint.

    Change in this sector takes time. Any innovations in whisky made today must age for at least three years before being ready for the “flavour wheel”. This delay underscores the urgency of developing new methods as it will take time to find the perfect eco-friendly recipe that compromises neither the taste nor tradition of Scotch whisky.

    In the meantime, whisky drinkers can seek out distilleries that are taking active steps to decrease their environmental impact and try drinking peat-free or peat-efficient whiskies.

    To continue celebrating the uniqueness of peat as a flavour in whisky, we need to better acknowledge the effect it has on peatland degradation and continue to advocate for positive changes in the industry.

    The story of peat use in Scotch whisky will continue to evolve. But while experimenting with future flavours, Scotland must preserve one of this nation’s most precious environmental resources.

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

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Toby Ann Halamka receives funding from the CERES (Climate, Energy and Carbon in Ancient Earth Systems) UKRI grant at the University of Bristol.

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

    – ref. Why peat is a key ingredient in whisky and the climate crisis – https://theconversation.com/why-peat-is-a-key-ingredient-in-whisky-and-the-climate-crisis-245497

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Defra’s Science Advisory Council Chair appointed

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments 2

    Professor Rowland Kao has been appointed as the Chair of Defra’s Science Advisory Council

    The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has appointed Professor Rowland Cao as Chair of the Science Advisory Council (SAC). This will be for a term of 3 years from 8 January 2025 until 7 January 2028.

    The appointment has been made in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.

    Biography

    • Professor Rowland Kao is Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science at the University of Edinburgh. Kao’s research focusses on infectious disease dynamics, mainly with respect to the role of demography in the spread and persistence of infectious diseases in wildlife, humans and livestock.
    • Rowland previously served as a member of the Science Advisory Council (SAC) from 2018 to 2024.

    Notes to editors:

    • Defra’s Science Advisory Council is an advisory non-departmental public body who provide expert independent advice on science policy and strategy to the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
    • All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process.

    Updates to this page

    Published 24 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Amid LA fires, neighbors helped each other survive – 60 years of research shows local heroes are crucial to disaster response

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Tricia Wachtendorf, Professor of Sociology and Director, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware

    Neighbors fill and pass a bucket of pool water to help extinguish a spot fire in Pacific Palisades, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2025. Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Image

    As wildfires swept through neighborhoods on the outskirts of Los Angeles in January 2025, stories about residents there helping their neighbors and total strangers began trickling out on social media.

    Accounts of Hollywood stars clearing streets for emergency vehicles to get through and raising money for fire victims were widely circulated. But there were many other examples of less-famous people helping older neighbors to safety, and even showing up with trailers to evacuate horses.

    Businesses, including fitness centers, opened their facilities so evacuees could shower or charge their phones. Organizations that routinely work with homeless populations quickly mobilized their members to help ensure people living on the streets and in camps could get to secure, safe locations away from the fires and hazardous air quality.

    Disasters, by definition, overwhelm local resources, making civilian responders like these essential. Sixty years of research at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center and by others examining the social aspects of disaster has repeatedly shown effective disaster management requires mobilizing community resources far beyond official channels.

    Often the response happens through local groups that form in response to a clear need in the community and with shared skills and interests. And this is exactly what we are witnessing in Los Angeles.

    Civilians helping often number in the thousands

    The number of those who step up to help during disasters varies by event, but it can be tremendous.

    Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, over 6,800 volunteers worked with the Red Cross on the response. That same year, volunteers responding to the Kobe earthquake in Japan logged more than 1 million person-days of activity, a measure of the number of people times the hours they contributed.

    People use garden hoses to try to prevent homes from catching fire in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 8, 2025. Neighbors rushed to help neighbors as the wind blew burning embers into neighborhoods.
    Mario Tama/Getty Images

    In an in-depth study of the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks, we interviewed local residents who used their retired fireboat to pump water for the firefighters at ground zero. Operators of tug, ferry and tour boats in and around New York City immediately responded to quickly evacuate 500,000 people in the area from danger. In fact, the majority of the boats involved belonged to private companies. Other volunteers queued evacuees and organized supplies and rides to get people home.

    Over 900 people, most acting in unofficial capacities, were awarded medals or ribbons for their efforts in just the marine response after the World Trade Center attack.

    A survey of residents after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake found that nearly 10% of local residents volunteered in the first three weeks of the response. Following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, in California, a survey of residents in Santa Cruz and San Francisco counties found that two-thirds of the public were involved in response activities.

    Local businesses are often quick to help in disasters. Greg Dulan, center, who runs a soul food restaurant and food truck, hands out hot meals to wildfire evacuees at a church in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 15, 2025.
    Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    However, much of the work local residents contribute during and after disasters goes unaccounted for in official reports.

    There is no mechanism to quantify the full extent to which a neighbor or a complete stranger helps someone flee from peril. Yet when people are trapped and minutes count, research shows it is family, friends and neighbors who are already on the scene and are most likely to save lives. It’s often everyday citizens who also take on immediate tasks such as debris removal. Providing a phone, a car, a place to do laundry, or a little bit of elbow grease can fill a gap and let firefighters and other formal responders focus on critical operations.

    Getting the right help to where it’s needed

    Every study of a large-scale disaster conducted by the Disaster Research Center has revealed some level of emergent, informal helping behavior.

    The lack of public understanding about the large number of local residents already involved, often including disaster victims themselves, can lead to an influx of outsiders eager to help. Their arrival can actually pose challenges for the disaster response.

    When too many people show up, or when people try to operate outside their areas of expertise, they can put themselves and others at further risk. Communities often need supplies, but unsolicited goods of the wrong kind or at the wrong time can create more problems than they solve.

    Local groups such as the Pasadena Community Job Center organize volunteers to send them where help is requested. This group is removing debris from streets in Pasadena, Calif., in the wake of the Eaton Fire on Jan. 14, 2025.
    Zoë Meyers/AFP via Getty Images

    So, what can you do to best support these local efforts?

    Making a financial contribution to a trusted disaster response or local organization can go a long way to providing the support communities actually need. Organizations such as the American Red Cross or Feeding America, or local community-based groups that routinely work in the area, are often best suited to help where it’s needed the most.

    Skilled help will be needed for the long term

    Also, remember that disasters don’t end when the emergency is over. Survivors of the Los Angeles-area fires face years of confusing and frustrating recovery tasks ahead.

    Offering help after the immediate threat has passed – particularly skilled help, such as experience in construction or expertise in managing insurance and FEMA paperwork – is just as important.

    For example, after fires in 1970 destroyed hundreds of homes in the San Diego area, local architects, engineers and contractors donated their time and skills to help people rebuild. Their work was coordinated by a local architect and member of the Chamber of Commerce to ensure projects were assigned to reputable volunteers.

    As we recognize the important ways that neighbors and strangers helped those around them, the broader community can support wildfire victims by responding to offering the right help as recovery needs emerge. Just about every skill that is useful in calm times will be needed in these difficult months and years ahead.

    Tricia Wachtendorf receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Arnold Ventures Foundation.

    James Kendra receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    – ref. Amid LA fires, neighbors helped each other survive – 60 years of research shows local heroes are crucial to disaster response – https://theconversation.com/amid-la-fires-neighbors-helped-each-other-survive-60-years-of-research-shows-local-heroes-are-crucial-to-disaster-response-247660

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Harrisburg University, Auditor General DeFoor, Members 1st Federal Credit Union to Launch 12th Annual Student Financial Literacy Scholarship Competition

    Source: US State of Pennsylvania

    January 24, 2025 – Harrisburg, PA

    ADVISORY – Harrisburg University, Auditor General DeFoor, Members 1st Federal Credit Union to Launch 12th Annual Student Financial Literacy Scholarship Competition


    What: Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (HU) Interim President, David Schankweiler; Pennsylvania Auditor General, Timothy L. DeFoor; and Members 1st Federal Credit Union Assistant Vice President of Community Relations, Sara Firestone, will announce the launch of a student scholarship competition aimed at increasing financial literacy in Pennsylvania. The student competition will give six Pennsylvania students a chance to win cash prizes from Harrisburg University, as well as a scholarship if and when they enroll at HU.

    When:
    Friday, January 24, 2025, 10:00 AM

    Where:
    Harrisburg University of Science and Technology Auditorium, 14th Floor
    326 Market Street
    Harrisburg, PA 17101

    MEDIA CONTACT
    April Hutcheson – Pennsylvania Department of the Auditor General: 717.787.1381 or News@PAAuditor.gov
    Jessica Warren – Harrisburg University: 717.901.5159 or JWarren2@HarrisburgU.edu
    Sara Weiser – Members 1st Federal Credit Union: 717.678.8683 or WeiserS@Members1st.org

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: MKS Instruments Completes Repricing on its Secured Term Loan B USD and EUR Tranches and Makes a $100 Million Voluntary Prepayment on its Secured Term Loan B USD

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    ANDOVER, Mass., Jan. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MKS Instruments, Inc. (NASDAQ: MKSI), a global provider of enabling technologies that transform our world, announced today that it successfully completed the repricing of its $2.5 billion and €0.6 billion secured tranche B term loans maturing in 2029. The repricing results in a reduction of the interest rate for the USD tranche B term loans from SOFR plus a margin of 225 basis points to SOFR plus 200 basis points and EUR tranche B term loans from EURIBOR plus a margin of 275 basis points to EURIBOR plus 250 basis points.

    In addition, concurrently with the repricing, MKS made a voluntary prepayment of $100 million on its USD tranche B term loans, reducing the principal amount of USD tranche B term loans from $2.6 billion to $2.5 billion.

    Based on the current interest rates, the annualized cash interest savings from the combined actions is approximately $15 million.

    “We continue to demonstrate our commitment to deleveraging our balance sheet,” said Ram Mayampurath, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. “Our latest term loan B repricing is one of many actions taken over the last 18 months to proactively seek opportunities to reduce costs and maximize free cash flow to repay debt.”

    JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Barclays Bank PLC, BofA Securities, Inc., Citibank, N.A., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., Mizuho Bank, Ltd., Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., and PNC Bank, National Association acted as the joint lead arrangers and joint bookrunners for the tranche B term loan repricing.

    About MKS Instruments
    MKS Instruments enables technologies that transform our world. We deliver foundational technology solutions to leading edge semiconductor manufacturing, electronics and packaging, and specialty industrial applications. We apply our broad science and engineering capabilities to create instruments, subsystems, systems, process control solutions and specialty chemicals technology that improve process performance, optimize productivity and enable unique innovations for many of the world’s leading technology and industrial companies. Our solutions are critical to addressing the challenges of miniaturization and complexity in advanced device manufacturing by enabling increased power, speed, feature enhancement, and optimized connectivity. Our solutions are also critical to addressing ever-increasing performance requirements across a wide array of specialty industrial applications. Additional information can be found at http://www.mks.com.

    SAFE HARBOR FOR FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
    This press release contains a forward-looking statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27 of the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act regarding MKS’ cash interest savings. This statement is only a prediction based on current assumptions and expectations. Actual events or results, including changes in interest rates, may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statement set forth herein. Readers are referred to MKS’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and any subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for a discussion of these and other important risk factors concerning MKS and its operations. MKS is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

    Company Contact:
    Paretosh Misra
    Vice President, Investor Relations
    Telephone: (978) 284-4705
    Email: paretosh.misra@mksinst.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Navigating deepfakes and synthetic media: This course helps students demystify artificial intelligence technologies

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mozhdeh Khodarahmi, Associate Library Director, Macalester College

    A Macalester College course helps students navigate a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Khanchit Khirisutchalual/Getty Images

    Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

    Title of course:

    AI Literacy and Building Resilience to Misinformation

    What prompted the idea for the course?

    As an associate director of a college library, I’ve watched artificial intelligence technologies become commonplace in society. They help shape our media. They influence our social interactions.

    And they’re also reshaping education.

    Through conversations with colleagues and students, I discovered an urgent need: a course that demystifies AI and provides students with tools to navigate a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

    This need is relevant today given the increasing prevalence of online misinformation.

    AI-driven social media algorithms – used by Facebook and TikTok, for example – and content generation tools like ChatGPT can amplify certain voices while obscuring others.

    Those using AI tools maliciously can also create entirely false content, such as deepfake videos or misleading AI-generated news articles. By understanding these dynamics, students can become more discerning consumers and responsible users of information.

    I worked with faculty member Michael Griffin and associate director of academic technology Tamatha Perlman to design a course that introduces students to several AI fields.

    They include machine learning – how computer systems imitate the way humans learn – and deep learning, which uses artificial neural networks to learn from data.

    We also delve into generative AI – a type of AI that can produce images, videos and other forms of data – and prompt engineering, which designs prompts to guide AI models.

    What does the course explore?

    The course explores two themes: AI literacy and building resilience to misinformation.

    Students learn AI technologies such as natural language processing, which allows machines to understand and generate human language, and generative AI. They explore how these tools influence the ways information is created, shared and interpreted.

    We then delve into the ethical implications of AI, from data privacy to bias and algorithmic transparency – the principle of making AI decision-making processes understandable and open for review.

    The idea is to foster a nuanced understanding of AI’s potential benefits. One example is AI tools that personalize educational content by adapting lessons to a student’s learning pace and style.

    We also examine its potential pitfalls. Some AI hiring tools, for example, have discriminated against specific demographic groups, such as systems that disproportionately rejected women’s resumes for technical jobs.

    The course also explores cognitive biases, or systematic patterns of deviation from rationality in judgment, which can make people more susceptible to misinformation.

    We look at confirmation bias, the inclination to search for information that supports one’s preexisting beliefs. We also examine recency effect, the tendency to give more weight to recent information over earlier data.

    Students experiment with AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and NotebookLM. They do so to examine misinformation case studies and participate in discussions on some complex questions.

    They include: When does AI assist in learning? When does it hinder learning? How can AI be used more responsibly? How can we know when it’s being manipulated?

    Why is this course relevant now?

    AI tools are increasingly embedded in social media and news content. This makes it critical for students to discern credible sources from misleading content.

    As AI technologies evolve, so too do the methods for spreading misinformation.

    They include AI-generated images and synthetic media, which is digitally created or altered content designed to appear authentic.

    All of these technologies can be difficult to identify and authenticate. This course gives students the tools to make informed decisions in a digital age.

    What’s a critical lesson from the course?

    Many students are surprised to learn that AI-powered platforms tailor content to match their interests.

    For example, watching a series of videos on a particular topic can lead to being shown increasingly similar content, reinforcing existing beliefs. This, in turn, can shape perceptions and distort reality.

    To address this, we introduce students to practical techniques for broadening their information sources. They also learn to cross-reference facts and scrutinize AI-curated content.

    For instance, we practice a technique called “lateral reading,” where students verify information by examining multiple sources simultaneously.

    What materials does the course feature?

    UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy Curriculum – E-version inspired our syllabus.

    Besides academic journal articles, we draw extensively from articles and videos published by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major news outlets to analyze misinformation stories. These sources offer ample real-life examples, enabling students to engage with timely and relevant case studies.

    We also review the AI Competency Framework for Students and the AI Competency Framework for Teachers, launched by UNESCO in September 2024. These frameworks provide valuable insights into fostering AI literacy and ethical engagement with AI technologies.

    What will the course prepare students to do?

    The goal is to empower students to approach digital information with a critical and informed mindset. This will position them as responsible citizens in a world increasingly shaped by AI.

    The course will also help students feel more confident when identifying credible sources, cross-checking information and making sense of AI-powered content. These skills will serve students well in their academic and personal lives.

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

    – ref. Navigating deepfakes and synthetic media: This course helps students demystify artificial intelligence technologies – https://theconversation.com/navigating-deepfakes-and-synthetic-media-this-course-helps-students-demystify-artificial-intelligence-technologies-243689

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: President Trump promises to make government efficient − and he’ll run into the same roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, among others

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jennifer Selin, Associate Professor of Law, Arizona State University

    President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

    As President Donald Trump issued a slew of executive orders and directives on his first day of his second administration, he explained his actions by saying, “It’s all about common sense.”

    For over a century, presidents have pursued initiatives to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government, couching those efforts in language similar to Trump’s.

    Many of these, like Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which he appointed billionaire Elon Musk to run, have been designed to capitalize on the expertise of people outside of government. The idea often cited as inspiration for these efforts: The private sector knows how to be efficient and nimble and strives for excellence; government doesn’t.

    But government, and government service, is about providing something that the private sector can’t. And outsiders often don’t think about the accountability requirements that the laws and Constitution of the United States impose on government workers and agencies.

    Congress, though, can help address these problems and check inappropriate proposals. It can also stand in the way of reform.

    Charles E. Merriam, left, and Louis Brownlow, members of the President’s Reorganization Committee, leave the White House after discussing government reorganization with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Sept. 23, 1938.
    Harris & Ewing, photographer, Library of Congress

    Proposing reform is nothing new

    Perhaps the most famous group to work with a president on improving government was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Committee on Administrative Management, established in 1936.

    That group, commonly referred to as the Brownlow Committee, noted that while critics predicted Roosevelt would bring “decay, destruction, and death of democracy,” the executive branch – and the president who sat atop it – was one of the “very greatest” contributions to modern democracy.

    The committee argued that the president was unable to do his job because the executive branch was badly organized, federal employees lacked skills and character, and the budget process needed reform. So it proposed a series of changes designed to increase presidential power over government to enhance performance. Congress went along with some of these proposals, giving the president more staff and authority to reorganize the executive branch.

    Since then, almost every president has put together similar recommendations. For example, Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed former President Herbert Hoover to lead advisory commissions designed to recommend changes to the federal government. President Jimmy Carter launched a series of government improvement projects, and President George W. Bush even created scorecards to rank agencies according to their performance.

    In his first term, Trump issued a mandate for reform to reorganize government for the 21st century.

    This time around, Trump has taken executive actions to freeze government hiring, create a new entity to promote government efficiency, and give him the ability to fire high-ranking administrators who influence policy.

    Most presidential proposals generally fail to come to fruition. But they often spark conversations in Congress and the media about executive power, the effectiveness of federal programs, and what government can do better.

    Most presidents have tried the same thing

    Historically, most presidents and their advisers – and indeed most scholars – have agreed that government bureaucracy is not designed in ways that promote efficiency. But that is intentional: Stanford political scientist Terry Moe has written that “American public bureaucracy is not designed to be effective. The bureaucracy arises out of politics, and its design reflects the interests, strategies, and compromises of those who exercise political power.”

    A common presidential response to this practical reality is to propose government changes that make it look more like the private sector. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan brought together 161 corporate executives overseen by industrialist J. Peter Grace to make recommendations to eliminate government waste and inefficiency, based on their experiences leading successful corporations.

    In 1993, President Bill Clinton authorized Vice President Al Gore to launch an effort to reinvent the federal government into one that worked better and cost less.

    The Clinton administration created teams in every major federal agency, modeled after the private sector’s efficiency standards, to move government “From Red Tape to Results,” as the title of the administration’s plan said.

    An introductory page from the 1993 National Performance Review executive summary, commissioned by the Clinton administration.
    CIA.gov

    Presidential attempts to make government look and work more like people think the private sector works often include adjustments to the terms of federal employment to reward employees who excel at their jobs.

    In 1905, for example, President Theodore Roosevelt established a Committee on Department Methods to examine how the federal government could recruit and retain highly qualified employees. One hundred years later, federal agencies still experienced challenges](https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-03-2.pdf) related to hiring and retaining people who could effectively achieve agency missions.

    President Bill Clinton applauds as Vice President Al Gore speaks at a press conference on March 3, 1994, at which Gore gave Clinton a report of the National Performance Review.
    Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images

    So why haven’t these plans worked?

    At least the past five presidents have faced problems in making long-term changes to government.

    In part, this is because government reorganizations and operational reforms like those contemplated by Trump require Congress to make adjustments to the laws of the United States, or at least give the president and federal agencies the money required to invest in changes.

    Consider, for example, presidential proposals to invest in new technologies, which are a large part of Trump and Musk’s plans to improve government efficiency. Since at least 1910, when President William Howard Taft established a Commission on Economy and Efficiency to address the “unnecessarily complicated and expensive” way the federal government handled and distributed government documents, presidents have recommended centralizing authority to mandate federal agencies’ use of new technologies to make government more efficient.

    But transforming government through technology requires money, people and time. Presidential plans for government-wide change are contingent upon the degree to which federal agencies can successfully implement them.

    To sidestep these problems, some presidents have proposed that the government work with the private sector. For example, Trump announced a joint venture with technology companies to invest in the government’s artificial intelligence infrastructure.

    Yet as I have found in my previous research, government investment in new technology first requires an assessment of agencies’ current technological skills and the impact technology will have on agency functions, including those related to governmental transparency, accountability and constitutional due process. It’s not enough to go out and buy software that tech giants recommend agencies acquire.

    The things that government agencies do, such as regulating the economy, promoting national security and protecting the environment, are incredibly complicated. It’s often hard to see their impact right away.

    Recognizing this, Congress has designed a complex set of laws to prevent political interference with federal employees, who tend to look at problems long term. For example, as I have found in my work with Paul Verkuil, former chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, Congress intentionally writes laws that require certain government positions to be held by experts who can work in their jobs without worrying about politics.

    Congress also writes the laws the federal employees administer, oversees federal programs and decides how much money to appropriate to those programs each year.

    So by design, anything labeled a “presidential commission on modernizing/fixing/refocusing government” tells only part of the story and sets out an impossible task. The president can’t make it happen alone. Nor can Elon Musk.

    Jennifer L. Selin has received funding and/or support for her research on the executive branch from the Administrative Conference of the United States. The views in this piece are those of the author and do not represent the position of the Administrative Conference or the federal government.

    – ref. President Trump promises to make government efficient − and he’ll run into the same roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, among others – https://theconversation.com/president-trump-promises-to-make-government-efficient-and-hell-run-into-the-same-roadblocks-as-presidents-taft-roosevelt-roosevelt-truman-eisenhower-carter-reagan-clinton-and-bush-among-others-247957

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Newly discovered photos of Nazi deportations show Jewish victims as they were last seen alive

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Wolf Gruner, Professor of History, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

    Deportation of Jews in Bielefeld, Germany, on Dec. 13, 1941. Courtesy City Archive Bielefeld, CC BY-SA

    The Holocaust was the first mass atrocity to be heavily photographed.

    The mass production and distribution of cameras in the 1930s and 1940s enabled Nazi officials and ordinary people to widely document Germany’s persecution of Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities.

    I co-direct an international research project to collect every available image documenting Nazi mass deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti, as well as euthanasia victims, in Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945. The most recently discovered series of images will be unveiled on Jan. 27, 2025 – Holocaust Remembrance Day.

    In most cases, these are the very last pictures taken of Holocaust victims before they were deported and perished. That fact gives the project its name, #LastSeen.

    A few of the images we’ve tracked down were taken by Jewish people, not Nazi officials, offering a rare glimpse of Nazi mass deportations from a victim’s perspective. As descendants of survivors help our researchers identify the deportees in these images and tell their stories, we give previously faceless victims a voice.

    Jewish Germans assemble for deportation in Breslau, Germany, in November 1941.
    Courtesy of Regional Association of Jewish Communities in Saxony, Germany, CC BY-SA

    A growing archive

    The #LastSeen project is a collaboration between several German academic and educational institutions and the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research in the United States. When it began in late 2021, researchers knew of a few dozen deportation images of Jews from 27 German towns that had been gathered for a 2011-2012 exhibition in Berlin.

    After contacting 1,700 public and private archives in Germany and worldwide to find more, #LastSeen has now collected visual evidence from 60 cities and towns in Nazi Germany. Of these, we’ve analyzed 36 series containing over 420 images, including dozens of never-before-seen photo series from 20 towns.

    Most photographs of Nazi mass deportations from local archives published in our digital atlas were taken by the perpetrators, who documented the event for the police or municipality. That has heavily shaped our visual understanding of these crimes, because they display victims as a faceless mass. When individuals were depicted, it was most often through an antisemitic lens.

    The LastSeen digital atlas shows locations of deportations where visual documentation has been uncovered.
    Screenshot, LastSeen, CC BY-SA

    We have, however, obtained a handful of images taken from a victim’s perspective. In January 2024, the #LastSeen team shared newly discovered photographs showing the Nazi deportations in what was then Breslau, Germany – today Wroclaw, Poland.

    They were sent to us for analysis by Steffen Heidrich, a staff member of the Regional Association of Jewish Communities in Saxony, Germany, who came across an envelope titled “miscellaneous” while reorganizing his archive. It contained 13 deportation photographs – the last images taken of dozens of Jewish victims before they were transported from Breslau to Nazi-occupied Lithuania and massacred in November 1941.

    Jewish resistance

    Many of these pictures in this series show a large, mixed age group of men and women wearing the yellow star – the notorious Nazi-mandated sign for Jews – gathering outside with bundles of their belongings. Some are taken from a peculiar angle, from behind a tree or a wall, suggesting they were snapped clandestinely.

    People waiting for deportation in Breslau in November 1941.
    Courtesy of Regional Association of Jewish Communities in Saxony, Germany, CC BY-SA

    Given the deportation assembly point for the Breslau Jews, a guarded local beer garden, our researchers knew that only a person with permission to access that property could have shot these pictures.

    For these two reasons, we concluded that an employee of the Jewish community of Breslau must have documented the Nazi crimes – most likely Albert Hadda, a Jewish architect and photographer who clandestinely photographed the November 1938 pogrom in Breslau.

    Hadda’s marriage to a Christian partially protected him from persecution. Between 1941 and 1943, the city’s Jewish community tasked him with caring for the deportees at the assembly point until their forced removal.

    These 13 recently discovered pictures constitute the most comprehensive series illuminating the crime of mass deportations from a victim’s perspective in Nazi Germany. Their unearthing is testimony to the recently rediscovered widespread individual resistance by ordinary Jews who fought Nazi persecution.

    Documenting Fulda

    Our project has also identified new deportation photos taken in the German town of Fulda in December 1941, during a snowstorm.

    Previously, historians knew of only three pictures of this deportation event. Preserved in the city archive, they show the deportees at the Fulda train station during heavy snowfall.

    We discovered two new images of the same Nazi deportation, apparently taken by the same photographer, in a videotaped survivor interview in the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles.

    In 1996, the Shoah Foundation interviewed Miriam Berline, née Gottlieb, the daughter of a successful Orthodox Jewish merchant in Fulda. At the end of the two-hour interview, Berline held two photographs up to the camera. They clearly show the same snowy deportation in Fulda.

    Screenshot from Miriam Berline’s interview about the Fulda deportations.
    USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, CC BY-SA

    Berline, born in 1925, escaped Nazi Germany in 1939. She did not remember how her family obtained the images but recalled the photographer as Otto Weissbach, a “wonderful” man who had helped Fulda’s Jewish families.

    Our researchers investigated and learned his name was Arthur Weissbach, a non-Jewish neighbor of the Gottliebs. The factory he owned still exists. Descendants of Jewish families have since confirmed that he kept valuables for them and took care of elderly relatives who stayed behind.

    Weissbach’s niece said he was a passionate hobby photographer. Since Weissbach kept contact with survivors after the war, he might have given the images to the Gottlieb family. Today, the family’s copies are lost, but their existence is preserved in Berline’s video interview at the USC Shoah Foundation.

    The pictures show the Jews at the Fulda train station on Dec. 9, 1941 – revealing how Nazi deportations happened in plain view.

    The day before, Jewish men and women from around Fulda had been summoned and spent the night at a local school gym. In the morning, they were taken to the train station and forced by police to board a train to Kassel, in central Germany, and then eastward onto Riga, in Nazi-occupied Latvia.

    In total, 1,031 Jews were deported from Kassel to Riga. Only 12 from Fulda survived.

    Identifying the deportation victims

    It is difficult to identify the people in the photos we discover. So far, we’ve published 279 biographies in the digital atlas.

    In the future, artificial intelligence may help us identify more people from the photos in our collection. But for now, this process takes exhaustive research with the help of local researchers and descendants of survivors, whose names are known from archived transport lists.

    Families often struggle to recognize individuals in these images, but sometimes they have family photos that help us do so.

    Take, for example, this posed family portrait of two young girls. They are Susanne and Tamara Cohn.

    Susanne and Tamara Cohn, circa 1939.
    Private Archive, CC BY-SA

    Relatives of the Cohn family had this photo. It, along with data from the local Nazi transport list, established that two girls photographed in one of his Breslau deportation shots were the daughters of Willy Cohn.

    Cohn, a well-known German-Jewish medieval historian and high school teacher in Breslau, kept a detailed diary about the persecution of the town’s Jews from 1933 to 1941. It was unearthed and published in the 1990s.

    This photo, below, may be the last picture ever taken of his children with their mother, Gertrud.

    Gertrud, Susanne and Tamara Cohn, Breslau, November 1941.
    #LastSeen Project, CC BY-SA

    New insights

    The #LastSeen research project is generating new insights into the history of Nazi mass deportations, new methodologies for photo analysis and new tools for Holocaust education.

    In addition to the digital atlas, which has been visited by more than 50,000 people since its launch in 2023, we have developed several award-winning educational tools, including an online game that invites students to search for clues, facts and images of Nazi deportations in an artificial attic.

    In workshops for teachers and seminars with students, #LastSeen teaches the history of Nazi deportations and demonstrates how historical photo research works. In Fulda, for example, high schoolers helped us locate the exact places where the photographs were taken.

    Those pictures will be published in our atlas on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025. A public commemoration in Fulda will feature the local students’ contributions.

    Depending on fundraising, we hope to extend the #LastSeen project beyond Germany. Collecting images from all 20-plus European countries annexed or occupied by the Nazis will help us better understand these crimes and advance research and education in new ways.

    Wolf Gruner is the director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide, which is a partner of the multiinstitutional research project #LastSeen.

    – ref. Newly discovered photos of Nazi deportations show Jewish victims as they were last seen alive – https://theconversation.com/newly-discovered-photos-of-nazi-deportations-show-jewish-victims-as-they-were-last-seen-alive-246929

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: One large Milky Way galaxy or many galaxies? 100 years ago, a young Edwin Hubble settled astronomy’s ‘Great Debate’

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

    The Andromeda galaxy helped Edwin Hubble settle a great debate in astronomy. Stocktrek Images via Getty Images

    A hundred years ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble dramatically expanded the size of the known universe. At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 1925, a paper read by one of his colleagues on his behalf reported that the Andromeda nebula, also called M31, was nearly a million light years away – too remote to be a part of the Milky Way.

    Hubble’s work opened the door to the study of the universe beyond our galaxy. In the century since Hubble’s pioneering work, astronomers like me have learned that the universe is vast and contains trillions of galaxies.

    Nature of the nebulae

    In 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei used the newly invented telescope to show that the Milky Way was composed of a huge number of faint stars. For the next 300 years, astronomers assumed that the Milky Way was the entire universe.

    As astronomers scanned the night sky with larger telescopes, they were intrigued by fuzzy patches of light called nebulae. Toward the end of the 18th century, astronomer William Herschel used star counts to map out the Milky Way. He cataloged a thousand new nebulae and clusters of stars. He believed that the nebulae were objects within the Milky Way.

    Charles Messier also produced a catalog of over 100 prominent nebulae in 1781. Messier was interested in comets, so his list was a set of fuzzy objects that might be mistaken for comets. He intended for comet hunters to avoid them since they did not move across the sky.

    As more data piled up, 19th century astronomers started to see that the nebulae were a mixed bag. Some were gaseous, star-forming regions, such as the Orion nebula, or M42 – the 42nd object in Messier’s catalog – while others were star clusters such as the Pleiades, or M45.

    A third category – nebulae with spiral structure – particularly intrigued astronomers. The Andromeda nebula, M31, was a prominent example. It’s visible to the naked eye from a dark site.

    The Andromeda galaxy, then known as the Andromeda nebula, is a bright spot in the sky that intrigued early astronomers.

    Astronomers as far back as the mid-18th century had speculated that some nebulae might be remote systems of stars or “island universes,” but there was no data to support this hypothesis. Island universes referred to the idea that there could be enormous stellar systems outside the Milky Way – but astronomers now just call these systems galaxies.

    In 1920, astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis held a Great Debate. Shapley argued that the spiral nebulae were small and in the Milky Way, while Curtis took a more radical position that they were independent galaxies, extremely large and distant.

    At the time, the debate was inconclusive. Astronomers now know that galaxies are isolated systems of stars, much smaller than the space between them.

    Hubble makes his mark

    Edwin Hubble was young and ambitious. At the of age 30, he arrived at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California just in time to use the new Hooker 100-inch telescope, at the time the largest in the world.

    Edwin Hubble uses the telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory.
    Hulton Archives via Getty Images

    He began taking photographic plates of the spiral nebulae. These glass plates recorded images of the night sky using a light-sensitive emulsion covering their surface. The telescope’s size let it make images of very faint objects, and its high-quality mirror allowed it to distinguish individual stars in some of the nebulae.

    Estimating distances in astronomy is challenging. Think of how hard it is to estimate the distance of someone pointing a flashlight at you on a dark night. Galaxies come in a very wide range of sizes and masses. Measuring a galaxy’s brightness or apparent size is not a good guide to its distance.

    Hubble leveraged a discovery made by Henrietta Swan Leavitt 10 years earlier. She worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a “human computer,” laboriously measuring the positions and brightness of thousands of stars on photographic plates.

    She was particularly interested in Cepheid variables, which are stars whose brightness pulses regularly, so they get brighter and dimmer with a particular period. She found a relationship between their variation period, or pulse, and their intrinsic brightness or luminosity.

    Once you measure a Cepheid’s period, you can calculate its distance from how bright it appears using the inverse square law. The more distant the star is, the fainter it appears.

    Hubble worked hard, taking images of spiral nebulae every clear night and looking for the telltale variations of Cepheid variables. By the end of 1924, he had found 12 Cepheids in M31. He calculated M31’s distance as a prodigious 900,000 light years away, though he underestimated its true distance – about 2.5 million light years – by not realizing there were two different types of Cepheid variables.

    His measurements marked the end of the Great Debate about the Milky Way’s size and the nature of the nebulae. Hubble wrote about his discovery to Harlow Shapley, who had argued that the Milky Way encompassed the entire universe.

    “Here is the letter that destroyed my universe,” Shapley remarked.

    Always eager for publicity, Hubble leaked his discovery to The New York Times five weeks before a colleague presented his paper at the astronomers’ annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

    An expanding universe of galaxies

    But Hubble wasn’t done. His second major discovery also transformed astronomers’ understanding of the universe. As he dispersed the light from dozens of galaxies into a spectrum, which recorded the amount of light at each wavelength, he noticed that the light was always shifted to longer or redder wavelengths.

    Light from the galaxy passes through a prism or reflects off a diffraction grating in a telescope, which captures the intensity of light from blue to red.

    Astronomers call a shift to longer wavelengths a redshift.

    It seemed that these redshifted galaxies were all moving away from the Milky Way.

    Hubble’s results suggested the farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was moving away from Earth. Hubble got the lion’s share of the credit for this discovery, but Lowell Observatory astronomer Vesto Slipher, who noticed the same phenomenon but didn’t publish his data, also anticipated that result.

    Hubble referred to galaxies having recession velocities, or speeds of moving away from the Earth, but he never figured out that they were moving away from Earth because the universe is getting bigger.

    Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre made that connection by realizing that the theory of general relativity described an expanding universe. He recognized that space expanding in between the galaxies could cause the redshifts, making it seem like they were moving farther away from each other and from Earth.

    Lemaitre was the first to argue that the expansion must have begun during the big bang.

    Edwin Hubble is the namesake for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which has spent decades observing faraway galaxies.
    NASA via AP

    NASA named its flagship space observatory after Hubble, and it has been used to study galaxies for 35 years. Astronomers routinely observe galaxies that are thousands of times fainter and more distant than galaxies observed in the 1920s. The James Webb Space Telescope has pushed the envelope even farther.

    The current record holder is a galaxy a staggering 34 billion light years away, seen just 200 million years after the big bang, when the universe was 20 times smaller than it is now. Edwin Hubble would be amazed to see such progress.

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

    – ref. One large Milky Way galaxy or many galaxies? 100 years ago, a young Edwin Hubble settled astronomy’s ‘Great Debate’ – https://theconversation.com/one-large-milky-way-galaxy-or-many-galaxies-100-years-ago-a-young-edwin-hubble-settled-astronomys-great-debate-246759

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Zack Polanski hosts Veganuary with Viva to push Mayor’s plant-based policies forward

    Source: Mayor of London

     Should the London Fire Brigade’s catering have more plant-based options? 

    Can sustainable food be required in every Free School Meal?  

    How vegan-friendly is City Hall’s procurement chain?   

    To jumpstart the Mayor of London’s plant-based policies and celebrate Veganuary, Zack Polanski, Green Party Londonwide Assembly Member, brought together environmental campaigners, animal welfare advocates, procurement advisors, policy officers, and food science academics for a night of networking and brainstorming.  

    Zack’s event was co-hosted by Viva!, the UK’s leading vegan campaigning charity.  

    Following the event, Zack will now compile and consolidate ideas shared at the event and present a core set of plant-based proposals to London’s Mayor.  

    Reflecting on the night’s success, Green Party London Assembly Member Zack Polanski said: 

    “Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate Veganuary! People coming together with a plan for how to make our city better and kinder – It really felt like London and democracy at it’s very best.  

    “I look forward to taking some of these incredible ideas to the Mayor next month, and continuing to push for a more animal friendly, sustainable London.” 

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Global: As Syria ponders a democratic future: 5 lessons from the Arab Spring

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Robert Kubinec, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina

    The fall of Bashar Assad’s dictatorship in December 2024 has ushered in a nerve-wracking time of hope and fear for Syrians concerning future governance in the long-war-torn country.

    While it’s unclear what exact political path Syria will take, the dilemmas the country faces are similar to the experiences of other Arab countries more than a decade ago. In the winter of 2010, an outbreak of protests in Tunisia spread across the region, toppling several regimes in what became known as the Arab Uprisings.

    While some countries – Egypt and Tunisia – became democracies, albeit briefly, others, like Yemen, Libya and Syria, descended into violence.

    In the intervening years, political science scholars from across the world have examined these political transformations, looking at why so many of Arab Uprising countries failed to continue down the path of democratic reform. As a political scientist with expertise in the region, I have distilled this research into five key lessons that could help guide Syria now, as it seeks to build a stable and democratic state.

    1. Islamist politicians are politicians first, Islamists second

    One of the most pressing questions when considering Syria’s post-Assad political direction is the role played by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the overthrow of Assad.

    Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a former al-Qaida affiliate that has since backed away from extremist ideology – though there are worries that this moderation is temporary. While some observers may think that all Islamist groups want to rigidly enforce a narrow interpretation of Islamic law like the Taliban in Afghanistan, research shows a far wider range of possibilities for the policies Islamist groups implement while in office.

    For example, the Tunisian Islamist group Ennahda stalwartly defended democracy and helped write a liberal constitution after the country ousted Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. Similarly, in Egypt after strongman leader Hosni Mubarak was removed the same year, the Muslim Brotherhood, a once-banned Islamist movement, competed successfully and fairly in the democratic process, though, of course, it faced the same challenges of any governing party in implementing policies once in power.

    But nor is such a path predetermined. Turkey’s recent democratic backslide and embrace of authoritarianism shows that Islamist politicians like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can also undermine democracy when it serves their interests.

    What political science research has turned up time and again is that Islamist politicians are like politicians everywhere: When they need to win elections, they will gravitate toward voter concerns. According to regional survey data, a majority of Arabs express a preference for religious leaders who are apolitical.

    If Syria becomes a democracy, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham will, I believe, likely have to continue to embrace moderation. But whether the group backs democracy depends on the organization’s calculation of what its future looks like in democracy versus more authoritarian forms of governance. Broad negotiations that involve all parties in Syria can help convince Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that continuing on a path of moderation is in their best interests. While no one can forecast with certainty what Syria’s new institutions will look like, research shows that Islamists are just as likely as secular parties to support democratic norms.

    2. Ending corruption is all important

    One of the drivers of the Arab Spring and the Syrian revolution was anger over corrupt business deals. Indeed, relatives and cronies of Assad owned de facto monopolies over lucrative industries like cellphone networks. Unwinding these corrupt legacies and opening industries to competition and licensing should be an overriding priority for those seeking a less autocratic future.

    In Tunisia, established businesses fought anti-corruption reforms because they said it would hurt investment and growth. But the reason that economic growth is so poor in many parts of the Middle East is precisely due to these entrenched companies.

    Syria’s diaspora has many capable businesspeople who can return and found innovative companies if the new government opens up investment and entrepreneurship beyond people with political connections.

    3. Political disagreement is OK

    Many hope that Syria’s new government will be freely and fairly elected. For democracy to work, though, it must successfully implement changes in response to voters’ concerns.

    Initially, Syria will need to decide on basic rules like a constitution, which will involve many diverse groups. This broad coalition may have an easier time reaching compromises because of the opposition’s shared experiences under the prior dictatorship. Trying to maintain this unity, however, can mask important political debates that need to occur.

    In order for voters to see change, electoral competition must yield actual policy change. In Tunisia, top-heavy coalitions of parties promoted unity instead of tackling difficult decisions that resonated with people’s daily concerns. Over time, voters stopped identifying with parties and lost confidence in elections. Tunisia’s elected president, Kais Saied, took advantage of this apathy to shut down the country’s parliament – an action that was broadly popular despite the loss of democracy.

    A practical response to this concern is to build strong parties, a cause that pro-democracy organizations like the National Democratic Institute are very good at. Effective parties help voters by putting together a package of policies that will get through parliament and building coalitions.

    While Syria’s opposition has a lot of experience with waging war, it has relatively little in the way of running campaigns and building strong party brands. These more mundane goals are the key connective tissue that makes democracy work.

    4. Bureaucracies should serve the public

    Elections choose leaders, but lasting, popular change also requires bureaucrats who implement new policies – what is known as “horizontal accountability.” Egypt’s post-2011 democratic government left many state institutions untouched and later faced a revolt from autonomous anti-democratic agencies. Meanwhile, in Sudan, which saw a brief interlude of liberalization after the ouster of its longtime dictator, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019, democratic reformers launched an ambitious overhaul of state institutions that still failed because bureaucrats lobbied politicians for support.

    Without cooperative bureaucrats, basic state services fail, which leads to phenomena like crime waves and a loss of confidence in democracy.

    The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led government in Syria has already started reforming bureaucracies by prosecuting high-ranking officials from the prior regime while retaining the rank and file. Effective oversight, though, requires participation of elected leaders with the legitimacy to demand accountability from bureaucrats. For those who want to be involved in Syria’s transition, providing technical assistance to quickly rebuild ministries is one way to increase the odds of a successful transition.

    5. Keep the military close

    If Syria’s new government collapses, history suggests the military will be the most likely culprit. Egypt’s military undermined the country’s democratic transition by covertly supporting the anti-Islamist opposition. Sudan’s military acquiesced to protester demands for new leadership but kept de facto control of important government institutions.

    Recent research shows that keeping the military in check means giving it a stake in democracy by funding needed items like salaries and equipment. Just as important, however, is establishing civilian control over the military by mandating that the military report to elected leaders about its budgets, policies, and deployments. Military aid is necessary, yes, but still must be tied to strict commitments to civilian control.

    The future is Syria’s

    Political transitions are too complex to embark on easy forecasts. But the experience of nations who saw democracy rise and fall in the Arab Spring and subsequent winter can help Syria’s new leaders avoid costly political mistakes.

    Ultimately, though, the fate of the country rests with its own people. They are the ones who survived Assad’s regime – and who will make the most important decisions for Syria’s future.

    I know and have co-authored with people who wrote some of the studies that are linked to in this article.

    – ref. As Syria ponders a democratic future: 5 lessons from the Arab Spring – https://theconversation.com/as-syria-ponders-a-democratic-future-5-lessons-from-the-arab-spring-246203

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Defense News: NPS’ Latest CubeSat Launch Furthers International Collaboration in Space

    Source: United States Navy

    At 11:09 a.m. PST, Jan. 14, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) – in partnership with NPS and the New Zealand military’s Defence Science & Technology unit (DST) – launched Otter, an NPS CubeSat suite aboard the commercial SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter 12 rocket from Space Launch Complex-4E Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

    Its mission: to explore new technological developments and experimental concepts to operate in an increasingly complex space environment.

    The Otter launch occurs at a time of an upswing in space technology investment, particularly in the commercial sector. As NPS leans in on partnering with commercial entities in all Naval Science and Technology Focus Areas, the Otter spacecraft is a prime example of the benefits to its students from these relationships, noted Dr. Wenschel Lan, interim chair of NPS’ Space Systems Academic Group (SSAG), an interdisciplinary academic association serving as the focal point for space-related research at the university.

    “In working with our commercial vendors, we have lessons learned that we continue to share with our students – from acquisitions, to spacecraft integration and testing, and spacecraft operations – that are relevant and representative of both the successes and challenges for the aerospace industry,” she said. “In gaining first-hand knowledge and experience with a space mission life cycle through these types of opportunities at NPS, our students are better prepared to serve as Space professionals in the Navy, throughout the DOD, and beyond.”

    Two hours after the rocket’s successful launch and Otter’s separation, Dr. Lan and her team were huddled in NPS’ Space Operations Center (SOC), the university’s heart for interacting with space assets.

    As the satellite arced across Canada into the Northern Pacific 515 km above the earth, the team prepared to make first contact.

    “We’re tracking!” exclaimed Alex Savattone, SSAG faculty associate for research involved with the daily management of the CubeSat missions, as the satellite’s beacon came into focus.

    Word reached the office of then 78th Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, himself an ’89 NPS alumnus with a master’s in Space Systems Engineering, who offered his congratulations.

    “Well done to the NPS student-faculty team and all the partners involved,” Secretary Del Toro said. “The strength of NPS’ innovative space education program is a force multiplier, impacting critical talent development needs and shaping future technology concepts.”

    Several days later, the Otter team tracked down the orbit plane, transmitted several commands, and the data began streaming to the NPS SOC: good status confirmed.

    While NPS is known for having the most alumni of any graduate school become astronauts, NPS also has a strong history in developing standardized and modular nanosatellites such as CubeSats, which have many benefits over costly traditional satellites. Beginning with the NPS Petite Amateur Navy Satellite (PANSAT) launched into low Earth orbit (LEO) in 1998 aboard the shuttle Discovery, the NPS program evolved into CubeSat designs and launchers, now commonly used by commercial providers. Made up of 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm cubes called units (U), CubeSats are relatively inexpensive to design, develop and deploy payloads into orbit and are ideal for applied education and research.

    Otter is a 6U CubeSat built and operated by NPS on behalf of NRO. Its primary payload, Tui, is a DST-built risk reduction platform for space-based maritime domain awareness capabilities. Two secondary payloads built by NPS, an X-band transmitter and an LED on-orbit payload (LOOP), will help develop and evaluate communication technologies and concepts of operations on future CubeSat missions.

    “The NRO is always looking for innovative ways to advance our capabilities in space,” said Dr. Aaron Weiner, director of the NRO’s Advanced Systems & Technology Directorate. “This demonstrator, developed in coordination with academia and an international ally, showcases the value in rapidly qualifying low-cost, commercial off-the-shelf hardware.”

    Otter is the second collaborative CubeSat mission run together with NRO and DST. The first, named Mola, launched in March 2024 with Tui’s predecessor, Korimako. Two NPS-built payloads are also manifested on Otter – an X-band transmitter and the next iteration of LOOP to continue experimenting with line-of-sight communications by using two banks of LEDs, transmitting in green and near-infrared wavelengths, that are capable of modulating light for basic messaging. More than 20 NPS students will have directly contributed to the Mola and Otter CubeSats as part of their master’s and Ph.D. research.

    Both CubeSat missions are directly supported by the NPS maintained and operated Mobile CubeSat Command and Control (MC3) network, a Department of Defense-sponsored effort that began in 2011 at NPS. Since then, SSAG has cultivated partnerships with nine other tracking facilities nationwide, including three other DOD service universities, civilian institutions, industry partners, and governmental agencies. These all work together within a distributed operations network that shares tracking responsibilities via parallel ground stations.

    Tui very much fits into this, according to Dr. Lan. The highly collaborative mission will provide space-based maritime awareness as well as serve as a pathfinder for policy development.

    “The capability that we’re developing is to add sensors in the space layer to be able to see what’s going on in the water,” she said. “It’s not just a camera, but a lot of different phenomenologies that you can sense from space to then help paint the picture of what’s going on.”

    The project also represents a risk reduction effort in the sense that it utilizes low-cost, off-the-shelf current technologies to explore the art of the possible.

    “We’re spending a small amount of money to buy down the risks so that when they actually do a full program of record, they’re not going into it blind,” Dr. Lan stated.

    The NPS-built payloads, the X-band transmitter and LOOP projects, also employ the latest in rapidly developing commercial technology. The X-band transmitter, operating in the microwave radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum, is ideal for space communications optimized for data-intensive payloads.

    The LOOP project utilizes a ground-based optical telescope to observe the LEDs on the CubeSat to evaluate how to track objects in low Earth orbit. Otter is a significant step forward toward the future goal of high-rate optical communications using the MC3 network.

    Now that Otter is launched, its operations will be undertaken by NPS faculty and students.

    “Our operations have changed since the launch of Mola,” observed Savattone. “During initial commissioning, our team manually ran each pass opportunity to check the satellite’s health and troubleshoot as needed. Currently, operations are predominantly automated. Mola is provided with a schedule for executing specific sequences, such as a telemetry downlink to one of the ground stations. Today’s daily operations primarily involve monitoring the health of the entire system, including ground stations, cloud resources, and satellites.”

    Otter also builds on lessons learned from the Mola mission, he said. “One significant lesson learned is the critical importance of having comprehensive knowledge of all subsystems. Since we procured the satellite buses from a commercial vendor instead of constructing the entire satellite ourselves, it took our team some time to understand the complexities of each system. Mola facilitated our learning process regarding the efficient operation of Otter and served as a pathfinder for streamlining our flight operations.”

    “The Otter mission was a success not only in its launch, but also in the opportunities it afforded the NPS students who worked on it,” said Dr. Giovanni Minelli, SSAG research associate professor and co-principal investigator for its CubeSat program along with Dr. Lan.

    “Most importantly, it serves as a means of providing hands-on experience with the design, test, launch and operation of a real spacecraft to complement the theoretical coursework offered to our students,” he said. “We believe practically applying lessons learned in the classroom helps cement understanding of difficult concepts and better prepares our warrior scholars for leveraging space to advance our military’s priorities after graduation.”

    “Furthermore,” Dr. Minelli noted, “the CubeSat program grants students the chance to advance technologies jointly developed by international government research institutions.”

    “The students get to be involved in a mission with real stakeholders, requiring the successful operation of the spacecraft, its payloads, and the supporting ground infrastructure to collect and disseminate experimental test results to our strategic partners,” he said. “An ideal training opportunity, this ‘rubber meets the road’ process is also used for the high-value operational missions our students will work on throughout their careers.”

    The LOOP project is a prime exemplar of this, with both iterations spanning the Mola and Otter missions.

    LOOP was originally developed for Mola by Marine Corps Maj. Dillon Pierce to address a gap in the payload manifest as part of his doctoral research at NPS. Using his education from NPS as a Space Operations Masters student, he quickly designed, built, and tested a flight-ready payload.

    The Marine Corps infantry officer is on track to earn his doctorate this June. His work, sponsored by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, aims to fill critical operational capability and capacity gaps, with significant anticipated impacts on future military operations.

    “What I truly fell in love with was the hands-on aspect of the applied research within the SSAG,” Maj. Pierce said. “Coming into the lab and being able to apply theory to real-world capabilities, such as building rockets and CubeSat payloads, is fascinating. It provided me with a deep understanding of the technical concepts learned in the classroom and demonstrated how to apply those concepts to address the operational challenges facing the military today.”

    Maj. Pierce is elated to see the LOOP project evolve with its second iteration for the Otter mission, which he passed on to Dr. James Newman, NPS acting provost, SSAG professor and former Space Shuttle astronaut, who was able to upgrade its capabilities to include InfraRed LEDs and higher data rates.

    Work on LOOP was also carried out by Navy Lt. Charles “Chuck” Bibbs for his master’s degree in Space Systems Operations. Lt. Bibbs, currently attached to Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command (NSWBTC), is a SEAL phase officer at Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training in Coronado, California.

    Lt. Bibbs was specifically involved with the planning, preparation and execution of environmental testing for LOOP, including thermal vacuum and vibration testing, as well as the integration of the total Otter payload.

    “This experience gave me an appreciation for the entire lifecycle of a payload,” he said. “Upon joining the team, I was introduced to the remarkable collaborative effort that brought this particular payload to life, and I gained a clear understanding of where my contributions fit within that timeline. It was fascinating to see how NPS works with other countries and commercial entities to drive innovation for defense purposes!”

    Lt. Bibbs also commended the SSAG faculty’s excellent alignment of the department’s research efforts with course objectives. His work on Otter was conducted as course projects for the AE4831 Spacecraft Systems II curriculum in the M.S. Space Systems Operations program.

    “This experience was formative because, like the military as a whole, I have a significant interest in space and would like to involve myself in those efforts in the near future,” he continued. “Additionally, by working on this project I better understand the nuances of requirements, procurements, and fielding large-scale projects. This experience provided skills that will assist me in a wide-range of military duties that do not necessarily have to be space-related.”

    Maj. Pierce and Lt. Bibbs’ observations cut to the heart of NPS’ mission: to provide defense-focused graduate education, including classified studies and interdisciplinary research, to advance the operational effectiveness, technological leadership and warfighting advantage of the Naval service.

    As a naval command with a graduate university mission, NPS uniquely synchronizes mid-career student operational experience and education with applied research and faculty expertise to deliver innovative warfighting solutions and leaders educated to understand and employ them.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Mpox in the DRC: residents of the slum at the centre of Kinshasa’s epidemic have little chance of avoiding this major health crisis

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Yap Boum, Professor in the faculty of Medicine, Mbarara University of Science and Technology

    Walking through the crowded streets of the Pakadjuma neighbourhood in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, I am struck by the vibrant atmosphere around me.

    Children play happily in puddles, surrounded by piles of plastic bags and open ditches of sewage. Shacks patched together from pieces of corrugated iron crowd the settlement. Loud rumba music blasts through the air as young people enjoy themselves in open bars, waiting for grilled pork or chicken to be served. Sex workers sit outside tin shacks in narrow alleyways, calling for customers.

    Nearby a Médecins Sans Frontières triage centre is the only reminder that this slum area is the epicentre of the mpox epidemic in Kinshasa. There are no posters, no pamphlets or banners warning residents of the dangers of this viral disease that was declared a continental and global emergency in August last year.

    At the clinic, patients suspected to have mpox are sent to one of three dedicated mpox centres in the city. Common symptoms include fever, headache, muscle ache, chills, exhaustion, swollen lymph nodes and lesions. With symptomatic care most patients get better in 7 to 35 days, depending on the severity of the case.

    As an epidemiologist co-leading the response to mpox for Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, I visited Pakadjuma to get a better sense of the situation on the ground.

    Mpox has historically been a rural disease in the DRC. This microcosm of Kinshasa sheds light on the complex challenges of managing the outbreak in a city.

    Fighting on two fronts

    With a population of more than 17 million, Kinshasa is Africa’s biggest megacity. Pakadjuma is one of the city’s many overcrowded areas where people live in extreme poverty.

    Kinshasa, often called “Kin la Belle”, faces a unique crisis in the fight against mpox. Both strains of the virus, clade Ia and clade Ib, are circulating in the city simultaneously. This is first time this has happened.

    Clade Ia, which is primarily transmitted from animal to human and then within households through touch, has been endemic to Africa for decades.

    Clade Ib is a new strain and contracted predominantly through sexual contact. It is the strain that has spread rapidly across 21 African countries during the current epidemic in east and central Africa.

    Grilled meat for customers.

    This dual transmission makes the fight against mpox even more complicated: how does one tackle a public health crisis rooted in both intimate human connections and structural inequities such as living in overcrowded areas?

    Although the strains are treated similarly clinically, their spread and transmission differ.

    Clade Ia is mainly associated with zoonotic transmission (from animals to humans) in rural areas. Animal surveillance and community education are required to control spillovers.

    Clade Ib, with higher human-to-human transmissibility, necessitates intensified contact tracing, vaccination, and preventive measures in urban and peri-urban areas.

    Tailoring strategies to these differences is key to containing the outbreak.

    When condoms don’t work

    Pakadjuma, in the north-east of the city, is known for poverty and high crime rates. For many girls and young women the sex trade is their only option if they want to survive.

    One of the most pressing challenges to combat the virus in the area is curbing sexual transmission.

    Unlike HIV, where condoms can significantly reduce the risk of spread, mpox poses a different challenge: because the virus is spread by touch there is no practical preventive measure for sexual transmission apart from complete abstinence.

    Mpox lesions start in the groin, making any movement excruciating. For these sex workers, though, abstinence is not an option. It would mean losing their livelihood and the ability to feed their children.

    For their clients, who come from all over the city, it would require altering a core aspect of their lives for a disease they perceive as less lethal than Ebola. There are no easy answers to this dilemma.

    Patients are tested for mpox at this Médecins Sans Frontières triage centre

    Tracing the spread

    Contact tracing, a cornerstone of outbreak control, is another hurdle.

    Identifying and tracing the contacts of sex workers is complex. As a result only a fraction of mpox cases are confirmed with laboratory analysis.

    On average, each mpox case has about 20 contacts, yet tracing clients in a highly confidential sexual network is next to impossible.

    Without effective contact tracing, infected individuals remain in the community, often seeking treatment only when their condition worsens. From discussions with Médecins Sans Frontières staff in the triage zone, it emerges that suspected mpox cases usually arrive in advanced stages of the disease, when symptoms are clearly visible. Many patients first attempt other remedies such as traditional healing methods, before seeking medical care.

    Fortunately Kinshasa benefits from a strong laboratory network led by the Institut National de la Recherche Biomédicale and test results are available within 48 to 72 hours. This state-of-the-art institute was pioneered by Dr Jean Jacques Muyembe, the microbiologist who first discovered Ebola.

    In the first week of January 2025 there were 1,155 confirmed cases and 27 deaths in the city, according to the DRC Ministry of Health.

    Even for those who seek care at the dedicated mpox centres, navigating the chaotic, congested roads is a nightmare. Yellow minibuses – ominously known locally as the “Spirit of Death” – are crammed and it can take hours to get to a destination.

    With increasing patient numbers, mpox centres in the city are overwhelmed.

    Pakadjuma, one of the poorest districts in the city.
    A goods train passing through.

    The fight on all fronts

    Addressing the mpox outbreak in Kinshasa requires a multifaceted approach which includes:

    Vaccination: Blanket vaccination drives offer the strongest hope for controlling the outbreak in hotspots such as Pakadjuma where contact tracing is almost impossible. In these cases the whole community needs to be vaccinated.

    This could break transmission chains while allowing individuals at risk, such as sex workers, to continue plying their trades.

    Prevention and control: Home care is essential, particularly in informal settlements like Pakadjuma. Providing food and material support to patients and their families and encouraging the isolation of infected relatives will help to limit the spread of the disease.

    These measures require new thinking, however, when people are trying to survive from day to day.

    Talking to the community: This is difficult because of the stigma around the disease, but it must be at the heart of the response.

    Amplifying the message: The media, local leaders and trusted community members need to be engaged to spread the word loud and clear.

    This all needs to happen immediately or the epidemic will be almost impossible to contain in this vast, sprawling city. The consequences would be dire.

    – Mpox in the DRC: residents of the slum at the centre of Kinshasa’s epidemic have little chance of avoiding this major health crisis
    – https://theconversation.com/mpox-in-the-drc-residents-of-the-slum-at-the-centre-of-kinshasas-epidemic-have-little-chance-of-avoiding-this-major-health-crisis-247809

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Mpox in the DRC: residents of the slum at the centre of Kinshasa’s epidemic have little chance of avoiding this major health crisis

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Yap Boum, Professor in the faculty of Medicine, Mbarara University of Science and Technology

    Walking through the crowded streets of the Pakadjuma neighbourhood in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, I am struck by the vibrant atmosphere around me.

    Children play happily in puddles, surrounded by piles of plastic bags and open ditches of sewage. Shacks patched together from pieces of corrugated iron crowd the settlement. Loud rumba music blasts through the air as young people enjoy themselves in open bars, waiting for grilled pork or chicken to be served. Sex workers sit outside tin shacks in narrow alleyways, calling for customers.

    Nearby a Médecins Sans Frontières triage centre is the only reminder that this slum area is the epicentre of the mpox epidemic in Kinshasa. There are no posters, no pamphlets or banners warning residents of the dangers of this viral disease that was declared a continental and global emergency in August last year.

    At the clinic, patients suspected to have mpox are sent to one of three dedicated mpox centres in the city. Common symptoms include fever, headache, muscle ache, chills, exhaustion, swollen lymph nodes and lesions. With symptomatic care most patients get better in 7 to 35 days, depending on the severity of the case.

    As an epidemiologist co-leading the response to mpox for Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, I visited Pakadjuma to get a better sense of the situation on the ground.

    Mpox has historically been a rural disease in the DRC. This microcosm of Kinshasa sheds light on the complex challenges of managing the outbreak in a city.

    Fighting on two fronts

    With a population of more than 17 million, Kinshasa is Africa’s biggest megacity. Pakadjuma is one of the city’s many overcrowded areas where people live in extreme poverty.

    Kinshasa, often called “Kin la Belle”, faces a unique crisis in the fight against mpox. Both strains of the virus, clade Ia and clade Ib, are circulating in the city simultaneously. This is first time this has happened.

    Clade Ia, which is primarily transmitted from animal to human and then within households through touch, has been endemic to Africa for decades.

    Clade Ib is a new strain and contracted predominantly through sexual contact. It is the strain that has spread rapidly across 21 African countries during the current epidemic in east and central Africa.

    This dual transmission makes the fight against mpox even more complicated: how does one tackle a public health crisis rooted in both intimate human connections and structural inequities such as living in overcrowded areas?

    Although the strains are treated similarly clinically, their spread and transmission differ.

    Clade Ia is mainly associated with zoonotic transmission (from animals to humans) in rural areas. Animal surveillance and community education are required to control spillovers.

    Clade Ib, with higher human-to-human transmissibility, necessitates intensified contact tracing, vaccination, and preventive measures in urban and peri-urban areas.

    Tailoring strategies to these differences is key to containing the outbreak.

    When condoms don’t work

    Pakadjuma, in the north-east of the city, is known for poverty and high crime rates. For many girls and young women the sex trade is their only option if they want to survive.

    One of the most pressing challenges to combat the virus in the area is curbing sexual transmission.

    Unlike HIV, where condoms can significantly reduce the risk of spread, mpox poses a different challenge: because the virus is spread by touch there is no practical preventive measure for sexual transmission apart from complete abstinence.

    Mpox lesions start in the groin, making any movement excruciating. For these sex workers, though, abstinence is not an option. It would mean losing their livelihood and the ability to feed their children.

    For their clients, who come from all over the city, it would require altering a core aspect of their lives for a disease they perceive as less lethal than Ebola. There are no easy answers to this dilemma.

    Tracing the spread

    Contact tracing, a cornerstone of outbreak control, is another hurdle.

    Identifying and tracing the contacts of sex workers is complex. As a result only a fraction of mpox cases are confirmed with laboratory analysis.

    On average, each mpox case has about 20 contacts, yet tracing clients in a highly confidential sexual network is next to impossible.

    Without effective contact tracing, infected individuals remain in the community, often seeking treatment only when their condition worsens. From discussions with Médecins Sans Frontières staff in the triage zone, it emerges that suspected mpox cases usually arrive in advanced stages of the disease, when symptoms are clearly visible. Many patients first attempt other remedies such as traditional healing methods, before seeking medical care.

    Fortunately Kinshasa benefits from a strong laboratory network led by the Institut National de la Recherche Biomédicale and test results are available within 48 to 72 hours. This state-of-the-art institute was pioneered by Dr Jean Jacques Muyembe, the microbiologist who first discovered Ebola.

    In the first week of January 2025 there were 1,155 confirmed cases and 27 deaths in the city, according to the DRC Ministry of Health.

    Even for those who seek care at the dedicated mpox centres, navigating the chaotic, congested roads is a nightmare. Yellow minibuses – ominously known locally as the “Spirit of Death” – are crammed and it can take hours to get to a destination.

    With increasing patient numbers, mpox centres in the city are overwhelmed.

    The fight on all fronts

    Addressing the mpox outbreak in Kinshasa requires a multifaceted approach which includes:

    Vaccination: Blanket vaccination drives offer the strongest hope for controlling the outbreak in hotspots such as Pakadjuma where contact tracing is almost impossible. In these cases the whole community needs to be vaccinated.

    This could break transmission chains while allowing individuals at risk, such as sex workers, to continue plying their trades.

    Prevention and control: Home care is essential, particularly in informal settlements like Pakadjuma. Providing food and material support to patients and their families and encouraging the isolation of infected relatives will help to limit the spread of the disease.

    These measures require new thinking, however, when people are trying to survive from day to day.

    Talking to the community: This is difficult because of the stigma around the disease, but it must be at the heart of the response.

    Amplifying the message: The media, local leaders and trusted community members need to be engaged to spread the word loud and clear.

    This all needs to happen immediately or the epidemic will be almost impossible to contain in this vast, sprawling city. The consequences would be dire.

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

    – ref. Mpox in the DRC: residents of the slum at the centre of Kinshasa’s epidemic have little chance of avoiding this major health crisis – https://theconversation.com/mpox-in-the-drc-residents-of-the-slum-at-the-centre-of-kinshasas-epidemic-have-little-chance-of-avoiding-this-major-health-crisis-247809

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Netflix’s La Palma’s ‘megatsunami’ has been debunked

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hannah Little, Lecturer in Communication and Media, University of Liverpool

    In the Netflix series La Palma, a Norwegian family goes on holiday to the Canary Islands when a young researcher discovers alarming signs of an imminent volcanic eruption. Cumbre Vieja is an active volcano on La Palma, which last erupted in 2021. The series culminates in a “megatsunami” capable of engulfing Europe and reaching as far as the west coast of the US.

    It’s a truly terrifying prospect.

    Disaster stories are hugely popular and La Palma is just the latest hit in the growing genre. In his book Disaster Mon Amour, the film critic David Thomson identifies the filmmakers’ goal of creating “a spectacle of devastation with cozy human interest”. But stories like La Palma can have real world impact.

    The series presents itself as being based on a real hypothesis, which is communicated by newscasters and a scientist in the title sequence of each episode. The tsunami expert Simon Day, whose research inspired the show, is also thanked in the closing credits. However, La Palma does nothing to capture the more up to date and reassuring science.

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

    While volcanic events can trigger tsunamis, as experts in volcanoes and the communication of disaster, we can assure you that the eruption and subsequent rapid collapse of the island depicted in the series isn’t a plausible scenario that scientists are concerned about.

    What should be taken more seriously are localised tsunamis. Such “megatsunami” scenarios have been debunked in recent years you’ll be happy to hear.

    There have been more than 17 eruptions in the Canary Islands since the 1400s, none resulting in a “megatsunami” across the Atlantic.

    Stories have the power to communicate information about environmental risk for audiences. Following the release of the film, some have dug up the megatsunami hypothesis, raising it back into the public awareness.

    The idea of a “megatsunami”, triggered in the way it is in La Palma, first arose in a 2001 paper by the academic the series thanks in its credits, Simon Day and the geophysicist Steven Ward based on one extreme hypothetical scenario. This theory has since been proven false by subsequent studies that show that a Canary Islands eruption and collapse might reach the US with a maximum wave height similar to a storm surge at one to two metres , not the 25-metre waves depicted in La Palma. Newer research has also called into question the scale of the landslide used in the original study which would cause such a tsunami.

    Since the initial work, we understand a lot more about how large landslides and tsunamis occur, and the computer models used to test tsunami scenarios have improved. Research on the underwater landslide deposits has shown that these collapses occur in multiple, smaller steps, not one massive slide into the ocean. Such a large tsunami would leave telltale deposits in North and South America – but they are nowhere to be found.

    The importance of understanding the risk relating to real volcanoes was encapsulated during the 2021 eruption of Cumbre Vieja. As the eruption progressed, volcanologists received messages from concerned and frightened people fearing a megatsunami, which prompted the US Geological Survey to respond outlining why the hypothesis doesn’t carry. This was even before a major Netflix drama had recounted such an imaginary event.

    Volcanogenic tsunamis of all sizes are a real threat around the world and hazards experts want to know what our risks are so we can prepare and protect our communities. This becomes difficult when facts are diluted or distorted by stories like La Palma’s. Volcanologists with limited resources during an eruption end up spending more time debunking information rather than talking to the press about the potential dangers.

    During the 2021 eruption, the people of La Palma suffered greatly and continue to struggle with claiming compensation and rebuilding their homes or accessing their properties. Tourist numbers dropped to a third of pre-pandemic levels after 2021’s volcanic eruption.

    Misinformation about eruptions and their risks can add to the stress of those inhabiting or visiting volcanic islands, not only concerned about their own safety, but the security of an economy that relies heavily on tourism. With the right information, we can empower communities to prepare themselves and to act fast when the time comes.

    A lot of people watch Netflix, but not many people read scientific papers on volcanology. Given this, it might be that the responsibility of getting the science right and accurately representing risk should lie with the people with a captive audience. There is an opportunity to work with scientists to help spread the right information alongside promotion for future stories about such disasters.

    Simon Day was approached for comment but hadn’t responded by the time this article was published.

    Katy Chamberlain received funding to work on the 2021 La Palma eruption from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Urgency grant number: NE/ W007673/1

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

    – ref. Netflix’s La Palma’s ‘megatsunami’ has been debunked – https://theconversation.com/netflixs-la-palmas-megatsunami-has-been-debunked-246916

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why meteorologists are comparing Storm Éowyn to a bomb

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Suzanne Gray, Professor of Meteorology, University of Reading

    A satellite image of the British Isles during Storm Éowyn’s descent. ©EUMETSAT (2025), CC BY

    Storm Éowyn is today unleashing strong and damaging winds over the British Isles, and particularly over Ireland and Scotland.

    Air pressure at the centre of the storm plummeted 50 millibars in the 24 hours leading up to midnight on January 24. That’s more than twice what is required in the definition of “explosive cyclogenesis”, in other words, the development of a cyclonic (anticlockwise rotating) storm that is both rapid and severe – like a bomb going off. As a result, Éowyn can be termed a “bomb cyclone”.

    It is not unusual for winter storms in this part of the world to reach bomb cyclone status. However, only very few in recent years have shown a rate of deepening pressure that is comparable to that of Storm Éowyn.

    The exceptional intensity of Storm Éowyn was predicted and it has prompted the Met Office and Met Éireann to issue red warnings covering the whole island of Ireland and central and southern Scotland. This tells the public to expect widespread gusts of 80-90mph and up to 100mph in the most exposed locations. A record-breaking gust of 114 mph has this morning been provisionally reported at Mace Head on Ireland’s west coast.

    Similar intense storms have left widespread damage and tragically claimed lives. Some, such as the infamous Great Storm of 1987, have entered popular culture.

    Éowyn’s place in history

    The maximum gust during the Great Storm was measured as 115mph at Shoreham, on the west Sussex coast. However, the anemometer stopped recording immediately afterwards so the real peak may have been higher.

    A scientific paper has cast doubts on the UK national low-level wind gust record (so, excluding mountain summits) of 142mph. This was recorded at Kinnaird Head Lighthouse at Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire, Scotland on February 13 1989. The researchers documented brief power supply interruptions to the recording anemograph, which could have given a faulty reading.

    The record-highest wind gust measured in England sits at 122mph. This was recorded at the Needles, a very exposed site at the edge of the Isle of Wight, during Storm Eunice in February 2022. Two gusts of similar strength were recorded less than two years later (November 2023) in Brittany during Storm Ciarán.

    In Ireland, the strongest gust recorded by an inland low-altitude weather station was during ex-Hurricane Debbie in 1961, with 113mph measured at Malin Head, the most northerly point of mainland Ireland. A gust of 97mph was measured in October 2017 at Roche’s Point at the entrance to Cork harbour during ex-Hurricane Ophelia.

    The measurements we’re now seeing during the passage of Storm Éowyn are up there with those recorded during the most infamous storms of recent years and decades.

    What makes a storm ‘explode’

    Like making a cake, there are several key ingredients to cooking up an explosively developing bomb cyclone like Storm Éowyn.

    A strong jet stream – the ribbon of winds about six miles up in the atmosphere over the North Atlantic – is one. Winds here are currently exceeding 200 mph – their strength is linked to the strong temperature contrast between the cold plunge of air across the eastern US and the far warmer air over the western North Atlantic.

    This strong jet has provided the energy for the storm’s development and is also the cause of its race towards the UK across the North Atlantic. Storm Éowyn came to life off the eastern seaboard of the US during Wednesday January 22 and will have covered over 2,000 miles before it arrives off western Scotland by Friday midday.

    The low-pressure centre of Storm Éowyn crossed the jet stream from south to north en route, an ideal track for explosive development.

    Éowyn’s heavy rainfall as it tracks towards the UK is a result of another key ingredient for explosive storm development: deep clouds within the storm that generate energy when their water condenses. These clouds are fed by strong fluxes of heat and moisture from the warm ocean surface, and scientists have been detecting record-warm surface ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic in recent years.

    The role of climate change

    When a storm such as Éowyn occurs, people ponder the role of climate change in fuelling its strength. Our experiences of future storms will depend on what tracks these storms typically take and how that influences their intensity. Stormy weather is, of course, not unusual in the autumn and winter over the British Isles and it requires detailed research to attribute the strength of any specific storm to climate change.

    To date, the observed trends in storminess have not provided a conclusive link with climate change. The latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, experts relating to all aspects of climate change who are convened by the United Nations, states that there is “low confidence” in the direction of trends in the number and intensity of extratropical storms (those that form outside of the warm band surrounding Earth’s equator) over the last century.

    One reason why it is difficult to make this link is that the position and variability of storminess is very dependent on the jet stream, and its position varies a lot from day to day, week to week, and beyond. Large-scale climate patterns such as the El-Niño Southern Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation, and sea surface temperatures and the extent of sea ice are also likely to be important factors.

    Despite this uncertainty, there are indications that in the future, winter storms may become more frequent and more clustered (such that several storms occur within a few days of each other), which can exacerbate their overall impact. The frequency of storms with extreme winds may also increase. Rainfall is highly likely to increase, as a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.

    Another thing that could change about intense storms in future is their propensity to develop “sting jets”. Sting jets are descending airstreams that can produce particularly destructive surface winds, as in the Great October storm, Storm Eunice and Storm Ciarán. Sting jets are short-lived and occur over very small areas, making them hard to predict and identify.

    There is speculation over whether a sting jet has descended during Storm Éowyn. Post-event verification will be needed. While the overall impact on wind speed is uncertain, the small number of studies that have considered sting jets in future cyclones have predicted an increase in their likelihood.

    Cyclones that are capable of producing sting jets also typically show more vigorous cloud development, consistent with the hypothesis that the intense storms of the future will be influenced by our hotter and wetter atmosphere.

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

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Suzanne Gray has previously received or currently has funding from the Natural Environmental Research Council and AXA Research Fund to work on sting jet storms, and storms in the Arctic and Mediterranean regions.

    Ambrogio Volonté has previously received or currently has funding from the Natural Environmental Research Council, AXA Research Fund and the University of Reading to work on sting jet storms, and storms in the Arctic and Mediterranean regions.

    – ref. Why meteorologists are comparing Storm Éowyn to a bomb – https://theconversation.com/why-meteorologists-are-comparing-storm-eowyn-to-a-bomb-248203

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Welch Opposes Republican Efforts to Further Restrict Abortion Access

    US Senate News:

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

    WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) this week opposed the so-called Born Alive Survivors Protection Act, legislation that advances Republican-led efforts to criminalize abortion and override families’ decision-making. The bill would also endanger doctors’ ability to provide women with compassionate health care by forcing physicians to comply with mandates not based in medicine or science. Senator Welch released the following statement on his vote:   
    “Millions of women were left without access to medical care following the Dobbs decision. And instead of looking for solutions that make it easier for women to access health care, this legislation searches for ways to further criminalize abortion. Not only would this legislation undermine health care providers’ ability to do their job, it overrides women’s rights to make the best decision for them and their families,” said Senator Welch. “If Republicans really wanted to save lives, they’d ensure that medical decisions are made by parents and physicians, not politicians. That’s how we should have marked the anniversary of Roe this week—not by voting to further limit access to abortion.” 
    All children born alive, regardless of the circumstances of that birth, are already equally protected under the law through the bipartisan Born-Alive Infant Protections Act of 2002. Under the proposed Born Alive Survivors Protection Act’soverly broad, vague standards, induced labor of a fetus with a fatal diagnosis could potentially be considered an “attempted abortion”—and subject medical providers to up to five years in prison. The bill would also prescribe the type of care provided to such infants without regard to the provider’s best medical judgment. 
    The bill would also threaten providers’ ability to apply their own professional judgment and provide advice in the best interest of families by establishing harmful criminal penalties—including up to five years in prison—for providers and other health care employees who fail to report them. Providers would also be subject to potential civil action. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: The rector of the State University of Management took part in the meeting of the State Council Commission on Personnel

    Translation. Region: Russian Federation –

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

    Rector of the State University of Management Vladimir Stroyev took part in the first meeting of the State Council of the Russian Federation Commission on Personnel in 2025, which took place on January 22, 2025.

    The Chairman of the Commission, Governor of the Kaluga Region, and graduate of the State University of Management Vladislav Shapsha opened the meeting with a speech in which he spoke about work plans for this year.

    The event was attended by representatives of the Presidential Administration, the Government, the Federation Council, the State Duma, heads of regions, federal and regional ministries, and the scientific and business community. Among them were the Minister of Labor and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov, the First Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, a graduate of the State University of Management Vasily Osmakov, the Chairperson of the Federation Council Committee on Science, Education, and Culture Liliya Gumerova, the President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin, and the Deputy Chairman of the State Council, Deputy Governor of the Kaluga Region, a graduate of our university Tatyana Leonova.

    The participants discussed the main areas of the Commission’s work in 2025 and approved the action plan for the year. The key task is to “land” in a number of pilot regions events related to technological sovereignty, regional personnel forecasts, and the professional education system, in accordance with the updated national objectives. At the same time, the entities participating in the project will be able to receive expert assessments from leading institutes, federal ministries, and subordinate institutions.

    The meeting participants identified assistance to veterans of the special military operation in adapting to civilian life, including in mastering a new profession, as a key priority.

    It was also decided that in February of this year, a visiting meeting would be held in the Kaluga region, in Obninsk, which would be dedicated to the human resources potential of Russian science.

    “We are working on mechanisms for mutual coordination of the goals of national projects. In our case, technological leadership with a regional personnel forecast and routing of students “school-SPO/university-employer”, – Vladislav Shapsha reported on his social networks.

    Rector of the State University of Management Vladimir Stroev noted that he will take part in the next meeting of the Commission and share the experience of the State University of Management in this area.

    The national project “Personnel” was launched this year by decision of President Vladimir Putin. The main objective of the national project is to help prepare employees efficiently and quickly to meet the needs of employers. This can be achieved through the coordinated work of the state, educational institutions and companies. The national project is aimed at career guidance for schoolchildren and employment of recent graduates – measures are provided for the development of targeted training and industrial practices, the formation of a flexible system of professional standards, and increased labor mobility; to transform the approach to the professional development of already working Russians – assistance will be provided in changing professions or acquiring new skills; to create conditions for the development of business competencies in young people.

    Subscribe to the TG channel “Our GUU” Date of publication: 01/24/2025

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

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Culture Secretary speech at the Creative Industries Growth Summit

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy’s speech on government plans to grow the creative industries, at the Creative Industries Growth Summit in Gateshead.

    Welcome to the first Creative Industries Growth Summit. The first national and international gathering of the industries we have chosen to be the centre of our plan for economic growth. 

    Today I want to talk to you about how, together, we are going to take the brakes off our fastest growing industries and from design and TV to music, video games and fashion, we are going to unleash the power of our creative industries. 

    To grow our economy. To create good jobs, choices and chances for all our young people. To power the world through our dynamic creative industries. 

    It’s no accident that we chose to meet here in Gateshead. A town with a proud industrial history. Through iron, steel and coal the people of this town – and this region – powered us through the last century. And Gateshead is now at the forefront of Britain’s cultural renaissance. 

    Through great institutions like the Baltic and the Glasshouse, sculptures like the Angel of the North, and a growing film industry and video games industry across the region, Gateshead and the North East are a shining example – every bit as striking as the Millennium Bridge – of how you build a living, breathing bridge from our past to our future. 

    That potential exists in every nation and region of the United Kingdom. Where our world class creative industries have given us a uniquely British brilliance, from the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, Derry Girls in Northern Ireland, the Hay Festival in Wales, the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, and the British Museum in London which pulls in more visitors from around the world than any apart from in New York.

    But while governments of every stripe have appreciated the social value of our creative industries, they have consistently underpriced the huge economic potential of industries that are already among our most powerful engines of growth. That ends with us.

    I shouldn’t have to say it but I do. From theatre to fashion, advertising to publishing, the creative industries have grown one and a half times faster than the rest of the economy. You together in this room are responsible for creating one in seven jobs through the creative economy. You contribute £124 billion to our economy. Your industries generate nearly 6% of our GVA.

    Paul Simon once sang: “Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.” There are only three countries that are net exporters of music. That is so uniquely true of Britain. We are the musicians, the creators, the storytellers, who tell our story, light up the world and power this economy. That is the talent and ambition that you have, that has built sectors that were worth more to the economy in 2022 than aerospace, life sciences and the automotive industries combined. 

    But too often you’ve done extraordinary things, not in partnership with your government, but despite it. You’ve been knocking on doors in Whitehall for far too long with a clear message. You want the stability that gives investors confidence to back you. You want a government willing to take a bulldozer to every barrier to growth.

    Well today we’re throwing those doors wide open. We share your passion. We match your ambition and we are going to back you to the hilt as one of only eight industries that we believe will power us through the next century.

    I’m delighted that Baroness Shriti Vadera has agreed to lead us through this new chapter as the next chair of our revamped Creative Industries Council. She and the titan that is Sir Peter Bazalgette have wasted no time in setting to work on the Sector Plan, which is our dedicated plan in the Industrial Strategy that will guide us forwards. 

    But as we put those plans in place to carry the torch forwards, you’ve been nothing but straight with us about what is holding you back. And we’ve heard it loud and clear. Investment, innovation, international competitiveness, and skills. So today in all of these areas we’re taking the brakes off our fastest growing industries and inviting you to motor ahead. 

    We’re starting by making sure you have the investment and backing you need. Like every part of the UK economy, the creative industries have amazing start-ups that struggle to scale up. The growth potential is huge, but the investments are often wrongly deemed too risky and this is particularly true outside London and the South East – forcing great British creative businesses to look overseas to scale.

    We are determined to keep that creative pound here in the UK. So as a first step to addressing that all-important finance barrier, the British Business Bank, which supports over £17 billion in finance for businesses already, is committing to increase the scale of its support for the creative industries. 

    Backing capital fund managers to invest in UK creatives, supporting those experts who understand the unique strengths of this sector in the UK. And we are asking the British Business Bank to report to us on its investment in the creative industries, so that we know the real world impact it is having.

    Secondly, we’re taking steps today to address some of the principal barriers to innovation, research and development investment. Time and again we’ve seen examples of creative businesses coming up with innovations that go on to benefit the wider economy. 

    3D modelling, pioneered for video games, is now employed by Rolls Royce in developing engines. 

    Visualisation technologies are helping bring down the backlog in the NHS, helping surgeons at hospitals like University College Hospital, to increase the number of prostate operations they do every year. That is lives changed because of the work you are doing.

    It’s why the Prime Minister’s Council of Science and Technology recommended that public investment in R&D in the creative industries reflect the size, economic contribution and future growth potential of the sector.

    So today we are announcing that we will strengthen the investment from our national research funding agency UKRI into creative R&D.

    This means building on the success of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and programmes like the Creative Clusters Programme. It means UKRI will develop a specific new strategy to support the creative industries.

    And it means a long-term investment plan for innovation and growth in the sector, allowing us to build world-leading infrastructure around the UK. And again, to underline this commitment, the Government will ask UKRI to report on its investment in the creative industries.

    Because underpinning this is our belief that public and private investment should better reflect the creative industries’ contribution to the economy and its enormous growth potential. 

    But as we embrace new innovation across the country, we will do it in a way that works for creatives, rather than just paying lip service to your concerns. Creators have always been at the cutting edge of new technologies. 

    But we hear creators’ concerns and we recognise the worry that AI is an existential threat to livelihoods. There is no value without content. I want to assure you in the clearest possible terms: creatives are at the core of our AI strategy.

    When it comes to copyright we’re unambiguous in our desire for a copyright regime that provides creators with real control, transparency and ensures they can license their content.

    Thirdly, we’re taking on the skills shortages holding your industries back. We are proud to be supporting major investment projects like the Crown Works film studio in Sunderland. But too often what I hear from young people is that they could no more dream of getting those jobs than going to the moon. 

    That is not just a tragic waste of human potential. It’s bad business. 

    It’s why people like Stephen Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders, who is working to bring in a film school in Birmingham, is recruiting and training 20% of his workforce from local postcodes. 

    It is essential for investors to know that they don’t have to incur the costs of shipping people in to work on a project, because that talent exists everywhere, but opportunity does not.

    [political content]

    So, the Education Secretary has announced a review of the curriculum. As part of that we are putting creativity, art, music, culture and sport back at the heart of the curriculum, supporting culture and creativity through the education system.

    We’re going to introduce shorter apprenticeships from August 2025. This is one of our first steps towards a more flexible Growth and Skills Levy, recognising the particular needs of this sector.

    A movie can take six months to film, while the inflexible apprenticeship model we inherited requires a commitment to 12. We’re knocking down these needless hurdles and this is just the start.

    Skills England, along with DfE and my department, are now committing to work with creative employers to identify where else the apprenticeship system can be more flexible to help them get the skills they need, when they need them.

    We want kids growing up in Gateshead and Wigan to know that they have a contribution to make, that is seen and is valued. And that contribution is not just for Britain – it’s for the world.

    Because our creative industries aren’t just at the heart of our Industrial Strategy and our economic plan, but right at the centre of our ambition to reconnect Britain to the world.

    This week the Foreign Secretary and I put the creative industries at the heart of our new Soft Power Council which we lead together and we launched on Wednesday.

    We both know that when it comes to international competitiveness, we cannot afford to stand still. So in Europe we are working together to unlock closer cooperation to support our touring artists and those across the EU.

    We’ve wasted no time in introducing tax credits for VFX and independent film. A shining example of how industry and government working together drives investment, creates jobs and allows the best storytellers in the world to tell those stories to the world.

    And to drive the sector’s international impact, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade and I are extending the Music Export Growth Scheme, which will help great artists to take their talent to the next level. Because nobody has a monopoly on talent. 

    I spent three of the happiest years of my life just over the Tyne Bridge at Newcastle University. And apart from having to get used to being called a southerner, those years introduced me to the very rich culture and heritage here in the North East.

    And when I look around this region, it is obvious to me, as it is to so many of you, that this is a region that should be the Hollywood of the UK. With its innovation, its work ethic, its ability to reinvent and reimagine itself. 

    There is a reason why investors are clamouring to invest here. Not just the creativity of the people, and the strong local leadership, but the beauty of the backdrops and the sheer scale of the space to build film studios like Crown Works in Sunderland. 

    So it is extraordinary that for 19 of the last 20 years only two regions – London and the South East – have had the backing and investment to make a net contribution to the public purse. 

    Trying to grow the economy while ignoring the potential in most parts of Britain is like trying to fly a jet on only one engine. So as well as breaking down the barriers to investment, innovation and skills, we are going to build on what you’ve started through the Sector Plan – learning from the success of London as a global hub, to turbocharge the growth of the creative industries right across the UK. 

    There is huge untapped potential across our country, from the music industry in Liverpool to film and TV production here in the North East. And we know mayors and local businesses – like Kim McGuiness here in the North East and Tracy Brabin who has led trade delegations and created cultural collaborations all over the world – know better than anyone how to unlock this creativity, innovation, and growth. 

    That is why today we are announcing new funding for six Mayoral Strategic Authorities with high potential, which local leaders will be able to spend and invest on what they know local creative industry businesses need. They are: the North East, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and the West of England.

    This is just the first step in boosting growth in all parts of the country. The Sector Plan will include further support that will benefit all businesses wherever they are based. We will work with any part of the country that wants to prioritise the creative industries in their local growth plan.

    Alongside that, we are putting money where our mouth is. Today the Chancellor and I are committing £40 million of funding toward the creative industries in the next fiscal year. Including funding 127 businesses to take growth to the next level – including 11 here in the North East of England.

    That’s new funding for creators and creative businesses, major music labels, film studios and fashion houses. It is a serious sign of our belief in these industries and breaking down the barriers, so that many of you in this room can do the same.

    And this is just the first step. In the months ahead we will be taking more action, developing the Industrial Strategy across Whitehall and knocking down these barriers in the way of this sector’s growth.

    [political content]

    Updates to this page

    Published 24 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –