Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –
An agreement was signed in Moscow between the HSE and Hanoi National University (HNU). The document was signed during the visit of the official Vietnamese delegation to the celebrations dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory and negotiations with the participation of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam. The signatures were put by the Rector of the HSE Nikita Anisimov and the Rector of HNU Le Quan.
The joint research institute will focus on advanced developments, coordination of bilateral research programs, academic exchanges and development of scientific potential.
On May 12, a meeting of the delegation of the Hanoi National University, headed by Rector Le Quan, with the Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics Nikita Anisimov and other representatives of the university was held at the Higher School of Economics. The parties discussed key issues of creating joint projects, as well as specific steps for their implementation.
During the visit of the Vietnamese delegation, the Higher School of Economics also signed an agreement with the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. HSE and VAST agreed to develop scientific and cultural cooperation, joint projects, conferences, and to intensify the exchange of scientific knowledge.
These steps open a new stage in the scientific and educational partnership between Russia and Vietnam. Expanding cooperation and creating a common research space not only strengthens bilateral ties, but also enhances the contribution of both countries to the global scientific community, including the development of an intellectual base for the sustainable development of BRICS.
The Higher School of Economics has been developing partnerships with educational and scientific institutions in Vietnam since 2016. The university has cooperation agreements, including agreements on mutual understanding, educational and scientific cooperation and academic mobility, with Vietnamese partners, including the Vietnam University of Engineering and Technology of the Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics, National University of Economics and others. In 2020–2023, HSE, in cooperation with the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, implemented the research project “Cross-border interaction, socio-cultural transformations and local communities of the Chinese-Vietnamese borderland in the context of state projects of the PRC and the SRV”.
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.
Headline: ACP Names Artealia Gilliard as Chief Communications Officer
WASHINGTON D.C., May 13, 2025 — The American Clean Power Association (ACP) today announced that Artealia Gilliard will join the organization as Chief Communications Officer. With over 20 years of experience in strategic communications, public policy, and energy sector leadership, Gilliard will guide the association’s communications efforts to advance American energy production and domestic manufacturing growth as the industry positions itself to meet America’s growing demand.
“Clean energy is leading an all of the above American energy renaissance, but polarized politics remain an obstacle to achieving our economic and security interests,” said Jason Grumet, ACP’s Chief Executive Officer. “Artealia has a strong track record of building consensus and connecting intricate policy issues to everyday American values. She also understands that reliable, affordable, domestic energy isn’t just good policy—it’s good business and good for communities.”
Gilliard has experience leading organizations in the public, private and non-profit sectors. Most recently, Gilliard was head of environmental and sustainability communications and advocacy at Ford Motor Company, where she helped communicate the company’s energy innovation initiatives and American manufacturing investments. Her previous roles include Director of Communications at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation Policy at the Department of Transportation, where she worked on energy issues.
“I am honored to join the American Clean Power Association at such a critical time for America’s energy future. The clean power industry is driving economic growth, creating jobs, and strengthening communities across the country,” said Artealia Gilliard. “I look forward to working with ACP’s members and stakeholders to tell the compelling story of how American-made clean energy is building a more secure, prosperous, and sustainable future for all Americans.”
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., May 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — via IBN — FAVO Capital, Inc. (OTC: FAVO) (“FAVO Capital” or the “Company”), a leading provider of revenue-based funding solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), today announced that it will participate in the D. Boral Capital Inaugural Global Conference, where Shaun Quin, President of FAVO Capital, will engage with potential investors and highlight the Company’s growth strategy and market opportunities.
Conference Details:
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Location: New York City
Venue: The Plaza Hotel
“We are looking forward to engaging with potential investors and learning what exactly the industry is looking for in a company about to IPO”. Said Vincent Napolitano, CEO of FAVO Capital, he added, “We believe this platform will showcase the company to new and potential investors.”
The D. Boral Capital Inaugural Global Conference is a premier event bringing together emerging growth issuers and institutional investors. With approximately seventy-five companies presenting and hundreds of institutional investors in attendance, the conference provides FAVO Capital with a platform to showcase its innovative funding solutions and engage directly with the investment community.
“We are excited to participate in the D. Boral Capital Inaugural Global Conference,” said Shaun Quin, President of FAVO Capital. “This event is an excellent opportunity for us to connect with investors, share our strategy, and highlight our growth story as we embark towards an uplisting.”
Investors attending the conference are encouraged to reach out to FAVO Capital to arrange one-on-one meetings with the Company’s management team.
About FAVO Capital, Inc.
FAVO Capital, Inc. (OTC: FAVO) is a private credit firm specializing in alternative financing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the United States. Since its inception, FAVO Capital has supported more than 10,000 businesses. FAVO Capital is committed to financial transparency, sustainable growth, and empowering SMBs with flexible funding solutions. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, FL, the company also has operations in New York and the Dominican Republic.
For more information, visit www.favocapital.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X.
Investor Alerts
Interested investors and shareholders are encouraged to sign up for press releases and industry updates by registering for Email Alerts at FAVO News Alerts.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements include, but are not limited to, projections, estimates, and expectations regarding future trends, financial performance, and operational strategies. Forward-looking statements are often identified by words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “believes,” “plans,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “may,” “will,” “should,” or similar expressions.
These statements are based on the company’s current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions and are subject to significant risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. Factors that may cause such differences include, but are not limited to, market conditions, regulatory developments, competition, economic conditions, and the company’s ability to execute its business strategy.
Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated, and investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances, or changes in expectations after the date of this press release, except as required by law.
Company Contact:
FAVO Capital, Inc. 4300 N University Drive D-105 Lauderhill, FL 33351
Investor Relations: Scott McGowan InvestorBrandNetwork (IBN) Phone: 310.299.1717 ir@favocapital.com
Composite image by The Conversation. Images courtesy of TruthSocial/@realDonaldTrump and Wikimedia Commons
The US presidency and the papacy came together on May 3 when Donald Trump posted an AI-generated photograph of himself dressed as the pope to Truth Social. The image was then shared by the White House’s accounts.
Seated in an ornate (Mar-a-Lago-style) golden chair, he was wearing a white cassock and a bishop’s hat, with his right forefinger raised.
Trump has since told reporters he “had nothing to do with it […] somebody did it in fun”.
This image of “Pope Donald I” is of historical significance, for reasons of which, no doubt, the White House and Trump were blissfully unaware. It is the first ever image to combine the two most important understandings of the figure of the Antichrist in Western thought: on the one hand, that of the pope, and on the other, that of the authoritarian, despotic world emperor.
On April 22, the day after Pope Francis’ death, Trump declared “I’d like to be pope. That would be my number one choice”. On April 28, Trump told The Atlantic “I run the country and the world”.
So, both pope and world emperor.
The Imperial Antichrist
In the New Testament, the First Letter of John says, before Christ came again, the Antichrist will appear: the most conspicuous sign the end of the world was near.
The Antichrist would be the archetypal evil human being who would persecute the Christian faithful. He would be finally defeated by the forces of good. As Sir Isaac Newton suggested, “searching the Prophecies which [God] hath given us to know Antichrist by” is a Christian obligation.
The first life of the Antichrist was written by a Benedictine monk, Adso of Montier-en-der, around 1,100 years ago. According to Adso, the Antichrist would be a tyrannical evil king who would corrupt all those around him with gold and silver. He would be brought up in all forms of wickedness. Evil spirits would be his instructors and his constant companions.
The Antichrist, left, is depicted as a king, in this image from a 12th century manuscript. Wikimedia Commons
Seeking his own glory, as Adso put it, this king “will call himself Almighty God”.
The Antichrist was opposite to everything Christ-like. According to the Christian tradition, Christ was fully human yet absolutely “sin free”. The Antichrist too was fully human, but completely “sin full”. The Antichrist was not so much a supernatural being who became flesh, as a human being who became fully demonised.
Influenced by Christian stories of the Antichrist, Islam and Judaism constructed their own Antichrists – al-Dajjal, the Antichrist of the Muslims, and Armilus, the Antichrist of the Jews. Both al-Dajjal and Armilus are king-like messiahs.
Over the centuries, many world leaders have been labelled “the Antichrist” – the Roman emperors Nero and Domitian were Antichrist figures, and the French emperor Napoleon was named the Antichrist in his own time.
In the year 1190, King Richard I of England, on his way to the Holy Land, was informed by the Italian theologian Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202) the next pope would be the Antichrist.
In the history of the Antichrist, this was a momentous occasion. From this time on, the tyrannical Antichrist outside of the Church would be juxtaposed with the papal deceiver within it.
That the Catholic pope was the Antichrist was the common reading of the pope in the 16th-century Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther (1483–1546), the founder of the Protestant revolution, declared the pope “is the true […] Antichrist who has raised himself over and set himself against Christ”.
Just as all Christians would not worship the Devil as God, he went on to say, “so we cannot allow his apostle the pope or Antichrist, to govern as our head or lord”.
This 1877 painting depicts Martin Luther summoned by the Catholic Church in 1521, to renounce or reaffirm his views criticising Pope Leo X. Wikimedia Commons
As he was about to be burned by the Catholic Queen Mary for his Protestant beliefs, the Anglican bishop Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) declared, “as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and antichrist with all his false doctrine”.
Even in 1988, as Pope John Paul II addressed the European Parliament, the Northern Ireland hardline Protestant leader Ian Paisley roared, “Antichrist! I renounce you and all your cults and creeds” – to which, we are told, the pope gave a slight bemused smile.
Except among the most extreme of Protestant conservatives, the idea of the papal Antichrist no longer has any purchase. The papal Antichrist has vacated the Western stage for the imperial Antichrist.
The Antichrist and the end of the world
In the history of Christianity, the idea of the Antichrist was a key part of Christian expectations about the return of Christ and the end of the world.
In the final battle between the forces of good and evil, the Antichrist would be defeated by the forces of Christ. In short, the rise of the world emperor who was the Antichrist was a sign that the end of the world was at hand.
In the light of the Western history of “the Antichrist”, the image of the imperial and papal US president is a powerful sign that the global order – at least as we have known it for the last 80 years – may be at an end.
Philip C. Almond 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.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sarah E.K. Smith, Canada Research Chair in Art, Culture & Global Relations and Associate Professor, Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Western University
The United States government recently announced a plan to leverage a 100 per cent tariff on “foreign” films. President Donald Trump explained it was because he wanted to protect the U.S. film industry. He said other reasons include “national security” and “propaganda.”
The current announcement may seem out of place in trade talks about steel and automobiles. But culture has long been a key part of North American trade relations.
In my book, Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America, I examine how culture became a vital tool for shaping relationships among Canada, Mexico and the United States. I focus on visual art — including exhibitions and museum initiatives — to show how culture is intertwined with the negotiation of free trade in North America.
A history of cultural negotiations
In the late 20th century, when Canada negotiated the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (later expanded into NAFTA), culture was central to free-trade debates.
The period was charged with anxiety over American cultural imperialism and concerns about protecting Canadian cultural production. Ultimately, at Canada’s urging, culture was formally exempted from free-trade agreements, with limited provisions focused on cultural industries. But even though the cultural exemption in trade agreements may give the impression that culture has nothing to do with the histories of free trade, my research shows otherwise.
This exemption isn’t just about protecting markets. Political scientist Patricia Goff says it also comes from a “desire to uphold …a distinct cultural identity.” Culture held a key place in the discussions about the impact of free trade. And it served as a means to construct new geopolitical identities, helping to introduce and reinforce the trade alliance.
Culture was mobilized in different ways. It functioned as a unifying tool, but also a venue for critique.
For example, following the creation of NAFTA, the online exhibition Panoramas: The North American Landscape in Art brought together art from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. The show offered a new transnational approach and explored landscapes across the continent.
All three governments — of Canada, Mexico and the United States — used art exhibitions as a way to create and share stories about North American unity. While art has long been used for national narratives, this collaboration and these new stories about the North American region were a departure.
For most of the 20th century, people did not think of North America as a unified or shared cultural entity. Most people saw the Americas as divided between Anglo and Latin America.
Art was seen as a means to overcome this. It provided a way to support and depict the new alliance between Canada, Mexico and the United States under free trade. Exhibitions offered a way to depict North America in a new perspective. They presented concepts about continental unity to the public.
During a trip to Canada, President Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mila Mulroney sing during a gala performance at Grand Théâtre de Québec in March 1985. (Ronald Reagan Library), CC BY
How could Canada, Mexico and the United States understand themselves as part of a regional group? These art shows worked on many levels. They brought together work that helped make visual, thematic connections. They helped cultural professionals meet and make connections. They helped museums forge relationships.
On top of that, the exhibitions also provided diplomatic spaces. Many openings celebrated specific moments in bi- and trilateral relationships, creating and facilitating social spaces for diplomatic and government connections.
Art and cultural exchange gave people a meaningful and accessible way to see and understand the growing ties between the three countries. Art also offered a powerful and engaging way to tell the public about North American connections.
Artistic resistance, critiques of free trade
These were not the only messages circulating in this period. A body of contemporary art questioned and challenged free trade.
For many Canadian artists, their work offered a means to question and critique increasing economic integration under free trade. In the 1980s and ‘90s, video art was a particularly active site for such work.
An affordable medium that was easily disseminated, video art critiqued the media coverage of free trade, reflected on cultural nationalism and advanced experimental narratives about North America. Video art was also deeply tied to the anti-globalization protests that began at the start of the economic integration of North America under free trade.
Video offered a space for creative expression and documentation of the protests. Video also enhanced protection for activists who were safer because they were recording their encounters with law enforcement. Beyond producing artworks, many artists joined other cultural producers, community and labour organizations to advocate against free trade.
Culture is often overlooked when considering free-trade histories and dismissed as a form of “soft power.” But the cultural sphere does not sit apart from daily life and political economic concerns. Art and exhibitions from this period offer a rich vantage point on how free trade was perceived and contested. Examination of culture also reveals how it was used to construct a North American identity.
Culture is not simply an entity to be instrumentalized for international relations, but a key venue in which these relations always play out. In the lead up to the renegotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement and amid the current tariff war, the ties between Canada, Mexico and the United States seem fragile. We should pay attention to how culture will be used as a tool to support or fracture these connections.
Sarah E.K. Smith receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and Western University. She is affiliated with the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative and the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Annalijn I. Conklin, Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of British Columbia
Older people who are socially isolated have poor diet quality compared to those with frequent friend contact. (Shutterstock)
Healthy eating supports healthy aging: Canada’s Food Guide recommends daily intake of fruits and vegetables as a way to help prevent multiple chronic conditions that typically affect older adults.
We know that healthy eating is strongly influenced by our social connections and different settings. But aging often brings losses to different social connections that can put healthy eating at risk.
As researchers who study the interaction of nutrition, age and social issues, we were curious to know if adverse changes in an older person’s social connections matter for maintaining a good diet, and who is most affected?
Social isolation and social diversity change with age
There is broad health research focused on social isolation that measures this concept at one point in time using a combination of different types of social contexts such as living alone, infrequent social contact, no social participation and not married.
About one in five aging adults reduces the variety of their social engagement. (Shutterstock)
Social isolation, however, is not a static experience as aging adults frequently go through changes in different types of social relationships, often reducing their social contacts and activities over time.
Our recent research shows that the number of different social activities decreases over time for middle-age and older adults.
About one in five aging adults reduces the variety of their social engagement (for example, seeing friends and family, volunteering, sports, religious and educational activities, etc.), with greater declines seen among older women.
In addition, about 14 per cent of aging Canadians either became socially isolated or stayed socially isolated over time. Canadians in the oldest age group and in more socio-economically disadvantaged groups appear most vulnerable to staying or becoming either socially isolated or less socially diverse over time.
It is important, then, for research on nutrition and healthy aging to better capture distinct alterations in social engagement over time, not only in terms of a lack of regular social interaction but also in terms of a diversity of social interactions.
Dietary risks of changing social connections
Both the quantity and the quality of the foods we eat can be affected by our meal setting, and eating alone is correlated with poor diet quality.
Eating alone is correlated with poor diet quality. (Shutterstock)
Among older adults, being socially isolated is linked to inadequate intakes of fruits and vegetables — a marker of diet quality that is associated with chronic disease. More specifically, both older men and women with no or rare friend contact have poor diet quality compared to those with frequent friend contact.
It has been unclear whether staying or becoming socially isolated is a problem for maintaining healthy eating habits as people age. It is also unknown whether reducing the variety of social activities puts diet quality at risk of declining.
The handful of nutrition studies that do consider changes in social connections all focus on marital transitions, leaving a critical gap in knowledge for healthy aging policy and practice.
Our new study with collaborators is filling this knowledge gap by using multiple waves from a nationally representative cohort of middle-aged and older Canadians.
The first important finding is that older women who stayed socially isolated — meaning one or no monthly activity — reduced their diet quality over time compared to women who stayed engaged in two or more monthly social activities.
The second notable finding is the older women who reduced their diversity of social activities also had declines in diet quality over time. And finally, both older women and older men who had a small number of social activities that stayed the same over time were also at risk of declining diet quality.
These results were not explained by other social or behavioural factors that were included in the study’s analysis.
Social interventions to support healthy eating
Canada’s healthy aging strategy and Food Guide both emphasize the important role of social connections for maintaining health and healthy eating. There have long been programs, such as Meals on Wheels, that support health and well-being by providing hot, nutritious meals to individuals, especially older adults, who are home-bound.
Both older women and older men who had low social diversity over time were also at risk of declining diet quality. (Shutterstock)
Maintaining regular and diverse social activities is vital for promoting health and well-being as people transition from mid to later life. Everybody can benefit from not just being connected, but also from staying connected across a range of social settings.
We want to call attention to the significance of both persistent isolation and losses of social diversity for women’s nutrition and health in Canada. Different types of social connections may matter for women than for men, and their maintenance over time can show different effects on diet and health that need more research and policy action.
Understanding the social determinants of diet for women is key to addressing health inequities and to tailoring more effective social interventions for aging Canadians, such as social prescribing and other social relational models of care.
Annalijn I. Conklin receives funding from The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Michael Smith Health Research BC. Dr. Conklin is affiliated with Obesity Canada.
Gilciane Ceolin and Sanaz Mehranfar 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.
It’s become clear that many news organizations are still operating in the ethical equivalent of the Wild West when it comes to how they use artificial intelligence. (Shutterstock)
What’s lagging behind all this experimentation are the important conversations about the ethics of using these tools. This disconnect was evident when we interviewed journalists in a mix of newsrooms across Canada from July 2022 to July 2023, and it remains a problem today.
We conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 journalists from 11 Canadian newsrooms. Many of the people we spoke to told us that they had worked at multiple media organizations throughout their careers.
AI literacy varies within the same newsroom and certainly within the industry as a whole.
There’s agreement that humans play an important role in supervising the use of AI, but there’s no agreement on where human journalists must be involved in the process — at the AI tool coding level? Before a piece is published?
Journalists believe professional practice and industry standards are being followed when using AI in journalism, but there is no agreed-upon “rule book” for how AI should be used.
There are issues with transparency about how and when AI is being used, both among journalists working in the same newsroom and in terms of what is revealed to audiences about whether the content they are consuming was created using AI tools.
Some of what we heard was reassuring. One journalist told us:
“The one thing that we are very particular about when we use this technology is that our editors always have the ability to override what the machine is doing.”
At the same time, however, it became clear that many news organizations are still operating in the ethical equivalent of the Wild West.
In many cases, journalists we spoke to talked about just following their gut when it came to deciding if using that AI tool to do that task was ethical. As one of our interviewees put it: “There’s a rule book in my head.”
When we asked interviewees how they knew their colleagues at the same publication followed the same ethical code they did when using AI, most could not answer except to imply that their co-workers wouldn’t have been hired if they didn’t share the same principles. One journalist said:
“I’ve worked there for 14 years now …I can’t think of anyone whose ethics I would disagree with.”
Getting the ethics of AI right and being seen to be doing so is important because journalism has a growing trust problem and needs to do everything possible to reverse the trend.
Audiences, meanwhile, are being fed a steady diet of examples that illustrate how using AI tools to create journalistic work can go very wrong. For instance:
The Winnipeg Free Press was forced to disavow its AI audio tool because it was mispronouncing the Manitoba premier’s name.
An AI-generated poll about a report in The Guardian provoked outrage when it quizzed readers on how a woman who was featured in the article had died. The poll was created by a Microsoft news aggregator, but The Guardian stated that it damaged their reputation.
Sports Illustrated was caught creating fake bylines for AI-generated stories on their websites.
Journalists and news organizations are still struggling to arrive at a shared understanding of how to use AI tools. (Shutterstock)
News organizations might think they’re being transparent with audiences about how much content is being created using AI, but our research finds the evidence is mixed at best, especially in circumstances where AI generates the content and an editor approves it in the content management system before it is published.
In one memorable Zoom interview, an editor walked us through the AI-generated content in an article posted online, saying that it was clearly identified as AI on the webpage.
However, upon sharing the page, they were shocked to discover there was no information about the article being AI-generated anywhere. They said it would be fixed immediately, but when we last checked, the article still said nothing about the AI tool used to generate it.
While we gathered data from interviews, newsrooms in Canada started releasing guidance through internal emails and public blog posts. It is hard to find any language in publicly accessible policies that refers explicitly to how AI is being used or the ethics surrounding such use. It’s also unclear who is involved in conversations about ethical AI use in newsrooms, and who is not.
As one journalist we interviewed put it:
“I think my frustration personally comes from again the lack of openness to have this conversation about AI, and the urgency of it, because I think … we’re so busy trying to survive, we don’t realize that having this conversation about AI will help us survive.”
Our research suggests journalists and news organizations are still struggling in the midst of rapid technological change to arrive at a shared understanding of AI tools, their usage, the limitations of programming and best practices that build rather than erode trust.
Angela Misri receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University.
April Lindgren receives funding from the School of Journalism and the Journalism Research Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, the Rossy Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has received funding previously from MITACS, CTV News, the Ken and Debbie Rubin Public Interest Advocacy Fund and CWA Canada, the Media Union.
Nicole Blanchett receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, and the School of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has received funding previously from Centre d’études sur les médias and Mitacs.
A star cluster in the constellation Sagittarius seen by the James Webb Space Telescope.NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope
We have long taken it for granted that gravity is one of the basic forces of nature – one of the invisible threads that keeps the universe stitched together. But suppose that this is not true. Suppose the law of gravity is simply an echo of something more fundamental: a byproduct of the universe operating under a computer-like code.
That is the premise of my latest research, published in the journal AIP Advances. It suggests that gravity is not a mysterious force that attracts objects towards one another, but the product of an informational law of nature that I call the second law of infodynamics.
It is a notion that seems like science fiction – but one that is based in physics and evidence that the universe appears to be operating suspiciously like a computer simulation.
In digital technologies, right down to the apps in your phone and the world of cyberspace, efficiency is the key. Computers compact and restructure their data all the time to save memory and computer power. Maybe the same is taking place all over the universe?
Information theory, the mathematical study of the quantification, storage and communication of information, may help us understand what’s going on. Originally developed by mathematician Claude Shannon, it has become increasingly popular in physics and is used in a growing range of research areas.
In a 2023 paper, I used information theory to propose my second law of infodynamics.
This stipulates that information “entropy”, or the level of information disorganisation, will have to reduce or stay static within any given closed information system. This is the opposite of the popular second law of thermodynamics, which dictates that physical entropy, or disorder, always increases.
Take a cooling cup of coffee. Energy flows from hot to cold until the temperature of the coffee is the same as the temperature of the room and its energy is minimum – a state called thermal equilibrium. The entropy of the system is a maximum at this point – with all the molecules maximally spread out, having the same energy. What that means is that the spread of energies per molecule in the liquid is reduced.
If one considers the information content of each molecule based on its energy, then at the start, in the hot cup of coffee, the information entropy is maximum and at equilibrium the information entropy is minimum. That’s because almost all molecules are at the same energy level, becoming identical characters in an informational message. So the spread of different energies available is reduced when there’s thermal equilibrium.
But if we consider just location rather than energy, then there’s lots of information disorder when particles are distributed randomly in space – the information required to keep pace with them is considerable. When they consolidate themselves together under gravitational attraction, however, the way planets, stars and galaxies do, the information gets compacted and more manageable.
In simulations, that’s exactly what occurs when a system tries to function more efficiently. So, matter flowing under the influence of gravity need not be a result of a force at all. Perhaps it is a function of the way the universe compacts the information that it has to work with.
Here, space is not continuous and smooth. Space is made up of tiny “cells” of information, similar to pixels in a photo or squares on the screen of a computer game. In each cell is basic information about the universe – where, say, a particle is – and all are gathered together to make the fabric of the universe.
If you place items within this space, the system gets more complex. But when all of those items come together to be one item instead of many, the information is simple again.
The universe, under this view, tends to naturally seek to be in those states of minimal information entropy. The real kicker is that if you do the numbers, the entropic “informational force” created by this tendency toward simplicity is exactly equivalent to Newton’s law of gravitation, as shown in my paper.
This theory builds on earlier studies of “entropic gravity” but goes a step further. In connecting information dynamics with gravity, we are led to the interesting conclusion that the universe could be running on some kind of cosmic software. In an artificial universe, maximum-efficiency rules would be expected. Symmetries would be expected. Compression would be expected.
And law – that is, gravity – would be expected to emerge from these computational rules.
We may not yet have definitive evidence that we live in a simulation. But the deeper we look, the more our universe seems to behave like a computational process.
Melvin M. Vopson is affiliated with the University of Portsmouth and the Information Physics Institute.
Predicting whether or not companies will be successful is crucial for guiding investment decisions and designing effective economic policies. However, past research on high-growth firms – enterprises thought to be key for driving economic development – has typically shown low predictive accuracy, suggesting that growth may be largely random. Does this assumption still hold in the AI era, in which vast amounts of data and advanced analytical methods are now available? Can AI techniques overcome difficulties in predicting high-growth firms? These questions were raised in a chapter I co-authored in the De Gruyter Handbook of SME Entrepreneurship, which reviewed scientific contributions on firm growth prediction with AI methods.
According to the Eurostat-OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) definition, high-growth firms are businesses with at least 10 employees in the initial growth period and “average annualised growth greater than 20% per annum, over a three year period”. Growth can be measured by the firm’s number of employees or by its turnover. A subset of high-growth firms, known as “gazelles”, are young businesses – typically start-ups – that are up to five years old and experience fast growth.
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High-growth firms drive development, innovation and job creation. Identifying firms with high-growth potential enables investors, start-up incubators, accelerators, large companies and policymakers to spot potential opportunities for investment, strategic partnerships and resource allocation at an early stage. Forecasting outcomes for start-ups is more challenging than doing so for large companies due to limited historical data, high uncertainty, and reliance on qualitative factors like founder experience and market fit.
How random is firm growth?
Accurate growth forecasting is especially crucial given the high failure rate of start-ups. One in five start-ups fail in their first year, and two thirds fail within 10 years. Some start-ups can also contribute significantly to job creation: research analysing data from Spanish and Russian firms between 2010 and 2018 has shown that while “gazelles” represented only about 1-2% of all businesses in both countries, they were responsible for approximately 14% of employment growth in Russia and 9% in Spain.
In an effort to understand why some firms grow faster than others, researchers have looked into various factors including the personality of entrepreneurs, competitive strategy, available resources, market conditions and macroeconomic environment. These factors, however, only explained a small portion of the variation in firm growth and were limited in their practical application. This led to the suggestion that predicting the growth of new businesses is like playing a game of chance. Another viewpoint argued that the problem of growth prediction might stem from the methods employed, suggesting an “illusion of randomness”.
As firm growth is a complex, diverse, dynamic and non-linear process, adopting a new set of methods and approaches, such as those driven by big data and AI, can shed new light on the growth debate and forecasting.
AI offers new opportunities for predicting high-growth firms
AI methods are being increasingly adopted to forecast firm growth. For example, 70% of venture capital firms are adopting AI to increase internal productivity and facilitate and speed up sourcing, screening, classifying and monitoring start-ups with high potential. Crunchbase, a company data platform, claims that internal testing has shown that its AI models can predict start-up success with “95% precision” by analysing thousands of signals. These developments promise to fundamentally change how investors and businesses approach decision-making in private markets.
The advantages of AI techniques lie in their ability to process a far greater volume, variety and velocity of data about businesses and their environments compared to traditional statistical methods. For example, machine learning methods such as random forest (RF) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) help identify key variables affecting business outcomes in datasets with a large number of predictors. A “fused” large language model has been shown to predict start-up success using both structured (organized in tables) fundamental information and unstructured (unorganized and more complex) textual descriptions. AI techniques help enhance the accuracy of firm growth predictions, identify the most important growth factors and minimize human biases. As some scholars have noted, the improved prediction indicates that perhaps firm growth is less random than previously thought. Furthermore, the ability to capture data in real time is especially valuable in fast-paced, dynamic environments, such as high-technology industries.
Challenges remain
Despite AI’s rapid progress, there is still considerable potential for advancement. Although the prediction of high-growth firms has been improved with modern AI techniques, studies indicate that it continues to be a challenge. For instance, start-up success often depends on rapidly changing and intangible factors that are not easily captured by data. Further methodological advances, such as incorporating a broader range of predictors, diverse data sources and more sophisticated algorithms, are recommended.
One of the main challenges for AI methods is their ability to offer explanations for the predictions they make. Predictions generated by complex deep learning models resemble a “black box”, with the causal mechanisms that transform input into output remaining unclear. Producing more explainable AI has become one of the key objectives set by the research community. Understanding what is explainable and what is not (yet) explainable with the use of AI methods can better guide practitioners in identifying and supporting high-growth firms.
While start-ups offer the potential for significant investment returns, they carry considerable risks, making careful selection and accurate prediction crucial. As AI models evolve, they will increasingly integrate diverse and unstructured data sources and real-time market signals to detect early indicators of potential success. Advancements are expected to further enhance the scalability, accuracy, speed and transparency of AI-driven predictions, reshaping how high-growth firms are identified and supported.
Tatiana Beliaeva ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Sioux McKenna, Professor of Higher Education, Rhodes University, South Africa, Rhodes University
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is trained on enormous bodies of text, video and images to identify patterns. It then creates new texts, videos and images on the basis of this pattern identification. Thanks to machine learning, it improves its ability to do so every time it is used.
As AI becomes embedded in academic life, a troubling reality has emerged: students are extremely vulnerable to its use. They don’t know enough about what AI is to be alert to its shortcomings. And they don’t know enough about their subject content to make judgements on this anyway. Most importantly, they don’t know what they don’t know.
As twoacademics involved in higher education teaching, we argue that there are four key dangers facing students in today’s world of AI. They are:
blind trust in its abilities
using it to side-step actual learning
not knowing how it works
perpetuating the gap between expertise and uncritical yet confident noise.
Given our experiences as academics who have developed curricula for students and who research generative AI, we think there are three things universities can do. They should teach critical AI literacy, emphasise why developing knowledge is important, and teach students why being an expert matters if they’re going to engage meaningfully with AI.
The four dangers
Blind trust in AI’s false confidence. A recent Microsoft report showed that those who know the least about a topic are the most likely to accept AI outputs as correct. Generative AI programs like ChatGPT and Claude produce text with remarkable confidence. Students lacking domain expertise can’t identify when these systems are completely wrong.
Headlines already demonstrate the consequences of this in the workplace: lawyers submitting fabricated case citations generated by AI, and hospitals using AI transcription tools that invent statements never actually made.
Generative AI can get it wrong because it doesn’t understand anything in the human sense of the word. But it can identify and replicate patterns with remarkable sophistication. These patterns include not only words and ideas but also tone and style.
Missing the power of education. A core purpose of higher education is to give students a new way of understanding the world and their place in it. When students use AI in ways that sidestep intellectual challenges, they miss this essential transformation.
When students simply outsource their thinking to AI, they’re getting credentials without competence. They might graduate with degrees but without knowledge and expertise.
The false confidence trap. Even students who develop critical awareness about AI’s limitations face what Punya Mishra, a learning engineer professor at Arizona State University, calls “the false confidence trap”. They might recognise that AI can produce errors but lack sufficient subject knowledge to correct those errors.
As Mishra puts it:
It’s like having a generic BS detector but no way to separate truth from fiction.
This creates a dangerous half-measure where students recognise AI isn’t perfect but can’t effectively evaluate its outputs.
Perpetuating the knowledge gap. As AI becomes ubiquitous in workplaces, the gap between those with genuine expertise and those relying solely on AI will widen. Students who haven’t developed their own knowledge foundations will be increasingly marginalised in a world that paradoxically values human expertise more, not less, as AI advances.
Answers
There are three steps universities can take.
Integrate critical AI literacy. Students need to understand how generative AI works – how AI is trained on massive databases of human-created texts and images to identify patterns by which to craft new outputs.
It’s not enough to have an “Intro to AI” course. Every discipline needs to show students how AI intersects with their field and, most significantly, empower them to reflect on the ethical implications of its use. This includes engaging in questions around the use of copyrighted materials for the training of generative AI, the biases inherent in AI generated texts and images, and the enormous environmental cost of AI use.
Emphasise knowledge development. Higher education institutions must actively counter the view that university is merely about the provision of credentials. We need to help students see the value of acquiring domain expertise. This is not always self-evident to those students who understand higher education only as a means to a job, which encourages them to engage with knowledge in an instrumentalist way – and thus to use AI in ways that prevent engagement with complex ideas. It is a personal relationship with knowledge that will prepare them for a future where AI is everywhere. Advocating for the power of knowledge needs to be a central part of every academic’s job description.
Model dual expertise. Academics should model what Mishra calls “the dual expertise challenge” — combining domain knowledge with critical AI literacy. This means demonstrating to students how experts engage with AI: analysing its outputs against established knowledge, identifying biases or gaps, and using AI as a tool to enhance human expertise rather than replace it.
As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, the value of human expertise only grows. Universities that prepare students to critically engage with AI while developing deep domain knowledge will graduate the experts that society needs in this rapidly evolving technological landscape.
We have our work cut out for us, but expertise remains highly valued.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Headline: Governor Stein Announces Genentech Will Build New Manufacturing Plant in Wake County Creating 400 Jobs
Governor Stein Announces Genentech Will Build New Manufacturing Plant in Wake County Creating 400 Jobs lsaito
Raleigh, NC
Governor Josh Stein announced today that Genentech, one of the world’s premiere biotechnology companies, will invest $700 million to build a new manufacturing plant in Holly Springs, creating 400 jobs.
“World-class companies like Genentech recognize that North Carolina is a leading state for biotechnology,” said Governor Josh Stein. “These companies know that our life science workforce is ready to help them deliver their cutting-edge medicines to the world. We are proud to welcome Genetech to North Carolina.”
Genentech, with headquarters in South San Francisco, California, is a member of Switzerland’s Roche Group (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) and is considered the original biotechnology pioneer. For more than 40 years the company has pursued groundbreaking science to discover and develop medicines for people with serious or life-threatening diseases. Genentech’s project in Holly Springs will establish a new 700,000 sq. ft. high-volume fill-finish operation to support its existing product portfolio as well as its future pipeline, allowing the company to meet growing demand for its medicines.
“Genentech would like to thank Governor Stein and Commerce Secretary Lilley for their support and for welcoming us to North Carolina. We are thrilled to establish this relationship with the city of Holly Springs, where we will create new manufacturing and construction jobs while making a broader positive impact on the local economy and community for many years to come,” said Genentech CEO Ashley Magargee. “Our new facility will serve as an important new setting within our manufacturing network to help deliver on the promise of our company’s life-changing science and industry-leading pipeline.”
“Genentech siting its first East Coast production facility in North Carolina is a gamechanger for our already strong biotechnology sector,” said North Carolina Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley. “Thanks to amazing state leadership from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and continued investments in workforce and infrastructure, these kinds of successes breed great jobs and great therapies that make the world a healthier place.”
Although wages will vary depending on the position, the average salary for the new positions will be $119,833, compared with an average wage in Wake County of $76,643. The new positions will bring an annual payroll impact to the community of more than $50 million per year.
The company’s project in North Carolina will be facilitated, in part, by a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) approved by the state’s Economic Investment Committee earlier today. Over the course of the 12-year term of this grant, the project is estimated to grow the state’s economy by more than $3 billion. Using a formula that takes into account the new tax revenues generated by the new jobs and the capital investment, the JDIG agreement authorizes the potential reimbursement to the company of up to $9,846,750, spread over 12 years and based on the creation of 420 jobs. State payments only occur following performance verification by the departments of Commerce and Revenue that the company has met its incremental job creation and investment targets.
The project’s projected return on investment of public dollars is 230 per cent, meaning for every dollar of potential cost, the state receives $3.30 in state revenue. JDIG projects result in positive net tax revenue to the state treasury, even after taking into consideration the grant’s reimbursement payments to a given company.
Because Genentech chose to expand in Wake County, classified by the state’s economic tier system as Tier 3, the company’s JDIG agreement also calls for moving $3,282,250 into the state’s Industrial Development Fund – Utility Account. The Utility Account helps rural communities finance necessary infrastructure upgrades to attract future business. Even when new jobs are created in a Tier 3 county such as Wake, the new tax revenue generated through JDIG grants helps more economically challenged communities elsewhere in the state.
“Our momentum in biotech is off the charts as these new jobs and new investment come to Holly Springs,” said N.C. Senator Lisa Grafstein. “Genentech is a renowned brand in the industry, and we welcome the company to our growing family of life science partners.”
“Economic development success takes teamwork, and I’m proud of the many local, regional, and state organizations that worked hard to bring Genentech to our community,” said N.C. Representative Ya Liu. “We look forward to seeing this innovative company put down roots and grow in Holly Springs, Wake County, and North Carolina.”
Partnering with the North Carolina Department of Commerce and the Economic Development Partnership of N.C. on this project were the North Carolina General Assembly, the North Carolina Community College System, N.C. Commerce’s Division of Workforce Solutions, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, N.C. State University, Duke Energy, Enbridge Gas North Carolina, Capital Area Workforce Development, Wake Tech, the Town of Holly Springs, Wake County, and Wake County Economic Development, a program of the Greater Raleigh Chamber.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Sioux McKenna, Professor of Higher Education, Rhodes University, South Africa, Rhodes University
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is trained on enormous bodies of text, video and images to identify patterns. It then creates new texts, videos and images on the basis of this pattern identification. Thanks to machine learning, it improves its ability to do so every time it is used.
As AI becomes embedded in academic life, a troubling reality has emerged: students are extremely vulnerable to its use. They don’t know enough about what AI is to be alert to its shortcomings. And they don’t know enough about their subject content to make judgements on this anyway. Most importantly, they don’t know what they don’t know.
As twoacademics involved in higher education teaching, we argue that there are four key dangers facing students in today’s world of AI. They are:
blind trust in its abilities
using it to side-step actual learning
not knowing how it works
perpetuating the gap between expertise and uncritical yet confident noise.
Given our experiences as academics who have developed curricula for students and who research generative AI, we think there are three things universities can do. They should teach critical AI literacy, emphasise why developing knowledge is important, and teach students why being an expert matters if they’re going to engage meaningfully with AI.
The four dangers
Blind trust in AI’s false confidence. A recent Microsoft report showed that those who know the least about a topic are the most likely to accept AI outputs as correct. Generative AI programs like ChatGPT and Claude produce text with remarkable confidence. Students lacking domain expertise can’t identify when these systems are completely wrong.
Headlines already demonstrate the consequences of this in the workplace: lawyers submitting fabricated case citations generated by AI, and hospitals using AI transcription tools that invent statements never actually made.
Generative AI can get it wrong because it doesn’t understand anything in the human sense of the word. But it can identify and replicate patterns with remarkable sophistication. These patterns include not only words and ideas but also tone and style.
Missing the power of education. A core purpose of higher education is to give students a new way of understanding the world and their place in it. When students use AI in ways that sidestep intellectual challenges, they miss this essential transformation.
When students simply outsource their thinking to AI, they’re getting credentials without competence. They might graduate with degrees but without knowledge and expertise.
The false confidence trap. Even students who develop critical awareness about AI’s limitations face what Punya Mishra, a learning engineer professor at Arizona State University, calls “the false confidence trap”. They might recognise that AI can produce errors but lack sufficient subject knowledge to correct those errors.
As Mishra puts it:
It’s like having a generic BS detector but no way to separate truth from fiction.
This creates a dangerous half-measure where students recognise AI isn’t perfect but can’t effectively evaluate its outputs.
Perpetuating the knowledge gap. As AI becomes ubiquitous in workplaces, the gap between those with genuine expertise and those relying solely on AI will widen. Students who haven’t developed their own knowledge foundations will be increasingly marginalised in a world that paradoxically values human expertise more, not less, as AI advances.
Answers
There are three steps universities can take.
Integrate critical AI literacy. Students need to understand how generative AI works – how AI is trained on massive databases of human-created texts and images to identify patterns by which to craft new outputs.
It’s not enough to have an “Intro to AI” course. Every discipline needs to show students how AI intersects with their field and, most significantly, empower them to reflect on the ethical implications of its use. This includes engaging in questions around the use of copyrighted materials for the training of generative AI, the biases inherent in AI generated texts and images, and the enormous environmental cost of AI use.
Emphasise knowledge development. Higher education institutions must actively counter the view that university is merely about the provision of credentials. We need to help students see the value of acquiring domain expertise. This is not always self-evident to those students who understand higher education only as a means to a job, which encourages them to engage with knowledge in an instrumentalist way – and thus to use AI in ways that prevent engagement with complex ideas. It is a personal relationship with knowledge that will prepare them for a future where AI is everywhere. Advocating for the power of knowledge needs to be a central part of every academic’s job description.
Model dual expertise. Academics should model what Mishra calls “the dual expertise challenge” — combining domain knowledge with critical AI literacy. This means demonstrating to students how experts engage with AI: analysing its outputs against established knowledge, identifying biases or gaps, and using AI as a tool to enhance human expertise rather than replace it.
As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, the value of human expertise only grows. Universities that prepare students to critically engage with AI while developing deep domain knowledge will graduate the experts that society needs in this rapidly evolving technological landscape.
We have our work cut out for us, but expertise remains highly valued.
– AI can be a danger to students – 3 things universities must do – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-be-a-danger-to-students-3-things-universities-must-do-255652
COSTA MESA, Calif., May 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — While some Americans are struggling with unmanageable debt, they are finding many ways to cope, including limiting their use of credit cards and sticking to a rigid budget. A survey from Experian found that U.S. adults describe unmanageable debt as constant stress and a choice between paying off debt and covering basic necessities.
The good news is that many U.S. adults report conquering debt they once thought was unmanageable, including credit card and medical debt, as well as personal and student loans. Approximately 36% of U.S. adults who have overcome such debt took on an additional job or side hustle, about 26% utilized the snowball method (prioritizing smaller debts first) and 23% relied on budgeting apps to monitor cash flow. The survey also found that U.S. adults currently facing unmanageable debt are considering using these same methods.
“Unmanageable debt can negatively impact many facets of a consumer’s life. While credit is a useful tool for achieving certain financial goals, it must be used wisely,” said Rod Griffin, senior director of Consumer Education and Advocacy at Experian.
To help Americans with their financial health, Experian announced a $5 million debt relief initiative among 5,000 families in Louisiana, partnering with Louisiana State University basketball player Flau’jae Johnson. The company also offers a free membership with financial tools for managing debt and money.
For those Americans making a game plan for future success, more than 2 in 3 (70%) are avoiding taking on additional or unmanageable debt by steering clear of buy-now-pay-later payment options or limiting their use of credit cards. Meanwhile, 60 percent of respondents say they have a support system that could help them if they face a challenging debt payoff journey.
What do crispy bacon, a juicy beef steak, human flesh and faeces have in common? They’re all foods that trigger a powerful emotional reaction in people – disgust. And according to new research, for vegetarians, meat sits in the same psychological category as some of the most revolting substances imaginable.
In our recent study, we explored how vegetarians and omnivores respond emotionally to different types of food. We asked vegetarians to look at images of commonly eaten meats – roast chicken, beef steak and bacon – alongside a selection of unpopular vegetables like raw onions, aubergine, olives and brussels sprouts.
For omnivores, we swapped out the familiar meats for extreme examples: meat made from human or dog flesh – and faeces.
Participants answered a series of questions about how they would feel eating each food, focusing especially on foods they said they’d refuse. We gathered 896 such “food rejections” from more than 300 people in the UK, and from these, we could dig into the psychology behind why people reject certain foods.
Here’s what we found.
Offending vegetables were usually rejected due to distaste – a reaction based on sensory experience: taste, smell, or texture. This was true for both vegetarians and omnivores. Whether it’s the bitterness of brussels sprouts or the sponginess of raw aubergine, the dislike came down to flavour or texture.
Meat, however, was a different story. For vegetarians, it wasn’t the flavour of meat that made it unappealing, but the very idea of it. Their responses were driven by disgust – a reaction not to how something tastes, but to what it is.
Those who rejected meat felt discomfort at the idea of meat being inside their body, or of it touching other food. That kind of deep, intuitive rejection mirrors how omnivores in our study reacted to images of human flesh, dog meat, or faeces – things we avoid not because of how they taste, but because of what they represent.
To feel this distinction yourself, try this mental exercise. Imagine your favourite soup. Now, picture a tiny amount of a vegetable you dislike – let’s say beetroot – blended into it. You can’t see it, taste it, or smell it. Would you still eat the soup?
If yes, you’re experiencing distaste to the beetroot. Distaste only kicks in when your senses are affronted. No taste, no problem.
Now try the same scenario, but instead of beetroot, imagine the soup contains a minuscule amount of dog meat. Still invisible, undetectable – but you know it’s there. Would you eat it?
Most people in western countries wouldn’t – not because of the flavour, but because of an almost primal aversion. That’s disgust.
This distinction has been known in psychology for decades. Earlier studies showed that animal products like blood, bush meat and faeces are usually rejected because they evoke disgust, while plant-based foods are disliked due to distaste. But until now, it wasn’t clear just how closely vegetarians’ aversion to everyday meat mirrors reactions to the most revolting substances imaginable. This excludes reasoned, non-emotional choices like avoiding meat for environmental reasons or peanuts due to allergy.
Distaste and disgust evolved to protect us from different threats. Plants often defend themselves with bitter or sour toxins, prompting a distaste response that’s shared across many species. The threat in meat comes from pathogens and parasites that can’t usually be detected by taste, so distaste is useless here. Disgust gives us way to respond to the idea of contamination, one that makes us recoil not just from the food itself, but from anything it touches.
Disgust toward meat is more common than you might think. Around 74% of vegetarians and even 15% of flexitarians report robust levels of disgust when it comes to meat. And many omnivores experience it too – especially when confronted with unfamiliar meats. Think of the famous “Bushtucker Trials” on the reality show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here. Few of us could stomach insects, animal brains, or offal – even if told they’re safe and nutritious.
This emotional reaction isn’t just a quirk. It may help us reduce meat consumption overall. Recent research shows that during challenges like Veganuary, when people go a month without meat, they often become more disgusted by meat afterward. This makes it easier to keep reducing their intake.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A star cluster in the constellation Sagittarius seen by the James Webb Space Telescope.NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope
We have long taken it for granted that gravity is one of the basic forces of nature – one of the invisible threads that keeps the universe stitched together. But suppose that this is not true. Suppose the law of gravity is simply an echo of something more fundamental: a byproduct of the universe operating under a computer-like code.
That is the premise of my latest research, published in the journal AIP Advances. It suggests that gravity is not a mysterious force that attracts objects towards one another, but the product of an informational law of nature that I call the second law of infodynamics.
It is a notion that seems like science fiction – but one that is based in physics and evidence that the universe appears to be operating suspiciously like a computer simulation.
In digital technologies, right down to the apps in your phone and the world of cyberspace, efficiency is the key. Computers compact and restructure their data all the time to save memory and computer power. Maybe the same is taking place all over the universe?
Information theory, the mathematical study of the quantification, storage and communication of information, may help us understand what’s going on. Originally developed by mathematician Claude Shannon, it has become increasingly popular in physics and is used in a growing range of research areas.
In a 2023 paper, I used information theory to propose my second law of infodynamics.
This stipulates that information “entropy”, or the level of information disorganisation, will have to reduce or stay static within any given closed information system. This is the opposite of the popular second law of thermodynamics, which dictates that physical entropy, or disorder, always increases.
Take a cooling cup of coffee. Energy flows from hot to cold until the temperature of the coffee is the same as the temperature of the room and its energy is minimum – a state called thermal equilibrium. The entropy of the system is a maximum at this point – with all the molecules maximally spread out, having the same energy. What that means is that the spread of energies per molecule in the liquid is reduced.
If one considers the information content of each molecule based on its energy, then at the start, in the hot cup of coffee, the information entropy is maximum and at equilibrium the information entropy is minimum. That’s because almost all molecules are at the same energy level, becoming identical characters in an informational message. So the spread of different energies available is reduced when there’s thermal equilibrium.
But if we consider just location rather than energy, then there’s lots of information disorder when particles are distributed randomly in space – the information required to keep pace with them is considerable. When they consolidate themselves together under gravitational attraction, however, the way planets, stars and galaxies do, the information gets compacted and more manageable.
In simulations, that’s exactly what occurs when a system tries to function more efficiently. So, matter flowing under the influence of gravity need not be a result of a force at all. Perhaps it is a function of the way the universe compacts the information that it has to work with.
Here, space is not continuous and smooth. Space is made up of tiny “cells” of information, similar to pixels in a photo or squares on the screen of a computer game. In each cell is basic information about the universe – where, say, a particle is – and all are gathered together to make the fabric of the universe.
If you place items within this space, the system gets more complex. But when all of those items come together to be one item instead of many, the information is simple again.
The universe, under this view, tends to naturally seek to be in those states of minimal information entropy. The real kicker is that if you do the numbers, the entropic “informational force” created by this tendency toward simplicity is exactly equivalent to Newton’s law of gravitation, as shown in my paper.
This theory builds on earlier studies of “entropic gravity” but goes a step further. In connecting information dynamics with gravity, we are led to the interesting conclusion that the universe could be running on some kind of cosmic software. In an artificial universe, maximum-efficiency rules would be expected. Symmetries would be expected. Compression would be expected.
And law – that is, gravity – would be expected to emerge from these computational rules.
We may not yet have definitive evidence that we live in a simulation. But the deeper we look, the more our universe seems to behave like a computational process.
Melvin M. Vopson is affiliated with the University of Portsmouth and the Information Physics Institute.
Type 5 diabetes has just been recognised as a distinct form of diabetes by the International Diabetes Federation. Despite the name, there are more than a dozen different types of diabetes. The classification isn’t quite as tidy as the numbering suggests.
Here’s a clear guide to the different types, including some that you may not have heard of, along with information about what causes them and how they are treated.
Type 1
Type 1 diabetes is caused by the body’s immune system mistakenly attacking the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. This autoimmune reaction can occur at any age, from infancy through to old age.
Treatment involves lifelong insulin therapy, delivered through injections or pumps.
A small number of people who struggle with low blood sugars, called hypoglycaemia, can receive new cells in the pancreas that produce insulin from deceased donors. For many, this reduces the number of insulin injections needed. Some can stop taking their insulin altogether.
What’s more, dozens of people have now received stem-cell-derived transplants to effectively “cure” their diabetes, although people still need to take strong immune-suppressing drugs. This treatment is not yet widely available.
Type 2
Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of the condition and is often linked to having a high BMI (body mass index). However, it can also affect people of normal weight, particularly those with a strong genetic predisposition.
Certain ethnic groups, including south Asians and people of African and Caribbean descent, are at higher risk – even at lower body weights.
Boosting the body’s production of insulin can help to control blood sugar levels. Some drugs boost insulin production from the pancreas, while others improve insulin sensitivity.
Metformin, for example, is taken by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. This drug improves insulin sensitivity and switches off sugar production by the liver.
There are dozens of different drugs to help control blood sugar in type 2 diabetes. Tailoring treatment to the individual has been shown to improve health outcomes significantly.
Lifestyle changes can also reverse diabetes. This can be done by keeping a low-calorie diet of 800 calories a day. In a research trial maintaining this diet for 12 months reversed diabetes in 46% of people.
Gestational diabetes
This type of diabetes develops during pregnancy, typically between weeks 24 and 28. It is triggered by hormonal changes that reduce the body’s sensitivity to insulin.
Risk factors include being overweight or obese, a family history of diabetes, and giving birth to a large baby in a previous pregnancy.
Those from Middle Eastern, south Asian, black and African Caribbean backgrounds are also at higher risk of gestational diabetes. Age is also a factor, as insulin sensitivity declines with age. This can be treated with diet and exercise, tablets or insulin injections.
Gestational diabetes usually develops during the second or third trimester of pregnancy. Just Life/Shutterstock.com
Rarer forms of diabetes
There are at least nine sub-types of diabetes that include rare genetic forms, sometimes caused by a single genetic change. Others can be caused by treatment, such as surgery or drugs, such as steroids.
Neonatal diabetes appears early in life. Some of the genetic changes affect how insulin is released from the pancreas. Some people still make their own insulin, so can be treated with tablets that help pancreas cells to push out insulin.
Maturity onset diabetes of the young, or Mody, occurs later in life and is linked to genetic changes. There are several gene changes, with some affecting how pancreas cells sense sugar and others affecting how the pancreas develops.
Type 3c diabetes is different. It is caused by damage to the pancreas. People with pancreatic cancer, for example, can develop diabetes after parts of the pancreas are removed. It can also develop after pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas).
Those with cystic fibrosis are also at a higher risk of developing diabetes. This is called cystic fibrosis-related diabetes. The risk increases with age and is very common, with around a third of people with cystic fibrosis developing diabetes by the age of 40.
Type 5
This newly designated form is linked to malnutrition during early life. Type 5 diabetes is more common in poorer countries. It affects around 20-25 million people worldwide.
People have low body weight and lack insulin. But the lack of insulin is not caused by the immune system. Instead, the body may not have received the correct nutrition during childhood to help the pancreas develop normally.
Studies with rodents have shown that a low-protein diet during pregnancy or adolescence leads to poor pancreas development. This has been known for many years. Having a smaller pancreas is a risk factor for different forms of diabetes. Essentially, having fewer reserves of insulin-producing cells.
Diabetes is an umbrella term for a range of conditions that result in raised blood sugar levels, but the underlying causes vary widely. Understanding the specific types of diabetes someone has is crucial to providing the right treatment.
As medical science evolves, so does the classification of diabetes. Recognising malnutrition-related diabetes as type 5 will stimulate discussion. This is a step towards better global understanding and care – especially in low-income countries.
Craig Beall currently receives funding from Diabetes UK, Breakthrough T1D, Steve Morgan Foundation Type 1 Diabetes Grand Challenge, Medical Research Council, NC3Rs, Society for Endocrinology and British Society for Neuroendocrinology.
Dr Bárbara Barreiro LeónThe endurance of the European Song Contest and its place in the hearts of so many countries provides the ‘ideal lens for analysing cultural identities, memory, and heritage’, says Dr BárbaraBarreiro León.
The lecturer in Lecturer in Film & Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen is currently writing a book exploring how identities are represented through film, music and other contemporary arts, including Eurovision.
She says each year of the content – which has been running since 1956 – offers ‘a truly inexhaustible source of research’ and she will attend the 2025 event as part of the press group and will present at an academic conference being held at the University of Basel.
“Comparing different years, countries, performances, and styles of hosting significantly enriches my research focus on memory, cultural heritage, and identity within Eurovision,” Dr León added.
“When I last attended in 2023, the UK hosted on behalf of Ukraine—a moment filled with symbolic weight. This year, Switzerland takes on the role, bringing the contest full circle as the country that hosted the very first Eurovision in 1956. Being behind the scenes in these contexts offers a unique form of fieldwork—one that is immersive, dynamic, and unlike any other.”
She said that the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest stands out as ‘a record-breaking moment for linguistic diversity in the competition’.
Dr León said: “Out of 37 entries, 24 feature lyrics in languages other than English. Some countries are embracing their native tongues for the first time in years—or even decades—like Germany.
“Others are showcasing regional dialects, such as Sweden’s entry, which is performed in Vörå, a unique blend of Finnish and Swedish. In a surprising twist, some nations are even singing in the native languages of other countries, with Estonia, for example, presenting a song in Italian.”
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Dr León’s previous work has focused primarily on Ukraine but she has expanded this focus to encompass themes such as European belonging, diaspora and migration, and the visual politics of flag representation.
“It is a competition which may not always be taken seriously here but which has very different meanings across the countries taking part,” she added.
“It is still the biggest musical event in the world and was founded to bring Europe back together following the Second World War.
“There is nothing comparable which has run for so many years and which has such an enormous fan base crossing a huge number of national borders.
“From that perspective it is the ideal vehicle to look at more than seven decades of change in our societies and culture with each edition of the contest bringing fresh examples that continuously enrich and deepen the broader conversation.”
Further details of the conference at the University of Basel can be found at https://www.eurovisions.eu/programme-2025
Secretary for Constitutional & Mainland Affairs Erick Tsang will conclude his Beijing visit tomorrow and depart for Hungary and Egypt from May 15 to 20 to attend the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Economic & Trade Cooperation Exchange Conferences.
The conferences are jointly organised by the People’s Government of Guangdong Province, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and the Macao Special Administrative Region Government, to promote the development opportunities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).
While in Beijing, Mr Tsang led the Hong Kong SAR Government delegation to meet Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying and leaders of various bureaus to deepen their understanding of the country’s foreign policies and the latest developments of the international situation.
Mr Tsang thanked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for its staunch and continuous support for the Hong Kong SAR Government.
He hoped it would continue to provide support and guidance to the Hong Kong SAR Government in handling the city’s external affairs, to support Hong Kong in intensifying international interaction and co-operation, and to showcase the successful implementation of “one country, two systems” to the world.
Mr Tsang also met the Hong Kong Basic Law Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and the Committee on Liaison with Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan & Overseas Chinese of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and toured the China Foreign Affairs University.
Before leaving Beijing tomorrow, he will visit the Museum of Early Revolutionary Activities of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, meet Hong Kong students in Beijing, and call on the Office of the Hong Kong SAR Government in Beijing to receive briefings on its work.
Mr Tsang will leave for Budapest, Hungary, in the early hours of May 15 to attend the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area – Europe (Hungary) Economic & Trade Cooperation Exchange Conference the next day.
The conference aims to promote the enormous business opportunities brought about by the GBA to the Hungarian business community and how Hong Kong can play its important function as a “super connector” and “super value-adder” between the two places.
During his stay in Hungary, Mr Tsang will meet local political and business representatives to learn about the latest developments in the region and explore ways to further strengthen co-operation between Hungary and Hong Kong, with a view to opening up new opportunities for enterprises of both places.
He will depart for Cairo, Egypt, on May 17 for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area – Africa (Egypt) Economic & Trade Cooperation Exchange Conference on May 19 to promote the GBA’s latest developments and the development potential as well as Hong Kong’s unique advantages under “one country, two systems”.
During his stay, he will exchange views with representatives of the local political and business circles to understand the local development trends and promote interface between the industries of Hong Kong and Egypt.
Mr Tsang will leave Egypt on the evening of May 19, returning to Hong Kong on May 20. During his absence, Under Secretary for Constitutional & Mainland Affairs Clement Woo will be Acting Secretary.
Commissioner for the Development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Maisie Chan and Director-General of Investment Promotion Alpha Lau will join the visits.
The Neag School of Education honored several faculty and staff on May 2 with its annual awards recognizing research, teaching, and service. In March, the Neag School’s Dean’s Office solicited nominations from current students, faculty, and staff and presented the awards at the end-of-year School Meeting. The 2025 award recipients are:
Dean Jason Irizarry presents the 2025 Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award to Adam McCready during the May 2 Neag School meeting. (Shawn Kornegay/Neag School)
Dr. Perry A. Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award – Adam McCready
The Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award is awarded annually to a full-time faculty member in the Neag School. Alumnus Perry A. Zirkel ’68 MA, ’72 Ph.D., ’76 JD is a university professor emeritus of education and law at Lehigh University, where he formerly was dean of the College of Education and more recently held the Iacocca Chair in Education. The 2025 award recipient is Adam McCready, an assistant professor-in-residence in the Department of Educational Leadership since 2019.
McCready is a faculty member for the Neag School’s Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) Master of Arts program. His research critically examines the college student experience to identify and challenge oppressive educational structures. He has studied students’ experiences in historically white college social fraternities; college men and masculinities; and the relationship between social media use and students’ attitudes, behaviors, and experiences. His research has been published in Psychology of Men & Masculinities, Research in Higher Education, Innovative Higher Education, Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, and the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice. McCready serves as the editor for the Journal of Sorority and Fraternity Life Research and Practice, and previously served as the vice chair for scholarship and research for the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) Coalition on Men and Masculinities.
McCready exemplifies excellence in teaching through his unwavering commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in the classroom. Since joining the HESA program, McCready has taught diverse core courses, skillfully blending rich scholarship with professional experience. A reflective educator, he thoughtfully incorporates material centering minoritized students and engages in critical conversations about race, gender, sexuality, and disability to better prepare future higher education leaders.
In Spring 2022, McCready introduced an innovative “ungrading” philosophy, focusing on feedback and reflection rather than numerical scores. This humanizing approach has strengthened student learning while influencing fellow faculty members to rethink their evaluation methods. Known for his flexibility, McCready proactively seeks student feedback and adjusts his courses to meet learners’ evolving needs.
His thoughtful course preparation, creativity, and deep investment in student success have earned him high student evaluation scores and recognition from UConn and the Neag School’s administration. Students and colleagues alike commend his relational, scholar-practitioner model of teaching.
Sandra Chafouleas is the recipient of the 2025 Neag School Distinguished Researcher Award. (Neag School photo)
Distinguished Researcher Award – Sandra Chafouleas
This award is given to a full professor in the Neag School who, over at least the last 10-year period (at least five consecutive completed years at UConn), has made significant research contributions to their field of study. This year’s recipient is Sandra Chafouleas, a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology.
Chafouleas is also the Neag Endowed Professor and the founder and co-director of the UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH). Chafouleas focuses on supporting school system implementation of evidence-informed practices and is known for her expertise in areas of integrated health and learning (whole child), school mental health, and social, emotional, and behavioral assessment and intervention.
As a principal investigator and co-principal investigator, Chafouleas has secured over $20 million to support research, service, and training activities through the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and private foundations. Chafouleas has successfully built and led multidisciplinary and multisite teams in tackling issues in the social, emotional, and behavioral functioning of children across pre-K-12 settings. She currently serves as multiple principal investigator on an NIH-funded U24 Network to advance the science of emotional well-being, leading the measurement, training, and mentorship of emerging scholars. Many individuals, including junior faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and students, have benefited from her research team’s leadership as collaborators on research publications, presentations, and grants.
Chafouleas is also the co-creator of the award-winning Feel Your Best Self program, a free and fun toolkit that teaches 12 simple coping strategies to promote emotion regulation. The program has won numerous awards, including one Gold and three Silver Telly awards. She has authored over 200 publications, which have been cited more than 11,000 times, and regularly serves as a national presenter and invited speaker.
She is a fellow in the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She has received multiple recognitions, including a 2022 Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association and selection as the 2023 Reed Fellow at UConn Waterbury. Chafouleas previously served as associate dean for The Graduate School (2012-2014) and the associate dean for research at the Neag School (2014-2016). Prior to becoming a university trainer, she worked as a school psychologist and school administrator in a variety of settings supporting the needs of children with behavior disorders.
Dean Jason Irizarry presents the 2025 Neag School Early-Career Scholar Award to Zachary Collier during the May 2 Neag School meeting. (Shawn Kornegay/Neag School)
Outstanding Early-Career Scholar Award – Zachary Collier
This award is given to a pre-tenured faculty member in the Neag School who has completed at least two consecutive years at UConn. The 2025 recipient is Zachary Collier, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology.
Collier is a leading scholar in educational statistics, causal data mining, and artificial intelligence applications in missing data analysis. His work addresses critical methodological challenges in education, public health, and special education, with research published in top-tier journals such as Structural Equation Modeling, Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, and Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.
Collier has received significant external funding from major agencies, including a $3.1 million NIH grant, a $2.9 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, and awards from the Spencer and James S. McDonnell foundations. In 2025, he was named an Emerging Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education and was a featured mathematician by the Network for Minorities in Mathematical Sciences. That same year, he was appointed as grant reviewer for the IES.
Beyond his research, Collier is a dedicated educator and mentor known for fostering inclusive, collaborative learning environments. He teaches foundational and advanced courses in statistics and data science and actively supports graduate student development through co-authored research. A staunch advocate for equity in quantitative research, he contributes to initiatives like the InclusiMetrics Conference and is recognized for advancing justice-oriented approaches through QuantCrit and data sensitivity methods.
Valerie J. Pichette Outstanding Staff Award – Diane Herlihy and Christine North
Dean Jason Irizarry presents Diane Herlihy with the 2025 Valerie J. Pichette Outstanding Staff Award.
Named in honor of the late Valerie J. Pichette, this award recognizes an individual or individuals who have gone above and beyond in their work at the Neag School over the past academic year. Pichette had a 30-year history of service to the state of Connecticut, including having served as executive assistant to the Neag School dean for nearly two decades. This year’s recipients are Diane Herlihy and Christine North.
Herlihy, who joined the Neag School in 2019, is the true definition of a team player. She collaborates with faculty, students, and staff to support others within the Neag School and always brings a positive attitude. As a volunteer and an active member of the Community Building Committee, she has been instrumental in the planning and execution of many events throughout the year, including Undergraduate Commencement.
She has taken on the responsibilities of other positions multiple times to fill in for colleagues without hesitation and still ensured her work was not affected. Herlihy is always attentive to staff and student needs and is one of the first people willing to help; she seeks out answers to problems and does it all with a caring and determined attitude.
Dean Jason Irizarry presents Christine North with the 2025 Valerie J. Pichette Outstanding Staff Award.
North, the sole administrative staff person for the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, constantly juggles requests from faculty, students, staff, Neag School administrators, and external stakeholders who call with questions, seek advice, and need help solving problems. She is a stable and calming presence and an essential ingredient in how the department’s business and mission are met.
Since joining the Neag School in 1996, North has been an important member of the School community, helping others solve problems and raising questions and alternative strategies when relevant. She exhibits institutional loyalty, impressive professionalism, initiative, integrity, a willingness to help with everything and anything, and deeply cares for the culture of the Neag School.
Neag School of Education faculty member Adam McCready has been named the 2025 Dr. Perry A. Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award recipient. McCready teaches in the Neag School’s Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) master’s program. His scholarly work examines the college student experience to identify and challenge oppressive educational structures. His research includes studies on students’ experiences in historically white college social fraternities; college men and masculinities; and the impact of social media on student attitudes and behavior.
The Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award is awarded annually to a full-time faculty member in the Neag School. Alumnus Perry A. Zirkel ’68 MA, ’72 Ph.D., ’76 JD is a university professor emeritus of education and law at Lehigh University, where he formerly was dean of the College of Education and more recently held the Iacocca Chair in Education for its five-year term. He has a Ph.D. in educational administration and a JD from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Laws degree from Yale University.
“To me, the Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award indicates that my colleagues, students (particularly, those in the Higher Education and Student Affairs master’s program), and other members of the Neag School community value my teaching philosophy and practices,” McCready says. “Teaching is at the core of my identity as a faculty member, and I view learning as a community effort that honors and respects students’ identities, lived experiences, and contexts. Therefore, receiving this award also indicates that I have made progress toward valuing students’ humanity, and fostering community that aids learning and growth.”
To me, the Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award indicates that my colleagues, students … and other members of the Neag School community value my teaching philosophy and practices. — Adam McCready
“Dr. McCready incorporates flexibility in his teaching, especially when it comes to centering learners’ needs in his courses,” wrote nominators H. Kenny Nienhusser and Milagros Castillo-Montoya, associate professors in the HESA program. “He always wants to find ways to better meet students’ learning needs by asking them for feedback – formally and informally – and making adjustments during and after the course.”
Nienhusser and Castillo-Montoya also highlighted McCready’s commitment to inclusive pedagogy.
“At the core of Dr. McCready’s teaching is addressing issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in the higher education setting,” they wrote. “As a white, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied man, he has thoughtfully reflected on how his privileged identities may surface in his teaching. To address this, he has dedicated time to reflecting on and deconstructing how to include material in his courses that focus on minoritized college students, teach subject matter that centers on minoritized students’ strengths, and engage in conversations in the classroom about issues of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, among other important topics in preparing future HESA professionals.”
“Dr. McCready exemplifies rigor in his course instruction while fostering an inclusive and supportive learning environment for all his students,” wrote nominator Laura Burton, professor and head of the Department of Educational Leadership.
“The mission of the Neag School of Education is, ‘to improve educational and social systems to be more effective, equitable, and just for all,’ ” McCready says. “Although outstanding teaching is important to student learning and development across UConn, it is vital to mission of our School. In short, it is crucial that Neag School faculty members embody the outstanding teaching that we hope our students will provide to their students. The Zirkel Teaching Award helps our faculty community strive for this mission.”
Since joining the HESA program, McCready has taught diverse core courses that blend academic scholarship with professional practice. His commitment to diversity and inclusion is reflected in course content and how he engages students in reflective dialogue and creates space for marginalized voices.
McCready’s research has been published in Psychology of Men & Masculinities, Research in Higher Education Innovative Higher Education, Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, and the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice. McCready serves as the editor for the Journal of Sorority and Fraternity Life Research and Practice, and previously served as the vice chair for scholarship and research for the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) Coalition on Men and Masculinities.
In spring 2022, McCready introduced an innovative “ungrading” philosophy, focusing on feedback and reflection rather than numerical scores. This approach has strengthened student learning while influencing fellow faculty members to rethink their evaluation methods. Known for his flexibility, McCready proactively seeks student feedback and adjusts his courses to meet learners’ evolving needs.
His thoughtful course preparation, commitment to student success, and emphasis on inclusivity have earned him high evaluation scores and praise from students and colleagues. McCready has nearly 20 years of higher education experience, including the past six years at the Neag School. He holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from The George Washington University, a master’s in college student personnel from Bowling State University, and a Ph.D. in higher education from Boston College.
Neag School alumni, current students, and faculty were invited to nominate a faculty member for the annual Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award, and a committee selected the recipient. Previous awardees include Saran Stewart in 2024, Danielle Filipiak in 2023, Tamika LaSalle in 2022, Milagros Castillo-Montoya in 2020, Jennie Weiner in 2019, and D. Betsy McCoach as the inaugural recipient in 2018.
McCready received the award during the Neag School’s year-end meeting on May 2. His name will be added to the award plaque on display in the Neag School Dean’s Office.
Raised as a third-generation New Englander and Connecticut native, Ann Petry became the first Black woman to graduate from the Connecticut College of Pharmacy in 1931 (now, the UConn School of Pharmacy).
Anna Houston Lane, born in 1908, called Old Saybrook her home. In 1925, Ann graduated from high school as the only person of African American descent. Ann’s parents inspired her to push the limits of what was possible. Change-making didn’t scare the Lane family – Ann’s father, Pete, opened and operated two drugstores as a pharmacist. Her mother, Bertha James Lane, worked in a factory before becoming a shop owner, hairdresser, and chiropodist, and creating her own business,Beautiful Linens for Beautiful Homes. As the youngest of three daughters, Ann and her sisters were raised in “classic New England tradition” with strong familial role models who empowered her in light of systemic racial disadvantages.
“The Lanes were a close-knit, middle-class Black family, which provided the young Ann Lane with a strong sense of herself as well as with a level of confidence…” – A Yęmisi Jimoh (UMass ScholarWorks)
Ann, inspired by her aunt,Anna L. James, the first black woman pharmacist in Connecticut, became determined to continue breaking barriers for Black women and to carry on her family legacy by enrolling in the Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven, which has since been transformed into the School of Pharmacy in Storrs. After receiving her Graduate in Pharmacy degree (Ph.G.) from the School, Ann worked in the family business for several years in Old Saybrook and Old Lyme. While working as a pharmacist, Ann also explored her other interest in writing, crafting short stories in her free time.
Ann Petry (Wikimedia Commons)
In 1938, Anne married George Petry, a Louisiana-born resident of Harlem. Soon after, Ann moved to New York City and set aside her pharmaceutical career to become a journalist and writer. She dove into the world of activism, inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, and wrote forThe Harlem Amsterdam NewsandThe People’s Voiceswhile writing short stories and novels focused on the Black experience. While her husband was in service during WWII, Ann began work on her first novelThe Street,which became the first novel by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies after its publication in 1946. Ann eventually moved back to Saybrook, where she continued her joy of writing, and passed away in 1997 with her loving husband and only daughter, Elizabeth Petry, by her side. Shortly before her death, she was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in Connecticut where her legacy continues to live.
As the granddaughter of a slave who self-liberated and traveled to Connecticut through the Underground Railroad, Ann Petry had the forces of history against her. Yet, with the support of her loving family and friends, Ann wrote her own story – finding success in both pharmacy and writing.
Varro Tyler: FromPharmacognosist to Philatelist
A successful professor,pharmacognosist,and lifelong scholar, Varro Tyler graduated from UConn’s School of Pharmacy with his M.S. in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1953, becoming the first individual to be awarded both degrees from the School.
Born in Nebraska in 1926, Varro was a Southern man at heart but moved to Connecticut for his academic pursuits in herbal medicine. Before attending UConn, he received his bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the University of Nebraska and studied plant sciences at Yale on an Eli Lilly Research Fellowship for a year before attending UConn.
Varro Tyler (Wikimedia Commons)
Having attained his pharmacy degrees from several colleges and universities, Varro couldn’t leave academics behind. His most notable roles include associate professor and chairman of the Department of Pharmacognosy at the University of Nebraska, a similar position at the University of Washington, and Dean of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Purdue University in 1966.
Along with his time in academia, Varro served as the first president of the American Society of Pharmacognosy and president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). As an active member of professional organizations and his community, Varro implemented his work in several settings – writing more than 270 publications and frequently appearing on TV and radio talk shows.
As the dietary supplement industry boomed in the 1990s, Varro urged the FDA to take a more assertive role in regulating product quality and manufacturers’ claims while writing a monthly column on herbal remedies forPreventionmagazine. Varro grounded his interests in scientific research, opposing para-herbalism (herbalism based on pseudoscience) throughout his academic career.
Varro’s research interests were wide-ranging, including herbal medicine, medicinal and toxic constituents of higher fungi, drug plant cultivation, and more. In addition to his literature on these pharmaceutical topics, Varro was an avid stamp collector later in life and specialized in the postage stamps of Japan. As a philatelist, Varro wrote substantial literature on stamp forgery and had a long association with the International Society for Japanese Philately.
“Varrohad a profound impact on pharmacy education, natural product science, and the use of herbal medicine” and received many awards and accolades.” – James E. Robbers(The American Society of Pharmacognosy)
After retiring in 1996, Varro continued to be passionate about his interests and passed away in 2001 with his loving wife, Virginia, by his side.
Mike Pikal: A Legacy That Lives On
With a UConn career spanning almost twenty-five years, Mike Pikal inspired thousands of students and faculty at the School and left an unmatched legacy.
Born in 1939 in Minnesota to parents Harold and Sophie, Mike was raised in the Midwest. He stayed close to home, earning his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from St. John’s University in Minnesota. He later received a doctorate from Iowa State University in 1966.
Mike started his career as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee before joining Eli Lilly Research Laboratories in the early 1970s. After years of dedicated research, Mike became a senior research scientist and won the 1996 President’s Award for his work at the company. Years later, in 1996, he joined UConn Nation as a professor of pharmaceutics.
During his time at UConn, Mike made the School proud, serving as the department head of Pharmaceutical Sciences and an Emeritus Professor while maintaining a fully active and highly productive research program. In 2005, he was named the first Pfizer Distinguished Endowed Chair in Pharmaceutical Technology.
Mike Pikal (UConn Archives)
Mike’s research spanned freeze-drying, solid-state chemistry/materials science of pharmaceuticals and protein stability, which led to more than 170 publications. Particularly interested in freeze-drying, Mike was a leader in this field and its technology and was the main contributor to the School’s successful partnerships with groups like The Center for Pharmaceutical Processing (CPPR) and The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL). He also directed a prominent and diverse research program in freeze-drying. Because of these efforts, as well as his membership in various pharmaceutical associations, Pikal won several awards, becoming one of fewer than twenty scientists to receive the AAPS Distinguished Pharmaceutical Scientist Award.
While all his accolades and research pursuits are outstanding, the School is especially grateful for the relationships Pikal formed with his Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars. Selflessly giving his time and advice to those starting in the pharmacy field, Pikal was truly an inspiration to those around him.
Surrounded by his loving wife, Janice, five children, and many grandchildren, Pikal passed away in 2018, a year after retiring from UConn.
“Mike is just in a different league than most of the rest of us. One of the many things we love about him is that he never makes us feel that way.”—Steve Nail (Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences)
Graduate students interested in an academic career after graduation day have often been told they need to be open to moving somewhere they may not want to live. This advice is because of how hard it is to get a tenure-track professor position.
Where graduate students want to settle post-graduation has potential consequences for communities and states across the country that depend more and more on a steady stream of skilled workers to power their economies. Locations seen as undesirable may struggle to attract and retain the next generation of scientists, engineers, professors and other professions filled by today’s graduate students.
We aresociologistswho are examining some of the factors that influence graduate students’ educational and career paths as part of a research project supported by the National Science Foundation. In March 2025 we distributed a survey to a sample of U.S.-based graduate students in five natural and social science disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology and sociology.
As part of our survey, we asked students to identify states they would prefer to live in and places where they would be unwilling to go. To some extent, our findings match some past anecdotes and evidence about the varying number of applications received for academic positions across different states or regions.
But little data has directly assessed students’ preferences, and our survey also provides some evidence that some states’ policies are having a negative impact on their ability to attract highly educated people.
Most preferred, most unwilling
For our study, we built our sample from the top 60 graduate programs for each of the five disciplines based on rankings from U.S. News and World Report. We received responses from nearly 2,000 students. Almost all of these students – 98%, specifically – are pursuing Ph.D.s in their respective fields.
As part of our survey, we asked students to identify locations where they would “prefer” to live and also those where they would be “unwilling” to live after finishing their graduate program. For each of these questions, we presented students with a list of all states along with the option of “outside of the United States.”
Just looking at the overall percentages, California tops the list of preferred places, with 49% of all survey-takers stating a preference to live there, followed by New York at 45% and Massachusetts with 41%.
On the other hand, Alabama was selected most often as a state students said they’d be unwilling to move to, with 58% declaring they wouldn’t want to live there. This was followed by Mississippi and Arkansas, both with just above 50% saying they’d be unwilling to move to either state.
Clusters of preference
While the two lists in many respects appear like inversions of one another, there are some exceptions to that. Looking beyond the overall percentages for each survey question, we used statistical analysis to identify underlying groups or clusters of states that are more similar to each other across both the “prefer” and “unwilling” questions.
One cluster, represented by California, New York and Massachusetts, is characterized by a very high level of preference and a low level of unwillingness. About 35% to 50% of students expressed a preference for living in these places, while only 5% to 10% said they would be unwilling to live in them. The response of “outside of the United States” is also in this category, which is noteworthy given recent concerns about the current generation of Ph.D. students looking to leave the country and efforts by other nations to recruit them.
A second cluster represents states where the preference levels are a bit lower, 20% to 30%, and the unwillingness levels are a bit higher, 7% to 15%. Still, these are states for which graduate students hold generally favorable opinions about living in after finishing their programs. This cluster includes states such as Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.
A third group of states represents locations for which the rate of preference is similar to the rate of unwillingness, in the range of 10% to 20%. This cluster includes states such as Minnesota, Delaware and Virginia.
The fourth and fifth clusters consist of states where the rate of unwillingness exceeds the rate of preference, with the size of the gap distinguishing the two clusters. In the fourth cluster, at least some students – 5% to 10% – express a preference for living in them, while around 30% to 40% say they are unwilling to live in them. This cluster includes Florida, Montana, South Carolina and Utah.
Almost no students express a preference for living in the states contained in the fifth cluster, while the highest percentages – 40% to 60% – express an unwillingness to live in them. This cluster includes Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
Indeed, political factors may be of particular concern to graduate students. In recent years, some states have taken a more hostile stance toward specific academic disciplines, institutions of higher education in general, or professions that are of interest to graduate students. While states such as Florida and Texas have been leading such efforts, many others have followed.
Interestingly, our statistical grouping of states finds that students’ unwillingness to live in states such as Texas, Florida, Georgia and Ohio is higher than we would expect given those states’ corresponding preference levels. For example, about 10% of students selected Texas as a place they would prefer to live in after graduation. Looking at other states with similar preference levels, we would expect about 10% to 20% of students to say they are unwilling to live in Texas. Instead, this percentage is actually 37%. Similarly, 5% of students say they would prefer to live in Florida. Other states with this preference rate have an unwillingness rate of around 35%, but Florida’s is 45%.
Although our data does not tell us for sure, these gaps could be a function of these states’ own policies or alignment with federal policies seen as hostile to graduate students and their future employers.
These findings suggest that communities and employers in some states might continue to face particularly steep hurdles in recruiting graduate students for employment once they finish their degrees.
Christopher P. Scheitle receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. This article is based on a study supported by the National Science Foundation (Award #2344563).
Katie Corcoran receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Taylor Remsburg receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation as a research assistant. This article is based on a study supported by the National Science Foundation (Award #2344563).
For the first time, in 1990, May was officially designated as a month honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage. Though the current U.S. administration recently withdrew federal recognition, the month continues to be celebrated by a wide array of people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
People from the Pacific Islands have their own distinct histories and issues, delineated in part by a specific geography. Yet when we refer to the even broader category of Asian Americans, a concept with a deep yet often unknown history, who exactly are we referring to?
There are nearly 25 million people of Asian descent who live in the United States, but the term Asian American remains shrouded by cultural misunderstanding and contested as a term among Asians themselves.
But it wasn’t until the 1849 California Gold Rush that Asian immigration to the U.S. – from China – began on a mass scale. That was bolstered in the 1860s by Chinese laborers recruited to build the western portion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
Starting toward the end of the 19th century, Japanese immigration steadily picked up, so that by 1910 the U.S. Census records a similar number for both communities – just over 70,000. Likewise, a small number of South Asian immigrants began arriving in the early 1900s.
An exclusionary backlash
Yet after coming to the U.S. in search of economic and political opportunities, Asian laborers in America were met by a surge of white nativist hostility and violence. That reaction was codified in civil society groups and government laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
By 1924, federal law had expanded into a virtual ban on all Asian immigration, and through the first half of the 20th century, a multitude of anti-Asian laws targeted areas including naturalization, marriage and housing, among others.
In 1933, Chinese Americans in Sacramento, Calif., protested against deportations of Asian people and for higher unemployment insurance benefits. Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images
From the start, people from Asian countries in the U.S. were generally identified broadly with identifiers such as “Oriental,” a common term at the time mostly for those from China, Japan and Korea.
As more Asians came to the U.S, other terms were used to denigrate and demean these new immigrants, whose physical appearance, language and cultural norms were distinctly different from their Euro-American neighbors.
‘Asian American’ and the birth of a movement
The desire to claim America was one of the drivers for activists in the 1960s to create the concept of Asian American that we know today.
Rejecting the term “oriental” as too limiting and exotic, since oriental literally means “from the East,” the student activists wanted a term of empowerment that would include the Filipino, Chinese, Korean and Japanese students at the heart of this organizing. Graduate students Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka came up with “Asian American” as a way to bring activists under one radical organizing umbrella, forming the Asian American Political Alliance in 1968.
A contested term
Today, the Asian American label has moved beyond its activist roots. The term might literally refer to anyone who traces their lineage from the whole of the Asian continent. This could include people from South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka to parts of West Asia like Syria, Lebanon or Iran.
A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of self-identified Asian adults living in the U.S. revealed that only 16% of people polled said they identified as “Asian American,” with a majority – 52% – preferring ethnic Asian labels, either alone or in tandem with “American.”
Moreover, unlike the student activists who worked together through their shared Asian American identity, the majority of people of Asian descent living in the U.S. came after the 1965 Immigration Act was passed, which ended all prior anti-Asian immigration laws. This, combined with a subsequent wave of Asian immigration from parts of Asia not represented in the past – including Vietnam, Taiwan and Pakistan – means that most Asian Americans alive today are either immigrants or one generation removed from immigrants.
Indeed, Asian Americans come from over 30 countries with different languages, diverse cultures, and histories that have often been in conflict with other Asian nations. Within such a broad grouping as “Asian American,” a wide range of political, socioeconomic, religious and other differences emerge that greatly complicate this racial label.
Even though the term remains contested, many Asians still see value in the concept. Much like the activists who first created the label in the 1960s, many believe it signifies a sense of solidarity and community among people who – despite their many differences – have been treated like outsiders to the American experience, regardless of how American their roots are.
Jennifer Ho 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.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
Change of His Majesty’s Ambassador to Poland: Dame Melinda Simmons
Dame Melinda Simmons DCMG has been appointed His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Republic of Poland in succession to Ms Anna Clunes CMG OBE who will be transferring to another Diplomatic Service appointment. Dame Melinda will take up her appointment during August 2025.
Dame Melinda Simmons DCMG
Curriculum vitae
Full name: Melinda Veronica Simmons
Date
Role
2024 to present
Full time language training
2023 to 2024
University College London, Visiting Professor
2019 to 2023
Kyiv, His Majesty’s Ambassador
2016 to 2019
National Security Secretariat, Director, Joint Funds Unit
2013 to 2016
FCO, Deputy Director, Head of Conflict Department
2011 to 2013
DFID, Deputy Director, Head of Europe Department
2010 to 2011
DFID, Head of the Humanitarian Emergency Response Review
2009 to 2010
DFID, Deputy Director, Head of Middle East Department
2005 to 2008
Pretoria, Head of DFID Southern Africa
2002 to 2005
DFID, Deputy Head, Africa Policy Department
2000 to 2002
DFID, Head of Conflict Policy, Conflict Department
1998 to 2000
DFID, Team Leader, Russia Desk
1994 to 1998
International Alert, Public Affairs Officer
1990 to 1994
Primesight Intl, International Marketing Manager
1988 to 1990
The Register Group, International Marketing Officer and Associate Director
When disasters happen – such as hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes – every second counts. Emergency teams need to find people fast, send help and stay organized. In today’s world, one of the fastest ways to get information is through social media.
In recent years, researchers have explored how artificial intelligence can use social media to help during emergencies. These programs can scan millions of posts on sites such as X, Facebook and Instagram. However, most existing systems look for simple patterns like keywords or images of damage.
In my research as an AI scientist, I’ve developed new models that go further. They can understand the meaning and context of posts – what researchers call semantics. This helps improve how accurately the system identifies people in need and classifies situational awareness information during emergencies. The results show that these tools can give rescue teams a clearer view of what’s happening on the ground and where help is needed most.
From posts to lifesaving insights
People share billions of posts on social media every day. During disasters, they often share photos, videos, short messages and even their location. This creates a huge network of real-time information.
How social media can help when a disaster strikes, by the European Commission.
But with so many posts, it’s hard for people to find what’s important quickly. That’s where artificial intelligence helps. These systems, which use machine learning, can scan thousands of posts every second, find urgent messages, spot damage shown in pictures, and tell real information from rumors.
During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, people sent over 20 million tweets over six days. If AI tools had been used then, they could have helped find people in danger even faster.
Training AIs
Researchers begin by teaching AI programs to understand emergencies. In one study I conducted, I looked at thousands of social media posts from disasters. I sorted them into groups like people asking for help, damaged buildings and general comments. Then, I used these examples to train the program to sort new posts by itself.
One big step forward was teaching the program to look at pictures and words together. For example, a photo of flooded streets and a message like “we’re trapped” are stronger signals than either one alone. Using both, the system became much better at showing where people needed help and how serious the damage was.
Finding information is just the first step. The main goal is to help emergency teams act quickly and save lives.
I’m working with emergency response teams in the United States to add this technology to their systems. When a disaster hits, my program can show where help is needed by using social media posts. It can also classify this information by urgency, helping rescue teams use their resources where they are needed most.
For example, during a flood, my system can quickly spot where people are asking for help and rank these areas by urgency. This helps rescue teams act faster and send aid where it’s needed most, even before official reports come in.
AI scans of social media could help guide first responders to where they’re most urgently needed. Jon Cherry/Getty Images
Addressing the challenges
Using social media to help during disasters sounds great, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes, people post things that aren’t true. Other times, the same message gets posted many times or doesn’t clearly state where the problem is. This mix can make it hard for the system to know what’s real.
To fix this, I’m working on ways to check a post’s credibility. I look at who posted it, what words they used and whether other posts say the same thing.
I also take privacy seriously. I only use posts that anyone can see and never show names or personal details. Instead, I look at the big picture to find patterns.
The future of disaster intelligence
As AI systems improve, they are likely to be even more helpful during disasters. New tools can understand messages more clearly and might even help us see where trouble is coming before it starts.
As extreme weather worsens, authorities need fast ways to get good information. When used correctly, social media can show people where help is needed most. It can help save lives and get supplies to the right places faster.
In the future, I believe this will become a regular part of emergency work around the world. My research is still growing, but one thing is clear: Disaster response is no longer just about people on the ground – it’s also about AI systems in the cloud.
Ademola Adesokan receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Kummer Institute for Student Success, Research, and Economic Development at the Missouri University of Science and Technology through the Kummer Innovation and Entrepreneurship Doctoral Fellowship.
Several space missions have flown by asteroids before and gotten a peek at their compositions, but bringing a sample back to Earth is even more helpful for scientists. The most informative analyses require having physical samples to poke and prod, shine light at, run through CT scanners and examine under electron microscopes.
These missions require detailed planning and specialized spacecraft, so to shed light on why agencies go through the trouble, we compiled four stories from The Conversation U.S.’s archive. These articles describe the ways asteroid sample return missions generate new scientific insights at every stage – from the collection process, to the container’s return to Earth, to laboratory analyses.
A sealed container that holds a piece of the Ryugu sample from Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission. NASA/Robert Markowitz
As planetary scientist Paul K. Byrne from Washington University in St. Louis described in his article, the Hayabusa2 team shot the asteroid with a metal projectile and collected the dusty debris that floated into space. This process allowed the Hayabusa2 craft to gather a sample to bring home and also get a close-up look at the asteroid’s surface.
Some parts of Ryugu appear almost striped – the middle latitudes are redder, while the poles look more blue. The sample collection process gave researchers some hints about why that is.
“At some point the asteroid must have been closer to the Sun that it is now,” Byrne wrote. “That would explain the amount of reddening of the surface.”
Similar to how researchers gained valuable data just from the Hayabusa2 collection process, atmospheric scientists didn’t even need to open the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule to learn something new.
Released from the OSIRIS-REx craft, the sample return capsule hurtled down to Earth in a heavy box about the size of a microwave. Aside from the fact that it had been released from a spacecraft about 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) away, the return looked strikingly similar to that of a meteorite hitting Earth.
Scientists don’t often have the advance notice needed to study how real meteoroids – the term given to meteorites before they hit the ground – behave when they enter the atmosphere, so they jumped on the opportunity to study the capsule as it returned to Earth.
As physicists Brian Elbing from Oklahoma State University and Elizabeth A. Silber from Sandia National Laboratories discussed in their article, OSIRIS-REx’s reentry was the perfect opportunity to study what happens in the atmosphere when meteoroid-size objects fly through.
The teams set up networks of sensitive microphones and other instruments – both on the ground and attached to balloons – to log the sound wave frequencies that the capsule generated in the atmosphere. Understanding how waves travel through the atmosphere can help scientists figure out how to detect hazards such as natural disasters.
Once the OSIRIS-REx return capsule was safely back on Earth, researchers across the world – including geologist Timothy J. McCoy from the Smithsonian Institution and planetary scientist Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum in the U.K. – got to work running tests on its contents, while handling the sample carefully to avoid contaminating it.
As they described in their article, McCoy and Russell found the sample was mostly water-rich clay, which they expected from a carbon-rich asteroid. But they also found a surprising amount of salty and brine-related minerals. These minerals form when water evaporates off a rock’s surface.
Because these minerals – aptly called evaporites – dissolve when they come into contact with moisture, scientists had never seen them in the meteorites that fly through Earth’s atmosphere, even ones with similar compositions to Bennu. The spacecraft’s sample container kept the Bennu sample airtight, so these evaporites stayed intact.
These results suggest that the asteroid used to be wet and muddy. And a salty, water-rich environment like Bennu may have once been a great place for organic molecules to form. Some scientists predict that Earth got its ingredients for life from a collision with an asteroid like Bennu.
Asteroid sample return missions generate lots of scientific insights. They can also help space agencies and companies understand what exactly is out there, available to bring home from asteroids. While carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu aren’t flush with precious metals, other asteroids have more valuable contents.
Launched in 2023 and currently traveling through space, NASA’s Psyche mission will explore a metallic asteroid. The Psyche asteroid likely contains platinum, nickel, iron and possibly gold – all materials of commercial interest.
Scientists can learn about the formation and composition of Earth’s core from metallic asteroids like Psyche, which is the mission’s main goal. But as planetary scientist Valerie Payré from the University of Iowa wrote in her article, “The Psyche mission is a huge step in figuring out what sort of metals are out there.”
For now, commercial asteroid mining operations are science fiction – not to mention legally fraught. But some companies have started considering early-stage plans for how they one day might do it. Asteroid sample missions can lay some early groundwork.
Obsessive compulsive disorder has many unknowns, including what causes it, why symptoms can differ so much between people, how medication and therapy for it actually work, and why treatment is effective for some people and not for others. In our newly published research, my colleagues and I made a step toward unraveling some of these mysteries by shedding light on the genetics of OCD.
Obsessive compulsive disorder is one of the most impairing illnesses worldwide. Affecting about 1 in 50 people globally, OCD is among the top 10 causes of years lost to disability, leading to harmful effects on a person’s ability to work and function in the world and on their family.
Compared with people without OCD, a person with the condition has a 30% higher chance of dying prematurely from natural causes, such as infections or other illnesses, and a 300% higher chance of dying early from nonnatural causes, such as accidents or suicide.
People with OCD experience obsessions – disturbing, recurrent and unwanted thoughts, fears or mental images – and compulsions, such as repetitive behaviors and rituals performed to ease the anxiety usually caused by obsessions. For example, someone might wash their hands dozens of times or in a specific way to get rid of germs, even if they know it’s excessive or illogical. Avoiding certain places or situations to reduce anxiety or prevent triggering obsessions and compulsions is also common.
While the exact causes of OCD are unclear, researchers know that both genetic and environmental factors play a role in its development. OCD can run in families; studies attribute between 40% to 65% of OCD cases to genetic factors. OCD that begins in childhood has a stronger genetic influence than OCD that begins in adulthood.
But unlike some genetic diseases caused by a single faulty gene, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease, OCD is influenced by hundreds to thousands of genes that each play a small part in disease risk.
My colleagues and I analyzed the DNA of over 53,000 people with OCD and over 2 million people without OCD, the largest study of this kind for this condition. We discovered hundreds of genetic markers potentially linked to OCD – data we hope will ultimately lead to improved ways of identifying people who are at risk for OCD and, down the line, to better treatments.
How scientists study OCD genetics
To find the genes involved in OCD risk, researchers use a method called a genome-wide association study, or GWAS. These studies compare the DNA of tens to hundreds of thousands of people with a disease of interest with the DNA of people without the disease, looking for tiny differences in the genetic material. These genetic markers may be linked to OCD or indicate the presence of other genes linked to the disease.
In a GWAS, scientists carefully test each of the millions of genetic markers across the genome to identify those found more often in people with OCD than in people without OCD. They then determine which genes those markers are associated with, where in the body they are active and how they might contribute to the condition.
GWAS studies look for genetic associations between different traits.
We identified 30 areas in the genome linked to OCD, containing 249 genes of interest in total. Of those, 25 genes stood out as likely contributors to the development of OCD.
The top three genes we found are also linked to other brain disorders such as depression, epilepsy and schizophrenia. Several other genes of interest for OCD were found in a region of the genome that plays a role in adaptive immunity and has been associated with other psychiatric disorders.
Importantly, no single gene can predict or cause OCD on its own. Previous genetic studies have demonstrated that genes across all of the23 pairs of chromosomes in people may contribute to OCD risk.
Genetic insights into OCD
Because the contribution of each genetic marker or gene to disease susceptibility is very small, GWAS are not useful for identifying genes that cause OCD for a given person. Rather, this kind of research helps scientists understand how the brain works in people with OCD and whether OCD shares genetic roots with conditions that commonly occur alongside it.
For example, the genetic markers we found to be associated with OCD were highly active in several brain regions known to play a role in development of the condition. These brain areas are collectively involved in planning, decision-making, motivation, error detection, emotion regulation, and fear and anxiety, all of which can malfunction in OCD.
We also found associations with a brain region called the hypothalamus, which converts emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety or excitement into physical responses. The hypothalamus has not been directly linked to OCD before, but it is part of a network of brain regions that may contribute to its symptoms.
Additionally, we found that certain types of brain cells – particularly medium spiny neurons in a brain region called the striatum – were strongly linked to the OCD genes we identified. Medium spiny neurons play an important role in habit formation, the process by which a behavior becomes automatic and habitual – think compulsions. Specific receptors on medium spiny neurons are common targets for medications that are sometimes used to help treat OCD.
The results of our study can help researchers better understand the relationships between OCD and other conditions. We found genetic links between OCD and several other psychiatric disorders, especially anxiety, depression, anorexia and Tourette syndrome. People with OCD also showed lower genetic risk for conditions such as alcohol dependence and risk-taking behavior, aligning with what doctors see in clinics: Many people with OCD tend to be cautious and avoid risks.
Surprisingly, we also found genetic overlaps between OCD immune-related conditions. While having OCD appears to be linked to an increased risk of asthma and migraines, it may also be linked to a reduced risk of inflammatory bowel disease. These findings may lead to new insights about the role the immune system and inflammation play in brain health.
More effective OCD treatment
OCD is a complex disorder that can look very different from person to person. Understanding the genetic and biological factors behind OCD helps researchers move closer to better diagnosis, treatment and possibly even prevention.
As a practicing psychiatrist and researcher, I have spent my career working to understand the causes of OCD and to improve the lives of those who live with the condition. With larger studies and continued research, my team and I hope to better match specific biological patterns to individual symptoms.
In time, this could lead to more personalized and effective treatments – improving the lives of millions of people living with OCD around the world.
Carol Mathews receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. She is a member of the scientific advisory boards for the Family Foundation for OCD Research and the International OCD Foundation, and acts as a consultant for the Office of Mental Health for the State of New York.
The Wet Beaver Wilderness in Coconino National Forest in Arizona is one of many designated wilderness areas in the U.S.Deborah Lee Soltesz
As summer approaches, millions of Americans begin planning or taking trips to state and national parks, seeking to explore the wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities across the nation. A lot of them will head toward the nation’s wilderness areas – 110 million acres, mostly in the West, that are protected by the strictest federal conservation rules.
When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, it described wilderness areas as places that evoked mystery and wonder, “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” These are wild landscapes that present nature in its rawest form.
Regardless of whether Americans visit their public lands or know when they have crossed a wilderness boundary, as environmentalhistorians we believe that everyone still benefits from the existence and protection of these precious places.
This belief is an idea eloquently articulated and popularized 65 years ago by the noted Western writer Wallace Stegner. His eloquence helped launch the modern environmental movement and gave power to the idea that the nation’s public lands are a fundamental part of the United States’ national identity and a cornerstone of American freedom.
One of the commission’s members was David E. Pesonen, who worked at the Wildland Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He was asked to examine wilderness and its relationship to outdoor recreation. Pesonen later became a notable environmental lawyer and leader of the Sierra Club. But at the time, Pesonen had no idea what to say about wilderness.
However, he knew someone who did. Pesonen had been impressed by the wild landscapes of the American West in Stegner’s 1954 history “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.” So he wrote to Stegner, who at the time was at Stanford University, asking for help in articulating the wilderness idea.
Stegner’s response, which he said later was written in a single afternoon, was an off-the-cuff riff on why he cared about preserving wildlands. This letter became known as the Wilderness Letter and marked a turning point in American political and conservation history.
Pesonen shared the letter with the rest of the commission, which also shared it with newly installed Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Udall found its prose to be so profound, he read it at the seventh Wilderness Conference in 1961 in San Francisco, a speech broadcast by KCBS, the local FM radio station. The Sierra Club published the letter in the record of the conference’s proceedings later that year.
But it was not until its publication in The Washington Post on June 17, 1962, that the letter reached a national audience and captured the imagination of generations of Americans.
In the letter, Stegner connected the idea of wilderness to a fundamental part of American identity. He called wilderness “something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people … the challenge against which our character as a people was formed … (and) the thing that has helped to make an American different from and, until we forget it in the roar of our industrial cities, more fortunate than other men.”
Without wild places, he argued, the U.S. would be just like every other overindustrialized place in the world.
In the letter, Stegner expressed little concern with how wilderness might support outdoor recreation on public lands. He didn’t care whether wilderness areas had once featured roads, trails, homesteads or even natural resource extraction. What he cared about was Americans’ freedom to protect and enjoy these places. Stegner recognized that the freedom to protect, to restrain ourselves from consuming, was just as important as the freedom to consume.
Perhaps most importantly, he wrote, wilderness was “an intangible and spiritual resource,” a place that gave the nation “our hope and our excitement,” landscapes that were “good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”
Without it, Stegner lamented, “never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.” To him, the nation’s natural cathedrals and the vaulted ceiling of the pure blue sky are Americans’ sacred spaces as much as the structures in which they worship on the weekends.
Stegner penned the letter during a national debate about the value of preserving wild places in the face of future development. “Something will have gone out of us as a people,” he wrote, “if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” If not protected, Stegner believed these wildlands that had helped shape American identity would fall to what he viewed as the same exploitative forces of unrestrained capitalism that had industrialized the nation for the past century. Every generation since has an obligation to protect these wild places.
Stegner’s Wilderness Letter became a rallying cry to pass the Wilderness Act. The closing sentences of the letter are Stegner’s best: “We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”
This phrase, “the geography of hope,” is Stegner’s most famous line. It has become shorthand for what wilderness means: the wildlands that defined American character on the Western frontier, the wild spaces that Americans have had the freedom to protect, and the natural places that give Americans hope for the future of this planet.
Death Valley National Park in California contains one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States. National Park Service/E. Letterman
America’s ‘best idea’
Stegner returned to themes outlined in the Wilderness Letter again two decades later in his essay “The Best Idea We Ever Had: An Overview,” published in Wilderness magazine in spring 1983.
Writing in response to the Reagan administration’s efforts to reduce protection of the National Park System, Stegner declared that the parks were “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic.” He said they reflect us as a nation, at our best rather than our worst, and without them, millions of Americans’ lives, his included, would have been poorer.
Public lands are more than just wilderness or national parks. They are places for work and play. They provide natural resources, wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water and recreational opportunities to small towns and sprawling metro areas alike. They are, as Stegner said, cures for cynicism and places of shared hope.
Stegner’s words still resonate as Americans head for their public lands and enjoy the beauty of the wild places protected by wilderness legislation this summer. With visitor numbers increasing annually and agency budgets at historic lows, we believe it is useful to remember how precious these places are for all Americans. And we agree with Stegner that wilderness, public lands writ large, are more valuable to Americans’ collective identity and expression of freedom than they are as real estate that can be sold or commodities that can be extracted.
Leisl Carr Childers has received funding from the USDA Forest Service, the Henry Luce Foundation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.
Michael Childers has received funding from the USDA Forest Service, the Henry Luce Foundation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
Pension schemes back British growth
Mansion House Accord unlocks up to £50 billion investment for the economy, with first commitments to invest in the UK.
More ambitious targets than 2023 Mansion House Compact will unlock investment into UK businesses and major infrastructure projects, including clean energy developments.
Comes ahead of Pensions Investment Review final report, which will create megafunds to drive more investment, boost pension pots and grow the economy through the Plan for Change.
Up to £50 billion of investment for UK businesses and major infrastructure projects is set to be unlocked through a new agreement with Britain’s biggest pension funds, as the Government goes further and faster to drive growth through the Plan for Change.
Seventeen workplace pension providers managing around 90 percent of active savers’ defined contribution pensions will sign the Mansion House Accord at a roundtable with the Chancellor and Minister for Pensions in the City of London today (Tuesday 13 May).
Signatories to the Accord will pledge to invest 10 percent of their workplace portfolios in assets that boost the economy such as infrastructure, property and private equity by 2030. At least 5 percent of these portfolios will be ringfenced for the UK, expected to release £25 billion directly into the UK economy by 2030.
This investment could support clean energy developments across the country, delivering greater energy security and helping to lower household bills, as well as delivering growth finance to Britain’s world-leading science and technology businesses – creating jobs, boosting businesses and putting more money into people’s pockets.
Pension savers will also benefit from the commitment to invest in private markets. Comparable Australian schemes invest significantly more in private markets and domestic companies than UK schemes, and research suggests greater investment in private markets can deliver security through diversified asset holdings and potentially drive higher returns.
The pledge follows hot on the heels of securing trade agreements with India and the US, which will add billions of pounds to the UK economy and protect thousands of steel and car manufacturing jobs, as well as a fourth interest rate cut since last Summer. This demonstrates the UK’s strength in navigating a changing world, going further and faster through our Plan for Change to drive growth and put more money into people’s pockets.
Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:
Through our Plan for Change, we are choosing to back British businesses and British workers. I welcome this bold step by some of our biggest pension funds, which will unlock billions for major infrastructure, clean energy, and exciting startups — delivering growth, boosting pension pots, and giving working people greater security in retirement.
Torsten Bell, Minister for Pensions, said:
Pensions matter hugely, they underpin not just the retirements we all look forward to, but the investment our future prosperity depends on. I hugely welcome the pensions industry decision to invest in more productive assets, from growing companies to infrastructure. This supports better outcomes for savers and faster growth for Britain.
Today’s announcement is more ambitious than the 2023 Mansion House Compact, where eleven funds committed to the aim of investing 5 percent of their workplace defined contribution default funds – the off-the-shelf funds providers offer to the vast majority of savers – in unlisted companies by 2030. The new commitment involves the vast majority of the industry and brings more assets into scope, doubles the target from 5 percent to 10 percent, and includes a specific commitment to investing 5 percent in the UK.
Progress against the commitment will be monitored and the initiative will be reinforced by measures to be announced in the upcoming final report of the Pensions Investment Review. The final report will tackle fragmentation in the UK pension system, creating pension megafunds that take advantage of scale and consolidation like Australian and Canadian funds do, to invest in productive assets like private markets and big infrastructure projects.
Some pension funds have already indicated privately that they will go beyond the targets agreed through the Mansion House Accord, which could lead to even more direct investment in the UK economy – and is particularly welcomed by the government.
Today’s commitment comes alongside progress in the government’s efforts to help pension savers benefit from the opportunities of investing in UK growth. The British Business Bank has now received regulatory approval from the Financial Conduct Authority to deliver the British Growth Partnership – which will provide UK pension funds and other institutional investors with access to the Bank’s extensive pipeline of UK venture capital opportunities.
The government will continue working with the industry to make sure pension schemes deliver the best possible value for savers — while driving the investment needed to deliver growth and put more money into people’s pockets.
Yvonne Braun, Director of Policy, Long-Term Savings, Health and Protection at the ABI, said:
As major investors, the pensions industry already plays a vital role in driving growth in the UK and globally. The Accord formalises the industry’s ambition to invest more in private markets to diversify investments, support innovation and infrastructure, and ensure prosperity. Investments under the Accord will always be made in savers’ best interests. It is now critical that Government supports the industry’s ambition, by facilitating a pipeline of suitable investment opportunities, tackling barriers to investments, and delivering wider pension reforms effectively.
Alastair King, Lord Mayor of London, said:
The Mansion House Accord builds on the strong foundations of the Compact and signals a step change in ambition: more signatories, deeper allocations to private markets, and a clearer commitment to backing UK assets. That includes a renewed focus on revitalising the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange as well as the Aquis Exchange, which play a critical role in supporting high-growth companies that drive innovation, jobs and productivity. If we want those firms to scale in the UK, we must ensure they have the capital to do so. This is not just about better pension outcomes, it is about building a more dynamic, competitive investment ecosystem. Delivering long-term, sustainable growth is crucial and the City of London Corporation is delighted to have partnered with industry and Government to bring this ambition to life.
Zoe Alexander, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the PLSA, said:
UK pension schemes already invest billions in UK growth assets. This accord demonstrates the collective ambition of the DC sector to do even more, as well as its confidence that the UK will provide the right opportunities to invest, consistent with schemes’ fiduciary duty to members. The Government, in its turn, has committed to take action to ensure there is a strong pipeline of investable assets for pension schemes. With everyone playing their part, there is great potential to boost returns for savers while providing vital funding to productive growth areas.
More information
This is a voluntary expression of intent by seventeen signatories. The Mansion House Accord has been jointly led by the ABI, City of London Corporation and the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association.
Signatories to the new commitment include: Aegon, Aon, Aviva, Legal & General, LifeSight, M&G, Mercer, Natwest Cushon, Nest, NOW: Pensions, Phoenix Group, Royal London, Smart Pension, the People’s Pension, SEI, TPT Retirement Solutions and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).
The signatories to the Accord have stated that £252 billion of assets are subject to the pledge. Based on historical growth rates (which have been halved to reflect a maturing market (17% per annum)) and reflecting further consolidation in the pensions market, this could rise to around £740 billion by 2030.
The £50 billion and £25 billion cash estimates for investment unlocked are indicative and assume current private market investment levels are at 3.5%, of which 40% is UK-based. These are increased to 10% and 50% respectively by 2030 in line with the Accord.
Some providers have indicated they may exceed the private markets investment targets in the Accord, which could lead to additional investment.
Investments will support UK growth sectors, including clean energy infrastructure and innovative small businesses.
Government Actuary Department Analysis from 2024 found that a portfolio with greater exposure to private markets – including infrastructure and private equity – delivered stronger returns than a baseline portfolio comprised largely of overseas equities.
The Pensions Investment Review interim report was published at Mansion House 2024, with the final report due Spring 2025.
Pictures will be published on HMT’s Flickr following the signing event.
Stakeholder commentary:
Andy Briggs, Phoenix Group CEO, said:
This Mansion House Accord will unlock investment in UK private markets while helping deliver better long-term returns and retirements for millions of pension savers. The new commitments have the potential to strengthen the economy by fuelling the growth of British businesses and boosting investment in critical infrastructure.
Phoenix Group has already taken a lead by launching Future Growth Capital — the first private market investment manager formed to deliver the commitments made in the initial Mansion House Compact — committing £2.5bn over three years to the UK’s most exciting, innovative and fastest growing companies. The Accord is the natural next step, and we’re proud to play our part in delivering better outcomes for our customers and for the wider society.
Patrick Heath-Lay, Chief Executive Officer of People’s Partnership, provider of People’s Pension, said:
People’s Pension has a vital role to play in the exciting, shared vision for the future of the pensions’ industry, which will see bigger, stronger, value-driven schemes that will deliver better value to their members. By signing this Accord, we are reaffirming how seriously we take our commitment to delivering better outcomes, as well as helping to drive UK economic growth.
David Lane, Chief Executive of TPT Retirement Solutions, said:
By reaching an agreement with pension providers to invest in UK productive finance in a mutually beneficial way, the Government can achieve its objective and support better outcomes for scheme members. Many pension schemes already invest in productive finance, and most are open to investing more in the UK. Investment in assets such as infrastructure, transportation, housing, venture capital and private markets can play an important role in improving risk-adjusted returns for members while also contributing to economic growth.
Meeting the Government’s objectives while also maintaining fiduciary duty and ensuring strong returns for members are not mutually exclusive ambitions. However, hurdles remain around value for money considerations and the availability of suitable investment opportunities. These should be a focus for Government policy to spur more investment. The most pressing issue to deal with is that provider pricing practices leave very little room in the annual management charge for investment fees. There needs to be a shift to a value for money approach that considers the returns from an investment and not just its fees.
Jelena Croad, Head of LifeSight GB, said:
Signing up to the Mansion House Accord is a significant step for LifeSight. We believe that private market investments can increase overall returns as part of a diversified portfolio and have already begun investing in this way.
Our ability to invest in private markets, without increasing existing fee agreements, showcases our dedication to providing the best possible outcomes for our members. We are excited to be part of this initiative and look forward to contributing to the growth of the economy in which our members live.
We are pleased that the government acknowledges the need to increase the pipeline for UK private market investment opportunities. This recognition aligns with our mission to support the growth of innovative firms and sustainable infrastructure within the UK, ultimately enhancing the retirement incomes of millions of UK pension savers.
For LifeSight members, these investments are being made as part of our main default funds, ensuring that our members benefit from high-quality investment opportunities.
Steve Charlton, a member of SPP’s DC Committee and DC Managing Director at SEI, said:
Due to ongoing collaboration and open dialogue between the industry and the UK government, we have become comfortable with the proposed changes to the Mansion House reforms. This accord demonstrates our collective ambition to have a consolidated workplace pension environment that provides flexibility and choice for pension funds to invest where they see opportunity, whilst balancing their responsibility to members.
We welcome the government’s commitment to ensure a good flow of investable opportunities for pension schemes. This mitigates our previous concerns about the risks of high-priced, poor-quality investments in an environment where the originally proposed investable opportunities are scarce. It enables everyone to play their part in helping to deliver better member outcomes and drive economic growth.
Lorna Blyth, Managing Director – Investment Proposition at Aegon UK, said:
Aegon UK is proud to be a signatory of the Mansion House Accord, which aligns with our aim to deliver better long-term outcomes for our pension scheme members.
We are committed to ensuring our customers can access and share in the potential growth and success of new, innovative companies as part of diversified portfolios. Leveraging our partnership with the British Business Bank, along with our scale and expertise, we are dedicated to developing investment solutions that improve the retirement outcomes of the millions of members of the defined contribution pension schemes we support. We’ve made significant progress in becoming a DC provider fit for the future – but our journey doesn’t end here.
The Accord is a key element of the Government’s growth agenda, alongside other initiatives likely to transform the UK’s DC pensions market. It comes as the conclusions of the Pensions Investment Review are expected imminently and further fundamental changes are expected in the Pension Schemes Bill later this spring. This makes it essential that the Government adopts a pragmatic approach to implementation. Realistic timeframes and a steady supply of high-quality UK investment opportunities across all private asset classes are crucial for ensuring success. This includes collaborating with more organisations such as the British Business Bank to provide access to diverse types of private assets – from private equity to infrastructure, which are all vital for optimising member benefits and developing investment portfolios designed for long term growth.
Amanda Blanc DBE, Aviva Group Chief Executive Officer, said:
This is a major opportunity for the pension and investment industry to support UK growth while delivering improved outcomes for pension savers. As a significant investor in private markets, Aviva has recently launched a number of funds to give over four million workplace pension customers even greater opportunity to invest in UK assets, including innovative, early-stage businesses, and we want to do much more.
Jo Sharples, CIO, DC Solutions at Aon, said:
We believe that investing in private assets will benefit pension scheme members by delivering better expected returns over the long-term, ultimately resulting in higher retirement outcomes. The new Mansion House Accord is a great step forward in achieving this and is a fantastic example of how the UK pensions industry can work together to break down barriers to enable greater investment in private assets.
Source: International Organization for Migration (IOM)
Geneva, 13 May 2025 – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has signed a Letter of Intent with the Naif Arab University for Security Sciences (NAUSS) to establish the framework for the second phase of the Arab Center for Technical Cooperation on Migration and Border Management (ACTC-MBM).
This milestone builds on the achievements of a longstanding collaboration between IOM and NAUSS—the academic body of the Arab Interior Ministers Council—and reaffirms the shared commitment to advancing regional cooperation on migration and border governance across the 22 Arab States.
“This partnership with NAUSS and other key institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is strategically important to IOM’s global and regional mission. ACTC-MBM has already made a real difference in how migration and border management are addressed,” said Ugochi Daniels, IOM Deputy Director General for Operations. “The next phase offers a clear and ambitious path to deepen our cooperation through data, technology, and innovation, and IOM remains fully committed to advancing this shared vision.”
The second phase of the ACTC-MBM, spanning 2025 to 2029 with a budget of USD 6 million, will deepen institutional cooperation, scale up technical assistance, and enhance policy dialogue and capacity-building across the region.
NAUSS plays a critical role in equipping security professionals across the Arab region with cutting-edge skills and knowledge. Its commitment to innovation is reflected in its forward-looking vision, which integrates emerging technologies into curricula and practice—ranging from digital border management tools to data-driven approaches for migration governance.
The contract will be formally signed later in 2025, during the annual anniversary ceremony of NAUSS, which will be convened under the patronage of the Minister of the Interior of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Naif bin Abdulaziz.
The agreement also reinforces IOM’s strategic engagement with Arab States to promote safe, orderly, and regular migration while supporting rights-based and integrated approaches to border management.
