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Category: Universities

  • MIL-OSI Global: Investors value corporate tax responsibility – at least when the company is based somewhere with a lot of inequality, research shows

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Erica Neuman, Assistant Professor of Accounting, University of Dayton

    When corporations based in areas of above-average income inequality pay more taxes, it’s not just the public that appreciates it – investors do, too. That’s the key finding of our recent research published in the journal Accounting and the Public Interest.

    Our finding challenges traditional economic theory holding that investors see corporate taxes as a transfer of wealth from shareholders to the state. That would suggest investors value only strategies that minimize taxes. The reality isn’t so simple.

    As accounting professors at the University of Dayton, we study the intersection of corporate taxes and corporate social responsibility. We wanted to better understand how corporate taxes affect firm value and stock prices, and whether that relationship changes if a company is headquartered in an area with high income inequality.

    So we looked at financial data from over 1,500 firms over a 10-year period between 2011 and 2019, as well as the income inequality in the metro areas where they’re headquartered. For the latter point, we used the Gini coefficient, a measure of income distribution in a given place. This is a particularly useful context for looking at corporate taxes, since one of the key functions of taxation is to counter inequality.

    We found that there’s a negative relationship between corporate taxes and firm value for companies headquartered in areas of average inequality. In other words, paying more corporate taxes lowers firm value. That’s in line with previous research and traditional economic theory.

    However, we found that when local income inequality rises above the average, the relationship between corporate taxes and firm value flips. This flip suggests that some companies actually receive a financial benefit from paying corporate taxes.

    Why? We found that these companies enjoy a reputational benefit for being socially responsible taxpayers. Indeed, our results were driven by businesses that are are otherwise widely viewed as good corporate citizens. For those companies, paying taxes represents one of many socially responsible behaviors.

    Why it matters

    Our research offers evidence that investors view corporate taxes positively when they’re consistent with other socially responsible behaviors. Given that corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, this finding suggests that corporate taxes can play a role in a company’s corporate social responsibility, or CSR, efforts.

    Our findings also align with a 2023 KPMG survey of more than 300 chief tax officers that found more than half said they cared more about looking like good corporate citizens than reducing their tax burdens.

    An extensive body of research has shown that companies’ investments in CSR activities aren’t just selfless – they’re linked with improved operational and financial outcomes. There’s evidence that businesses that prioritize CSR are better able to attract quality employees; have improved corporate reputations; and are more profitable as judged by return on assets, return on equity and return on sales.

    While work on tax responsibility has lagged behind other CSR research, evidence is mounting that paying corporate taxes has positive effects. Much of this research indicates that companies that aggressively minimize tax payments and gain a reputation as “tax avoiders” face harm to their reputation – and therefore, the bottom line.

    Our study dovetails this research and identifies a specific context in which investors view corporate taxes favorably. At a time of tax reform both globally and in the U.S., and as lawmakers and pundits continue to call for greater tax transparency, companies should be aware of the role of corporate tax responsibility in their overall CSR portfolio.

    What’s next

    Corporate tax responsibility is complex and not yet well defined. Our current research examines other circumstances that lead investors to value corporate taxes, which will help companies to quantify the value of including taxes in their CSR portfolios.

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

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

    – ref. Investors value corporate tax responsibility – at least when the company is based somewhere with a lot of inequality, research shows – https://theconversation.com/investors-value-corporate-tax-responsibility-at-least-when-the-company-is-based-somewhere-with-a-lot-of-inequality-research-shows-225961

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: DEI programs are designed to help white people too – here’s how

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Liza Bondurant, Associate Professor of Secondary Math Education, Mississippi State University

    Many DEI programs support students with a disability, about a fifth of whom are white. simonkr/E+ via Getty Images

    While diversity, equity and inclusion may on the surface seem focused on certain groups, in fact DEI programs benefit people from all walks of life – including white people.

    President Donald Trump and other conservatives have increasingly attacked such initiatives as discriminatory based on the presumption that they benefit only students of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

    Most recently, Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025, directing federal agencies, including the Department of Education, to eliminate support for DEI positions and projects. The order labels them “illegal and immoral discrimination” and “radical and wasteful.”

    The impact of this sweeping order has been seismic across the U.S. government, private sector and in education in particular as universities have begun eliminating or rebranding their DEI programs and the Department of Education has removed any initiative and even any document or material that referenced diversity, equity or inclusion.

    As professors of education who have studied DEI programs in higher education, we believe these attacks represent a misconception about which groups DEI higher education programs actually support. The reality is, DEI policies help a wide range of people access and succeed in college regardless of their racial or ethnic background.

    Breaking down DEI funding by race

    It’s a challenge to determine the exact percentages of federal DEI funding allocated to groups of students broken down by race and ethnicity. There is limited publicly available data.

    Broadly speaking, a large majority of people within most racial and ethnic groups receive some kind of federal funding – some of which is connected to DEI programs. That includes 81% of Black students, 74% of American Indian/Alaska Native students, 72% of Hispanic or Latino students, 70% of white students, and 66% of Asian students, according to a 2023 report from the National Center for Education Statistics based on data during the 2019-20 academic year.

    The center’s data does not indicate whether those grants were explicitly designated for DEI initiatives. For example, Pell Grants are need-based, but not explicitly DEI.

    That said, DEI initiatives encompass a broad range of programs that support various underrepresented groups, including first-generation college students and students with disabilities. They also benefit women and veterans. Each of these groups invariably includes many white students.

    University DEI programs support underrepresented students from all kinds of backgrounds, such as those who are the first in their family to attend college, about half of whom are white.
    AP Photo/Darron Cummings

    First-generation students

    At most universities, a portion of DEI funding is dedicated to programs designed to support the success of first-generation students, or students whose parents did not graduate from college.

    DEI initiatives enhance first-generation students’ academic success by addressing their unique challenges, such as financial constraints, cultural adjustments and unfamiliarity with college environments. They do this through tailored support programs, inclusive learning communities and mentorship opportunities.

    Research shows that first-generation students are likely to adopt what psychologists call performance avoidance goals – such as the fear of looking incompetent – so they play it safe and don’t try too hard, which can hinder their academic success. But DEI efforts such as faculty engagement programs and dorm communities that mix academics and social support help foster supportive environments that mitigate those challenges.

    National data shows that 56% of college students are first-generation attendees. White students represent 46% of that group, more than any other single race.

    Students with disabilities

    People with disabilities make up the largest minority group in America – and represent a growing share of college students.

    Disability access is a vital yet often overlooked component of DEI efforts, with 20.5% of undergraduate students reporting a disability. Many institutions address this through disability services, which ensure students receive such appropriate testing accommodations as extended exam times, classroom support and access to assistive technology.

    Accommodations for individuals with both sensory and physical disabilities are universally accepted and ensure access to everyone regardless of their ability. DEI initiatives, particularly those focusing on accessibility and support services, play a pivotal role in ensuring students with disabilities have equal opportunities to succeed.

    Given that disabilities affect people from every ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic background, the erasure of DEI programs that support them hurts all groups – and that includes white people, who made up 21.1% of all undergraduate students with disabilities in the 2019-20 academic year.

    We believe it is particularly critical to fund programs that include students with disabilities because, in the past, public providers did not create equitable opportunities for all.

    Before the passage of key legislation such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, students with disabilities were often excluded from mainstream educational settings or received inadequate support. Even since those laws were enacted, enforcement has been inconsistent, and gaps in accessibility persist today.

    Women and veterans

    In addition to those two groups, DEI programs also target women and veterans.

    For women, who make up more than half of college students, they promote equity in male-dominated fields such as science, technology, engineering and math, and leadership roles in government, academia and the private sector.

    For veterans, DEI programs provide tailored resources like academic support, mental health services and career transition assistance that recognize the unique challenges some of them face in higher education.

    The GI Bill, which provides financial assistance to veterans pursuing higher education, has also gotten caught up in Trump’s DEI purge. While it wasn’t designed back in 1944 as a DEI initiative – and has often failed to ensure equitable access for Black veterans – the Department of Veterans Affairs has recently tried to provide targeted support to veterans of diverse backgrounds. Trump’s order ended those programs.

    While veterans make up only 6% of undergraduate students, the majority of them – about 60% – are white, with 16% Black, 14% Hispanic and 3% Asian.

    Close to home

    Collectively, those groups and others have benefited from the over US$1 billion in grants the Education Department has allocated to DEI programs since 2021.

    Diversity encompasses a lot more than just race, and that’s why DEI programs are intended to benefit a broad range of people who historically have been underrepresented at universities or have lacked support.

    For both of us, the end of these types of programs hits close to home. One of us is white, and one of us is Black, but we’ve both benefited from DEI initiatives aimed at first-generation college students and women.

    We also both have family members who are veterans or who have disabilities and who have received financial support and resources that made a significant difference in their ability to go to college.

    Most American families – even if they don’t realize it – can tell a similar story of how programs aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion helped them achieve the American dream.

    Trump’s order describes DEI programs as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” and says Americans deserve “a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect.”

    In our view, the orders are more likely to have the opposite effect.

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

    – ref. DEI programs are designed to help white people too – here’s how – https://theconversation.com/dei-programs-are-designed-to-help-white-people-too-heres-how-248989

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Traumatic brain injuries have toxic effects that last weeks after initial impact − an antioxidant material reduces this damage in mice

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Aaron Priester, Postdoctoral Fellow in Materials Science and Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology

    Brain damage can release harmful chemicals such as free radicals that cause further damage. fatido/E+ via Getty Images

    Traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability in the world. Blunt force trauma to the brain, often from a bad fall or traffic accident, accounts for the deaths of over 61,000 Americans each year. Over 80,000 will develop some long-term disability.

    While much of the physical brain damage occurs instantly – called the primary stage of injury – additional brain damage can result from the destructive chemical processes that arise in the body minutes to days to weeks following initial impact. Unlike the primary stage of injury, this secondary stage could potentially be prevented by targeting the molecules driving damage.

    I am a materials science engineer, and my colleagues and I are working to design treatments to neutralize the harm of secondary traumatic brain injury and reduce neurodegeneration. We designed a new material that could target and neutralize brain-damaging molecules in mice, improving their cognitive recovery and offering a potential new treatment for people.

    Biochemical fallout

    The primary stage of traumatic brain injury can severely damage and even destroy the blood-brain barrier – an interface protecting the brain by limiting what can enter it.

    Disruption of this barrier triggers damaged neurons or the immune system to release certain chemicals that result in destructive biochemical processes. One process called excitotoxicity occurs when too many calcium ions are allowed into neurons, activating enzymes that fragment DNA and damage cells, causing death. Another process, neuroinflammation, results from the activation of cells called microglia that can trigger inflammation in damaged areas of the brain.

    Traumatic brain injury can result in long-term damage.
    stockdevil/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    These secondary phase processes also produce harmful molecules called reactive oxygen species. These molecules, which include free radicals, chemically modify and deform essential proteins in cells, rendering them useless. They can also break DNA strands, leading to potentially damaging genetic mutations.

    If left unchecked, harm from this oxidative stress can have devastating consequences for long-term health and neurocognitive recovery. Researchers have linked the biochemical changes and byproducts resulting from this cascade of damaging molecules to the development of long-term neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS, among others.

    However, compounds called antioxidants can target this oxidative stress and improve long-term neurocognitive recovery by chemically interacting with reactive oxygen species in a way that can neutralize their damaging properties.

    Finding the ideal antioxidant

    My team and I studied whether an antioxidant called a thiol group could help treat traumatic brain injury.

    Thiol groups are chemical compounds that contain a sulfur atom bound to a hydrogen atom. Sulfur atoms are much larger than hydrogen atoms, which means the sulfur atom in a thiol has a strong pull on a hydrogen atom’s lone electron. This weakens the bond between the hydrogen and its electron, allowing the hydrogen to easily give up its electron to other atoms.

    As a result, thiols readily interact with many different reactive oxygen species, including the ones that damage DNA. We chose thiols not only for their antioxiant properties, but also for their ability to bind to and neutralize other brain-damaging molecules called lipid peroxidation products. These neurotoxic compounds are formed as byproducts when reactive oxygen species damage fats in the body.

    To get these thiols into the body, we incorporated them into materials called polymers. These are long chains of organic molecules made of individual units called monomers. To get the monomers to link together, a lone electron – or free radical – initiates a bond with a monomer, triggering a chain reaction. Think of this process like knocking down a series of dominoes: The push of your hand (the free radical in this instance) hits a domino (the monomer) and subsequently knocks down the rest of the dominoes to form a line (the polymer).

    Polymers are long chains of the same molecule, over and over again.

    Because thiols can inhibit this process of polymerization, we had to make a monomer with a so-called protecting group that can be chemically removed after polymerization to become our thiols. Since a-lipoic acid, a common supplement found in pharmacies, contains such a protecting thiol group, we used it to make our monomer.

    We then made a chain of these monomers with RAFT, a controlled process by which polymers can be designed to leave the body through the urine. To do this, a water-soluble co-monomer can be added into the chain, allowing the polymer to dissolve in the bloodstream.

    Finally, we treated the polymers to remove the protecting group, producing thiol polymers ready for further testing.

    Testing on TBI

    Next, we tested how well our thiol polymers neutralized reactive oxygen species.

    First, we used a technique called UV-visible spectrophotometry, which shines a laser into a cell sample containing both our polymer and brain-damaging molecules. If there are reactive oxygen species present in the sample, the light will be minimally absorbed. But if our polymer neutralizes these compounds, then the light will be heavily absorbed. Through these studies, we found that our thiol polymer neutralized reactive oxygen species such as hydrogen peroxide by as much as 50%, and other neurotoxic molecules such as acrolein by as much as 100%, thus protecting neurons from damage.

    We conducted additional tests by exposing fluorescent proteins to free radicals, finding that proteins that weren’t treated with our thiol polymers were destroyed. Proteins that were treated continued to be fluorescent, indicating that our thiol polymer neutralized the free radical and protected the protein.

    Lastly, we injected the thiol polymers into mice with traumatic brain injury. Brain scans showed that our polymer not only successfully concentrated in the damaged area of the brain but also provided immediate protection from further injury. Our thiol polymer was able to reduce reactive oxygen species in injured mice to just 3% over the normal levels found in uninjured mice. Untreated mice with traumatic brain injury had a 45% increase compared with uninjured mice.

    Future work on thiol polymers

    Our findings suggest that these thiol polymers may serve as a potential treatment for the secondary stage of traumatic brain injury. Further testing can help determine whether this material could potentially reduce the risk of long-term disability.

    We are currently developing a cheap process to incorporate thiols with tiny nanoparticles. This may help increase the number of thiols in the material while also improving its ability to circulate in the bloodstream for longer protection.

    Many additional studies in animals are needed to confirm the effectiveness of our material in treating traumatic brain injury. If our results continue to be positive, we aim to test the effectiveness of our material in people through clinical trials. We hope these treatments could improve the long-term outcomes for victims of car crashes, falls or even sport-related injuries to the brain.

    Aaron Priester received funding from the NIH.

    – ref. Traumatic brain injuries have toxic effects that last weeks after initial impact − an antioxidant material reduces this damage in mice – https://theconversation.com/traumatic-brain-injuries-have-toxic-effects-that-last-weeks-after-initial-impact-an-antioxidant-material-reduces-this-damage-in-mice-247655

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: Dmytro Kuleba “War has become a normality, not an exception.”

    Source: Universities – Science Po in English

    Students in front of the entrance at 1 St-Thomas (credits: Pierre Morel)

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    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How medical treatments devised for war can quickly be implemented in US hospitals to save lives

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Vikhyat Bebarta, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Medical Toxicology, Pharmacology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

    Military medicine moves faster than traditional research. Tech. Sgt. Darius Sostre-Miroir/920th Rescue Wing

    For decades, military doctors faced a critical challenge: What’s the best way to safely and effectively deliver oxygen to patients in remote combat zones, rural hospitals or disaster-stricken areas?

    Oxygen tanks are heavy, costly and dangerous in combat zones. A direct hit from a missile or a bullet can turn a lifesaving resource into a deadly hazard.

    Marine Corps Gen. Ernest T. Cook once said, “Logistics is the hard part of fighting a war.” It goes beyond oxygen. For deployed U.S. troops, the supplies available during combat for treating wounded soldiers can mean the difference between life and death.

    The Department of Defense turned to us, military physicians and academic researchers in military medicine at the University of Colorado Center for COMBAT Research, to study whether the military needs to bring oxygen to the battlefield for soldiers – and, if so, how much.

    This approach to research is known as a military-civilian partnership. These partnerships aim to save lives on the battlefield. But they also save lives across the U.S. by turning military medical gains into better health care for all.

    Innovation and agility

    In the civilian world, it takes 17 years on average for a research discovery to change medical practice. One of the most well-known examples of this is the use of tranexamic acid for trauma patients. Tranexamic acid is injected to stop bleeding during surgery or after trauma. It was discovered in 1962 but not approved by the FDA until 1986. It wasn’t used for traumatic bleeding until 2012.

    The changing nature of war and threats against U.S. forces require military medicine to move faster. Injuries and infections in combat push researchers to find better ways to save lives, often faster than in civilian health care.

    Military medicine must move quickly to keep up with the pace of war.
    Contributor/Anadolu via GettyImages

    At the center, scientists work side by side with military medical teams to study, develop and test solutions tailored for the battlefield.

    Whether it’s addressing oxygen use, traumatic brain injuries, burn treatments or trauma care, these partnerships allow military and civilian researchers to translate discoveries into practice rapidly.

    Rethinking oxygen

    The immediate administration of oxygen to an injured or ill patient has long been a cornerstone of trauma and burn care. The logic seemed simple: When patients are in shock or have severe injuries, their bodies struggle to get enough oxygen, so doctors provided extra.

    Our research, and that of others, found that too much oxygen can actually be harmful. Excess oxygen triggers oxidative stress – an overload of unstable molecules called free radicals that can damage healthy cells. That can lead to more inflammation, slower healing and even organ failure.

    In short, while oxygen is essential, more isn’t always better.

    We conducted a series of military-civilian collaborative trials called Strategy to Avoid Excessive Oxygen, or SAVE-O2. We discovered that severely injured patients often require less oxygen than previously believed. In fact, little or no supplemental oxygen is needed to safely care for 95% of these patients.

    This finding challenges decades of conventional medical wisdom. It will reshape how medical professionals approach critical care in not only military settings, but civilian hospitals as well.

    Within a year of presenting our findings to military medical leaders, these insights have already influenced changes and updates to patient care guidelines, medic training and even decisions on medical equipment purchases.

    To build on our findings, we’ve launched a trial to study the use of artificial intelligence to automate oxygen delivery. This military-funded study could provide better care for wounded soldiers in remote combat zones and for injured civilians in ambulances or rural hospitals before they reach large referral and trauma centers.

    An oxygen mask that uses artificial intelligence could help medics in rural combat zones and rural U.S. hospitals.
    John Moore/GettyImages

    In rural or remote areas of the U.S., access to supplemental oxygen can be limited due to supply chain challenges, high costs and shortages. This is particularly true in small hospitals and affects first responders after a natural disaster or accident. In the intensive care units of these hospitals, using oxygen more efficiently could preserve limited oxygen supplies for patients who need it.

    Prolonged casualty care: A new frontier

    While researching oxygen needs in combat zones, we realized another pressing issue: the challenges of prolonged casualty care. During a conflict, military medics often need to treat critically injured soldiers for hours or even days before the wounded person can be evacuated.

    In a future conflict with a “near-peer” adversary such as China or Russia, the U.S. may not have the ability to evacuate wounded troops quickly. Without reliable helicopter or airplane transport, many casualties may not reach trauma care within the “golden hour.” This is the critical first 60 minutes after a severe injury, when rapid treatment is essential.

    The ongoing war in Ukraine illustrates the challenge of prolonged casualty care. In hospitals across Ukraine, doctors are increasingly having trouble treating the wounds of civilian and military patients because of rising antibiotic resistance.

    Future military conflicts in the Indo-Pacific regions will present similar challenges, including long patient transport times and concerns about wound infections due to prolonged casualty care.

    However, this challenge isn’t unique to the battlefield. Prolonged casualty care also happens in civilian crises. For example, during a natural disaster, emergency responders must manage patients without quick access to hospitals.

    Once patients are treated in the field or in disaster scenarios, providers must often sustain care with limited resources. They have to prioritize essential interventions, minimize resource use and stabilize patients for eventual transfer to higher levels of care.

    Innovation in health care thrives on collaboration. Military-civilian partnerships are one way to advance medical solutions faster and more effectively. These innovations save lives in combat, improve care and allow us to apply our 98% survival rate in war to our trauma centers, rural hospitals and disaster zones in the U.S.

    The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense (DoD), the United States Government, or any of its agencies. The appearance of external links or mention of specific commercial products does not constitute endorsement by the DoD.

    Adit Ginde receives research funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense (DoD), the United States Government, or any of its agencies. The appearance of external links or mention of specific commercial products does not constitute endorsement by the DoD.

    Arthur Kellermann previously served as dean of the school of medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. His views are his own and do not neccessarily represent those of the U.S. Department of Defense.

    – ref. How medical treatments devised for war can quickly be implemented in US hospitals to save lives – https://theconversation.com/how-medical-treatments-devised-for-war-can-quickly-be-implemented-in-us-hospitals-to-save-lives-247752

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI: Rapsodo Extends NIL Deals to Two of the Nation’s Top Baseball Prospects, Amplifying Its Goal to Help Athletes Improve Their Skills

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    ST. LOUIS, Feb. 19, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rapsodo, the company known for giving athletes the sports technology they need to play like never before, announces the addition of two athletes to the Rapsodo baseball NIL community: Noah Franco and Sebastian “Sushi” Wilson. The partnerships reflect Rapsodo’s commitment to both players as they advance their careers and continue to pursue their dreams of reaching baseball’s highest level – the MLB.

    Franco, the No. 7 nationally ranked 2024 prospect by Perfect Game, is starting his freshman season for the Texas Christian University (TCU) Horned Frogs as a two-way player – a first baseman and left-handed pitcher. While a high school player at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL, Franco found success with a mid-90s fastball and honing his hitting skills with a batting average of .319. Franco’s success landed him on the 18U USA Baseball National Team in 2022 and 2023, a spot on the USA Prospect Development Pipeline and recognition as a high-school All-American by the MLB, Baseball America, Under Armour and Perfect Game. Franco has already been named the Big 12 Preseason Freshman of the Year.

    “I’ve used Rapsodo technology in practices and training programs my entire life, and because of that, I understand how important it is to track my performance with data when looking for ways to improve my game,” Franco said. “When I was being recruited, coaches often asked for data that backed up my skills, and I was able to show them my Rapsodo profile that showcased my two-way game. I’m excited for the next chapter of my baseball career at TCU and am thrilled to represent Rapsodo along the way.”

    Wilson, a sophomore at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL, formerly with Lane Technical High School in Chicago, is both a right-handed pitcher and outfielder. While in the seventh grade, he verbally committed to the University of Tennessee – one of college baseball’s best programs, and at 16 years old, his skills as a utility player have solidified his place as one of the nation’s top recruits. Wilson’s talent is reflected in the data collected on his performance. As of June 2024, Wilson has recorded a 6.62 60-yard dash, reached 90 mph when pitching and had an exit velocity of 98 mph, according to Perfect Game. Most recently, Wilson was honored by MaxPreps for their 2024 Underclass All-America Team.

    “My ultimate goal is to find success in baseball as a two-way player,” Wilson said. “I’m thankful for the opportunity to join the Rapsodo team, as I believe understanding my metrics and tracking my data will help me improve my performance across all levels of my hitting and pitching game.”

    Rapsodo’s PRO 3.0 and PRO 2.0 devices measure both hitting and pitching data by tracking key performance metrics. The success of both Franco and Wilson as two-way players makes them perfect fits for Rapsodo’s technology and NIL community. By utilizing Rapsodo, both players will continue to grow their two-way game using the most accurate, reliable and affordable baseball technology available.

    “Young athletes in the early stages of their baseball careers are in tune with technology now more than ever before, and we’re seeing more MLB players join the league having already used baseball technology in their career,” said Katrina Hartwell, general manager of Rapsodo North America. “We’re thrilled for the opportunity to partner with Noah and Sebastian so early in their careers because we see their potential and want them to use Rapsodo technology to further enhance their game. We’ll be keeping tabs on their seasons and cheering for their success in hopes that they reach the next level.”

    Today’s announcement introduces Franco and Wilson to Rapsodo’s community of elite athletes in the Rapsodo Baseball NIL program. All five NIL athletes in Rapsodo’s previous baseball NIL class were drafted in the first two rounds of the 2024 MLB draft: Chase Burns (Cincinnati Reds – round 1, No. 2 overall), Jac Caglianone (Kansas City Royals – round 1, No. 6 overall), Vance Honeycutt (Baltimore Orioles – round 1, No. 22 overall), Blake Burke (Milwaukee Brewers – round 2, No. 34) and Brody Brecht (Colorado Rockies – round 2, No. 38 overall).

    Rapsodo’s mission of helping athletes reach their highest levels of success also translates to softball where Rapsodo is continuing to expand its NIL presence. With the launch of PRO 2.0 Softball in late 2024, Rapsodo added three players from the University of Florida to the Rapsodo NIL community.

    • Jocelyn Erickson – the NFCA Division 1 Player of the Year, 2024 Rawlings Gold Glove award-winner, 2024 unanimous First Team All-American and 2024 SEC Player of the Year
    • Ava Brown – 2023 National Gatorade Softball Player of the Year, 2023 Gatorade Best Female Athlete, 2024 NFCA All-Southeast Region Second Team and 2024 All-SEC Second Team
    • Keagan Rothrock – 2024 SEC Freshman of the Year, 2024 NFCA All-American Third Team, 2024 NFCA D1 Freshman of the Year Top 10

    The Gators have started the season 13-1 and are currently ranked No. 3 according to D1Softball. A media kit with photos and videos of the Gator athletes using the Rapsodo Softball PRO 2.0 can be found here.

    Players and coaches interested in using Rapsodo’s game-changing technology can find more information on Rapsodo.com.

    About Rapsodo
    Rapsodo defies limits with affordable, professional-grade technology to enhance the way athletes play across the world. Used by MLB teams, NCAA Division I Champions, and elite PGA coaches, Rapsodo technology has earned multiple MyGolfSpy’s Best Of Golf Awards and the Official Player Development Partner of USA Baseball, affirming Rapsodo’s leadership in golf, baseball, and softball tech. Do what you didn’t think was possible. Play Without Limits. Play with Rapsodo. Discover more at Rapsodo.com.

    Media Contact:
    Tara Evans
    Uproar by Moburst for Rapsodo
    tara.evans@moburst.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: “The rule of six handshakes is followed in social media”

    Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –

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

    Ivan Samoylenko studies graph theory and in his third year he came up with an idea that formed the basis of a scientific article with a very high citation rate in the media. In an interview with the Young Scientists of the HSE project, he spoke about the Watts-Strogatz small world model, singing in the children’s choir of the Bolshoi Theater, and choosing between science and industry.

    How I got into science

    I am a graduate of the specialized mathematics school #57 in Moscow. I attended math clubs there since high school, and in the 9th grade I transferred to a specialized math class. I got acquainted with some mathematical disciplines at a fairly serious level there. At that time, my attention was drawn to graphs – perhaps because many life questions are clearly formulated in their language. After school, I entered the mathematics department of the Higher School of Economics and am currently mainly engaged in graph theory.

    At HSE, I work in two laboratories. In the International Laboratory of Game Theory and Decision Making at HSE in St. Petersburg, I study applications of graphs to game-theoretic problems. And at the Faculty of Mathematics, we created the Scientific and Educational Laboratory of Complex Networks, Hypergraphs, and Their Applications. There, as you can tell from the name of the laboratory, I study both graphs and their generalized version — hypergraphs. And not only from the point of view of theory, but also from the point of view of the possible application of these structures to solving problems from a wide variety of areas — biology, medicine, data analysis, etc.

    What is a graph

    For clarity, a graph can be represented as a set of points (vertices) connected by lines (edges). The main feature of graph theory is that almost any system can be represented as a set of objects and some interactions between them. For example, when a journalist interviews me, this is also a graph, and a directed one at that. But in this particular example, it is not very clear why the graph is needed – it does not provide any new information about what is happening. However, if many different journalists interview different scientists, with the help of graph theory, you can compare the structural characteristics of the vertices (people) and make unobvious (at first glance) general conclusions.

    About the history of graph theory

    The father of graph theory is considered to be the mathematician Leonard Euler, who published a solution to the problem of the Königsberg bridges in 1736. He proved that it is impossible to cross all seven Königsberg bridges without crossing any of them twice and return to the starting point. Later, with the development of technology and the emergence of large data sets, graph theory increasingly occupied the minds of mathematicians and was embodied in various fields of knowledge.

    Another famous graph problem is the four-color conjecture, the assertion that any map on a plane can be correctly colored in no more than four colors. Although the problem is formulated in a language understandable even to a schoolchild and is easily illustrated with understandable pictures, it took humanity more than 100 years to solve it. And when in 1976 a solution was found (by the way, not at all simple: one of the steps of this solution is to try out almost 2000 options), an important break in the history of all mathematics occurred: this was the first theorem completely proven with the help of a computer.

    In general, major breakthroughs and milestones in the history of graph theory are inextricably linked with the development of information technology. Thus, graph theory gained particular popularity with the emergence of a clear example of a very large irregular (which cannot be fully described by a small set of rules) graph — the Internet. In general, the emergence of the Internet led to the emergence of a major branch of graph theory — the theory of complex networks.

    The two major modern works in complex network theory are papers describing the mechanisms by which complex networks emerge in the real world: the Watts-Strogatz small-world model and the Barabasi-Albert preferential attachment model. These papers have a great many citations, which is rare in mathematics. The Watts-Strogatz model is even in the top 100 most cited scientific papers of all time.

    When large amounts of data appear, it is interesting to identify structural patterns. And now there is a lot of data, you can build informative graph systems in almost any area. For example, I saw a study on how the graph of interactions of British composers of the 20th century is structured. By calculating the characteristics of this graph, for example, some centralities, you can draw a conclusion about which specific composers were structurally important for the development of British music. And from different points of view: someone as an independent actor or founder of a school, and someone as a link, allowing more successful colleagues to interact with each other.

    In general, in the language of graph theory, one can formulate models – probabilistic, game-theoretic – and prove their properties with strict mathematical theorems. So this is both an applied and fundamental area of mathematics.

    What I am proud of

    I came up with a game-theoretic model that describes why the social networks we see in the real world follow the six-handshake rule. It has been described before why there should be relatively few handshakes, but I was able to show where the magic number 6 comes from. A paper about this, based on my bachelor’s thesis, was published in Physical Review X in 2023.

    In the language of graph theory, it is easy to formulate what a social network is. The vertices are people, and the relationships between them (for example, acquaintance or friendship) are edges. In this context, the six-handshake rule can be thought of as follows: if we take two random people registered in a social network, then with a probability close to one, the path from one to the other along the “friend” edges will be no longer than six steps.

    The Watts and Strogatz paper that I mentioned proposed a random graph model in which a similar phenomenon could be observed. And I came up with a model that, on the one hand, somehow justified why this model was reasonable, and on the other hand, theoretically proved that if it so happened that we had two people in the system who were more than six handshakes apart, then such a system would not be very stable under sufficiently weak constraints.

    It was fortunate that our article came out 25 years after Watts and Strogatz’s article. And Strogatz himself wrote about our article on his social networks. He is quite a media person, so such a mention greatly promoted our article; at some point, journalists from different countries even wrote to me to get comments. As a result, according to my calculations, according to the altmetrics indicator, which is responsible for mentions in the world media and social networks, among articles where the first author has affiliation with the HSE, mine is the most mentioned.

    How I Got Published in a Top-Rated Magazine

    Getting published in high-ranking journals is a separate art (or rather, a craft). Even if you are a young genius, but do not know how to write articles, present material in a format acceptable for your domain, then you most likely will not publish anything in serious journals.

    Our article, published in the journal, consists of two parts. This is the main, “selling” part, which should be read by a completely non-technical person, and the additional part, which provides technical details and detailed evidence. As the author of the concept and idea, I wrote almost all the additional material (with detailed evidence), while a team of several leading scientists worked on the first part. First of all, Stefano Bocaletti, who was introduced to me by my supervisor in the graduate school of MIPT, Andrei Mikhailovich Raigorodsky, made a significant contribution to the release of this publication.

    He was the first person who was able to read my drafts and believed in the concept I proposed (it should be noted that in 2021, when I started writing this work, there were no good LLM chats yet, and my English was so bad that even at local competitions of the Faculty of Mathematics my work did not take prizes; then I accidentally found out that one of the reasons was the inability to read it normally).

    Then Stefano, for some time, invited his friends, also very strong network scientists, to join our team so that they could help us illuminate and explore our problem: what experiments to conduct, where to place emphasis so that the work could be published in a major interdisciplinary journal. And everything worked out: our article has a fairly good citation rate both in the media and in other scientific publications. So it’s one thing to discover a phenomenon, and quite another to successfully convey your results to the scientific community. Moreover, the criteria for an interesting publication are different for different domains. For example, I know that my fellow economists from the Game Theory Laboratory did not really like the format of my work. I have yet to master writing good economic articles.

    On the lack of time, but not ideas

    I keep a document with tasks that can be done and where minimal progress has been made. There are more than 20 of them. There is no shortage of ideas, there is a shortage of time, and sometimes there is a shortage of workers.

    With semi-applied ideas, it is often unclear in advance whether they are good or not; this can only be determined by conducting an experiment. In theory, it sometimes happens that you come up with something — and it is immediately clear that it is a good idea. Even its refutation can be informative and interesting. In the context of applied methods, everything is different: if something does not work, it is no longer so interesting. But on the other hand, if you know the result in advance, then what kind of science is it? You research, and if something works out — that’s great.

    What I dream about

    I would like young Russian scientists to have an easier life. So that they could not only survive, doing exclusively or mainly science. The presence of specialized specialists who have the opportunity to fully devote their time to research is critically important from the point of view of the development of science and technology. To explain my understanding of the problem, I would like to give an example from game theory. There is such a concept as a “rational agent”. Let’s say a young man (or woman) as a rational agent chooses where to go to work. In theory, if in science, there will be less money, but the work will be more free. If in industry, vice versa. Such a trade-off with clear alternatives: for each person, you can figuratively imagine a payoff function depending on these two factors, and each chooses one of the two paths depending on which factor is more important for the person.

    However, this model is relevant only if the economic difference is not too big. In practice (this is not only our problem, but in Russia it is felt especially acutely) the gap is colossal. In some situations it is more reasonable and simpler to go to work in a corporation, and in your free time to get together with friends and discuss science, and some people do just that.

    Another important issue is time constraints. Many scientific projects/grants/programs are very heavy and unwieldy from a bureaucratic point of view. The project setup activities may begin when a student, say, has just entered a master’s program, and the launch — when he or she is already finishing the last pages of his or her diploma.

    In such conditions, a young scientist will have to look for part-time work/other jobs, be in a state of constant uncertainty, which leads to constant stress. So many, even among those who are really interested in a scientific career, cannot cope and simply leave science. If we attract young scientists and administrative personnel (in my understanding, a scientist should not be busy writing papers, he should be engaged in science, if he does not have additional paid administrative duties) on more market-based terms, it seems to me that much more interesting and breakthrough work could be done.

    If I hadn’t become a mathematician

    The simplest answer is that I would go into IT, because that’s how I make money. But, in principle, I could become anyone, mathematics is not about theorems, but rather about a way of thinking. I don’t know who I could become. I could even do music, I even sang in the children’s choir of the Bolshoi Theater. Many opera productions have parts where children sing, and opera houses have children’s choirs.

    So that there is no feeling that I am Luciano Pavarotti, I should clarify that it is easier for boys to get into the Bolshoi Choir. The Bolshoi Children’s Choir consisted (at least when I was there) mainly of girls, and any boy there is a great success; there are fewer of them in music in general, and in early adolescence many leave because of voice failure. We had a situation when three people stopped taking part in performances at once. Because when two boys almost six feet tall and a third, also quite a large fellow with the nickname Horse stand next to a soloist shorter than them by a head and a half and have to portray small children, a noticeable dissonance arises.

    What I was interested in at school

    I was interested in history. I was even closer to the final stage of the All-Russian in history than in mathematics. I also played a lot of “What? Where? When?” and continued to do so as a student, although a little less actively. Now, unfortunately, I have almost no time for this: I have to work in industry, do science, and I also have a social and organizational load in the laboratories where I work.

    Who would I like to meet?

    With John Conway. I have a close relationship with his attitude to mathematics: he saw it in various everyday things, and although he became famous mainly for the game “Life”, he was in fact an amazingly versatile scientist with a large number of important works in various areas of mathematics. I was very upset when I read the news of his death at the very beginning of the covid pandemic. It would also be interesting to talk to mathematicians from the golden age of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics – for example, Andrey Kolmogorov, the author of the axiomatics of probability theory.

    What are my hobbies besides science?

    I am a curious person and try to get acquainted with different things, to find out what is happening in the world. Sometimes I watch history channels, sometimes I can watch something about football or a strange documentary. In general, almost any information is interesting to me. But all this is irregular. I work systematically, slept – good, did not sleep – well, what to do.

    Advice to young scientists

    Think carefully about choosing your future track. I can also wish you patience and strength, mental and physical – you will definitely need it.

    Favorite place in Moscow

    I really like Moscow as a whole. I’ve been to different cities and I can’t say that even one of them is close to Moscow in terms of comfort (I have a certain sense of being a Muscovite, of course). If I have to name a specific place, I can simply say that I love the Moscow metro – it’s very practical (and at the old stations, it’s also aesthetically pleasing).

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

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Gov. Kemp: Duracell Selects Georgia for New R&D Headquarters

    Source: US State of Georgia

    Atlanta, GA – Governor Brian P. Kemp today announced that Duracell, one of the world’s leading battery manufacturers, will establish its new Global Headquarters for Research and Development at Science Square in Atlanta, creating 110 jobs and investing approximately $56 million. Duracell currently has a manufacturing facility in LaGrange, Georgia, that has been in operation since 1980 and a logistics and distribution plant in Fairburn, Georgia, that began operations in 2020.

    “Georgia has set itself apart as a leader in attracting innovative companies with our research institutions, world-class logistics network, and pro-business environment,” said Governor Brian Kemp. “I want to thank our local and state partners who are leveraging those assets to their fullest to bring new opportunities across the state. We are excited to welcome Duracell’s R&D headquarters to Atlanta and continue building on this great relationship.”

    Duracell is an American manufacturer of alkaline, lithium coin, and hearing aid batteries. Duracell’s LaGrange facility currently supports approximately 400 jobs, while the Fairburn plant supports an additional 275 jobs.

    “We’re excited about the opportunities the move to Atlanta will bring and we’re confident this new chapter will strengthen our position as a global leader in the industry,” said Dr. Liben Hailu, Chief Technology Officer at Duracell. “This move is a significant milestone for Duracell as we continue to drive innovation in battery technology for many years to come.”

    Duracell’s new Global Headquarters for Research and Development will be located at 101 Nerem Street NW in Atlanta. Adjacent to Georgia Tech’s Midtown Atlanta campus, Science Square is an 18-acre multi-phase development centered on innovation and featuring more than 1.8 million square feet of lab and office space.

    “Atlanta’s transportation infrastructure, diverse talent pool from top-tier universities and a thriving tech ecosystem make the city an ideal environment for corporate innovation and growth,” said Mayor Andre Dickens. “We appreciate Duracell’s confidence in Atlanta, including the investment of more than 100 new jobs that will provide the opportunity for more Atlanta residents to build promising careers.”

    “The impact of Duracell’s decision to locate their R&D headquarters in Atlanta goes beyond the 110 new innovation jobs in the region: as they make Science Square their new home, Duracell strengthens our region’s powerful reputation as a hub for innovation and furthers Georgia’s growing battery ecosystem,” said Katie Kirkpatrick, President & CEO of the Metro Atlanta Chamber. “Duracell is locating literally next door to the world-class talent at Georgia Tech and in close proximity to the other tens of thousands of new graduates in the region, setting them up for long-term success.” 

    “Duracell’s choice to set up its Global R&D Headquarters in Fulton County solidifies Fulton’s leadership in innovation and talent attraction,” said Robb Pitts, Chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. “This will bring unique jobs and investment – a win for Fulton County and Georgia.”

    Assistant Director of Statewide Projects John Soper represented the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s (GDEcD) Global Commerce team on this competitive project in partnership with Invest Atlanta, Select Fulton, Metro Atlanta Chamber, Georgia Power, and the University System of Georgia.

    “For decades, Georgia has been home to Duracell, and it’s exciting that they are looking to invest their future back into our state,” said GDEcD Commissioner Pat Wilson. “For a company like Duracell that is on the cutting edge of innovation, research and development is critical to their long-term success. Locating the new Global Headquarters for Research and Development in Atlanta makes it clear that Duracell sees the State of Georgia as a long-term partner in their success strategy.”

    About Duracell

    Started in the 1920s, the Duracell brand and company was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.  (NYSE-BRK.A, BRK.B) in 2016 and has grown to be a leader in the primary battery market in North America. Duracell’s products serve as the heart of devices that keep people connected, protect their families, entertain them, and simplify their increasingly mobile lifestyles. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is a $250 billion holding company owning subsidiaries that engage in diverse business activities. Visit www.duracell.com  for more information; follow Duracell on X.com/Duracell and like Duracell on Facebook.com/Duracell.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Climate change is threatening Lake Ontario — lessons from the Little Ice Age show us why we need to adapt

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Macfarlane, Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainability, Western Michigan University

    Humans have always had a close connection with Lake Ontario. For centuries, this Great Lake has been a backbone of the region’s economy — relied upon for trade, food and industry. But a warming climate could dramatically change this relationship.

    This wouldn’t be the first time climate change has affected how humans use this Great Lake, as I show in my new book The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History. During the Little Ice Age, which spanned roughly the 14th to 19th centuries, Indigenous and settler societies had to adapt to the cooling Lake Ontario environment.

    As we again face a changing climate, the way our predecessors adapted during the Little Ice Age teaches us why it’s necessary we change how we use and interact with Lake Ontario today.

    The Little Ice Age

    Prior to the onset of the Little Ice Age, the Lake Ontario region was occupied exclusively by different Indigenous Peoples — including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg. These groups regularly came to Lake Ontario to hunt, harvest and trade. They were highly attuned to local climate conditions, adapting their agricultural strategies accordingly.

    But the Little Ice Age altered the climate in the region — with average temperatures about 1-2°C lower than normal. I argue in my book that the impact this period’s climate had on the environment and those living in the region helped change the course of empires in North America — both Indigenous and Euro-American.

    This cooler climate led to seasonal unpredictability. This forced the region’s various occupants to adjust their resource and food acquisition strategies. A higher frequency of summer droughts could mean failed crops — while extremely heavy snows made it harder to hunt. These factors may have contributed to the severe decline of Indigenous populations in the region.

    The origins of the fur trade — which dramatically reorganized society and altered political power in the Great Lakes region — are also at least partly attributable to the Little Ice Age. The cooler climate drove the desire for fur in Europe while also affecting the pelt thickness of North American animals.

    The climate during the Little Ice Age also influenced various military campaigns due to its effects on the region’s weather and the lake’s conditions.

    During the War of 1812, for instance, two American warships sank in a sudden summer squall north of Port Dalhousie. A lack of appreciation for the lake’s capriciousness could mean disaster — while those commanders who respected the local environment had the upper hand.

    Agriculture

    But alongside the challenges this cooling climate created, it also provided new opportunities.

    As I contend in my book, climate changes during the period encouraged the diversification of agriculture and food production — such as the cultivation of wheat strains hardy enough to survive cooler conditions. Settlers also believed the mass conversion of forests and wetlands to fields could modify the climate, making it warmer. The influx of settlers reliant on these new types of agriculture fundamentally shaped the emerging political and economic systems around Lake Ontario.

    Heavier ice cover on Lake Ontario actually made winter transportation easier in some ways.

    Temperatures during the Little Ice Age frequently caused a thick freeze in the lake’s nearshore waters. This enabled alternative forms of wintertime travel which were generally cheaper, more flexible, and more dependable than travelling by boat. Skates, sleighs and iceboats were developed for both economic and recreational needs.

    As the Little Ice Age began releasing its grip during the 19th century, Euro-Americans moved to the Lake Ontario basin in larger numbers. This climatic shift proved integral to settler expansion.

    Ice on Lake Ontario enabled cheaper forms of travel.
    (William Armstrong, Public domain/Wikimedia Commons)

    Resilient yet fragile

    The Toronto region could not have become Canada’s economic and cultural capital without the resources of Lake Ontario.

    But all this economic and political growth has come at a tremendous cost. Lake Ontario is now imperilled because of the way we’ve come to rely on it.

    In the 19th century, we cut down forests, dammed and polluted tributaries, dug canals and obliterated fish species in the region.

    In the 20th century, our impacts only expanded: overwhelming pollution, invasive species, urban sprawl, larger canals and hydroelectric dams. These human costs have led to nutrient overloads in the water from wastewater and farming runoff, impoverished biodiversity, fluctuating water levels, toxic chemicals and plastics in the lake.

    This ongoing degradation — coupled with climate change exacerbating ecological challenges and creating new ones — is further undercutting Lake Ontario’s ability to cope with our many abuses.

    A hotter lake could alter the entire food web, which could have ripple effects on local species, energy flows and biodiversity.

    The changing climate is also causing extreme fluctuations in lake levels. Recent record-high levels eroded shorelines — affecting houses and infrastructure while threatening septic systems, nuclear power stations and fuel refineries.

    Resilience

    We’re lucky that Lake Ontario is remarkably resilient. But the lake is being pushed to the brink. We have a small window to both adapt to the already changing climate and prevent it from changing further.

    Of course, the Little Ice Age involved the climate getting cooler, while today it’s getting warmer — with humanity being the primary driver for this changing climate. In the face of climate change, we too can adapt how we use and interact with the lake — just as was done in the Little Ice Age.

    But our response nowadays needs to be as much about stopping old practices as starting new ones. We need to cease contributing to global warming and other negative impacts on Lake Ontario through our unsustainable industry, flawed economic systems and overconsumption, massive pollution and reliance on fossil fuels.

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

    – ref. Climate change is threatening Lake Ontario — lessons from the Little Ice Age show us why we need to adapt – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-threatening-lake-ontario-lessons-from-the-little-ice-age-show-us-why-we-need-to-adapt-246292

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Deportation fears create ripple effects across undocumented migrants, legal immigrants and entire communities

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kristina Fullerton Rico, Research Fellow, Center for Racial Justice, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detain a person on Jan. 27, 2025, in Silver Spring, Md. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    The Trump administration’s plan to deport millions of immigrants living in the country without permission is falling far short of its initial goals in its first few weeks.

    But there has been an increase in immigration raids in multiple cities, including Los Angeles and Miami, since Trump took office.

    After Trump’s inauguration, rumors of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents roaming the streets or showing up at churches and schools have spread on social media and messaging apps, sending waves of panic in immigrant communities from coast to coast.

    When I share my research on the effects of U.S. immigration policies, I find that most people intuitively understand how being deported can upend someone’s life.

    In fact, research shows that deportation, and the risk of deportation, impacts more than just the person who is deported.

    Deporting immigrants often separates individualsfrom their families, exiles them to countries that don’t feel like home, and leaves them poor, with few job prospects.

    Immigrants who are deported also face social stigmas that lead to further isolation and mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety and risk of suicide.

    An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who plans to leave the country in February 2025 is seen at home with his son in Dover, Ohio, in January.
    Rebecca Kiger for The Washington Post via Getty Images

    A family matter

    Immigrants in the country without permission tend to belong to mixed-immigration-status families, meaning that at least one family member has legal permission to be in the country or has citizenship.

    In some cases, mixed-status families feel pressure to leave the U.S. together if one family member is deported.

    Researchers call this phenomenon “de facto deportation.” It frequently affects young, U.S.-born children whose parents are deported.

    Legal scholars argue that deporting the parents of these young U.S. citizens violates these children’s citizenship rights. Though these children are citizens, their parents’ deportations push them out of the country and away from the lives they would have had in the U.S.

    In other cases, families separate when a mother, father or other adult guardian is deported. This is especially true for immigrants who are deported to dangerous places. Families are also likely to separate if a family member requires specialized medical care for a disability or chronic illness.

    But it is not just actual deportations that cause harm.

    The fear of deportation

    Even when immigrants do not face an immediate risk of deportation, the way they live their lives is shaped by the threat of removal.

    In hostile political climates, including the current moment in the U.S., immigrants feel the risk of deportation acutely.

    Some researchers call the fear of deportation “deportability.” This feeling has a chilling effect, discouraging immigrants from the everyday activities they would otherwise do.

    So far, immigrants’ fear is likely disproportionate to the risk of deportation. But the threat looms so large that immigrants and their families have upended their lives.

    Business owners, teachers and religious leaders across the country have noticed immigrants’ glaring absence in neighborhoods that are usually bustling and now feel deserted.

    In some cases, immigrants are keeping their children home from school. Others avoid going to doctor’s appointments or delay going to the hospital.

    Hostility toward immigrants also has a chilling effect on cultural expression.

    Research shows that Latino immigrants who fear deportation or anti-immigrant prejudice feel coerced to assimilate. They avoid speaking Spanish or their Indigenous language, like Quechua or Náhuatl, in public, and may even hesitate to teach it to their own children.

    Similarly, it can feel dangerous to play music or partake in cultural traditions.

    Spillover effects

    Research has also found that the threat of deportation makes immigrants hesitant to report dangerous conditions at work. Since immigrants are overrepresented in dangerous industries, like construction and meatpacking, this can lead to a higher risk of being injured or even dying on the job.

    Because local law enforcement agencies increasingly cooperate with federal immigration authorities, immigrants may also avoid going to the police – even when they are victims of violent crimes.

    Even in cities where local law enforcement agencies refuse to work closely with ICE, the perception that they might be creates fear in immigrant communities and leads people to underutilize public programs and services.

    People who have permission to be in the country are also afraid

    The fear of immigration enforcement can also extend to a person who speaks a foreign language, is a person of color, or otherwise seems like they might be in the country without permission.

    Perhaps the most striking example of this consists of recent reports that Native American citizens living in Southwest states like Arizona have been increasingly questioned by ICE. In response, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren has advised people to carry proof of their U.S. citizenship.

    Nonwhite U.S. citizens’ fears of being deported are not unprecedented.

    In the 1950s, many U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry were deported under President Dwight Eisenhower’s mass deportation operation. Trump credits Eisenhower’s program, officially called “Operation Wetback,” after the racist slur, for inspiring his current mass deportation plans.

    More than half a century later, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that between 2015 and 2020, ICE likely arrested 674 U.S. citizens, detaining 121 and deporting 70 of them.

    The entrance to a church in Chicago had a sign on its door on Feb. 10, 2025, informing ICE officials that they were not allowed to enter the building without a court order.
    Luzia Geier/picture alliance via Getty Images

    A sense of despair

    Not surprisingly, anti-immigrant policies and threats can elicit feelings of hopelessness among immigrants. The fear of deportation can lead to significant mental health problems for immigrants and their loved ones, ranging from conditions like anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to a loss of trust in others and social isolation.

    Children experience fear and confusion about the future of their lives and that of their families.

    Hopelessness can lead to immigrants leaving the country on their own accord. This can happen because immigrants see no future for themselves in the U.S.

    Similarly, immigrants who are detained by government authorities may agree to voluntary departure orders rather than fighting to remain in the country.

    Some consequences of the fear of deportation and anti-immigrant hostility are easy to see, like when children miss school.

    Others – delaying doctor’s appointments, going hungry instead of going to the food bank, tolerating abuse instead of seeking help – are harder to observe, and their negative effects may not be evident for years.

    Kristina Fullerton Rico’s research has received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation and Sociologists for Women in Society.

    – ref. Deportation fears create ripple effects across undocumented migrants, legal immigrants and entire communities – https://theconversation.com/deportation-fears-create-ripple-effects-across-undocumented-migrants-legal-immigrants-and-entire-communities-248817

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Greenland’s rapidly melting ice and landslide-prone fjords make the oil and minerals Trump covets dangerous to extract

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Paul Bierman, Fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment, Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Vermont

    Greenland has large deposits of rare earth minerals along its coasts, but these are also geologically hazardous regions. Alex Hibbert/The Image Bank via Getty Images

    Since Donald Trump regained the presidency, he has coveted Greenland. Trump has insisted that the U.S. will control the island, currently an autonomous territory of Denmark, and if his overtures are rejected, perhaps seize Greenland by force.

    During a recent congressional hearing, senators and expert witnesses focused on Greenland’s strategic value and its natural resources: critical minerals, fossil fuels and hydropower. No one mentioned the hazards, many of them exacerbated by human-induced climate change, that those longing to possess and develop the island will inevitably encounter.

    That’s imprudent, because the Arctic’s climate is changing more rapidly than anywhere on Earth. Such rapid warming further increases the already substantial economic and personal risk for those living, working and extracting resources on Greenland, and for the rest of the planet.

    Arctic surface temperatures have been rising faster than the global average.
    Arctic Report Card 2024, NOAA Climate.gov

    I am a geoscientist who studies the environmental history of Greenland and its ice sheet, including natural hazards and climate change. That knowledge is essential for understanding the risks that military and extractive efforts face on Greenland today and in the future.

    Greenland: Land of extremes

    Greenland is unlike where most people live. The climate is frigid. For much of the year, sea ice clings to the coast, making it inaccessible.

    An ice sheet, up to 2 miles thick, covers more than 80% of the island. The population, about 56,000 people, lives along the island’s steep, rocky coastline.

    While researching my book “When the Ice is Gone,” I discovered how Greenland’s harsh climate and vast wilderness stymied past colonial endeavors. During World War II, dozens of U.S. military pilots, disoriented by thick fog and running out of fuel, crashed onto the ice sheet. An iceberg from Greenland sunk the Titanic in 1912, and 46 years later, another sunk a Danish vessel specifically designed to fend off ice, killing all 95 aboard.

    Now amplified by climate change, natural hazards make resource extraction and military endeavors in Greenland uncertain, expensive and potentially deadly.

    Rock on the move

    Greenland’s coastal landscape is prone to rockslides. The hazard arises because the coast is where people live and where rock isn’t hidden under the ice sheet. In some places, that rock contains critical minerals, such as gold, as well as other rare metals used for technology, including for circuit boards and electrical vehicle batteries.

    The unstable slopes reflect how the ice sheet eroded the deep fjords when it was larger. Now that the ice has melted, nothing buttresses the near-vertical valley walls, and so, they collapse.

    In 2017, a northwestern Greenland mountainside fell 3,000 feet into the deep waters of the fjord below. Moments later, the wave that rockfall generated (a tsunami) washed over the nearby villages of Nuugaatsiaq and Illorsuit. The water, laden with icebergs and sea ice, ripped homes from their foundations as people and sled dogs ran for their lives. By the time it was over, four people were dead and both villages lay in ruin.

    Steep fjord walls around the island are littered with the scars of past rockslides. The evidence shows that at one point in the last 10,000 years, one of those slides dropped rock sufficient to fill 3.2 million Olympic swimming pools into the water below. In 2023, another rockslide triggered a tsunami that sloshed back and forth for nine days in a Greenland fjord.

    A cellphone video captures the June 2017 tsunami wave coming ashore in northwestern Greenland.

    There’s no network of paved roads across Greenland. The only feasible way to move heavy equipment, minerals and fossil fuels would be by sea. Docks, mines and buildings within tens of feet of sea level would be vulnerable to rockslide-induced tsunamis.

    Melting ice will be deadly and expensive

    Human-induced global warming, driven by fossil fuel combustion, speeds the melting of Greenland’s ice. That melting is threatening the island’s infrastructure and the lifestyles of native people, who over millennia have adapted their transportation and food systems to the presence of snow and ice. Record floods, fed by warmth-induced melting of the ice sheet, have recently swept away bridges that stood for half a century.

    As the climate warms, permafrost – frozen rock and soil – which underlies the island, thaws. This destabilizes the landscape, weakening steep slopes and damaging critical infrastructure.

    An excavator tries to save a bridge over the Watson River at Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Part of the bridge and the machine were eventually swept away by the rushing meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet during a heat wave in July 2012.

    Permafrost melt is already threatening the U.S. military base on Greenland. As the ice melts and the ground settles under runways, cracks and craters form – a hazard for airplanes. Buildings tilt as their foundations settle into the softening soil, including critical radar installations that have scanned the skies for missiles and bombers since the 1950s.

    Greenland’s icebergs can threaten oil rigs. As the warming climate speeds the flow of Greenland’s glaciers, they calve more icebergs in the ocean. The problem is worse close to Greenland, but some icebergs drift toward Canada, endangering oil rigs there. Ships stand guard, ready to tow threatening icebergs away.

    An iceberg passes near an oil drilling rig in eastern Canada.
    Geoffrey Whiteway/500px Plus via Getty Images

    Greenland’s government banned drilling for fossil fuels in 2021 out of concern for the environment. Yet, Trump and his allies remain eager to see exploration resume off the island, despite exceptionally high costs, less than stellar results from initial drilling, and the ever-present risk of icebergs.

    As Greenland’s ice melts and water flows into the ocean, sea level changes, but in ways that might not be intuitive. Away from the island, sea level is rising about an inch each six years. But close to the ice sheet, it’s the land that’s rising. Gradually freed of the weight of its ice, the rock beneath Greenland, long depressed by the massive ice sheet, rebounds. That rise is rapid – more than 6 feet per century. Soon, many harbors in Greenland may become too shallow for ship traffic.

    Streams of meltwater flow over the silt-covered surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet as it melts in summer heat near Kangerlussuaq in western Greenland.
    REDA/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Greenland’s challenging past and future

    History clearly shows that many past military and colonial endeavors failed in Greenland because they showed little consideration of the island’s harsh climate and dynamic ice sheet.

    Changing climate drove Norse settlers out of Greenland 700 years ago. Explorers trying to cross the ice sheet lost their lives to the cold. American bases built inside the ice sheet, such as Camp Century, were quickly crushed as the encasing snow deformed.

    In the past, the American focus in Greenland was on short-term gains with little regard for the future. Abandoned U.S. military bases from World War II, scattered around the island and in need of cleanup, are one example. Forced relocation of Greenlandic Inuit communities during the Cold War is another. I believe that Trump’s demands today for American control of the island to exploit its resources are similarly shortsighted.

    Piles of rusting fuel drums sit at an abandoned U.S. base from World War II in Ikateq, in eastern Greenland.
    Posnov/Moment via Getty Images

    However, when it comes to the planet’s livability, I’ve argued that the greatest strategic and economic value of Greenland to the world is not its location or its natural resources, but its ice. That white snow and ice reflect sunlight, keeping Earth cool. And the ice sheet, perched on land, keeps water out of the ocean. As it melts, Greenland’s ice sheet will raise global sea level, up to about 23 feet when all the ice is gone.

    Climate-driven sea level rise is already flooding coastal regions around the world, including major economic centers. As that continues, estimates suggest that the damage will total trillions of dollars. Unless Greenland’s ice remains frozen, coastal inundation will force the largest migration that humanity has ever witnessed. Such changes are predicted to destabilize the global economic and strategic world order.

    These examples show that disregarding the risks of natural hazards and climate change in Greenland courts disaster, both locally and globally.

    Paul Bierman receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and the University of Vermont Gund Institute for Environment

    – ref. Greenland’s rapidly melting ice and landslide-prone fjords make the oil and minerals Trump covets dangerous to extract – https://theconversation.com/greenlands-rapidly-melting-ice-and-landslide-prone-fjords-make-the-oil-and-minerals-trump-covets-dangerous-to-extract-249985

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI: American Rebel Light Beer Continues Rapid Expansion of National Distribution Footprint adding Iowa’s Mahaska Bottling Company

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    American Rebel Light to be served at Knoxville Raceway the “Sprint Car Capital of the World” and the Dingus Lounge “Iowa’s Most Notorious Bar”

    Nashville, TN, Feb. 19, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — American Rebel Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: AREB) (“American Rebel” or the “Company”), creator of American Rebel Beer (americanrebelbeer.com) and a designer, manufacturer, and marketer of branded safes, personal security and self-defense products and apparel (americanrebel.com), proudly announces its strategic expansion into Iowa through a partnership with Mahaska Bottling Company (mahaska.com). This move is a significant milestone in the Company’s broader Midwest growth strategy, underscoring Iowa’s pivotal role as a key market in American Rebel’s regional expansion.

    “I had a hunting show, Maximum Archery World Tour, on television for ten years. I bowhunted all over the world, but in Iowa I’ve met some of the most passionate hunters and outdoorsmen I’ve ever met. I’ve done several “meet and greets” at the Iowa Deer Classic in Des Moines over the years and it was always a lot of fun and great to meet everyone there. Getting American Rebel Light Beer distributed throughout the state of Iowa really means a lot to me,” said American Rebel CEO Andy Ross.

    Powerful Iowa Distribution Partnership – Mahaska Bottling Company and Rebel Light

    Founded in 1889, Mahaska Bottling Company boasts a rich history of providing high-quality beverage distribution services across Iowa. Their extensive network and dedication to customer satisfaction make them an ideal partner for American Rebel Beer.

    The agreement with Mahaska Bottling Company will allow American Rebel Light Beer to captivate a broader audience in Iowa, introducing its Premium Light Lager to beer enthusiasts across the region. This partnership aims to provide a seamless distribution network, ensuring American Rebel Light Beer is available in local bars, restaurants, and retail outlets. “We are very excited to bring American Rebel Light to our valued customers in the State of Iowa,” said Chad Irving, Chief Marketing Officer of Mahaska Bottling Company.

    “We are thrilled to partner with Mahaska Bottling Company to bring American Rebel Light Beer to Iowa,” said Todd Porter, President of American Rebel Beverages. “This collaboration allows us to serve the patriotic consumers in Iowa who are looking for a clean, natural, and great-tasting light beer that embodies the values of our great nation.”

    Launch Events to bring American Rebel Light Beer to Iowa’s Best Venues

    American Rebel Beer will host a series of exciting events, including beer tastings, live music performances, and promotional giveaways. The festivities will kick off this Spring and run through the Fall, offering a perfect opportunity for the community to come together and enjoy America’s Patriotic, God-Fearing, Constitution-Loving, National Anthem-Singing, STAND YOUR GROUND BEER!

    American Rebel Light will be anchored by two legendary Iowa establishments:

    “The Knoxville Raceway and the Dingus Lounge will put Rebel Light on the map in Iowa right out of the box,” said American Rebel CEO Andy Ross. “And Mahaska Bottling Company and our Rebel Light Street Team will carry our message throughout the rest of the state utilizing our Rebel Light nights in bars and restaurants across the state.

    The Knoxville Raceway is known as the “Sprint Car Capital of the World” and the home of the Knoxville Nationals, a premier sprint car racing event that draws tens of thousands of fans each year that was first held in 1961.

    “We have been looking forward to getting American Rebel Light in here for a while,” said Knoxville Raceway General Manager Jason Reed. “It’s a great fit for our audience. We love what American Rebel is doing in motor sports and we look forward to supporting them.”

    The Knoxville Raceway seats around 21,000, which is thought to be the fourth largest outdoor facility in Iowa behind the football stadiums of Iowa and Iowa State University and the Iowa Speedway. To promote American Rebel Light at the Raceway, entertainment events headlined by American Rebel CEO Andy Ross are in the works. American Rebel and Tony Stewart Racing will collaborate on further promotional value through the American Rebel sponsorship of the Tony Stewart Racing NHRA Funny Car driven by Matt Hagan and Tony Stewart’s love of sprint car racing and Tony’s suite at the Knoxville Raceway.

    “Iowa’s Most Notorious Bar”, the Dingus Lounge, is the ideal establishment to serve American Rebel Light. Owner AJ Mottet has expanded Dingus again and again. He now owns the entire block and during the Knoxville Nationals he’ll pack every square foot with patriotic race fans who love beer

    “Dingus Lounge is excited and proud to be a part of American Rebel Beer,” said AJ Mottet. “The World’s Best Racing Bar and our patrons stand for the same core values that American Rebel represents. Freedom has a price, that price is the sacrifice many men and women who gave everything for us to be the land of the free. Dingus and American Rebel Beer honor those who sacrificed. We honor them every day. It’s who we are.”

    “I LOVE THAT BAR,” said Andy Ross. “I would love to play at the Dingus Lounge during the Knoxville Nationals. That would be a great date to add to our tour this summer. It’s definitely our crowd and I think it would be a blast.”

    During the Thursday of a previous Knoxville Nationals Dingus claims it sold 10,700 cans of Busch Light alone. “We had a chain of employees handing cases right from the truck through the crowd, right into the bar tubs,” Mottet says. “If they can love the dirt in their track, then they can love the dive in their bar.”

    For more information about the launch events and American Rebel Beer, please visit (americanrebelbeer.com) or follow us on our social media platforms.

    About Mahaska Bottling Company

    Mahaska Bottling Company is a 7th generation family-owned bottling and distribution company that has been around for more than 135 years. From its early years at the dawn of the soft-drink industry, Mahaska has expanded its portfolio and added a multitude of product and service lines across non-alcoholic beverages, coffee, food, snacks, and beer.

    About American Rebel Light Beer

    Produced in partnership with AlcSource, American Rebel Light Beer (americanrebelbeer.com) is a premium domestic light lager celebrated for its exceptional quality and patriotic values. It stands out as America’s Patriotic, God-Fearing, Constitution-Loving, National Anthem-Singing, Stand Your Ground Beer.

    American Rebel Light is a Premium Domestic Light Lager Beer – All Natural, Crisp, Clean and Bold Taste with a Lighter Feel. With approximately 100 calories, 3.2 carbohydrates, and 4.3% alcoholic content per 12 oz serving, American Rebel Light Beer delivers a lighter option for those who love great beer but prefer a more balanced lifestyle. It’s all natural with no added supplements and importantly does not use corn, rice, or other sweeteners typically found in mass produced beers.

    About American Rebel Holdings, Inc.

    American Rebel Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: AREB) has operated primarily as a designer, manufacturer and marketer of branded safes and personal security and self-defense products and has recently transitioned into the beverage industry through the introduction of American Rebel Light Beer. The Company also designs and produces branded apparel and accessories. To learn more, visit www.americanrebel.com and www.americanrebelbeer.com. For investor information, visit www.americanrebel.com/investor-relations.

    Media Inquiries:
    Matt Sheldon
    Matt@Precisionpr.co
    917-280-7329

    American Rebel Holdings, Inc.
    info@americanrebel.com

    American Rebel Beverages, LLC
    Todd Porter, President
    tporter@americanrebelbeer.com

    Forward-Looking Statements

    This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. American Rebel Holdings, Inc., (NASDAQ: AREB; AREBW) (the “Company,” “American Rebel,” “we,” “our” or “us”) desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words “forecasts” “believe,” “may,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “should,” “plan,” “could,” “target,” “potential,” “is likely,” “expect” and similar expressions, as they relate to us, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. We have based these forward-looking statements primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, and financial needs. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements include benefits of marketing outreach efforts, actual placement timing and availability of American Rebel Beer, success and availability of the promotional activities, our ability to effectively execute our business plan, and the Risk Factors contained within our filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023. Any forward-looking statement made by us herein speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

    Company Contact:
    tporter@americanrebelbeer.com
    info@americanrebel.com

    Attachment

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Laidlaw & Co. Announces Appointment of Douglas M. Jacoby to General Counsel

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    • Douglas M. Jacoby brings over 25 years of experience to the position at Laidlaw & Co. as General Counsel
    • Douglas M. Jacoby previously served as the Director of Enforcement and Commissioner of Securities for the State of Missouri

    NEW YORK, Feb. 19, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Laidlaw & Company (“Laidlaw & Co.” or “Laidlaw” or the “Company”), an established international investment banking and securities brokerage firm serving high-net-worth individuals and institutions, is pleased to announce the appointment of Douglas M. Jacoby to the role of General Counsel effective February 3, 2025.

    With over 25 years of experience as in-house legal counsel, Jacoby brings a wealth of expertise to his new role. In his appointment, Laidlaw & Co. anticipates advancing continuous improvement and adaptation within the evolving regulatory environment. Jacoby will strategically advise the board and senior management on all compliance matters.

    “I look forward to assuming this new venture at Laidlaw as their General Counsel,” commented Doug Jacoby. “My commitment is to support Laidlaw’s business objectives while upholding the highest ethical standards and best practices, ensuring their continued success. Moreover, I look forward to collaborating with their exceptional team, offering legal counsel and providing ongoing strategic guidance that reinforces the company’s goals and maintains its leadership in ethical standards and best practices.”

    “We are pleased to welcome Doug to Laidlaw as our General Counsel,” commented Matthew D. Eitner, Chief Executive Officer of Laidlaw & Co. “His extensive experience in securities regulation, enforcement, and investment banking legal counsel will be invaluable in reinforcing our firm’s strong compliance framework and commitment to excellence.”

    Jacoby previously served as the Commissioner of Securities and Director of Enforcement for the State of Missouri Securities Division, a role in which he managed and oversaw all aspects of the Division’s three sections: Registration, Examinations and Enforcement, regulating broker-dealers, agents, investment advisers and their representatives.

    Prior, Jacoby was in-house counsel for several Wall Street investment banks in New York City and London. He worked for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) as Senior Counsel for Market Regulation Enforcement, was Executive Director of the Legal Department at Nomura Securities International, Inc., Senior Vice President and Legal Counsel at Lehman Brothers Inc./Barclays Capital Inc. and Vice President, Legal & Compliance Department at Credit Suisse First Boston LLC. Jacoby has also served as an adjunct faculty member at The Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University.

    About Laidlaw & Co.

    For nearly two centuries, Laidlaw & Company has maintained a legacy of independent investment banking and securities brokerage, tailored to the specific needs of both domestic and international companies, corporate entrepreneurs, institutions, and private clients worldwide.

    Our expansive and continually growing network spans across the United States and Europe. These professionals operate under our FINRA registered subsidiary and extend our influence through an FCA authorized subsidiary based in London.

    Additionally, our team in healthcare-focused investment banking and capital markets comprises mainly senior professionals. These experts seamlessly merge ‘bulge’ bracket experience with the unique perspective of an entrepreneurial ‘independent’ firm. Their primary objective is to offer in-depth, hands-on transaction management and holistic solutions. One of our distinctive capabilities lies in aiding emerging companies to swiftly secure capital, courtesy of our robust retail sales force. This ensures our corporate clients enjoy the financial latitude they need to thrive and expand.

    At our core, we foster an entrepreneurial spirit, marked by a robust work ethic and an innovative “think outside the box” approach. We specialize in gathering assets and delivering financial solutions through both our in-house and independent sales offices.

    Media Contact

    Jessica Starman
    media@laidlawltd.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: The floor is yours, Vyacheslav Butusov! The legendary rock musician met with polytechnicians

    Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –

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

    On the eve of the 126th anniversary of the university, the Polytechnics received an extraordinary gift – the legendary rock musician, leader of the Nautilus Pompilius group Vyacheslav Butusov performed on the stage of the White Hall. He answered questions and performed several compositions. The meeting was the tenth, anniversary, within the framework of discussion club “You have the floor!” ecosystem “Lepota” and was a sold-out event.

    Before meeting with fans, Vyacheslav Butusov visited the Technopolis Polytech research building on a tour. He looked at the model of the SPbPU campus, gave an interview in a TV studio, and got acquainted with the university’s capabilities.

    At this time, there were no free seats left in the White Hall, as there were many people who wanted to talk to the famous musician. Registration ended a few minutes after it began, which is not surprising. The Nautilus Pompilius group began its creative activity in 1982 in Sverdlovsk and during its existence, it has given many beloved hits. In the early 2000s, the U-Piter group became a new chapter in the life of Vyacheslav Butusov, and now he is actively creating new songs with the Order of Glory.

    The Polytechnicians greeted the guest with thunderous applause. The head of the news portal department of the SPbPU USO Evgeny Gusev asked questions from the Polytechnic Telegram channel, and there were also questions from the audience – an impressive queue formed at the microphone.

    I am very glad to be here with you today, on the eve of a holiday. 126 years is a good age, congratulations, – Vyacheslav Gennadyevich greeted.

    The conversation began with a question about spiritual development and the path to God.

    We all go to God, but not everyone knows about it. When you wake up in the morning, first of all you need to thank God. The first thing I always say is: “Glory to God.” In the morning, first of all you need to read the prayer rule, which for everyone consists of a certain set of prayers. A very important point is church services, because they discipline. I am not the kind of person who can be an example of an Orthodox Christian, I am just learning for now. I can say with absolute certainty that we live in a world where miracles happen. This is not just encouraging, it is inspiring, – noted Vyacheslav Butusov.

    The meeting participants were interested in how the musician evaluates modern youth.

    There are wonderful young people now. I was young myself, so I understand all the emotional trepidation, the element of hypersensitivity, how difficult it can be sometimes. It is we, already polished, hardened, who perceive everything with prepared attention. My son Daniil, who has the good fortune to study at the Polytechnic University, for me is the standard that I represent today in relation to young people, – said Vyacheslav Gennadyevich.

    Guests of the White Hall learned that the musician, who was educated as an architect, dreamed of becoming an engineer.

    When I was a schoolboy, the ultimate dream for us was to become an engineer. At 14-15 years old, I already knew for sure that I would go to the Polytechnic, but it didn’t work out: my parents took me to the North. Now my son, a student at SPbPU, is making my dream come true, – shared Vyacheslav Gennadyevich.

    The Polytechnicians asked about their attitude to music and where they get their inspiration from.

    “Music, due to its abstractness and breadth of perception, is so polysemantic that there is no need to ever limit this polysemanticity. It gives every person the opportunity to see what is close to them and what they need at the moment. It is even, in a sense, therapy, a panacea. When I am in a state of perceiving music, I feel like an absolutely happy person. It is some kind of miraculous process.

    I am inspired by communication with children, they give me the opportunity to continue working, because I draw on their wild energy,” said Vyacheslav Butusov.

    Viewers asked about their favorite places:

    My favorite place now is Tsarskoe Selo, where we live. For me, there is no better place in the world. Of course, it is connected with Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. We live in a place where Alexander Sergeevich spent a significant period of time, I see all this, I walk around these places. Everything is so fabulous!

    And about protest in songs:

    We never protested against anyone, because it is a bad thing. We described what was happening at the moment. Just a chronicle. What I categorically rebel against is what the devil is doing in this world.

    The Polytechnicians had time to talk about many things with the legend: about overcoming creative crises, attitudes towards artificial intelligence, new formations in the Russian language, about the release of the album “Adam’s Lament” from the symphonic cycle of the same name by Vyacheslav Butusov based on the Holy Scriptures, about filming the movie “Brother”, friendship with Alexey Balabanov and Sergey Bodrov, about the golden age of the Leningrad Rock Club, Konstantin Kinchev from “Alisa” and Viktor Tsoi from “Kino”, about Yekaterinburg and happy student years.

    The meeting at the Polytechnic University continued with the performance of popular songs by the group Nautilus Pompilius. Of course, Vyacheslav Butusov was called for an encore and then was not let go for a long time, having organized an impromptu photo and autograph session.

    Polytechnicians shared unforgettable emotions on social networks:

    “The best day ever!! Thanks to the organizers for such a gift and a wonderful evening”;

    “Butusov at the Polytechnic. A hall full of students. “Goodbye, America”, “I Want to Be with You” and other hits. Calm, intelligent conversation. Excellent guitar playing, wonderful voice. Absolute delight”;

    “This is amazing!!! I’ve watched the whole video a million times already!!!”

    “It touched me right to the soul…”

    “I want to say thank you very much! I will carefully keep the memories of this day in my heart!”

    Photo archive

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

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: University of Potsdam (UP)

    Source: UNISDR Disaster Risk Reduction

    Mission

    Since its founding in 1991, the University of Potsdam has excelled in research and teaching and is well positioned both on a national and international scale. The university aims to play an active role among Germany’s leading research universities on a sustained basis. The university actively engages in qualified training of urgently needed skilled personnel and ensure a rapid translation of the latest scientific findings into practice. It is of particular concern to us to win strong political, economic, and social partners. Through its reporting, the university aims to inform, arouse interest, and show connecting factors which improve the density and stability of the university’s network for education, science and knowledge transfer – to the benefit of Brandenburg.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: New Permanent Representative of Lao People’s Democratic Republic Presents Credentials to the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva

    Source: United Nations – Geneva

    Daovy Vongxay, the new Permanent Representative of Lao People’s Democratic Republic to the United Nations Office at Geneva, today presented his credentials to Tatiana Valovaya, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

    Prior to his appointment to Geneva, Mr. Vongxay had been serving as Director-General of the Department of International Organizations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lao People’s Democratic Republic since 2021.  He also served as Deputy Director-General of the Department from December 2016 to June 2018. He served as Deputy Permanent Representative and Minister Counselor at the Permanent Mission of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic to the United Nations in New York from July 2018 to August 2021.  He also served at the Mission as Second and First Secretary from January 2011 to February 2014.

    Other posts Mr. Vongxay has held include Director of the United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Division at the Department of International Organizations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from March 2014 to November 2016; and Deputy Director of the Dialogue Partners Relations Division at the Department of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at the Ministry from 2009 to 2010.  He was a desk official in various divisions of the Department starting October 1997.

    Mr. Vongxay has a Master of Science in International Cooperation Policy from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Oita, Japan (2006-2008); a post graduate diploma in translation and interpretation from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia (January-December 1999); and a bachelor of arts from the National University of Laos (1992-1997).  He was born on 2 September 1975 in Houaphan Province, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and is married with a daughter and a son.

    _________

    Produced by the United Nations Information Service in Geneva for use of the media; 
    not an official record. English and French versions of our releases are different as they are the product of two separate coverage teams that work independently.

     

    CR.25.053E

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Police are failing to deliver a minimum standard of service, according to the UK public

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Crawford, Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Leeds, and Chair in Policing and Social Justice, University of York

    Eyematter/Shutterstock

    The UK government has doubled the additional funding for neighbourhood policing in England and Wales to £200 million. This is to support its commitment to putting 13,000 new police officers on the streets.

    High-profile cases and scandals have eroded trust in police in the UK. According to some metrics, it is at its lowest level in 20 years. But the key to repairing it could be through neighbourhood policing. After all, this is where most people’s interactions with police happen.

    The government clearly understands this, hence the extra funding – but how do we make sure that the new recruits are delivering a good policing service?

    My colleagues and I within the Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre (University of York and University of Leeds) have recently published research that shows police are failing to meet the public’s minimum standards of service delivery.

    With Professor Ben Bradford, we developed a framework for a “minimum policing standard”. This is a list of things that members of the public, when asked, think the police should simply be able to do as a minimum standard under normal circumstances.

    We asked focus groups around the country – a total of 93 people – to identify what “good” or “effective” policing meant to them. Members of the public felt very strongly that, at minimum, police should be responsive, fair and respectful, as well as engaged and visibly present.

    Interestingly, people were more concerned with how policing is conducted, the quality of the treatment people receive, and the relationship between the police and the communities they serve, than with particular outcomes.

    The three areas that our respondents thought were most important to the minimum standard were:

    • Response: the way police respond to calls for service, follow up and address crime.

    • Behaviour and treatment: the ways officers and the police as an organisation treat individuals and communities.

    • Presence and engagement of police in neighbourhoods.

    How are the police doing?

    We then conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,484 respondents across Britain, and found that they viewed police to be failing across all three areas.

    Less than 30% of people were confident that police are open and transparent with the decisions they make, prioritise the crimes most affecting the respondents’ community, and provide adequate follow-up after a crime has been committed.

    While a majority of our respondents had confidence that police would treat people with respect, less than half thought that police were good role models, or that they built good relationships with the community or with young people. However, the public still retained significant trust in the idea of “the police” as a whole – which gives me and my colleagues hope that things can improve.

    The government’s efforts to reverse declining confidence in police focus on three aspects: internal reform, fighting crime and revitalising neighbourhood policing. Though all of these are important, our research suggests that the last is the most vital.

    Trust in police has consequences for crime too. Research shows that people are more likely to report crime and cooperate with investigations when they feel that the police are fair and respectful.

    Declining officer numbers and experience

    Between 2010 and 2018, police officer numbers declined from 143,734 to 122,405 across England and Wales, an overall loss of over 21,000 officers. Since 2019, this has increased back up to 147,746 by March 2024. But it means that we now have a police workforce that is both younger and less experienced. In March 2024, more than one in three police officers had less than five years’ service.

    The Home Office said that the additional £100 million in funding “reflects the scale of the challenges that many forces face” in building out their neighbourhood policing teams. This funding is to help them reach the aim of putting those extra 13,000 officers on the street by 2029.

    But these new recruits will again be inexperienced, and may not have developed the appropriate social, interpersonal and problem-solving skills to ensure that standards are met in all instances. This could lead to mistakes that set public confidence and trust in policing back further.

    One way to address this would be to limit the range of social problems that police are expected to respond to. Too often, the police are called upon to manage a host of social ills and vulnerable people. They are often filling gaps left by the withdrawal of other public and third sector services, such as mental health services, exacerbated by austerity.

    Yet there has been little critical assessment of what problems the state is asking the police to solve, and whether the police are really the best suited to solve them. Greater clarity about the limited role of the police would help avoid raising unrealistic expectations, and focus attention on the minimum standards that people want from local policing.

    Our research suggests that if police meet a minimum standard in their neighbourhood interactions with the public (the small things), then the public will be more likely to trust police to be fair and trustworthy when it comes to big and complex things like serious organised crime, counter-terrorism and violent offending.

    Adam Crawford receives funding from ESRC, Centre Grant number: ES/W002248/1.
    He is a member of the Police Science Council, a publicly appointed committee that is one of the Scientific Advisory Councils of the UK government, which provides independent advice to the National Police Chiefs’ Council in the UK on science, technology, analysis and research matters relevant to policing policy and operations.

    – ref. Police are failing to deliver a minimum standard of service, according to the UK public – https://theconversation.com/police-are-failing-to-deliver-a-minimum-standard-of-service-according-to-the-uk-public-249219

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump’s effect on critical minerals could be crucial for the future of green energy

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jorge Valverde, PhD Fellow, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), United Nations University

    Nickel laterite in an open pit mine. Nickel is one of the critical minerals

    There’s a chance Donald Trump’s second term as US president could have a long-term negative impact on the demand for and supply of what are known as critical minerals. These include copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and the “rare earth elements”, such as lanthanum and yttrium.

    They are vital for the green energy transition, being used in electric car batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. Trump’s decision to pull out of the UN’s Paris agreement to control global warming has led to some pessimistic perspectives on this policy’s impacts.

    If Trump’s move towards oil and gas is interpreted by the markets as permanent, the price incentive for new mining projects for critical minerals will fall, along with long-term supply. This could potentially threaten the green energy transition.

    However, there are reasons to doubt this pessimistic scenario. Contrary to this, we believe that the new US administration policy is just a temporary shock without a significant change to the world’s energy transition trajectory. Therefore, critical mineral markets will remain buoyant in the medium and long term. This position is based on three main arguments.

    1. The US holds a competitive position in critical mineral markets

    There’s a generalised perception that the US depends on importing critical minerals from other countries, such as China. This is true for a handful, but, overall, America is one of the most competitive countries in producing the minerals needed for green technology.

    Indeed, the US has a revealed comparative advantage in exporting a wide variety of minerals and, among them, the most critical ones.

    Supplies of germanium are tightly controlled by China.
    RHJPhtotos

    Therefore, it will be in the US’s interests to keep the lucrative critical mineral markets dynamic. Even if the US reduces its sustainability ambitions, slowing its demand for new clean technologies, it is likely to do it carefully, so as not to harm its own industries.

    Indeed, we expect the US to increase its interest in developing processing industries to recover some minerals from electronic waste or intermediate stages in some manufacturing processes. These include germanium and gallium, which are tightly controlled by China (their biggest producer) but which are vital for computer chips and renewable energy technology, as well as night-vision goggles.

    2. The US produces and uses only a small share of clean technologies

    China and Europe drive these markets. The US does not drive either the demand or the supply for new clean technologies. On the demand side, the US only represents 10% of world electric car sales, while China and Europe account for 66% and 20% of the market respectively.

    China represents over 43% of installed solar energy capacity.
    Wang An Qi Shutterstock

    Similarly, for the world installed solar energy capacity, China represents over 43% of the market, Europe 20%, and the US only 10%. On the supply side, the US produces around 15% of the world’s electric cars, while China represents more than 50% of the market.

    For other clean technologies, statistics are similar with a remarkable leadership of China in the production of solar panels and wind turbines.

    So the policies followed by China and Europe are likely to have a much larger impact on the energy transition than the US’s. In the likely event that these countries continue pushing forward the green transition, the cost of slowing its technological catch up for the US will be too high.

    Moreover, oil producer countries of the Middle East are heavily betting for new clean technologies, which could offset the lower appetite for green assets from the US. So regardless of what Trump’s administration will decide on this matter, its influence on the market for clean technologies will be limited.

    3. New tariffs could further increase some minerals’ criticality

    Import tariffs imposed by Trump’s first administration to promote local production damaged US exports of those industries using imported intermediate, or partly finished, goods. In other words, international trade along global value chains has modified the textbook dynamics of protectionism, and exports are hindered – and not fostered – by import protection.

    President Trump plans to impose 25% new tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico. This could increase the criticality of some minerals for the US. For example, nickel and aluminium could become even more critical to the US economy because Canada supplies almost 40% of the nickel employed by US industry, and 70% of the aluminium.

    As a consequence, new tariffs could indeed increase the criticality of some minerals. Indeed, this was probably in some way behind the decisions to postpone the tariff increases and to only impose them on selected products.

    The energy policies of the new American administration will have ripple effects. But these are likely to be temporary and the market in critical minerals is unlikely to be affected long term. The global transition to clean energy seems safe, for now.

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

    – ref. Trump’s effect on critical minerals could be crucial for the future of green energy – https://theconversation.com/trumps-effect-on-critical-minerals-could-be-crucial-for-the-future-of-green-energy-249058

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How plants are able to remember stress without a brain

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jurriaan Ton, Professor of Plant Environmental Signalling, University of Sheffield

    Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock

    It may sound strange but plants can remember stress. Scientists are still learning about how plants do this without a brain. But with climate change threatening crops around the world, understanding plant stress memory could help food crops become more resilient.

    Since their colonisation of the land 500 million years ago, plants have evolved ways to defend themselves against pests and disease. One of their most fascinating abilities is to “remember” stressful encounters and use this memory to defend themselves.

    This phenomenon, called immune priming, is similar to how vaccines help humans build immunity but is based on different mechanisms.

    Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.

    This story is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

    So how do they do it without a brain?

    Plants are genetically resistant to the vast majority of potentially harmful microbes. However, a small number of microbes have evolved the ability to suppress innate immunity, enabling them to infect organisms and cause disease.

    This is why vertebrates, including humans, have evolved a mobile immune system that relies on B and T memory cells. These memory cells are activated by exposure to a disease or vaccinations, which helps us become more resistant to recurrent infections.

    Plants don’t have specialised cells to acquire immune memory. Instead, they rely on so-called “epigenetic” changes within their cells to store information about past attacks and prime their innate immune system. Once primed, plants can resist pests and diseases better – even if they were genetically susceptible to begin with.

    Research over the past ten to 15 years has shown that repeated and prolonged exposure to pests or diseases can cause long-lasting epigenetic changes to plant DNA without altering the underlying sequence of the DNA. This enables plants to stay in a primed defence state.

    Immune priming has been reported in different plants species, ranging from short-lived annuals, such as thale cress Arabidopsis thaliana that lives several weeks, to long-living tree species, such as Norway spruce that can live up to 400 years.

    Immune priming comes at a cost for the plant though, such as reduced growth. So the primed memory is reversible and dwindles over longer periods without stress. However, depending on the strength of the stress stimulus, priming can be lifelong and even be transmitted to following generations. The stronger the stress, the longer plants remember.

    Plants constantly change the activity of their genes in order to develop and adapt to their environment. Genes can be switched off over prolonged periods of time by epigenetic changes. In plants, these changes most frequently happen at transposons (also known as “jumping genes”) – pieces of DNA that can move within the genome. Transposons are usually inactive because they can cause mutations. But stress changes the epigenetic activity in the plant cell that can partially “wake them up”.

    Plants can pass on stress memories down the generations.
    boommavel/Shutterstock

    This drives the establishment and maintenance of long-lasting memory in plants.

    In plants that haven’t yet experienced stress, defence genes are mostly inactive to prevent unnecessary and costly immune activity. Lasting epigenetic changes to transposons after recovery from disease can prime defence genes for a faster and stronger activation upon recurrent stress. Although scientists are still uncovering exactly how this works, it is clear that epigenetic changes at these jumping genes play an essential role in helping plants adapt to threats.

    Soil as a memory bank

    Plants don’t only rely on internal epigenetic memory to improve their resilience against pests and diseases. They can also use their environment to store stress memory. When under attack, plants release chemicals from their roots, attracting helpful microbes that can suppress diseases. If this soil conditioning is strong enough, it can leave a long-lasting “soil legacy” that can benefit plants of the next generation. Once the soil is conditioned, these helpful microbes stay near plant roots to help the plant fight off diseases.

    In some plant species, such as maize, scientists have identified the secondary metabolites driving this external stress memory. These are specialised metabolites that are not essential for the cell’s primary metabolism. They often play a role in defence or other forms of environmental signalling, such as attracting beneficial microbes or insects.

    Some of the genes controlling these root chemicals are regulated by stress-responsive epigenetic mechanisms. This indicates that the mechanisms driving internal and external plant memory are interconnected.

    Understanding how plants store and use stress memories could revolutionise crop protection. Harnessing plants’ natural ability to cope with pests and diseases might help us reduce reliance on chemical pesticides and create crops that are better at handling environmental stresses. As we face growing challenges from human-made climate change and rising food demands, this research could offer promising tools to develop more sustainable crop protection schemes.

    Jurriaan Ton receives funding from UKRI-BBSRC (BB/W015250/1)

    – ref. How plants are able to remember stress without a brain – https://theconversation.com/how-plants-are-able-to-remember-stress-without-a-brain-246615

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Electronic muscle stimulators are supposed to boost blood flow to your legs – here’s what the evidence says

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Houghton, Clinical Lecturer in Vascular Surgery, University of Leicester

    vebboy/Shutterstock

    Google “improve leg circulation” and you may see sponsored ads for electronic muscle stimulators that claim to boost blood flow to your feet. But is there any evidence they work?

    Peripheral artery disease is a surprisingly common condition affecting more than one in ten people aged over 65 in the UK. Caused by narrowings and blockages in the arteries of the legs, it can lead to intermittent claudication – calf pain while walking – what the Dutch call “window-shopping legs”.

    Leg pain during walking significantly affects the everyday life of those with peripheral artery disease. It limits their ability to take part in social activities, daily tasks such as shopping and it may even impact on a person’s employment. Unsurprisingly, those with shorter pain-free walking distances report worse quality of life and major impacts on their mental wellbeing.

    Peripheral artery disease is not a benign condition. Five years from diagnosis, four in ten people will have died and another one in ten will have had a major leg amputation.

    So, the aims of treatment for peripheral artery disease are to reduce both the risk of heart attacks – the biggest cause of death – and progression to the end-stage of the disease where amputation is necessary unless surgery is performed to restore blood flow. The most important elements to optimal medical treatment are blood-thinning medications such as aspirin, cholesterol-lowering medications such as statins, and stopping smoking.

    For those with pain when walking the treatment with one of the biggest effects on walking distance and quality of life is, well… walking. The best results are seen in those who take part in a supervised exercise programme which has consistently been shown to be more cost effective than surgery for claudication. In fact, one large randomised trial demonstrated similar results from supervised exercise to stenting a blocked artery in improving walking distance and quality of life.

    Unfortunately supervised exercise therapy is only available to about half of UK peripheral artery disease patients despite it being recommended by Nice.

    What about electrical muscle stimulation?

    These devices work by using electronic impulses to cause the muscles of the calf to repeatedly contract. Usually this is by indirect stimulation through the feet using an electronic footplate, somewhat resembling a foot spa – although no water needed is used. These devices appear to be safe and well tolerated, with no adverse events reported.

    Studies have demonstrated they do indeed increase arterial blood flow in the calf, both in healthy people and in those with peripheral artery disease. However, these increases in blood flow are present only while using the device.

    A 2023 trial of 200 patients with peripheral artery disease assessed the effect of electrical muscle stimulation on walking distance. The study recruited half of the participants from centres with supervised exercise programmes and half from those without. All patients received optimal medical therapy.

    The researchers randomly allocated half of the participants to receive electrical muscle stimulation. These patients were given the device and told to use it for 30 minutes at least once a day for three months.

    After three months there was no difference in the maximum walking distance between those that did and did not receive electrical muscle stimulation.

    However, there was an improvement in walking distance in those that received electrical muscle stimulation in addition to supervised exercise therapy compared to those that received supervised exercise alone.

    Additionally, patients who received electrical muscle stimulation reported lower pain scores and better scores for the health domain in quality of life questionnaires – although they recorded no overall quality of life benefit. This demonstrates that while there may be benefit of the device on symptoms, it may only be small or experienced by a limited proportion of patients.

    Transcutaneous nerve stimulation (Tens) has also been used in people with peripheral artery disease. This uses weaker electrical impulses to stimulate nerve fibres and block the transmission of pain signals.

    A review of published studies highlighted that Tens may have some benefit in improving walking distance. The included studies were relatively small though and not all were randomised trials. This means the findings may not be just due to the effect of Tens or applicable to a wider group of patients.

    While these electrical stimulation devices show some promise, it is not clear if they are cost effective nor are they currently recommended in guidelines for treating peripheral artery disease.

    Certainly, some people with peripheral artery disease do report benefit from using these devices. But they should only be used in addition to the cornerstones of peripheral artery disease treatment: medication, stopping smoking and walking as much as possible.

    John Houghton receives funding from the George Davies Charitable Trust and the National Institute for Health and Care Research. He is the trainee representative for the Vascular Surgery Specialist Advisory Committee and is a member of the UK Labour Party.

    – ref. Electronic muscle stimulators are supposed to boost blood flow to your legs – here’s what the evidence says – https://theconversation.com/electronic-muscle-stimulators-are-supposed-to-boost-blood-flow-to-your-legs-heres-what-the-evidence-says-248340

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Brutalism: Oscar-nominated film has revived interest in a controversial architectural legacy

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gleb Redko, PhD Researcher in Punk, Brutalism & Psychogeography, School of Architecture Art & Design, University of Portsmouth

    With ten Oscar nominations, The Brutalist has reignited the debate over the legacy of brutalism. The polarising architectural style was shaped by post-war hopes for a better future. But it was also, as historian Adrian Forty argues in his book Concrete and Culture (2012), an “expression of melancholy, the work of a civilisation that had all but destroyed itself in the second world war”.

    The fictional architect at centre of The Brutalist, László Tóth, is an Austro-Hungarian modernist and concentration-camp survivor who moves to America to rebuild his life. His designs, described as “machines”, are inspired by the trauma of camps like Buchenwald and Dachau.

    Emerging from the rubble of the second world war, brutalism became an architectural response to devastation and the pressing need for urban renewal. The destruction caused by the Blitz provided architects with opportunities to design environments reflecting the ideals of the new welfare state: equality, accessibility and functionality for the collective good.

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

    This ethical foundation aimed to address the social needs of the post-war era, particularly in housing, education and public welfare infrastructure. Notable examples of the style include the Barbican estate and Southbank Centre in London.

    Architectural critic Reyner Banham, who coined the term brutalism in his 1966 work Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic, argued that the movement was more than an aesthetic choice. He championed the work of Alison and Peter Smithson, young British architects who played a crucial role in shaping brutalism through projects like Robin Hood Gardens in London’s Tower Hamlets. For Banham, brutalism was an ethical stance and a form of “radical philosophy” aiming to address the social needs of the post-war era.

    The brutalist style has, however, often been criticsed for what many perceived to be its unappealing, “ugly” aesthetic and alienating qualities. In 1988, King Charles famously compared the National Theatre in London to a nuclear plant, encapsulating the public’s mixed reactions. Similarly the situationists (a French anti-capitalist art movement) denounced brutalist housing estates as “machines for living”. They saw them as oppressive structures that stifled human connection.

    The perception of brutalism is highly dependent on context. In warmer climates like Marseille in France, the play of sunlight on raw concrete gave structures a sculptural quality. In the UK’s wet climate, however, exposed concrete weathered quickly, making buildings appear grey and neglected.

    Yet for brutalist architects, this was never just about aesthetics. They saw their designs as expressions of honesty and social progress, rejecting ornamentation in favour of raw, functional materials that symbolised a new egalitarian society. The very qualities that critics saw as oppressive were, to its proponents, what made brutalism a radical and hopeful architecture.

    Rebellion and reclamation

    Despite their ethical intentions, brutalist buildings often appeared to have an alienating impact on their residents. In his book Making Dystopia (2018), architectural historian James Stevens Curl discusses the Canada Estate in Bermondsey, London, built in 1964, where tenants expressed their disaffection for the environment through acts of vandalism.

    By the 1970s, the optimism surrounding modernist and brutalist projects had begun to collapse, both figuratively and literally. One of the most infamous moments symbolising this failure was the Ronan Point disaster in 1968. A gas explosion on the 18th floor of this newly built tower block in east London caused a partial collapse. Four people were killed and serious concerns were raised about the safety and quality of post-war high-rise housing.

    This tragedy pushed the Clash’s Joe Strummer to write one of the band’s most notable songs, London’s Burning, in 1976. In the late 1970s and 1980s, punks splattered brutalist architecture with graffiti slogans echoing situationist critiques of modern urban life.

    Some referenced punk band names or song lyrics, showing how punk didn’t just adopt the attitude of the situationists but also their language and tactics. Jamie Reid, the architect of the Sex Pistols’ aesthetic, often used images of brutalist structures as a stark backdrop to his punk visuals.

    The punk movement reinterpreted the failure of brutalism not just as an architectural problem but as a broader societal collapse, highlighting issues of alienation, neglect and the erosion of post-war utopian ideals.



    Read more:
    Jamie Reid: the defiant punk art of the man behind the Sex Pistols’ iconic imagery

    Yet, in recent years, the brutalist aesthetic has found a new audience. Online communities, such as Reddit’s 1.5 million-member r/EvilBuildings reflect on buildings and surroundings captured by community members and the impressions these structures leave. Brutalist buildings frequently top the list.

    This renewed interest highlights the complex legacy of a style that was once widely criticised but continues to captivate a broader audience beyond architects.

    Brutalism’s dual legacy, a movement intended to create community but often seen as alienating, continues to shape debates in architecture and urban planning. The controversial nature of this style is evident in the demolition of prominent structures like the Smithsons’ Robin Hood Gardens (2018), the Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth (2004), and the currently ongoing demolition of Cumbernauld town centre in central Scotland.

    These demolitions highlight both brutalism’s polarised reception and the public reassessment of its value. These spaces are more than just concrete. They are sites of memory, rebellion, and ongoing cultural significance, continuously shaping and being shaped by the society around them.

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

    – ref. Brutalism: Oscar-nominated film has revived interest in a controversial architectural legacy – https://theconversation.com/brutalism-oscar-nominated-film-has-revived-interest-in-a-controversial-architectural-legacy-249627

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: NASA Selects New Round of Student-Led Aviation Research Awards

    Source: NASA

    NASA has selected two new university student teams to participate in real-world aviation research challenges meant to transform the skies above our communities.
    The research awards were made through NASA’s University Student Research Challenge (USRC), which provides students with opportunities to contribute to NASA’s flight research goals.
    This round is notable for including USRC’s first-ever award to a community college: Cerritos Community College.

    steven holz
    NASA Project Manager

    “We’re trying to tap into the community college talent pool to bring new students to the table for aeronautics,” said Steven Holz, who manages the USRC award process. “Innovation comes from everywhere, and people with different viewpoints, educational backgrounds, and experiences like those in our community colleges are also interested in aeronautics and looking to make a difference.”
    Real World Research Awards
    Through USRC, students interact with real-world aspects of the research ecosystem both in and out of the laboratory. They will manage their own research projects, utilize state-of-the-art technology, and work alongside accomplished aeronautical researchers. Students are expected to make unique contributions to NASA’s research priorities.
    USRC provides more than just experience in technical research.
    Each team of students selected receives a USRC grant from NASA – and is tasked with the additional challenge of raising funds from the public through student-led crowdfunding. The process helps students develop skills in entrepreneurship and public communication.
    The new university teams and research topics are:
    Cerritos Community College
    “Project F.I.R.E. (Fire Intervention Retardant Expeller)” will explore how to mitigate wildfires by using environmentally friendly fire-retardant pellets dropped from drones. Cerritos Community College’s team includes lead Angel Ortega Barrera as well as Larisa Mayoral, Paola Mayoral Jimenez, Jenny Rodriguez, Logan Stahl, and Juan Villa, with faculty mentor Janet McLarty-Schroeder. This team also successfully participated with the same research topic in in NASA’s Gateway to Blue Skies competition, which aims to expand engagement between the NASA’s University Innovation project and universities, industry, and government partners.
    Colorado School of Mines
    The project “Design and Prototyping of a 9-phase Dual-Rotor Motor for Supersonic Electric Turbofan” will work on a scaled-down prototype for an electric turbofan for supersonic aircraft. The Colorado School of Mines team includes lead Mahzad Gholamian as well as Garret Reader, Mykola Mazur, and Mirali Seyedrezaei, with faculty mentor Omid Beik.
    Complete details on USRC awardees and solicitations, such as what to include in a proposal and how to submit it, are available on the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate solicitation page.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Eclipses to Auroras: Eclipse Ambassadors Experience Winter Field School in Alaska

    Source: NASA

    In 2023 and 2024, two eclipses crossed the United States, and the NASA Science Activation program’s Eclipse Ambassadors Off the Path project invited undergraduate students and amateur astronomers to join them as “NASA Partner Eclipse Ambassadors”. This opportunity to partner with NASA, provide solar viewing glasses, and share eclipse knowledge with underserved communities off the central paths involved:

    Partnering with an undergraduate/amateur astronomer
    Taking a 3-week cooperative course (~12 hours coursework)
    Engaging their communities with eclipse resources by reaching 200+ people

    These Eclipse Ambassador partnerships allowed participants to grow together as they learned new tools and techniques for explaining eclipses and engaging with the public, and Eclipse Ambassadors are recognized for their commitment to public engagement.
    In January 2025, the Eclipse Ambassadors Off the Path project held a week-long Heliophysics Winter Field School (WFS), a culminating Heliophysics Big Year experience for nine undergraduate and graduate Eclipse Ambassadors. The WFS exposed participants to career opportunities and field experience in heliophysics, citizen science, and space physics. The program included expert lectures on space physics, aurora, citizen science, and instrumentation, as well as hands-on learning opportunities with Poker Flat Rocket Range, the Museum of the North, aurora chases, and more. Students not only learned about heliophysics, they also actively participated in citizen science data collection using a variety of instruments, as well as the Aurorasaurus citizen science project app. Interactive panels on career paths helped prepare them to pursue relevant careers.
    One participant, Sophia, said, “This experience has only deepened my passion for heliophysics, science communication, and community engagement.” Another participant, Feras, reflected, “Nine brilliant students from across the country joined a week-long program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ (UAF) Geophysical Institute, where we attended multiple panels on solar and space physics, spoke to Athabaskan elders on their connection to the auroras, and visited the Poker Flat Research Range to observe the stunning northern lights.”
    This undertaking would not have been possible without the coordination, planning, leadership of many. Principal Investigators included Vivian White (Eclipse Ambassadors, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ASP) and Dr. Elizabeth McDonald (Aurorasaurus, NASA GSFC). Other partners included Lynda McGilvary (Geophysical Institute at UAF), Jen Arseneau (UAF), Shanil Virani (ASP), Andréa Hughes (NASA), and Lindsay Glesener (University of Minnesota), as well as knowledge holders, students, and scientists.
    The Eclipse Ambassadors Off the Path project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSS22M0007 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. To learn more, visit: www.eclipseambassadors.org.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: NASA Sets Briefings for Next International Space Station Crew Missions

    Source: NASA

    NASA and its partners will discuss the upcoming Expedition 73 mission aboard the International Space Station during a pair of news conferences on Monday, Feb. 24, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
    Mission leadership will participate in an overview news conference at 2 p.m. EST live on NASA+, covering preparations for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 launch in March and the agency’s crew member rotation launch on Soyuz in April. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
    NASA also will host a crew news conference at 4 p.m. and provide coverage on NASA+, followed by individual crew member interviews beginning at 5 p.m. This is the final media opportunity with Crew-10 before the crew members travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch.
    The Crew-10 mission, targeted to launch Wednesday, March 12, will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the orbiting laboratory.
    NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, scheduled to launch to the space station on the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft no earlier than April 8, also will participate in the crew briefing and interviews. Kim will be available again on Tuesday, March 18, for limited virtual interviews prior to launch. NASA will provide additional details on that opportunity when available.
    For the Crew-10 mission, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft will launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy. The three-person crew of Soyuz MS-27, including Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
    United States-based media seeking to attend in person must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 21, at 281-483-5111 or at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov. U.S. and international media interested in participating by phone must contact NASA Johnson by 9:45 a.m. the day of the event.
    U.S. and international media seeking remote interviews with the crew must submit requests to the NASA Johnson newsroom by 5 p.m. on Feb. 21. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
    Briefing participants include (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
    2 p.m.: Expedition 73 Overview News Conference

    Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington

    Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, NASA Kennedy
    Bill Spetch, operations integration manager, NASA’s International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson
    William Gerstenmaier, vice president, Build & Flight Reliability, SpaceX
    Mayumi Matsuura, vice president and director general, Human Spaceflight Technology Directorate, JAXA

    4 p.m.: Expedition 73 Crew News Conference

    Jonny Kim, Soyuz MS-27 flight engineer, NASA
    Anne McClain, Crew-10 spacecraft commander, NASA
    Nichole Ayers, Crew-10 pilot, NASA
    Takuya Onishi, Crew-10 mission specialist, JAXA
    Kirill Peskov, Crew-10 mission specialist, Roscosmos

    5 p.m.: Crew Individual Interview Opportunities

    Crew-10 members and Kim available for a limited number of interviews

    Kim is making his first spaceflight after selection as part of the 2017 NASA astronaut class. A native of Los Angeles, Kim is a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and dual designated naval aviator and flight surgeon. Kim also served as an enlisted Navy SEAL. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of San Diego and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston. He completed his internship with the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. After completing the initial astronaut candidate training, Kim supported mission and crew operations in various roles, including the Expedition 65 lead operations officer, T-38 operations liaison, and space station capcom chief engineer. Follow @jonnykimusa on X and @jonnykimusa on Instagram.
    Selected by NASA as an astronaut in 2013, this will be McClain’s second spaceflight. A colonel in the U.S. Army, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and holds master’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering, International Security, and Strategic Studies. The Spokane, Washington, native was an instructor pilot in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. McClain has more than 2,300 flight hours in 24 rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, including more than 800 in combat, and was a member of the U.S. Women’s National Rugby Team. On her first spaceflight, McClain spent 204 days as a flight engineer during Expeditions 58 and 59, and completed two spacewalks, totaling 13 hours and 8 minutes. Since then, she has served in various roles, including branch chief and space station assistant to the chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office. Follow @astroannimal on X and @astro_annimal on Instagram.
    The Crew-10 mission will be the first spaceflight for Ayers, who was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021. Ayers is a major in the U.S. Air Force and the first member of NASA’s 2021 astronaut class named to a crew. The Colorado native graduated from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a minor in Russian, where she was a member of the academy’s varsity volleyball team. She later earned a master’s in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Rice University in Houston. Ayers served as an instructor pilot and mission commander in the T-38 ADAIR and F-22 Raptor, leading multinational and multiservice missions worldwide. She has more than 1,400 total flight hours, including more than 200 in combat. Follow @astro_ayers on X and @astro_ayers on Instagram.
    With 113 days in space, this mission also will mark Onishi’s second trip to the space station. After being selected as an astronaut by JAXA in 2009, he flew as a flight engineer for Expeditions 48 and 49, becoming the first Japanese astronaut to robotically capture the Cygnus spacecraft. He also constructed a new experimental environment aboard Kibo, the station’s Japanese experiment module. After his first spaceflight, Onishi became certified as a JAXA flight director, leading the team responsible for operating Kibo from JAXA Mission Control in Tsukuba, Japan. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Tokyo, and was a pilot for All Nippon Airways, flying more than 3,700 flight hours in the Boeing 767. Follow astro_onishi on X.
    The Crew-10 mission will also be Peskov’s first spaceflight. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, he earned a degree in Engineering from the Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation School and was a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft for airlines Nordwind and Ikar. Assigned as a test cosmonaut in 2020, he has additional experience in skydiving, zero-gravity training, scuba diving, and wilderness survival.
    Learn more about how NASA innovates for the benefit of humanity through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at:
    https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
    -end-
    Joshua Finch / Jimi RussellHeadquarters, Washington202-358-1100joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
    Kenna Pell / Sandra JonesJohnson Space Center, Houston281-483-5111kenna.m.pell@nasa.gov / sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Undergraduate Students Get Medical Experience Through Unique Classes

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    UConn students who are interested in various medical careers are able to enroll in two innovative courses that provide them with clinical research opportunities unique to undergraduates.

    The courses are under the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and taught by Elizabeth Kline and Dr. Sharon Smith.  Kline is an assistant professor in molecular and cell biology and Smith is an affiliate professor at UConn Health and the associate program director of the pediatric residency program at Connecticut Children’s (CT Children’s) in Hartford.

    By name, the courses are Molecular and Cell Biology 3100 and 3189 and called the University Research Assistant Program (URAP). In practice, students taking these classes gain experiences that include an interactive classroom setting and real-life experience at CT Children’s.

    Students learn to approach and engage with patients and their families in the hospital for current research projects and often shadow physicians, residents, and medical students. Many UConn students develop and conduct their own capstone projects through these courses.

    Program participants have also presented their research at regional and national pediatric medical meetings, another rare opportunity for an undergraduate.

    The courses started with a simple email that Smith received from a UConn student about 20 years ago.

    “I was a new faculty member at Connecticut Children’s and I got an email from a student on the UConn campus,” says Smith. “She said she wanted to go to medical school and heard that I did research and she wanted to work with me. I told her she could but I could not pay her and did not have any grant money to offer her. She was able to do the work as an independent study and joined me on campus every Friday for a semester. She was awesome.

    “Then I got an email from two more UConn students with the same story, and I had them come and work with me and then my inbox got flooded.”

    The class became a formal University offering in fall 2008, and Smith has been impressed over the years by how motivated and interested the students are. She has used student feedback about what to teach and what they find helpful.

    The introductory class enrolls 12 students a semester, with many continuing with the senior course. Students can take this course several times and some transition into independent studies as seniors.

    “The students present the research projects they are working on to the rest of the class,” says Smith. “It might be a subject like increasing physical activity among children, or how to approach families in the hospital setting. We break out in groups in the classroom and discuss how to go through study documents and how to be motivational.”

    Students who take the classes have a lab requirement of working at CT Children’s four hours a week.

    “The students enroll people in research projects and actually learn how to knock on the door of a hospital room, introduce themselves, and develop what we call soft skills by working with patients and families,” says Smith.

    Smith says students also get to learn what life is like at nursing stations.

    “It is a real learning experience for them,” says Smith. “It helps them decide if they want to go on to medical or dental school or maybe do research, go on to a Ph.D. program, or become an advanced-level provider.

    “It’s a really cool class that I am very passionate about. The students get to do so many things. It’s a huge potpourri of research and ideas,” she adds.

    Almaas Ghafoor ’26 (CLAS) is a molecular cell and biology major from Monroe who is enrolled in these classes. She hopes to attend medical school.

    “I learned about these classes from a recommendation I received as a freshman in the STEM Scholars program,” says Ghafoor. “It’s a great way to get into research and work on my capstone project. We get some great shadowing opportunities and see what different departments of hospitals are really like.”

    “I really value interacting with the patients at CT Children’s. It’s different than practicing with each other in class. We get to see families that are going through so much and having an impact on them. It’s a very unique experience.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: UConn Opens ‘Moral Courage’ Metanoia Event to All Interested Community Members

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    UConn’s recent first day of Metanoia discussions were so thought-provoking and popular with participants that the follow-up event will be open to all interested members of the University community, rather than through invitation only.

    Professor Irshad Manji, founder and chief executive of the Moral Courage Network, visited UConn Storrs for a series of teaching and training events that began Feb. 5, including a keynote presentation livestreamed for all UConn community members.

    The second day of events was postponed on Feb. 6 due to inclement weather, but will now be held Feb. 25 with two sessions of screening the film “Mississippi Turning” and interactive workshops.

    Participants are asked to RSVP in advance on or before Friday through a form on the event website, which also includes a link to the recording of the Feb. 5 keynote address and more information on the five skills used in the Moral Courage method of engaging across divides.

    UConn invited Manji as part of embracing its tradition of Metanoia, in which members of the University community work together to examine difficult topics in a spirit of candor, respect, and collaboration.

    Manji, who is a New York Times best-selling author, works through her organization to unify people with the skills needed to communicate in a polarized world, which is among the areas of focus that prompted the University to launch its current Metanoia process.

    She teaches with the Oxford Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights and was a prize-winning leadership professor at New York University for many years. Her latest book is “Don’t Label Me: How to Do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars.”

    UConn observed its first Metanoia in 1970 and has convened more than a dozen in the years since then to examine issues of shared importance, often involving political or racial issues that have resulted in divisions on campus and throughout the nation.

    This year’s Metanoia, which organizers announced in spring 2024, came out of a need for the UConn community to better foster an environment of equity, inclusion, and understanding when engaging in challenging conversations, organizers said.

    Planning is currently underway for additional events and people are invited to suggest an event or program in keeping with the mission of creating pathways to productive and civil discourse.

    Like other campuses nationwide, UConn has been home to a wide range of views on hotly disputed topics in recent months and years. Against that backdrop, the University Senate called for the Metanoia in spring 2024 with approval from President Radenka Maric and Provost Anne D’Alleva.

    “This will be a time for the University to come together and delve deeply into important topics and concerns. It’s meant to be an intellectual spark for the entire university: for faculty, staff, and students,” Jennifer Lease Butts, one of the organizers, told the Board of Trustees in a presentation about the Metanoia.

    Lease Butts, who is also director of the UConn Honors Program and is associate vice provost for enrichment programs, co-chairs the University’s Metanoia Committee with UConn President Emeritus Susan Herbst, who is also a professor of political science.

    “The first Metanoia in 1970 was held during a period of great positive change in the United States, but it was also an era marked by violence, incivility, and fear,” Herbst said.

    “UConn faculty and staff, who have always been outward-looking and intent on social justice, tackled those issues right here in Storrs, inspiring students – and each other – to discuss difficult issues as one community,” she added. “Let us carry on this tradition in 2025, another extraordinarily challenging year for American democracy and culture.”

    The current Metanoia kicked off with a 2024 event, “Pathways to Productive Civil Discourse,” in which participants discussed ways to communicate across differences and listen with empathy, which will be underlying themes of events throughout the coming year.

    The event was followed later in the day “UConn Strong: A Dialogue on Mental Health & Resilience,” a Democracy & Dialogues Initiative event hosted by the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, in which students led a discussion on the escalating importance of mental health on UConn’s campuses.

    The previous events epitomized the kind of thoughtful give-and-take that the yearlong Metanoia seeks to foster and set the tone for planning future events to take place, and Metanoia committee members say they look forward to continuing this conversation with the UConn community this semester.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: expert reaction to the announcement of the expansion of the OpenSAFELY data platform

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Scientists comment on the expansion of the OpenSAFELY data platform. 

    Prof Andrew Morris, Director of HDR UK, said: 

    “OpenSAFELY is an excellent example of what is possible when we get health data right with the confidence of patients, the public and health professionals. Access to comprehensive GP data across all of England is a great step forward for safe and approved research. GP data offers greater breadth and depth than hospital data, providing a detailed picture of people’s health over time. Many common conditions, like arthritis, depression and back pain are mostly managed by GPs, so this data is vital for research that can improve care for millions.  

    “The OpenSAFELY platform is one that proved its worth during the pandemic, giving us much needed knowledge about COVID-19.  It permits researchers to work with the information the data provides – while preventing them from accessing the data itself. Now by moving beyond COVID-19, researchers will be able to uncover groundbreaking insights that can improve the health and well-being of countless individuals. Significant challenges remain – the system is still evolving, with much work still to be done.  But as OpenSAFELY and other initiatives show, the UK has both the skills and the will to make it work.  

    “The UK has long been a global leader in health data research.  But to stay ahead, we must make coordinated investments in secure data infrastructure if data driven research is to power improvements in patient care, public health, NHS efficiency, clinical trials and enable medical discovery. This includes secure data sharing with flagship programmes such as Our Future Health, UK Biobank and Genomics England.”

     

    Professor Sir Rory Collins, Principal Investigator and CEO of UK Biobank, said:     

    “The expansion of OpenSAFELY should be welcomed as it enhances an innovative and useful tool for health researchers working on GP data. However, the most significant leaps in scientific discovery will come from comparing many different types of data simultaneously, and at scale. For example, the 20,000 researchers who use UK Biobank can analyse over 10,000 variables on many of our 500,000 volunteers, with whole genome sequencing being just one of those. 

    “It is this ability to study the genetic, imaging, lifestyle, secondary and – soon – primary care data in combination that is so vital for research. That’s why we’ve seen over 14,000 peer-reviewed papers published using UK Biobank data, including developments that should lead to better diagnostics and treatments for conditions such as diabetes, dementia and heart disease. 

    “GP data is a critical national asset, and both researchers and patients will benefit from this expansion. The next step is adding consented GP data to larger datasets, and we at UK Biobank are delighted to be working with NHS England to add the de-identified primary care data of our 500,000 volunteers.” 

    Prof Sheila Bird, Honorary Professor, University of Edinburgh’s College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine; and Visiting Senior Fellow at the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, University of Cambridge, said:

    “Dr. (now Professor) Ben Goldacre, a physician by profession, was first to receive the Royal Statistical Society’s Award for Statistical Excellence in Journalism for his  Bad Science column in the Guardian.

    “Professor Goldacre, who authored the Goldacre Review in 2022 [1] is against Bad Science. But he is staunchly for properly-approved record-linkages which respect patient confidentiality: and his team at OpenSafely have worked, during SARS-CoV-2 and since, to deliver just that. The delivery is a work in progress, as the excellent video about OpenSafely makes clear. Hence, my comment is about elements of enhanced delivery.

    “First, as the Royal Statistical Society has argued for since swine-flu in 2009/10, the public  – and OpenSafely – need legislation to end the late registration of fact-of-death in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Only in Scotland, in our dis-United Kingdom, is fact-of-death registered, by law, within 8 days of death having been ascertained. OpenSafely for E&W urgently needs prompt and proper registration of fact-of-death which – for inquest deaths – is delayed by months or years [2].

    “Second, since one of five deaths aged 5-44 years in E&W is not registered for at least 6 months [2], ending the late registration of deaths is essential if we are to learn by OpenSafely’s research how to prevent or reduce premature mortality such as deaths due to suicide or addictions.

    “Third, analysts – including biostatisticians such as I – need to know in more detail about the random generators that OpenSafely uses for creating its pseudo-data, on which, as a biostatistician, I would develop and test my analysis routines. In particular, real data are often more complex in structure than statistical approximations to them in terms of their distribution (eg lognormal distribution assumed but the actual ln-data are not normally-distributed) or correlation structure. Analysts typically need to check assumptions on real data but may be writing checking-code based on approximations. For the checking-code to be incisive enough, analysts may need to understand in some detail the  “random generation” processes.

    “Fourthly, enhancements to OpenSafely may lead to important evolution in how some data are recorded by general practitioners. For example, when Gao et al. used record-linkage within Scotland’s  safe-haven to analyse the methadone-specific death-rate and other opioid-related deaths in Scotland’s Methadone Client Cohort (2009-2015)[4], we found that the available data were quantity of methadone prescribed (not daily-dose) and reimbursement date (not prescription end-date) because those quantities were the data needed to audit the reimbursement of pharmacists[5]. By contrast, guidelines on safe prescribing of methadone are written in terms of daily-dose!

    “Finally, the precautions built-into OpenSafely may mean that patients who registered objection to the use of their GP-data by care.data or the subsequent attempted grab during SARS-CoV-2 (which also failed) may wish to re-consider their objection. How does one do so?

    1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis
    2. Bird SM. Editorial: Counting the dead properly and promptly. Journal of the Royal Statistics Society Series A 2013; 176: 815 – 817.                                                                                                                                           
    3. Bird SM. End late registration of fact-of-death in England and Wales. Lancet 2015: 385: 1830 – 1831.             
    4. Bird SM. Everyone counts – so count everyone in England and Wales. Lancet 2016: 387: 25 – 26.                     Gao L, Robertson JR,
    5. Bird SM.  Scotland’s 2009-2015 methadone-prescription cohort: quintiles for daily-dose of prescribed methadone and risk of methadone-specific death. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 2020; accepted 12 June 2020; https://doi.org/10.1111/bcp.14432.

    This was announced at an SMC Press Briefing, and was accompanied by a funding announcement from Wellcome. The embargo lifted at 11:30am on Wednesday 19th February. 

    Declared interests:

    Prof Andrew Morris “Andrew Morris is Director of Health Data Research UK, the national institute for health data science; is Professor of Medicine and Vice Principal at the University of Edinburgh; is President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, has minority (

    Prof Sir Rory Collins “I am CEO and PI of UK Biobank, which is a Charitable Company established as a Joint Venture by the MRC and Wellcome. I have been in that role since September 2005, seconded 60%FTE from the University of Oxford where I am Head of the Nuffield Department of Population Health (which, along with other research organisations globally, benefits from using the UK Biobank – without any preferential access – for health-related research that is in the public interest).”  

     Prof Sheila Bird “has 30-years of experience of confidential record-linkage; & leads for Royal Statistical Society on need for legislation to end late registration of fact-of-death in E&W and Northern Ireland.”

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: National Commission for Scheduled Tribes celebrates its 22nd Foundation Day

    Source: Government of India (2)

    Posted On: 19 FEB 2025 4:58PM by PIB Delhi

    Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Shri Jual Oram lauded the proactive initiatives of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, emphasizing its vital role in implementing and monitoring the Forest Rights Act using its Constitutional powers. He was addressing the gathering at the 22nd Foundation Day celebrations of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes here today.

    Shri Jual Oram assured that the Tribal Ministry, in collaboration with the Commission, will continue working towards ensuring a better and dignified life, social justice, and holistic development for Scheduled Tribe communities. Highlighting key initiatives of the Central Government for Scheduled Tribes, he mentioned programs such as Eklavya Model Residential Schools, pre- and post-matric scholarships, and the National Overseas Scholarship. Additionally, he discussed the identification of 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) across the country as part of a specialized development plan.

    In his address during the Foundation Day programme, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, Shri Antar Singh Arya, elaborated on the activities of the Commission. He stated that since assuming office, the current Commission has been continuously visiting Scheduled Tribe communities across the country. The Commission has successfully implemented a 100-day action plan to review the progress of various states, districts, and public sector undertakings. He highlighted the work and achievements of the Commission and emphasized that it remains steadfast in its efforts to safeguard the rights and ensure the development of Scheduled Tribes.

    The event also featured speeches by Commission members, including Shri Nirupam Chakma, Dr Asha Lakra and Shri Jatothu Hussain, who shared their experiences and thoughts. The Chairperson of the National Commission for Backward Classes, Shri Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, and Member of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, Shri Vaddepally Ramchander, along with other dignitaries such as chairpersons, members, and secretaries of various national commissions, representatives of Scheduled Tribe communities, and university students, were also present at the event.

    During the inaugural session, the Secretary of the Commission, Shri Puneet Kumar Goel, welcomed the guests and presented an overview of the Commission’s key activities, successful cases and a brief introduction to its work. Following the inaugural session, various sessions on tribal community progress, development, skill enhancement, and entrepreneurship were conducted. Experts from the National Skill Development Corporation, academicians from Delhi University, and policymakers shared their insights during these sessions. The programme concluded with a vote of thanks by Joint Secretary of the Commission, Shri Amit Nirmal.

    ****

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    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Examination toppers participate in 8th episode of Pariksha Pe Charcha 2025

    Source: Government of India (2)

    Posted On: 19 FEB 2025 12:06PM by PIB Delhi

    The insightful discussions initiated by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in the inaugural episode of the 8th edition of Pariksha Pe Charcha culminated with the eighth and final episode, where eight young achievers engaged with students. They were Radhika Singhal (CBSE topper 2022-23); Shuchismita Adhikari (ISC Exam topper 2024); Brahmacharimayum Nistha (PPC anchor & MBBS student, Manipur University); Ashish Kumar Verma (PPC anchor & IIT Delhi student); Vavilala Chidvilas Reddy (IIT JEE Advanced AIR – 1, 2023); Jai Kumar Bohara (CLAT AIR – 1, 2024); Armanpreet Singh (NDA AIR – 1, 2024); and Ishita Kishore (UPSC-CSE AIR – 1 2022).

    While interacting with the students, Nistha suggested revising previous years’ questions and learning to prioritize, as advised by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his book, emphasizing the importance of “becoming wise with revise.” Shuchismita encouraged focusing on preparation and advised writing down answers to help articulate learned concepts.

    Jai Kumar highlighted the need for personalized preparation strategies and recommended experimenting with different methods to find the best. He suggested studying for 25 minutes, taking a 5-minute break, and maintaining discipline in this routine. His key advice for students was to be ready to make sacrifices to achieve their goals.

    Armanpreet emphasized focusing on strengths, while Ishita stressed the importance of honesty and not being overpowered by fear. She also highlighted the significance of maintaining a balanced schedule—studying for 7-8 hours, pursuing hobbies for 1-2 hours, and ensuring adequate sleep.

    Radhika underscored the value of extracurricular activities in building confidence. Chidvilas shared tips for managing exam-related stress, suggesting activities such as indoor and outdoor games, reading, or listening to music between study sessions. He also encouraged students to remain happy but never complacent.

    Nistha reminisced about her experience anchoring Pariksha Pe Charcha, highlighting how it enhanced her communication and preparation skills, benefiting her exam readiness. Ashish shared his mantra of the “three wins”—spiritual, mental, and physical.

    Additionally, Ishita and Jai guided students through an interview masterclass, while Ashish conducted a session on question paper strategies, helping students prepare for life through structured time management.

    Students asked questions about board exam preparation, societal support, and mastering life skills. Participants from Japan and Dubai also asked questions to the guests. After the session, students reflected on their learning from the interaction with the panellists.

    To ensure comprehensive development, distinguished personalities from various fields—including sports icons, technical experts, toppers of competitive exams, entertainment industry professionals, and spiritual leaders—are enriching students with insights beyond textbooks. Each session provided students with essential tools and strategies to excel academically and personally.

    The eighth edition of Pariksha Pe Charcha (PPC) 2025, in its revamped and interactive format, has been receiving widespread appreciation from students, teachers, and parents across the nation. Breaking away from the traditional Town Hall format, this year’s edition commenced with an engaging session featuring Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi at the scenic Sunder Nursery, New Delhi, on 10th February 2025.

    In the inaugural episode, the Prime Minister interacted with 36 students from across the country, discussing insightful topics such as Nutrition and Wellness, Mastering Pressure, Challenging Oneself, The Art of Leadership, Beyond Books – 360º Growth, Finding Positives, and more. His valuable guidance offered students practical strategies to tackle academic challenges with confidence while fostering a growth mindset and holistic learning.

    Pariksha Pe Charcha has been a beacon of inspiration for students, empowering them with confidence and resilience to tackle academic and life challenges with a positive mindset.

    Link to watch the 1st episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5UhdwmEEls

    Link to watch the 2nd episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrW4c_ttmew

    Link to watch the 3rd episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgMzmDYShXw

    Link to watch the 4th episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CfR4-5v5mk

    Link to watch the 5th episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GD_SrxsAx8

    Link to watch the 6th episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhI6UbZJgEQ

    Link to watch the 7th episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Zg7B_o8So

    Link to watch the 8th episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR9BazO6Vfo

    *****

    MV/AK

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  • MIL-OSI USA: President Donald J. Trump Intends to Nominate Individuals to Key Posts at the Department of Justice

    Source: US State of North Dakota

    Today the Department of Justice is proud to announce President Trump’s intent to nominate John Eisenberg to serve as Assistant Attorney General for National Security, Brett Shumate to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, and Patrick Davis to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs.

    John Eisenberg (The National Security Division)

    During President Trump’s first term, John served as the Legal Advisor to the National Security Council, Assistant to the President, and Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs. John has also served at the Department of Justice in several positions, including Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. In addition to his government experience, John was also a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, where he focused on white-collar and internal-investigation matters as well as data-security issues.

    John clerked for J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Stanford University.

    Brett Shumate (The Civil Division)

    Brett presently serves as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division. Prior to rejoining the Department, Brett was a partner at Jones Day in Washington, D.C. He previously served at the Department as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Federal Programs Branch in the Civil Division.

    Brett clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is a graduate of Wake Forest University School of Law and Furman University.

    Patrick Davis (The Office of Legislative Affairs)

    This will be Patrick’s third stint with the Department of Justice. During President Trump’s first term, Patrick served in DOJ management as Deputy Associate Attorney General. Earlier in his career, he served as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the DOJ’s Civil Division. On Capitol Hill, Patrick was the Deputy Chief Investigative Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he led the Committee’s “Russiagate” investigation and was instrumental in the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He later served as the Chief Investigative Counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

    Patrick rejoined the Department of Justice as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs. Prior to his return to the Department, he served as Senior Counsel at the American Petroleum Institute.

    Patrick is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Nebraska.

    MIL OSI USA News –