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SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Un nuevo estudio muestra que la restauración de los arrecifes de coral en Florida y Puerto Rico podría salvar miles de vidas y…
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The USGS Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) flood hazard products are now available for Humboldt County, California.
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A new report authored by scientists from USGS, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute highlights…
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A study led by USGS outlines a multifaceted climate-driven crisis facing communities along the Southeast Atlantic coast of the United States. As sea…
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USGS researchers representing multiple Mission Areas and Programs met with other collaborators in Gainesville, Florida from November 19-20, 2024, to…
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AGU24 is the world’s largest annual Earth science meeting, showcasing science that will benefit humanity and ensure a sustainable future for the…
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USGS geologist Dr. Ben Gutierrez gave a guest lecture in the Environmental Science and Water Resource classes at Tennessee State University in October…
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SPCMSC Research Physical Scientist Donya Frank-Gilchrist first-authored a recently published manuscript titled “Vortex Trapping of Suspended Sand…
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Dr. Christina Kellogg (SPCMSC Research Microbiologist) will present and participate in a 3-day international workshop funded by Coral Research &…
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As Hurricane Milton approached the US Gulf of Mexico coast, the USGS Coastal Change Hazards team produced a series of forecasts for impacts on the…
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As Hurricane Helene approached the US Gulf of Mexico coast, the USGS Coastal Change Hazards team produced a series of forecasts for impacts on the…
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New research led by USGS SPCMSC researcher Justin Birchler assesses the skill of the USGS/NOAA Total Water Level and Coastal Change Forecast along the…
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Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Stacey, Senior Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management, Anglia Ruskin University
In perhaps one of the greatest brand comeback stories in automotive since the Fiat 500 in 2007, British car company Austin announced the return of the Austin Arrow.
Its name is an unashamed reference to one of the most memorable Austin 7 models – first introduced in the 1920s the Arrow was the original “everyman sportscar”, before the muscle cars (think of the Dodge Challenger) of the US became popular in the 1960s. Now reimagined as an electric Vehicle (EV), the Arrow is designed and made in the UK and aims to be to 2020s consumers what the original was 90 years ago.
A number of cars are synonymous with the British car industry. In fact, as a small nation, Britain punches above its weight when it comes to classic automobile brands – The Mini, the Range Rover, London black cabs, James Bond’s Aston Martins, and even the London red bus. However, if one car can be credited for creating the dawn of the motor vehicle in the UK, it would be the diminutive Austin 7.
The car was created in the 1920s at the time when Austin was struggling. New laws were pushing manufacturers to produce smaller, less powerful cars. But Austin’s board of directors didn’t support a cheap, small car with low profit margins. Austin was known for its larger, luxury products.
However, Sir Herbert Austin and his 18-year-old apprentice Stanley Edge decided to secretly create a small car. Thank god they didn’t heed the board, because they ended up creating the greatest democratising automotive product Britain had ever seen (until they repeated it with the Austin Mini).
The reason why products such as the Austin 7 come to define their period is rarely due to their technical prowess or exhilarating performance – it’s because they bring to the masses a technology that is both useful and traditionally seen as out of reach.
The Austin 7 was a bit like the iPhone. There were smartphones that came before it, like the Sony Ericsson p800. However, these were considered expensive and out of reach for the average consumer. The Iphone did the same thing but at a cheaper price and so came to be the definitive smartphone.
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With the Austin 7, Herbert Austin’s team applied the key lessons from Ford’s Model T – creating a simple, modestly powered car with just enough features for mass appeal while incorporating clever design elements that earned the respect of car enthusiasts.
When the Austin 7 was unveiled in July 1922, it was priced at just £165, when an Austin 20 was between £600 and £700. At a time when the average British worker earned around £5 per week, the only real affordable car had been Ford’s basic and utilitarian Model T at around £250.
The 7’s ingenious design was the key to its success. With a shared base frame for the car, it could be a four-seater family car, a stylish coupe, or even a racing car.
This cheap, tiny car not only was a legend in its own right and familiar around the world, but it influenced other legends too.
Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars, based his first Lotus 1 on the Austin 7. What is less known is that German car manufacturer BMW built Austin 7s under licence in the 1920s and 30s but called them “Dixis”. Nissan did the same in Japan in the pre-war period. Such licensing deals helped set up both manufacturers’ future success as the powerhouses they are today.
Austin 7s were produced all over Europe, Asia and even in Australia. The 7 was also produced in the US as the “American Bantam” and its design contributed to the “Willy’s Jeep”, one of the US’s most famous vehicles.
Ultimately, the beginning of the second world war marked the end of Austin 7 production as the Austin factory at Longbridge, near Birmingham, needed to be repurposed to produce munitions. When the war ended, tastes for vehicles had changed and factories started to produce more modern designs, and not those from the 1920s, marking the end of a British automotive icon in 1939.
Now it’s back, thanks to the engineer John Stubbs who bought the Austin brand after noticing the brand and trademarks were available. The rights to these had been owned by the Nanjing Automobile Group, which bought MG Rover when it collapsed in 2005. However, Nanjing had let these lapse and Stubbs bought them for £170 in 2015.
The new Essex-based Austin Motor Company aims to recreate this classic brand, tugging at the heartstrings of those looking nostalgically at Britain’s automotive heyday. The announcement featured images of fun, cheap (£31,000) and light cars driving around the B-roads of Britain, or perhaps being taken to a racetrack for an amateur competition, harking back to earlier days. However, this car is thoroughly modern, featuring an electric motor.
The new Austin Arrow is not meant to be the usable “everyman” car the original 7 was. For starters, to be compliant with quadricycle (a micro car with less than 6kW of power and an unladen mass no more than 425 kg) legislation it is limited to 60mph as a top speed and the range will be a maximum of 100 miles on one charge.
However, as that fun, racy, open-top car that it’s predecessors were, it very much captures the spirit of the original Austin 7 Arrow.
Tom Stacey 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.
The mere mention of Leonardo da Vinci evokes genius. We know him as a polymath whose interests spanned astronomy, geology, hydrology, engineering and physics. As a painter, his Mona Lisa and Last Supper are considered works of mastery.
Yet one great achievement that frequently goes unrecognised is his studies of human anatomy. More than 500 years after his death, it’s time this changed.
Leonardo is thought to have been born on April 15 1452 in Anchiano, a small hamlet near the town of Vinci, close to Florence. His mother was a 16-year-old peasant girl called Caterina di Meo Lippi, and his father was Ser Piero da Vinci, a 26-year-old notary.
Being illegitimate, the young Leonardo was only permitted an elementary education in reading, writing and arithmetic. He was also barred from becoming a notary, but this worked out to his advantage. Instead of being constrained by life as an officiate, he was free to be creative and explore the world of nature, satisfying his insatiable appetite for knowledge.
The human anatomy became one of his great interests. This was seeded during his time as an apprentice in Andrea del Verrocchio’sbottega (studio) in Florence, where studying the human form was crucial for achieving realistic depictions.
Creating detailed anatomical drawings required precise sketching skills and the ability to accurately depict the structures being studied. As Leonardo’s fascination grew, he would delve deeper into anatomy as a discipline.
Pioneers
This traces back to the 2nd-century Greek physician Galen of Pergamum, whose anatomical descriptions were mostly based on insights he had gained through dissecting animals and studying wounded gladiators. However, he did no human dissections – they were illegal during his time – and many of his extrapolations from animal to human anatomy were wrong.
Galen dissecting a monkey, Veloso Salgado (1906). wikimedia
It wasn’t until the 14th century that anatomy and medical science advanced thanks to the start of systematic human cadaver dissections. The physician Mondino de Liuzzi, who practised the first public dissections of human cadavers at the University of Bologna, published the first modern anatomical text, Anathomia Corporis Humani, in 1316.
The text was mostly descriptive in nature, like that of Galen, lacking drawings to illustrate anatomy. Subsequent texts on the subject during the 14th and early 15th centuries did contain drawings, but these were basic and unrealistic.
Leonardo advanced this discipline through his remarkable observational skills, knowledge of perspective and, most notably, his outstanding drawing abilities. His anatomical sketches were unlike anything seen before. For example, his sketches of the muscles of the arms and human skull are comparable to illustrations in today’s medical anatomy texts.
According to Leonardo’s biographer, Giorgio Vasari, the artist “was one of the first who, with Galen’s teachings, began to bring honour to medical studies and to shed real light upon anatomy, which had until that time been shrouded in the deepest shadows of ignorance”.
Leonardo was the first to depict a detailed study of the human spine, showing its natural curvature and correctly numbered vertebrae. He drew and described nearly all the bones and muscles of the body in beautiful detail, as well as investigating their biomechanics.
His studies on the heart combined both experimentation and observation. Using an ox’s heart to understand blood flow though the aortic valves, Leonardo poured molten wax into the surrounding cavities to make a wax cast, from which a glass model of the heart was made. He then pumped water mixed with grass seeds through this model to visualise the flow pattern. From this experiment, he concluded that the vortex-like flow of blood through the aortic valves was responsible for closing them during each heartbeat.
Over 450 years later, in 1968, scientists used dyes and radiography methods to observe this blood flow and prove that Leonardo was correct. A study in 2014 using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) also demonstrated that he had provided a strikingly precise depiction of these vortex-like flows.
Shortcomings
Leonardo may have dissected around 30 human corpses during his lifetime. Most took place at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence, and later at the Santo Spirito hospital in Rome. The fact he didn’t have more human cadavers to study probably helps to explain why he also got things wrong.
In addition, Leonardo was very influenced by Galen, through his readings of both Mondino de Liuzzi and the Persian writer Avicenna (c980-1037), while also dissecting animals such as dogs, cattle and horses to fill in human anatomical gaps.
This approach is evident in his study of the male and female reproductive system, as I found when carrying out a detailed review of his work in this area. Misconceptions included the presence of three channels in the penis for semen, urine and “animal spirit”. The prostate gland is also missing in all his sketches of the male reproductive system. Meanwhile, he made the uterus spherical (derived from cow dissections), and similarly misrepresented the fallopian tubes and ovaries.
Even then, Leonardo still got a lot right. He correctly depicts the position of the foetus in the uterus, and the umbilical cord anatomy. He also correctly argued that penile erections were caused by blood engorgement and not by air or “vital spirits” flowing into the penis, as suggested by Galen.
Where he got things wrong, Leonardo’s shifting focus may also have played a part. His restlessness, disorganised notes and unfinished work suggest ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Equally, this may also explain his boundless curiosity and incredible creativity.
Despite his shortcomings, Leonardo’s anatomical studies were centuries ahead of their time, rivalling modern standards. His work in this area might have been more appreciated had he published it in a book: he had planned one, and is said to have been collaborating with the Renaissance physician and professor, Marc’Antonio della Torre.
Unfortunately, this was cut short with Marc’Antonio’s death in 1511. Leonardo died in 1519 at the age of 67, and while his gifts to the world have received endless attention, his important contributions to anatomy remain overshadowed, and deserve greater recognition.
Michael Carroll 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.
A soprano pipistrelle, one of the commonest UK species, often roosts in buildings.Bearacreative/Shutterstock
Developers need not “worry about bats and newts” before they start building, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said in a speech that outlined her plans to reform the UK’s planning process. Reeves’ comments suggest construction firms and housebuilders will be allowed to destroy habitat if they pay into “a nature fund” that might finance restoration elsewhere.
As an ecologist (with a passion for bats), I have serious concerns about what this would mean for the UK’s dwindling biodiversity. The comments from the chancellor are, at best, disheartening at a critical time for nature conservation.
Bats and newts are derided as the gum in the wheels of the planning system. But the idea that nature inherently obstructs development and stymies our collective prosperity is wrong. There are many ways infrastucture can be designed to work with nature in mind from the start – often with low cost.
The chancellor’s own calculations are off if she attaches no economic value to nature. In one scientific study that tried to quantify the economic contribution of wildlife, researchers found that losing pest-eating bats in North American farmland would cost farmers several billions of dollars in crop losses.
Blaming wildlife for economic challenges will only worsen the biodiversity crisis. A report from 2023 found that nearly one in six UK species are at risk of extinction, and that the country is one of the most nature depleted in the world.
Rather than weakening protections for nature, the UK should be doing much more to help the plants and animals that call these islands home.
Why we should worry about bats and newts
Populations of the great crested newt halved between 1965 and 1975 and have continued to decline by 2% every five years since. The enormous loss of habitat is partly to blame: half of all ponds vanished in the 20th century and 80% of those remaining are in poor condition. These figures highlight the long-running failure of the planning system to protect nature.
Newts need ponds to breed in, but they also traverse surrounding grasslands and marshes to find food and new homes. Destruction of these habitats will not be easily remedied by digging a new pond elsewhere, with money from the chancellor’s new fund. Connections between habitats are also essential – isolated, artificial ponds are of little use if wildlife cannot reach them.
This approach will be even less helpful to bats, whose habitat requirements are even more varied.
Bats are highly sensitive to environmental changes. The UK is home to 18 species, including the brown long-eared bat and the pug-like barbastelle. Far from being the menace of developers, bats have suffered greatly as changes to buildings have excluded them from making roosts while changes to the wider landscape have made it harder for them to find feeding and breeding sites.
The numbers of some species have shown a small increase since monitoring began in 1998, but a wider perspective is instructive: the barbastelle bat, for instance, has declined by 99% in the UK over the past few hundred years.
The wider decline of nature now poses a terrible strain. Local bat conservation groups have reported an uptick in the number of starving or underweight bats. All UK bats eat insects, so their health is linked with moths and butterflies and other pollinators that knit ecosystems together. Bats are an early warning system for the overall health of our environment.
Develop with nature, not against it
Conservation measures have to be tailored to the relevant species and setting. Careful deliberation in the planning system is important to protect species – it cannot be replaced with a pot of money that each developer pays into.
Take “bat tunnels”, the structures designed to help bats safely navigate developments which recently drew the chancellor’s ire. These tunnels have been installed along the HS2 trainline and, in theory, protect bats from the 220-mph train as it intersects their flight paths.
Bat tunnels maintain connections between habitats, enabling bats to reach their roosting, feeding and breeding sites without risking their lives near roads or other man-made barriers. It’s not just a fatal collision bats risk – noise and pollution also perturb bats and the insects they eat.
While some species might benefit from a simple bat box that allows bats to roost by providing a roosting structure either outside of a building or on trees, others might need more complex changes. Bats rely on sound to navigate, emitting squeaks that bounce around their environment to create an audible impression of the world.
Conservationists might build them flight paths composed of hedgerows and other features that bats can use to orient themselves. This can be particularly important for developments over a large area.
In these instances, it’s important that bats, who may travel several kilometres from their roosts to feeding sites, have well-connected habitats. Fragmenting the landscape leaves smaller and smaller pockets of available habitat which in turn support fewer and fewer species.
Instead of being an expensive burden, most measures for mitigating development are fairly easy to implement. It could be as simple as maintaining and improving hedgerows or preserving old trees. More ambitious schemes include designing rail lines that allow animals to pass over or beneath.
Instead of weakening protections and treating biodiversity as a hindrance, a smarter approach would be to integrate nature into development from the outset, and so prevent harm to protected sites and reduce the need for compensation later. The Woodland Trust said that “HS2’s assessment of woodland was significantly deficient” and its impacts to ancient woodland could have been avoided with alternative routes or proposals. In lieu of better assessment, the developers ran into avoidable delays.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to conservation – no big pot of funding that can pay to repair all the damage later. It requires careful, species-specific strategies, because the needs of wildlife vary greatly. Ignoring the necessity of protecting wildlife jeopardises ecosystems which underpin the economy.
Effective conservation is not a barrier to development, but rather, key to a sustainable future, for people, nature and industries.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peter Howson, Assistant Professor in International Development, Northumbria University, Newcastle
William Stanley Jevons also invented an early computer.University of Manchester Libraries / wiki, CC BY-SA
AI burns through a lot of resources. And thanks to a paradox first identified way back in the 1860s, even a more energy-efficient AI is likely to simply mean more energy is used in the long run.
For most users, “large language models” such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT work like intuitive search engines. But unlike regular web-searches that find and retrieve data from anywhere along a global network of servers, AI models return data they’ve generated from scratch. Like powering up a nuclear reactor to use a calculator, this tailored process is very inefficient.
One study suggests the AI industry will be consuming somewhere between 85 and 134 terrawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity by 2027. That’s a similar amount of energy as the Netherlands consumes each year. One prominent researcher predicts that by 2030, over 20% of all electricity produced in the US will be feeding AI data centres (huge warehouses filled with computers).
Despite Google’s ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2030, the company’s AI developments mean its emissions have climbed 48% in the past few years. And the computing power needed to train these models increases tenfold each year.
However, Chinese start-up DeepSeek claims to have created a fix: a model that matches the performance of established US rivals like OpenAI, but at a fraction of the cost and carbon footprint.
An environmental game changer?
DeepSeek has created a powerful open-source, relatively energy-lite model. The company claims it spent just US$6 million renting the hardware needed to train its new R1 model, compared with over $60 million for Meta’s Llama, which used 11 times the computing resources.
DeepSeek uses a “mixture-of-experts” architecture, a machine-learning method that allows the model to scale up and down depending on the complexity of prompts. The company claims its model can also store more data and be trained without the need for huge amounts of expensive processor chips.
Compared with its US rivals, DeepSeek promises to do more with less. Chitaika / shutterstock
In reaction, US chip manufacturing and energy stocks plummeted following investor concerns that AI companies would rethink their energy-intensive data centre developments. As the world’s largest supplier of specialist AI processors, Nvidia saw its share price fall by US$589 billion, the biggest one-day loss in Wall Street history.
Paradoxically, as well as upsetting the performance of US tech stocks, improving the energy efficiency of AI platforms could actually worsen the industry’s environmental performance as a whole.
With tech stocks crashing, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tried to bring a longer-term perspective: “Jevons paradox strikes again!” he posted on X. “As AI gets more efficient and accessible, we will see its use skyrocket, turning it into a commodity we just can’t get enough of.”
The Jevons paradox
The idea that energy efficiency isn’t always a good thing for Earth’s resources has been around for well over a century. In 1865, a young Englishman named William Stanley Jevons wrote “The Coal Question”, a book in which he suggested that Britain’s place as an industrial superpower might soon come to an end, due to its rapidly depleting coal reserves.
But to Jevons, frugality was not the solution. He argued: “It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.”
According to Jevons, any increase in resource efficiency generates an increase in long-term resource consumption, rather than a decrease. Because greater energy efficiency has the effect of reducing energy’s implicit price, it increases the rate of return – and demand.
Jevons offered the example of the British iron industry. If technological advancements helped a blast furnace produce iron with less coal, profits would rise and new investment in iron production would be attracted. At the same time, falling prices would stimulate additional demand. He concluded: “The greater number of furnaces will more than make up for the diminished [coal] consumption of each.”
More recently, the economist William Nordhaus applied this idea to the efficiency of lighting since the dawn of human civilisation. In a paper published in 1998, he concluded that in ancient Babylon, the average labourer might need to work more than 40 hours to purchase enough fuel to produce the equivalent amount of light emitted by a modern lightbulb for one hour. But by 1992, an average American would need to work for less than half a second to produce the same.
Throughout time, efficiency gains haven’t reduced the energy we expend on lighting or shrunk our energy consumption. On the contrary, we now generate so much electric light that areas without it have become tourist attractions.
Warming and lighting our homes efficiently, driving our cars, mining Bitcoin and, indeed, building AI models are all subject to the same so-called rebound effects identified in the Jevons paradox. And this is why it will be impossible to ensure a more efficient AI industry actually leads to an overall reduction in energy use.
A Sputnik moment
In the 1950s, the US was horrified when the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first space satellite. The emergence of a more efficient rival caused America to allocate more resources to the space race, not less.
DeepSeek is Silicon Valley’s Sputnik moment. More efficient AI will probably mean more distributed and powerful models, in an arms race that is no longer made up only of US tech giants. AI offers superpower status, and the floodgates may now be fully open for the UK and other global competitors, as well as China.
What’s for certain is that in the long term, the AI industry’s appetite for energy and other resources is only going to increase.
Peter Howson has received research funding from the British Academy.
For centuries, people have claimed that their aching joints can predict changes in the weather, often reporting increased discomfort before rain or cold fronts. Given the scale and duration, there is a sense of legitimacy to these anecdotes – but this phenomenon remains scientifically contentious.
From shifts in barometric pressure to temperature fluctuations, many theories attempt to explain how environmental factors might influence joint pain. But is there an anatomical basis for this claim, or is it simply an enduring weather-related myth? Are our joints any more reliable than the Met Office?
At the heart of this debate lies barometric pressure, also known as atmospheric pressure – the force exerted by air molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere. While invisible, air has mass, and the “weight” pressing down on us fluctuates with altitude and weather systems.
Higher barometric pressure often signals fair-weather conditions with clear skies and calm winds, whereas lower pressure typically precedes unsettled weather, such as cloudy skies, precipitation and humidity.
Moveable joints are intricate structures cushioned by synovial fluid, the viscous liquid that lubricates joints, and encased in capsules rich in nerve endings. In healthy joints, these components should allow smooth, pain-free movement. However, when joints are compromised by cartilage damage (as in osteoarthritis) or inflammation (as in rheumatoid arthritis), even subtle changes in the environment may be acutely felt.
One leading hypothesis suggests that changes in barometric pressure may directly influence joint discomfort. When atmospheric pressure drops ahead of storms, it can allow inflamed tissues within joints to expand slightly, increasing stress on surrounding nerves and amplifying pain. Conversely, rapid increases in pressure, characteristic of fair-weather systems, may compress already sensitive tissues, leading to discomfort in some people.
Scientific studies offer some support for these claims, though results remain mixed. For instance, a 2007 study published in the American Journal of Medicine found a slight but significant correlation between dropping barometric pressure and increased knee pain in osteoarthritis patients. However, this pattern is not universally observed across all joint conditions.
A 2011 systematic review in Arthritis Research & Therapy examined the relationship between weather and pain in rheumatoid arthritis patients. It revealed highly variable responses: while some people reported increased pain under low-pressure conditions, others noted no change. A few even experienced discomfort during high-pressure fronts.
More recently, a [2019 citizen-science project] called Cloudy with a chance of pain used app-based pain tracking to explore this connection. The study found a modest association between falling pressure and heightened joint pain, but it also highlighted substantial individual differences in how people perceive weather-related pain.
These findings suggest that while changes in barometric pressure may influence joint pain for some, responses are far from uniform and depend on a complex interplay of factors, including the individual’s underlying joint condition and overall pain sensitivity.
Why responses differ
Barometric pressure rarely acts in isolation. Fluctuations in temperature and humidity often accompany pressure changes, complicating the picture.
Cold weather can have a pronounced effect on joints, particularly in people with existing joint conditions. Low temperatures cause muscles to contract and become stiffer, which can lead to reduced flexibility and a greater risk of strain or discomfort.
Ligaments, which connect bones to one another, and tendons, which anchor muscles to bones, may also lose some of their elasticity in colder conditions. This decreased pliability can make joint movement feel more restricted and exacerbate pain in conditions like arthritis.
Cold weather can also cause blood vessels to narrow — particularly in the extremities, as the body prioritises maintaining core temperature. This reduced blood flow can deprive affected areas of essential oxygen and nutrients, slowing the removal of metabolic waste products like lactic acid, which may accumulate in tissues and exacerbate inflammation and discomfort.
For people with inflammatory conditions, the reduced circulation can aggravate swelling and stiffness, especially in small joints like those in the fingers and toes.
Cold also slows the activity of synovial fluid. In lower temperatures, the fluid becomes less effective at reducing friction, which can heighten joint stiffness and make motion more painful, particularly for people with degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis.
Sudden temperature changes may also play a role. Rapid shifts can challenge the body’s ability to adapt, which might worsen pain in people with chronic conditions. Similarly, high humidity can intensify sensations of heat or dampness in already inflamed areas, further complicating the experience of pain.
However, isolating a single variable – whether humidity, temperature or pressure –proves difficult because of the interplay of overlapping factors.
Responses to weather also depend on individual factors, including the extent of joint damage, overall pain sensitivity and psychological expectations. This variability makes it difficult to link a single meteorological factor to a biological response.
Still, the evidence suggests that people with joint conditions tend to be more attuned to environmental changes, particularly pressure fluctuations.
While the relationship between weather and joint pain remains an imperfect science, the collective evidence indicates that there may be some truth to the age-old belief. For those with chronic joint conditions, shifts in barometric pressure and accompanying weather changes might indeed serve as nature’s warning system – albeit one that’s far from foolproof.
Michelle Spear 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.
Before January 27 2025, it’s fair to say that Chinese tech company DeepSeek was flying under the radar. And then it came dramatically into view.
Suddenly, everyone was talking about it – not least the shareholders and executives at US tech firms like Nvidia, Microsoft and Google, which all saw their company values tumble thanks to the success of this AI startup research lab.
Founded by a successful Chinese hedge fund manager, the lab has taken a different approach to artificial intelligence. One of the major differences is cost.
The development costs for Open AI’s ChatGPT-4 were said to be in excess of US$100 million (£81 million). DeepSeek’s R1 model – which is used to generate content, solve logic problems and create computer code – was reportedly made using much fewer, less powerful computer chips than the likes of GPT-4, resulting in costs claimed (but unverified) to be as low as US$6 million.
This has both financial and geopolitical effects. China is subject to US sanctions on importing the most advanced computer chips. But the fact that a Chinese startup has been able to build such an advanced model raises questions about the effectiveness of these sanctions, and whether Chinese innovators can work around them.
The timing of DeepSeek’s new release on January 20, as Donald Trump was being sworn in as president, signalled a challenge to US dominance in AI. Trump responded by describing the moment as a “wake-up call”.
From a financial point of view, the most noticeable effect may be on consumers. Unlike rivals such as OpenAI, which recently began charging US$200 per month for access to their premium models, DeepSeek’s comparable tools are currently free. They are also “open source”, allowing anyone to poke around in the code and reconfigure things as they wish.
Low costs of development and efficient use of hardware seem to have afforded DeepSeek this cost advantage, and have already forced some Chinese rivals to lower their prices. Consumers should anticipate lower costs from other AI services too.
Artificial investment
Longer term – which, in the AI industry, can still be remarkably soon – the success of DeepSeek could have a big impact on AI investment.
This is because so far, almost all of the big AI companies – OpenAI, Meta, Google – have been struggling to commercialise their models and be profitable.
Until now, this was not necessarily a problem. Companies like Twitter and Uber went years without making profits, prioritising a commanding market share (lots of users) instead.
And companies like OpenAI have been doing the same. In exchange for continuous investment from hedge funds and other organisations, they promise to build even more powerful models.
These models, the business pitch probably goes, will massively boost productivity and then profitability for businesses, which will end up happy to pay for AI products. In the mean time, all the tech companies need to do is collect more data, buy more powerful chips (and more of them), and develop their models for longer.
But this costs a lot of money.
Nvidia’s Blackwell chip – the world’s most powerful AI chip to date – costs around US$40,000 per unit, and AI companies often need tens of thousands of them. But up to now, AI companies haven’t really struggled to attract the necessary investment, even if the sums are huge.
DeepSeek might change all this.
By demonstrating that innovations with existing (and perhaps less advanced) hardware can achieve similar performance, it has given a warning that throwing money at AI is not guaranteed to pay off.
For example, prior to January 20, it may have been assumed that the most advanced AI models require massive data centres and other infrastructure. This meant the likes of Google, Microsoft and OpenAI would face limited competition because of the high barriers (the vast expense) to enter this industry.
Money worries
But if those barriers to entry are much lower than everyone thinks – as DeepSeek’s success suggests – then many massive AI investments suddenly look a lot riskier. Hence the abrupt effect on big tech share prices.
Shares in chipmaker Nvidia fell by around 17% and ASML, which creates the machines needed to manufacture advanced chips, also saw its share price fall. (While there has been a slight bounceback in Nvidia’s stock price, it appears to have settled below its previous highs, reflecting a new market reality.)
Nvidia and ASML are “pick-and-shovel” companies that make the tools necessary to create a product, rather than the product itself. (The term comes from the idea that in a goldrush, the only person guaranteed to make money is the one selling the picks and shovels.)
The “shovels” they sell are chips and chip-making equipment. The fall in their share prices came from the sense that if DeepSeek’s much cheaper approach works, the billions of dollars of future sales that investors have priced into these companies may not materialise.
For the likes of Microsoft, Google and Meta (OpenAI is not publicly traded), the cost of building advanced AI may now have fallen, meaning these firms will have to spend less to remain competitive. That, for them, could be a good thing.
But there is now doubt as to whether these companies can successfully monetise their AI programmes.
US stocks make up a historically large percentage of global investment right now, and technology companies make up a historically large percentage of the value of the US stock market. Losses in this industry might force investors to sell off other investments to cover their losses in tech, leading to a whole-market downturn.
And it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In 2023, a leaked Google memo warned that the AI industry was exposed to outsider disruption. The memo argued that AI companies “had no moat” – no protection – against rival models. DeepSeek’s success may be the proof that this is true.
Richard Whittle receives funding from the ESRC, Research England and was the recipient of a CAPE Fellowship.
Stuart Mills 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.
As I’ve grown older and experienced the vagaries of my ageing memory, I’ve often reflected on the possibility of a miracle cure that would rejuvenate it. As if in answer to my wishful thinking, not one but several reports recently appeared simultaneously in the scientific news, highlighting a trending solution of which I was blissfully unaware.
A welter of articles – The Times of India, MSN, New York Post and others – spoke of an Indian herb called bacopa, or to give it its full botanical name, Bacopa monnieri, an aquatic flower. This wave of publicity resulted in a massive spike in interest: 2,000 monthly searches on Google and a weekly average of 13,000 views on TikTok.
The reason for its global popularity? A new study which concluded that ingesting bacopa brought significant improvements in both memory and cognition skills (concentration, alertness, reasoning and mental flexibility).
All types of memory were improved – short-term memory (verbal and spatial), working memory and episodic memory (memory of everyday events).
The researchers also reported other brain health-related benefits. Anxiety and cortisol levels in the blood were significantly reduced, and sleep quality and serum BDNF were increased by taking a bacopa supplement (BDNF is a naturally produced protein in the brain that stimulates the production of new brain cells in every decade of our life). If I had wanted a miracle, perhaps I had found it.
But one swallow doesn’t make a summer. And neither should a single study set a law in stone.
So, curious as to the weight of evidence, I delved deeper. My search led me to a surprising source – Ayurvedic medicine.
Over many thousands of years, this traditional Indian medical system has expounded the benefits of bacopa. Bacopa is a medhya rasayana, meaning a class of herbs believed to improve mental health, memory and intellect, and promote rejuvenation and longevity.
It would be true to say that millions of people over the centuries have relied on this supplement for health and mental health benefits. However, history and tradition teach us many things, but not all of them are true. And, therefore, I asked myself: what of the scientific evidence?
One of the earliest papers on the effects of taking bacopa was in 2008. And though, over the years, it stimulated several more studies favourable to the use of bacopa, the picture of its effectiveness is mixed.
It’s true to say that most of the papers – many of them using the gold standard method of a randomised controlled trial – find that bacopa is positive for improved memory and reduced anxiety. And there is a biological explanation.
Bacopa extract contains many potent substances called “bacosides” that have, among other effects, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing) properties. But by no means do all studies show that bacopa improves memory and anxiety. In fact, in 2021 a review of bacopa research stated that there are only limited studies (six to date) to establish the memory-enhancing and brain-protecting effects of bacopa.
Safety
Then I asked myself, is it safe? I turned to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). If there is an issue with safety and side-effects, the FDA would know.
The FDA has not approved bacopa as a drug and therefore has not made any statements as to its safety or efficacy. However, the way in which a supplement is marketed can lead to the FDA categorising it as a drug. For example, in 2024, a US company selling veterinary products was censured because their marketing of one of them intended it to be used in the cure of chronic seizures and epilepsy in dogs.
The FDA can investigate, censor or fine – without limit – any company which says that its supplement acts like a drug by implying it can be used to prevent, mitigate, treat or cure any illness.
There is a very fine line here. For example, marketing such as, “the control of blood pressure” may lead to a US federal investigation. A company in Houston, Texas, making medical claims for bacopa was given 15 days in a warning letter by the FDA to correct their marketing or face sanctions including fines.
The FDA states: “Dietary supplements are regulated by the FDA as food, not as drugs. However, many dietary supplements contain ingredients that have strong biological effects which may conflict with a medicine you are taking or a medical condition you may have.”
Such effects are known in bacopa because it inhibits an important brain chemical called acetylcholine and therefore could counteract cholinergic drugs for conditions such as dementia, glaucoma and urinary retention.
It is generally safe for most people, but is inadvisable where there are thyroid conditions, asthma, COPD, genital problems, stomach ulcers or if pregnant.
What are we to make of all this? All that glisters is not gold. And the wisdom of the ages is not irrevocable. There may be a frenzy of popularity in the media but that makes bacopa neither effective nor safe.
The moral here is that before spending your hard-earned money on a promising product that has been seized upon by millions, you should pause, read, research, think and then, based on real evidence, commit – one way or the other. After all, since the days of Newton, science has served us pretty well.
James Goodwin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephanie Hernandez, PhD Candidate, Literature and Music, University of Liverpool
Marianne Faithfull, the London-born singer with an inimitable voice, has passed away at the age of 78. She was known for many things: she was a pop star, an actress and a muse. But she was probably best known for her voice.
When she first entered the world of pop in 1964, her high-pitched tones rang with mellifluous vibrato. As she grew older and lived an increasingly excessive lifestyle, she developed a rasp – a quality borne of her unique experiences.
Faithfull’s final musical releases were works that incorporated Romantic poetry in different ways. She Walks in Beauty (2021) is a spoken-word album of canonical Romantic poetry by the likes of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats. Songs of Innocence and Experience 1965-1995 (2022) is a chronological retrospective of her career which uses the name of William Blake’s poetry collection (1789) as its title.
As a PhD student focused on the legacy of Romanticism in 1960s and 1970s popular music, I’ve closely examined Faithfull’s engagement with Romantic literature throughout her career. These final two albums represent a beautiful culmination of her artistic journey, and are a testament to her unique voice and strong poetic influences.
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Songs of Innocence and Experience 1965-1995, like Blake’s poetry collection, is broken up into the sections Innocence and Experience.
The Innocence portion of the album covers Faithfull’s youth, featuring early hits such as This Little Bird. Her early sound incorporated baroque pop instrumentation, including harps, harpsichord and horn arrangements (Come and Stay with Me), as well as folk styles with the acoustic guitar at the centre of the sound (Cockleshells).
Faithfull’s voice in this section portrays her as an “innocent” girl in pop stardom, as its high pitch and pure tone embody a sense of naivete that is also reflected in her lyrics about young love, such as in Come and Stay With Me:
We’ll live a life no one has ever known
But I know you’re thinking that I’m hardly grown
But oh thank God, at last and finally
I can see you’re gonna stay with me
There is a noticeable shift in the Innocence section of the album with the song Sister Morphine. As the song was made in collaboration with her then-boyfriend, Mick Jagger, it features a noticeably more rock sound in contrast to her previous pop productions. You can also hear subtle changes in Faithfull’s voice: it cracks and sounds strained in places.
The song’s lyrics (“Please, Sister Morphine, turn my nightmares into dreams”) reflect the darker side of the mythologised “swinging sixties” lifestyle and its drug culture, which Faithfull has come to symbolise.
Blake’s Songs of Innocence features a piper as the presiding narrator over the poems. In contrast, Songs of Experience is meant to be heard through the voice of an ancient bard, as established in Introduction to the Songs of Experience:
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word
That walk’d among the ancient trees.
The Experience section of Faithfull’s album features music from Broken English (1979) and her re-recording of As Tears Go By, from Strange Weather (1987). The songs in this portion of the album exhibit her completely transformed voice: from piper to bard, it is deeper, raw and more weathered as a result of her struggles with addiction and bouts of illness. This brought a distinct edge to her music, marking a new phase in her career.
Beyond the qualities of her voice, Faithfull’s song selection reflects Blake’s notions of Experience. Strange Weather (“Will you take me across the Channel / London Bridge is falling down”) aligns with Blake’s London geographically and thematically, as both explore entrapment and decay. Faithfull’s depiction of societal monotony, as in “Strangers talk only about the weather / All over the world / It’s the same …” echo Blake’s “charter’d street(s)” and “mind-forg’d manacles”.
Faithfull’s connection to Romantic poetry is most overt in She Walks in Beauty, which she made with Warren Ellis (Australian composer and member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). In this album, she recites Romantic poetry set to Ellis’s music.
The poems she selected to recite are all by male poets and many feature voiceless female subjects, such as Byron’s She Walks in Beauty or Thomas Hood’s The Bridge of Sighs. On the album’s liner notes, Faithfull described how she related with these women, particularly Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott.
The Lady of Shalott is a woman cursed to live alone in a tower near Camelot – unable to look directly at the world, forced to weave what she sees in the mirror. Faithfull uses the Lady to reflect on the pressure she felt to conform to the expectations imposed on her by the press and music industry. There is a parallel between the Lady’s forced isolation and her struggles with being controlled and defined by external forces, as she explained:
Do I identify with the Lady? Oh yeah, always. I’m nothing like the Lady of Shalott, but I guess I wanted to be … When Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics for As Tears Go By, he knew this poem. There’s a bit he always said he used from here, the thing about ‘it was the closing of the day’.
In the liner notes, Faithfull also mentioned that her love of poetry was thanks to her English teacher at St Joseph’s Convent in Reading, Mrs Simpson, and to Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, an anthology of English poetry, which she had bought as a teenager.
Faithfull’s lifelong interest in literature came to fruition in her two final projects. They exemplify how she was a pop star, muse and chanteuse – and also a Romantic.
Stephanie Hernandez 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.
OMA SAVINGS BANK PLC, STOCK EXCHANGE RELEASE 31 JANUARY 2025 AT 19.00 P.M. EET, OTHER INFORMATION DISCLOSED TO THE RULES OF THE EXCHANGE
Shareholders’ Nomination Committee proposal on the composition and remuneration of the Board of Directors of Oma Saving Bank Plc
The Shareholders’ Nomination Committee proposes the following to the Annual General Meeting of Oma Savings Bank Plc (OmaSp or the Company) on 8 April 2025:
The number of members of the Board of Directors is proposed to be confirmed at seven.
The Shareholders’ Nomination Committee proposes that the current Board members Juhana Brotherus, Irma Gillberg-Hjelt, Aki Jaskari, Jaakko Ossa, Carl Pettersson, Kati Riikonen and Juha Volotinen.
All candidates are proposed to be elected for the period starting at the Annual General Meeting 2025 and ending at the Annual General Meeting 2026. All nominees have given their consent to the election. At the time of election, all proposed nominees are independent in their relationship with the company and its significant shareholders.
Details of the Board members nominated for election:
JUHANA BROTHERUS Juhana Brotherus (born 1986) has been a member of OmaSp’s Board of Directors since December 2024. Brotherus has been the Director and Chief Economist of the Federation of Finnish Enterprises since 2023. In addition, Brotherus worked as Chief Economist and Director of the Mortgage Society of Finland in 2014–2023 and as the Economist of Danske Bank in 2011–2014. Brotherus has served as the Vice Chairman of the Board of HOAS since 2018, as a member of the Investment Committee of the Finnish Business School Graduates since 2016, as a member of the Board of the Foundation for Economic Students in Helsinki in 2015–2020, and as a member of the Board of aTalent Recruitingin in 2012–2018, of which as the Chairman of the Board in 2014–2018. Brotherus holds a Master of Economic Sciences.
IRMA GILLBERG-HJELT Irma Gillberg-Hjelt (born 1962) has been a member of OmaSp’s Board of Directors since December 2024. Gillberg-Hjelt has has been the Executive Vice President and Head of Corporate Banking of Aktia Bank Plc in 2017–2020, employed by Danske Bank and its predecessors from 1987 to 2017 holding managerial positions in the corporate customer business in 2010–2017, as Bank Director in 2007–2012, as financial director in 2003–2007, and in customer-responsible positions in 1987–2003. In addition, Gillberg-Hjelt has been a member of the Board of Directors of Saldo Bank UAB in 2023–2024. Gillberg-Hjelt holds a Master of Laws.
AKI JASKARI Aki Jaskari (born 1961) has been a member of OmaSp’s Board of Directors since 2014. Jaskari has served as the CEO of Nerkoon Höyläämö Oy since 1995. In addition, Jaskari has been a member of the Advisory Board of Leppäkosken Sähkö Group Oy since 2001, a member of the Regional Advisory Committee of Pohjola Insurance Oy in 2001–2015 and as a member of the Board of the Parkano Savings Bank in 2010–2013. Jaskari holds a master’s degree in economics.
JAAKKO OSSA Jaakko Ossa (born 1965) has been the Chairman of the Board of OmaSp since May 2024 and a member of the Board since 2023. Ossa has been a professor of financial law at the University of Turku since 1998. Ossa has an extensive written production, particularly in the field of corporate taxation and investment taxation. Along with his academic career, Ossa has held expert positions at Asianajotoimisto Astrea Oy for around 20 years and currently at Ossa Partners Oy, a family company. Ossa has been as a member of the Board of several companies, including Liedon Savings Bank, Sp-Fund Management Company and the Savings Bank Association. In addition, he is currently the Chairman of the delegation of Taxpayers Association of Finland (TAF) and the inspector of the Satakuntalais-Hämäläinen Student Nation (osakunta) of the University of Turku. Ossa holds a Doctor of Laws.
CARL PETTERSSON Carl Pettersson (born 1979) has been the Vice Chairman and a member of OmaSp’s Board of Directors since January 2025. Pettersson has been the Managing Director of Elo Pension Company since 2021. In addition, Pettersson has been the Managing Director of Veritas Pension Insurance Company in 2017–2021, Deputy Managing Director of Aktia Bank Plc in 2016–2017 and prior to that in several management positions of Aktia Bank Plc in 2008–2016 and as Director of OP Raasepori’s branch office in 2006-2008. Pettersson holds a Bachelor of Business Administration and an eMBA.
KATI RIIKONEN Kati Riikonen (born 1971) has been a member of OmaSp’s Board of Directors since December 2024. Riikonen has been the VP, Head of Online, Marketing and Analytics of Telia Finland Plc in 2020–2024, Head of Industry of Google Finland in 2017–2020, Managing Director of Isobar Finland Oy in 2015–2017, Chief Digital Officer of DNA Oy in 2013-2015 and Marketing Director of DNA Oy in 2011–2013, an entrepreneur of KRi Marketing and Training in 2006–2009, Marketing Director of Motorola Inc. USA in 2003–2006 and as various expert and team leader positions at Nokia Plc in 1996–2003. In addition, Riikonen has been a member of the Board of Directors of Kamux Plc since 2024, a member of the Board of Directors of Verkkokauppa.com Plc since 2023, a member of the Board of Directors of Nooa Savings Bank in 2021–2024, a member of the Board of Directors of Kotipizza Group in 2021–2022, a member of the Board of Directors of City Digital Oy in 2016–2018, and a member of the Board of Frantic Media Oy in 2012–2014. Riikonen holds a Master of Business Administration.
JUHA VOLOTINEN Juha Volotinen (born 1975) has been a member of OmaSp’s Board of Directors since December 2024. Volotinen has been the CIO of the Municipality Finance Plc since 2021. In addition, Volotinen worked as CIO of Aktia Bank Plc in 2017–2021 and before that in several managerial positions in Aktia Bank Plc in 2010–2017, in SEB Ab in several managerial positions in 2003–2010, and as IT Manager of Danske Securities in 2002–2003. Volotinen has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Aktia Finance in 2017–2020. Volotinen holds a Master of Economic Sciences.
Shareholders’ Nomination Committee proposal on the remuneration of the Board of Directors of OmaSp:
The Shareholders’ Nomination Committee proposes that the members of the Board of Directors be paid annual remuneration as follows:
Chairperson of the Board EUR 85,000
Vice Chairperson of the Board EUR 60,000
Other members of the Board EUR 40,000
In addition, the Chairperson of the Board Committees are paid a separate annual fee as follows:
Chairperson of the Remuneration Committee EUR 6,000
Chairperson of the Risk Committee EUR 9,000
Chairperson of the Audit Committee EUR 9,000
The Shareholders’ Nomination Committee proposes that meeting fees be paid as follows:
Board meeting EUR 1,000
Committee meeting EUR 1,000
Email meeting of the Board or Committee EUR 500
The Shareholders’ Nomination Board proposes that 25 percent of the annual remuneration of the Board of Directors be paid from the market in Oma Savings Bank Plc’s shares acquired on behalf of the members of the Board of Directors. The shares will be acquired directly on behalf of the members of the Board of Directors at a price formed on the market in public trading when the interim report for the period from 1 January to 31 March 2025 has been published. The Company is responsible for the costs of acquiring the shares and any transfer tax. The rest of the annual fee is paid in cash to cover the taxes arising from the fee.
In addition, Oma Savings Bank Plc pays or reimburses travel expenses and other expenses related to board work to the members of the Board of Directors.
The proposals of the Nomination Committee shall be included in the notice of the Annual General Meeting.
Raimo Härmä (nominated by the South-Karelian Savings Bank Foundation) is the Chairman of the Shareholders’ Nomination Committee of OmaSp, members are Ari Lamminmäki (nominated by the Parkano Savings Bank Foundation), Jouni Niuro (nominated by the Liedon Savings Bank Foundation), Aino Lamminmäki (nominated by the Töysän Savings Bank Foundation), Simo Haarajärvi (nominated by the Kuortane Savings Bank Foundation), and as a specialist acts Jaakko Ossa, the Chairman of the Board of OmaSp.
Additional information: Raimo Härmä, Chairman of the Nomination Committee, tel. +358 44 363 7063 Minna Sillanpää, CCO, tel. +358 50 66592, minna.sillanpaa@omasp.fi
DISTRIBUTION Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd Major media www.omasp.fi
OmaSp is a solvent and profitable Finnish bank. About 500 professionals provide nationwide services through OmaSp’s 48 branch offices and digital service channels to over 200,000 private and corporate customers. OmaSp focuses primarily on retail banking operations and provides its clients with a broad range of banking services both through its own balance sheet as well as by acting as an intermediary for its partners’ products. The intermediated products include credit, investment and loan insurance products. OmaSp is also engaged in mortgage banking operations.
OmaSp core idea is to provide personal service and to be local and close to its customers, both in digital and traditional channels. OmaSp strives to offer premium level customer experience through personal service and easy accessibility. In addition, the development of the operations and services is customer-oriented. The personnel is committed and OmaSp seeks to support their career development with versatile tasks and continuous development. A substantial part of the personnel also own shares in OmaSp.
Source: United States Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico)
Subcommittee Oversees Key New Mexico Priorities Including Food Assistance Programs, Specialty Crop Produces, and Healthy Food Initiatives
Washington, D.C. – This week, U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) was named Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry’s Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research for the 119th Congress. Senator Luján will serve alongside Subcommittee Chairman U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“Across New Mexico and the nation, federal nutrition assistance programs help feed our families and children, while our specialty crop growers put high-quality, nutritious produce for our tables,” said Senator Luján. “I am honored to have been selected to lead the Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics and Research, where I will work to boost programs to help families afford healthy food, secure resources for our specialty crop and organic producers, and ensure strong investment and support for our agricultural research institutions. I look forward to working in a bipartisan manner to secure New Mexico priorities on this key subcommittee.”
“As Ranking Member, I will work to support and provide resources for our specialty crop growers in New Mexico who feed our nation and the world and support our trademark crops from pecans to chile. No one should face the threat of hunger, and I will work tirelessly to make certain that families are able to put high-quality, nutritious food on the table, no matter where you live. New Mexico also boasts a wealth of agriculture research institutions, ranging from New Mexico State University to our climate hub and agriculture research stations,” continued Senator Luján. “Supporting strong research investment will be a priority for me on this subcommittee as we look to ensure that our agriculture community has the tools they need to face challenges ranging from pests to climate change and be competitive at the global level.”
Background on Senator Luján’s work on supporting food assistance programs and specialty crop growers:
Senator Luján has long fought to protect and improve federal nutrition assistance programs, leading legislation to protect local grocers from transaction fees that would make it harder for them to accept SNAP benefits, introducing legislation that would support merit staff and protect the integrity and efficiency of SNAP, and fighting to protect access to SNAP benefits in the Farm Bill. Through Senator Luján’s work on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, he has fought to secure provisions in the Farm Bill that would invest in agriculture research and boost resources for New Mexico’s specialty crop and organic producers.
Background on the Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research:
The Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research oversees programs regarding food and nutrition assistance, school meals, non-program crops, organic production, and research. The subcommittee oversees agencies within the Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services; Research, Education and Economics; and Marketing and Regulatory Programs mission areas at USDA. In addition to agencies, this subcommittee oversees the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research.
(HARTFORD, CT) – Governor Ned Lamont and Connecticut Consumer Protection Commissioner Bryan T. Cafferelli today announced that a training program for licensed pharmacists who want to be able to prescribe contraception directly to customers is now available in Connecticut. In addition, they announced today that the state’s first vending machines providing access to emergency contraception and other over-the-counter medications are also now available in Connecticut.
The training program, developed by the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, received final approval this week from the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. The continuing education program is expected to take four hours to complete and is optional for all pharmacists. There are 671 licensed pharmacies and more than 6,500 licensed pharmacists in the state who are eligible to complete the course and begin offering this service.
“This is just one of the many ways we’re working to expand access to contraception and other important medications in Connecticut,” Governor Lamont said. “Pharmacists have continued to play a growing role in our healthcare system, from administering vaccines to dispensing Narcan and other lifesaving medications, and now prescribing birth control. They are a critical part of the healthcare network.”
“There can be many barriers to going to a primary care provider for contraception – potential costs, needing to take time off work, or traveling long distances. That is why both patients and pharmacists overwhelmingly offered their support for this change,” Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz said. “Everyone should have safe and reliable access to contraceptives. Governor Lamont and I remain committed to ensuring that our state continues to be the best place for women and that every patient in Connecticut has access to the care they need.”
“Many people interact with their pharmacists more often than their doctors throughout the year, providing a critical resource for patients in every corner of our state,” Commissioner Cafferelli said. “Pharmacies are everywhere, from CVS and Walgreens to the independent pharmacies down the road, to the pharmacies in major retailers like Stop and Shop and Walmart, and they play a critical role in removing barriers to accessing safe and effective medication.”
“Allowing pharmacists to both prescribe and dispense hormonal birth control could help mitigate barriers and expand access to contraception for the citizens of our state,” UConn School of Pharmacy Dean Philip Hritcko said.
“The ability for pharmacists to directly prescribe hormonal and emergency contraception is a critical step forward in expanding access to essential healthcare,” Nathan Tinker, CEO of the Connecticut Pharmacists Association, said. “In Connecticut, this means that there could potentially be some 600 new points of access across the state for this important service. The Connecticut Pharmacists Association thanks Governor Lamont’s administration and the Department of Consumer Protection for recognizing that pharmacists are in a unique position to provide timely, convenient, and patient-centered care.”
“Access to contraceptives gives people the ability to control their own reproductive destinies and make personal decisions regarding if, when, or how to start their families,” Liz Gustafson, Connecticut state director of Reproductive Equity Now, said. “By eliminating the need for a visit to a healthcare provider to obtain a prescription for birth control and allowing people to receive the prescription directly from their local pharmacy, pharmacist prescribing will help increase access to contraception for those who face the greatest barriers to care. We’re also thrilled to see the first emergency contraception vending machine in Connecticut installed at UConn Storrs, and commend Dr. Smith, medical director of student health and wellness and his colleagues, for their work to bring this to fruition. As national attacks on birth control escalate, we must find every opportunity to protect and expand reproductive freedom, and this pharmacist training program and expanded access to emergency contraception are critically important steps.”
Pharmacists who want to prescribe contraception can register for the on-demand training program by visitingthe UConn School of Pharmacy website. The cost to pharmacists is $40 for registration. Once a pharmacist completes the training, they will be able to prescribe contraception. The course counts toward the 15 hours of annual continuing education required for pharmacists.
Patients who are prescribed birth control by a pharmacist are advised to consult with a primary care or other physician for a follow-up consultation after receiving a prescription from a pharmacist, but a follow up appointment is not required.
Pharmacists who have questions can contact the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection via email atDCP.DrugControl@ct.gov.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University
The pairing of British prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump connotes many imponderables. The only certainty happens to be the most significant: they will be in office together for four years.
It is rare for a prime minister and a president to have the luxury of knowing – barring extreme unpredictabilities, such as death or incapacity – they have a full term in harness. And personal chemistry matters.
Trump emphasises (rather too much for the liking of America’s allies) the deal, the handshake, the gaze; the bond that only the lonely, only those who lead, can have. Starmer emphasises level-headedness (although his government has not been particulary conspicuous in evincing it).
Opposites may well attract, but the precedents for coterminous presidents and prime ministers are not encouraging. John Major and Bill Clinton, elected seven months apart, spent 1992 to 1997 together. But in the very definition of what not to do before an election, London had made its preference for the result of the election in America known – and the other guy won. The Conservative and the Democrat were no more than coolly cordial thereafter.
On his re-election in 2001, Tony Blair knew he had George W. Bush for at least four years – it turned out to be eight – but the consequences for him were disastrous once the two decided to partake in a war on “terror”.
In 1964, Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson were elected almost simultaneously, and spent 1964 to 1968 together. Though they were Labour and Democrat, and therefore from sister parties, it was not a harmonious pairing. Wilson’s meddling in, but lack of support for, Johnson’s war in Vietnam was a source of unbridled irritation in the White House.
Trump and May
The last time Trump became president, Theresa May was prime minister and she travelled with undisguised haste to the White House. There she achieved a highly untypical diplomatic coup in getting Trump to commit publicly to Nato (that bars should be so low was a general feature of the presidency).
Their subsequent relationship was, however, toxic. No prime minister has been less likely to gaze, to bond (despite pictures of them holding hands), and the president held her as having mangled Brexit, a bid for freedom with which he was keen to associate himself.
Before the US election, Starmer displayed a unfamiliar deftness of touch, and banked some credit. His immediate phone call to candidate Trump following an attempt on his life in July was both bold and smart. There followed the fabled Trump Tower two-hour chicken dinner.
It was more typical for Starmer that when it emerged, in a most unfortunate echo of 1992, Labour activists – and Starmer’s own pollster – were working on the Kamala Harris campaign, Trump’s people cried foreign interference and threatened legal action.
And the two in Starmer’s team who will have the most exposure to the new administration have both been publicly rude about Trump. David Lammy, now foreign secretary, called him “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic [and] narcissistic” in 2019.
Peter Mandelson, nominated but not yet confirmed as the UK ambassador to the US, has made comments about Trump being a “bully” and a “danger to the world”. To appease opposition in DC on his appointment, Mandelson has since turned on a sixpence (or perhaps a dime).
This is, at root, about Trump. No other president would have attracted such comments from frontline politicians. But from TV studio to TV studio, Lammy and Mandelson will have those quotes hung about their necks as if they were modern-day ancient mariners. Starmer’s innate caution in public utterance, in this area at least, has inured him.
Indeed, the repercussions of his unusual boldness in picking Mandelson over a career diplomat may discourage Starmer from ever thinking imaginatively again.
Most members of the Trump administration would be naturally hostile to a Labour government even without its leading figures insulting their boss or campaigning for his opponent. Certainly, the grounds for disagreement are great: the threat of tariffs, demanded increases in defence spending, the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, co-operation with China and support for Ukraine.
Thus Morgan McSweeney – architect of Labour’s 2024 victory, planner of its re-election and Starmer’s chief of staff – flew out to meet Susie Wiles, his equivalent in the White House. (It did not, a person privy to such information told me, go well. Voices were raised.)
Elon Musk, this moment’s most prominent presidential acolyte inveighed on X, “Starmer must go”, adding for good measure, “He is a national embarrassment.” It is indeed embarrassing – for Starmer – but he will be consoled with the well-founded suspicion that the life-expectancy of Musk and Trump’s tech bromance will be much less than four years.
Cause for self-reflection
The return of Trump, emboldened and more powerful than before, has effectively forced the posing of the age-old question: over which expanse of sea should Britain gaze – the Channel or the Atlantic? Churchill thought it should – and that only Britain could – do both.
Hence, perhaps, Trump’s own public statement about the possible destination of his first international trip: “It could be UK. Traditionally, it’s been UK.”
It hasn’t. Only Jimmy Carter, in 1977, and Joe Biden, in 2021, visited the UK first – and then because of summits. More than a few presidents (most recently Ford and Johnson) didn’t visit at all.
But even what might have been a supportive comment was laced with arsenic: “Last time, I went to Saudi Arabia because they agreed to buy 450 billion dollars’ worth of United States merchandise … And if that offer were right, I’d do that again.” Which at least may free the British government to be as unsentimentally transactional.
Trump and Starmer achieved big victories, albeit when painted in the most flattering terms. Starmer’s came on a historically low combination of vote share and voter turnout, Trump’s with fewer votes than Biden. But Trump will like that Starmer won a large majority. When May managed to lose hers in 2017, what little respect Trump had for her went with it.
Starmer would much rather have had four years with Biden, and even more with Harris, another public prosecutor of the left. But he has to deal with the transatlantic relationship as it is, rather than as he would wish it to be, and this one is most unlikely to be special.
Starmer is, moreover, a realist. Which is why he’ll also know that the second Trump presidency will be much more consequential than the first. Caution may have limited effect.
Martin Farr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: Government of the Russian Federation – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
January 31, 2025
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Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed developments in eliminating the consequences of emergencies in the Black Sea
During a working visit to Anapa, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko met with scientists and assessed innovative developments and technological solutions for eliminating the consequences of an emergency situation (ES) in connection with an oil spill in the Black Sea.
The Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that, on the instructions of President Vladimir Putin, a government commission headed by Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev has been created to coordinate the process of eliminating the consequences of the fuel oil spill. A separate direction on science is led by Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov.
“Scientists said an important thing: they do not compete in technology, but complement each other and find symbiosis. Cooperation is extremely important, because President Vladimir Putin instructed us to develop technologies for the future so that we can quickly respond and help others. It is also necessary to solve current issues. Now we are faced with the task of defining clear steps for testing developments and scaling them in real conditions,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko.
At the experimental site, the Tyumen Industrial University demonstrated a technology for cleaning water areas using magnetically sensitive materials introduced by mobile means, including UAVs. Both ready-made powders and industrial waste are used.
The Institute of Control Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences presented an autonomous robot for monitoring the surface, underwater and in the air. The robot detects objects using AI, conducts additional examination and can be used for environmental monitoring and other purposes.
Sibur and the Chemistry Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University demonstrated samples of polyurethane foams and fibers to improve fuel oil collection using polymer networks and sorption materials.
Kuban State University and Bauman Moscow State Technical University presented the results of research on the use of biopreparations and bacteria for the decomposition of fuel oil in the soil. For the additional purification of sands, it is planned to use oxidative methods and biopreparations.
Tomsk State University presented the “Aeroshup” technology, based on the flotation principle. Air bubbles separate pollutants from the bottom of a reservoir, raising them to the surface for further collection. It is planned to adapt the technology to marine conditions using a remotely operated unmanned underwater vehicle (ROV) for work at depths of up to 100 m.
Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education Denis Sekirinsky noted that, on the instructions of the Government, the existing scientific and technical groundwork is being analyzed, and interaction with the operational headquarters is underway. The interdepartmental working group formed in the Ministry from leading scientists, business representatives and interested executive authorities works on a permanent basis, providing the necessary consultations to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources.
“Today we presented key scientific and technical developments that we are beginning to test and apply to solve problems of eliminating the consequences of the accident. This experience will certainly be useful in the future if a similar incident occurs in one or another part of the world,” said Denis Sekirinsky.
Krasnodar Region Governor Veniamin Kondratyev noted that a working group was created at the regional level, which included leading research centers of the region, Moscow and Sevastopol. In total, there are about 40 scientists, representatives of production and scientific enterprises and associations. Experts have already reviewed 84 proposals for cleaning contaminated sand and recycling petroleum products.
“Among the solutions that have already been tested is the development of Skoltech scientist Vladimir Kalyaev, who was one of the first to arrive in the region – in Anapa, more than 10 km of protective sand embankments have already been covered with absorbent fabric. In the village of Voskresensky, an industrial installation called “Grokhot” is operating at the temporary accumulation site for oil-contaminated sand, and mechanized seeders are used on the beaches. We need to find a technology as soon as possible that will allow us to clean the soil in the beach area as efficiently as possible,” said Veniamin Kondratyev.
In addition, Dmitry Chernyshenko held a meeting on the development and implementation of scientific solutions aimed at eliminating the consequences of an emergency situation in connection with an oil spill in the Black Sea.
It was attended by the Governor of Krasnodar Krai Veniamin Kondratyev, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Maxim Korolkov, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education Denis Sekirinsky, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Stepan Kalmykov, heads of scientific organizations and universities.
The participants discussed the status of the implementation of the Government’s instruction on organizing the work on selecting promising solutions to eliminate the short-term and long-term consequences of oil spills. The heads of scientific organizations also heard reports on technologies for monitoring and forecasting the state of fuel oil pollution.
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.
Many wars on Earth start over territorial disputes. In order to avoid such disputes in outer space, nations should consider enacting national laws that specify the extent of each settler’s authority in outer space and provide a process to resolve conflicts.
Space is an international area, and companies and individuals are free to land their space objects – including satellites, human-crewed and robotic spacecraft and human-inhabited facilities – on celestial bodies and conduct operations anywhere they please. This includes both outer space and celestial bodies such as the Moon.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits territorial claims in outer space and on celestial bodies in order to avoid disputes. But without national laws governing space settlers, a nation might attempt to protect its citizens’ and companies’ interests by withdrawing from the treaty. They could then claim the territory where its citizens have placed their space objects.
Nations enforce territorial claims through military force, which would likely cost money and lives. An alternative to territorial claims, which I’ve been investigating and have come to prefer, would be to enact real property rights that are consistent with the Outer Space Treaty.
Territorial claims can be asserted only by national governments, while property rights apply to private citizens, companies and national governments that own property. A property rights law could specify how much authority settlers have and protect their investments in outer space and on celestial bodies.
The Outer Space Treaty
In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty went into effect. As of January 2025, 115 countries are party to this treaty, including the United States and most nations that have a space program.
The Outer Space Treaty is the main international agreement governing outer space. However, it is not self-executing.
The Outer Space Treaty outlines principles for the peaceful exploration and use of outer space and celestial bodies. However, the treaty does not specify how it will apply to the citizens and companies of nations that are parties to the treaty.
For this reason, the Outer Space Treaty is largely not a self-executing treaty. This means U.S. courts cannot apply the terms of the treaty to individual citizens and companies. For that to happen, the United States would need to enact national legislation that explains how the terms of the treaty apply to nongovernmental entities.
One article of the Outer Space Treaty says that participating countries should make sure that all of their citizens’ space activities comply with the treaty’s terms. Another article then gives these nations the authority to enact laws governing their citizens’ and companies’ private space activities.
This is particularly relevant to the U.S., where commercial activity in space is rapidly increasing.
UN Charter
It is important to note that the Outer Space Treaty requires participating nations to comply with international law and the United Nations Charter.
In the U.N. Charter, there are two international law concepts that are relevant to property rights. One is a country’s right to defend itself, and the other is the noninterference principle.
The international law principle of noninterference gives nations the right to exclude others from their space objects and the areas where they have ongoing activity.
But how will nations apply this concept to their private citizens and companies? Do individual people and companies have the right to exclude others in order to prevent interference with their activities? What can they do if a foreign person interferes or causes damage?
The noninterference principle in the U.N. Charter governs relations between nations, not individuals. Consequently, U.S. courts likely wouldn’t enforce the noninterference principle in a case involving two private parties.
So, U.S. citizens and companies do not have the right to exclude others from their space objects and areas of ongoing activity unless the U.S. enacts legislation giving them that right.
The accords explain how important components of the Outer Space Treaty will apply to private space activities. One section of the accords allows for safety zones, where public and private personnel, equipment and operations are protected from harmful interference by other people. The rights to self-defense and noninterference from the U.N. Charter provide a legal basis for safety zones.
Aside from satellite and rocket-launch regulations, the United States has enacted only a few laws – including the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 – to govern private activities in outer space and on celestial bodies.
As part of this act, any U.S. citizen collecting mineral resources in outer space or on celestial bodies has a right to own, transport, use and sell those resources. This act is an example of national legislation that clarifies how the Outer Space Treaty applies to U.S. citizens and companies.
Property rights
Enacting property rights for outer space would make it clear what rights and obligations property owners have and the extent of their authority over their property.
All nations on Earth have a form of property rights in their legal systems. Property rights typically include the rights to possess, control, develop, exclude, enjoy, sell, lease and mortgage properties. Enacting real property rights in space would create a marketplace for buying, selling, renting and mortgaging property.
Because the Outer Space Treaty prohibits territorial claims, space property rights would not necessarily be “land grabs.” Property rights would operate a little differently in space than on Earth.
Property rights in space would have to be based on the authority that the Outer Space Treaty gives to nations. This authority allows them to govern their citizens and their assets by enacting laws and enforcing them in their courts.
Space property rights would include safety zones around property to prevent interference. So, people would have to get the property owner’s permission before entering a safety zone.
If a U.S. property owner were to sell a space property to a foreign citizen or company, the space objects on the property would have to stay on the property or be replaced with the purchaser’s space objects. That would ensure that the owner’s country still has authority over the property.
Also, if someone transferred their space objects to a foreign citizen or company, the buyer would have to change their objects’ international registration, which would give the buyer’s nation authority over the space objects and the surrounding property.
Nations could likely avoid some territorial disputes if they enact real property laws in space that clearly describe how national authority over property changes when it is sold. Enacting property rights could reduce the legal risks for commercial space companies and support the permanent settlement of outer space and celestial bodies.
U.S. property rights law could also contain a reciprocity provision, which would encourage other nations to pass similar laws and allow participating countries to mutually recognize each other’s property rights.
With a reciprocity provision, property rights could support economic development as commercial companies around the world begin to look to outer space as the next big area of economic growth.
Wayne N White Jr consults with One Space Technologies Inc. He is a member and former Director of The National Space Society and an Associate Fellow of AIAA.
Assistant professor Frank Cackowski, left, and researcher Steven Zielske at Wayne State University in Detroit became suspicious of a paper on cancer research that was eventually retracted.Amy Sacka, CC BY-ND
Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research. These paper mills are profiting by undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives.
It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the problem is. About 55,000 scholarly papers have been retracted to date, for a variety of reasons, but scientists and companies who screen the scientific literature for telltale signs of fraud estimate that there are many more fake papers circulating – possibly as many as several hundred thousand. This fake research can confound legitimate researchers who must wade through dense equations, evidence, images and methodologies, only to find that they were made up.
Even when bogus papers are spotted – usually by amateur sleuths on their own time – academic journals are often slow to retract the papers, allowing the articles to taint what many consider sacrosanct: the vast global library of scholarly work that introduces new ideas, reviews and other research and discusses findings.
These fake papers are slowing research that has helped millions of people with lifesaving medicine and therapies, from cancer to COVID-19. Analysts’ data shows that fields related to cancer and medicine are particularly hard-hit, while areas such as philosophy and art are less affected.
To better understand the scope, ramifications and potential solutions of this metastasizing assault on science, we – a contributing editor at Retraction Watch, a website that reports on retractions of scientific papers and related topics, and two computer scientists at France’s Université Toulouse III–Paul Sabatier and Université Grenoble Alpes who specialize in detecting bogus publications – spent six months investigating paper mills.
Frank Cackowski at Detroit’s Wayne State University was confused.
The oncologist was studying a sequence of chemical reactions in cells to see whether they could be a target for drugs against prostate cancer. A paper from 2018 in the American Journal of Cancer Research piqued his interest when he read that a little-known molecule called SNHG1 might interact with the chemical reactions he was exploring. He and fellow Wayne State researcher Steven Zielske began experiments but found no link.
Meanwhile, Zielske had grown suspicious of the paper. Two graphs showing results for different cell lines were identical, he noticed, which “would be like pouring water into two glasses with your eyes closed and the levels coming out exactly the same.” Another graph and a table in the article also inexplicably contained identical data.
Zielske described his misgivings in an anonymous post in 2020 at PubPeer, an online forum where many scientists report potential research misconduct, and also contacted the journal’s editor. The journal pulled the paper, citing “falsified materials and/or data.”
“Science is hard enough as it is if people are actually being genuine and trying to do real work,” said Cackowski, who also works at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Michigan.
Wayne State scientists Cackowsi and Zielske carried out experiments based on a paper they later found to contain false data. Amy Sacka, CC BY-ND
Legitimate academic journals evaluate papers before publication by having other researchers in the field carefully read them over. But this peer review process is far from perfect. Reviewers volunteer their time, typically assume research is real and so don’t look for fraud.
It’s unclear when paper mills began to operate at scale. The earliest suspected paper mill article retracted was published in 2004, according to the Retraction Watch database, which details retractions and is operated by The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch.
An analysis of 53,000 papers submitted to six publishers – but not necessarily published – found 2% to 46% suspect submissions across journals. The American publisher Wiley, which has retracted more than 11,300 articles and closed 19 heavily affected journals in its erstwhile Hindawi division, said its new paper mill detection tool flags up to 1 in 7 submissions.
As many as 2% of the several million scientific works published in 2022 were milled, according to Adam Day, who directs Clear Skies, a company in London that develops tools to spot fake papers. Some fields are worse than others: biology and medicine are closer to 3%, and some subfields, such as cancer, may be much larger, Day said.
The paper mill problem is “absolutely huge,” said Sabina Alam, director of Publishing Ethics and Integrity at Taylor & Francis, a major academic publisher. In 2019, none of the 175 ethics cases escalated to her team was about paper mills, Alam said. Ethics cases include submissions and already published papers. “We had almost 4,000 cases” in 2023, she said. “And half of those were paper mills.”
The Cochrane Collaboration has a policy excluding suspect studies from its analyses of medical evidence and is developing a tool to spot problematic medical trials. And publishers have begun to share data and technologies among themselves to combat fraud, including image fraud.
Technology startups are also offering help. The website Argos, launched in September 2024 by Scitility, an alert service based in Sparks, Nevada, allows authors to check collaborators for retractions or misconduct. Morressier, a scientific conference and communications company in Berlin, offers research integrity tools. Paper-checking tools include Signals, by London-based Research Signals, and Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm.
But Alam acknowledges that the fight against paper mills won’t be won as long as the booming demand for papers remains.
Today’s commercial publishing is part of the problem, Byrne said. Cleaning up the literature is a vast and expensive undertaking. “Either we have to monetize corrections such that publishers are paid for their work, or forget the publishers and do it ourselves,” she said.
There’s a fundamental bias in for-profit publishing: “We pay them for accepting papers,” said Bodo Stern, a former editor of the journal Cell and chief of Strategic Initiatives at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit research organization and funder in Chevy Chase, Maryland. With more than 50,000 journals on the market, bad papers shopped around long enough eventually find a home, Stern said.
To prevent this, we could stop paying journals for accepting papers and look at them as public utilities that serve a greater good. “We should pay for transparent and rigorous quality-control mechanisms,” he said.
Peer review, meanwhile, “should be recognized as a true scholarly product, just like the original article,” Stern said. And journals should make all peer-review reports publicly available, even for manuscripts they turn down.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. This is a condensed version. To learn more about how fraudsters around the globe use paper mills to enrich themselves and harm scientific research, read the full version.
Labbé receives funding from the European Research Council.
He has also received funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR), and the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
Labbé has been in touch with most of the major publishers and their integrity officers, offering pro-bono consulting regarding detection tools to various actors in the field including STM-Hub and Morressier.
Cabanac receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) and the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). He is the administrator of the Problematic Paper Screener, a public platform that uses metadata from Digital Science and PubPeer via no-cost agreements. Cabanac has been in touch with most of the major publishers and their integrity officers, offering pro bono consulting regarding detection tools to various actors in the field including ClearSkies, Morressier, River Valley, Signals, and STM.
Frederik Joelving does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ed Turner, Reader in Politics, Co-Director, Aston Centre for Europe, Aston University
A vote in Germany’s national parliament (Bundestag) has led to fears that the firewall supposedly separating mainstream political parties and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been blown apart.
Until now, Germany’s largest parties, including the union of Christian democratic parties the CDU and CSU, and the social democrat SPD, have ruled out any form of cooperation with the AfD. Friedrich Merz, CDU leader and most likely chancellor following the election to be held on February 23, had previously said that decisions in the Bundestag should not be passed if they relied on AfD votes.
And while Merz’s commitment to the firewall had occasionally wavered in some interviews, the CDU had resisted any temptation to do deals with the AfD nationally or in state parliaments. There is some cooperation on a local level, but beyond a vote on local taxation in Thuringia in 2023, mainstream parties have eschewed any hint of state or national level cooperation.
That has now changed. Apparently in response to the AfD’s promising polling ahead of the election on February 23, the CDU has tacked dramatically to the right on immigration policy. Merz introduced a five-point plan into the Bundestag proposing a significant tightening of Germany’s immigration system.
Most radical among the proposals is the reintroduction of border controls at German borders and for migrants without permission to reside in Germany to be turned back. These measures would be questionable, at best, in their conformity with European law.
Merz made it plain he would put this plan to a vote, even if it could pass only with AfD support. This it did, by 348 to 345. The CDU and its sister party the CSU voted in favour, alongside the AfD and the Free Democratic Party (barring a handful of rebels). The SPD, Greens and Left party voted against while the anti-immigration “left populist” Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance abstained.
This was not a binding vote but Merz can now push for a more formal process to make his five-point plan law. It is also highly symbolic.
The AfD was gleeful, hailing a “turning point”, or Zeitenwende, in migration policy. It celebrated the “fall of the firewall” and a “great day for democracy”. The SPD and Greens were furious, with outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz accusing Merz of breaking his word – and breaking with the tradition of former chancellors from Konrad Adenauer to Angela Merkel by relying on votes from the far right. Merkel subsequently underlined Scholz’s point by criticising Merz’s move.
The Greens talked of a “dark day for our democracy”. A Left Party parliamentarian called out “to the barricades”, and some spontaneous demonstrations occurred around the country. Merz said he “regretted” that the vote had only been possible with AfD support but added that “doing the right thing does not become wrong when the wrong people – the AfD – vote for it”.
An election ahead
Merz’s changed position on immigration and the AfD has come a few weeks ahead of an election that had initially got off to a slow start. The campaign is now suddenly polarised and angry on all sides.
The election is being held because the three-party governing coalition of social democratic SPD, Greens and liberal FDP collapsed in November over disputes on fiscal policy. Opinion polls have been quite stable, showing the CDU/CSU leading. However, Merz’s party would need a coalition partner.
The AfD has been consistently in second place but the firewall would prevent a coalition. This helps explain why reactions to the Bundestag vote have been so fierce.
And while the government collapsed because of disagreements over the economy, several high-profile stabbings by migrants have turned this into an election about immigration. Indeed, migration, asylum and security questions are now right at the top of the list of voters’ concerns.
The AfD has the wind in its sails and is basking in the glow of Elon Musk’s noisy endorsements. It has adopted an even more hardline manifesto than its previous offerings, proposing “remigration” as a policy – code for removing legal migrants who are no longer welcome.
However, it is important to note that with this vote, Merz has not declared open season for a coalition with the AfD. And if a coalition was formed with the SPD or Greens, there is no way it would survive Merz turning to the AfD for support on issues where the coalition partner disagreed.
Scholz has warned of the risk of events similar to Austria, where the CDU/CSU’s sister party, the ÖVP, initially ruled out going into government with the far-right FPÖ but changed its stance when negotiations with mainstream parties failed. Merz insists this won’t happen but moderate CDU/CSU voters may heed Scholz’s warnings and look elsewhere. Merz’s gamble is that such losses would be offset by voters who support a harder line on migration – and even that he will win voters back from the AfD.
These events highlight the debate being had ever more often across Europe. Are far-right parties weakened if their positions are, to a degree, accommodated by the political mainstream? Or does this in fact strengthen and embolden them?
That debate will continue but there are more immediate consequences in the wake of the Bundestag vote. Germany’s neighbours will look on uneasily, both because of the febrile political atmosphere in the largest EU member state at a time of substantial geopolitical pressure and because, if Germany were to be found to have set aside European law, that could trigger a total unravelling.
Ed Turner receives funding from the German Academic Exchange Service.
“Just Because I am a Librarian doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.”
With this breezy pronouncement, Belle da Costa Greene handily differentiated herself from most librarians.
She stood out for other reasons, too.
In the early 20th century – a time when men held most positions of authority – Greene was a celebrated book agent, a curator and the first director of the Morgan Library. She also earned US$10,000 a year, about $280,000 today, while other librarians were making roughly $400.
She was also a Black woman who passed as white.
Born in 1879, Belle was the daughter of two light-skinned Black Americans, Genevieve Fleet and Richard T. Greener, the first Black man to graduate from Harvard. When the two separated in 1897, Fleet changed the family’s last name to Greene and, along with her five children, crossed the color line. Belle Marion Greener became Belle da Costa Greene – the “da Costa” a subtle claim to her Portuguese ancestry.
When banking magnate J.P. Morgan sought a librarian in 1905, his nephew Junius Morgan recommended Greene, who had been one of his co-workers at the Princeton Library.
Henceforth, Greene’s life didn’t just kick into a higher gear. It was supercharged. She became a lively fixture at social gatherings among America’s wealthiest families. Her world encompassed Gilded Age mansions, country retreats, rare book enclaves, auction houses, museums and art galleries. Bold, vivacious and glamorous, the keenly intelligent Greene attracted attention wherever she went.
I found myself drawn to the worlds Greene entered and the people she described in her lively letters to her lover, art scholar Bernard Berenson. In 2024, I published a book, “Becoming Belle Da Costa Greene,” which explores her voice, her self-invention, her love of art and literature, and her path-breaking work as a librarian.
Yet I’m often asked whether Greene mentions her passing as white in her writings. She did not. Greene was one of hundreds of thousands of light-skinned Black Americans who passed as white in the Jim Crow era. While speculation about Greene’s background circulated in her lifetime, nothing was confirmed until historian Jean Strouse revealed the identities of Greene’s parents in her 1999 biography, “Morgan: American Financier.” Until that point, only Greene’s mother and siblings knew the story of their Black heritage.
“Passing” can often raise more questions than answers. But Greene did not largely define herself through one category, such as her racial identity. Instead, she constructed a self through the things she loved.
‘I love this life – don’t you?’
In my view, any consideration of Greene’s attitudes toward her own race must remain an open question. And uncertainty can be acknowledged – even embraced – with judgments suspended.
The Morgan Library & Museum currently has an exhibition on Greene that will run until May 4, 2025 – one that’s already generated debates about Greene and the significance of her passing.
One section of the exhibition, “Questioning the Color Line,” includes novels on passing, paintings such as Archibald J. Motley Jr.’s “The Octoroon Girl,” photographs of Greene, and clips from Oscar Micheaux’s 1932 film “Veiled Aristocrats” and John M. Stahl’s 1934 film “Imitation of Life,” which portray painful scenes between white-passing characters and their family members.
None of these objects clarifies Greene’s particular relationship to passing. Instead, they place the librarian within melodramatic and conventional representations about passing that stress self-division and angst.
We don’t know – perhaps we will never know – whether Greene had similar moments of self-doubt.
Yet some critics have concluded as much. In his review of the exhibition for The New Yorker, critic Hilton Als laments what Greene’s passing had cost her. He describes her as a “girl who loved power,” a woman who “became a member of another race – not Black or white but alternately grandiose and self-despising.”
There’s a lot of certainty in such a pronouncement – and scant evidence furnished to support such declarations.
New York Times columnist John McWhorter takes issue with Als’s depiction of the librarian’s passing in a Jan. 23, 2025, article.
Citing passages from her letters in which Greene excitedly describes reading the Arabic folktales “The Thousand and One Nights” and seeing exhibitions of modern art, McWhorter asks readers to reconsider this “witty, puckish soul who savored books and art” and “had an active social life.”
What if Greene gave her race little thought, McWhorter wonders. What if she simply saw the notion of race and racial categorization as “a fiction” and instead lived her life to its fullest? Of course, her light skin afforded her the opportunity that other Black people of her era didn’t have. But does that necessarily mean that she was self-loathing or conflicted?
“[W]e are all wearing trousers and I love them,” Greene writes in one letter to Berenson, adding, “The Library grows more wonderful every day and I am terribly happy in my work here … I love this life – don’t you?”
The connoisseur was not the only contemporary who admired Greene’s effervescence. In “The Living Present,” an account of the activities of women before and after World War II, Greene’s friend Gertrude Atherton paid tribute to Greene, a “girl so fond of society, so fashionable in dress and appointments” that she could impress any stranger with her “overflowing joie de vivre.”
Greene dressed to be noticed – and she was. Meta Harrsen, the librarian Greene hired in 1922, offers a rare eye-witness account. On the day Greene interviewed Harrsen, “she wore a dress of dark red Italian brocade shot with silver threads, a gold braided girdle, and an emerald necklace.”
Greene understood well the power of clothes to project a distinct identity – a highly crafted one in this case, and one befitting a connoisseur of rare books.
At that, she excelled. She became known for her stunning acquisition coups: her purchase of 16 rare editions of the works of English printer William Caxton at an auction; her procurement of the highly coveted Crusader’s Bible through a private negotiation; and her acquisition of the Spanish Apocalypse Commentary, a medieval text written by a Spanish monk that Greene was able to buy at a steep discount.
To me, a 1915 photo captures Greene’s confidence and aura more than any other image of the librarian.
She posed in her home and wasn’t shot in soft focus with a studio backdrop as other photographs tend to portray her. Sitting on the arm of a large chair upholstered in a tapestry weave, she wears an elaborate hat with a large ostrich plume, a high-necked blouse under a long, loosely belted jacket with a ruffled cuff over a long dark skirt. The decor is no less striking: Flemish tapestries decorate the walls behind her, and a liturgical vestment is draped over the bookcase. Looking directly at the viewer, Greene is assured and poised.
Greene’s stylish flair was not simply decorative. It was a testament to her vibrant personality and the joy she took in her work. Rather than judge her according to contemporary notions of racial identity, I prefer to marvel over her achievements and how she became a model for generations of future librarians.
Greene didn’t just pass. She surpassed – in spectacular ways.
Deborah W. Parker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Headline: ICC announces new editorial board for Dispute Resolution Bulletin
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has appointed new co-editors-in-chief and editorial board members of the ICC Dispute Resolution Bulletin. The Bulletin is ICC’s flagship, triannual journal focused on arbitration and other methods of dispute resolution. Editorial board members are highly-regarded dispute resolution practitioners from around the world, with diverse backgrounds. With their involvement, the Bulletin will remain one of the most essential go-to resources on dispute prevention and resolution.
Since the first edition in 1990, the Bulletin has been at the forefront of providing up-to-date developments in international arbitration and commentaries on ICC dispute resolution and arbitral awards. The Bulletin offers legal updates, expert insights and studies, best practices and analysis of ICC awards. It also reports on ICC events and trainings, and features book reviews for dispute resolution practitioners.
Claudia Salomon, President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, said:
“In line with the ICC Court pledge to drive thought leadership, the new co-editors in chief and editorial board members will ensure that the Bulletin continues to generate innovative ideas, and build capacity, offering readers a greater understanding of the arbitration and ADR process.”
Alexander G. Fessas, Director of ICC Dispute Resolution Services and Secretary General of the ICC Court, said:
“As the leading institution in dispute resolution, ICC plays a critical role in promoting access to justice and the rule of law. The Bulletin serves as a vital platform for analysis and debate, fostering the safeguard of the legitimacy of arbitration and ADR, and maximising the potential of all in the legal and business communities. We are confident that, with the new editorial board, the Bulletin’s relevance and reach will continue to grow exponentially.”
The Bulletin’s gender-balanced editorial board comprises 20 members based in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the United States.
The Bulletin is led by two co-editors-in-chief: Rafael Rincón, a partner at Rincón Castro Abogados in Colombia, and Sara Nadeau Seguin, a partner at Teynier Pic in France. Both were members of the board during the previous mandate. They succeed Julien Fouret and Yasmine Lahlou, who were appointed as members of the ICC Court in July 2024.
The 2025-2027 ICC Bulletin editorial board members are:
Sara Nadeau Seguin, Co-Editor in Chief, Partner, Teynier Pic, France
Rafael Rincón, Co-Editor in Chief, Partner, Rincón Castro Abogados, Colombia
Aysha Abdulla Mutaywea, Partner, MENA Chambers, Bahrain
Marie-Isabelle Delleur, Counsel, Clifford Chance, Brazil
*Farouk El-Hosseny, Senior Associate, Three Crowns, United Kingdom
*Ahmed Habib, Senior Associate, DWF, Qatar
*Imad Khan, Partner, Winston & Strawn, United States of America (Houston)
*Damien Nyer, Partner, White & Case, United States of America (New York)
*Olena Perepelynska, Partner and Head of International Arbitration, Integrites, Ukraine
*Sulabh Rewari, Partner, Keystone, India
*Michele Sabatini, Partner, Arblit, Italy
Mikaël Schinazi, Associate, Jones Day, France
Anna Secomb, Arbitrator, Singapore
*Leyou Tameru, Founder, I-Arb Africa, Ethiopia
Mireille Taok, International Arbitrator, Lawyer, and University Lecturer, United Arab Emirates
Monty Taylor, Barrister, Tenth Floor Chambers, Australia
Sylvia Tee, Partner, Ashurst, China
*Angeline Welsh, Barrister, Essex Chambers, United Kingdom
* Member during the previous mandate, which is renewable once.
The Bulletin is published three times a year with the next edition due in March 2025. The latest edition of the ICC Dispute Resolution Bulletin is freely available for download in the ICC Dispute Resolution Library.
Many of us have witnessed unusual and even anti-social behaviour at an airport or on a flight. These may range from benign acts such as sleeping on the floor or doing yoga in front of the flight information display system to serious incidents like early morning drunken arguments or even trying to open the aeroplane doors mid-flight.
These more sinister problems appear to have worsened over recent years, with increasing air rage incidents and flight diversions. Such incidents have led to calls to reduce or even ban the sale of alcohol at airports and on planes. RyanAir, for example, has called for a two-drink limit at airport bars to stop drunken incidents on planes.
But what is it about airports that make us behave differently? Let’s take a look at the psychology.
Many holidaymakers feel that the adventure begins at the airport, putting them in a different frame of mind to normal. They are eager to begin their one or two weeks’ of relaxed hedonism with a flourish.
Others, however, are anxious about flying, which may make them act out of character or take refuge in alcohol. The noise and crowds of airports doesn’t help either. As the field of environmental psychology has demonstrated, human beings are very sensitive to our immediate surroundings, and can easily become “overloaded” by stressors such as crowds and noise.
Stress and anxiety produce irritability, both on a temporary and ongoing basis. People who are generally anxious are more prone to anger. And a temporary anxious mood often triggers angry outbursts.
In my view, we also need to look at the airport from a psychogeographic perspective. Psychogeography studies the effect of places on people’s emotions and behaviour, particularly urban environments.
In Celtic cultures, there is a concept of special “thin places” – often sacred groves or forests – where the veil between the material and spiritual world is thin. In thin places, we are between two realms, neither fully in one place nor another.
In the modern technological world, airports can also be seen as “thin places”. They are liminal zones where boundaries fade. On a literal level, national borders dissolve. Once we pass through security, we enter a no man’s land, between countries. The concept of place becomes hazy.
In a similar way, time becomes a hazy concept at airports. About to step on a plane, we are in a liminal space between two time zones, about to leap forward in time, or even head back into the past. Some flights across the US – such as Atlanta to Alabama – land earlier than departure time, as they cross time zones. Being able to manage our time gives us a sense of control over our lives. Losing this may be another source of anxiety.
In another sense, airports are a zone of absence, where the present moment is unwelcome. Everyone’s attention turns towards the future, to their flights and the adventures ahead of them when they arrive at their destination. This intense future focus often brings frustration, especially if flights are delayed.
Personal boundaries also become fluid. As well as anti-social behaviour, airports may play host to pro-social behaviour, where strangers share their travel and holiday plans, speaking with unusual intimacy. In no man’s land, normal social inhibitions don’t apply. And alcohol can further lubricate this social cohesion.
Due to the haziness of time and place, airports create a sense of disorientation. We define ourselves in terms of time and place. We know who we are in relation to our daily routines and our familiar environments. We also define ourselves in terms of nationality. Without such markers, we may feel adrift. Whether caused by psychological or environmental factors, and even if only temporary, disorientation can have detrimental effects.
Liberating effects
On the plus side, all of this may have a liberating effect for some of us. As I point out in my book Time Expansion Experiences, we normally view time as an enemy that steals the moments of our lives and oppresses us with deadlines. So to step outside time sometimes feels like being let out of prison.
The same applies to identity. A sense of identity is important to our psychological health, but can become constricting. Like actors who are stuck playing the same character in a soap opera week after week, we enjoy the security of our roles but long to test and stretch ourselves with new challenges. So to step outside our normal routines and environments feels invigorating. Ideally, the freedom that begins at the airport continues throughout our foreign adventures.
Ultimately, whether we feel anxious or liberated, we may end up acting out of character.
In line with the theories of psychologist Sigmund Freud, this could be interpreted as a shift from our normal civilised ego to the primitive, instinctive part of the psyche, which Freud called the id. According to Freud, the id is the site of our desires and drives, our emotion and aggression, and it demands instant gratification. The id is normally held in check by the ego, but is always liable to break through, especially when our inhibitions are loosened by alcohol or drugs.
Outside normal restraints, some holidaymakers allow their id to express itself as soon as they pass through security. And once they become intoxicated, the id is completely dominant, and liable to cause mayhem.
Banning alcohol from airports may sound draconian. But given that there are so many factors that encourage anti-social behaviour, it is difficult to think of any other solution. In a situation when boundaries break down, leading to possible chaos, a legal boundary may be the only hope.
Steve Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Headline: New AI Hub coming in partnership with State of New Jersey, Princeton University and CoreWeave
Major artificial intelligence Hub will bolster state’s innovation economy
Microsoft, CoreWeave, New Jersey Economic Development Authority and Princeton University expected to invest over $72 million to support the long-term success of the Hub
TRENTON, N.J. (Jan. 31, 2025) – Governor Phil Murphy and Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber on Friday announced thatMicrosoftandCoreWeavewill join the state and Princeton as founding partners in the NJ AI Hub. The NJ AI Hub will serve as a state-of-the-art, collaborative ecosystem that integrates world-class research, innovation, education and workforce development. As part of this investment in the NJ AI Hub, Microsoft will leverage itsTechSpark programto provide expertise and resources for AI skilling and workforce development to create opportunities for innovation in New Jersey and the region.
The NJ AI Hub will help position New Jersey as a leading East Coast center for AI innovation. It will be located along Route 1 — New Jersey’s innovation corridor — at 619 Alexander Road in Princeton, in space provided by Princeton University.
“As the AI industry rapidly evolves, it’s imperative that we capitalize on this moment in New Jersey. I’m incredibly proud of this partnership with the top leaders in the industry and higher education, which further establishes our state as a hub for cutting-edge AI innovation and talent,” said Governor Murphy. “AI’s economic and innovation potential is vast, giving us the chance to take our state to new heights. This partnership will not only solidify New Jersey’s position as a global technology leader, it will also attract high-paying, sustainable jobs for our residents, allowing for a stronger and more prosperous future for our state.”
“The addition of Microsoft and CoreWeave as founding partners of the NJ AI Hub demonstrates how government, higher education and the corporate sector are coming together to advance AI innovation and the regional innovation ecosystem — two of Princeton’s highest priorities,” President Eisgruber said. “I’m eager to see many of the state’s other excellent colleges and universities join this effort as its development continues.”
“New Jersey has long been at the forefront of American innovation, and AI is the next chapter of this journey,” said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft. “By leveraging the strengths of the private sector, Princeton and the state of New Jersey, our goal is to build a thriving regional AI economy that not only drives economic growth but sets a new standard for research, development and workforce development.”
“This collaboration represents the best of what private-public partnerships can achieve, bringing together the brightest minds from government, academia, the business community and our team of experts to foster groundbreaking AI innovation in New Jersey,” said Brian Venturo, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at CoreWeave. “Together, we’re advancing the future of technology while driving meaningful economic growth and strengthening New Jersey’s role as a leader in the global AI landscape. New Jersey is our home, and we’re excited to continue our partnership with the state by making it a leader in AI advancement.”
“AI is rapidly evolving, and New Jersey is capitalizing on this moment to cement our place as a national leader in the industry. By bringing together world-class leaders like Princeton, Microsoft and CoreWeave, Governor Murphy is building upon the Garden State’s long-standing legacy in innovation and helping advance cutting-edge AI technologies,” said New Jersey Economic Development Authority Chief Executive Officer Tim Sullivan. “The opportunity presented by AI aligns with Governor Murphy’s vision for cultivating high-growth sectors, with the goal of creating family-sustaining career opportunities. Showcasing New Jersey’s bustling innovation community, talent pool and robust resources will help AI companies recognize the state’s value proposition for growing innovative companies of the future.”
Microsoft, CoreWeave, the NJEDA and Princeton University are founding equity partners in the newly created NJ AI Hub. Together, they expect to invest over $72 million to support the long-term success of the Hub, including up to $25 million of nonbinding commitment from the NJEDA.
A portion of NJEDA’s and CoreWeave’s committed funding will include a planned NJ AI Venture Fund that will support innovation commercialization through equity investments.
Microsoft, CoreWeave, the NJEDA, and Princeton University will focus on the following three pillars of programming at the NJ AI Hub:
Research and development: The NJ AI Hub will help companies across a range of industry sectors integrate and apply AI in their businesses and use it to advance their research and development efforts. The Hub will focus on applications of AI in several industry sectors that have strong footprints in New Jersey, such as the life sciences, clean energy and climate resilience, telecommunications and cybersecurity, and infrastructure and logistics. The NJ AI Hub will also actively engage New Jersey’s research universities on applied research in AI and will host events to connect companies developing and using AI tools with cutting-edge research and potential collaborators.
Commercializing and accelerating innovation: An AI accelerator will be operated at the NJ AI Hub, which will help facilitate the growth of the early-stage AI ecosystem in New Jersey. The accelerator will host cohorts of startup ventures and will provide them with essential support services such as workspace, compute power, legal assistance and business development advice. In addition, these startups will have coordinated access to the NJ AI Hub’s corporate partners for mentorship and networking opportunities.
Strengthening AI education and workforce development: The Hub will work closely with New Jersey’s higher education community to promote high-quality talent development at all levels and will leverage the resources of Microsoft’sTechSpark program. By developing shared curricula, projects and teaching tools for AI courses; training community college faculty in teaching AI; and creating upskilling opportunities to help workers across disciplines apply AI in their work, the Hub will coordinate efforts to build the state’s pool of AI talent. Ongoing collaboration with employers will ensure that education and training programs are providing trainees with industry-recognized credentials and in-demand skills for the workforce. The NJ AI Hub will also be able to connect employers with opportunities to host AI apprenticeships, develop customized upskilling training for their workers, recruit talent from New Jersey schools for jobs and internships, and partner with project-based AI courses at the college and graduate level.
Through this new AI Hub, Microsoft will be bringing itsTechSparkprogram to New Jersey. Founded in 2017, Microsoft TechSpark fosters inclusive economic opportunity across the U.S., including job creation and innovation, by working in communities and investing in local organizations. TechSpark operates across all 50 states and to date has helped secure more than $700 million in community funding for local innovation, trained 65,000 people in critical technology skills, and created 4,500 jobs.
Plans for an AI Hub wereannouncedby Governor Murphy and President Eisgruber in 2023. Pending NJEDA Board approval, the NJ AI Hub will be supported through the NJEDA’sStrategic Innovation Center(SIC) initiative. The NJEDA has executed a nonbinding term sheet to support the NJ AI Hub’s operating budget for up to five years. In total, the NJEDA is anticipated to invest up to $25 million to support the NJ AI Hub and the NJ AI Venture AI Fund.
For further updates, please visit the NJ AI Hub website atnjaihub.org.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
Antidepressants can be useful for treating a wide range of conditions.Kmpzzz/ Shutterstock
Antidepressants are typically prescribed to manage depression. But this isn’t the only reason you may be prescribed an antidepressant. In fact, they can have a broad range of effects, which makes them suitable for managing a range of other health conditions that aren’t necessarily related to mental health.
Here are five health conditions you may be prescribed an antidepressant for.
1. Chronic nerve pain
Many antidepressants are believed to work by increasing the levels of chemicals in the brain called neurotransmitters – although the exact science is still unknown. In particular, they increase levels of serotonin and noradrenaline, which are linked to mood.
These neurotransmitters are also linked to pain pathways. It’s for this reason that some people who experience nerve pain may be prescribed a tricyclic antidepressant – such as amitriptyline and nortriptyline.
Studies show that low doses of these drugs may be effective in treating nerve pain. This pain is often described as a shooting, burning pain, which may radiate outwards.
Sometimes patients also experience tingling and numbness. This type of pain is typically caused by nerve damage. Nerve pain can occur in people with diabetes (diabetic neuropathy), trigeminal neuralgia (facial pain) and multiple sclerosis.
Studies show these antidepressants are more likely to relieve nerve pain compared to traditional painkillers such as ibuprofen or paracetamol. Duloxetine is another antidepressant that may be used.
Antidepressants may also be helpful in managing urinary incontinence (unintentionally passing urine) and stress incontinence (passing urine when there’s pressure on the bladder from coughing, jumping, laughing or sneezing).
In clinical trials of the antidepressant duloxetine (a serotonin noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor, or SNRI), the drug is shown to be useful in treating severe urinary incontinence in women. However, duloxetine is usually only prescribed by a specialist as a second-choice treatment after surgery.
An SNRI is typically only prescribed as a second-line treatment option for incontinence. CrizzyStudio/ Shutterstock
In children who experience bedwetting (nocturnal enuresis), studies show a tricyclic antidepressant, such as imipramine, may be used. Similarly to duloxetine, this is only used if other treatments have been unsatisfactory.
Imipramine may help with bedwetting as it relaxes the bladder muscle so children are less likely to release urine.
3. Eating disorders
Bulimia is an eating disorder characterised by purging (for example, making themselves vomit) and binge eating. As it’s a complex mental health disorder, the first-choice treatment is psychotherapy. But fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), is the only antidepressant licensed for bulimia. It’s normally prescribed alongside psychotherapy if psychotherapy by itself hasn’t worked.
A small study showed that fluoxetine was more effective than a placebo in treating some bulimia symptoms. It’s unclear what the exact mechanism is, but some research suggests fluoxetine reduces depressive symptoms which may be associated with bulimia in some patients – making it easier for them to engage in psychotherapy.
4. OCD, panic and anxiety disorders
Antidepressants may also be useful for treating other mental health conditions – including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder and generalised anxiety disorder.
The exact mechanism that enables antidepressants to work for these conditions is unknown. But it may be due to the increase in serotonin levels or changes in brain pathways which regulate mood, anxiety and compulsions.
5. Menopause
Although antidepressants are not licensed for this condition, they are sometimes used to treat menopausal symptoms.
Several studies show the SSRIs paroxetine and citalopram and the SNRI venlafaxine can help women. In particular, they reduce the frequency and severity of hot flushes – one of the most common menopause symptoms women seek help for. One review found that hot flushes can be reduced by up to 65% when using these antidepressants.
In menopause, a woman’s oestrogen level drops. This is a hormone that stimulates the production of serotonin. But some studies suggest the lower levels of serotonin may be linked to hot flushes. This may explain why antidepressants are useful in managing hot flushes as they are thought to increase serotonin levels in the brain.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is the most effective option for managing menopause symptoms such as hot flushes. But antidepressants may be useful for women who are unable to use HRT. But as there is limited research on using antidepressants to manage menopause symptoms, more studies will be needed.
For many of these conditions, antidepressants are the last treatment option. But for some, such as those with nerve pain, antidepressants are the most effective options. Antidepressants may not work for everyone – and they may cause side-effects in some people. This is why it’s important to talk with your pharmacist or doctor if you have questions about taking an antidepressant you’ve been prescribed.
Dipa Kamdar 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.
This article was first published as World Affairs Briefing from The Conversation UK. Click here to receive this newsletter every Thursday, direct to your inbox.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians returned to the northern Gaza Strip this week after checkpoints were reopened in line with the ceasefire agreement. Many will have found their homes destroyed after months of heavy fighting and bombardment – something the new US president, Donald Trump, has pointed out.
In an exchange with reporters last weekend, Trump said: “I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess.” He then went on to suggest Palestinians there should be “evacuated” to Egypt and Jordan where “they could maybe live in peace for a change”. “You’re talking about a million and a half people … we just clean out that whole thing,” he continued.
Trump is seemingly no stranger to airing whatever thoughts come into his head. At his inauguration he claimed – without providing evidence – that “China is operating the Panama canal”. And he has since called Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine “ridiculous”. But even by these standards, his suggestion to evict Gazans from their land is brash to say the least.
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As Karin Aggestam of Lund University reports, Trump’s proposal has been met with disbelief across the Middle East. It has been widely criticised throughout the region as a potential “second Nakba” – referring to the displacement of Palestinians after Israel’s unilateral declaration of statehood in 1948.
The proposal has also been rejected outright by Egypt and Jordan. Egypt’s ministry of foreign affairs released a statement on Sunday objecting to any forced displacement of Palestinians. And Jordan’s minister of foreign affairs, Ayman Safadi, said his country was committed to “ensuring that Palestinians remain on their land”. The Arab League regional bloc has accused Trump of advocating ethnic cleansing.
Aggestam says it’s not yet certain if moving Palestinians out of Gaza will become an official US policy position, or whether it is yet another example of Trump speaking his mind. But, in her view, Trump’s latest pronouncement will further complicate the already fragile ceasefire.
The idea of relocating Palestinians to other countries has thrilled Israel’s extreme ultra-nationalist parties. The Israeli finance minister and leader of the Religious Zionist party, Bezalel Smotrich, and the former national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, have both previously encouraged the return of Israeli settlers to the Gaza Strip.
Ben Gvir, who recently resigned from his ministerial position in protest at the Gaza ceasefire, asserted in October that “encouraging emigration” of Palestinian residents of Gaza would be the “most ethical” solution to the conflict.
According to Leonie Fleischmann of City, University of London, the pair share an anti-Arab ideology and a messianic belief in the Jewish people’s right to what they call “Greater Israel”. This refers to a Jewish state that would also include the West Bank, which they referred to as “Judea and Samaria”, as well as Gaza and part of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
As Fleischmann explains, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were the sites of many key events in biblical times and were the home of a number of Israelite kingdoms. In the Bible, God even promises this land to the descendants of Abraham – the Jewish people. This, Fleischmann writes, is the reason behind Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s belief that the Jewish people have the God-given right to settle the whole of Greater Israel.
This is not a position held by the majority of Israelis. But Israel’s ultra-nationalists wield considerable political power, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government dependent on their support to remain in power. Indeed, days after Trump suggested clearing out Gaza, Smotrich spoke of turning it into an actionable policy.
Speaking with reporters on Monday, he said: “There is nothing to be excited about the weak opposition of Egypt and Jordan to the plan. We saw yesterday how Trump [imposed his will on] Colombia to deport immigrants despite its opposition. When he wants it, it happens.”
The events Smotrich was referring to in Colombia were certainly extraordinary. Outraged at the repatriation of Colombian migrants in military planes, Colombian president Gustavo Petro refused to allow the flights to land.
Trump immediately vowed tariffs on Colombian goods and sanctions on government officials, which drew a furious social media response out of Petro and the start of a (very brief) trade war. But within a few hours, Petro had backed down and Colombia announced it would start receiving migrants, including on US military aircraft.
The White House hailed the agreement as a victory for Trump’s hardline immigration strategy. However, according to Amalendu Misra of Lancaster University, Trump’s punishing tariff threats and foul rhetoric toward illegal immigrants may only damage the power and position of the US in the region.
His willingness to wage a trade war with countries in Latin America could encourage others to speed up their search for alternative trade partners. And, worse still, he may even push them towards closer relations with governments and ideologies that are inimical to US interests, writes Misra.
Back in the Middle East, the ceasefire in Gaza has offered the region a break from war. This has included a pledge by Houthi militants in Yemen not to attack commercial ships travelling through the Red Sea.
These attacks have halved the number of ships passing through the Suez Canal, a crucial route for goods moving between Asia and Europe, with many diverting around the southern tip of Africa.
This route adds thousands of miles to the journey, so supply chains have had to deal with higher shipping costs, product delivery delays and increased carbon emissions. In the view of Gokcay Balci, a logistics expert at Leeds University, this disruption is likely to continue.
The situation in the Red Sea remains unpredictable, he writes. The leader of the Houthis, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said on Monday that the group was “ready to return to escalation again alongside our brothers, the fighters in Palestine”, and warned: “We have our finger on the trigger.” Shipping companies have, unsurprisingly, announced that they will continue to prioritise alternative routes.
The Houthis seem unconvinced that the ceasefire in Gaza will hold. But, at least for now, it is providing civilians with some much-needed respite after more than a year of relentless violence.
On Jan. 27, 2025, the Trump administration ordered a freeze on federal grants and contracts covering a wide array of aid programs to take effect at 5 p.m. the following day. This freeze was partially prevented when a judge responded to a lawsuit filed by the National Council of Nonprofits and other organizations. The flow of funds on grants that had already been awarded was at least temporarily protected by the judge’s action. The attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia have also sued to block this funding freeze.
Dyana Mason and Mirae Kim, two scholars of nonprofits, explain the role that federal funding plays in the nonprofit sector.
How much do nonprofits rely on federal funding?
Nonprofits partner with the government to deliver social services, such as child care for low-income families, housing for people experiencing homelessness, and job training and placement. These partnerships can form with local or state governments, as well as with the federal government, with this collaboration mostly taking place through grants and contracts.
Government funding makes up about 33% of the revenue flowing into the nonprofit sector annually, according to the Urban Institute. The institute, a think tank, also found that nearly 40% of all nonprofits in the United States applied for federal grants in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and that about 10% applied for federal contracts. The share of government funding can be far larger for some kinds of social service nonprofits.
Many other nonprofits applied for local and state grants during that three-year period. Those grants, however, are often themselves funded by the federal government indirectly through grants it makes to state and local government agencies. Those agencies, in turn, then provide grants or maintain contracts with local nonprofits to provide services.
Although it’s hard to track with absolute precision due to those complex arrangements, government revenue is the second-largest source of income for nonprofits after the money these organizations and institutions earn through commercial activities.
Also called “fee-for-service,” this revenue includes the money nonprofit hospitals get when patients and insurers pay medical bills, nonprofit theaters receive when they sell tickets to performances, and nonprofit private schools obtain when parents pay tuition.
Some social service nonprofits charge fees too, typically on a sliding scale. That is, their clients with relatively higher incomes pay more, and those with extremely low incomes pay very little or nothing at all.
How could freezing federal funding affect nonprofits?
We have no doubt that a long freeze on federal grants and contracts would be devastating for nonprofits and the communities they serve.
For example, Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers hot meals to more than 2 million homebound people over 65 and helps them maintain social connections, gets 37% of its funding from the federal government.
Clackamas Women’s Services, a domestic and sexual violence organization based near Portland, Oregon, is one of the many local organizations that have expressed concern about what to expect. The group says it could lose half of its annual budget if federal funding were to be eliminated.
Without federal funding, organizations like these – many of which already have waitlists – would have to cut back on the services they provide.
Nonprofits are confused and concerned about the stability of federal funding, Scripps News reports.
What’s the role of nonprofits in the US safety net?
This arrangement typically provides nonprofits with a reliable and predictable source of funds that they can use to serve their communities. But it can also leave them vulnerable to policy changes – especially when new administrations take over, as the second Trump administration’s actions illustrate.
Research we conducted about what happened to nonprofits during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that volatility in the economy has serious effects on the ability of nonprofits to do their work.
For example, social service nonprofits struggled in March and April 2020 due to falling revenue at a time of increasing demand. Many of these organizations had to scale back their services. In some cases, they canceled them.
Nearly half of the nonprofits told us that they had, in addition, received other forms of emergency funding from the federal government, including Economic Injury Disaster Loans and emergency food distributions.
This federal assistance made it possible for thousands of nonprofits to keep their staff employed and continue to provide important services as the economy recovered.
What happens when nonprofits lose federal funds?
It’s hard for social service organizations to replace federal funding.
Nonprofits can, of course, appeal to their donors to help bridge the gap. But donations from individuals, foundations, corporations and bequests only amount to no more than 15% of the funds flowing into the nonprofit sector.
The outcome of freezing, eliminating or scaling back federal funding for nonprofits would mean that those in need would get fewer services. We would also expect mass layoffs, which could harm the U.S. economy.
Nonprofits employ more than 12 million people in the United States. That’s more workers than big industries such as construction, transportation and finance employ. Should millions of them suddenly become unemployed, demand would grow further for social services from providers already unable to meet lower levels of demand due to funding cuts.
Has there ever been upheaval like this before?
Congress appropriates money to provide for the services that the public needs and demands. These moves have led to great fear and uncertainty among organizations that serve people in need in the United States and abroad.
Although it’s not unusual for funding priorities to change from one administration to the next, Donald Trump’s executive orders on international aid and nonprofit grants and contracts that underpin the U.S. safety net are unprecedented.
Dyana Mason has received research funding from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities and the Joint Fire Science Program with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). She is also a volunteer board member of the Southwest Oregon chapter of the American Red Cross.
Mirae Kim is affiliated with the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) as a non-paid, at-large board member.
Teachers at a school in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland, are planning industrial action – not over pay but the behaviour of their pupils.
It’s not the first time school staff in Scotland have taken this step. Teachers at a school in Glasgow took strike action in 2022 over “violent and abusive” pupil behaviour. A 2024 survey of staff in Aberdeen found that many had experienced violence and more than a third had been physically assaulted.
Pupil behaviour is one factor – among others – severely affecting the wellbeing of teachers, as shown in my recent research with colleagues.
Our national research project on teacher workload is a collaboration between the University of the West of Scotland, Cardiff Metropolitan University and Birmingham City University. We asked 1,834 teachers in primary, secondary and special schools in Scotland to fill out online diaries, logging how they spent their time over one week in March 2024.
Our study found that nearly a quarter of teachers’ lesson time was spent on low-level and serious behaviour interruptions. They spent time dealing with distressed behaviour and incidents of verbal and physical aggression, settling the class and working with pupils on individual plans to help them engage better with school.
In 2023, research commissioned by the Scottish government on behaviour in schools found 67% of teachers experienced general verbal abuse, 59% physical aggression and 43% physical violence between pupils in the week preceding the survey.
On average, our research found that teachers in Scotland worked 46 hours in a typical week. That is 11 more than their contracted hours. The reasons are complex, but we found patterns that repeated regardless of the kind of school teachers were in, their location or their experience. Teachers’ workload intensified when the demands made of them exceed the support and resources available.
Teachers face increased levels of cultural and linguistic diversity in the classroom, as well as rising numbers of children with additional support needs. Schools’ access to specialist support is falling while pupil needs are rising. Child poverty and poor mental health are contributing to increasing social, emotional and behavioural issues.
We found that teachers spent 58% of the non-teaching time in their contracted hours on planning and preparation to meet the diverse needs of their pupils.
The remaining 42% was consumed with administrative activities, data management and reporting, communicating with colleagues, parents and external agencies. These demands left teachers with just 35 minutes a week, on average, for professional learning.
High stress and low job satisfaction are driving people out of teaching. Over 75% of the teachers in our study said they were considering leaving the job prior to retirement.
Inclusive education
Another issue affecting teachers in Scotland is the country’s approach to the education of children with additional needs, which differs from the rest of the UK. The default position in Scotland is that all children should be educated in mainstream schools, unless there is compelling evidence that a specialist setting would better serve a child’s educational needs.
But our research identifies growing disquiet among teachers regarding the capacity of Scotland’s education system to fully support this “presumption to mainstream”.
The number of pupils with recorded additional needs in Scottish schools rose by 84% between 2014 and 2023. In 2024, pupils with additional needs in mainstream classes reached a record high of 284,448 pupils. This is 40% of all pupils – a rise from 28.7% in 2018.
Among Scotland’s 2,445 publicly funded schools, 107 are special schools, down from 133 in 2018. A reduction of 392 additional support needs teachers between 2013 and 2023 means a single teacher may now have a caseload of more than 80 pupils.
Worsening conditions
Unfortunately, the pressure on teachers looks set to increase as funding challenges affect teacher numbers.
Scotland’s 32 councils face an overall total budget gap of £585 million in 2024-25. Audit Scotland estimate that this shortfall in funding will increase to £780 million by 2026-27.
A Scottish National Party 2021 manifesto pledge to recruit 3,500 more teachers and reduce teachers’ contact time remains unfulfilled. In 2023-24, 26 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities reduced teacher numbers while the ratio of pupils to teachers rose.
Pressures are particularly acute in Scotland’s largest local authority, Glasgow, and are set to intensify. In 2024, Glasgow City Council employed 5,492 full time equivalent teachers, compared to 5,725 in 2022. In spring 2024, the city proposed cutting 450 teaching posts over three years as part of an “education service reform” to address a £100 million funding shortfall.
In November 2024, parental volunteer group Glasgow City Parents Group failed to secure a judicial review of the council’s education budget cuts. Reducing the teaching workforce across the city by nearly 10% is unlikely to be without consequence for teachers’ workload and the quality of education.
A resilient education workforce requires highly skilled professionals and a supportive professional environment. As the demands made of teachers intensify, they risk being reduced to institutional “shock absorbers” rather than nurturing leaders of learning.
Systematic reform of the school curriculum, national assessment and school inspection is under consideration in Scotland. But this will take place against a backdrop of service demands and budgetary pressures that are deeply affecting teaching staff. This must be addressed in order to avoid compromising learning in Scottish schools.
Moira Hulme received funding from the Educational Institute of Scotland.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Robert Botha, Research Fellow at the Impumelelo Economic Growth Lab. The Impumelelo Economic Growth Lab is a unit of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), Stellenbosch University
South Africa’s fiscal trajectory paints a concerning picture. Public expenditure exceeds revenue. As a result sovereign debt is building up and interest on this debt is increasing.
This raises concerns over the South African government’s financial sustainability. The debt-to-GDP ratio has skyrocketed from 23.6% in 2008/09 to a projected 74.7% in 2024/25. The International Monetary Fund has recommended that, over the long term, South Africa should reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio to 60% of GDP, in line with that of peers.
Arguably more important than the debt level is how quickly debt has accumulated. Debt servicing costs, which consist of the interest on government debt and other costs directly associated with borrowing, have been the fastest-growing line item in the national budget. Rising interest payments have been crowding out critical expenditures on services such as health, education and infrastructure.
As I argue in a recently published report titled “A fiscal anchor for South Africa: Avoiding the mistakes of the past”, establishing a credible fiscal anchor (or fiscal rule) could be step towards avoiding a debt spiral and regaining fiscal sustainability and credibility.
Fiscal rules are constraints on fiscal policy, designed to impose numerical limits. For example, a limit on the allowable debt-to-GDP ratio, or the allowable balance after accounting for government expenditure and revenue. Fiscal rules are widely used – 105 countries have adopted them so far.
Failing to address the country’s fiscal challenges risks plunging South Africa into a debt trap. This happens when a country finds it difficult to escape a cycle of debt and has to borrow more to pay off old debt. If debt-servicing costs continue to rise, essential public services will come under even greater strain.
Several emerging markets have experienced the severe consequences of unchecked debt accumulation and debt servicing costs. Argentina is one example. Without a credible plan to stabilise and reduce debt and debt servicing costs, the risk of economic stagnation and financial instability grows quickly.
Fiscal erosion and credibility concerns
The roots of South Africa’s current predicament lie in years of mistakes. These include:
spending beyond its means
questionable political decisions like bailing out state-owned entities
poor governance and oversight at municipal and local government level, which led to inefficient public spending.
These factors were underpinned by an underperforming economy, unrealised forecasts and arguably weak institutional checks.
For the last 15 years South Africa’s National Treasury has undertaken to stabilise the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio. This would have required keeping the ratio constant. But these commitments have consistently been deferred. Debt stabilisation targets have been revised upwards 13 times, from 40% in 2015/16 to the current 75.5%. The stabilisation year has been pushed back 10 times, from the initial year of 2015/16 to the current target of 2025/26. This has created a perception of inconsistent policy.
Over-optimistic macroeconomic forecasting has undermined credibility. Over the last ten years, GDP growth projections have routinely overshot actual performance by an average of 0.5 percentage points in the first year of forecasts and even more in subsequent years. In defence of the National Treasury, the South African economy has performed worse than more forecasters expected in recent years.
Adding to the fiscal strain are rising social expenditures, the public sector wage bill and repeated bailouts of state-owned enterprises. This spending relieves short-term political and social pressures, but undermines the country’s long-term fiscal health.
Without credible mechanisms to constrain spending, South Africa’s fiscal framework lacks the discipline needed to ensure sustainability, and to restore credibility.
Why fiscal rules matter
Fiscal rules are there to promote discipline, ensure that debt can be paid and enhance credibility. The experience in the 105 countries that have adopted them suggests that strong, well-designed rules can signal a government’s commitment to fiscal prudence.
It’s difficult to establish whether there is a causal relationship between fiscal rules and fiscal performance. But there’s at least a correlation. As a practical example of enforcing fiscal rules, in November 2023, the German constitutional court overruled a budget that was passed in the Bundestag but breached Germany’s fiscal rules.
However, fiscal rules are not a panacea. Poorly designed or inadequately enforced rules can make the problems worse. For South Africa, this risk is acute.
Political commitment and strong institutional frameworks are needed too. Also, a shift in how fiscal policy is conceived and implemented.
Designing new rules
Drawing lessons from global best practices, South Africa’s fiscal rules must be enforceable, flexible and simple. A well-designed rule should:
stabilise and eventually reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio
target government spending as a share of GDP, emphasising consumption spending like salaries and goods and services, rather than capital expenditure
have political buy-in
be overseen independently
be legally binding and enforceable.
Context
South Africa’s low economic growth rate is a complication. Average interest rates on government debt are higher than the nominal GDP growth rate. But reining in spending too much could stifle growth, creating a vicious cycle.
That’s why stabilising debt first would make more sense than aiming to reduce debt too rapidly.
South Africa’s fiscal rules must also have some flexibility. For instance, they could allow for shocks such as natural disasters or global economic crises.
Fiscal rules could follow a phased approach to initially focus on stabilising debt, and then to move towards reducing debt. Both of these phases would entail expenditure rules to guide annual budget processes and to place limits on spending.
The benefits
Credible fiscal rules could have a number of benefits.
Firstly, they could improve South Africa’s credibility by signalling to markets and international institutions that South Africa is committed to fiscal discipline.
Secondly, fiscal credibility is associated with reduced sovereign risk premiums, which translates into lower debt-servicing costs. In turn this would free up resources for critical development priorities.
Third, they can foster a more stable economic environment for investment and growth.
Fourth, they would help coordinate policies. South Africa enjoys rule-based monetary policy in the form of inflation targeting but lacks the same for fiscal policy. This can lead to sub-optimal outcomes. For example, the central bank can keep interest rates too high, not necessarily because it thinks the treasury’s policies are inflationary, but because it cannot predict the treasury’s actions.
The way forward
Adopting fiscal rules in South Africa comes with risks. Weak institutional capacity, especially in oversight bodies like the Parliamentary Budget Office, could undermine rule enforcement.
To shield against these risks, South Africa should have stronger institutions. It could create an independent statutory fiscal council, possibly falling under Parliament, the National Treasury or as an independent constitutional advisory body.
Oversight bodies would also need to build their capacity.
– South Africa’s debt has skyrocketed – new rules are needed to manage it – https://theconversation.com/south-africas-debt-has-skyrocketed-new-rules-are-needed-to-manage-it-248355
Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Participants of the meeting
On January 29, a meeting of the scientific and technical council of the Housing Committee of the Government of St. Petersburg was held at SPbGASU. The presidium of the meeting included Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Evgeny Razumishkin, Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Housing Committee, Head of the Department of Construction Economics and Housing and Utilities of SPbGASU Veronika Asaul, Chairman of the Housing Committee Denis Udod, Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the Improvement of St. Petersburg Sergey Malinin. More than one hundred specialists in the housing and utilities sector took part in the meeting.
Chief Engineer of the St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution “Central Administration of Regional Roads and Improvement” Igor Mishustin spoke about the use of new models of municipal equipment for road cleaning. He reviewed the universal municipal machines used in the Northern capital, emphasized their positive characteristics and voiced proposals to manufacturers for technical improvement. “Interaction between road agencies and factories-manufacturers of municipal cleaning equipment continues on an ongoing basis,” the specialist noted.
The head of the investment and technology center “Vympel” Yuri Murzin spoke about the results of testing an innovative electric loader in snowfall conditions. The speaker noted that the loader is distinguished by a high level of localization of production.
Elena Aleksandrova, Head of the Educational and Methodological Department of SPbGASU, reported on how our university is training personnel for the housing and utilities sector. “Since the 2024/2025 academic year, SPbGASU, together with the self-regulatory organization “Association of Builders of St. Petersburg” as part of the work of the Consortium of the Construction Industry of the Northwestern Federal District, continues to work in school construction classes,” she said in particular.
Elena Aleksandrova focused on the proposals of SPbGASU for the implementation of the Concept of training personnel for the construction industry and housing and utilities until 2025, approved by the Russian government. The university has introduced new educational programs for the industry, modules for developing competencies in the field of information modeling technologies, and increased the share of practical classes. Practitioners, including future employers of graduates, are widely involved in the educational process. The programs have been brought into line with the current needs of the industry. “Industrial partners play a significant role in our educational process,” she noted.
Director of OOO ECOTERMIX SPB Konstantin Baranov reported on the results of the implementation of an innovative building material based on polyurethane. It has a wide range of applications both in new construction and in the improvement of already built facilities requiring routine and major repairs.
At the end of the meeting, those gathered agreed on further cooperation between all participants in the housing and utilities sector of St. Petersburg in scientific research, the introduction of new technology and personnel training.
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.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Robert Botha, Research Fellow at the Impumelelo Economic Growth Lab. The Impumelelo Economic Growth Lab is a unit of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), Stellenbosch University
South Africa’s fiscal trajectory paints a concerning picture. Public expenditure exceeds revenue. As a result sovereign debt is building up and interest on this debt is increasing.
This raises concerns over the South African government’s financial sustainability. The debt-to-GDP ratio has skyrocketed from 23.6% in 2008/09 to a projected 74.7% in 2024/25. The International Monetary Fund has recommended that, over the long term, South Africa should reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio to 60% of GDP, in line with that of peers.
Arguably more important than the debt level is how quickly debt has accumulated. Debt servicing costs, which consist of the interest on government debt and other costs directly associated with borrowing, have been the fastest-growing line item in the national budget. Rising interest payments have been crowding out critical expenditures on services such as health, education and infrastructure.
As I argue in a recently published report titled “A fiscal anchor for South Africa: Avoiding the mistakes of the past”, establishing a credible fiscal anchor (or fiscal rule) could be step towards avoiding a debt spiral and regaining fiscal sustainability and credibility.
Fiscal rules are constraints on fiscal policy, designed to impose numerical limits. For example, a limit on the allowable debt-to-GDP ratio, or the allowable balance after accounting for government expenditure and revenue. Fiscal rules are widely used – 105 countries have adopted them so far.
Failing to address the country’s fiscal challenges risks plunging South Africa into a debt trap. This happens when a country finds it difficult to escape a cycle of debt and has to borrow more to pay off old debt. If debt-servicing costs continue to rise, essential public services will come under even greater strain.
Several emerging markets have experienced the severe consequences of unchecked debt accumulation and debt servicing costs. Argentina is one example. Without a credible plan to stabilise and reduce debt and debt servicing costs, the risk of economic stagnation and financial instability grows quickly.
Fiscal erosion and credibility concerns
The roots of South Africa’s current predicament lie in years of mistakes. These include:
spending beyond its means
questionable political decisions like bailing out state-owned entities
poor governance and oversight at municipal and local government level, which led to inefficient public spending.
These factors were underpinned by an underperforming economy, unrealised forecasts and arguably weak institutional checks.
For the last 15 years South Africa’s National Treasury has undertaken to stabilise the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio. This would have required keeping the ratio constant. But these commitments have consistently been deferred. Debt stabilisation targets have been revised upwards 13 times, from 40% in 2015/16 to the current 75.5%. The stabilisation year has been pushed back 10 times, from the initial year of 2015/16 to the current target of 2025/26. This has created a perception of inconsistent policy.
Over-optimistic macroeconomic forecasting has undermined credibility. Over the last ten years, GDP growth projections have routinely overshot actual performance by an average of 0.5 percentage points in the first year of forecasts and even more in subsequent years. In defence of the National Treasury, the South African economy has performed worse than more forecasters expected in recent years.
Adding to the fiscal strain are rising social expenditures, the public sector wage bill and repeated bailouts of state-owned enterprises. This spending relieves short-term political and social pressures, but undermines the country’s long-term fiscal health.
Without credible mechanisms to constrain spending, South Africa’s fiscal framework lacks the discipline needed to ensure sustainability, and to restore credibility.
Why fiscal rules matter
Fiscal rules are there to promote discipline, ensure that debt can be paid and enhance credibility. The experience in the 105 countries that have adopted them suggests that strong, well-designed rules can signal a government’s commitment to fiscal prudence.
It’s difficult to establish whether there is a causal relationship between fiscal rules and fiscal performance. But there’s at least a correlation. As a practical example of enforcing fiscal rules, in November 2023, the German constitutional court overruled a budget that was passed in the Bundestag but breached Germany’s fiscal rules.
However, fiscal rules are not a panacea. Poorly designed or inadequately enforced rules can make the problems worse. For South Africa, this risk is acute.
Political commitment and strong institutional frameworks are needed too. Also, a shift in how fiscal policy is conceived and implemented.
Designing new rules
Drawing lessons from global best practices, South Africa’s fiscal rules must be enforceable, flexible and simple. A well-designed rule should:
stabilise and eventually reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio
target government spending as a share of GDP, emphasising consumption spending like salaries and goods and services, rather than capital expenditure
have political buy-in
be overseen independently
be legally binding and enforceable.
Context
South Africa’s low economic growth rate is a complication. Average interest rates on government debt are higher than the nominal GDP growth rate. But reining in spending too much could stifle growth, creating a vicious cycle.
That’s why stabilising debt first would make more sense than aiming to reduce debt too rapidly.
South Africa’s fiscal rules must also have some flexibility. For instance, they could allow for shocks such as natural disasters or global economic crises.
Fiscal rules could follow a phased approach to initially focus on stabilising debt, and then to move towards reducing debt. Both of these phases would entail expenditure rules to guide annual budget processes and to place limits on spending.
The benefits
Credible fiscal rules could have a number of benefits.
Firstly, they could improve South Africa’s credibility by signalling to markets and international institutions that South Africa is committed to fiscal discipline.
Secondly, fiscal credibility is associated with reduced sovereign risk premiums, which translates into lower debt-servicing costs. In turn this would free up resources for critical development priorities.
Third, they can foster a more stable economic environment for investment and growth.
Fourth, they would help coordinate policies. South Africa enjoys rule-based monetary policy in the form of inflation targeting but lacks the same for fiscal policy. This can lead to sub-optimal outcomes. For example, the central bank can keep interest rates too high, not necessarily because it thinks the treasury’s policies are inflationary, but because it cannot predict the treasury’s actions.
The way forward
Adopting fiscal rules in South Africa comes with risks. Weak institutional capacity, especially in oversight bodies like the Parliamentary Budget Office, could undermine rule enforcement.
To shield against these risks, South Africa should have stronger institutions. It could create an independent statutory fiscal council, possibly falling under Parliament, the National Treasury or as an independent constitutional advisory body.
Oversight bodies would also need to build their capacity.
Robert Botha is a Research Fellow at the Impumelelo Economic Growth Lab. The Impumelelo Economic Growth Lab is a unit of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER)
Home » Latest News » Awards spotlight Canterbury’s community heroes
Three pillars of the community were presented with Lord Mayor’s Awards to recognise all the work they do to make the district a better place.
The awards celebrate local heroes living in Canterbury, Herne Bay, Whitstable and the surrounding villages.
This year’s deserving winners were revealed by the Lord Mayor of Canterbury, Cllr Jean Butcher, at a special ceremony at Tower House on Thursday (30 January).
The first recipient was Dan Rattigan from Canterbury who runs Warhammer Alliance Canterbury – a free youth club that provides a setting for young people to take part in the Warhammer hobby.
Described as ‘kind, patient and inspiring’, Dan runs the youth club in his own time on top of his job as a teacher and holding tabletop hobby events and gaming sessions as part of Gothic Games Canterbury.
His nominations cite his support for the University of Kent’s Warhammer club by donating free equipment as well as his fundraising events for local charities.
The second recipient was Maureen Hawkes from Hoath whose nomination noted her unwavering service to the community by organising a number of local initiatives including monthly coffee mornings, festive events, and a regular community newsletter.
Maureen’s nomination highlights how she ‘has fostered a close-knit, vibrant community where everyone feels they belong’ through her voluntary work and that she brings ‘warmth, joy, and a strong sense of connection to residents of all ages.’
Barbara Plews from Canterbury was the final award winner, having been nominated for setting up a low-cost badminton club for local children back in 2017.
She created Canterbury Junior Badminton Club after feeling there was a lack of opportunities for children to play badminton locally and now gives up her time to coach every Saturday morning on top of accompanying the children at local tournaments and league matches.
Cllr Butcher said: “Reading the heart-warming nominations sent in was incredibly inspiring but certainly made judging a really tough job.
“Although there were so many who deserved thanks, each of the winners selected have shown a true sense of community spirit and had a profound impact on the lives of those living in the district.
“It’s a real privilege to recognise Dan, Maureen and Barbara for their deep commitment to our community through the Lord Mayor’s Awards.”
Pictured above, from left to right, are Lady Mayoress Di Baldock, Maureen Hawkes, Dan Rattigan, Barbara Plews, and Lord Mayor Cllr Jean Butcher.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Lindy Heinecken, Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology., Stellenbosch University
The death of South African soldiers on a Southern African Development Community (SADC) mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has sparked fierce debate about the deployment of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers there. Some, including political parties, have questioned whether the soldiers were adequately trained, equipped and supported. Lindy Heinecken has spent decades researching the South African military in peacekeeping operations and has interviewed hundreds of soldiers about their experiences and the challenges during deployment. We asked her for her insights.
What is South Africa doing in the DRC?
The country is part of the Southern African Development Community Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC), which includes troops from Malawi and Tanzania. This deployment followed approval by the Southern African Development Community in May 2023, in response to the deteriorating security situation in eastern DRC. The South African National Defence Force is leading the mission.
Their mandate is to support the DRC government, a member of the 16-member SADC group, in restoring peace, security and stability. The fact that the mandate states that it is to support the DRC government in combating armed groups that threaten peace and security in the eastern DRC implies that this is not a peacekeeping mission.
The legal basis for the deployment lies in the SADC Mutual Defence Pact, (2003), which states that
Any armed attack perpetrated against one of the States Parties shall be considered a threat to regional peace and security and shall be met with immediate collective action.
The mandate gives them the responsibility to protect civilians, disarm armed groups, and help implement the August 2024 ceasefire agreement between the DRC and Rwanda, brokered by Angola as part of the Luanda Process. This agreement aimed to provide a more secure environment, and protect critical infrastructure to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid. This is in line with the United Nations’ responsibility to protect victims of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
The M23 rebel group, which is supported by Rwanda, has committed a wide range of atrocities in the eastern DRC which can be traced back to the 1994 genocide.
The impact on civilians has been devastating. While pinning down an exact number is difficult, it’s clear that the rebel forces operating in the eastern DRC, particularly the M23, pose a significant challenge to the stability of the region, and the safety and security of civilians.
The rebels are implicated in mass killings of civilians, rape and other forms of sexual violence and attacks on camps for internally displaced persons. The M23’s atrocities have been condemned by the international community. The United Nations and human rights bodies have called for an end to the violence. They also demand accountability for the perpetrators.
In sum, South African soldiers – alongside Malawians and Tanzanians – are in the DRC to assist the Congolese army in combating the armed groups and to protect civilians from violence and human rights abuses.
Are the soldiers adequately prepared and equipped?
Many questions have been asked about whether South African troops on the mission forces are adequately trained and equipped. Critics claim this deployment is suicidal.
South African soldiers are well-trained and have served in numerous peace operations. Their extensive deployment means that they have accumulated valuable experience. They have been part of the UN Stabilisation Mission in the DR Congo, Monusco, almost since inception in 1999.
Monusco forces are still present in the DRC, but in the process of withdrawing. Congolese president Félix Tshisekedi requested they leave because of their perceived ineffectiveness.
The combination of budget cuts, resource limitations, and the complex nature of the conflict raises questions about the South African National Defence Force’s ability to effectively achieve its objectives, and ensure the safety of its personnel.
The force takes its own equipment on missions to ensure it is self-sufficient and can meet its specialised needs. The problem is that this equipment is old, leading to shortages due to maintenance problems. This affects the force’s ability to carry out its duties.
Budget cuts for defence over the years, to less than 1% of GDP compared to the global average of 2%, have severely affected the military’s ability to maintain equipment, conduct training exercises and modernise its force. This has led to a decline in overall readiness.
South African troops in the DRC lack essential resources, including adequate air support, attack helicopters and modern equipment. This limits their ability to respond quickly to threats and provide close air support for ground troops.
Despite having one of the most capable air forces in Africa, it is unable to deploy its Gripen and Rooivalk helicopters because they have not been serviced and lack spare parts.
The use of older equipment has also been less effective against the well-equipped M23.
Besides being outgunned, the regional mission is also out-manned.
The SADC mission in the DRC was authorised to have 5,000 troops from Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania. The actual deployment has fallen far short of this number. As of late January 2025, only about 1,300 troops had been deployed.
There are concerns in the DRC about the presence of multiple foreign forces, given the relative ineffectiveness of these interventions.
There are also questions about the legitimacy of the mission. Rwanda has opposed the deployment, saying that the SAMIDRC, and specifically South Africa’s involvement, undermines regional unity and cooperation.
The best approach to peace and stability in the DRC requires a concerted effort by regional actors – the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Kenya and the Southern African Development Community – to address the underlying causes of the conflict. This requires political dialogue with the regional actors, the UN, the international community and, most importantly, the Congolese people.
As for South Africa, it is time for some critical reflection on the future roles of its military. The equipment shortages and challenges it faces raise serious concerns about the defence force’s ability to carry out its core mandate of protecting South Africa, its territorial integrity and its people in accordance with the constitution.
The tragedy in the DRC highlights the dire need for the South African National Defence Force to be redesigned, modernised and funded to become more effective and capable, ready to meet the immediate challenges it faces (like ageing equipment) and ensure the security of South Africa.
– South African troops are dying in the DRC: why they’re there and what’s going wrong – https://theconversation.com/south-african-troops-are-dying-in-the-drc-why-theyre-there-and-whats-going-wrong-248696
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