We have been bombarded in recent weeks with apocalyptic headlines about “artificial super-intelligence” and the possibilities of a new era of “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) in which AI achieves human capacities for reason and learning.

Concerns vary from its misuse in bioterrorism to the capacity of AI agents to form collectives, “go rogue” and perform unauthorized attacks on systems, or even to take over the internet and terminate humanity.

Read more:
How an OpenAI safety test became a real-world cyberattack on the Hugging Face platform

As a scholar interested in public memory, I find myself returning to the writing of Wendell Berry in response as a source of wisdom for these turbulent times. Berry, who died at home in August, was a cultural critic, writer, farmer, environmentalist and an early influence on my thinking. His book, Life is a miracle: An essay against modern superstition reads as an eerie letter to the purveyors of AI.

For Berry, the mind was shaped by its place in the world, the textures of the local, a sense of home and a notion of history. To have a mind, argued Berry, one must have a world. In a section of the book titled, “Creatures as machines,” he railed against the way in which the metaphor of mind as machine, has turned into an equivalence.

The death of the earth

Some thinkers believe AI promises to save us from work. Elon Musk has made radical claims that AI will make work optional within the next two decades. But part of taking our place in the world — and in time — is through work.

Berry himself gave up a promising life in New York’s literary scene to move back to Kentucky and work the land. Of course, he continued to produce written works as well: no less than 50 books.

Some analysts also claim that AI could reduce inequality. Berry addressed similar promises made by 20th century science in the domains of nuclear power, genetic engineering and industrial agriculture.

In the face of systems that were meant bring us global food security, Berry declared that many of us are now mourning “the progressive death of the Earth.”

Technology without consent

We are already witnessing how AI is accelerating many breakthroughs in the sciences — from solving previously unsolvable mathematics problems to diverse transformations in health care and disciplines as diverse as meteorology and synthetic biology. Many commentators within science and the AI industry have drawn parallels between AI and the Industrial Revolution.

Read more:
Artificial intelligence raises profound moral questions — for all of humanity to answer

The better comparison may be with nuclear weapons. Geneticist Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, once warned “we ought to stay out of the nuclei.” Jackson was concerned about corporate patents on genetically engineered seed crops and the destructive potential of nuclear fission.

As a plant geneticist, Jackson himself developed innovative perennial grains by looking to the natural resilience of prairie plant communities. By “entering” the nuclei, Jackson held that we were crossing a threshold that should remain off limits to humans, given the risks involved.

Quoting his friend and collaborator Jackson, Berry invoked a notion of planetary and creaturely consent: “When a few scientists decided to go in, they decided for everybody.”

Similarly, when Musk warns of a 20 per cent chance of AI destroying humanity and still plugs away at developing it, he is deciding for all of us.

Avoidance of difficult thoughts

It’s tough to argue against the expedience brought about by computers, smart phones and artificial intelligence. And yet Berry showed us how the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century grew in alignment with the development of mechanical processes.

If freedom is our express purpose, Berry argued, then democracy actually requires instruments that impede operation. These include trial by jury, consent of the governed and the idea of minority rights — all concepts with processes that are frustratingly inefficient but more equal and free.

AI apologists are fond of dismissing doubters and critics as Luddites. But the Luddites themselves protested precarious work and food insecurity in an age of widespread economic inequality in 19th century England. Berry, in a couple of instances, identified with the Luddites.

The common refrain when it comes to technological development is to embrace it as inevitable. Berry described this recourse to inevitability as the avoidance of difficult thought.

Read more:
Who were the Luddites? Their legacy ripples through politics, cultural commentary and literature

Minds like trees or computers?

For the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, technology was less about the knobs and buttons and more a particular expression of reality, influenced by our immersion in particular tools and activities.

And there is the impasse. For some, inevitable AI is part of “the way reality discloses itself.” To others, an entirely different existence is made possible by attending to the body, land and material objects. The difficulty today is the distance between these two realities.

Avoiding the digital screen, Berry wrote in “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself),” was a simple matter of staying “away from anything that obscures the place it is in.” In the same poem, he wrote that that “a tree forms itself in answer to its place and the light.”

It’s perhaps difficult to conceive of ourselves as creatures, tethered to other creatures and to places — the way trees are wedged into soil and connected by underground mycorrhizal networks. It’s maybe easier to accept we are merely computers, and that by making better computers we take the pressure off the computer that lives somewhere between our ears.

In Berry’s words: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

Read more:
What happens to your brain in nature? The neuroscience explained

How to live in community

If he was still with us, Berry might remind us to judge what we make not for its independent utility, but for its wider relationship to the community. Berry despised the word “environment,” and the notion that “we” might be separate from “it.” Instead, he demanded that we conceive of ourselves as part of a community — including creatures, places, the dead and those not yet born.

He would invite each of us, tech innovators included, to speak a common language and openly reveal our inventions. He disliked academic over-specialization and feared loss of accountability and understanding across disciplinary boundaries.

He would tell us to find a place, get to know it and consult the land — an essential educational opportunity in an age of declining ecological knowledge and numb senses.

If I listen hard, I can hear Berry’s voice: Go slowly; be quiet; plant seeds; restore local watersheds; eat what grows; build community with all creatures that come.

Timothy Martin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/are-you-a-creature-or-a-machine-how-to-live-in-ecological-community-in-a-time-of-ai/

Finding a job is challenging enough without having to contend with stereotypes about disability. Yet ableist assumptions — including the association of disability with “economic inactivity” — can shape how employers perceive you and your abilities.

What employers often overlook is how much skill it takes to navigate an inaccessible world. While that labour contributes to the hidden costs of living with disabilities, it can also develop abilities that are useful at work.

Recognizing those skills can help you communicate what you bring to a job. Understanding your rights and assessing an employer’s commitment to accessibility can help you find a supportive workplace.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

• The ‘dream job’ myth: Why a fulfilling career does not have to define your life

• Getting outside despite your 9‑to‑5 job can improve your mental health – here’s how to spend time in nature during and around working hours

• What everyone gets wrong about the modern job search — and what actually works

The skills you are already using

For many people whose bodies and minds defy social norms, time is a precious resource. When you fit therapy sessions and specialist appointments around work, school or other commitments, you are constantly practising organization, scheduling and time management.

If you use paratransit, you may need to book rides days in advance. When something goes wrong — an out-of-service elevator or a rideshare driver who refuses to accommodate your service animal — you need to know how to find an alternative quickly. These experiences can involve contingency planning, effective communication and creative problem-solving.

If you live with chronic illness or another condition that affects your energy, you may have developed ways to manage limited resources. American writer Christine Miserandino’s popular “spoon theory” describes anticipating how much energy everyday tasks require and deciding how to allocate it strategically.

You might use speech-to-text software to reduce the physical effort of typing, set reminders to reduce the mental effort of remembering routine tasks or plan breaks around demanding activities. You may also have learned when and how to request assistance, delegate responsibilities or rest.

These strategies can draw on prioritization, adaptability and effective resource management. When seeking employment, consider how those skills relate to the roles you want to pursue.

Understanding your rights

Navigating the job market as a disabled person can bring additional responsibilities, too, from disclosing your disability to advocating for the access and accommodations you need.

In many jurisdictions, human rights laws entitle disabled employees to accommodations — reasonable adjustments that enable workers with different abilities to perform the essential duties of a job.

These protections are important, but requesting accommodations requires decisions about when and what to disclose, which can be emotionally exhausting and leave you vulnerable to stigma and discrimination.

If you experience discrimination, pursuing a rights complaint can bring further challenges. Both the experience itself and the process of seeking redress can take a toll, consuming emotional, cognitive, physical and financial resources.

Finding the right fit

Knowing your rights is important, but legal protections cannot guarantee you will feel supported at work. When deciding where to apply, look for clues about how a prospective employer approaches accessibility. An organization’s website, job postings and statements about mission, values and priorities can reveal its commitment to diversity and inclusion.

An absence of accessibility features or rights-affirming language may be a warning sign, but does not necessarily mean an employer will be unwilling to adapt. You might even find opportunities to highlight your knowledge of accessibility as an asset, particularly if an organization is beginning to adopt inclusive design.

As you move through the hiring process, pay attention to how the employer addresses accessibility in practice. If you have a more apparent disability or need to disclose a disability to discuss accommodations, consider how the employer responds. Is information about accessibility readily available? Are your requests taken seriously? Are practical solutions discussed?

If you choose not to disclose, you can still connect the skills you have developed through your experiences to the abilities listed in a job posting. Think about which are relevant to the role description and how you could demonstrate them through examples from work, education or everyday life.

Discussing experience-based strengths in a job application or interview can be challenging, especially if you’re unsure how an employer will respond to your disability. A mentor can help you identify transferable skills and communicate them effectively.

You might try to connect informally with someone who has a similar condition or works in a field that interests you, explore career coaching from people with lived experience of disability or seek the support of a disability doula.

What employers can do

Anti-discrimination and employment legislation provide essential protections, but policy measures alone have not eliminated harmful stereotypes and employment gaps. Employers can go further by adopting inclusive design practices that plan and provide for a range of access needs.

Greater sensory awareness and flexibility around timelines, for example, can help more people work effectively. Anticipating human diversity from the outset can improve workplace culture — not only for employees, but for clients as well — benefiting those who identify as disabled as well as those who don’t.

One practical step is to develop and implement a transparent accessibility policy that explains what supports are available, how to make requests and who is responsible for responding. Responsibility for accessibility and inclusion must be clearly assigned within employee role descriptions and supported with adequate time and other resources.

Responsibilities should also be shared among staff with diverse experiences and perspectives. Disabled employees bring firsthand knowledge of workplace barriers and the changes that can make work more accessible. But relying on a single disabled employee to represent an entire community overlooks differences in disabled experiences and how disability intersects with race, gender and other aspects of identity. It can also tokenize that employee and place an unfair burden on them.

There is no shortage of open-access resources to help organizations develop more inclusive workplaces. In addition to valuing the expertise of employees with lived experience, employers can also seek advice from disabled-led services.

Finding an accessible workplace shouldn’t depend on how much time and energy you can spend advocating for yourself. Employers can take proactive action, rather than relying on individuals to identify and overcome barriers.

No one should have to repeatedly disclose personal information, justify access needs or take on the extra work of making their workplace inclusive. Employers who accept responsibility for accessibility can reduce that burden, creating workplaces where you are enabled to do your best work and develop your career.

Erika Katzman 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/looking-for-work-as-a-disabled-person-recognize-your-strengths-and-find-an-accessible-workplace/

For more than 20 years, Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) has protected wildlife that are at risk of being lost from Canadian lands and waters. Once a species is listed as extirpated, endangered or threatened under the act, it becomes illegal to kill, harm or capture it or damage its residences. Its critical habitat must also be protected, at least on federal land.

Nevertheless, these protections are routinely delayed for years. Our recently published research has found that since 2017, species that need SARA protections have waited nearly two and a half years on average to formally receive legal protections, well beyond the timelines the federal government set for itself.

And that only includes species the government has decided to protect. Others are still awaiting protected status and have been waiting for much longer than that. This is a systemic problem that has persisted for nearly two decades.

As climate change and human disturbance accelerate, delays in implementing protections can have irreversible consequences for wildlife.

A step with no deadline

Listing a species requires two stages. First, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) independently assesses a species’ status and the threats it faces, and recommends whether it should be listed. The committee’s assessment then goes to the federal minister of environment and climate change.

Second, the federal government consults with Indigenous rights holders, provincial and territorial governments, scientific experts, industry and the public to assess broader social and economic consequences of listing.

The minister then forwards the assessment to the federal cabinet, which has nine months under SARA to make a final decision. However, SARA sets no deadline for the consultation step. Every delay we found occurred at this stage, before the assessment reached cabinet.

In 2017, the federal government introduced a non-binding policy recommending that consultations take no more than 12 months, or 24 months for species requiring extended consultation. But that hasn’t reduced delays. For the species forwarded to the cabinet since 2017, this middle stage ran an average of 477 days (about 16 months) past the recommended timeline. Before the policy, the average was 484 days.

These figures only include species that were eventually forwarded. Of the 288 species assessed since 2017, 153 are still awaiting and already overdue. Only six per cent were forwarded on time, down from 16 per cent in the eight years before the policy.

Some species have been stuck in limbo for more than 20 years. COSEWIC assessed limber pine as endangered in 2014, and the minister responded in 2015. Consultations were completed in 2021, yet the species has still not been forwarded to cabinet. Although the science clearly supports its endangered status, there are no federal protections for individual limber pine trees or their habitat.

Aquatic species fare worst. Not one of the 49 marine fish, including many Pacific salmon populations, or the 15 marine mammals assessed since 2017 has been forwarded to cabinet.

The status of many of these species continues to decline while waiting for listing. The Bay of Fundy striped bass, a freshwater fish that was first assessed by COSEWIC as threatened in 2004, is now endangered, but it remains unlisted without any legal protections under SARA.

Why the holdup?

The answer is not consultation itself. For more than 40 per cent of the delayed species described in the 2023 SARA annual report, consultations were already complete, yet the process had stalled with no explanation of what came next.

These reports are meant to explain why species have missed their recommended timelines. Yet of the 173 species overdue as of January 2023, 63 were left out of that year’s report entirely, and 57 of those were fish.

For the species that were included, the most common reason given was that information collection was ongoing. In the 2023 report, 31 Pacific salmon populations, all assessed as endangered or threatened, received the identical explanation: “The collection of information required to inform a listing decision for the species is extensive and underway.”

That leaves the public with no clear sense of why these decisions have stalled — and leaves vulnerable species without protection.

Fixing the process

With threats to Canada’s ecosystems mounting, the federal government needs to fix this protection process now by amending either the 2017 policy or SARA itself. We recommend three changes.

First, set binding timelines for every stage of the listing process.

Second, complete consultations in a responsible and timely manner by strengthening existing bodies such as the National Aboriginal Council on Species at Risk, a step recommended as early as 2012 but never implemented.

Third, the federal government should publicly disclose clear, species-specific reasons for every delay, including where the process has stalled, what information or consultations are outstanding and an expected timeline for resolution. This would not limit ministerial discretion, but it would increase transparency, call attention to prolonged inaction and open the process to review.

Canadians care about protecting biodiversity, and at-risk species are central to that goal. For limber pine, dozens of salmon populations and the more than 150 species assessed since 2017 that are now overdue, faster and more transparent listing decisions could determine whether they survive in Canada.

Mary Ann C. Perron receives funding from Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellowship. She is a Research Scientist at the St. Lawrence River Institute of Environmental Sciences.

William Bugg receives funding from the Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/endangered-species-in-canada-face-extensive-delays-receiving-protection/

Jared Wesley, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, is on the award-winning Conversation Weekly podcast discussing the Alberta independence referendum being held on Oct. 19 and his work in community town halls throughout the province leading up to the vote. The following is a truncated version of that compelling conversation. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

The Conversation: What’s the mood in Alberta right now just a few days before the referendum?

Jared Wesley: There’s a lot of uneasiness in most Alberta communities. This is the largest exercise in direct democracy in Canadian history. Never before in one event have we seen so many questions put to the public for a vote. So I think there’s a lot of confusion.

TC: There are 10 referendum questions in total, five related to immigration. Tell us a bit about them.

JW: They aren’t particularly concisely worded and a lot of folks are struggling to understand them. A lot of my work at community town halls is trying to provide a non-partisan perspective on why the government has introduced these questions and how people can make sense of them. Public opinion polls show quite consistently over the last two years that about 70 to 75 per cent of Albertans want to remain in Canada. And so folks in Alberta are either animated and ready to come out to the polls and vote to remain, or they’re quite confused as to why an issue that’s only supported by about 25 per cent of the population has made its way onto a referendum ballot and captured the world’s attention. So there’s a lot of confusion around the process and why we’re holding this vote in the first place.

TC: Let’s rewind a bit to the 1970s when there were first calls for Alberta’s independence. What was that movement about?

JW: The sense of what we call western alienation has really been part of Alberta’s political DNA since it joined Canadian Confederation, all the way back in 1905. These sentiments were captured by a political cartoon that featured a giant cow, and this cow was positioned across the entire country of Canada. It’s eating in Western Canada. It’s being fed hay by some burly farmers. It’s being milked in central Canada, particularly in Ottawa but also the financial capitals of Toronto and Montréal. So the, the notion has always been that the West has been feeding more into central Canada in terms of natural resources; originally agriculture, but now it’s oil and gas. So western alienation is imbued with this sense that Albertans put more into Canada than they get out, and we’ve seen versions and manifestations of that over time.

TC: There’s a successful separatist party in Québec. Why never in Alberta?

JW: Similar parties have been tried in Western Canada, but they failed to win seats. Looking at other far-right populist movements in the United States and in the United Kingdom, folks started saying: “We don’t need to start our own political party to make this work. We simply need to infiltrate mainstream parties, and in particular, governing parties.” That change in strategy by groups called Take Back Alberta and others was the start of a new approach to Alberta separatism and one of the main reasons why we’re now seeing separatism on the public agenda.

TC: Where are separatist groups getting money? Is there funding and support from both inside and outside Canada?

JW: Alberta and Canada have some fairly strict campaign finance laws. And so since the campaign started, disclosures have been made available publicly so we can see who’s donating. Most separatist organizations are drawing fairly large amounts of money — the maximum contributions of about $5,000 dollars per person. But what’s less clear is where the initial funding for these organizations came from. How did one of the largest separatist organizations, the Alberta Prosperity Project, start off with a million-dollar endowment? Where did that money came from? We do have reports that Russian and American operatives are active, particularly in social media misinformation campaigns, and that’s been confirmed by academics.

TC: Are these campaigns working?

JW: We haven’t seen an increase in support for separatism, despite all the fundraising and spending; despite all of the attention. It seems the more Albertans seek out information about separatism, the less likely they are to support it. And this is very different from what we saw in the case of Brexit in the U.K., where that interest was converted into public support.

TC: What do Alberta separatists think of Donald Trump?

JW: Most Alberta separatists want to form an independent country. While they want to have strong trade ties with the United States, they don’t want to become the 51st state. But there’s a strong faction, about 20 per cent, that do firmly believe that Alberta should be a 51st state and should be integrated into the United States more directly. So it’s dividing the movement itself. Separatists are more likely to tune into far-right American-based news sources like Fox News, Newsmax and other sources, where they’re hearing a lot of far-right populist narratives that they seem to want to import into Alberta politics. Those concerning immigration, re-migration, the great replacement theory, and so on.

TC: What about average Albertans? And how has U.S. involvement played a role?

JW: A lot of Albertans who would have otherwise been persuaded that voting in this first referendum to support independence would send a message to Ottawa are really withholding that support because they worry about what message a divided Canada sends to the United States. We know that the Trump administration likes to exploit weaknesses. And that’s why State Department officials have made comments about how an independent Alberta would be a welcome addition to the North American economy. They’re not passive bystanders. They would like nothing more than to see Canada divided.

TC: Have federalist forces cited Donald Trump as a reason to vote no to separation?

JW: There’s no doubt about it. In the closing weeks of the campaign, a lot of federalist organizations are running ads that feature Donald Trump very prominently.

TC: Danielle Smith has said she’s voting to remain in Canada and it seems she may have proceeded with this referendum to please the separatist faction of her party. Is she essentially trying to call their bluff?

JW: The premier has indicated that she’s feeling pressure from within to to settle this issue, and that’s one of the reasons why she’s holding this referendum. She is facing a faction within her party that wants to separate from Canada. Some polls show that up to half or even more than half of her party’s supporters would vote to leave Canada if given the choice.
So that’s a lot of internal pressure. The other half wants to stay in Canada, so how do you resolve those disputes? One way is to throw it to the broader public.

TC: What do we know about the typical pro-separatism voter in Alberta?

JW: About 20 per cent of Albertans are what we would call hardcore separatists. They will vote to leave. Another 10 or 15 per cent who would vote to leave to send a message to the rest of Canada, to say: “We don’t really want to leave, but we want a better deal within Confederation, and you need to take notice and, and listen to some of our demands when it comes to federal policy.” If we look at that hardcore 20 per cent, demographically, these folks tend to be in rural areas. They tend to be white. They tend to be married. They tend to be more religious than the general population, and they tend to work in blue-collar jobs; that is, in oil and gas or in agriculture.

TC: What does either outcome mean for Alberta, Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney?

JW: A lot depends on how the vote is split. Very few polls show a reasonable prospect for this first referendum passing. However, in a low turnout situation, the gap narrows considerably. Some modelling suggests if turnout is in the 50 per cent range, this becomes a coin flip in a very real sense. The premier holds a lot of power when it comes to interpreting the results of these non-binding referendums. Will she interpret a narrow result as a reason to continue moving forward with negotiating for a better deal within Canada? Does she look at a strong remain result as a reason to move on to other priorities? The prime minister needs to look at the result and decide whether Alberta independence is a genuine threat, whether his government must continue to take steps to assuage separatist demands or whether it’s time to put this behind us.

Listen to the podcast here:

Jared Wesley receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is affiliated with LeadNotLeave.ca.

The Conversation Canada 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/qa-with-an-alberta-politics-expert-taking-the-provinces-pulse-as-the-referendum-approaches/

In the western Canadian province of Alberta, a political battle is playing out on people’s front lawns. Separatists are flying the royal blue Alberta flag, others the red and white maple leaf of Canada to show their support for a united Canada.

It’s all because a populist right-wing political movement wants Alberta to break away from the rest of the country. On October 19, Albertans will vote on whether to have a binding referendum on independence.

“Public opinion polls show quite consistently over the last two years that about 70% to 75% of Albertans want to remain in Canada,” explains Jared Wesley, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta to The Conversation Weekly podcast. “So there’s a lot of confusion around the process and why we’re holding this vote in the first place.”

Separatist sentiment is driven in part by a longstanding sense of western alienation from eastern Canada, fuelled by grievances that the province puts more into the federal budget than it gets back. But the current wave of separatism in Alberta also has links to protests against Covid vaccine mandates and conspiracy theories. While most separatists want Alberta to become its own country, some even want the province to be the 51st US state.

Donald Trump’s aggressive trade war with Canada and his attacks on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney loom large over the poll. Some Albertans who may otherwise have voted in favour of independence to send a message to Ottawa, Wesley says, “are really withholding that support because they worry about what message that sends to the United States.”

Read more:
Albertans disapprove of Donald Trump — and his brand is weakening separatism, too

The referendum was called by the Alberta premier, Danielle Smith, leader of the province’s United Conservative Party. Despite her support for Alberta remaining in Canada, Smith faced pressure from separatists within her party to hold a referendum. Wesley says Smith’s decision bears similarities with the decision taken by then UK prime minister David Cameron to hold the 2016 Brexit referendum on leaving the European Union:

“More or less, David Cameron called the bluff of his internal Brexiteers that were putting pressure on him, and called a nationwide referendum thinking that he would win it. A lot of the same pressures are at play for Danielle Smith.”

There are ten questions on the ballot, ranging from whether to introduce stricter rules on access to public services for immigrants, to proposals for judicial and constitutional reform. The final question reads:

“Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

Wesley says turnout will be key to how the referendum plays out:

“Very few polls show a reasonable prospect for this first referendum passing. However, in a low turnout situation, the distance between remain and continue the conversation … narrows considerably.”

Disclosure statement

Jared Wesley receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Credits

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Grace Jennings-Edquist. Mixing by Dan Semo and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from cpac, BBC and Global News.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/in-alberta-far-right-populism-fuelled-by-conspiracy-theories-and-alienation-drive-bid-to-separate-from-canada/

On June 30 2015 at 23:59:59 UTC (19:59:59 EDT), artist Sara Morawetz was standing in the middle of New York’s Times Square with a pair of cymbals. As the clock ticked to the next second, she struck the cymbals together.

This simple performance, titled 61/60, sought to highlight the strange blip of time where the clock read 23:59:60 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), instead of 00:00:00 UTC.

Since 1972, extra seconds, known as leap seconds, have been added to clock time whenever our slightly wobbly Earth falls out of sync with atomic clocks (which run more consistently). A total of 27 leap seconds have been added in those five decades.

They are therefore important in fields like astronomy because they keep the link between clock time and solar time – which is based on our planet’s movement.

But on Thursday 15 October, delegates at the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) in Versailles, France, voted to abolish them, starting from 2027.

Their loss might seem trivial to some people. But in the field of precision timekeeping, leap seconds are highly controversial. They have the potential to affect everything from financial trading, telecommunications and the energy sector to data centres and the legal system.

In fact, they have threatened to interrupt any sector that requires accurate timing. For example, data centres use time synchronisation to ensure distributed servers work together effectively. In finance, time stamps ensure orders are carried out accurately and provide an audit trail for complying with regulations.

When a leap second was added in 2012, it caused websites such as Reddit and Linkedin to crash and Qantas airline flights to be delayed.

In the reporting on today’s decision, these risks to computing systems are often described as the main reason for the end of leap seconds, but in fact the risk was to the single globally accepted standard of time.

Big tech concerns

In 2008, when a leap second was due to be added to the clock on December 31, Google was unwilling to risk adding it in a single step. Instead, the tech giant’s time servers deviated from UTC for a period of 20 hours, “smearing” the extra second across this time period in increments that were so small their systems did not notice them.

Effectively, Google determined that UTC was not suitable for its needs and invented its own form of clock time in response. Increasingly, other corporations adopted their own workarounds, raising concerns about the ability of UTC to retain its position as the pre-eminent determination of time.

As a result, conversations within the international bodies responsible for standardisation have, in recent years, focused on the ways that the current model of clock time no longer works as a standard for all.

As Mario Maniewicz, director of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-R), has argued, clock time needs to be updated so that it can meet the needs of 21st century users.

At the 2022 CGPM, it had already been agreed by delegates that, by 2035, UTC would effectively be free of leap seconds. However, recent predictions of future changes in Earth’s rotation raised the possibility of the first negative leap second, where a second is subtracted rather than added to the clock.

Alarm over the unprecedented impact this situation could have led to it being likened to a new Y2K event. The increased risk of losing users of UTC to forms of timekeeping that do not require leap second adjustments led to the proposal agreed at Versailles, namely to bring forward the end of leap seconds to May 20 2027.

Meeting needs

UTC has thus been redefined so that it can be reasserted as a shared standard, free of the controversy it once held for many economic activities.

As I’ve argued previously, the leap second debate has shown that our usual ideas of clocks as abstract, mathematical and objective are incorrect. These ideas do not take into account the way that clocks are designed tools that are reformulated when needs shift.

Global computing and tech companies now have the time they need for their systems to work more smoothly. But astronomers will no longer be able to use UTC as a broad proxy for the Earth’s rotation as they did before. The proposal brought before the CGPM mentions this, but more or less says they will need to look elsewhere for their requirements.

The implication of the decision seems to be that computing needs have been placed above the requirements of other sectors. But the larger question raised by today’s decision at the CGPM is one the broader public has rarely asked, namely what other “user needs” are going unmet by the assumption that all human activities can be coordinated by a single standardised clock time? Astronomy provides one example of this, but our own experiences of pressure and anxiety around time suggest there are others.

Can we reinvent time?

There is a strange kind of audacity in even considering the idea of changing clock time to suit our own needs. Google was able to do it in part because it is big enough to do so.

But think about the common habit of running our clocks slightly fast to help with getting to meetings on time. This is done so often that Apple had to introduce an official feature to its smart watch allowing people to set it to the wrong time on purpose.

Public clocks do this occasionally too, such as the turret clock on the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh. Since 1902, the clock has run three minutes fast to help travellers arrive on time at the nearby Waverley train station. There are also clocks that let you track time outside of the UTC standard that was redefined today.

Designer Scott Thrift has built a clock called The Present which features a single hand that moves with the changing seasons across a full year. Thrift described The Present as “no hours, no minutes, no numbers. Only the bigger picture”. US scientists working on Mars missions created their own watches to track Martian days (called sols) which run longer than Earth days.

Many people may think of clock time as immovable and inevitable. As the latest vote shows, the “shape” of the clock remains up for debate. Currently, if you are big enough it will bend to your needs. We need to decide if we are happy to just leave the big players to it.

Michelle Bastian 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/experts-have-voted-to-stop-adding-extra-seconds-to-clock-time-the-outcome-favours-big-tech/

Some 23,000 years ago, during the coldest part of the last ice age, people walked across the muddy margins of an ancient lake in what is now White Sands national park, New Mexico.

The footprints they left behind have transformed our understanding of when people first reached the Americas. When we reported dates for the White Sands footprints in 2021, our findings were met with controversy. They placed people in North America thousands of years earlier than other widely accepted sites.

Subsequent work using several independent dating techniques strengthened that chronology. Our latest research takes the story a step further. Rather than simply asking when people were at White Sands, we can begin to ask: what sort of world did they experience?

The answer is a surprisingly dynamic one that was marked by periods of rapid climate change. Our expanded excavations at White Sands have identified 20 different horizons or packages of sediment containing human footprints. Together they span almost two millennia, from about 23,500 to 21,700 years ago, firmly within the last glacial maximum (the height of the last ice age).

Alongside the footprints, the sediments contain a remarkable archive of
environmental change. Pollen records the vegetation growing around the basin,
while organic molecules preserved in the sediment – including waxes originally
produced by plant leaves – provide information about temperature and rainfall.

Together, these allowed us to reconstruct the landscape through which people were
walking.

At the beginning of the record, White Sands looked very different from today. A large body of water, Lake Otero, occupied much of the basin. The surrounding mountains supported conifer forests and average annual temperatures were around 4°C colder than today.

But conditions did not remain stable. From around 23,600 years ago the lake began
to shrink as temperatures rose. Conifer forest declined and was increasingly
replaced by oak and sagebrush.

As a result of this warming, the basin became progressively drier as evaporation increased. Superimposed upon this longer term change were much sharper climatic swings.

Around 23,200 years ago, for example, White Sands experienced a short but severe drought. Rainfall declined, the lake became more saline and drought-tolerant vegetation expanded. This dry period coincided with a rapid climatic change recorded thousands of miles away in Greenland ice cores.

And people were there. Indeed, the earliest footprint horizon in our expanded
sequence occurs around this climatic transition. Footprints continue to occur at
intervals as the lake retreated and the environment changed.

Our new evidence therefore shows that people visited this landscape repeatedly while experiencing substantial environmental change.

Rapidly changing world

The footprints capture a world changing on timescales that could have been noticed by the people living there at the time. It is tempting to go one step further.

Were people particularly attracted to White Sands during difficult climatic episodes? Did the shrinking lake concentrate animals, plants or other resources that made the basin especially important during drought?

Perhaps. But footprints come with an important catch. What gets preserved is not
necessarily a full picture of what happened. In a separate recent study, we used an agent-based computer model to explore what a footprint record such as White Sands actually represents. Agent-based models are rather different from conventional models that attempt to predict something such as tomorrow’s weather.

Instead, they populate a simplified world with individual “agents” following basic rules. Complex patterns can then emerge from their collective behaviour. Our virtual world consisted of people moving around a fluctuating lake.

When they crossed mud they left footprints. Those footprints gradually disappeared unless changing water levels created the right conditions for them to be buried and preserved.

The result was revealing. People could be active around the lake while leaving
virtually no fossil record. At other times, relatively few people could produce large numbers of preserved footprints. What mattered was not simply whether people
were present, but whether their presence happened to coincide with the right
geological circumstances.

Arriving in pulses

Preservation was particularly likely during environmental transitions. A dry period
could expose large areas of footprint forming mud. Subsequent wetting and
sedimentation could then bury the tracks and preserve them. When we compared
this model with the real White Sands record, we found something striking.

The footprint surfaces occur as irregular pulses that tend to cluster around periods of climatic and hydrological change – just the pattern predicted by the model.

Footprints are snapshots, not a movie. But this study changes how the White Sands record should be interpreted. The footprints demonstrate unequivocally that people were present at particular moments.

But the gaps between footprint surfaces do not demonstrate that people were absent. Nor does a surface covered in footprints necessarily indicate a population boom. A handful of people repeatedly crossing soft ground can leave hundreds of tracks.

So we should be cautious about turning the correlation between footprints and
climate into a simple story in which people arrived at White Sands whenever drought
struck. Instead, there are two histories intertwined here.

One is a human history: people repeatedly inhabited this landscape for almost two millennia while the lake shrank, vegetation changed and the regional climate swung between wetter and exceptionally dry conditions. The other is a geological history determining which tiny fragments of those human lives happened to survive.

Footprints provide an intimate connection with ancient people, but they are not a continuous record of their lives. They are individual frames – moments when human behaviour, mud, water and chance came together.

Matthew Robert Bennett receives funding from UK AHRC.

Sally Christine Reynolds receives funding from the Art and Humanities Research Council grant: “The Peopling of the Tularosa Basin”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/early-humans-in-america-endured-climate-chaos-new-research/

On October 17, 1346, the battle of Neville’s Cross was fought outside Durham in the north-east of England. It was a decisive moment in Anglo-Scottish history that led to the capture of King David II of Scotland. Yet few have heard of it.

Other battles are far better known. Those of Stirling Bridge (1297), Falkirk (1298) and Bannockburn (1314) are more famous because of the exploits of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Similarly well-known are the successes of Edward III (the Black Prince) and Henry V at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415), respectively.

Yet, less than two months after Crécy, a decisive victory was won in northern England. The battle of Neville’s Cross remains one of the least publicly known but decisive battles in English history.

As Edward III gathered a force of 15,000 men to invade France in 1346, King Philip IV of France requested Scottish aid. He wrote to King David in June and again in July: “I implore you to remember our friendship and our treaties and to strike as hard at England as you can.”

With Edward III and most of his nobles in France, Philip reassured David that England was a “defenceless void”. The opportunity was too good to miss.

David duly invaded England with a force of around 12,000 men on October 7. They stormed the Peel of Liddell, took a ransom from Carlisle and sacked Hexham Abbey, before resting outside Durham at Bearpark on October 16.

The English were not, however, caught unawares. Contrary to Philip’s assurances, Edward had not left his northern border undefended. A force of 6,000 men was raised by the northern lords, Henry Percy, Ralph Neville and the Archbishop of York.

Seeking to catch the Scots unawares, they marched towards Bearpark before dawn on October 17. In the morning mists, the English force stumbled upon a Scottish raiding party led by William Douglas. Douglas hastily fled to inform King David that the English had successfully fielded an army against him.

The Anonimalle Chronicle, an anonymous 14th-century account written at St Mary’s Abbey, reported that David arose from his bed irritated and angrily said: “O man, that cannot be, because in England there are no men left but monks and canons, brothers and priests, swineherds and shepherds, cobblers and skinners; but all the knights are with their king overseas.”

The battle of Neville’s Cross

Two contemporary letters by the prior of Durham and Thomas Sampson described how the English army arrived at the battlefield outside Durham at 9am. The two armies proceeded to stare at each other across the moor for the next five hours. Then the English longbowmen opened fire on the Scots at 2pm, and the battle began in earnest. By 5pm, the Scots were routed and fled the field.

Although the ebb and flow of the battle is difficult to reconstruct, historians have suggested that “victory was achieved, not so much by archery, as by the hard work of fighting hand-to-hand in a fierce melee”.

The chronicle of Meaux Abbey, written at the turn of the 15th century, recorded that “because of their exhaustion and the length of the fight, they rested from the fight for a time, leaning on their spears and weapons”. The Anonimalle Chronicle similarly noted that the armies “rested by agreement and then fought again” on several occasions.

Local legend suggests that King David attempted to flee, hiding underneath Aldin Grange bridge. It is said he was captured because the English saw his reflection in the water of the River Browney. However, most contemporary chronicles record the king fighting courageously.

King David was wounded by two arrows. Despite this, the Scotichronicon, a 15th-century Scottish chronicle, reported that King David managed to knock out two of his captor’s teeth before being overwhelmed.

King David’s captor was a relatively humble Northumberland squire – John de Coupland. He was promoted to the rank of knight banneret, the highest position below the titled aristocracy. He also received a very large annuity of £500 per year (equivalent to just over £290,000 in 2017).

Decisive and devastating result

It was a decisive and devastating result. The Scottish force lost up to 2,000 men, while the prior of Durham wrote that “few of us in the said battle were killed”.

Alongside King David, four Scottish earls and over a dozen major barons were captured. The Earl of Menteith, who had previously paid homage and sworn loyalty to Edward III, was hung, drawn and quartered for treason. The list of the dead included the earls of Moray and Strathearn, the marshal, constable, chancellor and chamberlain of Scotland, as well as many barons and knights.

In the following year, the English were able to occupy virtually of all of Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde rivers. It would take decades for the Scots to recover all they had lost. King David himself spent 11 years as an English prisoner before agreeing to pay a large ransom of 100,000 marks for his freedom (equivalent to just over £39 million in 2017).

The battle of Neville’s Cross was most significant because it stopped a series of potential might-have-beens. A Scottish victory would have put pressure on Edward III to lift his siege of Calais and return to England. Instead, the resounding English victory secured Edward’s northern border for the rest of his long reign. This enabled him to raise 30,000 men for the Calais siege; the largest English force assembled during the hundred years war (1337-1453).

Why, then, is the battle not more famous? Unlike Agincourt, it was not immortalised by Shakespeare. Unlike Bannockburn, national identities have not coalesced around it. The battle has not featured in a major cinematic portrayal. It has faded from popular memory in the long and bloody history of Anglo-Scottish warfare.

Although relatively few people today have heard of Neville’s Cross, the events of a few short hours there one October afternoon were of international significance. They came to shape the relations of England, Scotland and France for years to come.

Alex Brown is currently the Principal Investigator of a Leverhulme Trust funded project on ‘Modelling the Black Death’.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/the-little-known-14th-century-battle-that-has-shaped-english-scottish-and-french-relations/

The drone has become the signature weapon of the Russo-Ukraine war. On any day in Ukraine, tens of thousands of drones are out hunting the battlefield for targets. These could be individual enemy soldiers or vehicles, or they could be larger targets such as depots, headquarters, bridges or power plants.

Yet, this drone war has been possible only because of a less obvious but equally vital technology. Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink system is a secure digital satellite communications network that Ukraine has become fully reliant on.

When Russia mounted its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mykhailo Fedorov – then Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation – urged Musk publicly to provide connectivity. Two days later, 500 Starlink terminals arrived in Ukraine. In February 2022, Musk granted the Ukrainian government and military the use of Starlink, initially for free. By July 2020, Starlink had provided 15,000 terminals.

The Ukrainians have fully admitted their dependence on Musk: “Without Starlink, we would have been losing the war already,” one platoon commander reportedly told the Wall Street Journal in 2022. Starlink allowed the government and the armed forces to communicate securely, at the heart of its vital system of C4ISR (the military term for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance).

Without Starlink, the defence of Ukraine would have been very difficult: perhaps impossible.

The cost to Starlink was considerable, though. Musk initally provided 2,000 terminals for free, 300 discounted and waived monthly services for about 5,500 more. Starlink’s total contribution to the Ukraine war effort in 2022 alone was US$80 million (£71 million). Musk provided a vital military capability gratis and eventually on a (discounted) contractual basis.

The strategic and commercial partnership between Starlink and Ukraine has been vital to the war effort for more than four years.

Crisis resolved

But Ukraine’s dependency on Starlink – or Starshield as the system’s military application is called – has not come without conditions. In September 2022, having repulsed the initial Russian attacks, the Ukrainian armed forces were planning their first assault on the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, then the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. The plan was to sail remotely controlled boats, loaded with explosives to cripple the fleet.

It was a bold plan – the first attempt by the Ukrainian to attack territory which the Russians had held since 2014 and which they considered sovereign. And it was a controversial attack – the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, had personally warned Musk that attacking Crimea would be a red line, which could lead to nuclear war.

Musk was concerned. He believed that this was potentially escalatory. He advised Fedorov: “Once Russia is fully mobilised, they will destroy all infrastructure throughout Ukraine.” He urged him to avoid a third world war: “Seek peace while you have the upper hand.”

Musk refused a Ukranian request to activate Starshield operations in the region, posting on X that: “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

But following this crisis, relations between Musk and Ukraine’s leadership stabilised. Starshield has continued to play an indispensable role in Ukraine. It has been the digital communications spine of the Ukrainian armed forces and the enabler of all its operations in this war.

Indeed, when the Ukrainians informed him that in 2026 the Russians had acquired some Starlink terminals on the black market and were accessing the system to help them prosecute the war inside Ukraine, he identified the serial numbers of those terminals and disabled them.

Speed limit

Unfortunately, in the past week, Ukrainian armed forces have once again been exposed to the jeopardy of their dependence on Starlink. On the night of October 13-14, without any warning, SpaceX imposed a speed limit of about 160kmph on some Starlink services, meaning this is the maximum speed Ukrainian drones and missiles can travel and remain connected. Starshield terminals mounted on drones have been particularly badly affected. Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Reaction Corps was forced to cancel several missions.

Given the importance of drones to the Ukrainian war effort, the Starlink constraint is very serious. The speed limit has compromised Ukrainian drone fleets operating above the kill zone. It has also undermined Ukrainian air defence against intensifying Russian drone attacks on cities and infrastructure, as 160kmph is too slow for intercepts.

Since strategic bombardments against Ukrainian energy infrastructure have become Russia’s principal means of prosecuting this war and will only intensify into the winter, the Starlink embargo is deeply concerning. It may become critical if it continues.

Read more:
‘Sodcit’ – after battlefield setbacks, Russia returns to destroying Ukraine’s morale

Unlike September 2022, it appears that this is not a random individual decision by the Starlink boss. It seems to reflect troubling shifts in US policy on Ukraine.

On October 9, the US president, Donald Trump announced a deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and allow it access to global markets. The plan was, he said, to reduce the price of fuel – although how effectively the relatively small amount of Russian diesel will do that is unclear. The high price of diesel is much more to do with the intractable war in Iran.

Read more:
Donald Trump aligns with Vladimir Putin yet again, leaving Ukraine – and US relations with Europe – under pressure

The following day, Trump called for the removal of Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky: “Time for Ukraine to get a new president”, he told reporters. The day after that, the US president announced that an energy ceasefire was in immediate effect and that Russia and Ukraine would stop targeting each other’s energy infrastructure.

Ukraine has not used Starlink to hit Russia’s oil refineries. Starlink does not work in Russia and the Ukraine deep strikes rely on other communications systems. So Ukraine’s strategic bombardments remain technically unaffected by the Starlink embargo.

Musk has put the responsibility for the slowdown in Starshield squarely on the US government, posting on his X social media platform: “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

In September 2022, Musk instituted a policy which contradicted US policy on Ukraine – he turned off Starlink against the wishes of the Biden administration. Now, so Musk says, in October 2026, it’s US government which is restricting Starlink. But the result is effectively the same: Ukraine is the victim.

This winter always looked as if it will be hard for Ukraine. It just got harder.

Anthony King 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/is-the-us-limiting-starlink-in-ukraine-the-risks-could-be-catastrophic/

The Earth got its Moon when a small planet collided with our planet more than four billion years ago. This impact hurled molten rock into space, which eventually coalesced to form the satellite we can see every night from across our planet.

But what of our neighbour, Mars? The red planet has two small, irregularly shaped moons called Phobos and Deimos. There are several theories on how these natural satellites formed, but no clear front-runner. Soon, a Japanese-led space mission called Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) will begin its hunt for the answer.

On Monday October 19, MMX is due to lift off on an H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. The mission will aim to land on Phobos and collect a sample of soil. The spacecraft will then send this precious payload to Earth, for study in laboratories.

Of the two Martian moons, Phobos is the largest and orbits closer to the planet. It has a mean diameter of 22.2km and a mass of 10,637 million million kg. Deimos has a mean diameter of 12.5km and a mass of 1,480 million million kg.

The moons were discovered during a six-day window in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall, who was working at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC.

Two main hypotheses dominate discussions of how Mars got these moons. The giant impact theory proposes that a celestial object a third of Mars’ size hit the planet early in its history, ejecting material into space.

The general mechanism is similar to how scientists think Earth’s natural satellite formed. But in the Martian impact theory, a single “giant” moon was created by the ejected material, along with a host of smaller satellites.

Over time, each one broke up and fell to Mars’ surface. Simulations by Pascal Rosenblatt, from the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique (LPG) in Nantes, France, and his colleagues show that Phobos and Deimos would have been the sole moons to survive.

Gravitational capture

The other main idea is known as the captured asteroid theory, which goes back to the 1960s. This suggests that Phobos and Deimos were originally asteroids that wandered so close to Mars they were captured by the planet’s gravity.

According to this idea, the moons may have originated from within or just beyond the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. The moons might even have been what’s known as a binary – two asteroids that orbit each other.

The moons are characterised by their low density, which implies they have porous interiors.

The captured asteroid hypothesis, however, requires an extremely dense Martian atmosphere to explain how the asteroids were trapped by tidal forces. Mars today has a thin atmosphere mainly composed of carbon dioxide. Also, asteroids captured by planets tend to have highly eccentric orbits. The orbits of Phobos and Deimos around Mars are, by contrast, almost circular.

Scientists have also proposed other theories for the origins of these moons, but they command lower levels of support among the scientific community. One visualises the origin of these moons as debris from the destruction of a single “proto-moon”.

Another lesser known idea proposes that Mars undergoes billion-year cycles where rings of rocky material orbiting Mars coalesce over time into moons.

Once the moons are formed, they are eventually ripped apart by gravitational (tidal) forces to form new rings. Under this scenario, we just happen to live in an era where the debris is in the form of moons and not as rings.

Solving the mystery

Amid this ongoing uncertainty surrounding the moons’ origins, MMX aims to collect more than 10g of material from Phobos – marking the world’s first sample return mission from the Moon.

If the samples contain a large amount of material from Mars itself, along with material from the asteroid that collided with the red planet, then it would favour the giant impact theory. If the composition of Phobos is similar to that of meteorites from known categories of asteroid, it would favour the asteroid capture theory.

MMX’s round trip to Mars will take five years in total. It will arrive at the red planet in late 2027, and return to Earth in 2031.

The spacecraft consists of three modules, one to get to Mars, one to land on Phobos and another to return the sample to Earth. It houses 11 scientific instruments, including a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer for measuring the chemical composition of Phobos, two cameras and a near-infrared instrument for characterising minerals. MMX will also deploy a 25kg rover called Idefix on Phobos’ surface.

For decades, the origin of Mars’s unusual moons has been subject to intense debate. Now, with the launch of this landmark space mission, scientists could be on the verge of a breakthrough.

Lana Williams 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/how-did-mars-get-its-moons-japans-mmx-space-mission-aims-to-solve-the-puzzle/

In what looked like a return to the dark days of Reefer Madness – a 1936 film that portrayed cannabis as a drug that could drive people to madness and murder – a recent article in the Daily Telegraph claimed that cannabis users are “twice as likely to be violent”.

The claim comes from a systematic review by King’s College London that combined 63 studies covering more than 265,000 people. The researchers did, indeed, find a link between cannabis use and violence, but the headline overstates what the numbers can tell us.

There are three reasons to be cautious: other factors that could explain the link (known as confounders), the way the studies were designed, and potential biases in how the data was gathered.

Confounders

Poverty, alcohol, other drugs and a difficult upbringing are all linked to violence in their own right. Cannabis is also illegal in many places, and buying it can bring people into contact with people and places where violence is more common. Some of these factors are more common among cannabis users, so these confounders could partly explain the link.

Ice cream sales rise and fall alongside drownings, yet nobody thinks ice cream causes drowning. Hot weather makes people eat more ice cream and swim more, linking the two. Cannabis and violence may be connected in a similarly roundabout way.

The review did try to account for other factors. But its authors generally favoured the versions of studies that adjusted for the fewest of these factors, making it harder to rule out alternative explanations.

Study design

Of the 63 studies in the review, 46 were cross-sectional, meaning they measured cannabis use and violence at one point in time. This makes it difficult to tell whether cannabis use came before the violence, followed it, or simply occurred alongside other circumstances that contributed to it. These studies found the strongest link between cannabis use and violence.

Studies that follow people over time – called longitudinal studies – can help establish which came first. These studies found a much weaker link between cannabis use and violence than the cross-sectional studies.

In the one-off studies, the odds of violence were more than twice as high among cannabis users. The Telegraph presented these figures as meaning cannabis users were up to twice as likely to be violent. In the longitudinal studies, cannabis users had 17% higher odds of violence than non-users.

It should also be noted that twice the odds is not the same as twice as likely. Likelihood looks at your chance out of the entire group. Odds compares the people an event happens to against those it doesn’t.

The two are close when violence is rare, but they drift apart when it is common.

For example, if one in 100 people experience something, doubling the likelihood gives you two in 100 (2%). Doubling the odds gives you two in 101 (1.98%) – a tiny distinction.

The gap widens a lot when an event is common. Imagine something that already happens to 50 out of 100 people. Twice as likely doubles that 50% chance to 100% (it happens to everyone). Twice the odds only increases that 50% chance to 67%.

Bias

One of the review’s authors told the Telegraph that a study of this size lets researchers “speak with more confidence about the risks”. That is true only in a narrow sense. Imagine measuring a room with a slightly stretched tape measure: a thousand repeat measurements might give a consistent answer, but the wrong one.

A large sample reduces random error – the chance that researchers happen to study an unusual group of people. It cannot fix systematic bias, where the original studies measured the wrong things or measured them badly.

Bias can creep in at every stage. Studies disagree on what counts as cannabis use (once, in the past month or daily?) and violence (a shove, a fight or a criminal conviction?). The review groups together domestic incidents, sexual assault, fights and robbery, which may have very different causes.

Results across the 63 studies also varied widely. Three analyses of the same US national drug survey, all included in the review, produced odds ratios ranging from about 1.3 to nearly 10. This may reflect differences in how cannabis use and violence were defined and measured, as well as in who was surveyed.

Also, some studies may be missing because research showing little or no link is less likely to be published. This could make the link between cannabis and violence look stronger than it is. The review found signs of this problem, and its attempts to account for it could not rule it out.

Finally, the review’s supplementary material rates the certainty of the evidence as very low. In other words, the authors have very little confidence in the size of their estimate, though they consider the association itself likely to be real. This important qualification does not appear in the Telegraph report.

None of this means cannabis and violence are unrelated, and the authors themselves acknowledge many of these limitations. But the headline figure leaves readers with a number that looks much more certain than the evidence warrants.

SCM is Deputy Chair of the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Better Methods, Better Research funding panel and has received funding from the Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Youth Endowment Fund, Office of the South Wales Police Crime Commissioner, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/cannabis-doesnt-make-you-violent-despite-what-recent-reports-have-claimed/

Pregnancy and infant loss affect thousands of Canadian families each year. Yet after a loss, many find themselves navigating not only grief but a complicated system of employment leaves and income benefits.

The protections and supports available are far from consistent across Canada. They vary by region, the timing of the loss, parental role and employment circumstances. The impact of a loss can extend beyond grief itself, affecting health, well-being and people’s ability to work. These impacts carry financial consequences for individuals, families and employers alike.

Policy reform is now getting more attention, but we know surprisingly little about how much grief actually affects people’s working lives. And without that evidence, it’s hard to tell whether new policies will help the people who need them.

A patchwork of protections

Provincial and territorial employment standards largely govern job-protected leave, while income support through employment insurance (EI) falls under the federal system. Québec is the exception on the benefits side.

For example, British Columbia offers up to six weeks of job-protected leave following a pregnancy loss. Québec ties entitlement more closely to timing: up to three weeks for a loss before 20 weeks of gestation, rising to about 18 weeks (the province’s full maternity leave) for a loss at or after 20 weeks.

Regional differences appear again in provisions following an infant loss. B.C. and Ontario offer up to 104 weeks of leave after the death of a child, no matter the cause. In Alberta, the default is much less, with leave of up to 104 weeks available only if the death results from a crime.

Eligibility for employment insurance benefits also depends on parental role: the person who was pregnant, their partner and adoptive or surrogate parents are not always equally entitled.

Following the death of an infant, maternity benefits generally continue, but parental and paternity benefits end within one to two weeks of the death. Families lose that support at the moment they need it most.

This compounding of grief and financial strain — and their toll on health and well-being — is a burden increasingly recognized in calls for legislative reform, in Canada and abroad.

Reform, but for whom?

This patchwork of entitlements, benefits and eligibility rules can fail to match what families need. It creates uncertainty and financial instability at a time when people are least able to handle administrative complexity. It has also prompted growing policy attention.

One example is Evan’s Law (the Relieving Grieving Parents of an Administrative Burden Act), or Bill C-222, a private member’s bill currently before Parliament. It would allow parents to continue receiving EI parental benefits after the death of a newborn rather than losing eligibility as soon as the infant dies.

Such legislative efforts reflect a broader shift: recognition within policy that pregnancy and infant loss constitute a form of grief warranting societal and workplace attention. They also acknowledge that current systems may not adequately account for the experiences of grieving Canadians.

But they also raise another question: How do we know whether these reforms go far enough, and for whom? That question is surprisingly difficult to answer.

Measuring the impacts of grief at work

Research has established that grief affects people’s working lives, but there is little on how to measure that impact. This limits how well programs and reforms can be evaluated.

Grief can shape not only whether someone returns to work, but also their career trajectory, earning potential and employability. Yet the methods used to measure these impacts are fragmented and inconsistent from one study to the next. Most existing research relies on one-time snapshots. Few studies follow people over time, even though grief may unfold unevenly and its effects can ebb, resurface or persist.

This matters because policymakers need evidence about the scale and duration of consequences of grief following pregnancy and infant loss. Without it, basic design questions go unanswered.

How long might someone need to be away from work? Who should be eligible for these protections and benefits? Does the impact differ according to the type or timing of loss? Should protections be extended to losses before pregnancy, such as embryo loss? What happens when someone returns to work but is not yet functioning as they did before? What is the role of employers and workplaces in supporting employees once they return?

Closing this evidence gap is therefore part of closing the policy gap. More consistent measurement would help researchers compare experiences across populations and jurisdictions, and give policymakers what they need to design evidence-informed reforms.

It could also make visible costs that currently go uncounted: lost income, disrupted careers and the strains of returning to work while grieving.

Read more:
The painful collision between work life and pregnancy loss

More than a policy question

Pregnancy and infant loss cannot be reduced to an employment policy issue. But employment and income-support systems are one of the places where society communicates which losses it recognizes, and what support it considers warranted.

Meaningful change in policy and workplace practice can give people room to grieve, to recover and, in time, to return to contributing their talents fully.

As Canada weighs reforms after pregnancy and infant loss, building evidence-informed policy will depend on better ways to measure the wide-ranging effects of grief at work so that policy is grounded in what families across the country actually experience.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/theres-no-clock-on-the-grief-of-losing-an-infant-but-there-is-a-deadline-to-return-to-work/

Completing value-added tax (VAT) returns takes time, and waiting for a refund can tie up money a business needs to pay suppliers or invest.

The South African Revenue Service wants to ease both pressures while making it harder for businesses to under-report VAT. VAT-registered businesses already file returns electronically, reporting VAT on their sales and purchases. The revenue service checks supporting invoices after submission when it requests them.

VAT is a tax on most goods and services. VAT-registered businesses charge it on the goods and services they supply, deduct the VAT they are entitled to claim on purchases, and pay the difference to the tax authority.

In an August 2026 consultation paper, the South African Revenue Service proposed receiving VAT-related transaction details in near real time. Businesses would issue invoices in a standard digital format, with the relevant details sent automatically to the revenue service. It could use this information to pre-fill returns for businesses to review and correct, and to identify discrepancies sooner. Public comments are due by 16 October 2026.

More accurate reporting could help the revenue service collect VAT that businesses have failed to declare. A study estimated South Africa’s domestic VAT reporting gap at between 35% and 41% across the 2016-2020 tax years. This measures the difference between VAT declared and the amount that would have been declared under full compliance.

VAT is South Africa’s second-largest source of tax revenue. In 2024/25, it raised R457.8 billion (about US$28 billion) after refunds, accounting for 24.7% of total tax revenue. Personal income tax, the largest contributor, accounted for 39.5%.

We study taxation in Africa, including how businesses respond to tax rules and how tax authorities administer them. Our work has investigated how much VAT businesses under-report and how electronic invoicing changes their reporting behaviour. Drawing on this work and other research from South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia, we consider the lessons for South Africa’s proposed VAT reform.

Together, these studies show that digital records can improve VAT reporting, but businesses may find other ways to under-report. Collecting records is therefore only part of the task. Tax authorities also need to compare buyers’ and sellers’ records, identify claims that do not match, and investigate possible under-reporting.

How firms respond to tighter checks

Businesses can lower their tax bills by deducting VAT on purchases from the VAT they collect from customers. Some businesses understate the VAT they owe by exaggerating purchases or concealing sales. Digital invoice records allow officials to check whether the purchases businesses claim match their suppliers’ records.

Uganda required VAT-registered businesses to start issuing electronic invoices from January 2021, reporting sales information to the tax authority. Initially, businesses could choose how to report, including entering details through an online portal. In April 2022, about 5,000 larger firms were instructed to connect their accounting software directly to the system, automating invoice reporting.

Research on this stricter requirement found that affected businesses reported 43% fewer purchases, while their reported VAT liabilities increased by nearly 150%. The researchers interpret this as evidence that tighter checks reduced exaggerated purchase claims. Reported sales also fell by 39%, suggesting that some businesses shifted towards hiding sales when exaggerating purchases became harder. Higher declared VAT does not necessarily translate immediately into higher cash payments. Many businesses had accumulated VAT credits that could offset the amounts owed.

Acting on discrepancies

Uganda illustrates how businesses respond to tighter checks. Rwanda shows why follow-up matters. A Rwandan study using records from 2012 to 2019 estimated that electronic invoicing increased annual VAT declared after deductions by about US$11,000 per firm. However, audits among firms using electronic invoicing increased subsequent annual declared VAT by an estimated US$33,400 per firm. The study suggests that digital invoice records can make audits more effective.

Evidence from Ethiopia also shows the importance of using the information collected. Electronic sales registers increased VAT payments by adopting businesses in Addis Ababa by at least 48%. They also reduced inconsistencies in reporting. Nevertheless, across the declarations studied for 2010-2016, about 42% contained different sales figures for income tax and VAT. Officials did not fully use the available information to address these discrepancies.

The South African Revenue Service already plans to use automated risk detection. The proposed pilot could test which discrepancies automated checks flag, which businesses can correct, and which require further investigation.

Protecting revenue and paying refunds promptly

How the revenue service handles checks also matters to businesses waiting for VAT refunds. The challenge is to investigate questionable claims without unnecessarily delaying legitimate refunds. Refund claims arise when deductible VAT on purchases exceeds VAT charged on sales. Delaying payment restricts money available for investment and operating costs.

A South African study of refund administration found that roughly halving the audit rate on refund claims, alongside faster processing, increased investment by 31% and reported sales by 24% among affected firms. Delays were particularly damaging to smaller businesses.

Fewer audits and smaller adjustments also reduced additional tax recovered through those checks. The study did not establish the overall short- and long-term revenue effects.

The study did not assess electronic invoicing. But it highlights a practical test for the proposed reform: can better records help the tax authority to investigate questionable claims while paying legitimate refunds sooner?

What South Africa can test

The consultation paper already identifies VAT gap indicators, compliance risks and ease of adoption as considerations for phased rollout. Estimated reporting gaps by sector, based on data from 2016 to 2020, were approximately 47% in construction and 5% in gold mining. These estimates can help inform which sectors adopt first, alongside potential revenue gains and businesses’ readiness.

The South African Revenue Service’s indicative roadmap places the pilot in 2029/2030, with phased implementation starting in 2030. The pilot can test whether businesses report more accurately, whether the service can resolve discrepancies, and whether legitimate refunds reach businesses sooner. Assessing declarations alongside cash payments, investigation workloads, refund delays and adoption costs would show how the reform works in practice. Software changes and staff training may create particular challenges for smaller businesses, which may need support to participate.

For South Africa, success would mean detecting under-reporting while making compliance easier and paying legitimate refunds promptly.

Amina Ebrahim receives funding from Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation QZA-18/0207 Domestic Revenue Mobilization.

Ada Jansen received funding from the UNU-WIDER/SA-TIED programme of National Treasury and UNU-WIDER to complete a working paper entitled: The VAT gap in South Africa: A bottom-up approach.
Ada Jansen works for Stellenbosch University as a professor in economics.

Adrienne Lees receives funding from the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). Through the ICTD, the research described in this article has been supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and the Gates Foundation.

Maria Jouste receives funding from Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation QZA-18/0207 Domestic Revenue Mobilization.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/south-africa-is-going-digital-on-vat-what-it-can-learn-from-the-rest-of-africa/

Ethiopia has experienced recurrent conflicts for over five decades. This includes a long-running civil war sparked by the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, renewed fighting in Tigray, and ongoing conflicts in Amhara and Oromia.

The renewed hostilities in Tigray threaten to undo a peace process that had begun with an agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa, in 2022.

Why has peace been so difficult to sustain in Ethiopia? My research on constitutional design and conflict points to four interconnected explanations:

• the foundations of the Ethiopian state remain contested

• ceasefires are mistaken for political settlements

• armed force continues to be a route to political power

• regional rivalries reinforce internal conflicts.

The problem isn’t that Ethiopians of diverse ethnic backgrounds hate one another and can’t live together peacefully. It’s that successive political arrangements have failed to establish widely accepted rules for managing disagreements.

1. The foundations of the state remain contested

Ethiopia’s 1995 constitution emerged from a political transition that followed the overthrow of the military government in 1991. This ended nearly two decades of civil war.

The new leadership sought to address long-standing grievances over ethnic marginalisation and demands for greater autonomy. It restructured the country as a federation largely organised around ethnolinguistic communities. The constitution vested sovereignty in Ethiopia’s nations, nationalities and peoples. It guaranteed their right to self-determination, including secession.

Proponents of federalism regard this right as protection against historical domination. Opponents argue that it entrenches ethnic boundaries and encourages competition over territory and resources.

Ethnic diversity doesn’t inevitably lead to violence. And federalism isn’t inherently destabilising. It was introduced to accommodate competing national claims within a common political order.

But constitutional recognition is not the same as political reconciliation.

Read more:
What is federalism? Why Ethiopia uses this system of government and why it’s not perfect

The problem arises when a constitution sets out rules for sharing power and governing the country without sufficient agreement among the political groups expected to follow them. Instead of providing a common framework for resolving disputes, those rules become another source of political conflict.

2. Ceasefires are mistaken for political settlements

The 2022 Pretoria agreement was about stopping hostilities, not about resolving their causes. The federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front agreed to end two years of war. Major political questions were left for later negotiation.

Disputed territories, regional administration, political participation and accountability for wartime abuses remain contentious.

Eritrea, a major participant in the 2020-2022 war in Tigray, did not sign the agreement. Eritrean forces are still present in parts of Tigray.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front itself also became fragmented after the war. Divisions emerged within the leadership. Disagreements over federal relations, political authority and control of military forces developed into a struggle within the movement.

A peace agreement assumes that the parties signing it have authority over their political and military organisations to honour their commitments. But when these organisations fragment, it becomes unclear who can carry out agreements.

The Tigray leadership’s loss of legal party status in 2025 added another obstacle to political reintegration.

These developments have undermined confidence that the transition from armed conflict to constitutional politics would be honoured.

Read more:
Ethiopia’s peace deal is unravelling – what went wrong with the Tigray agreement

This distinction is fundamental. A cessation of hostilities can save lives immediately. But it cannot, by itself, establish a legitimate regional government, resolve territorial claims or restore trust between former enemies.

3. Armed force is a route to political power

The use of violence to acquire or retain political authority has deep roots in Ethiopia’s modern history. In 1974, the military overthrew the empire-state and established a military regime. This regime was itself overthrown in 1991 by a coalition of rebel forces led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front.

These transitions reinforced a pattern in which political power could be won through armed struggle. When political opponents have little confidence that elections, courts or negotiations can bring change, taking up arms can appear more effective than peaceful political competition.

The continued use of force by both the state and armed groups makes this cycle difficult to break.

Read more:
Ethiopia’s national dialogue was meant to heal the nation, but divisions are deepening

Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in 2018 after years of anti-government protests and divisions within the ruling coalition. Two years later, rising political tensions led to war in Tigray. Abiy’s regime has faced accusations of serious rights abuses and a lack of accountability.

This has deepened distrust. It’s made negotiated settlements harder to achieve. Under Abiy, political authority has become increasingly personalised. Military operations and extraordinary security measures have been used to confront political challenges.

Peace needs a political environment where losing an election doesn’t mean exclusion from power or exposure to coercion.

4. Regional rivalries reinforce internal conflicts

Ethiopia’s domestic conflicts are increasingly intersecting with the interests and actions of neighbouring countries. Eritrean forces fought beside Ethiopia’s army in Tigray. They remained in parts of the region after the 2022 peace deal. Now the former allies are adversaries.

There have been accusations of cross-border military intervention. This has renewed concerns that the war in Tigray could develop into a wider conflict.

Ethiopia’s ambitions to secure Red Sea access have further complicated relations with Eritrea and Somalia. Its 2024 agreement with Somaliland provoked a dispute with Mogadishu.

Ethiopia also has strained relations with Egypt over its mega dam in the Nile River. Sudan’s ongoing civil war and rival Saudi Arabia and Emirati relationships across the Red Sea add further pressures.

Read more:
Ethiopia and Eritrea are on edge again: what’s behind the growing risk of war

These external tensions can make domestic troubles harder to contain. Ethiopia has a duty to defend its boundaries and also to respect those of its neighbours.

What would lasting peace require?

These four obstacles to peace reinforce one another:

• disagreements over constitutional rules fuel political tensions

• armed conflict makes inclusive negotiations more difficult

• peace agreements that fail to address underlying grievances leave the door open to renewed violence

• competing regional interests complicate efforts to achieve lasting peace.

As a result, Ethiopia’s recurring conflicts cannot be resolved through ceasefires alone.

Lasting peace requires all Ethiopians to agree on how power is shared, and the relationship between the federal government and its regions.

Read more:
What makes peace talks successful? The 4 factors that matter

But resolving Ethiopia’s internal divisions will not, on its own, settle tensions with neighbouring countries. That requires diplomacy built on respect for sovereignty, non-interference and peaceful negotiation over interests.

Ethiopia therefore faces two interconnected challenges. First, building a political system that its diverse communities can accept. Second, establishing peaceful relations with its neighbours.

Lasting peace depends on both.

Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/can-ethiopia-ever-be-at-peace-four-reasons-conflict-keeps-flaring-up/

Years of antibiotic use have fuelled a rise in bacteria that can survive antibiotics. These antibiotic resistant bacteria are competing with and displacing other bacteria that are naturally present in the human gut, where they play a critical role in maintaining good health. Resistant bacteria have led to increased illness and death from diseases that were once easily treatable with antibiotics. Disease ecologist Eric Ng’eno shares findings from his research on how some resistant strains of Escherichia coli bacteria are taking over the guts of people who are otherwise healthy. He suggests how this displacement can be slowed down.

What did you do that’s new?

In every person’s gut there are millions of friendly microbes that help digest food, produce energy, and shield the person from harmful, disease-causing bacteria and other invaders. The microbes that live in the body include bacteria, fungi and viruses. They form a community of microorganisms.

Where people live and work together, healthy microbes spread easily through everyday interactions like handshakes, kissing, and sharing food or water. In this way, people who interact often tend to develop similar gut microbes. We call these the background microbial community.

Disease-causing agents spread in a similar way.

Microorganisms affect the environment around them so as to encourage or prevent the growth of other microorganisms in their community. We wanted to assess whether these microbial interactions play a role in the presence of resistant E. coli in the gut of individuals living in a densely populated urban informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.

To do this, we mapped out background microbial communities in people living in different areas across the study region.

We then tested how different background microbial composition identified at the beginning of the study were associated with resistance patterns observed thereafter.

How did you go about it?

To determine the role of the gut microbes, we first built a statistical model that used all three factors that contribute to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria together. These factors are:

• antibiotic use

• spread of bacteria

• background microbial communities in people’s guts.

We measured how well this combined model predicted where resistant E. coli appeared.

Next, we ran a similar model, but this time using background microbial communities as the only predictor. These are the microbes people naturally had in their gut at the beginning of the study.

By comparing the two results, we were able to pinpoint how much the background microbial communities alone drove resistance in this setting. We used E. coli strains identified from faecal samples collected from people living in different locations across the whole study area.

The idea of considering microbial interactions in the analysis of drivers of resistant bacteria carriage isn’t new. But this is the first time where such interactions were considered in an analysis of real-world data.

What did you find?

We showed that the background microbial community largely determined which E.coli strains people in this area ended up carrying.

People who lived in areas where invading resistant bacteria made up a larger share of the local microbial community were more likely to carry resistant E. coli strains. Those in areas where the local microbial communities mostly included the native non-resistant bacteria were less likely to carry resistant E.coli strains. This was the case despite how antibiotics were used and how easily bacteria could spread in these areas.

Antibiotic use and background microbial communities work together. When antibiotics disrupted the gut microbiota of individuals, the native microbes that people had in their guts were quickly displaced by microbial communities present in the surrounding environment. If these replacement microbial communities include invading resistant bacteria, they may create an environment that supports growth of even more resistant bacteria in the invaded guts.

How this process worked varied with the type of antibiotics involved.

Antibiotics that severely disrupted the gut microbiota facilitated direct takeover by microbes present in the surrounding environment.

On the other hand, milder, less universally lethal antibiotics tended to result in varied outcomes. The resistant E. coli has fewer opportunities to take over since these antibiotics preserve the original gut microbiota that compete with incoming microbes.

Why are your findings useful?

These findings highlight that carriage of antibiotic resistant E. coli in community settings is context dependent. Native microbes present in the broader environment shape whether an invading resistant strain established itself or not.

Strategies to minimise antibiotic resistance need, therefore, to be tailored to the local microbial community context. In areas where the background microbial community includes resistant types, measures which minimise disruption or facilitate the spread of harmless microbes should be encouraged.

Broadly speaking, current preventive efforts should always aim at helping natural, diverse, non-resistant microbial communities to reclaim their ground in human populations.

These communities carry the potential for holding back resistant bacteria. The goal is to preserve them.

Minimising the use of antibiotics is key to this effort. Vaccines and hygiene practices which minimise the risk for diseases can help reduce the need for antibiotics.

Where unavoidable, antibiotics need to be used carefully. In addition, there need to be efforts to restore microbes lost with antibiotic use.

In the short term, using probiotics after using antibiotics may be a good strategy. For the long term, people could be encouraged to embrace “farming of the microbiome”. This describes the continuous efforts of creating a culture of good bacteria in the body. People around the world have been doing this for centuries through eating fermented foods, for example, which are naturally packed with the good microbes.

Eric Ng’eno receives funding from the Gates Foundation.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/good-gut-bacteria-vs-bad-what-we-learnt-about-antibiotic-resistance-from-a-community-in-nairobi/