For some survivors of intimate partner violence, leaving an abusive relationship might mean facing a difficult choice between prioritizing their own safety and that of a beloved pet.

A study of 86 residents at 16 domestic violence shelters in Canada found that concern for a pet’s safety is a significant factor in decisions about when to leave an abusive relationship. A recent evidence review shows that abusive partners may threaten, injure or kill animals to intimidate and control other members of the household.

These experiences help explain why animal maltreatment is increasingly recognized as an important community safety risk. That connection received specific attention in Ontario, where the Standing Committee on Justice Policy released a report on intimate partner violence in December 2025.

The report (which the NDP accused of being partly AI-generated but that I have independently verified) contains important, well-considered and well-researched information. Among its findings was recognition that animal maltreatment can be linked to intimate partner violence, child maltreatment, coercive control and broader community safety concerns.

The report creates an opportunity to bring this overlooked issue into public discussion.

The ‘violence link,’ explained

Researchers have spent decades studying what is termed the “violence link”, a pattern in which animal maltreatment — abuse, cruelty and neglect — and violence directed toward humans occur together.

While this does not mean that everyone who harms an animal will become violent toward people, animal maltreatment frequently occurs alongside other forms of family and interpersonal violence.

Studies in Canada and internationally have found higher rates of animal maltreatment in homes where intimate partner violence is occurring, and have linked it with more severe forms of intimate partner violence.

Perhaps the most important insight from this research is the role animals can play in coercive control — patterns of behaviour designed to dominate, isolate and create fear over time. Abusive relationships also involve psychological tactics intended to maintain power over a partner, and animals can become part of that strategy.

Threatening or harming a pet, withholding veterinary care and abandoning an animal are all forms of animal maltreatment that can be used to punish, intimidate or manipulate another person. Research examining animal maltreatment in the context of intimate partner violence has found that these behaviours are often used as deliberate tools of power and control.

In these situations, the target is often not only the animal itself but also the emotional bond between the animal and the victim. Canada’s Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, received royal assent in June 2026, with most provisions taking effect on July 18. It addresses these behaviours and adds them as specific offences in the Criminal Code of Canada.

Children may also be affected. Young people who witness animal maltreatment are often exposed to other forms of violence, intimidation or neglect within the home.

Research has linked childhood exposure to animal maltreatment with later behavioural and developmental concerns. For violence prevention professionals, harm directed toward animals can provide important clues about a child’s environment and about opportunities to support children early.

Read more:
People in abusive relationships face many barriers to leaving — pets should not be one

How warning signs get missed

As a veterinary forensic scientist, my work at the Ontario Veterinary College has highlighted how information about animal maltreatment can reveal patterns of violence that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Veterinarians, social workers, child protection professionals, police officers and victim service providers may each encounter different pieces of the same story. Canadian research involving service providers has highlighted how concerns for animal care and safekeeping frequently intersect with efforts to support survivors of intimate partner violence.

The challenge is that our systems often respond to these concerns in isolation.

Animal-related information is not consistently incorporated into violence risk assessments, safety planning or information-sharing practices. As a result, opportunities for early intervention may be missed, and information that could help professionals better understand risk may never be shared across agencies.

Recognizing the violence link does not mean treating every report of animal maltreatment as evidence of intimate partner violence. It means understanding that harm to animals can sometimes provide important context when other risk factors are present. When professionals collaborate and pay attention to this information, overall risk assessments are strengthened.

Changing how risk gets assessed

Animal maltreatment should concern us because animals suffer. But the evidence increasingly suggests it may also reveal risks facing children, partners and families.

Ontario’s report offers an opportunity to recognize animal maltreatment as part of a broader conversation about violence prevention and community safety. Using its recommendations to inform policy and practice would help ensure that information about animal harm is included in efforts to assess and reduce risk.

Humane Canada and other organizations emphasize that recognizing the violence link can improve both human safety and animal welfare outcomes.

When animals are harmed in the context of intimidation, coercion or family violence, the question is not only what happened to the animal, but what that harm may be telling us about the safety of the people around it.

Shane Bateman works for Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, and has received external funding to develop Violence Link education for medical professionals. He serves on the Board of Directors of Humane Canada.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/22/the-violence-link-animal-maltreatment-and-family-violence-often-happen-together/

Complex characters represented with sensitive and powerful performance is part of what draws audiences to drama, including live theatre.

This is no less the case for musical theatre — but what is the role of music in character development?

Part of my research has been concerned with developing a method for young actors to begin building characters that involves listening to subtle cues in the music. For example, a rising melodic line could be interpreted as reaching or pleading. A pause in the music could feel like doubt or hesitation.

I call this method score-based character analysis. I had the chance to apply it this past spring with a cohort of students at MacEwan University’s theatre department who presented the world premiere of the new musical Monoceros.

It’s based on the award-winning novel of the same name by Canadian author Suzette Mayr. The story follows a high school student, Faraday, on a journey of grief and discovery after the death of a fellow classmate, Nathan, whom she hardly knew.

Faraday, who is longing to find her purpose, gathers some of her school friends and they set off on an adventure to finish the quest Nathan never got to finish: acquiring a unicorn assistance certificate from the Unicorn Society of Lethbridge.

The show enjoyed a sold-out run this past March.

New roles and stories

Tackling a new role in an original musical can be a daunting challenge for any actor.

In addition to the performances, Monoceros‘s run was also recorded live by Bent River Records, which will release an original cast album recording later this year.

A huge part of my job as musical director was to ensure that the words and emotions the actors were singing would translate to an audience that did not see the show live.

Creating a character without a blueprint

Most modern Broadway musicals have bootleg performances or “pro shots” that can be viewed on sites such as YouTube that can serve as a starting point for actors to see how the original roles were portrayed.

However, generally, directors expect actors to show up to rehearsals with their own choices rather than reproducing the original performer’s interpretation. Casting directors also warn actors that watching a famous performance can lead to unconscious imitation and invite direct comparison with the original actor.

Aside from a few demo recordings from earlier workshops, the Monoceros actors had little reference points to begin building new characters.

While building a character is highly interpretive work, listening carefully to what the music is telling them can encourage actors.

The score becomes a critical key in unlocking interpretive choices while anchoring performance in embodied movement — using one’s body to tell a story. Monoceros was the perfect opportunity to put my research into practice.

Seeing versus hearing

Watching live theatre gives the audience physical and visual information. Listening to a cast album recording asks the listener to understand the story and feel the emotion through sound alone. While rehearsing and performing the show for a live audience, I also had to be conscious that the show would also be recorded.

An audience watching a musical in person can understand character through the help of facial expressions, movement, gestures, design and staging. While listening to a recording, the emotive power of the acting must be audible.

Cast recordings also allow musicals to circulate far beyond the audiences who encounter them in the theatre. For many listeners, the album becomes the primary — or only — means of experiencing a work, while individual songs can develop lives of their own through repeated listening, performance, teaching and popular culture.

A cast recording therefore functions not merely as a souvenir of a live production, but as an independent, mediated version of the musical that helps shape how its score, characters and original performances are remembered.

Each night of the run, Paul Johnston, head of recording at MacEwan University, and his team of students at Bent River Records would record and upload the recordings of the show for me to begin the process of selecting takes.

During show week, I listened each morning to the previous night’s recording with one question in mind: without the stage visuals, was the acting and emotion present in the voices alone?

Throughout show week, I had regular check-ins with the actors and let them listen to their own performances and reflect on what they heard. Together we identified the moments where the acting and emotion was clear and other moments where they could lean into musical clues to elevate the text.

In doing so, the recording process not only served as merely a documentation of the production; it shaped and deepened the performances as the actors continued to explore.

Expanding how we create musical theatre

As we transitioned from rehearsals to performance, this process reinforced the main idea in my research. When the actors used the score as a primary tool for building character, their performances became elevated and more visceral through sound alone.

This approach offered interpretive tools so that young actors didn’t need to rely on imitation, but rather used their own imagination to bring the music to life.

Often when I’ve listened to a cast album recording, I’ve felt the need to see it live in order to truly connect with the material. For me, a studio album rarely carries the same magic and emotional resonance as a live performance.

The original Broadway recording of Rent, however, is an example of a musical that I listened to and immediately felt a connection between word and song. I believe that this is, in part, to the fact that the recording wasn’t overproduced.

Actors feed off the energy from a live audience — that’s evident as I listen to the individual takes of Monoceros.

Live theatre is unpredictable, and no two shows in a run are the same. By encouraging actors to take risks and try different choices throughout the run, it has created an energy and magic that is heard through the microphone as it unfolded in real time.

When this cast album is released it is my hope that when audiences listen closely, the music does more than simply support the story; it becomes the story.

Shawn Henry 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/2026/07/22/how-music-cues-helped-actors-harness-emotion-in-monoceros-a-new-canadian-musical/

The American chestnut tree was a dominant and iconic species in many Appalachian forests until it was devastated by an introduced fungus from Asia called chestnut blight.

A majestic forest tree, an American chestnut was typically 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30 meters) in height, but could grow as tall as 150 feet (45 meters) over its several-hundred-year lifespan. Its leafy canopy provided shade and beauty from Maine to Mississippi. The chestnuts it produced had helped to nourish wildlife, Indigenous peoples and European settlers alike. Its rot-resistant wood was also prized for lumber.

People first noticed the blight fungus in New York City in 1904, when it began killing trees at the Bronx Zoo. Over subsequent decades, it spread south and east through the chestnut’s range, killing nearly every mature tree in its path.

Chestnut lovers, foresters and scientists – many under the umbrella of the American Chestnut Foundation – have been working for about a century to bring the trees back. The main strategy has been the use of conventional crossbreeding methods to create blight-resistant varieties.

Resistance is exceedingly rare in the American chestnut itself. So breeders have relied on hybridization, crossing the American chestnut with the naturally resistant Asian chestnut by putting pollen from one into the flowers of the other. They recross the hybrids with American chestnut and pick out offspring that are blight-resistant and look like American chestnuts in growth and form. However, progress had been limited.

More recently, scientists have learned more about the tree’s genome – its complete set of DNA – including how its genes are expressed, interact and give rise to traits. Now, researchers are turning to genome science for new strategies for chestnut restoration.

I am a forest biotechnologist who has been studying and teaching about the genetics and engineering of forest trees and other plants for more than 40 years. My laboratory has been using genomic methods, and developing gene transfer and editing methods, for a variety of tree species, including the American chestnut. Our goal is to develop improved genetic transformation techniques to facilitate the restoration of American chestnuts to their dominant role in Eastern forests.

OXO excites, then disappoints

The first major genetic engineering approach focused on inserting a single gene from bread wheat into the American chestnut. This gene encodes a protein called OXO, short for oxalate oxidase, which breaks down oxalic acid, the fungus’s key weapon for invading and killing plant tissues.

For about 20 years, it appeared the OXO gene could produce fully blight-resistant and healthy chestnuts. This work was pioneered by the late William Powell and his colleagues in the College of Environmental Science and Forestry at the State University of New York in Syracuse.

Unfortunately, recent field results suggest that this approach is not working as well as hoped. Many of the trees with the OXO gene unexpectedly developed large abnormal growths called galls, grew slower and showed other symptoms of poor health. Although work to expand and refine the OXO approach continues, new methods and insights from the ongoing genomics revolution in biology have provided new options.

Genomics is helping in two distinct ways

Scientists using genome-guided breeding can rapidly identify thousands of DNA segments that, when used together, can predict blight resistance in young, healthy plants. Then researchers can choose individual trees for making crosses, and for field testing, that have genomes that contain those same DNA segments.

This method enables much faster breeding progress, as breeders can quickly zero in on the best parent trees and progeny, rather than waiting five or more years for the baby tree to grow to see how it fares against the blight. By improving the precision of field studies and disease evaluation, it can save time and money.

The second genomic approach, often just called “omics,” focuses not just on DNA segments, but on genes and what they do. The goal is to figure out how the presence or absence of a particular gene, the matching mRNA transcripts or cellular biochemicals that a gene codes for relates to blight resistance.

Scientists have now identified numerous genes and expressed molecules that are statistically associated with blight resistance in Asian chestnuts. These are logical targets for genetic transformation approaches – that is, using genetic engineering methods to modify naturally occurring genes or introduce genes from one organism into another. My lab has been practicing these techniques for many years in poplars, eucalypts, hops and, recently, chestnut.

The goal is to insert genes from Asian chestnuts, or modify American chestnut genes to act more like those in Asian chestnuts. Genomics-informed studies have been carried on in a modest way for some time, but they are poised to expand rapidly given all the new genomics-informed leads now in hand, together with highly efficient gene-editing technologies like CRISPR.

There are also some surviving large American chestnuts, some of which have heritable blight resistance. Genomic studies of these rare survivors can provide additional insight into the critical genes and processes keeping them healthy, potentially informing both genome-guided breeding and transformation approaches.

Challenges beyond the science

From a scientific viewpoint, genomics-guided breeding and genetic transformation approaches are complementary technologies. The former integrates easily into conventional breeding because it’s just another way to choose parents for crossing and field testing. Transformation approaches enable researchers to create or refine novel mechanisms that are not easily accessible by simple breeding. In practice, however, both tactics add significant costs to conventional breeding.

To make matters worse, transformation approaches also face two additional noneconomic barriers to adoption. First, for reasons scientists don’t yet understand, chestnut remains technically challenging to genetically transform. It is often hard to insert genes into chestnut cells; and even once the DNA is in cells, it can be very difficult to get those modified cells to develop into normal plants.

Another limiting factor is that most previous transformation approaches have relied on tissues from developing seeds that are only available during limited times of the year and require very specialized culturing methods. My lab is currently working on a new and hopefully more efficient approach that we hope will mitigate this bottleneck.

Genetic transformation approaches also face major social barriers in the form of government regulations. Though any kind of chestnut hybrid can be grown in the field freely, those produced with most transformation methods – even when using chestnut genes as the “active ingredients” – cannot.

Transformation-modified trees require strict containment and federal inspections during field studies. Pollen or seed movement – which are very difficult to restrict from mature trees – would violate federal guidelines. Limits on field trials are likely one of the reasons that the problems with OXO were not revealed for many years.

The Agriculture Department has recently begun considering regulatory changes that I hope lead to regulations more in line with consensus scientific advice about genetically engineered crops; these should ease the burdens of conducting field tests. But similar moves over past decades have failed or been reversed due to legal challenges.

Market restrictions also come into play. All the major green certifiers, such as the Forest Stewardship Council, do not allow any materials that result from transformation approaches in certified forest products. These prohibitions on gene editing and transfer reduce the land area where trees created with transformation approaches could be grown, and dampen interest in associated research.

As a scientist, I hope that the barriers to transformation approaches for chestnut, which also apply to the many other forest trees under threat from exotic pathogens and climate stresses, fade. Genomic methods in all their forms have the potential to help protect and restore forests.

Steve Strauss’ laboratory at Oregon State University receives research (not personal) funding from a variety of industry and government organizations, including the National Science Foundation, USDA, and DOE, to advance the science and methods relevant to plant and tree biotechnology. He has also consulted with The American Chestnut Foundation and supervised grant reviews for chestnut related studies under The former Forest Health Initiative (https://2017-2019.archive.usendowment.org/what-we-do/forest-health/forest-health-initiative/).

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/22/new-genetic-approaches-raise-hopes-for-restoring-the-american-chestnut-to-its-former-glory/

A commercial robotic spacecraft called LINK launched on an emergency mission to save NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has been slowly falling toward Earth, on July 3, 2026. Over the coming weeks, LINK, built by Katalyst Space Technologies, will try to grasp the telescope, then spend months raising it to a safer orbit.

For most of the space age, satellites have been disposable: moved aside or replaced when they ran low on fuel or failed. That wasn’t much of an issue decades ago, when orbit was far less crowded. Now, space surveillance networks track tens of thousands of human-made objects, and the European Space Agency estimates that more than 1.2 million pieces of satellite and spacecraft debris larger than half an inch (1 centimeter) are in orbit. Even chunks that small are large enough to cause severe damage in a collision.

You might say “just clean up the junk” because space debris looks motionless in photographs. But as a Ph.D. candidate researching satellite servicing, I know that the hardest part of removing a dead satellite before it breaks apart into new debris is not reaching it – it is understanding how it moves, how to approach without hitting it, and controlling the instant that two free-flying objects touch.

A tow hook changes the problem

So, how do you catch a dead or broken satellite? The spacecraft doing the catching is a servicer: a robotic mechanic that flies up to refuel, repair or move a disabled satellite.

Some satellites, called prepared satellites, are easier to catch. They carry a built-in feature that works like a car’s tow hook. The servicer knows where to attach, what loads the hook can bear and what its cameras can use as landmarks. That feature removes several unknowns at once.

Many older, unprepared satellites have no docking plate, beacon or navigation marker. Some can still be serviced by gripping a strong structural feature. Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicles, for example, have docked onto communications satellites and taken over their propulsion and pointing.

To grab the satellite, engineers first identify a safe attachment point and estimate the object’s shape, mass and motion, often while working off incomplete information. But even if they find a potential attachment point, this strategy may not work. A solar panel, antenna or insulation blanket may not be strong enough to carry the load from the servicer.

The target does not hold still

Even if a satellite is prepared with some sort of tow hook, capturing it is still extremely difficult.

A dead or disabled satellite is not parked in space. It keeps orbiting Earth and may spin or tumble because it can no longer control its orientation or reorient itself to face the servicer.

Imagine fitting a key into a lock while the lock, or even the door, keeps rotating, your hands float freely and a hard touch sends everything spinning. Reaching the lock is only half the task. Matching its motion closely enough for controlled contact is the rest of the challenge.

Swift is an example of an unprepared satellite. It was not built with any standardized fixture that a repair craft can latch onto. Without one, there is no obvious place to grab and no guarantee it survives capture. LINK’s mission is a vivid case of what engineers call noncooperative capture: catching a spacecraft that cannot help the servicer, may be tumbling unpredictably and was never built to be caught.

To catch a tumbling satellite, the servicer has to estimate several things at once: where the target is, how fast it is moving, which way it is facing and how that orientation is changing. Cameras and laser-ranging sensors on the servicer offer clues, and data from those readings can provide an estimate of how the satellite is moving before the servicer edges close enough to touch.

When the servicer’s robotic arm touches a tumbling satellite, the force from that contact pushes the servicer back. The arm acts like a long lever, so even a gentle nudge at its tip can throw it off course. A rigid grab lands a sharp, jarring impact; a softer, shock-absorbing one keeps the satellite from bouncing away.

The servicer will have an onboard control system, which flies the spacecraft and keeps its body back at a safe distance while the arm reaches in. If the satellite starts moving in an unexpected way, the servicer’s control system helps it retreat. Researchers study how to coordinate the servicer spacecraft’s body, thrusters and arm so that contact becomes a controlled transfer of momentum, not an accidental collision.

In my doctoral research in aerospace engineering at the University of Florida, I study how to approach defunct satellites in a controlled way. My broader research looks at how a single framework can handle both cooperative satellites, built to be caught, and noncooperative ones – the dead or tumbling craft that can’t help their rescuers.

Designing for rescue changes the equation

Designing a satellite with a standardized fixture to grab onto and navigation markers to help the servicer line up can cut down on uncertainty. But these features can’t totally replace precise navigation. A servicing craft still needs to move nimbly through orbit. Knowing where the capture point is gives the servicer’s cameras a clear reference and a predictable place to connect, and lets engineers trust that the satellite’s structure will survive capture.

ELSA-M and ClearSpace-1 show two complementary paths. Astroscale’s ELSA-M will capture commercial satellites fitted with a magnetic docking plate before launch (targets built to be serviced). The European Space Agency’s ClearSpace-1, planned for 2029, tackles the harder case by capturing the unprepared, noncooperative Proba-1 satellite and dragging it down to burn up.

Servicers usually stay in orbit instead of coming home. Some, like the Mission Extension Vehicles, park the satellite they have been helping in a high “graveyard” orbit, clear of working spacecraft, then undock and move on; others ride down with their target and burn up when they reach Earth’s atmosphere.

The next few years will show whether the space industry really leaves disposable satellites behind and starts building them to be caught and repaired, or simply gets neater about throwing them away, designing them to burn up on the way down.

Wanjiku Chebet Kanjumba is the co-founder and CEO of Vicillion Inc., an early stage aerospace company focused on commercial spaceflight and spaceport interoperability. She is affiliated with organizations including the Global Spaceport Alliance, the Space Generation Advisory Council, and Women in Space. She has no funding from or financial relationship with any satellite servicing or debris removal companies named in the article.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/22/rescuing-satellites-is-harder-than-it-looks-a-growing-space-junk-problem-will-make-doing-so-more-important/

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will announce on Thursday the extension of the “Prac Payment” for health professionals undertaking placements to 10 new categories.

The extension begins from July 1 next year.

The payment, which began last year, provides eligible students with up to $338.60 a week while they are doing their clinical and professional placements. The payment is means tested and indexed.

The new categories are:

• clinical psychology
• physiotherapy
• occupational therapy
• speech pathology
• paramedicine
• radiography
• pharmacy
• rehabilitation therapies
• audiology

Albanese will make the announcement during his speech on the first day of the 50th Labor national conference in Adelaide. The speech is titled Delivering Real Change.

Those already covered by the Prac Payment are students enrolled in teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work courses.

The expansion will cost $158 million over the period 2026-2027 to 2029-2030.

It is expected to support more than 20,000 extra students. This would take the total number supported by the scheme to 95,000. The total spending would be $745 million over the period.

In his speech, a part of which was released before delivery, Albanese says the Prac Payment provides “real help with the cost of living for tens of thousands of Australians. And a real investment in the health care workers of tomorrow”.

The three-day conference is being carefully managed to avoid or minimise arguments that could be damaging to the government. It is being attended by some 400 delegates, including parliamentarians, branch members and unionists. Although the left of the party has a slight majority at the conference, factional wrangling will ensure the government retains the whiphand.

In his address, Albanese emphasises the government’s reform credentials and empathises with the difficult situation of many Australians.

“I understand that for many Australians right now, looking to the future runs second to the immediate pressures they are under.

“The last decade has inflicted one global shock after another. And people have been given every reason to feel like the economy is simply not working for them.”

[The government’s] focus remains squarely on helping with the cost of living, on the practical measures that matter to people and make a positive difference to their lives.

Because that is how we demonstrate to Australians that their hard work will pay off, that their effort is worth it, that they can plan and build for their future. And it is how we prove that the status quo is not set in stone.

In an apparent gibe particularly at One Nation, without mentioning it or Pauline Hanson, Albanese says, “You can go a long way in politics, for a long time, by raging against a system that you are a part of, without a plan to fix it.

“Or blaming people who cannot defend themselves for a problem they did not cause. That doesn’t build anything. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t take our country forward.

“It doesn’t help anyone find a job, pay their bills, or put a roof over their head. This has always been the fundamental contrast between Labor and all our political opponents. And never more so than now.”

Gas tax

With many in the Labor rank and file urging a gas tax, former Labor leader Bill Shorten, now vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, has said there is a “national appetite” to consider such a tax.

He told the ABC on Tuesday: “I think probably the time has arrived to consider reviewing the taxation on gas. […] I think there’s a national appetite.

“I mean, the government’s paring back on things like the NDIS. That’s necessary, I get. But I think there’s a lot of people saying, ‘What about the gas companies?’”

Agitation over Middle East

Agitation continues around the draft platform’s section on Israel and Palestine. Some in the party want it changed to be tougher on Israel although they appear unlikely to prevail.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry in a statement on Wednesday criticised the draft platform, which earlier this week also came under attack from the Israeli embassy.

The council, pointing to positions stated by the Albanese government, said: “It is a reasonable question to ask why the ALP National Conference is not backing in the Albanese government in expressly recognising the government’s position on excluding Hamas and requiring the Palestinian Authority to honour the commitments for governance reform upon which the government’s recognition of a Palestinian State was explicitly based”.

Union call for greater action on housing

The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) will launch “Housing Charter” outside the conference on Thursday morning.

AMWU National Secretary Steve Murphy said the charter was “unapologetically pro-worker”. “Working people expect action, not incrementalism,” he said.

He said the charter “calls for tax settings that put homeowners before investors, a dramatic expansion of public and social housing, a new national Housing Commission to coordinate housing delivery, and a government-backed modular housing industry to build union-secured homes faster”.

Michelle Grattan 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/2026/07/22/albanese-will-announce-extension-of-paid-prac-at-labor-national-conference/

The obituaries were being written before the body was cold. Within hours of Prime Minister Andy Burnham confirming that Whitehall’s responsibilities for science and technology would be absorbed into a new Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST), Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, was on Radio 4 warning that “science isn’t a slave to business”. The trade association TechUK declared it “the wrong change at the wrong time”.

You might imagine that something ancient, ineffable and essential to British science had been ripped away. In fact, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) was only born in February 2023 – a surprise late tweak to the machinery of government under Rishi Sunak’s faltering premiership.

Science has never enjoyed a settled home in Whitehall. For most of the period from 1995 to 2023, it sat precisely where Burnham has put it now: inside a business super-department. Notably, the single most important protection UK science secured in that era – a ring-fenced budget through the George Osborne austerity years – was won from inside the Business, Innovation and Science department, under then-business secretary Vince Cable.

The historian David Edgerton has long argued that Britain’s fondness for tinkering with the machinery of government is a form of displacement activity. What actually shapes the fortunes of research is money, people and demand for what they produce, not the nameplates on London’s Victoria Street.

On that test, the outlook for science is far calmer than some reactions to this latest move would suggest. Under plans published last October, the UK’s total research and development budget is locked in at £58.5 billion over the four-year spending review to 2030 – a real-terms increase.

Machinery changes move budget lines across departments; they don’t unravel them. As yet, nothing we’ve heard from the Burnham government suggests the settlement for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is at risk.

A US wrecking ball

If we want to be reminded what real damage to a science system looks like, we only need to glance across the Atlantic. While London rearranges the departmental furniture and dishes out new email addresses, Washington is taking a wrecking ball to the foundations of its public science system.

A 2027 budget request will halve the size of the US National Science Foundation, if passed. A draft White House rule, due to take effect in October, will hand political appointees the power to vet federal research grants against “the president’s priorities” and terminate awards mid-stream.

A predictable exodus has begun. The Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi has just left the University of California, Berkeley for Tsinghua University in China.

Set against political commissars patrolling the borders of knowledge, the UK’s science soap opera feels deeply provincial – a debate about which secretary of state sponsors oversight of a gradually swelling budget.

And the institutional layer beneath this is in better shape than doomsayers allow. UKRI’s new strategy has set a clear five-year path: priority programmes in AI, quantum and clean energy, faster funding decisions, and a welcome seriousness about experimentation with the modes and means by which we manage public investment in research.

Not everyone is happy with UKRI’s approach to prioritisation. But a funder with a published strategy, agreed budget and hard targets is a more durable asset than a three-year-old ministry. The research councils have outlasted every department that ruled over them, and UKRI will outlast this too.

Nor should the science community be spooked by closer proximity to business. When I leave my office at UCL and stroll down the Euston Road through London’s Knowledge Quarter – dubbed “the new square mile” – I pass by the Wellcome Trust, the Crick and Turing institutes, the British Library, Anthropic and Google DeepMind. Day in, day out, this dense weave of labs, firms and cultural institutions delivers what the triple helix of government, industry and academia is all about.

And we can find versions of the same story unfolding in Manchester, Sheffield, Cambridge and Glasgow. Rather than science being subordinate or “enslaved”, the UK’s world-leading universities have spent the past decade aligning themselves with agendas for regional growth and frontier technologies.

But there’s a harder truth lurking here too. Public money accounts for less than a third of UK research and development investment. The rest is financed and largely performed by the private sector.

UK science’s chronic weakness has never been the quality of publicly funded research. It is the R&D intensity of UK firms, and their ability to convert discoveries into products, services and revenue streams generated and owned in the UK.

If yoking science to industrial strategy in a single department reminds Whitehall to treat these as a single problem, some good may come of Burnham’s reorganisation.

AI policy concerns

With DSIT’s disappearance, a particular source of concern has been the future of AI policy. This at a time when the radical possibilities and risks of AI frontier models, fluctuating US export controls, and the latest “Sputnik moment” jolt from China’s Kimi K-3 demand sustained and technically fluent policy attention.

We are also seeing a sharp acceleration in the ways AI is transforming science itself – whether by cracking mathematical problems that stumped humans for the past 87 years, or collapsing decades-old models of grant writing and peer review.

Splitting AI from science just as they converge in practice would have been the least defensible element of this reorganisation. So it is reassuring that cross-government oversight of AI, including the AI Security Institute and AI public sector adoption, is moving to a new “AI taskforce” in the Cabinet Office – alongside the promotion of Kanishka Narayan to the status of AI minister attending Cabinet. Much now rests on his shoulders.

Government departments come and go. Those of us who have long advocated for research policies built on evidence rather than gut can allow ourselves a wry smile at the fuss created by this latest reorganisation – and then get back to work.

DSIT is dead, but UK science will be fine. Keep your eyes on the AI prize – and be thankful we are arguing about organograms, not survival.

James Wilsdon receives funding from UKRI and the Wellcome Trust, and a wider consortium of international research funders who partner in the Research on Research Institute (RoRI).

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/22/what-the-sudden-demise-of-the-uks-department-of-science-means-for-the-future-of-research/

Around 80 million years ago, a stretch of tropical coastline in what is now north-eastern Italy was lashed by monsoon rains and tropical cyclones. Those storms swept dinosaur carcasses, crocodiles, plants and river mud onto a tidal flat, where the tides and a film of microbes sealed everything away with extraordinary preservation.

My colleagues and I have published a new study that reconstructs the violent tropical climate behind the Villaggio del Pescatore Lagerstätte near Trieste and reveals it preserves just four decades of life, recorded almost day by day.

The Villaggio del Pescatore site near Trieste is one of the most important Late Cretaceous fossil localities in the Mediterranean. It is the only known site in the region to preserve large land animals, including dinosaurs such as Tethyshadros insularis, from the final 15 million years or so of the age of dinosaurs.

Tethyshadros insularis was a plant-eating, duck-billed dinosaur that lived in what is now north-eastern Italy around 80 million years ago. It was initially interpreted as a dwarf island species, shaped by the “island rule” – that large animals evolve smaller bodies in environments with limited space and resources.

However, the discovery of larger specimens challenged this idea. Up to 11 individuals are potentially preserved in this succession of rocks, with at least three other fairly complete skeletons still waiting to be extracted from the hard (and expensive to cut) limestone rock. Geological evidence has also revealed that the site was about 10 million years older than previously thought and was not part of a tiny, isolated island. Instead, it lay near a larger landmass connected through the ancient Mediterranean region.

The fossils of tiny crocodilians named Acynodon (with shorter muzzles than modern crocodilians) have also been found at this site.

After years of research, Professor Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna and I led a multidisciplinary team of palaeontologists, physicists and geologists to determine exactly how this fossil treasure trove formed. Our findings overturn decades of competing interpretations.

In a study published in Global and Planetary Change, we show that the site was not a quiet, isolated lake or sinkhole, as previously suggested. Our results suggest it was a storm-battered tidal flatland at the edge of a tropical sea.

Villaggio del Pescatore is not simply a place where fossils happen to be beautifully preserved. It is also a record of the weather that shaped the site. We can identify individual storms and floods in the rocks, almost day by day. Very few fossil sites on Earth allow us to do that.

Reading the rock like a calendar

The fossils at Villaggio del Pescatore are concentrated in a finely layered carbonate rock, marked by thousands of paper-thin light and dark bands. For years these were interpreted as annual layers (like tree rings) laid down season by season.

Our new analysis tells a different story. Using high-resolution X-ray scans at the Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste, alongside detailed geochemical and microscopic analyses, we showed that the bands were not annual but daily. A synchrotron accelerates electrons (particles with a negative charge) to almost the speed of light. This produces powerful X-rays that can penetrate dense materials such as rock. This allowed us to examine structures inside the rocks and bones at a resolution of fractions of a millimetre.

The scans revealed that the layers were deposited by ocean tides, two pairs each day. These tides varied according to the familiar fortnightly cycle of stronger and weaker tides that still happen today. We could count these tidal layers, thanks to this unparalleled resolution.

The entire fossil-bearing rock pile, our results calculate, accumulated in only about 40 years, a single human lifetime, frozen in stone. Most fossil deposits containing several individuals average together thousands or millions of years. Here, we’re looking at a few decades.

Monsoons, cyclones and microbes

To explain why storms were so central to the preservation of the fossils, the team ran climate simulations. The models consistently placed the site at around 29° north, inside a powerful, summer-dominated monsoon belt. This was a tropical regime of intensely wet summers and recurring tropical cyclones, sustained by the greenhouse climate of the age.

Monsoon-driven floods and cyclone surges created pulses of sediment, nutrients, plant debris and animal carcasses onto the tidal flat. The tides trapped this material, and mats of microbes rapidly stabilised it. This encouraged the sediment to harden right after the carcass was deposited, before it started rotting or predators could scavenge its dead tissues. These storms were the main agents behind this preservation.

The site’s three most important Tethyshadros insularis dinosaurs show a range of fates: one buried so quickly that soft-tissue outlines survive, another bearing the cracked, sun-dried bones of a carcass that lay exposed inland before being washed in by a flood. Crocodilians such as Acynodon adriaticus, fish and shrimps were also local residents, entombed close to where they lived and died.

We propose that this combination of “ingredients”, monsoon floods, tidal trapping and microbial sealing, represents a recipe for creating exceptionally preserved fossil sites in hot, tropical greenhouse climates – precisely the kind of setting in which rapid decay would normally destroy organic remains.

The study also offers an ancient perspective on how intensifying monsoons and cyclones can reshape coastlines, ecosystems and what becomes preserved along tropical shores.

Villaggio del Pescatore has been studied for more than four decades, yet it still has new stories to tell. Understanding how extreme storms transformed this ancient coastline may also help us think about how modern coasts could respond to a warmer and more turbulent climate fuelled by high levels of CO₂.

Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza works for University College London, Department of Earth Sciences. He receives funding from The Royal Society as a Newton International Research Fellow.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/22/storms-that-built-a-graveyard-ancient-monsoons-created-a-spectacular-dinosaur-fossil-site/

From microplastics clogging up our oceans to landfills leaching out dangerous chemicals, plastic waste is a serious and growing problem for human health and the environment. We need to recycle more, and crucially, recycle better.

Most plastic that is recycled is melted and remoulded into lower-quality products such as carpet fibres and garden planters, before eventually ending up in landfill or the incinerator. This is downcycling rather than proper recycling. Current methods don’t enable the recovery of the original components of the waste – that means they cannot be truly recycled back into new high-quality plastic.

A 2026 study from the University of Manchester marks a potential turning point in our ability to recycle better. The study focused on polycarbonate, a type of hard plastic. These plastics are common, but notoriously difficult to degrade as they are specifically designed for strength and durability for use in safety glasses, electronics and as machine parts.

The Manchester authors report a way to rapidly digest polycarbonate back to its original building blocks. They did this by creating an enzyme (proteins that carry out chemical reactions) to digest the polycarbonate. This is part of a major emerging field, using super-enzymes for green recycling of our waste.

Enzymes are nature’s nano-machines, they speed up reactions to make and break chemical bonds, converting one compound into another. For example, digestive enzymes can break starch in bread back to the simple sugars from which it is made. If enzymes could similarly digest plastic into its original building blocks these blocks could then be re-used to synthesise new plastic. So, a double win, less waste, plus this could drastically decrease the need to extract crude oil to manufacture new plastic.

Read more:
How microbes could help solve the world’s plastic pollution crisis

However, there are two big problems. First, plastics need heating to around 70°C to open up their structures enough for the enzymes to get at the chemical bonds that hold them together. But enzymes are proteins, and proteins get destroyed by heat, think of the way the clear protein in your egg white solidifies and permanently changes as it hits the pan. The other issue is that enzymes have evolved to work on natural compounds, not human-made synthetics.

Ancient evolution can help with the heat problem. Some microbes, called extremophiles, live at temperatures of more than 100°C, in volcanoes and deep-sea hot springs. To be able to do this, their proteins have evolved special features to make them thermo-resistant. These include a rigid outer shell, and lots of high-strength bonds between different parts of the protein, acting like steel girders to reinforce the structure against the effects of heat. These evolutionary innovations give us a blueprint for making our plastic digesters heat-resistant.

That still leaves the difficulty of how to get enzymes to work on synthetic materials. Here we can turn to some of the tricks used by protein engineers like me. One approach is directed evolution, a way of breeding better proteins by repeated mutation and selection, just like natural evolution but compressing that process in the lab into just a few weeks. Directed evolution can train proteins to work on plastics rather than their natural substrates, and this was a key method used by the Manchester group for their polycarbonate digester.

Supercharging with AI

Artificial intelligence can supercharge the process of protein and enzyme design. By training machine learning models to analyse millions of existing proteins, correlations between the specific functional activity of each protein and the structural features that make up that protein can be mapped. The computer can then predict what structural features we need to introduce or modify in our starting protein to achieve a particular target function.

Combining strategies like directed evolution and AI, and adding the hacks for heat resistance learned from the extremophiles, lets scientists build super-enzymes, stable at 70°C and trained to digest plastics and spit out the very components needed to make a truly circular plastic economy.

Using super-enzymes for green recycling is on the horizon for other types of waste as well, including synthetic textiles, electronics and even astronaut waste deep in space. By looking back to ancient evolution and combining this with the latest lab evolution and AI we could improve our future, potentially changing plastic waste from a problem into a resource.

Nick Brindle receives funding from UKRI.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/22/how-super-enzymes-can-transform-recycling/

If his impressive academic record is any measure, Andrew Charlton might lay claim to one of the highest IQs in the parliamentary Labor party. Now, with his central role in the government’s AI policy, he’s grappling with issues thrown up by a very different sort of intelligence.

Charlton is only an assistant minister (for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy), junior to Industry Minister Tim Ayres, who’s in cabinet.

But he’s an expert on AI, and has been carrying much of the media load after Anthony Albanese’s speech last week on the government’s directions for handling this rapidly evolving technology that will transform modern life.

Charlton, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and the Prime Minister’s Office were the key players in bringing together the framework Albanese outlined, setting terms to capture the benefits of AI while imposing some conditions on the rollout. Charlton undertook the talks with business.

Labor’s national conference in Adelaide, which opens on Thursday, will be a tightly controlled performance. But the debate on AI, due on Thursday, which pits issues of technological progress and productivity opportunities against the concerns of sections of the union movement, could be one of the livelier of the three-day jamboree.

As well as whatever he says on the conference floor, Charlton will address a “fringe” event on AI on the sidelines.

Last month, Charlton won the prize for Emerging Political Leader of the Year for 2025, awarded by the McKinnon Foundation, a non-partisan organisation that aims to promote “better governments”.

Its citation recognised his contribution in “shaping Australia’s response to artificial intelligence at a moment when the stakes for the country could not be higher”.

“Charlton’s work on artificial intelligence stood out for its seriousness, depth and long-term thinking,” the citation said.

“At a time when governments around the world are struggling to respond to the economic and strategic implications of AI […] Dr Charlton has brought genuine intellectual weight to the debate. His work has consistently focused on the difficult questions shaping Australia’s future: productivity, economic sovereignty, jobs, capability and national security.”

Albanese is a fan of Charlton. He made a “captain’s pick” to install him as candidate for the western Sydney seat of Parramatta for the 2022 election, even though Charlton didn’t live in the electorate and that denied the locals a preselection vote. (With few seats “safe” anymore, finding electorates in which to place outside “high flyers” is much harder than it once was. These days contests are more often around “local champions”.)

In his first term, Charlton put a lot of work into his electorate, also finding time to write a book about Australia’s relations with India.

Charlton brings stellar formal economic credentials. He won Sydney University’s economics medal; studied at Oxford for a doctorate as a Rhodes scholar; and joined the London School of Economics as an academic. During his early academic career, he was mentored by some of the world’s leading centre-left economists. He co-authored a book, Fair Trade for All: How Trade can Promote Development, with Joseph Stiglitz, a nobel-prize winner.

As it happened, Charlton arrived in parliament quite familiar with the heat of government. As prime minister Kevin Rudd’s economic adviser, he worked through the turbulence of the Global Financial Crisis.

Apart from elevating Charlton to an assistant minister after the 2025 election, Albanese also appointed him cabinet secretary, a position that means he attends all cabinet meetings and has a bird’s eye view across government.

Charlton has his sceptics. One Labor insider sees him as influenced by the last person he spoke to. But when his name is mentioned to Labor people, “very bright” and “intelligent” are often their first words.

Unusually in Labor, Charlton has direct business experience, having founded, and later sold, at a very big return, a startup business in consulting and technology.

Murray Hurps, Director of Entrepreneurship at UTS and Managing Director of Startup Muster, the largest survey of startups in Australia, finds it “nice having someone in government who’s had entrepreneurial experience like he’s had. He’s extremely tech savvy. Things don’t have to be explained to him” – a contrast with many ministers Hurps has dealt with over the years. Charlton “understands the opportunities and issues tech companies in Australia are facing”.

Charlton’s startup wasn’t his first stint in business. After Rudd’s sacking Richard Goyder, then CEO of Wesfarmers, hired him. Goyder says: “He’s thoughtful, driven to get good outcomes”, as well as “able to engage with the teams required in business”.

To the frenetic public debate about the May budget’s capital gains tax changes Charlton brought the expertise of his business experience, as well as more frankness than many colleagues would venture. He said:

Startups and some small businesses are a real concern because [post budget] we’ve got this new type of capital gains discount which is based on inflation.

The point that many startup founders, the point that many small businesses have been making, is valid. It’s a valid point because that new regime doesn’t interact well if you have a really low capital base because you’ve got nothing to inflate off. So, there are real concerns out there.

The government recognised those concerns, the Treasurer recognised them. […] There was a statement in the budget recognising them and we are consulting on them. So, we definitely hear those concerns.

How high can Charlton, 47, rise?

He’s not in the front tranche of candidates for the succession, whenever Albanese departs. That line up currently includes Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, Health Minister Mark Butler, and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.

Charlton’s time for leadership, if it were to come at all, would likely be after whoever becomes leader post Albanese.

Charlton would have a strong claim to be treasurer to Albanese’s successor (assuming Labor was in government).

If that successor were Chalmers, would he make Charlton his treasurer? As things stand, Chalmers looks over his shoulder at Charlton, although he doesn’t have to.

Chalton’s long term challenges in pursuing leadership would include that he lacks a union base, and he would need to get the support of his NSW right faction, where multiple aspirants always jostle. Colleagues would also need to be confident that a man who’s more a thinker than a brawler would be able to handle the down-and-dirty side of politics.

Michelle Grattan 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/2026/07/22/view-from-the-hill-labors-andrew-charlton-surfs-the-ai-wave/

By Anish Chand in Suva

Fiji’s universities have been criticised for failing to study the long-term effects of the country’s repeated political upheavals on the public service and governance, with the Fiji Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing that a major gap in research has left important national lessons undocumented.

Academic Professor Vijay Naidu told the commission it was “a great shame” that higher education institutions had not examined how cycles of political instability had affected the quality and performance of Fiji’s public sector.

“It’s a great shame that the universities in Fiji have failed to look at the impacts of these cycles of political instability on the nature, the quality and the function of the public sector.”

• READ MORE: Fiji Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings
• Fiji coup reports

Dr Naidu drew particular attention to the University of the South Pacific, saying its once-prominent governance programme had disappeared despite the country’s history of political crises.

“The governance programme was a flagship programme of the university in the early 2000s … Well, the governance programme is gone. It’s finished.”

He questioned what that said about the role of universities in serving Fiji and the wider Pacific.

“What does it tell you about universities serving Fiji and the region when governance is such an important issue?”

Strengthening democracy
Dr Naidu said strengthening democratic institutions required sustained effort and could not be achieved overnight.

“The general democratic institutions and the checks and balances associated with them, together with a supportive democratic culture, have to be built incrementally.”

He warned that every military coup had reversed progress made in democratic governance and institution building. Fiji has suffered four coups — two in 1987, and also in 2000 and 2006.

“The analogy of switching the light on and off doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work that way. Each time we have had a military coup, it’s actually taken us backwards.”

Referring to earlier evidence presented by Professor Graham Hassall, Dr Naidu said the damage extended beyond the public service to the broader confidence people had in national institutions.

“The wider implication is that there is a loss of confidence.”

He said understanding the long-term consequences of political instability was essential if Fiji was to rebuild stronger democratic institutions and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/22/fiji-universities-criticised-for-great-shame-of-ignoring-coup-impacts/

If you spend a few minutes talking with college students about their career prospects, one topic is at the top of their minds: Will their jobs be displaced by a bot?

Their concern makes sense. Universities are integrating artificial intelligence into their curricula, and employers are adopting AI at a rapid pace. So most students assume that AI skills are now key to getting an entry-level job.

But what if employers are changing their candidate criteria just as quickly?

As scholars who research how technology is changing the workplace, we have long asked what employers value when hiring new talent. The question grew out of our conversations with both employers and students about internship experiences.

Year after year, employers emphasize communication, professionalism and other workplace skills as the areas where interns most need to improve. Students tend to focus on building their technical skills instead.

To determine whether this disconnect extended beyond internships, we surveyed more than 600 employers across a range of industries and organization sizes. We asked them which skills and qualities matter most when hiring recent graduates and early-career professionals.

Their answer might surprise you: They consistently ranked “soft skills” over technical know-how when evaluating applications.

Learning to grow with the job

We had expected employers to place AI and technical skills at the top of their list. Instead, our survey told a more nuanced story. Employers clearly valued those skills, but they consistently ranked even higher qualities such as interpersonal skills and willingness to learn.

No matter the size of the organization, the results were similar. The rankings showed what employers valued, and their comments explained their reasoning. One theme surfaced repeatedly: Employers want to hire people who they believe will grow with their organizations.

This doesn’t mean technical abilities are unimportant. Rather, those were seen as job-specific skills that could be taught on the job – which is much more easily done when new hires already have soft skills like dependability, professionalism and a willingness to learn.

A human resources manager at a midsize healthcare employer captured this idea well: “Computer skills, excellent customer service and dependability are of utmost importance. The rest, we can train.”

A small medical device company made a similar point: While technical positions require a base level of competence, attitude and adaptability also matter because employees often need to take on varied responsibilities rather than staying in “one lane.”

Another respondent, from a small nonprofit, emphasized curiosity, adaptability and the ability to learn new skills quickly. In a small organization, the employer explained, employees need to be willing to grow along with the organization.

Together, these comments suggest that employers aren’t choosing between technical abilities and workplace qualities. Candidates may still need a technical foundation, but employers also want evidence that they can learn, adjust and apply what they know in changing circumstances.

Can we talk?

Communication was another recurring concern.

A hiring manager at a large manufacturer described the challenge of finding candidates who were comfortable with face-to-face and telephone conversations. Similarly, an executive from a small professional services firm said poor writing was a recurring reason for rejecting applications, and he cited communication with clients and colleagues as a growing challenge.

While our survey doesn’t show whether communication skills have declined over time, the consistency of these comments suggests that employers see this as a persistent challenge when hiring recent graduates. One respondent shared that many young graduates were “not equipped with great communication skills” and had trouble following through on commitments.

These comments suggest that employers see communication as more than just speaking and writing. They also associate it with professionalism and reliability.

The comments also helped explain why internships and training programs remain valuable to employers. A respondent from a small professional services firm said they primarily hired former trainees, adding: “We know their skills, motivation and how they fit within our firm.”

These experiences allow employers to observe more than a candidate’s academic record or list of skills. As part of our ongoing conversations with employers, one supervisor described an intern who completed several complex projects ahead of schedule while adapting quickly to a new corporate environment. The supervisor was especially impressed by the student’s communication skills and eagerness to learn.

As for AI, the message from employers was clear: Knowing how to use a technology matters, but so does knowing when and how to use it responsibly.

As one respondent wrote: “If AI is used well in application materials, it’s fine. Most of the time, we only notice because it’s being used so poorly, which is unacceptable.”

We encountered a similar issue while serving on a recent search committee. Several applicants appeared to have used generative AI to prepare their cover letters, but they left out references to other institutions or positions. Instead of strengthening their applications, these errors called into question the applicants’ judgment, attention to detail and the accuracy of their materials.

The hiring process through an employer’s eyes

Reading these comments changed the way we thought about hiring. We saw how students and employers often approach the hiring process from different perspectives.

Students, understandably, focus on getting the job. They build strong resumes, prepare for interviews and learn how to use AI. Those efforts matter because employers expect graduates to arrive ready to contribute.

Employers, however, are asking a different question: Is this someone who will succeed here?

Every interaction helps them answer that question. An email can show how clearly and professionally a candidate communicates. An interview may reveal how someone listens and responds to an unfamiliar question. An internship or training program demonstrates whether a student follows through, works well with others and responds to feedback.

Viewed this way, the survey results become easier to understand. Employers aren’t simply evaluating what candidates already know. They’re looking for signs of how candidates will perform, learn and develop after joining the organization.

Lessons for students and universities

For students, the message isn’t that they must choose between technical and workplace capabilities. They need both.

Learning to use AI and other workplace technologies remains important, but students also need to prove they can communicate clearly, work effectively with others, exercise judgment and follow through on their commitments.

This means universities need to do more than add AI-themed courses and majors to their curricula. They should give students repeated opportunities to demonstrate how they apply their knowledge, respond to feedback and contribute to a team. Internships, traineeships and client projects allow students to refine these qualities before entering the workforce.

Career advising can reinforce this strategy by helping students explain not only which skills they possess, but where and how they have used them.

We began with a simple question: Has AI changed what employers value when hiring recent graduates?

The answer was more nuanced than we expected. AI is changing how work gets done, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed what employers look for in the people they hire. They still want graduates who can use technology effectively while demonstrating the judgment, professionalism and adaptability needed to grow with the organization.

After all, AI may be changing the workplace, but employers are still hiring people, not algorithms.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/21/why-employers-still-place-a-premium-on-people-skills-not-ai-when-they-make-hiring-decisions/

In the 108-year history of daylight saving time in the United States, the country has three times moved to institute it year-round: during each of the two world wars and in 1973-74.

Now, after a 2022 attempt to reintroduce this policy floundered, the U.S. House of Representatives on July 14, 2026, passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would put the country permanently on daylight saving time. The bipartisan bill passed by a wide margin, 308-117, with President Donald Trump publicly backing the measure. It will now be considered by the Senate.

With the exception of Arizona and Hawaii, which observe standard time year round, the U.S. observes seasonal daylight saving time, moving clocks ahead by one hour each March and turning them back each November.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans would like to eliminate changing the clocks twice a year, compared to 21% who aren’t sure and 16% who would like to keep moving their clocks back and forth, according to a 2026 poll.

But the effects go beyond simple inconvenience. Researchers are discovering that “springing ahead” each March is connected with serious negative health effects, including an uptick in heart attacks and teen sleep deprivation. In contrast, the fall transition back to standard time is not associated with these health effects, as my co-authors and I noted in a 2020 commentary.

I’ve studied the pros and cons of these twice-annual rituals for more than five years as a professor of neurology and pediatrics and the director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s sleep division. It’s become clear to me and many of my colleagues that the transition to daylight saving time each spring affects health immediately after the clock change and also for the nearly eight months that Americans remain on daylight saving time.

The strong case for permanent standard time

Americans are split on whether they prefer permanent daylight saving time or permanent standard time.

However, the two time shifts – jolting as they may be – are not equal. Standard time most closely approximates natural light, with the Sun directly overhead at or near noon. In contrast, during daylight saving time from March until November, the clock change resulting from daylight saving time causes natural light to be present one hour later in the morning and one hour later in the evening according to clock time.

Morning light is essential for helping to set the body’s natural rhythms: It wakes us up and improves alertness. Morning light also boosts mood – light boxes simulating natural light are prescribed for morning use to treat seasonal affective disorder.

Although the exact reasons why light activates us and benefits our mood are not yet known, this may be due to light’s effects on increasing levels of cortisol, a hormone that modulates the stress response or the effect of light on the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotions.

Adolescents also may be chronically sleep deprived due to school, sports and social activities. For instance, many children start school around 8 a.m. or earlier. This means that during daylight saving time, many young people get up and travel to school in pitch darkness.

The body of evidence makes a good case for adopting permanent standard time nationwide, as I testified at a March 2022 congressional hearing and argued in a position statement for the Sleep Research Society. The American Medical Association has also called for permanent standard time.

The biggest advantage of daylight saving time is that it provides an extra hour of light in the late afternoon or evening, depending on time of year, for sports, shopping or eating outside. However, exposure to light later into the evening for almost eight months during daylight saving time comes at a price. This extended evening light delays the brain’s release of melatonin, the hormone that promotes drowsiness, which in turn interferes with sleep and causes us to sleep less overall.

Because puberty also causes melatonin to be released later at night, meaning that teenagers have a delay in the natural signal that helps them fall asleep, adolescents are particularly susceptible to sleep problems from the extended evening light. This shift in melatonin during puberty lasts into our 20s.

The ‘western edge’ effect

Geography can also make a difference in how daylight saving time affects people. One study showed that people living on the western edge of a time zone, who get light later in the morning and later in the evening, got less sleep than their counterparts on the eastern edge of a time zone.

This study found that western-edge residents had higher rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and breast cancer, as well as lower per capita income and higher health care costs. Other research has found that rates of certain other cancers are higher on the western edge of a time zone.

Scientists believe that these health problems may result from a combination of chronic sleep deprivation and “circadian misalignment.” Circadian misalignment refers to a mismatch in timing between our biological rhythms and the outside world. In other words, the timing of daily work, school or sleep routines is based on the clock, rather than on the Sun’s rise and set.

A brief history of daylight saving time

Congress instituted year-round daylight saving time during World War I and World War II, and once again during the energy crisis of the early 1970s.

The idea was that having extra light later into the afternoon would save energy by decreasing the need for electric lighting. This idea has since been proved largely inaccurate, as heating needs may increase in the morning in the winter, while air conditioning needs can also increase in the late afternoon in the summer.

Another pro-daylight saving argument has been that crime rates drop with more light at the end of the day. While this has been proved true, the change is very small, and the health effects appear to outweigh the benefits to society from lower rates of crime.

After World War II, designating the start and end dates for daylight saving time fell to state governments. Because this created many railroad scheduling and safety problems, however, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966. This law set the nationwide dates of daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April until the last Sunday in October. In 2007, Congress amended the act to expand the period in which daylight saving time is in effect from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November – dates that remain in effect today.

The Uniform Time Act allows states and territories to opt out of daylight saving time, however. Arizona and Hawaii are on permanent standard time, along with Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa.

Several U.S. states have legislation and resolutions under consideration to support permanent standard time, while many others have been or are considering permanent daylight saving time. Among all these efforts combined, state-level measures in support of permanent standard time have increased from 15% in 2021 to 52% in 2026.

In March 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act in a bid to make daylight saving time permanent. But the House did not move forward with this legislation. Even as the current version of the Sunshine Protection Act awaits consideration in the Senate, a bipartisan countermeasure, the Sunshine for Our Kids Act, introduced in the House on July 9, would restore permanent standard time as the nation’s default clock.

Now, it’s up to legislators to decide whether to end the time shift altogether, and whether to choose permanent standard or daylight saving time.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 10, 2022, and updated again on March 6, 2023, and March 4, 2024.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/21/time-for-a-clock-change-congress-considers-daylight-saving-time-again/

As of Sept. 1, Muslim students at Québec’s post-secondary colleges, known as CEGEPs, will have no place to perform their daily prayers. Jewish, Christian and Muslim independent schools may lose provincial funding. And group prayer in parks will require municipal permission.

These are key provisions of Québec’s new secularism law, Bill 9. A challenge to Bill 21, meanwhile — a law prohibiting public employees in positions of authority, such as teachers, police officers and judges, from wearing visible religious symbols at work — is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Québec’s new secularism law claims to limit only religious symbols. In fact, it regulates religious obligations.

A religious symbol or an obligation?

As a PhD student researching Islamic legal theory at McMaster University, I believe the public debate has not yet addressed the core of what Bill 9 actually does.

Passed in April 2026 by a vote of 77 to 27 in the Québec legislature, Bill 9 is not simply an extension of the province’s 2019 religious symbols law, Bill 21. It’s a fundamental shift in what secularism is being asked to do.

To see why this shift matters, consider a framework from an unexpected source: Islamic legal theory. The 14th-century jurist Al-Shatibi argued that religious obligations are not arbitrary rules; they are responses to basic human needs that the law exists to protect: faith, life, intellect, lineage and property. He called these the maqasid — roughly, the “higher purposes” of Islamic law.

Daily prayer is an essential obligation in this framework. It serves as the practice through which a believer becomes a conscious servant of their creator.

By protecting the relationship between creator and creation — the highest of the five essential objectives in Islam — prayer functions not as a symbolic or optional act but as the fundamental, practical expression of that divinely designed purpose.

When I look at the CEGEP prayer bans through the lens of Islamic legal theory, I do not see a student expressing an identity. I see someone trying to fulfil an obligation tied to specific times, ritual washing and facing Mecca. Closing a prayer room does not ask students to remove a symbol. It asks them to violate a duty.

This distinction between symbol and obligation is not unique to Islam. The Jewish hospital patient relying on a kosher menu, the Sikh day-care worker whose dastaar (turban) is an extension of their commitment — these are not optional symbols, but deeply held obligations, binding regardless of whether anyone is watching.

Regulating the state versus the citizen

By imposing dress codes at subsidized daycares, restricting religiously accommodated meals in certain public institutions and banning unpermitted outdoor group prayer, the law pulls personal religious practice under government control.

These citizens exercise no state power. Their only shared trait is visibility — a trait that Bill 9 seems to be treating as the problem itself. In framing visibility as something to be eliminated, the law pushes against foundational principles of a liberal democratic society.

Supporters, including French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge, argue the law ensures the “religious neutrality of the state” and equal rules for all. In their view, neutrality demands uniformity.

But uniformity is not neutrality. A rule that treats a daily obligation and a decorative pin as the same thing has not achieved equality — it has arguably just stopped closely examining what it’s actually regulating.

The opposition to Bill 9 is unusually broad. The Archbishop of Montréal has called for the law’s withdrawal, and Jewish, Sikh, Christian and Muslim communities have all raised concerns about its scope.

Legal challenges

The province has pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — a constitutional override that lets governments suspend certain rights under the charter — to shield Bill 9 from court challenges.

Opponents can still challenge how the law is applied through Québec’s administrative tribunals by invoking the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms or by raising Canada’s treaty commitments at the United Nations.

But these avenues are slow, and because of the notwithstanding clause, they can only limit enforcement case by case; they cannot cancel the law.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada is weighing its ruling on the Bill 21 case it heard in March 2026. While the ruling will have no direct impact on Bill 9, it will establish the legal framework and precedents that will shape future challenges against the new law.

Bill 9 asks Canada to decide what kind of secularism it wants. One model keeps the state neutral and treats religious citizens as full participants in public life. The other demands the public sphere be free of visible religion, even when that religion takes the form of obligations its adherents cannot set aside.

A version of secularism that fails to distinguish between a religious symbol and a religious duty misses the true meaning of neutrality.

Marwan El Gaddafi 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/2026/07/21/quebecs-bill-9-doesnt-just-ban-symbols-it-bans-obligations/

Nine-year-old Eva was watching an episode of the children’s show Horrible Histories about the stone age recently when a question popped into her head. The cave men were speaking a broken form of English, but Eva thought that didn’t sound right and she wondered: how was the first language formed?

She joined our host Eloise to get some answers from anthropologist April Nowell on The Conversation’s Curious Kids podcast.

In each episode of The Conversation’s Curious Kids, a child joins host Eloise to ask a top researcher their burning question.

To listen to season two, follow us wherever you get your podcasts, or listen on the Yoto Player via the Discover section on the Yoto interactive audio platform for kids.

You can also listen back to season one and read lots of answers to questions sent in by children around the world in our Curious Kids series.

Got a question? Pop it in an email, or record it and send us the audio to curiouskids@theconversation.com.

This season of The Conversation’s Curious Kids is supported by the University of Southampton in the UK, a world-leading research-intensive university with a global network of international students and campuses in Malaysia and Delhi.

Disclosure statement

April Nowell 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.

Credits

This episode of The Conversation’s Curious Kids was hosted and mixed by Eloise Stevens. The producer was Katie Flood and the executive producer was Gemma Ware. Credits in this episode to Horrible Histories, Pysched for Nature and Wild Ambience.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/21/how-was-the-first-language-formed/

International students have become a flashpoint in immigration and education debates in recent years.

Since international student numbers surged after the pandemic lockdowns, they have been blamed for housing pressures in some city areas. And universities have been accused of “cashing in” on the high fees they can charge students from overseas.

Since late 2023, the federal government has made repeated moves to cut overall numbers.

The latest example is the decision to freeze new international students at 295,000 in 2027. Student visa fees were also just increased by A$500 to $2,500, as of July 1.

Education Minister Jason Clare says international student numbers must be sustainable and in the “national interest”.

Meanwhile, migration continues to be a major political issue, and the federal government has been eager to demonstrate its control over the area.

But the public debate can obscure a more complicated reality. The relationship between international students and population growth is easily misunderstood.

A huge growth in population?

One of the main ways we think about population growth is through “net overseas migration”.

This is calculated by adding migrants and Australian citizens coming in and subtracting migrants and Australian citizens going out of Australia.

During COVID, our net overseas migration declined with the closure of international borders. After borders reopened, it rebounded to record levels.

The federal government has since attempted to bring this number below 300,000 per year. It was as high as 556,000 in late 2023.

Net overseas migration counts individuals who change their usual country of residence. In Australia, this is someone who spends at least 12 months in one country within any 16-month period.

Temporary migrants, such as international students, or working holiday-makers who stay longer than one year are included in this definition.

Since 2012, the difference between migration departures and arrivals was a cumulative increase of about 3.4 million people. In our analysis of Australia Bureau of Statistics data, international students contributed about 1.25 million, or 36% of this growth.

Looking at the numbers again

This sounds huge, and can easily feed into perceptions international student numbers are “booming”.

But other data from the Department of Home Affairs shows the number of international students physically present in Australia has only increased by 265,000 between March 2012 and March 2026.

In fact, the most recent data shows the total number of international students living in Australia is slightly lower than before the pandemic.

The reason is net overseas migration counts the type of visa someone holds at the time of their arrival to or departure from Australia.

It doesn’t capture other visa changes that might happen after they arrive, such as moving from a student to a skilled worker visa.

So it means some “students” are being counted in the tally on the way into the country, but not reclassified if they move into another visa category.

So how many students are there?

International students have been an important part of the post-pandemic rise in net overseas migration.

But the student-visa component of net overseas migration is not a measure of how much long-term population growth has been caused by international students.

It records one event in a migration system in which people may change visas, obtain permanent residence, leave Australia or be replaced by migrants arriving through other programs.

Net overseas migration figures are influenced by a complex mixture of factors. Fewer people leaving, or staying longer than expected, can keep net overseas migration elevated.

For example, many international students transition to temporary graduate visas following study, which can prolong their stay.

How many students are coming in?

The federal government uses “national planning levels” to manage how many international student visas are granted each year.

Universities and vocational education providers (including TAFEs and private colleges) are then given an allocation for new international students.

The government says “international student commencements are on track to be below the [levels] for both 2026 and 2027”.

How does this impact universities?

Universities are often seen as the main cause of high international student numbers.

Universities receive the highest amount of income from international students (because of the fees they can charge), and this revenue is concentrated in some universities.

In 2024, the University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, Monash University and University of Queensland had about 35% of international student enrolments. They also had almost 50% of university international student revenue.

But more than 50% of international student enrolments are actually in private providers. This includes higher education and vocational colleges, along with students in English language courses.

These figures highlight how international education is not a single sector with uniform interests. International student enrolments are spread much more broadly across the sector than revenue. This further complicates the debate.

What now?

Under currently proposed legislation, the newly formed Australian Tertiary Education Commission will have responsibility for allocating international student places. This promises to be a tough job.

The method for allocating places will have a very big impact on the distribution of resources across the tertiary education sector, though the total number of places available will still be set by the government.

We don’t yet have any details on the method it will use or how the scheme will be devised.

But as the next major step in managing Australia’s international student numbers, the challenge will be ensuring decisions are grounded in evidence and informed by a nuanced understanding of the sector.

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/2026/07/21/what-boom-in-international-students-the-total-number-living-in-australia-is-lower-than-before-the-pandemic/