Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

As the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, American citizens living in or visiting the Middle East found themselves stranded in countries facing bombing attacks by Iran. The State Department on March 2, 2026, urged Americans in 14 Middle Eastern countries to leave via “available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks.” But commercial air travel and airports were shut down in many of those places and the U.S. wasn’t offering to evacuate its citizens.

Media reports featuring frustrated and frightened Americans stuck in places where danger was mounting, as well as growing criticism that the U.S. hadn’t handled the situation well or according to normal procedure, led the State Department to scramble and send charter flights to evacuate U.S. nationals from a handful of countries.

The Conversation’s politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed former ambassador Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat who now teaches at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, to understand how such situations are normally handled – and how the current situation diverged from longstanding practices.

What is the customary way that the United States and the State Department deal with U.S. nationals who are abroad in an area that becomes dangerous?

Over my 35-year career, I was ambassador to a small country and I worked a lot on African affairs. But most of my time was spent in consular affairs, which is the part of the State Department that does this work. And over the last 20 or 30 years, we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve developed a model that works pretty well.

When you’re in a country with instability, what you want to do is to get the population of Americans down as small as you can. So the first thing that happens is you have some instability, and you tell Americans, “Listen, we advise against traveling here.” See if you can discourage everybody except missionaries or people whose employers really want them to go there to make money or people visiting family members, but get rid of the casual tourist.

Then, a little more time goes by and things start to get bad, and you say, “You should consider leaving.” And then, a little while later, the embassy gives its own employees and their families what they call “authorized departure,” which is, “It’s OK for you to go back to the U.S., and in fact we’ll help pay for it.” And we tell the public that, and we hope that that’ll help spur more people to leave.

And the step after that?

Next step: We order departure, where we tell parts of the embassy, “You’ve got to go home. You can’t make the decision to stay here, you and your kids go home.” And we tell the public that, and hopefully that makes the number of Americans remaining in the country smaller and smaller.

Then – and it doesn’t always happen – the last step is we evacuate. We say, “We’re getting our people out of here on planes, we’ve got space for you on the planes, you should have listened to us before.”

That’s the standard model. Unfortunately, it didn’t get followed very well this week.

What did you see this week, and how did it diverge from the normal procedure?

We went from zero to 60 very quickly. Look, the Mideast is unstable on a good day, but there had not been a new instability where people should be getting scared and going home. And then what happened was we launched the attack, and all of a sudden there was that instability.

Logically, you would think, there were two places that Americans should be getting out of. One was Iran, where we’ve told people not to be for many years. The other was Israel, because Israel is going to be attacked.

But no, the Iranians attacked over half a dozen countries. So now, all of a sudden, you’ve got Americans who feel unsafe in places that have never really been considered unsafe, like Oman, Cyprus or Turkey.

So now you have a long list of countries where you want to encourage Americans to leave and where they want to leave. There’s some demand, and you haven’t got that drawdown, where it makes things smaller, and also you haven’t done anything about arranging charter flights or military flights to get them out. So they’re going to have to stay where they are and feel unsafe for X number of days.

That’s when this started generating news stories.

This led to lot of people calling a member of Congress, a lot of people talking to the press, saying, “We got to get us out of here.” That’ll continue until the evacuation is arranged. There’s a bit of an analogy to COVID. When COVID first took off, we had a lot of Americans stuck overseas. They wanted to get home to their families. They figured U.S. health care to be the best that’s available, and it took us awhile to arrange charter flights. It was a very expensive process to get everybody home. They just kind of had to hunker down. That’s where we are right now.

Do you think this problem that’s being faced by Americans in the Middle East now should have been anticipated by the State Department?

Yes and no. I think a big part of the problem here was that the Trump administration kept the knowledge of the impending attack to a very small circle of people for operational security reasons. You can’t launch a surprise attack if half of Washington knows about it.

You can see a scenario by which a very trusted State Department officer has to eventually talk to a charter plane company about chartering a whole bunch of planes. They’re going to figure out pretty quickly what’s going to happen, and then you’ve got a security leak.

At the same time, I think going back weeks and months, maybe people should have been arranging charter flights and military flights, kind of on spec so that you could flip the switch and get that going right away. They’re kind of starting from scratch this week.

You’ve got people who are stranded, afraid and can’t get on with their lives. What should happen next?

All these Iranian strikes, the casualty numbers aren’t high. So objectively speaking, I think that very few of the Americans over there are in actual, real danger.

But casual tourists do get afraid, and they don’t travel overseas that much. This may be their first time in the Mideast, and all of a sudden this is happening. They want out bad. They’re scared, whether, objectively speaking, they have a good reason to be scared or not. And it’s better for everybody – the U.S. embassy, the host country, for people in Washington – if we get them out of there and get them home.

This will sort itself out. There will be planes, we’ll get all the people out who want to get out, but it’s going to take at least a few days, maybe a week.

Donald Heflin 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.

– ref. Operational secrecy kept the US from making evacuation plans – and that means Americans in the Mideast could wait days – https://theconversation.com/operational-secrecy-kept-the-us-from-making-evacuation-plans-and-that-means-americans-in-the-mideast-could-wait-days-277578

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Michael Wysession, Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

The past three years have been the world’s hottest on record by far, with 2025 almost tied with 2023 for second place. With that energy came extreme weather, from flash flooding to powerful hurricanes and severe droughts. Yet, by most indicators, the planet should have been cooler in 2025 than it was.

So, what happened, and what does that say about the year ahead?

As an earth and environmental scientist, I study influences that affect global temperatures year to year, such as El Niño, wildfires and solar cycles. Some make Earth hotter. Some make it cooler. And one particularly unhealthy influence has been quietly hiding a large amount of global warming – until now.

Factors that made 2025 cooler than 2024

The Earth’s climate is the result of many factors that change from year to year. Some that helped make 2025 cooler than 2024 include:

La Niña’s arrival: La Niña is part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural climate pattern that fluctuates between warm El Niño conditions and cooler La Niña conditions. During El Niño, the Pacific Ocean heats up along the equator, influencing the atmosphere in ways that can cause intense storms, droughts and heat waves around the planet. La Niña does the opposite; it’s like putting an ice pack on the atmosphere.

Both 2023 and 2024 were El Niño years, but in 2025 conditions shifted to neutral and then to La Niña starting in September.

The solar cycle: The Sun reached its solar maximum near the end of 2024, the peak of its energy output in an approximately 11-year cycle, and began declining in 2025. So, while the sun’s output was still stronger than average in 2025, it was less than in 2024.

Fewer wildfires: Despite some destructive blazes, the world also saw fewer wildfires during 2025 than 2024, which put less carbon dioxide – a planet-warming greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere.

Despite those points, 2025 still ended up as the third-hottest year in over 175 years of record-keeping and likely one of the warmest in at least several thousand years. It was nearly as warm as 2023, at 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1.47 Celsius) above the 1850-1900 average, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. It also had the second-highest average land temperature recorded, up 3.6 F (2 C) compared to preindustrial years, with more than 10% of the land experiencing record-high temperatures.

Factors that made 2025 warmer than expected

Several other factors made 2025 warmer than expected, and some are likely to continue to increase in 2026. They include:

Greenhouse gas emissions: The big driver of global warming is excess greenhouse gas emissions, largely from burning fossil fuels, and 2025 had plenty.

Greenhouse gases trap heat near Earth’s surface like a blanket, raising the temperature. They also linger in the atmosphere for years to centuries, meaning gases released today will continue to warm the planet well into the future. The levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere all increased in 2025.

Rising energy demand drove an increase in fossil fuel use. About 80% of the increasing electric power demand came from emerging economies, largely for rising air conditioning demands as the world gets hotter. In the U.S., the rapid growth of data centers for AI and cryptocurrency mining helped boost U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 2.4%.

Earth’s energy imbalance: Other sources can disrupt the natural balance between the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth and the lesser amount radiated back to space. A recent study found that Earth’s energy uptake surged and temperatures rose quickly when a rare three-year La Niña in 2020-2022 shifted to El Niño in 2023-2024.

Declining polar ice, which efficiently reflects sunlight back into space, also affects the energy balance. As sea ice declines, it leaves dark ocean water that absorbs most of the sunlight that reaches it. In a spiraling feedback, warmer water melts sea ice, allowing more sunlight into the ocean, warming it faster; 2025 had the lowest winter peak of Arctic sea ice on record and the third-lowest minimum extent of Antarctic ice.

Air pollution: Sulfate aerosol pollution from coal combustion and burning heavy fuel oil in shipping has also been affecting Earth’s energy balance. It has been masking the full effects of human-caused greenhouse gases for years by reflecting sunlight back into space, creating a cooling effect. But sulfate aerosol pollution is also a serious health hazard, blamed for about 8 million human deaths per year from lung diseases.

Recent reductions in sulfate pollution – now 40% less than 20 years ago – have meant about a 0.2 F (0.13 C) increase in global temperatures. Much of the reduction was from China’s efforts to reduce its notoriously bad air pollution in recent years and international shipping rules in effect since 2020 that have reduced sulfur emissions from large ships by 85%.

Taking all factors together, humans are now warming the planet at a faster rate than at any point in human history: at about 0.5 F (0.27 C) per decade. That extra heat can fuel extreme weather, including flash floods, heat waves, extended droughts, wildfires and coastal flooding, affecting human lives and economies.

Predictions for 2026

Most climate models predict 2026 will be about as hot as 2025, depending on whether a Pacific El Niño develops, which forecasters give about a 60% chance of happening. The planet is already starting the year out warm, even if it doesn’t feel like that everywhere. While January was very cold in parts of the U.S., globally, Earth saw its fifth-warmest January on record, and much of the western U.S. saw one of its warmest winters on record.

Solar output will continue to decrease slowly in 2026. However, the International Monetary Fund projects strong global economic growth at about 3.3%, suggesting electricity demand will also continue to grow. The International Energy Agency expects global electricity demand to increase by 3.6% per year through at least 2030.

Even though global renewable energy use is growing quickly, it isn’t growing fast enough to meet rising demand, meaning more fossil fuel use in the coming years. More fossil fuels burned means more emissions and more warming, while the ability of the ocean and land to absorb carbon dioxide continues to decrease. As a result, the atmosphere and oceans heat up, increasing the risks of passing tipping points – glaciers disappear, Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down, permafrost thaws, coral reefs die.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high rate, humanity may look back at 2025 as one the coolest years globally in the rest of our lives.

Michael Wysession 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.

– ref. 2025 was hotter than it should have been – 5 influences and a dirty surprise offer clues to what’s ahead – https://theconversation.com/2025-was-hotter-than-it-should-have-been-5-influences-and-a-dirty-surprise-offer-clues-to-whats-ahead-276605

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Saharnaz Babaei-Balderlou, Teaching Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Students using AI to cheat on homework or tests is a source of much discussion. But some scholars argue the greater risk of students using AI is that they will simply not learn.

Approximately 90% of 1,100 U.S. students surveyed at two-year and four-year colleges in 2025 reported using generative AI for everything from drafting assignments to clarifying complex concepts.

But when students use AI as a tutor or study partner, not as an immediate answer generator, does it make it easier or harder for them to learn?

We are economists who tried to answer this question by designing an AI tool using ChatGPT’s custom GPT feature, with the web access of the chatbot disabled.

We named the tool Macro Buddy and trained it to guide some students at one of our undergraduate macroeconomics classes at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, through their reasoning rather than giving them direct answers.

We found in our research, conducted in spring 2025, that students who used Macro Buddy, alongside peer discussion, earned higher exam scores than students who worked alone, without this AI tutor.

Meet your new tutor

One of our macroeconomics courses enrolled 140 undergraduate students, mostly in their first or second year of college, divided across four sections.

Students’ course materials, assignments and exams were identical across all four sections. Students were generally not allowed to use AI tools or collaborate with classmates during exams. Students took all tests in person and were not allowed to reference any notes or other materials during the exam.

As a result, exam scores reflected what students understood and could explain on their own – without the help of AI or any other outside source.

After all students took their first exam, we randomly assigned the four class sections to take on a different study format.

We prompted one group of students to work individually, without Macro Buddy; another group of students worked in groups, without Macro Buddy; a third group of students worked individually, with Macro Buddy; and a fourth group of students worked in groups, with Macro Buddy.

We wanted to compare how different study approaches – working alone, working with classmates, using Macro Buddy or combining both – altered how well students did on exams.

Macro Buddy’s skills

We trained Macro Buddy with the help of lecture transcripts, slides and homework questions specifically from this macroeconomics course.

Macro Buddy had internet access turned off, so it relied only on the instructor’s course materials.

Macro Buddy was designed to act like a tutor, not an answer machine. Instead of giving students complete solutions, Macro Buddy asked follow-up questions meant to guide students toward an answer.

For example, if a student asked why lower prices might increase consumers’ spending, Macro Buddy would not offer a quick, full explanation. It might instead ask what happens to people’s purchasing power when prices fall. The student would then have to connect the concepts and explain their reasoning, in their own words, step by step.

This distinction between explaining an idea and receiving a finished answer matters.

An AI tool that simply delivers answers can allow students to skip thinking through a problem. One study found that when college students rely on a chatbot as a crutch, they perform worse when they no longer have access to it. A tool that asks questions requires students to do the work themselves, even while receiving guidance. This is the very process that makes learning stick.

What happened to students’ learning

The one group of students that continued working individually, without AI, served as our control group.

The other three groups changed how they studied: One began working in groups without AI, one worked individually with Macro Buddy, and the last group combined group work with Macro Buddy.

All of the students’ average scores declined when they took their second exam, across all four study groups.

By the third exam, however, differences across sections became clearer.

Students who used both Macro Buddy and group discussion earned the highest average scores. Students who used Macro Buddy alone also scored higher than those who worked alone without Macro Buddy. Students who worked in groups without Macro Buddy showed smaller improvements, when compared to the students in other groups.

The third exam happened several weeks after we introduced the new study formats.

By that point, students in the combined group may have grown more comfortable using Macro Buddy to test their understanding, while also explaining ideas to classmates. Working with peers meant having to articulate reasoning clearly and respond to questions, which can deepen understanding over time.

Why this matters

Some critics of AI worry that students will rely on AI to do the hardest parts of learning for them. This reflects a fear that students may stop practicing the skills that build expertise. Students become experts in their fields while struggling with confusing material, revising explanations and seeing whether they truly understand an idea.

Our experiment suggests erosion of learning when using AI is not inevitable.

We found that when AI is designed as a tutor that asks questions instead of simply giving answers – and when students are also required to explain their reasoning to classmates – the technology can support learning rather than replace it.

Most students today use general-purpose chatbots that are not designed as tutors. They type in a question and receive a response. But our findings suggest that even small design choices, such as building an AI chatbot with guiding questions, can shape how students engage with the material.

Peer discussion also adds something to the learning process that AI cannot provide: social accountability and exposure to alternative reasoning.

Together, these practices encourage students to think through problems more actively.

The evidence from our experiment highlights a practical distinction: AI can be used to replace thinking, or it can be used to support it. The impact may depend less on the technology itself and more on how it is structured and integrated into learning.

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

– ref. We designed an AI tutor that helps college students reason rather than give them answers – https://theconversation.com/we-designed-an-ai-tutor-that-helps-college-students-reason-rather-than-give-them-answers-276584

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Gillian Russell, Assistant Research Professor, Penn State

Nearly three times as many Pennsylvania adults gamble online today than just a few years ago.

And as online platforms make gambling easier and more convenient, some Pennsylvanians are gambling more often and may be more prone to developing problems.

We are researchers at Penn State’s Criminal Justice Research Center and the University of Kentucky’s College of Social Work who recently published these findings in a report on online gambling in Pennsylvania. The report was produced in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.

We surveyed over 3,500 Pennsylvania adults and found that between 2.5% and 6.4% could be classified as problem gamblers.

An additional nearly 30% fell into “at-risk” categories, meaning they show meaningful signs of harm but do not yet meet the threshold for problem gambling.

Here are five of our key findings and why they matter:

1. Most Pennsylvanians still gamble offline, not online – but the distance between the two is shrinking

When Pennsylvania legalized online gambling in 2017, it required an annual assessment on the impacts of the legislation on Pennsylvania residents’ gambling behaviors. The assessment began two years after the first licenses were issued.

In the first two years of the survey, which were used to produce the 2021 and 2022 annual reports, approximately 11% of Pennsylvania adults reported gambling online. That number rose to as high as 30% in the most recent 2025 report, which was released in January 2026.

The 2025 report, which used both online and phone survey methods, identified that between 61% and 74% of Pennsylvania adults had gambled at least once in the past year. These numbers were consistent with previous reports. Depending on the sampling method, between 56% and 69% of adults reported they had gambled offline – for example, playing slot machines at brick-and-mortar casinos or buying lottery tickets at a store. Between 17% and 30% had gambled online.

Lottery games and raffles remain the most popular offline gambling format, while sports betting remains the most popular online gambling format. This finding has been consistent through all five years of the report.

But the line between “online gamblers” and “offline gamblers” is blurry. Among those who had gambled online, more than three-quarters also gambled offline.

We grouped Pennsylvania gamblers into three subgroups and found that about 43% gambled exclusively offline, about 4% exclusively online, and somewhere between 14% to 27% were “mixed-mode” gamblers, meaning they gambled both online and offline.

2. The more ways people gamble, the more they tend to gamble overall

Those who engaged in mixed-mode gambling participated in nearly twice as many gambling formats as those who gambled only offline or only online.

They also gambled most often: close to once a week on average, compared with about once a month for those who gamble offline only.

Mixed-mode gamblers also spent more time and more money on gambling. People who gambled offline-only or online-only spent a median of about US$20-$40 per month on gambling. Mixed-mode gamblers, meanwhile, spent about $105-$230 per month. Mixed-mode gamblers also had the largest single-day gambling losses.

3. Nearly a third of Pennsylvania gamblers are at risk of problem gambling

This year’s report is the first to estimate how many Pennsylvanians meet criteria for problem gambling in the general population.

Between 2.5% and 6.4% of adults could be classified as current problem gamblers, according to the “problem gambling measure.” This is an evidence-based measure of problem gambling that classifies individuals as recreational, at-risk and problem gamblers.

Nearly 30% fell into “at-risk” gambling categories. They showed meaningful signs of harm but did not yet meet the threshold for problem gambling.

People who engage in mixed-mode gambling are significantly more likely to fall into at-risk and problem gambling categories than people who gamble offline only or online only.

4. Most people with gambling problems do not seek help

Despite the size of the at-risk and problem gambling groups, very few people seek treatment or other assistance.

Only about 1.5% of Pennsylvanians said they felt they had a gambling problem in the past year. Just 0.2% said they had sought help.

Even among those who met criteria for problem gambling, only about 6% reported getting help.

Some people did reach out proactively for others. About 0.4% of residents said they had contacted the 1-800-GAMBLER helpline because of someone else’s gambling.

This gap between harm and help-seeking is not unique to Pennsylvania. But it matters more as gambling becomes easier, faster and more continuous, and as people are more exposed to gambling content through social media and streaming platforms.

5. Young men are particularly vulnerable

Pennsylvania’s experience with gambling mirrors what public health research has long shown with alcohol, tobacco and more recently cannabis: When a behavior becomes more accessible and easier to repeat, overall use rises and harm concentrates among a smaller, more vulnerable group.

Features of online gambling – such as ease of access and acceptance of online payment methods, including cryptocurrencies – are particularly appealing to younger adults, many of whom have shown declining interest in traditional forms of gambling, such as casinos or lotteries. Online platforms offer them the opportunity to gamble on their phones, at all hours, with rapid feedback and minimal barriers to entry. This matters because younger people, especially young men, are disproportionately vulnerable to different types of addictive behaviors, including misuse of alcohol and illicit substances.

For most Pennsylvanians, gambling remains a casual pastime. But as with drinking or substance use, increased availability expands both experimentation and the number of people who progress to harmful levels of engagement. As the online gambling market grows, the data suggests that entertainment and harm may be rising together, following a pattern that public health has seen before with alcohol and cannabis.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Gillian Russell receives funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Glenn Sterner receives funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

– ref. Nearly a third of Pennsylvania gamblers are at risk of problem gambling − but few seek treatment – https://theconversation.com/nearly-a-third-of-pennsylvania-gamblers-are-at-risk-of-problem-gambling-but-few-seek-treatment-272240

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sarah Greene, Instructor in Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases, Washington University in St. Louis

In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus was condemned by the god Zeus to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down, having to start anew every day.

His story captured our attention as researchers studying neglected tropical diseases – a collection of conditions that primarily affect poor people in low-income countries. These diseases do not kill people at the rates of more well-known infections, such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, but cause significant pain and disability. As chronic infections that can cause disfigurement, they are also stigmatizing and economically devastating.

For over 50 years, researchers, clinicians and policymakers in the global health community have worked to eliminate infections such as onchocerciasis (also known as river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). They’ve done this through controlling black flies and mosquitoes, the vectors that spread these diseases, as well as huge campaigns to distribute antiparasitic medications to entire communities in areas where these diseases are endemic.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s sudden defunding of the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2025 has created a real-life Sisyphean struggle for countries working to eliminate neglected tropical diseases. Withdrawal of USAID support is abandoning the boulder of disease elimination partway up the mountain. When countries are unable to provide treatment, the parasites that cause these diseases will spread to infect more people.

Inevitably, the boulder will roll backward, undoing decades and billions of dollars of work.

Ancient foes

Lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis are centuries-old afflictions. An Egyptian statue of Pharaoh Mentuhotep II from 2000 B.C. is suggestive of lymphatic filariasis.

Filarial worms can live for years within humans, causing a variety of different problems. In lymphatic filariasis, adult worms live in the lymphatic vessels, a network running throughout the body that returns fluid back to the circulatory system. This disruption of the lymphatic system can cause the extremities or the scrotum to swell tremendously.

In onchocerciasis, adult worms live in small nodules under the skin. The larval forms of these parasites migrate through the skin and can invade the eyes, causing chronic inflammation that can lead to blindness.

In recognition of the significant suffering these diseases cause, the World Health Organization coordinated global efforts to eliminate them: onchocerciasis starting in 1974 and lymphatic filariasis in 2000.

Since then, these public health campaigns have distributed hundreds of millions of doses of treatment for lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis. Medications vary somewhat by location, but they often involve the use of the Nobel Prize-winning drug ivermectin. Merck, the manufacturer of ivermectin, provides the drug for free to each country’s disease control program. Similarly, the companies GlaxoSmithKline and Eisai respectively donate the antiparasitic medications albendazole and diethylcarbamazine citrate for these campaigns.

Together, these programs have dramatically reduced the numbers of people exposed to these infections. For lymphatic filariasis, as of 2024, 871 million people no longer need preventive medications, and 21 countries have eliminated this infection. Five countries have eliminated onchocerciasis.

A job partially completed

Despite significant progress in controlling these infections, it remains logistically challenging to map endemic areas, deliver medications, test for ongoing infection and decide which areas have active outbreaks.

While each country runs its own medication delivery programs, these efforts have been supported by the World Health Organization as well as USAID or USAID-funded nongovernmental organizations. The Trump administration’s funding cuts to USAID halted over 40 drug distribution drives in 2025, affecting over 140 million people. Importantly, the U.S was the largest financial contributor to the World Health Organization until it withdrew its membership in January 2026.

We and others working on eliminating these neglected diseases are concerned that the rapid decrease in funding for these programs will destabilize efforts to treat infections. Stopping medication delivery now can allow these infections to spread unchecked and roll back decades of progress. Donated medications can be effective only if they are delivered to those who need them. This might mean that these campaigns will have to be combined with other public health efforts already underway, or that each country reallocates resources toward these efforts.

If the world turns its back on eliminating these diseases, millions of people will be hurt by the boulder rolling back down.

Sarah Greene has received funding from the NIH.

Philip Budge has received funding from the Gates Foundation and the NIH. He is a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

– ref. Billions of dollars, decades of progress spent eliminating devastating diseases may be lost with undoing of USAID – https://theconversation.com/billions-of-dollars-decades-of-progress-spent-eliminating-devastating-diseases-may-be-lost-with-undoing-of-usaid-266195

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sagar Lekhak, Ph.D. Student in Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

At least 57 nations have live antipersonnel land mines in their territories. In 2024 alone, 1,945 people were killed by mines and 4,325 were injured, 90% of whom were civilians. Nearly half of those were children. Demining operations removed 105,640 mines in the same year.

With new conflicts, the number of mines continues to grow. For farmers, children and others returning to areas after a conflict, a single step can mean permanent injury or death.

I am a Ph.D. student in the Imaging Science Department at Rochester Institute of Technology, working with Emmett Ientilucci. My research focuses on using drone-based, multisensor imagery and artificial intelligence to improve the speed, accuracy and reliability of land mine and unexploded ordnance detection.

Our research aims to do this in three ways: developing techniques for combining data from multiple types of sensors, building benchmark datasets for developing and evaluating detection systems, and improving the reliability of AI detection methods by incorporating estimates of uncertainty.

Multiple sensors from above

Land mine detection still relies heavily on ground-based methods, each with serious limitations. Handheld metal detectors often struggle in mineral-rich soils and have difficulty reliably detecting low-metal or predominantly plastic mines. Ground-penetrating radar can detect nonmetallic objects but performs poorly in wet or uneven terrain, or ground covered by vegetation, and often generates high false-alarm rates. Manual probing and trained detection animals remain effective methods for locating land mines, but the process is slow, resource-intensive and exposes deminers to considerable risk. At the scale of land mine deployment seen in Ukraine and other conflict and post-conflict regions, ground surveys alone cannot keep pace.

Demining operations are increasingly using drone-based aerial imagery to accelerate land mine surveys, particularly for mines laid on the surface of the ground. However, camouflage, vegetation and changing lighting conditions often make these mines nearly invisible in conventional images.

Earlier research my colleagues and I conducted examined whether aerial sensing can realistically replace or support traditional ground-based surveys. We evaluated the viability of substituting an airborne metal-detection system for handheld metal detectors for detecting land mines and unexploded ordnance.

The results showed that drone-mounted magnetic sensing can detect metallic targets with accuracy comparable to ground-based methods in a controlled test site, while reducing human risk and increasing survey speed approximately tenfold. Our heat map, generated by an airborne electromagnetic-induction metal detector over a test site, highlights likely locations of buried land mine and unexploded ordnance targets, illustrating how drone-based sensing can safely and efficiently survey areas where land mines have been deployed.

Aerial detection benefits from complementary sensors. RGB cameras, which detect visible light images in color, capture visual features of land mines. Thermal sensors reveal temperature differences between mines and the ground around them. Multispectral and hyperspectral sensors identify signatures of different materials. Synthetic-aperture radar detects changes in land surfaces. LiDAR maps subtle surface disturbances. And magnetometers detect underground metallic components. Together, these sensors can address the variety of mine types and deployment conditions found in real-world environments.

Despite their potential, multisensor, drone-based land mine detection systems remain underexplored. Progress is limited by the lack of publicly available benchmark datasets with data captured from multiple types of sensors using realistic mine deployments and precise ground truth, meaning the actual positions and depths of the target mines. Without such datasets, researchers cannot accurately compare algorithms, validate test results or develop AI models that work well outside of test environments.

Building mine-detection datasets

To address this challenge, our team along with several other researchers collaborated with the nonprofit Demining Research Community to collect a comprehensive dataset. We used the Demining Research Community’s controlled test field in Oklahoma, which included over 140 inert land mine and unexploded ordnance targets.

We collected a large, georeferenced, multisensor dataset using both ground-based and drone-based platforms at multiple altitudes. We used hyperspectral, multispectral, thermal, RGB, LiDAR, synthetic-aperture radar, ground-penetrating radar, electromagnetic induction metal detectors and magnetometers. This dataset will be released through a journal paper that is currently under review. We have released a portion of this collection – specifically a visible and near-infrared hyperspectral dataset acquired at an altitude of 20 meters – through a conference publication.

We expanded this effort internationally through a collaboration with the Royal Military Academy of Belgium during a large data-collection campaign. Together, we deployed over 110 replicas of PFM-1 mines across varied terrains and vegetation conditions.

To simulate realistic minefields, we scattered the inert mines to approximate aerial dispersal. We precisely surveyed and geolocated each mine using GPS base stations. We then collected data at multiple altitudes using drones outfitted with hyperspectral, multispectral, thermal, RGB, LiDAR and polarization sensors that reduce glare.

Other research groups, participants and industry partners, including sensor manufacturers, collected additional datasets over the same test field. These datasets are currently being processed and will be released as open-access in the near future.

To our knowledge, these will be the first publicly available datasets of their kind, opening new opportunities not only for land mine detection research but also for the broader AI and remote sensing community. By making these datasets openly available, we aim to accelerate research on multisensor data fusion, improve the reliability of AI-based detection systems, and help bridge the gap between academic research and the needs of industry developers and humanitarian organizations.

Measuring reliability

But even if you carefully calibrate your sensors using our dataset, you still need to recognize the limitations of the technology. In applications like land mine detection, a single mistake can be fatal. A major part of my research focuses on AI reliability and uncertainty estimation. In a recent study, we developed a measure of an AI model’s uncertainty about its predictions.

Rather than forcing models to produce confident predictions at all times, we are developing methods that allow systems to say, “I’m not sure.” Our goal is to provide an uncertainty metric alongside predictions: The noisier or more ambiguous the input, the higher the uncertainty score. This information can help demining operators make safer and more informed decisions, particularly in challenging or uncertain conditions.

With the release of these datasets, we believe new opportunities will emerge for researchers in AI and remote sensing to explore multisensor data fusion. The datasets include a wide variety of targets in terms of size, shape and orientation, with all data fully georeferenced and with precise ground truth. Because each target was observed by multiple sensors at multiple altitudes, researchers will be able to conduct comparative analyses of individual sensors versus combined sensing approaches. This will support the development of more reliable, safer and faster detection algorithms tailored to real-world demining needs.

At its core, this research is not about algorithms or drones, it is about people. It is about farmers reclaiming their land, children walking safely to school, and communities rebuilding without fear. By combining AI, drones and open science, we aim to transform land mine detection from a slow and dangerous practice into a safer, smarter and more scalable process, one that helps turn post-conflict landscapes back into places where life can grow again.

I have research collaborations with the Demining Research Community and the Royal Military Academy of Belgium, but no financial or commercial relationships related to this work.

– ref. Researchers are combining drones and AI to make removing land mines faster and safer – https://theconversation.com/researchers-are-combining-drones-and-ai-to-make-removing-land-mines-faster-and-safer-272248

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Vahe Peroomian, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

As a space scientist, every time I go outside with my family, I tell my children to look up at the sky. The front door of our home looks southeast, and on winter nights the constellation Orion hangs majestically just above the horizon as soon as it grows dark enough to see stars.

One summer night, my son came running in and exclaimed, “Dad, Orion’s not there!” It was time for his first real astronomy lesson.

We went outside and I asked him to find the Big Dipper, the easily identifiable pattern of stars that make up a portion of the constellation Ursa Major. I reminded him that we could always see the Big Dipper no matter what time of the year it was.

So, why is it that Orion is not always visible in the night sky, and certainly not in the same location month after month, while the Big Dipper always is? The answer is intimately tied to a few concepts: how astronomers measure the length of a day, the motion of the Earth around the Sun during a year, and the cadence with which stars rise and set night after night.

Sidereal time

If you look eastward at the same hour for two nights in a row, you’ll find that the stars seem to be in the same place. But they’re not, and this movement becomes apparent if you continue observing at the same hour for a week or more. A combination of the Earth’s daily rotation on its axis and its yearly orbit around the Sun cause them to appear to move across the sky.

Earth spins on its axis, which runs from the South Pole through the center of the Earth to the North Pole, once a day. Astronomers measure a day in two different ways: They measure a solar day, 24 hours long, with the position of the Sun from high noon to high noon. They measure a sidereal day with respect to distant stars that are fixed in the sky. A sidereal day is 23 hours and 56 minutes long.

The constellation Orion – and every star in the night sky – will appear in exactly the same place every 23 hours and 56 minutes. Because of this slight offset, stars will appear to rise four minutes earlier every 24 hours on successive nights. Over the course of a month, a star that was close to the eastern horizon at 10 p.m. will now be much higher in the sky, having risen two hours earlier.

So while the constellation Orion appears close to the horizon at sunset in late December, it is nearly overhead in February and March.

You can use an interactive star chart to see this phenomenon. Do you want to find Orion in August in North America? Just wake up at 4:30 a.m. and look eastward.

Unlike Orion, the Big Dipper is always visible at night in most of the Northern Hemisphere. This is because of how Earth’s daily rotation is projected onto the stars.

Circumpolar stars

Astronomers use a common set of reference points to project Earth’s north and south poles, and the equator, onto the celestial sphere, an imaginary sphere encompassing the sky.

The idea of the celestial sphere evolved in ancient times from the notion that the Earth was the unmoving center of the universe. The projection of Earth’s equator delineates the celestial equator, and the poles project onto the north and south celestial poles.

The motion of stars near the celestial poles differs from how Orion and other constellations behave. Presently, the north celestial pole is very close to the star Polaris, also known as the North Star. Stars close to Polaris never rise or set. They appear to circle counterclockwise around that star as the Earth spins on its rotation axis once a day.

The number of these circumpolar stars increases as you move toward the North Pole. There are no circumpolar stars at the equator. Every star and constellation rises in the east and sets in the west because Earth rotates west to east on its axis.

If you are standing at the North Pole, every northern constellation is circumpolar, circling the North Star and never rising or setting. The pattern is similar in the Southern Hemisphere, with the southern constellations circling clockwise around the south celestial pole.

Earth’s precession

Millennia ago, people charted the path of the Sun through the constellations of the zodiac, which birthed the practice of astrology.

What does it mean for the Sun to be in Sagittarius, for example? It means that to see the constellation Sagittarius, you have to be looking toward the Sun. That would make it daytime, when the stars are not visible. Wait for nightfall, and you can see Gemini high in the sky. Six months later, the Sun is in Gemini, and Sagittarius is visible in the night sky. This pattern repeats year after year, as the Earth orbits the Sun. Your zodiac signs depend on which constellation the Sun was in when you were born.

There is one other change in the night sky that occurs on time scales much longer than a human lifetime. Because of the gravitational influence of the Sun, and to a lesser extent Jupiter, on Earth’s daily rotation, Earth’s spin axis precesses, or moves in a circle, like a toy top spun on a table.

Because of this motion, which also subtly changes Earth’s orbit in space, Polaris will no longer be the North Star a thousand years from now. Wait 12,000 years, and the bright star Vega will be closest to the north celestial pole, more than 50 degrees across the night sky from its present location near Polaris.

Another consequence of this motion, sometimes referred to as the precession of the equinoxes, is that today the constellations of the zodiac no longer align with the traditional dates associated with them.

For example, when horoscopes and astrological signs were originally devised, the Sun was in the constellation Sagittarius from Nov. 22 to Dec. 21. However, because of precession over thousands of years, the Sun now crosses this constellation from Dec. 18 to Jan. 19. It spends the early part of December in Ophiuchus, which is not part of the traditional 12 constellations of the zodiac.

These changes in the night sky take weeks, months or even hundreds of years to be visible. If you’re not that patient, you can fly to the opposite hemisphere to see Orion upside down and the night sky turning in the opposite direction above.

Vahe Peroomian has, in the past, received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for research in the field of space science.

– ref. Why are some stars always visible while others come and go with the seasons? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-some-stars-always-visible-while-others-come-and-go-with-the-seasons-274096

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Ziyad Al-Aly, Clinical Epidemiologist, Washington University in St. Louis

A patient of mine, a veteran who had tried to quit smoking for over a decade, told me that after he started a GLP-1 drug for his diabetes, he lost interest in cigarettes. He didn’t use a patch. He didn’t set a quit date. He simply lost interest. It happened without effort.

Another patient on one of these drugs for weight loss told me that alcohol had lost its pull – after years of failed attempts to quit.

People struggling with many addictions, ranging from opioids to gambling, are reporting similar experiences in clinics, on social media and around dinner tables. None of them started these drugs to quit. This pattern of people losing their cravings across a broad range of addictive substances has no precedent in medicine.

But my patients were giving me an important clue. People taking GLP-1 drugs often talk about “food noise” vanishing: the constant mental chatter about food that dominated their days simply goes quiet. But my patients were reporting that it wasn’t just food: They were noticing that the preoccupation with smoking, drinking and using drugs that drives people back despite their best intentions to stop was going quiet too.

As a physician whose patients are often on GLP-1 drugs, and as a scientist who works on answering pressing public health questions – from long COVID to medication safety – I saw a problem hiding in plain sight: Many addictions have no approved treatment. The few medications that exist are massively underutilized, and none works across all substances. The idea that a drug already taken by millions might do what no addiction treatment has done before was too important to ignore.

My team and I set out to test whether GLP-1 drugs – medications like semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound), originally developed for diabetes and then approved for obesity – could do what no existing addiction treatment does: curb craving itself.

Our evidence strongly suggests they can.

Biological basis of cravings

The hormone that these drugs mimic – GLP-1 – is not only produced in the gut. It is also active in the brain, where the receptors it binds to cluster in regions governing reward, motivation and stress – the same circuitry that gets hijacked by addiction. At therapeutic doses, GLP-1 drugs cross the blood-brain barrier and dampen dopamine signaling in the brain’s core reward center, making addictive substances less rewarding.

GLP-1 drugs seem to inhibit cravings for several different substances in multiple animal models. For instance, rodents given GLP-1 drugs drink less alcohol, self-administer less cocaine and show less interest in nicotine. When researchers gave semaglutide to green vervet monkeys – primates that voluntarily drink alcohol much like humans do – the animals drank less without showing signs of nausea or changes in water intake. This suggests the drug lowered the reward value of alcohol rather than making the animals feel sick.

From animals to people

To find out whether these drugs have a similar effect on people, we turned to the electronic health records of more than 600,000 patients with Type 2 diabetes at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs – one of the largest health care databases in the world.

We designed a study that applied the rigor of randomized controlled trials – the gold standard in medicine – to real-world data. We compared people who started GLP-1 drugs to people who did not, adjusting for differences in health history, demographics and other factors, and followed both groups for three years.

My team and I asked two questions: For people already struggling with addiction, did the drugs reduce overdoses, drug-related hospitalizations and deaths? And for people with no prior substance use disorder, did GLP-1 drugs reduce their risk of developing one across all major addictive substances: alcohol, opioids, cocaine, cannabis and nicotine?

What we found was striking. In the group already struggling with addiction, there were 50% fewer deaths due to substance use among those taking GLP-1 drugs compared with those who were not. We also found 39% fewer overdoses, 26% fewer drug-related hospitalizations and 25% fewer suicide attempts. Over three years, this translated to roughly 12 fewer serious events in total per 1,000 people using GLP-1 drugs – including two fewer deaths.

Reductions of this magnitude are rare in addiction medicine – and what’s remarkable is that the finding came from drugs initially designed for diabetes, later repurposed for obesity and never intended to treat addiction.

The drugs also appeared to prevent addiction from developing in the first place. Among people with no prior substance use disorder, those taking GLP-1 drugs had an 18% lower risk of developing alcohol use disorder, a 25% lower risk of opioid use disorder and an approximately 20% lower risk of cocaine and nicotine dependence. Over three years, this translated to roughly six to seven fewer new diagnoses per 1,000 GLP-1 users.

With tens of millions of people already using GLP-1 drugs, the reductions in deaths, overdoses, hospitalizations and new diagnoses could translate into thousands of prevented serious events each year.

Converging evidence

Our findings align with a growing body of evidence.

A Swedish nationwide study of 227,000 people with alcohol use disorder found that those taking GLP-1 drugs had 36% lower risk of alcohol-related hospitalizations. This is more than double the 14% reduction that the same study found with naltrexone, which was the best-performing medication approved for treatment of alcohol use disorder in that analysis. Other observational studies have linked GLP-1 drugs to lower rates of new and recurring alcohol use disorder, reduced diagnoses and relapse in cannabis use disorder, fewer health care visits for nicotine dependence and lower risk of opioid overdose.

Meanwhile, randomized controlled trials that directly test whether these drugs help people with addiction also show promise. In one trial, semaglutide reduced both craving and alcohol consumption in people with alcohol use disorder. In another, dulaglutide reduced drinking. More than a dozen additional trials are already underway or actively enrolling, and several more are planned.

The future of addiction treatment

GLP-1 drugs are the first type of medication to show potential benefit across multiple substance types simultaneously. And unlike existing addiction medications, which are prescribed by specialists and remain vastly underused, GLP-1 drugs are already prescribed at enormous scale by primary care doctors. The delivery system to reach millions of patients already exists.

The consistency of GLP-1 effectiveness across alcohol, opioids, cocaine, nicotine and cannabis suggests these drugs may act on a shared vulnerability underlying addiction – not on any single substance pathway. If confirmed, that would represent a fundamental shift in how society understands addiction and how doctors treat it.

Some unanswered questions remain, though, about how these drugs would affect addiction. Many people who take GLP-1 drugs to treat obesity or diabetes discontinue them; afterward, their appetite typically returns and they regain the weight they lost. Whether the same rebound would occur with addiction, and what it would mean for someone in recovery to face the roar of craving again, is unknown. Nor is it clear whether the benefits persist over years of continuous use, or whether the brain adapts in ways that dampen those effects.

Also, because GLP-1 drugs engage the brain’s reward circuitry – the same system that governs not just craving but everyday motivation – prolonged use could, in theory, dampen motivational drive in some people. Whether that might affect real-world outcomes, such as initiative, competitive drive or performance at work, remains an open question.

What comes next

GLP-1 drugs have not been approved for addiction, and there is not yet enough evidence to prescribe them solely for that purpose. But for millions of people already weighing whether to start a GLP-1 drug for diabetes, obesity or another approved indication, it is one more factor worth considering.

A patient living with diabetes who is also trying to quit smoking might reasonably choose a GLP-1 drug over another glucose-lowering medication, not because it is approved for smoking cessation, but because it may help them quit, a benefit that other diabetes drugs do not offer. Similarly, for people living with obesity who also struggle with alcohol, the potential for benefit beyond weight loss could be one more reason to consider a GLP-1 drug.

If additional trials confirm that they effectively curb cravings across addictive substances, these drugs could begin to close one of the most consequential treatment gaps in medicine. And the most promising lead in addiction in decades will have come not from a deliberate search but from patients reporting a benefit no one anticipated. Like my patient who quit smoking after a lifetime of trying, it happened without effort.

Ziyad Al-Aly receives funding from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

– ref. GLP-1 drugs may fight addiction across every major substance, according to a study of 600,000 people – https://theconversation.com/glp-1-drugs-may-fight-addiction-across-every-major-substance-according-to-a-study-of-600-000-people-275233

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Houlong Zhuang, Associate Professor of Engineering, Arizona State University

From hypersonic aircraft to nuclear-powered submarines, many of today’s most advanced defense systems rely on a special class of materials known as refractory alloys. This class refers to metals that do not melt or weaken easily, even in extreme heat.

An alloy is a material made by combining two or more metallic elements to achieve properties no single metal can offer on its own – greater strength, for example, or better resistance to corrosion. Refractory alloys are based on elements such as tungsten, niobium and molybdenum, which have some of the highest melting points of any metals.

Their atoms are held together by strong chemical bonds and arranged in a stable crystal structure that resists deforming, even at extreme temperatures. Where conventional alloys begin to soften and slowly deform under constant stress, refractory alloys retain their strength, making them essential for components exposed to extreme heat, stress and radiation.

Most refractory alloys in service today were designed decades ago. They predate modern 3D printing of metal parts, also called additive manufacturing, and artificial intelligence.

To execute metal 3D printing, a laser or electron beam melts successive thin layers of metal powder.

This builds up a 3D part directly from a computer model by adding material layer by layer, rather than using molds or removing material from a solid block. 3D printing allows shapes that are impossible with traditional manufacturing methods. However, many current refractory alloys are difficult or impossible to manufacture reliably using these techniques.

This mismatch can slow the domestic production of new parts. To help address these manufacturing and supply-chain challenges, our team of materials researchers at Arizona State University and UNSW Sydney has formed a new international collaboration to redesign high-temperature alloys.

Old alloys in a new manufacturing world

Additive manufacturing allows defense and aerospace manufacturers to produce complex components locally, on demand and with far less material waste. In principle, it is ideal for producing replacement parts for aircraft, spacecraft and naval systems.

In practice, many refractory alloys crack, warp or develop internal defects when 3D-printed. Their compositions were optimized for casting or forging, not for the rapid melting and solidification involved in laser-based printing. In 3D printing, a laser melts and resolidifies metal thousands of times in quick succession, creating steep temperature gradients that generate enormous internal stresses. Several key refractory metals are brittle at room temperature and cannot absorb those stresses without cracking.

Redesigning these alloys using traditional trial-and-error methods would take decades.

Teaching computers to design new metals

Our alternative approach uses reinforcement learning, a form of artificial intelligence best known for training computers to master games such as Go or chess.

Designing a new alloy is a bit like mixing ingredients for a recipe, but at the atomic level. Instead of planning moves on a board, the AI system explores thousands of possible alloy recipes – for example, different combinations of chemical elements. Even tiny changes in the ingredients can completely change how the final material behaves.

The AI evaluates each candidate virtually against multiple criteria, including strength at temperatures above 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) and resistance to damage caused by reacting with oxygen at high heat, as well as weight, cost and, crucially, whether it can be reliably 3D-printed.

Alloys that should perform well are rewarded, while those that fail are discarded. Over repeated cycles, the system learns which chemical combinations work best.

We can then manufacture and test the most promising AI-designed alloys in the laboratory. Their real-world performance feeds back into the model, steadily improving its predictions.

Strategic benefits beyond the laboratory

The implications of our research extend beyond the lab.

For defense agencies, faster materials development means quicker deployment for next-generation engines, hypersonic vehicles and systems that protect against heat. AI-designed alloys can be optimized for strength, heat resistance and manufacturability. For example, NASA’s GRX-810 alloy, designed with computational methods and 3D-printed, is 1,000 times more durable at high temperatures compared with traditional alloys.

Traditional manufacturing of refractory metals wastes up to 95% of the raw material through machining – removing unwanted material to create the precise shape – but 3D printing can bring that figure close to zero.

Our work is an international collaboration. At Arizona State University, the focus is on AI-driven computational design. UNSW Sydney’s facilities allow for high-temperature testing by looking at the metal’s microstructure and conducting additive manufacturing under realistic conditions.

Challenges still ahead

This approach is not without hurdles. One of the biggest is data scarcity: AI models learn from existing experimental results, and for refractory alloys, that data is limited. Far fewer alloys in this class have been systematically tested, compared with more common materials like steel or aluminum.

There are also practical constraints. Refractory metal powders suitable for 3D printing are expensive and difficult to source, and scaling up from small laboratory samples to full-sized components is difficult. An alloy that performs well as a thumbnail-sized test sample may behave very differently when printed as a large, complex part.

Finally, AI predictions must always be validated experimentally – and those experiments are costly and time-consuming. The system does not eliminate the need for rigorous physical testing.

A new model for defense-focused research

Our collaboration is in its early stages. We are currently building the AI model and assembling the experimental databases it will learn from. Later this year, the first candidate alloy compositions will be selected for 3D printing and laboratory testing. The results will feed back into the model.

We are also working with defense research agencies to ensure our work aligns with real-world needs and to lay the groundwork for larger-scale programs.

In an era where technological advantage increasingly depends on speed and adaptability, reimagining how we design the metals behind defense systems can improve the systems themselves.

Houlong Zhuang receives funding from Security and Defence PluS Alliance.

Vitor Rielli receives funding from Security and Defence PluS Alliance

– ref. AI and 3D printing help researchers create heat- and pressure-resistant materials for aerospace and defense applications – https://theconversation.com/ai-and-3d-printing-help-researchers-create-heat-and-pressure-resistant-materials-for-aerospace-and-defense-applications-273687

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Marcos Fernandez Tous, Assistant Professor of Space Studies, University of North Dakota

Throughout February 2026, people at the Kennedy Space Center got to witness an exciting sight: NASA’s behemoth Space Launch System rocket, SLS, standing on the launch pad, aimed toward the sky. The launch system has been key to the Artemis program – an ambitious series of missions intended to culminate in a sustained human presence on the Moon. NASA had initially planned to launch the second Artemis mission, which would take a crew of four people around the Moon, in February.

But as anticipation for launch built, an issue with the liquid propellant arose. A few days later, the SLS faced another problem, this time with the rocket’s upper stage, and had to roll back from the pad.

I’m an aerospace expert who is deeply passionate about aerospace technology and what it means for the U.S. and humanity’s future. I’ve been following the Artemis program’s timeline – February 2026 has represented a pivotal moment for U.S. spaceflight. Artemis II faced a number of delays, and NASA officials announced a shake-up of the larger program’s timeline.

Springing leaks

It started on Feb. 2, during Artemis II’s first wet dress rehearsal. During this major test, engineers assemble all components of the Space Launch System and fill its tanks with a combined 700,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. These liquids act as the propellant for the rocket during launch.

During the test, the team detected a hydrogen leak at the interface of a 33‑foot-high (10 meters) service mast, the removable structure that brings the hydrogen and oxygen to the tank. They attributed the cause of the issue to moisture accumulated in the Teflon seal of two interfaces between that mast and the vehicle’s tank.

On the following day, NASA decided to postpone the launch until March 6. A new wet dress rehearsal would take place on Feb. 19 to verify everything was working as expected.

On the day of the second wet dress rehearsal, hydrogen operations proceeded smoothly, seemingly confirming plans for a March launch for Artemis II. Engineers at NASA likely breathed a sigh of relief, but they did so too early. A couple of days later another problem surfaced: They found the exploration upper stage was leaking helium. This upper stage of the rocket kicks in above 62 miles (100 kilometers), once the core stage expends all its propellant.

Because helium is essential for pressurizing cryogenic tanks and for purging the pipelines that will carry highly reactive liquid oxygen, the leak raised concerns.

Notably, these issues echoed the challenges SLS encountered ahead of its first launch for the Artemis I mission in 2022. Artemis I launched nearly six years after NASA’s original target date, ultimately accumulating 25 scrubbed or delayed launch attempts. Recurring hydrogen leaks in the tail service mast umbilical – a very similar issue – caused several of these delays.

Trouble with the SLS

On Feb. 25, the same day SLS rolled back to the vehicle assembly building for more work, NASA’s independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel released its annual report. This panel began in the aftermath of the January 1967 Apollo command module fire that claimed the lives of three astronauts, and NASA headquarters takes its assessments very seriously.

Citing the problems encountered on Artemis I and II, the panel warned of elevated risks for Artemis III, which planned to land on the Moon. They strongly recommended NASA restructure the program to reduce the likelihood of similar issues on future missions.

On Feb. 27, NASA made a major announcement: Artemis IV, scheduled for 2028, would now include a lunar landing. Artemis IV would then overlap with another landing planned in the same year, Artemis V.

NASA also confirmed that it plans to replace the exploration upper stage – the source of the helium leak – with a different upper stage known as the interim cryogenic propulsion stage. While the exploration upper stage was designed to use four engines, the interim cryogenic propulsion stage relies on a single engine.

The interim cryogenic propulsion stage previously flew on Artemis I, after which NASA intended to transition to the exploration upper stage for future missions. With the restructuring, however, the exploration upper stage program has been canceled, and NASA is returning to the interim cryogenic propulsion stage instead. With this change, Artemis appears to be going back to the basics and returning to simpler, proven hardware.

While Artemis II will not launch before April, the plan for the mission itself remains the same: It will still fly around the Moon.

But this new situation poses a question: If Artemis IV will now carry out the lunar landing, what will become of Artemis III, which had originally been planned as humanity’s return to the Moon? In essence, NASA is accelerating the schedule by adding more launches and tests before the first lunar landing attempt, and these changes are not necessarily to Artemis’ detriment.

A new timeline

NASA aims to increase the cadence of launches up to every 10 months starting in April 2026, incorporating fewer changes from mission to mission each time. This approach reduces technological uncertainty and stands in sharp contrast to the more than three‑year gap between the 2022 launch of Artemis I and the potential 2026 launch of Artemis II.

Artemis III will now become a tightly focused rehearsal mission lasting 30 days. NASA will test each mission component independently rather than checking them all together as a unit. Instead of visiting the Moon, Artemis III will remain closer to Earth.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman explained to CBS on Feb. 27 that Artemis III will launch the Orion spacecraft, which holds the astronaut crew, into low Earth orbit, where it will dock with one or both lunar landers – Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander and SpaceX’s Human Landing System.

The Human Landing System will be a modified version of SpaceX’s Starship, the company’s enormous, superheavy spacecraft. The docking maneuver will help NASA confirm that the lander can handle the forces involved in connecting with Orion in space – essentially checking that the structure behaves as expected and can safely support the crew and their equipment.

Isaacman also pointed out that Artemis III may allow for NASA to test out the new spacesuit Axiom Space is designing for forays outside of the spacecraft.

The mission may also test navigation, communication, propulsion and life‑support systems. Interestingly, this series of tests aligns Artemis III more closely with the historical role of Apollo 7, which focused on evaluating the command and service module in Earth orbit.

In short, the new plans reshape Artemis III into a proof‑of‑concept mission intended to validate several critical systems before the two lunar landings planned for 2028 with Artemis IV and V. If successful, this approach should greatly improve the reliability of the missions that will finally return humans to the lunar surface. The revised timeline creates more opportunities to test and troubleshoot all the systems required for a safe landing.

It will also keep the missions more straightforward. With the same configuration across all missions, the tests will build on each other.

For now, you will need to wait a bit longer to watch humans walk in the Moon’s south pole region, where icy craters may hold clues to the early history of our solar system. But if February 2026 sets the tone, this next chapter will be anything but dull. Fasten your seat belts.

Marcos Fernandez Tous 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.

– ref. With Artemis II facing delays, NASA announces big structural changes to the lunar program – https://theconversation.com/with-artemis-ii-facing-delays-nasa-announces-big-structural-changes-to-the-lunar-program-277169