At a glance A global healthcare worker shortage of at least ten million is expected by 2030. Closing that shortage could avert 189 million years of life lost to early death and disability and boost the global economy by $1.1 trillion. While known supply-side interventions that enable the workforce to grow, thrive, and stay can add about 5.6 million healthcare workers, this is not enough to close the gap. Closing…
A generous gift of over £8.4 million from the Fondation Docteur Sadok Besrour will establish the new Dr Sadok Besrour Professorship of Global Primary Care and a dedicated Besrour Centre for Global Primary Care at the University of Oxford.Housed in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (NDPCHS), internationally recognised for its research into health systems and community-based care, the new Centre will focus on improving access to high-quality,…
Unlike traditional summits that convene the world’s experts in a single location, often at great environmental cost, the second Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit pioneers a decentralised model that will unite people across the world around a cornerstone online event.First held at the University of Colorado Boulder in December 2022, this year the event will be virtually anchored at Oxford but connected with leading universities around the world…
Rivers support life—but they also pose growing risks. As rainfall becomes more erratic and sea levels rise, floods are expected to become more frequent and severe in many parts of the world. Yet existing global river maps are outdated and overly simplified, assuming that rivers flow in a single direction and never split. They often overlook complex features, such as when a single river channel splits into multiple channels. These branching…
In addition to leukemia, CAR-T cells are now used to treat other blood cancers, including multiple myeloma and some kinds of lymphoma, and they are being tested in clinical trials for various solid tumors. Monje and her colleagues have an ongoing trial of CAR-T cells for deadly brain stem and spinal cord tumors in children, which is beginning to show success.Although patients report brain fog after CAR-T cell therapy, studies…
This term's focus on the subject of 'truth' supplied inspiration for a wide-ranging exchange of views when the Sheldonian Series returned on Tuesday 13 May.Discourse navigated the role of truth in contemporary life and the people who create it, the relationship between truth, news organisations and universities, and the impact of AI and the Trump administration.The Sheldonian Series is a termly event that launched in Michaelmas 2024, convened by the Vice-Chancellor, and…
Quick Hits The 2025–26 New York state budget includes significant amendments to the New York Labor Law, impacting wage-and-hour enforcement, liquidated damages, and child labor penalties. The amendments bring long-awaited clarity to New York pay frequency claims, including interest-only damages for a first violation. The amendments grant the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) enhanced enforcement powers, including the ability to impose a 15 percent surcharge on unsatisfied wage…
On July 1, 2025, the Regulation respecting Complaint Processing and Dispute Resolution in the Financial Sector (the Regulation) will come into force in Québec. Adopted by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), the Regulation establishes a new framework for handling complaints in Québec’s financial sector. It aims to promote a more transparent and efficient complaint resolution process through the financial sector in the province. Who is subject to the Regulation?…
The Taliban hopes to send a signal to Pakistan by increasing its participation in the Chabahar port transit project that it which is not a militia group affiliated with this country, rules an independent country and has various options in foreign policy as well as trade and transit. The Chabahar Transit Project was created on May 24, 2016 as a combined, multimodal network of ships, rails, and road freight routes…
Professor Ian Walmsley This dual appointment signals Oxford’s intent to remain at the forefront of global quantum research and innovation, building on a decade of strategic investment in this critical area. The Oxford Quantum Institute, hosted by the Department of Physics, brings together researchers across departments and divisions to accelerate the development and application of quantum science and technology. Professor Walmsley’s role on the government’s advisory board further reinforces Oxford’s…
Amid overall uncertainty, including about the future that AI will bring, two things are clear. One, jobs and occupations will change as new technologies are used to handle and support more tasks. The transition to AI is already underway, according to the results of the latest McKinsey American Opportunity Survey (AOS) in which roughly 20 percent of employed respondents say that they have used gen AI for work purposes. Two,…
Quick Hits The proposed New York State Fast Food Franchisor Accountability Act would make fast-food restaurant franchisors jointly and severally liable for violations of Chapter 31 of the New York Labor Law, as well as the New York State Human Rights Law and applicable workers’ compensation laws, to the same extent that they may be enforced against fast-food restaurant franchisees. The proposed act aims to enhance accountability for fast-food restaurant…
In the current economic environment, many businesses may feel pressured to get creative with their marketing and pricing strategies to remain competitive. For example, promotional terms such as “Sale”, “Marked Down” or “End of Line” are frequently used in marketing campaigns to attract consumer attention and boost sales. While these representations may offer short term commercial advantages, businesses must exercise caution, as the Competition Bureau (the Bureau) is increasingly cracking…
If you accidentally stumbled into a solution for a major problem at work, would you turn down an employee-of-the month award? What if you spent hours of work on something trivial, and your boss offered a free lunch as a reward? Yale SOM marketing professor Corey Cusimano wondered if there are patterns to when people feel they have earned a reward. Does hard work alone justify being compensated, or…
In a trial where cancers were treated with chemotherapy followed by a targeted cancer drug before surgery, 100% of patients survived the critical three-year period post-surgery.The discovery, published today in Nature Communications, could become the most effective treatment to date for patients with early-stage breast cancer with inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations. Breast cancers with faulty copies of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are challenging to treat, and came…
The United States is on track to experience the largest outbreak of measles since health officials declared the disease eliminated from the country in 2000. This year alone has seen more than 1,000 cases reported across several states, with severe outcomes for young children: Many have been hospitalized, and two children have died.About half of parents surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation say they’re worried about measles. Yet as cases…
The reality is that, when an economy is dependent on commodities, all of its variables are exposed tovolatility in their prices.. Fundamentally, then, the assessment of a country’s risk should not change because of market turmoil; rather, it should reflect the country’s ability to resist it. This would help reduceagitation. Fortunately, there is a practical tool for just that purpose: the fiscal breakeven. But this analysis does not necessarily fit…
The reality is that, when an economy is dependent on commodities, all of its variables are exposed to changes in the prices of those commodities. Fundamentally, then, the assessment of a country’s risk should not change because of market turmoil; rather, it should reflect the country’s ability to resist such turmoil. This would help reduce turbulence. Moreover, there is a practical tool for just that purpose: the fiscal breakeven. But…
Since 2015, McKinsey, in partnership with LeanIn.Org, has conducted annual original research on women’s participation in the formal workforce in the United States and Canada through the Women in the Workplace report series. This report extends that pioneering research to new countries—India, Nigeria, and Kenya—for the first time, addressing a major data gap and deepening our understanding of women’s representation in the formal sector in these critical markets. Our analysis…
Professor Andrew Przybylski Too often, media headlines blame social media for causing rising rates of depression and anxiety in young people, oversimplifying the issue and ignoring the complex factors at play. But the reality, as shown in new research we published with colleagues from the University of Cambridge is more nuanced. Young people with diagnosed mental health conditions experience social media differently from those without such conditions. We found that adolescents with…
The rapid rise of gen AI has captured the world’s imagination and accelerated the integration of AI into the global economy and the lives of people across the world. Gen AI heralds a step change in productivity. As institutions apply AI in novel ways, beyond the advanced analytics and machine learning (ML) applications of the past ten years, the global economy could increase significantly, improving the lives and livelihoods of…
Tell me about Fair Haven Community Health Care and who it serves. Fair Haven Community Health Clinic, as it was called then, was founded in 1971 by a group of women activists. This has long been an immigrant community—go back 70 or 80 years, and it was largely Irish and Italian. By the early ’70s it was becoming more Hispanic. A group of women got a $5,000 grant from the…
This commentary was adapted from a commencement address delivered at Sacred Heart University and originally published in the Hartford Courant. The views expressed are the authors’ own. A few days ago, the College of Cardinals convened to select a successor to the beloved Pope Francis—a very challenging reign for any human to follow. It would be presumptuous for me to suggest the leadership qualities needed for this daunting role, but…
The research challenges a widespread assumption about LLMs: that these learn how to generate language primarily by inferring rules from their training data. Instead, the models rely heavily on stored examples and draw analogies when dealing with unfamiliar words, much as people do.To explore how LLMs generate language, the study compared judgments made by humans with those made by GPT-J (an open-source large language model developed by EleutherAI in 2021)…
‘Counter-connecting’ is a term coined by the lead author, Dr Julia Badger, of a recently released paper ‘Bullying or counter-connecting? Two inclusive definitions for schools’.Julia, who is a Departmental Lecturer of Child Development and Education at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, said: 'There is no standardised or universally accepted definition of school bullying, and the most frequently used definitions are not inclusive of the experiences of pupils with…
Modernization is one of the most pressing challenges facing the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry. In the past decade, core systems built for a slower, paper-driven insurance model have evidently become no longer fit for purpose. They leave carriers struggling with operational inefficiencies, rising IT maintenance costs, and growing pressure to meet customer expectations for real-time responsiveness, such as instant quotes and faster claims payouts. Staying competitive demands adopting…
One of the most resonant events at the beginning of Donald Trump's second term in office was the large-scale increase in tariffs on imports to the United States. The new tariff policy affected almost all trading partners, and separate duties were introduced for a group of more than seventy countries. This “trade war against the whole world” became another shock of the first hundred days of the new administration. The…
The Faculty Senate received updates Thursday from the vice provosts of undergraduate education and student affairs regarding their efforts to support and enhance the Stanford undergraduate experience. Senators also learned about the Emeriti/ae Council’s work addressing the needs of the university’s emeriti community.Stanford strives to offer undergraduates a modern liberal arts education focused on self-knowledge, moral development, citizenship, and an intrinsic love of learning, said Jay Hamilton, the Freeman-Thornton Vice…
Seyfarth Synopsis: The 2025 New York State budget includes a provision that reduces the potential damages available to plaintiffs for violation of the weekly pay requirement of the New York Labor Law. As discussed here, New York employers have been bedeviled in recent years by class action claims for violation of the Labor Law’s weekly-pay requirement for “manual workers.” This flood of litigation resulted from the decision in Vega v.…
John Chambers, founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures and the former CEO and chairman of Cisco Systems for more than 20 years, grew Cisco to nearly $50 billion in annual revenues, helping companies around the world transform by leveraging the internet. On this episode of the At the Edge podcast, he joins host and McKinsey Senior Partner Lareina Yee to discuss the urgent need for companies to adopt AI and what this…
Stanford Live has announced its 2025-26 season, Amplifying Voices, with more than 60 planned performances spanning music, dance, theater, spoken word, film, and comedy. It will be the first season led by Iris Nemani, the newly appointed McMurtry Family Director of Stanford Live. “These artists will not only entertain,” said Nemani, “but also challenge, teach, and strengthen our community with their stories, their perspectives, and their passion.” The performances, featuring…
May 8, 2025 – Seyfarth Shaw LLP represented programmatic joint venture comprised of Bain Capital Real Estate and Oliver Street Capital in the acquisition of a strategically located infill industrial portfolio in Northern New Jersey, further strengthening the joint venture’s presence in one of the most supply-constrained and high-demand warehouse markets in the United States. Bain Capital Real Estate and Oliver Street Capital acquired the portfolio for approximately $208 million.…
The fact is that the changing balance of power on a global scale and the inability of previous leaders to maintain their positions causes a fundamental restructuring of the international order. It has become a common opinion in recent years. It is difficult to argue with its validity: first of all, because the power base has really changed – there is no longer a group of countries in the world…
Russia is to hold a parade on Friday to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The main point of parades is not the parade itself, but to move on to the future world we want to build after the parade. This is what both Russia and China are doing, with their leaders, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, meeting in Moscow during the celebrations. Both…
About 1.8 billion people in the world don’t get enough exercise. Physical inactivity is a global problem—but there are solutions. That’s one of the big themes in Sporting Goods 2025, a report published by McKinsey in partnership with the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI). This fifth edition of the annual report is titled, “The new balancing act: Turning uncertainty into opportunity.” In a recent webinar, four of…
Introduction OSHA duty officers around the country routinely field complaints from employees and labor unions alleging workplaces are understaffed and unsafe. Unions often dispute staffing levels, complaining that employers have insufficient bargaining unit members and insufficient members with seniority. Individual complainants allege that they are left to work alone, have no backup in case of emergency, or are at enhanced risk of accident or workplace violence. OSHA duty officers normally…
Quick Hits Minnesota’s legislative session will conclude with an omnibus bill introducing significant proposed changes to labor and employment laws, with more developments expected by the end of the session on May 19, 2025. A provision in the omnibus bill would mandate that Minnesota employers provide a thirty-minute meal break for employees working six or more consecutive hours and a fifteen-minute rest break every four hours, with penalties for noncompliance.…
Excellent governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is a common aspiration, but how often is it a reality? For most companies, GRC is a work in progress, according to McKinsey’s 2025 Global GRC Benchmarking Survey (see sidebar, “Our survey methodology”). Despite efforts to broaden expertise at senior levels, corporate leaders see a “need for improvement” across numerous aspects of all three GRC pillars. There are many reasons for GRC shortfalls, some…
In a time marked by anxiety, division and disconnection, the path forward lies not in fixing the past but in expanding our freedom to imagine what’s next. In this episode of Learning Through Experience, Dr. Heidi Brooks is joined by Suzi Tucker, a writer, teacher and pioneer of Family Constellations work. Together, they explore how our personal and ancestral stories shape the patterns we repeat—and how stepping into those patterns…
A nationwide collaboration led by Stanford’s Big Local News and Stanford University Libraries contributed to a 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, awarded to Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme, and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner, working in partnership with The New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship.Their investigative series examined the devastating toll of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis, with a focus on older Black men. The Pulitzer committee praised the reporting as…