It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
AI on the battlefield: top experts gather at TalTech to debate the future of military decision making
The main theme of the conference is "Military Decision Making in the Era of New Technologies". The event will serve as a crucial platform to discuss the opportunities and risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as the challenges posed by Cognitive Warfare and the need for enhanced cooperation between science, industry, and the defence sector.
EstMilTech 2026 is the essential meeting point where:
The role of AI on the battlefield is debated.
Challenges of cognitive warfare are addressed.
Cooperation networks between academia, industry, and defence organizations are established.
Researchers, defence experts, entrepreneurs, and students are welcome to participate.
Programme and Speakers
The two-day programme brings together leading experts, scientists, and representatives from the defence industry across multiple nations.
The conference will be opened on January 14 by TalTech Rector Tiit Land and President of the Estonian Academy of Sciences Mart Saarma. A series of engaging presentations will follow, including:
"Cognitive Dependence: Opportunities and Risks of AI-enabled Decision Support" – Col (ret) Brad Boyd, Stanford University
"Who is in Control: Humans, AI or the Enemy?" – Prof Frank Flemisch, Fraunhofer FKIE
"AI in Military Decision-Making: From Knowledge to Effect" – Prof Roy Lindelauf, Tilburg University
The focus on January 15 will shift towards Cyber Security and Artificial Thinking that mimics human cognition and decision processes. Confirmed speakers include Silver Andre (CR14) and Peter Bovet Emanuel (Swedish Defence University). The day concludes with a high-level panel discussion on the future of military decision-making.
Demo Area: At the Forefront of Technology
The conference's demo area offers companies a unique opportunity to showcase their solutions to defence sector stakeholders, both indoors and outdoors.
PULLMAN, Wash. – Children in Guatemala who received a common vaccine that helps prevent pneumonia were less likely to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to a new study led by Washington State University researchers.
The team examined whether rotavirus (RV) and pneumococcal (PCV13) vaccines reduce gut colonization by a group of bacteria that includes Escherichia coli and resists critical antibiotics used to treat severe infections. Colonization occurs when the bacteria are present in the body, often in the gut, without causing illness, yet they can persist and later cause infections or spread to others.
While rotavirus vaccine results were inconclusive, children under 5 who received the pneumococcal vaccine had significantly lower colonization rates. These antibiotic-resistant bacteria – known as extended-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacterales (ESCrE) – were less common in vaccinated children largely because they made fewer visits to health care facilities, a factor previously linked to higher rates of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. The team’s findings were published in the journal Vaccine.
“Most vaccine studies on antimicrobial resistance focus on infection and how vaccines prevent illness and reduce antibiotic use, thereby reducing selection processes of antibiotic resistant bacteria,” said Dr. Brooke Ramay, lead author of the study and a researcher in WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Health. “We took a different approach by looking at colonizing bacteria and we found vaccination reduced antimicrobial resistance through a completely different mechanism: vaccination prevented clinic visits and resulted in a lower probability of colonization with antibiotic resistant bacteria. We think this may be because individuals had less exposure to environments where these resistant bacteria are present.”
Antimicrobial resistance is one of the world’s most urgent health threats, contributing to millions of deaths annually. Resistant infections are harder to treat, often require longer hospital stays and increase the risk of complications and death. Previous studies in Guatemala have shown that children who visited hospitals or clinics for illness were more than twice as likely to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria, while antibiotic use itself was not found to be strongly associated with colonization.
The new study was conducted in Guatemala’s Western Highlands, where researchers analyzed stool samples, vaccination records and health data from 406 children.
Researchers were unable to conclusively determine the effects the rotavirus vaccine – which helps prevent rotavirus infection, a leading cause of severe gastroenteritis in infants and young children – largely because reports of diarrhea were scarce, likely due to recall bias. Ramay said the rotavirus vaccine may provide the similar indirect protective effects by preventing diarrhea and gastrointestinal inflammation, though it is important to collect clinical data on diarrheal events before any conclusions can be made.
Researchers also identified several additional factors that influenced colonization. Children who reported diarrhea in the previous month, for example, were significantly more likely to carry ESCrE. Researchers suspect this is due to inflammation in the gut, which creates conditions that favor the growth of hardy bacteria like E. coli.
On the other side, yogurt consumption appeared protective, suggesting beneficial bacteria from probiotic foods may help maintain a healthy gut environment and reduce colonization by resistant bacteria.
Environmental exposure also appears to play a role, as children from households that used land for agriculture had a higher risk of colonization, likely due to contact with soil and water contaminated by fecal matter from animals or humans. Ramay said her team plans to follow up with additional studies to better understand how agricultural land use and environmental exposure influence colonization with resistant bacteria.
The study was completed in partnership with the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala and was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Wellcome Trust, a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London.
Assessing effects of pneumococcal vaccination (PCV13) and rotavirus vaccination (RV) on colonization with extended-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacterales (ESCrE) in Guatemalan children
Carbon monoxide, the ‘silent killer,’ becomes a boon for fuel cell catalysts
KIER has developed a metal thin-film control technology at the atomic scale of 0.3-nanometer using carbon monoxide
Researchers Dr. Gu-Gon Park, Dr. Yongmin Kwon, and Dr. Eunjik Lee from the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Laboratory at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (President Yi Chang-Keun, hereafter “KIER”) have developed a technology that uses carbon monoxide, typically harmful to humans, to precisely control metal thin films at a thickness of 0.3 nanometers. This technology enables faster and simpler production of core–shell catalysts, a key factor in improving the economic viability of fuel cells, and is expected to significantly boost related industries.
Core–shell catalysts refer to catalysts in which the inner core and outer shell are made of different metals. Typically, the core is composed of a low-cost metal, while the shell is made of platinum, which promotes the reactions* in fuel cells. This structure makes it possible to maintain high performance while using only a small amount of expensive platinum, making core–shell catalysts a strategic factor in improving the economic viability of fuel cells.
* Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR): In a hydrogen fuel cell, this is the reaction in which oxygen combines with hydrogen. The faster the reaction proceeds, the more quickly current can flow, making ORR a critical indicator for evaluating fuel-cell performance.
To achieve a high-performance core–shell structure, an atomically thick shell must be precisely coated onto the core surface. For this purpose, the “copper-underpotential deposition (Cu-UPD) method has been used for the precise shell thickness contral, in which a thin layer of low-cost copper is first deposited onto the core, followed by the replacement of platinum.
However, this approach demands highly precise voltage control to form an atomic-level copper layer, including extra steps to remove surface oxides. These factors make large-scale manufacturing of core-shell catalysts complex and time-consuming.
To solve this, the team developed CO Adsorption-Induced Deposition (CO AID), a method that uses the redox behavior of carbon monoxide. It enables precise metal coating without additional steps or reducing agents and cuts processing time to one-tenth of conventional methods.
The researchers turned their attention to carbon monoxide’s strong affinity for metal surfaces. CO readily adheres to metals, and when inhaled, it binds strongly to iron ions in the blood, preventing oxygen transport and posing serious health risks. This characteristic is the reason that CO is widely known as a hazardous gas.
Based on this insight, the team enabled carbon monoxide to adsorb onto the core metal surface as a single molecular layer. Platinum was then selectively reduced onto this layer, allowing the researchers to precisely control the shell thickness at the ultra-thin scale of about 0.3 nanometers.
With this approach, kilogram-scale quantities of core–shell catalysts can be produced in as little as 30 minutes to 2 hours, an impressive improvement over conventional copper deposition methods that take more than 24 hours. Moreover, since the process harnesses the inherent redox activity of carbon monoxide, it eliminates the need for electrochemical systems or additional reducing agents.
Using the newly developed method, the team fabricated core–shell catalysts by coating platinum onto metals such as palladium, gold, and iridium. Notably, the palladium-based platinum core–shell catalyst demonstrated about twice the ORR activity and 1.5 times the durability of commercially available platinum-on-carbon (Pt/C)* catalysts.
* Platinum-on-Carbon (Pt/C): A catalyst consisting of platinum particles dispersed on a carbon substrate. Its ease of production has made it the conventional benchmark catalyst in today’s fuel cells.
Dr. Gu-Gon Park, the lead researcher, explained, “This work originated from the idea of converting carbon monoxide’s toxicity into a tool for nanoscale thin-film control. By allowing materials to be precisely engineered at the atomic level and drastically reducing processing time, the technology presents a new synthesis paradigm with excellent prospects for commercialization.”
Dr. Yongmin Kwon, a member of the research team, noted, “Being able to manipulate the surfaces of metal nanoparticles at the atomic-layer scale using something as simple as carbon monoxide means this technology could have far-reaching implications—not only for fuel-cell catalyst production, but also for advancing nanoparticle manufacturing in areas such as semiconductors and thin-film materials.”
The research was conducted in cooperation with the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). It was published in the November issue of ACS Nano (IF 16.1), a prestigious international journal in nanomaterials, and was selected for the issue’s inside front cover. The research was carried out with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT.
Inside front cover of the journal featuring the published research
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has upgraded its High-Viscosity Flow Loop (HVFL) to meet increased demands in the oil and gas industry. The upgrade has further optimized the facility, allowing SwRI to offer more comprehensive, efficient and cost-effective heavy oil testing.
SAN ANTONIO — December 2, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has upgraded its High-Viscosity Flow Loop (HVFL) to meet increased demands in the oil and gas industry. The expanded and upgraded facility now enables SwRI to offer more comprehensive, efficient, and cost-effective heavy oil testing.
Increasing production of heavy oil around the world led SwRI to develop the HVFL in 2015 to gain a better understanding of flow equipment performance in extremely viscous conditions.
“Today, as operators tap into reservoirs with higher gas volume fractions, conventional pumping systems struggle to process the volatile mixture of gas and liquid, demanding advanced gas separation technologies,” said SwRI Senior Research Engineer Josh Neveu. “This presents an opportunity for more research through evaluating pump performance with highly viscous fluids while also handling gas mixed into the fluid stream, simulating multiphase issues.”
In industrial drilling systems, produced oil is rarely single phase and often has natural gas mixed into the production fluid. This makes accounting for multiphase flow a necessity, as the introduction of gas into equipment designed for liquid-only operation can impact equipment performance. Multiphase testing for heavy oil can be costly as most facilities are not optimized to handle highly viscous fluids.
“We modified our facility to start mixing air into water to see how pumps designed for single-phase liquid flow will handle multiphase flows. We will transition to heavy oil as well, and test multiphase flows with different viscosities,” Neveu said.
These upgrades allow the HVFL to complement SwRI’s Multiphase Flow Facility, which has long offered multiphase flow testing at lower viscosities.
In addition to the new multiphase capability, SwRI redesigned and optimized the HVFL, creating more permanent infrastructure that enables cost-effective and efficient testing. This upgrade also improved environmental safety by extending the facility’s oil containment barrier to fully enclose the test setup.
The initial suite of upgrades to the HVFL began in January 2025 and were completed in October. Additional upgrades will commence soon, including the introduction of heavy oil multiphase flow testing.
“We updated the facility to meet our clients’ needs,” Neveu said. “Our goal is to confirm that their equipment performs reliably in tougher, more complex environments.”
