Featured Stories
University of the District of Columbia: Professor Anshu Arora Earns International Teaching Award
WASHINGTON, June 24 -- The University of the District of Columbia issued the following news:
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Professor Anshu Arora Earns International Teaching Award
Priscilla Lalisse-Jespersen
International award recognizes teaching excellence, student success and innovative approaches to preparing future business leaders for a global workforce.
When more than 6,100 students from 53 countries collaborated on international business projects this spring, University of the District of Columbia students stood out among their peers. Their performance helped earn Professor Anshu Arora the 2026 X-Culture
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WASHINGTON, June 24 -- The University of the District of Columbia issued the following news:
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Professor Anshu Arora Earns International Teaching Award
Priscilla Lalisse-Jespersen
International award recognizes teaching excellence, student success and innovative approaches to preparing future business leaders for a global workforce.
When more than 6,100 students from 53 countries collaborated on international business projects this spring, University of the District of Columbia students stood out among their peers. Their performance helped earn Professor Anshu Arora the 2026 X-CultureBest Professor Award, an international honor celebrating excellence in teaching and global experiential learning.
Presented by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), the award recognizes top-performing educators participating in X-Culture, a large-scale experiential learning initiative that gives students firsthand experience working in global virtual teams.
During the Spring 2026 semester, 6,165 students from 162 universities in 53 countries across six continents participated in the program. Organized into 1,279 teams, participants developed business proposals and implementation plans for corporate partners while working across cultures, languages and time zones.
Based on evaluations across more than 100 performance indicators, Arora was selected as one of approximately 50 professors recognized among nearly 200 participating educators worldwide.
"Professor Arora consistently demonstrated excellence as an educator and collaborator," wrote X-Culture Founder and Coordinator Vasyl Taras, Joseph M. Bryan Distinguished Professor of International Business and Department Head at UNCG. "She completed all responsibilities on time, supported her students diligently and promptly addressed student questions and concerns."
Taras noted that X-Culture requires a significant commitment from both students and instructors, as teams navigate cultural differences, communication challenges and demanding project deadlines. In his recommendation letter, he wrote that Arora "went above and beyond" to support student success and ensure a meaningful learning experience.
For Arora, the recognition reflects the accomplishments of UDC students as much as her own.
"Our students continue to demonstrate that they can compete and succeed alongside peers from leading universities around the world," said Arora. "The ability to collaborate across cultures, contribute to international teams and solve real-world business challenges is increasingly important in today's workforce. I am incredibly proud of what our students accomplish through this program."
At UDC, Arora teaches marketing, artificial intelligence and robotics in the School of Business and Public Administration. She serves as director of the AI, Social Robotics and Behavioral Research Lab and the Logistics and International Trade Analytics Center, where she leads research and student engagement initiatives focused on emerging technologies and global business practices. Her research explores social robotics, artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction, with a focus on how people engage with intelligent technologies and how organizations can effectively integrate them into business and customer experiences. She also serves as editor of a special research collection for Frontiers in Robotics and AI, is a research fellow with the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for International Business Education and Research and participates in multiple National Science Foundation-funded projects.
Arora has led UDC's participation in X-Culture since 2018, helping students gain practical experience working as global consultants on real-world business challenges. Through the program, students collaborate with teammates from around the world, engage with company founders and executives and develop recommendations for organizations operating in international markets.
Since joining the program, 238 UDC students -- including 136 undergraduate students and 102 MBA students -- have successfully completed the X-Culture challenge and earned Global Collaboration Certificates. During the Spring 2026 semester, 33 UDC students participated.
According to X-Culture's evaluation data, UDC students delivered strong results.
"The students from the University of the District of Columbia also performed exceptionally well," Taras wrote. "They were well-prepared, proactive in engaging with their international teammates, made strong intellectual contributions and left a very positive impression on their teams."
The recognition highlights Arora's commitment to experiential learning and the success of UDC students in a global learning environment. As businesses increasingly operate across borders and cultures, programs like X-Culture help students develop the communication, collaboration and problem-solving skills needed to succeed in an interconnected world.
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Original text here: https://www.udc.edu/news/2026/06/professor-anshu-arora-earns-international-teaching-award
UMass-Amherst School of Public Health: Chaoran Ma Receives 2026 Korean Nutrition Society Award
AMHERST, Massachusetts, June 24 -- The University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences issued the following news:
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Chaoran Ma Receives 2026 Korean Nutrition Society Award
Assistant Professor of Nutrition Chaoran Ma has been named the recipient of the Korean Nutrition Society Award by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) and the American Society for Nutrition Foundation (ASNF).
Ma joins a diverse group of 2026 National Scientific Achievement Award honorees, including scientists, clinicians, educators, mentors, and emerging leaders, who are being recognized
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AMHERST, Massachusetts, June 24 -- The University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences issued the following news:
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Chaoran Ma Receives 2026 Korean Nutrition Society Award
Assistant Professor of Nutrition Chaoran Ma has been named the recipient of the Korean Nutrition Society Award by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) and the American Society for Nutrition Foundation (ASNF).
Ma joins a diverse group of 2026 National Scientific Achievement Award honorees, including scientists, clinicians, educators, mentors, and emerging leaders, who are being recognizedfor their work in advancing nutrition science and improving health around the world. This year's recipients will be presented their awards during the American Society for Nutrition's annual flagship meeting, NUTRITION 2026, being held July 25-28, 2026, in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.
"I am honored and grateful to receive this recognition from the ASN and Korean Nutrition Society," says Ma. "This award is meaningful to me because it highlights the importance of collaboration with Korean investigators to address nutrition-related questions relevant to diverse populations. I deeply appreciate the support of my collaborators, colleagues, and research team, and I look forward to continuing research that advances nutritional epidemiology and promotes population health."
Ma currently serves as chair of the ASN's Diet and Cancer research interest section (RIS). Her research focuses on understanding age-related chronic diseases, particularly cancer and neurodegeneration, and how modifiable factors, including diet and lifestyle behaviors, influence disease risk, progression, and outcomes. She seeks to understand how genetic, metabolic, and gut microbial factors contribute to individual variability in response to diet and to uncover the biological mechanisms linking dietary and behavioral factors to the development and progression of chronic diseases.
The KNS Award was established in 2010 by the Korean Nutrition Society (KNS) and the ASN to improve understanding and co-operation between the societies in nutritional matters of common interest and concern. The award promotes excellence in nutrition research conducted by a North American scientist who is an ASN member and engaged with KNS, Korea, or related collaborators or studies.
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Original text here: https://www.umass.edu/public-health-sciences/news/chaoran-ma-2026-korean-nutrition-society-award
UMass Chan Study Finds Brain Activity Could Predict Problematic Drinking, Relapse Vulnerability in Alcohol Use Disorder
WORCESTER, Massachusetts, June 24 (TNSjou) -- The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School issued the following news:
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UMass Chan study finds brain activity could predict problematic drinking, relapse vulnerability in alcohol use disorder
By Pat Sargent
A new study from the Department of Neurobiology at UMass Chan Medical School focuses on the diversity of alcohol drinking behaviors in alcohol use disorder (AUD), with findings indicating that individuals displaying certain problematic drinking patterns may be more susceptible to relapse than others.
"Many of the ways to treat use
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WORCESTER, Massachusetts, June 24 (TNSjou) -- The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School issued the following news:
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UMass Chan study finds brain activity could predict problematic drinking, relapse vulnerability in alcohol use disorder
By Pat Sargent
A new study from the Department of Neurobiology at UMass Chan Medical School focuses on the diversity of alcohol drinking behaviors in alcohol use disorder (AUD), with findings indicating that individuals displaying certain problematic drinking patterns may be more susceptible to relapse than others.
"Many of the ways to treat usedisorders still involve an abstinence phase, and maintaining abstinence is extremely difficult, especially in individuals with alcohol use disorder," said Danny G. Winder, PhD, the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research Chair I and chair and professor of neurobiology. "We think it's important to understand what sort of things happen in the brain during abstinence that might propel problems like relapse. There are markers we can look for and things that we might be able to examine that could mitigate the likelihood that abstinence is going to end in relapse."
The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry and led by Dr. Winder and Marie Doyle, PhD, instructor in neurobiology, uses animal models to examine brain activity in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) during alcohol abstinence in association with problematic drinking and alcohol seeking behaviors.
In the AUD clinical population, periods of alcohol abstinence are often a high-risk stage of recovery, when increased anxiety and depression are thought to trigger stronger cravings for alcohol. The BNST is a small but mighty part of the brain that acts as a neural hub for signals related to alcohol reward, stress and anxiety. The research team's findings show that BNST activity predicts aversion-resistant drinking, or the continued consumption of alcohol despite negative consequences, and identifies a subset of animals prone to persistent alcohol seeking.
"The focus of this research is on individual differences. The overall goal is to understand how individuals can vary within a population," Dr. Doyle said. "We see this at the clinical level. About 10 percent of adults in the U.S. will have a diagnosis of alcohol use disorder, but a much larger proportion of adults consume alcohol throughout their lifetime. So why do some people develop an alcohol use disorder and some people don't? That's the big picture idea for the study."
Doyle conducted several experiments to specifically examine BNST neuron activity patterns in an animal model while they are in abstinence after volitional alcohol intake. According to Winder, most studies in this field are focused on models in which alcohol intake is directly controlled by researchers. In this study, the animals had the choice to drink alcohol or refrain daily over several weeks. This distinction is important because it resulted in a wide range of alcohol consumption. Some animals drank large amounts of alcohol, while others drank very little, reflecting the variety of drinking patterns seen in humans. They were then moved into an abstinence phase.
"What Dr. Doyle was able to do was show that the BNST activity tracks with the drinking behavior and that activity signal predicted the aversion-resistant alcohol intake," Winder said. "It was like a marker of a population of animals that are going to go on to potentially engage in maladaptive alcohol seeking. The BNST signal seemed to grow during abstinence, potentially predicting the aversion-resistant drinking. It's interesting that this diversity of responses happens in animals that are genetically identical. This means that there are aspects of the environment and perhaps social aspects of the animal's behavior that could set up these kinds of changes."
Winder has a long-term collaboration with Jennifer Blackford, PhD, director of research at the Munroe-Meyer Institute and the Hattie B. Munroe Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, whose lab was the first to image the human BNST using MRIs. The lab has been working on imaging the BNST in humans with AUD in early abstinence, allowing Winder and Doyle to draw parallels between their work with animal models and what the Blackford Lab is doing in the clinical population. This research is part of an NIH-funded alcohol center aimed at developing translational research programs.
Moving forward, Winder, Doyle and the research team aim to identify molecular targets related to BNST brain activity for the potential development of personalized therapeutics for people with AUD.
"By understanding the underlying biology, we can start to dive deeper and deeper into what's causing these changes in behavior on a molecular level," Doyle said. "This study has allowed us to look at animal models on an individual level; but now we're asking, can we have individual therapeutics that will help subsets of people? When it comes to potential therapies, trying to tease out what might work for certain individuals, especially those that are more likely to relapse, is important."
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Original text here: https://www.umassmed.edu/news/articles/2026/06/umass-chan-study-finds-brain-activity-could-predict-problematic-drinking-relapse-vulnerability-in-alcohol-use-disorder/
UC-San Francisco: Single Molecular Change May Help Viruses Jump From Bat to Human
SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 24 (TNSjou) -- The University of California San Francisco campus issued the following news release:
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A Single Molecular Change May Help Viruses Jump from Bat to Human
Most pandemics start when a pathogen spreads from animals to humans. It's a leading explanation, in fact, for the COVID-19 pandemic: the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, is a cousin to coronaviruses that live in bats.
Now, researchers at the UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Institut Pasteur, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center report that
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SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 24 (TNSjou) -- The University of California San Francisco campus issued the following news release:
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A Single Molecular Change May Help Viruses Jump from Bat to Human
Most pandemics start when a pathogen spreads from animals to humans. It's a leading explanation, in fact, for the COVID-19 pandemic: the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, is a cousin to coronaviruses that live in bats.
Now, researchers at the UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Institut Pasteur, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center report thata single change in an amino acid -- a building block of proteins -- alters how coronaviruses interact with bat and human immune systems, shifting the body's response to infection.
The discovery helps explain how benign animal viruses can adapt to humans and cause severe disease. The study appeared in Cell Host & Microbe on May 13.
Researchers looked at SARS-CoV-2 and a related coronavirus called RaTG13, which only infects bats, and compared how each virus interacted with proteins in bat and human lung cells. The experiments relied on the first laboratory-grown lung cell line from the greater horseshoe bat.
A viral protein called Orf9b emerged as a key factor. The SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 versions of Orf9b are 93% identical but behave very differently. In human cells, the SARS-CoV-2 version disabled an immune alarm system, allowing the virus to multiply. In bat cells, the RaTG13 version activated a protein that helped suppress the virus.
The team found that changing just one of Orf9B's 100 amino acids reversed its ability to evade the immune system.
"The difference between a virus that stays in bats and one that spills over into humans and causes catastrophic disease can come down to remarkably small genetic changes," said Nevan J. Krogan, PhD, director of QBI and senior author of the study. "By mapping these interactions at the protein level -- across two viruses and two species -- we can read the molecular signatures that predict spillover risk. It's the kind of early warning system the world needs."
Authors: UCSF authors are Jyoti Batra, PhD; Yuan Zhou, MS; Rithika Adavikolanu; Durga Anand; Sooraj Verma; Martin Gordon, MS; Shivali Malpotra, MS; Jack M. Moen, PhD; Ajda Rojc, MS; Atoshi Banerjee, PhD; Sourobh Maji, PhD; Monita Muralidharan, PhD; Helene Foussard, PhD; Irene P. Chen, PhD; CJ San Felipe, PhD; Lorena Zuliani-Alvarez, PhD; Promisree Choudhury, PhD; Kirsten Obernier, PhD; Rahul Suryawanshi, PhD; Taha Y. Taha, PhD, PharmD; Kliment A. Verba, PhD; James S. Fraser, PhD; Robert M. Stroud, PhD, MA; Melanie Ott, MD, PhD; Ben Polacco, PhD; Danielle L. Swaney, PhD; Ignacia Echeverria, PhD; and Manon Eckhardt, PhD. For all authors see the paper.
Funding: National Institutes of Health (U19AI135990, U19AI135972, U54AI170792, F31AI164671-01, G20AI174733, UL1TR004419, S10OD026880, S10OD030463); Howard Hughes Medical Institute; James B. Pendleton Charitable Trust; Roddenberry Foundation; P. and E. Taft; Gladstone Institutes; Fast Grants; Innovative Genomics Institute; Chan Zuckerberg Biohub - San Francisco; ANR EmerCoV AAP CE35.
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Original text here: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2026/06/432136/single-molecular-change-may-help-viruses-jump-bat-human
Q&A: Have You Seen This Rare Tree - UVA Wants to Know
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, June 24 -- The University of Virginia issued the following Q&A on June 23, 2026, involving Mia Murray, student with masters degree in environmental sciences:
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Q&A: Have you seen this rare tree? UVA wants to know
By Zeina Mohammed, spr2jm@virginia.edu
Since 1967, the native butternut tree has been rapidly disappearing from forests across the East Coast and University of Virginia scientists are asking the public to help them counteract this loss.
Researchers at Blandy Experimental Farm, the University's environmental research facility, are asking people across
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, June 24 -- The University of Virginia issued the following Q&A on June 23, 2026, involving Mia Murray, student with masters degree in environmental sciences:
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Q&A: Have you seen this rare tree? UVA wants to know
By Zeina Mohammed, spr2jm@virginia.edu
Since 1967, the native butternut tree has been rapidly disappearing from forests across the East Coast and University of Virginia scientists are asking the public to help them counteract this loss.
Researchers at Blandy Experimental Farm, the University's environmental research facility, are asking people acrossVirginia to help them find remaining trees. T'ai Roulston, a research associate professor of environmental sciences, is leading the campaign.
Helping in the effort is Mia Murray, who first came to Blandy in 2021 as an undergraduate student from Wheaton College, funded through the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates program. After graduating and working in Panama, Montana and Minnesota, she was drawn back to UVA, where she is now pursuing a master's degree in environmental sciences and working with Roulston to preserve the butternut species.
Murray spoke with UVA Today about why the butternuts are in decline and how Blandy researchers are collaborating with citizen scientists to better understand the surviving populations.
Q. What's going on with the butternuts?
A. When a lot of people think of threats to forests, they think of fires and human impacts, but pests and pathogens can also do a lot of damage, like in the case of the American chestnut. The butternut is a tree that has been really cherished and used by a lot of different communities up and down the eastern U.S. for millennia. In 1967, there was the first observance of something called "butternut canker disease," a non-native fungal pathogen that infects the trees. It works its way into the trunk and causes these cankers, eventually girdling the tree, which means that it prevents nutrients from reaching the leaves and kills the tree over time.
Along the East Coast and Midwest, certain states have experienced anywhere from 50% to 90% loss of butternut trees in the wild, which is a pretty large-scale loss in a relatively quick time span. Virginia has been largely overlooked in a lot of studies and efforts, so even though we know what's happening across the range, we don't really have a good idea of what's happening here.
Q. What is your project's focus?
A. My project is looking to find trees in Virginia to assess the wild populations and understand the disease severity. Then we're going to collect samples for genetic sequencing to differentiate between pure butternuts and the hybrids with the Japanese walnut, because it's really hard to tell the difference between pure and hybrid butternuts. While the hybrids are more resistant to butternut canker disease, they are more susceptible to other diseases in the landscape.
A lot of times, data people help collect stays within the walls of academia, so I will be sharing my results in person and online in the fall with my participants, with project reports outlining all the information they helped me collect.
Q. How are you working with the public on this?
A. T'ai has been collecting leaves for the past few years now to send to our collaborators at Purdue University. When I joined his lab last summer, and there was finally an extra set of hands, we began weeklong trips to find trees based on iNaturalist, a great citizen science app.
The problem is a lot of the butternut locations on the app were outdated or misidentified. So, he posted a callout on the Blandy website to encourage people to reach out if they knew of any tree locations or were open to searching with us.
Some people are sampling trees from their property or their neighbor's property and sending us photos, as well as mailing us the leaf samples that we need. Other people have butternuts near them, but can't collect samples themselves because of injuries, or the trees are too large to reach the canopy to collect leaves. So, we'll come in with this tool called a tree slingshot to bring leaves down. They can either come assist us or just show us where the trees are.
A third group of people we call "surveyors" will receive a map of all places we either have confirmed or suspected butternut locations, and they will send us photos from there so we can confirm before going there ourselves with permits to collect the leaves.
Q. If folks want to get involved, how do they reach out?
A. They can email us at uvabutternuts@virginia.edu.
Q. Does your research have broader implications?
A. In terms of conservation, it's helpful to have a more complete understanding of what's happening here. Even if Virginia has the same disease incidence as other, more severe places, we need to know the severity of butternut canker disease here. Once we begin to understand if there are wild ones that are large, relatively healthy and still reproducing, we can begin to understand possible mechanisms of natural resistance before more deliberate intervention with hybrids or genetic engineering.
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Original text here: https://news.virginia.edu/content/qa-have-you-seen-rare-tree-uva-wants-know
FIU Researchers Reveal How Altered Images Can Bypass AI Safeguards
MIAMI, Florida, June 24 -- Florida International University, a component of the public university system in Florida, issued the following news:
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FIU researchers reveal how altered images can bypass AI safeguards
By Brian Zimmerman
It may look like a picture of a panda bear to you, but to your business's AI agent, it can act like a skeleton key, bypassing safety safeguards and potentially causing the model to generate harmful, misleading or policy-violating outputs.
That risk is the focus of new research from Hadi Amini, associate professor at Florida International University's Knight
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MIAMI, Florida, June 24 -- Florida International University, a component of the public university system in Florida, issued the following news:
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FIU researchers reveal how altered images can bypass AI safeguards
By Brian Zimmerman
It may look like a picture of a panda bear to you, but to your business's AI agent, it can act like a skeleton key, bypassing safety safeguards and potentially causing the model to generate harmful, misleading or policy-violating outputs.
That risk is the focus of new research from Hadi Amini, associate professor at Florida International University's KnightFoundation School of Computing and Information Sciences. Together with graduate assistant Md Jueal Mia, he is studying how manipulated images can "jailbreak" certain AI systems, pushing them beyond their built-in safeguards.
"AI models don't see images the same way humans do," Amini said. "They see patterns of numbers and pixels. By carefully manipulating those pixels, we can influence how the AI interprets the image and responds."
The team's research demonstrated how small-language AI models - the kind frequently employed by small businesses to execute routine tasks like accounting or customer service - have become particularly susceptible to image-based hacks. As shown in research presented at the 2025 International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), the team found that by introducing microscopic pixel-level changes called "perturbations" into an image, they could trick these AI systems into generating responses that they would normally block.
"The manipulated image is like the face of a stranger," Amini said. "The AI has to learn when a request should be treated with caution before it answers. In order to protect AI systems from attacks, we try to break them ourselves, identify potential vulnerabilities and design defense mechanisms."
The researchers then set out to probe the system's defenses. The more successfully they penetrated the models' guardrails, the more the systems could be trained to resist future threats. To do this, Amini and his team developed a method called JaiLIP (Jailbreaking with Loss-guided Image Perturbation), which uses an algorithm to determine the optimal degree of pixel-level manipulation.
In tests using BLIP-2, a multimodal AI model used by researchers and developers, Amini and his team found that images modified with JaiLIP significantly increased the likelihood that the system would generate harmful or unsafe responses. In one example, a JaiLIP-altered version of a stoplight tricked the AI model into divulging detailed instructions on how to run the light while avoiding a traffic ticket. Overall, the use of JaiLIP images nearly doubled the number of harmful responses generated by AI models.
The risk extends beyond users simply prompting AI systems for instructions on illegal activity. As businesses increasingly adopt AI-powered customer service agents, chatbots and automated workflows, vulnerabilities in open-source or lightly protected systems could negatively impact users' trust or create new avenues for cyberattacks.
"Small businesses and companies can benefit from AI to enhance their efficiency, but they have to be aware of the potential vulnerabilities," Amini said. "They must make sure they're deploying sufficient guardrails to maintain the safety and integrity of their AI tools."
Amini said there are some basic precautions that everyone should use before integrating AI into their business or workplace, including limiting the sensitive information they provide to AI systems (especially images), restricting who can access those systems and carefully evaluating the security measures built into AI tools before deployment.
Because safety is paramount, Amini and his team are working to stay one step ahead of potential bad actors in the AI sphere. The more vulnerabilities he and his team can find, the quicker the AI will learn to repair them. The challenge, he said, is ensuring that AI can recognize threats hidden in plain sight -- even when humans cannot.
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Original text here: https://news.fiu.edu/2026/fiu-researchers-reveal-how-altered-images-can-bypass-ai-safeguards
Carlos Vargas-Aburto Appointed Interim President of California State University, Monterey Bay
LONG BEACH, California, June 24 -- California State University issued the following news:
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Carlos Vargas-Aburto Appointed Interim President of California State University, Monterey Bay
California State University (CSU) Chancellor Mildred Garcia has appointed Carlos Vargas-Aburto to serve as interim president of Cal State Monterey Bay. Most recently, Vargas-Aburto served for 10 years as president of Southeast Missouri State University.
"Dr. Vargas-Aburto has a strong record of supporting student achievement, fostering inclusive learning environments and advancing innovative academic programming,"
... Show Full Article
LONG BEACH, California, June 24 -- California State University issued the following news:
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Carlos Vargas-Aburto Appointed Interim President of California State University, Monterey Bay
California State University (CSU) Chancellor Mildred Garcia has appointed Carlos Vargas-Aburto to serve as interim president of Cal State Monterey Bay. Most recently, Vargas-Aburto served for 10 years as president of Southeast Missouri State University.
"Dr. Vargas-Aburto has a strong record of supporting student achievement, fostering inclusive learning environments and advancing innovative academic programming,"said CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia. "I am fully confident that he will provide steady, adept and collaborative leadership, ensuring continuity as the university continues to advance its--and the system's--strategic priorities and serve the students and richly diverse communities of the Monterey Bay region."
Vargas-Aburto has more than three decades of experience as a faculty member, researcher, provost and president at public universities across the nation. Prior to Southeast Missouri State, Vargas-Aburto served eight years as provost and vice president for academic affairs and student affairs at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and one year as acting president. He also served three years as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Central State University in Ohio, an HBCU.
Vargas-Aburto was at Kent State for 18 years, joining the university as a professor in the College of Technology. He went on to serve in several administrative roles of increasing responsibility, including interim assistant and then associate dean of research. He was Kent State's founding director of the Program on Electron Beam Technology.
"Both my parents instilled in me a deep love for learning and the desire to go to college, and throughout my career, I have worked hard to help every student be similarly inspired and have the same or better experience that I had," Vargas-Aburto said. "I am excited to join Cal State Monterey Bay as interim president and serve a dynamically diverse group of students as well as the institution's vibrant internal and surrounding communities."
A first-generation college graduate, Vargas-Aburto earned a Bachelor of Science in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and master's degrees in aerospace science and in physics from the University of Michigan, where he also earned a Ph.D. in physics and aerospace science.
Vargas-Aburto's appointment is pending compensation approval by the Board of Trustees, which will be taken up at the July board meeting. Upon approval, his appointment will be effective August 1, 2026, and will continue until the board completes a national search for the university's next regularly appointed president.
Andrew Lawson, CSUMB's provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, will serve as Executive in Charge from July 1 until Vargas-Aburto's tenure begins.
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About the California State University
The California State University is the nation's largest four-year public university system, providing transformational opportunities for upward mobility to more than 470,000 students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. More than half of CSU students are from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, and more than one-quarter of undergraduates are first-generation college students. Because the CSU's 22 universities* provide a high-quality education at an incredible value, they are rated among the best in the nation for promoting social mobility in national college rankings from U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Monthly. The CSU powers California and the nation, sending more than 123,000 career-ready graduates into the workforce each year. In fact, one in every 20 Americans holding a college degree earned it at the CSU. Connect with and learn more about the CSU in the CSU newsroom.
*Transition to 22 universities in progress (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Maritime integrating)--official fall 2026.
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Original text here: https://www.calstate.edu/csu-system/news/Pages/Carlos-Vargas-Aburto-Appointed-Interim-President-of-California-State-University,-Monterey-Bay.aspx
