Across Africa, education reform is shaped as much by global partnerships as by classroom realities. Drawing on studies of China–Africa cooperation, teacher development, university collaboration, and student leadership, this feature explores how policy ambitions are translated into practice. Together, these perspectives frame education as a human process, where confidence, voice, and locally rooted institutions determine whether international initiatives deliver lasting, equitable change across diverse African contexts.

Associate Professor SHIMOJO Hisashi of the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies conducts research on spaces where state intervention is difficult from the perspectives of anthropology and Southeast Asian studies. His main research focus is on the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, but he aims to understand the backgrounds of how such spaces are formed regardless of the country, and the social order that people weave in these spaces. His efforts illuminate the image of the state as seen by ordinary people and challenge the understanding of society. We spoke with Shimojo about the results of his research and future prospects. In his words, “If the front side of a coin represents the state, then I study its reverse side.”

Researchers at Rice University’s WaTER Institute are leading an ambitious new effort to transform the way the world manages water and sanitation at the household scale. The project, funded by the Gates Foundation and in collaboration with Arizona State University, Clarkson University and Duke University, aims to develop modular, field-ready water treatment systems capable of recycling multiple household wastewater streams and dramatically reducing both water use and dependence on centralized infrastructure.

 

The latest study from the Sharma Lab at UC Santa Cruz makes the mechanisms of how epigenetic information is established in sperm cells, and how that encoding affects offspring health, a little less of a scientific mystery.

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Type One Energy are partnering to establish a world-class facility to advance fusion energy.

When a swat team trains multiple times a week, running repeated live-fire drills, the noise can be intense. Even with premium hearing protection, the sound and pressure can damage hearing over time, contributing to traumatic brain injuries for officers and disorienting civilians nearby. If only there were a way to curb that danger.

Those kinds of problems are exactly what the New Mexico Small Business Assistance program has helped tackle for 25 years with support from Sandia National Laboratories and, since 2007, Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The program, created in the year 2000 helps small businesses solve critical challenges by providing technical assistance and expertise that they don’t have access to anywhere else, at no cost to them.

This year, two of the businesses Sandia helped aim to make the nation safer with their products: Ridgeline Engineering and Manufacturing, which is working to reduce hearing damage from firearms, and Aperi Computational Mechanics Consulting, which is making critical engineering simulations faster and more affordable.