Research & Public Sector

Christchurch – October 19, 2026 -- Colossal has bought a giant moa egg from Artemis Gallery in Louisville, Colorado, and will return it to New Zealand for care under the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, with a repatriation ceremony planned for December.

The egg was found in New Zealand on January 14, 1966, and spent roughly six decades in a private American collection before it resurfaced at public auction. Auction records indicate it may come from a Moa Hunter-period burial site dating to around AD 1300. Further research is needed to confirm that provenance.

North Little Rock – October 17, 2026 -- Highland County and Bath County, Virginia, went live on Caliber Hosted CAD on October 6 in a shared hosted environment, putting two neighboring rural dispatch centers on one platform across more than 900 square miles of mountainous terrain, Caliber Public Safety announced.

Each county keeps its own dispatch operation, configuration, workflows and local control. Both run on the same underlying platform, which removes the technical barriers that normally separate CAD systems in adjacent jurisdictions.

Shared tenant targets cross-county incidents in a sparsely staffed region

Highland County covers roughly 416 square miles and has about 2,300 residents. Bath County covers more than 500 square miles and has about 4,100 residents. Both are largely forested and mountainous, with few dispatchers and responders on any shift, and mutual aid is routine.

Douglas – October 15, 2026 -- Douglas Police Department has launched an automated victim notification system on Versaterm CommunityConnect that requires no additional staff and no restructuring of its records workflow.

Automated alerts replace manual follow-up by officers and advocates

The system sends crime victims case information and status changes as their cases move through investigation. Staff no longer have to track down and contact each victim individually.

Department leadership describes the system as an upgrade over a manual, ad hoc process. That process depended on individual officers or victim advocates remembering to follow up, and it was prone to delays and inconsistency as caseloads grew.

Dublin – October 15, 2026 -- Elsevier has pledged 4,000 complimentary AI product licenses and an estimated €1m a year in in-kind support and funding to the European Commission's AI in Science Enablers Initiative.

The commitment was announced at the AI in Science Summit in Dublin. More than 1,000 participants from the research, technology, business and policy communities attended the event, which launched the Commission's effort to mobilize private-sector and philanthropic support for European science.

Elsevier splits 4,000 licenses evenly across four AI and clinical products

Elsevier will provide 1,000 licenses each for four products to European researchers, healthcare professionals and students:

Jackson, Miss. – October 14, 2026 -- The American Correctional Association (ACA) will convene a national summit in Mississippi in early 2027 to examine how the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) cut suicide deaths by 82%, from 11 in 2021 to 2 so far in 2026.

The event, titled Insights for Impact, will bring together correctional and healthcare leaders, behavioral health experts and community partners. It will feature new findings and outcome data from Mississippi, according to the ACA.

ACA Executive Director Robert Green attributes the decline to sustained system-level strategies

Green said the figures reflect sustained attention, system-level strategies, stronger behavioral health efforts and a commitment to addressing the factors behind suicide in correctional environments. He said the summit will let leaders examine the data and consider how the lessons apply to systems nationwide.

Lisle – October 14, 2026 -- ArbNet, the accreditation program run by The Morton Arboretum, has reached 1,000 accredited arboreta after adding Kórnik Arboretum in Kórnik, Poland, and the network has doubled in the last five years alone.

Kórnik is the first ArbNet-accredited arboretum in Poland. ArbNet recognized it at level IV, the highest tier, at the Oct. 12 "Trees and Forests in a Changing Environment" conference. The Institute of Dendrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which oversees the arboretum, hosted the event. The program is now in its 15th year and describes itself as the only international accreditation scheme specific to arboreta.

Poland becomes one of 44 countries with an ArbNet-accredited arboretum

Newly welcomed countries this year include Bermuda, Denmark, Ecuador, Indonesia and Madagascar. Cayo Levantado Arboretum in Samaná Bay, Dominican Republic, was also recently accredited.

Orange County – October 13, 2026 -- More than 465 County of Orange public sector workers, represented by Teamsters Local 952, have launched an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike after contract talks with the county failed.

Strike threatens services for more than 3 million Orange County residents

Local 952 members work in OC Public Works, OC Waste and Recycling, OC Community Resources and other county operations. The union expects the walkout to delay road and flood channel maintenance, landfill operations, and parks and beach maintenance. Repairs to county and first responder vehicles are also expected to slow.

More than three million Orange County residents depend on these services, according to the union.

New York – October 12, 2026 -- Debra L. Laskin, PhD, a member of the Expert Panel for Fragrance Safety, has been named to the Forbes 2026 50 Over 50: Innovation list after a career of more than 40 years and over 350 published journal articles, reviews, book chapters and reports.

Forbes cites Laskin's research on immune responses to toxic chemicals

The annual list recognizes women whose experience, leadership and accomplishments continue to advance their fields. Laskin was honored for research into how the immune system responds to toxic chemicals and into the inflammatory mechanisms behind lung and liver injury. Her work has contributed to the development of medical countermeasures for chemical threats, including mustard agents.

New York – October 09, 2026 -- SuperCom (NASDAQ: SPCB) has won two county-level electronic monitoring contracts with adult and juvenile probation agencies in Texas, fully displacing the county's incumbent providers and lifting its total to more than 50 new U.S. contracts since mid-2024.

SuperCom's fourth and fifth Texas contracts both replace existing providers

The awards are the company's fourth and fifth in Texas since it expanded into the state in December 2025. SuperCom entered Texas with a single juvenile probation agency, and all five of its Texas contracts to date have involved replacing an incumbent provider, according to the company.

New York – – October 07, 2026 -- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has integrated CLEAR's secure identity platform, CLEAR1, into a pilot program designed to simplify account access for the nation's roughly 17 million living Veterans while combating fraud across federal benefit programs.

VA.gov sign-in now offers biometric verification via selfie

Veterans can now create or access their VA.gov account using CLEAR1, which combines biometrics, government-issued identification and trusted data sources to verify identity. After a one-time setup, future sign-ins require only a selfie, reducing reliance on traditional usernames and passwords. VA operates the largest integrated health care system in the country, serving 9.1 million enrolled Veterans annually, and VA.gov serves as the primary digital gateway to earned benefits and services.