There is something quietly reassuring about a scientific mystery that gets solved not by a dramatic new discovery, but by simply looking again, more carefully, at something we thought we already understood. That’s exactly what has happened with the Sun, and the missing element at the heart of it is silver.

For years, there’s been a nagging problem. The Sun and the meteorites in our Solar System formed from the same swirling cloud of gas and dust, 4.6 billion years ago, which means they should, in theory, contain the same proportions of heavy elements. Meteorites are essentially untouched time capsules from that era, so they can be used as a trusted benchmark. And yet, whenever astronomers measured how much silver the Sun contained, the number always came up short compared to the meteorites but not by a small margin. The Sun appeared to be missing a substantial amount of silver that, by all rights, it should have had.

Now, thanks to new work led by Sema Caliskan at Uppsala University, that mismatch has finally been resolved. The Sun, it turns out, was never missing its silver at all, we simply weren't measuring it properly.

To understand how, it helps to know how astronomers work out what a star is made of in the first place. Starlight carries the fingerprints of every element within it. As sunlight passes through the outer layers of the Sun, atoms of each element absorb tiny amounts of light at very specific wavelengths, leaving faint dark lines in the spectrum. By studying the pattern and strength of those lines, astronomers can work out exactly which elements are present, and in what quantities.

The trouble is, converting that pattern into an accurate number depends entirely on how well you model the Sun's atmosphere in the first place, and previous models were, in hindsight, oversimplified. Caliskan and her colleagues built a far more realistic model, one that accounts for the genuinely turbulent, dynamic nature of the Sun's outer layers, combined with more precise atomic physics describing exactly how silver atoms interact with light and their surroundings. Crucially, the new model also accounts for the fact that light itself affects the very atoms producing those tell tale absorption lines, something earlier, simpler calculations had overlooked entirely.

Researchers have discovered that children's brains can contain cells with their mother's DNA and that these cells can persist for decades.

The findings, which were posted to the preprint database bioRxiv June 10 but have not been peer-reviewed yet, are part of a growing body of work showing that a mother and fetus exchange cells during pregnancy — a phenomenon known as "microchimerism." Previously, scientists had found that a mother's brain harbors cells with her children's DNA.

The findings are important for several reasons, said Amy Boddy, co-director of the Microchimerism, Human Health and Evolution Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study. Past work mostly found evidence of maternal microchimerism in infancy, and in blood samples, she told Live Science in an email. "What's exciting here is that it's tissue, not blood; it's real human data, not an animal model; and the methods are cutting-edge."

More broadly, the work reinforces the idea that microchimerism is "a normal process of mammalian biology," Boddy said.

Hunting down maternal cells in the brain
Before this study, there was sparse evidence for maternal microchimeric cells in brains, mostly because it is hard for researchers to get samples of human brain tissue and DNA from both parents and their children.

To overcome this challenge, a team led by Sami Kanaan, a staff scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, analyzed brain tissue that had been surgically removed from dozens of children with severe epilepsy as part of their treatment. The patients ranged in age from 28 days to 19 years at the time of their surgery, and their mothers provided DNA samples through cheek swabs.

Kanaan's team used a tool called quantitative PCR to identify and count maternal cells hiding among millions of cells in the children's brains.

"Guardrails" built by the EU to govern AI fall short in both ambition and execution and have become too heavy to absorb rapid changes in technology, a new study in Big Data & Society warns.

The rules took years of negotiations and political effort and are difficult to change but not to remove, making them a "rigidity trap in action."

Recent changes have amounted to a "partial retreat" before the EU AI Act has been fully implemented, experts have said. The European Union's 2024 AI Act, supposed to take effect this year, has already been replaced with the 2026 AI Simplification Act.

The study says the EU's regulatory framework fails to fulfill the European Commission's stated goals of promoting trustworthy, human-centric and rights-respecting AI.

In contrast, in the U.S.—more by accident than design—there are "regulatory leashes" that can be pulled in response to need, and these are more binding and enforceable than the EU guardrails. Rules are more concrete and easier to enforce.

The study, by Alison Harcourt of the University of Exeter, Claudio M. Radaelli of the European University Institute and Philipp Trein of the University of Lausanne, says the EU's efforts to anticipate AI risks and impose comprehensive rules made adaptive regulation hard to develop. This has made the AI Act hard to enforce and limited its capacity to protect human rights and public values.

The United States intervenes legislatively when specific risks are clearly present or on a sector-by-sector basis. The study says this approach is more enforceable than the EU AI Act, and the state-by-state and sector-by-sector evolution of rules provides more space for learning from experience.

Silicon chips have driven the computing revolution for more than 50 years. Now, researchers are finding new ways to use them in biology, including monitoring large groups of neurons, sequencing DNA, and even manufacturing DNA itself.

A Harvard-led research team has developed a silicon chip that can synthesize 64 different DNA sequences at the same time. The work, published in Nature Electronics, replaces the solvent-heavy chemistry commonly used in custom DNA production with a water-based enzymatic method.

Rather than controlling DNA synthesis with conventional laboratory equipment, the chip uses precisely regulated electric currents to activate chemical reactions at individual locations across its surface. The research was led by Donhee Ham, the John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

A Chip That Writes DNA in Water
Synthetic DNA plays a central role in many areas of modern science and medicine, including diagnostics, genome engineering, and cancer research.

Most synthetic DNA is currently produced through phosphoramidite chemistry. This well-established process can create millions of sequences in parallel, but it relies on hazardous organic solvents and is usually carried out in large, centralized facilities.

Enzymatic DNA synthesis offers a gentler alternative. It takes place in water and more closely resembles the way living cells naturally assemble DNA. In the future, this approach could make DNA-writing devices smaller, safer, and easier to use.

Until now, however, enzymatic methods have lagged far behind conventional chemistry in the number of DNA sequences they can produce simultaneously. Previous systems had created no more than about a dozen sequences at once.

The Harvard team raised that number to 64 distinct sequences, with each one reaching a length of up to 39 nucleotides. The result establishes a new benchmark for parallel enzymatic DNA synthesis.

A prominent computer scientist argues that a proposal made by Alan Turing, widely regarded as the father of theoretical computer science, sent artificial intelligence research in the wrong direction for the past 75 years.

In his new analysis, “Turing’s Mistake: Escaping the Yoke of Unintelligent Machines,” Peter J. Denning examines ideas Turing advanced in 1950. At the time, many scientists believed that human intelligence could exist independently of the body and might therefore be recreated as software running on a digital computer.

Denning also disputes the idea that machine intelligence can be demonstrated through an imitation game (now known as the Turing test).

“These two claims have shaped much of AI research and development,” Denning writes. “My premise is that our acquiescence to these claims has led to the AI mess in which we find ourselves today.”

According to Denning, the artificial intelligence (AI) systems now being developed are unlikely to produce human-level intelligence, known as artificial general intelligence (AGI). Instead, he warns, they may create serious dangers without ever thinking like humans.

Why Tacit Knowledge Matters
Central to Denning’s argument is the idea of tacit knowledge. This refers to the enormous amount of human understanding that people possess but cannot fully express in words or translate into symbols that a machine can process.

Denning describes five broad forms of tacit knowledge that he says ‘elude machine learning’. They include common sense, everyday interactions with people and the environment, feelings and perceptions, practical skills, and the cultural and historical background shared by societies.

Researchers have spent decades trying to record common sense in a form computers can use. Beginning in the 1980s, Douglas Lenat’s ambitious Cyc project set out to build a vast database of common-sense facts. After 40 years of work, the project contained 25 million entries.

“Yet even this treasury could not add up to a background of common sense sufficient to make expert systems smart enough to be experts,” Denning notes. “Cyc validated that much of the knowledge that makes people experts cannot be articulated as propositions.”

A quantum computer does not usually bring musical instruments to mind. Yet inside a chip developed at ETH Zurich, information is stored in vibrations that behave somewhat like notes resonating through a guitar.

These movements cannot be heard. They occur at extremely high frequencies inside microscopic mechanical resonators, where packets of vibrational energy called phonons carry quantum information. The entire experimental chip measures about 7.5 millimeters long, 2.5 millimeters wide, and 1 millimeter thick (0.30 inches long, 0.10 inches wide, and 0.04 inches thick), making it roughly as wide as a small fingernail.

Led by quantum physicist Yiwen Chu, the team used these tiny resonators as a working memory connected to a superconducting quantum processor. Their results, published in Science, demonstrate a different way to organize a quantum computer, one that more closely resembles the basic structure of the classical computers used today.

“The interaction between the quantum processor and the quantum memory provides a crucial foundation with a view to establishing quantum computers as a powerful and reliable way to perform computations that are not feasible with conventional computers,” says Yiwen Chu.

Borrowing the CPU and RAM Model
Most quantum systems do not clearly separate calculation from memory. Processing and information storage are often closely integrated into the same hardware, which can make it difficult to expand the machine without adding more bulky components.

Chu’s team instead borrowed a familiar idea from conventional computing. In a digital computer, a central processing unit (CPU) performs calculations while data is temporarily held in random access memory (RAM). Separating those jobs allows the processor to retrieve information when needed rather than forcing every part of the system to perform every task.

The experimental quantum architecture follows a similar principle. A superconducting qubit serves as the processor and control unit, while mechanical resonators hold quantum information during the calculation.

“In our quantum working memory, however, information is not stored electromagnetically, as is usually the case today, but rather in the form of mechanical vibrations,” explains Chu.

One of the central assumptions of modern neuroscience research is that the brain's shape and structure affect behavior. Scientists have linked a thicker cortex (the brain's outer layer) to higher intelligence, certain brain wave patterns to better volleyball ability, and higher connectivity between parts of the brain to chess-playing skills. There's a vast number of these so-called brain-wide association studies (BWAS).

But when experts repeat these studies, they can't replicate the results.

This "replication crisis" suggests that a substantial amount of brain-behavior imaging research rests on a shaky foundation. There are myriad problems affecting this area of research, said Randy Ellis, a senior scientist at Oracle who wrote about these issues while working as a biomedical informatician at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Some of these issues aren't unique to neuroscience. They begin with what Ellis called the "original sin" of science: Academics are put under huge pressure to publish positive research findings.

But some of these factors do apply specifically to this field.

The problems are big enough that they are "halting the growth and development of science and the curing of diseases," Ellis told Live Science.

Tiny differences, small samples
Several brain studies that could not be reproduced in follow-up work show how problems can creep in. Each of the original papers has over 500 citations, with the number of citations reflecting how much these studies may influence thinking in the field.

For example, a landmark study in 2007 found that the brains of kids with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder took longer to mature. But a study published earlier this year found that this link vanished once the different rates of aging between boys and girls were taken into account. "That's what made the whole house of cards topple," Matthew Albaugh, co-author of the replication paper and a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Vermont, previously told Live Science.

During the Cretaceous-Paleogene period (ca. 66 million years ago), a massive impact triggered an extinction-level event (ELE), wiping out about three-quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth, including the dinosaurs. Scientists have named the impactor that caused this devastation the Chicxulub meteor, after the nearby town of Chicxulub Pueblo in the Yucatan Peninsula in southern Mexico. The impact certainly left its mark, forming a 180-km-wide (112 mi) crater buried beneath the surface and creating thousands of limestone sinkholes filled with water (known as cenotes).

Today, Earth scientists are closing in on the type of impactor that caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event. According to the latest findings from an international team of researchers, it may have been a rare type of space rock known as a carbonaceous (CO) chondrite. As they describe in a paper recently published in Science Advances, an advanced nickel isotope analysis of samples from around the world allowed them to narrow down the composition of the Cretaceous-Palaeogene meteorite.

Asteroids and other "space rocks" are essentially material left over from the formation of the Solar System, roughly 4.5 billion years ago. These objects regularly enter Earth's atmosphere, with most burning up and others exploding in mid-air in what is known as an "airburst." However, larger impactors like the Chicxulub meteor, estimated at 10 to 15 km (6 to 9 mi) in diameter, have occasionally reached the surface, causing massive explosions that eject enough material into the stratosphere to block out sunlight and trigger a "nuclear winter."

By analyzing material left behind by the impact, and comparing it to other meteorites that have been recovered on Earth, scientists can determine where the impactor came from in the Solar System. This is precisely what postdoctoral researcher [Georgy V. Makhatadze] and his colleagues at the Institut de Physique du Globe attempted when conducting high-precision nickel-isotope measurements of clay samples that formed from the impact. These samples were gathered over several years from sites around the world.

Jet engines demand materials that can survive tremendous heat and force without bending, cracking, or slowly losing their shape. The strongest candidates, however, often come with a major weakness: they are too brittle to deform safely.

Purdue University engineers have now found a way to overcome that tradeoff in cobalt aluminum (CoAl), an intermetallic compound with potential uses in high-performance turbines. By redesigning the material at the nanoscale, the researchers created a form of CoAl that is exceptionally strong but can still undergo substantial deformation at room temperature.

The advance, reported in Science Advances, could point toward a broader strategy for making notoriously brittle intermetallic compounds more practical for aerospace, energy, and defense technologies.

Why Intermetallics Fracture
Intermetallics contain two or more metallic elements arranged in a highly ordered crystal structure. That atomic order can give them remarkable strength, high melting temperatures, and resistance to creep, the slow deformation that occurs when a material remains under stress for long periods.

These qualities are valuable in jet engines, gas turbines, energy storage systems, and automotive components. Yet the same ordered structures that make intermetallics strong can also prevent them from deforming easily. Instead of bending under force, many fracture, particularly at room temperature.

After an earthquake, survivors can become trapped beneath piles of unstable debris where conventional rescue robots are too large to enter. Tiny flying machines modeled on insects could one day move through these narrow gaps while avoiding fixed barriers and falling rubble.

Until recently, however, aerial microrobots could only travel slowly along simple, smooth paths, falling far short of the rapid and agile flight seen in insects — until now.

AI unlocks insectlike aerial agility
MIT researchers have demonstrated aerial microrobots that can match the speed and agility of their biological counterparts. They developed a new AI-based controller that allowed the robotic insect to perform demanding flight maneuvers, including repeated body flips.

The two-part control system combines strong performance with computational efficiency. Compared with the researchers’ best earlier demonstrations, it increased the robot’s speed by about 450 percent and its acceleration by roughly 250 percent.

The microrobot completed 10 consecutive somersaults in 11 seconds while maintaining control even as wind disturbances pushed against it.

Flight performance approaches living insects
“We want to be able to use these robots in scenarios that more traditional quadcopter robots would have trouble flying into, but that insects could navigate. Now, with our bioinspired control framework, the flight performance of our robot is comparable to insects in terms of speed, acceleration, and the pitching angle. This is quite an exciting step toward that future goal,”

Life has scarcely found a boundary on Earth that it can’t push. While much of life’s diversity exists in lush, bountiful habitats like tropical rainforests and coral reefs, even the most brutal corners of the planet are also occupied. The organisms that thrive in extreme environments — blistering temperatures, crushing pressures, corrosive acid — are what we call “extremophiles.”

Most of these imperiled pioneers are rugged microbes, such as bacteria or archaea. Some have evolved to live in poisonous brine that would fatally pickle nearly everything else. Some can happily grow in subzero temperatures, using special enzymes that chug along where others grind to a halt. Others can shrug off the menaces of heavy metals, ionizing radiation, or the vacuum of space and still thrive.

These organisms aren’t just curiosities. Understanding their resilient biology has many possible applications. Discovering biochemicals that function under extreme temperatures, pH levels, or pressure could be a boon for a broad array of industrial processes. The organisms may also help clean up toxic pollutants by growing, thriving, and digesting where nothing else can. Extremophiles and their enzymes are even responsible for the modern era of genetics and molecular biology.

Extremophiles can also provide a window into life’s deep origins. The planet where life first evolved was a harsh place compared to today, and it likely had high concentrations of toxins and heavy exposure to radiation. By divining the limits of what life can endure today, researchers can get a better idea of what made life possible in the first place, and what has allowed life to adapt to almost any environment.

And if life can be found at our planet’s extremes, then there’s a chance that life may exist elsewhere in the universe. Extremophiles offer a hypothetical peek at alien biology, helping us better imagine what kinds of life forms might evolve on other relatively inhospitable worlds, from our neighbor Mars to far beyond.

Bacteria have spent decades evolving resistance to virtually every antibiotic we have thrown at them. To stay ahead, new drugs must hit targets that existing antibiotics have never touched. A research team at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) has now developed a series of synthetic drug candidates that do exactly that: By blocking an essential molecular supply system, these molecules cut off the bacteria's supply of essential vitamins and starve them to death. The team published its findings in two studies in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Like all living cells, bacteria need vitamins to survive and cause infection. Unlike humans, many bacteria rely on specialized membrane transporters—called energy-coupling factor transporters, or ECF transporters—to actively and efficiently import vitamins from their surroundings into the cell. Block these transporters, and the bacteria run out of essential nutrients and die.

What makes ECF transporters particularly attractive as a drug target is that human cells do not have them. A drug designed to block these transporters would therefore attack the bacteria while leaving human cells largely unaffected, substantially reducing the risk of side effects.

More than 550 million years ago, a small, flattened animal moved across the seafloor and repeatedly favored one direction. Fossils of Spriggina floundersi suggest that when it bent its body, it tended to turn right.

That preference may represent the oldest-known example of lateralized behavior, in which an animal consistently favors one side of its body over the other. The evidence pushes the roots of this behavior back to the Ediacaran Period, long before the emergence of most familiar animal groups.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, was led by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History, Florida State University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Riverside. By examining how Spriggina fossils were curved, the researchers found a population-wide pattern rather than a random mix of leftward and rightward movement.

“When we talk about being right-or-left-handed, most people likely think about how they hold a pencil or kick a soccer ball. But our research shows that an animal without hands or feet, living over 500 million years ago, may have had its own version of handedness,” said lead author Scott Evans, assistant curator of invertebrate paleontology at the museum.

Space weather warnings could be received hours before Earth is hit rather than minutes with the help of a miniature UK-built instrument soon to be stationed in deep space. MAGIC (MAGnetometer from Imperial College) is part of the European Space Agency's Heliospheric Pioneer for Solar and Interplanetary Threats Defense (HENON) CubeSat mission, which is scheduled for launch in early 2027.

By measuring the sun's magnetic field much farther upstream than current real-time space weather monitors, the mission aims to extend advance warning of severe solar storms from just tens of minutes to several hours.

"I am really excited to be working on the HENON mission because it paves the way for a dramatic improvement in our ability to respond to severe space weather," said Eastwood.

Researchers at EMBL Hamburg and collaborators at the Leibniz Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP) have mapped how the influenza A virus rewires infected human cells in unprecedented detail. To do this, the researchers used a customized experimental workflow to directly observe how proteins interact inside intact infected cells.

Every year, seasonal influenza kills up to 650,000 people globally and causes serious illness for 3–5 million individuals. The influenza A virus, in particular, has been responsible for several pandemics, including the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. When this virus infects cells, it releases its genetic material, called RNA, which contains blueprints for a handful of proteins. These proteins then spread throughout the host cell and repurpose its molecular machinery to make more viruses.

Scientists want to understand this process in detail because it would help in designing better drug therapies and vaccines against the flu virus. That's why it's crucial to figure out how proteins of the flu virus interact with proteins of host cells and subvert them to meet the virus's needs. This is the first time scientists have mapped direct virus-host protein contacts at scale inside intact influenza-infected cells, with enough structural detail to model how the proteins fit together.

"Our work provides a new way to study flu-host interactions in their native context and with structural insight," said Jan Kosinski, group leader at EMBL Hamburg and Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB). "The current results are a snapshot of a moment during infection, and they open the door to studying flu-host interactions across the entire infection cycle."

Advances in computing power, artificial intelligence (AI) and fancy tools that measure sounds promise to bring people closer to conversing with other animals. These advances could turn animal chatter into bits of information that can be decoded by humans.  

Of course, some animals can already talk to us — in our preferred languages, too. Jarvis tells the story of a parrot that left its California home. It returned years later speaking Spanish, he says.  

Such language skills are rare. Thinking up a message and making intricate vocal sounds to convey it take special mental skills and a great flexibility of body systems. These traits are present in fewer than 1 percent of vertebrate species, says Michael Long. He’s a neuroscientist at New York University in New York City.  

Not all animals may be good conversationalists. Take vervet monkeys. “Their cognitive abilities are huge,” Long says. But they flounder when it comes to producing complex sounds. “So they have one of those requirements, but they need to get the other one,” Long says.  

And with rare exceptions, none really speak our language. But that gap can be overcome. It may just take a slight shift in what we consider talking. “Animals are speaking, often — to use speaking in a very loose way — more vibrantly than we had ever given them credit for,” Long says. 

Understanding animals 
Like parrots, dolphins and whales may similarly make good conversation partners with people. In 2023, scientists used a decoded whale “hello” to enjoy a short conversation with an Alaskan humpback. This exchange consisted of a volley of whale whups, translated into English as “hello.” Still, both parties engaged in this interspecies chat. 

Another group of researchers has since discovered that whale language shares statistical properties with those spoken by humans. With these sorts of advances, perhaps we’ll soon be swapping krill recipes.

Some of Jarvis’ research includes mice that have been genetically changed to produce more complex sounds. He is part of a team that’s closely examining key genes that are active in good vocal learners. Mice with a human version of a protein called NOVA1, for instance, made more complex vocalizations. To be clear, this is not yet a talking mouse. But the research is moving fast.

Some animal messages are clear even without a fancy sci-fi gadget. “Animals are broadly expressive,” Long points out. Anguished yowls of a cat sitting by her unfilled food dish are no great mystery.  

A person may be unable to form a sentence after a stroke yet still solve a difficult puzzle, recognize a hidden pattern, or make a sound logical judgment. That contrast points to a basic question about the mind: does reasoning depend on language, or can the brain think logically without words?

Cognitive neuroscientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research found that severe language impairment does not prevent people from performing well on logical reasoning tasks. Brain scans also showed that the regions responsible for processing language were not recruited when healthy participants reasoned through logical problems. The research was published in PNAS and led by Evelina Fedorenko, an MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences.

Logic may not depend on language
For thousands of years, philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists have argued over whether language is the machinery of thought or simply one of the tools used to express it. Logic and language appear closely connected because both can be broken into smaller parts and assembled into more complicated structures.

Hope Kean, a postdoc and former K. Lisa Yang Integrative Computational Neuroscience (ICoN) Center graduate fellow in Fedorenko’s lab, notes that this resemblance has made language seem like a plausible foundation for abstract reasoning. “Abstract thinking has properties that look a lot like language,” Kean says, pointing to structural similarities. “You can decompose a thought into subcomponents, like little atoms of logical propositions, and you can combine them in a hierarchical manner to make more complex structured rules, very akin to language.”

Kean and Fedorenko, who is also a McGovern Institute investigator, questioned whether that similarity meant the same brain system must support both abilities. People usually need language to receive a logic problem, describe their reasoning, or explain an answer, but the mental work between those steps might occur elsewhere.

“There are aspects of thinking that seem to go beyond some of the limitations of language,” Kean explains. Logical reasoning demands precision that language often lacks. And language is linear, progressing one word at a time, whereas evaluating available information to reach logical conclusions can require thinking in less linear ways.

Global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible. However, the improvements remain fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report, released Tuesday by five United Nations specialized agencies.

The report estimates that 7.8% of the global population faced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022, confirming a sustained, albeit slow, improvement. This means that around 645 million people were affected by hunger in 2025, representing a reduction of nearly 14 million compared with 2024 and 43 million compared with 2022.

Despite global progress, recovery remains uneven across regions. Asia, together with Latin America and the Caribbean, has recorded steady improvements in recent years. In contrast, Africa is now home to approximately 309 million hungry people, compared with 292 million in Asia. Although Africa's previously rising trend is beginning to stabilize, with the share of its population facing hunger decreasing from 20.3% in 2024 to 20.0% in 2025, the continent now has the highest number of hungry people in absolute terms amid a rapidly growing population.

Broader measures of food access tell a similar story. In 2025, an estimated 25.8% of the global population (around 2.1 billion people) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning they were at times forced to compromise on the quality or quantity of the food they ate. This is down from 27.1% in 2024 and 28.7% in 2020—equivalent to nearly 86 million fewer people than in 2024 and 135 million fewer than in 2020, though still above pre-pandemic levels.

Regional disparities remain stark. More than half of Africa's population (56.6%) faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025, compared with 20.3% in Asia, 22.9% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.7% in Northern America and Europe. Food insecurity also continues to be more prevalent in rural areas than in peri-urban and urban areas, while women remain disproportionately affected, although the gender gap narrowed slightly in 2025.

Light moves quickly enough to transmit enormous amounts of information, but that speed creates a problem when a computer needs to hold, delay, or synchronize an optical signal. Researchers from Seoul National University and the University of Seoul have now designed a programmable photonic integrated circuit that can slow light whenever needed.

The rapid growth of generative AI and large-scale artificial intelligence models has sharply increased computing demands. Conventional electronic semiconductors face persistent constraints, including heavy power use and limited data transfer speeds, driving interest in optical computing systems that process information rapidly with less energy. Yet because light naturally travels at a fixed speed, creating the buffers and memory functions needed for optical computing has remained difficult.

The researchers addressed this limitation with a programmable photonic circuit that controls both the speed and shape of optical signals. Their approach provided greater control over “slow light” than previously proposed methods.

What dangers does smoke from wildfires pose? Who is most at risk? Here are some answers to health questions often asked, especially now with fires in France and Spain.

What is in the smoke?
Fires burning vegetation generate gases and particles in the air that are dangerous to our health, notes Anses, France's health safety agency.

Fine particles are especially harmful because they can penetrate deeply into the lungs.

Carbon monoxide is one of the major pollutants released by such fires, the agency says. It also listed other chemical substances, such as carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds including acrolein, formaldehyde and benzene.

Other pollutants can be mixed in if vehicles or buildings are consumed by flames.

Who is most at risk?
Individuals closest to a fire can display symptoms of respiratory irritation. But effects will be felt more widely among the population if wind carries the smoke over the following hours or several days later, French pulmonologist Bruno Crestani told AFP.

Especially at risk are "vulnerable persons—those who are old, who have a respiratory disease, infants or asthmatics—because this (smoke) can unbalance a situation that was previously under control," said Crestani, who heads France's Respiratory Health Foundation.

The impact is "not only respiratory," he pointed out. "These particles can enter the circulatory system" and possibly trigger diabetes, a stroke or a heart attack, he said.

Because these particles are so fine and light, they can be carried long distances and affect people well away from the fire zone.

In September 2025, the World Meteorological Organization stressed that wildfires can send a toxic mix of pollutants thousands of kilometers. It noted that, in 2024, smoke from wildfires in Canada caused air pollution as far away as Europe.

A poor night’s sleep can affect far more than energy the next day. Research from Florida International University links sleep disorders with structural differences in brain regions that help control attention, motivation and decision-making.

Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the findings provide one of the broadest comparisons yet of how different sleep disorders are associated with the brain. The results could eventually support earlier diagnosis and treatments tailored to specific conditions.

Multiple disorders reveal shared brain changes
An estimated 50 to 70 million Americans live with sleep disorders. To search for common neurological patterns, researchers at FIU’s Center for Children and Families conducted a meta-analysis combining results from 57 brain imaging studies.

Rather than examining one condition at a time, the researchers compared two broad categories. Dyssomnias, such as insomnia and sleep apnea, interfere with falling asleep or remaining asleep. Parasomnias, including sleepwalking, nightmare disorder and sleep terrors, involve unusual events that disrupt the sleep cycle.

“As more people recognize how important sleep is, there’s growing urgency to understand what’s happening in the brain,” said Matthew Sutherland, a cognitive neuroscientist at FIU and senior author of the study. “By bringing together results from many studies, this research gives us a clearer picture of how sleep disorders affect brain structure and function and where we need to focus next.”

Attention centers show a common decline
Both categories were associated with decreases in the thalamus, a region that filters incoming information, supports concentration, and contributes to higher-level thinking. The researchers identified changes specifically in the pulvinar, an area within the thalamus that directs attention and helps manage cognitive control.

These differences were connected with wider brain networks that support concentration and task performance. That pattern may help explain why disrupted sleep is associated with slower reactions, poorer decision-making and a greater likelihood of errors and accidents.