Making use of emergency telescope time awarded to an international team of astronomers in February, JWST's first observation of the building-size asteroid reveals that 2024 YR4 may be slightly larger and rockier than previous ground-based telescope studies suggested. Luckily, though, JWST also confirmed what NASA has known for weeks: 2024 YR4 is no longer a hazard , and there is zero chance that the asteroid will strike Earth in 2032. However, a direct collision with the moon is still possible. "While an Earth impact by 2024 YR4 on December 22, 2032 has now been ruled out, it continues to have a non-zero probability of impacting the Moon at this time," the researchers wrote in their preliminary report , which has not yet been peer-reviewed. Initial observations with ground-based telescopes indicated that the space rock had a diameter of about 180 feet (55 meters) — roughly as wide as the Leaning Tower of Pisa is tall. Its orbital trajectory frequently crosses Earth's route around the sun, making a direct collision with our planet possible. If such a strike were to occur, it could wipe out an entire city with the equivalent force of 500 Hiroshima bombs . Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors While analyzing the asteroid's trajectory, researchers briefly estimated that 2024 YR4 had up to a 3.1% chance of crashing into Earth in 2032 — the highest probability ever recorded for an object of this asteroid's size. But, while uncertainty reigned, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that several hours of JWST's emergency discretionary time would be used to study the potentially hazardous space rock's size and trajectory. Key to these observations are JWST's infrared sensors, which can directly detect heat emitted by the asteroid and provide insight into both its size and composition. Ground-based telescopes that observe visible light can only see the sunlight reflected off of the asteroid's surface, leaving big questions about its true nature. JWST made its first observations of the asteroid on March 26, watching the asteroid rotate once every 20 minutes over a five-hour period. The thermal analysis also suggests that the asteroid is cooler than is typical for objects of this size, hinting that it may be rockier than previously thought as well. But even if 2024 YR4 is a bit bigger and harder than we thought, it still poses no imminent threat to Earth, the JWST data confirm. But there does remain a roughly 2% chance that the asteroid will slam into the moon in 2032, report co-author Andrew Rivkin , an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, told New Scientist . While a lunar impact may sound scary, the moon endures thousands of tiny meteor strikes every year and has the cratered scars to prove it has survived much larger impacts. "We've got our fingers crossed for a moon impact," Alan Fitzsimmons , a physics and math professor at Queen's University Belfast in the U.K. who was not involved in the JWST observations, told New Scientist. "It would have no effect on Earth, but would allow us to study the formation of a lunar crater by a known asteroid for the very first time."

On March 29, a partial solar eclipse swept across parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike in a total solar eclipse, the moon didn't completely block out the sun this time, so observers needed equipment such as eclipse glasses or pinhole cameras to view the sun safely. Because the eclipse happened at sunrise in North America, seeing the spectacle at its best depended on having a clear view of the eastern horizon and cloudless weather. In European time zones, the eclipse unfolded at midday, making it an easier viewing experience. Sungazers in Greenland and Europe captured these stunning images of the moon taking a "bite" out of the sun. (Image credit: Leon Neal via Getty Images) Observers in Rouans, France, were treated to glimpses of the partial eclipse behind clouds around midday. (Image credit: Leon Neal via Getty Images) A slim crescent of the sun peeks out from behind the moon above a home in Nuuk, Greenland. (Image credit: CTK via Alamy Stock Photo) Some areas, like the Czech town of Turnov, had their view of the eclipse completely obscured by clouds.

New technologies today often involve electronic devices that are smaller and smarter than before. During the Middle Paleolithic , when Neanderthals were modern humans' neighbors, new technologies meant something quite different: new kinds of stone tools that were smaller but could be used for many tasks and lasted for a long time. Archaeologists like me are interested in the Middle Paleolithic — a period spanning 250,000 to 30,000 years ago — because it includes the first appearance of our species, our arrival into many parts of the world for the first time, and our invention of many new kinds of stone tools. An illustration of a typical Quina scraper and related tools. Archaeologists have thought that ancient people in East Asia completely skipped the Middle Paleolithic . Our discovery challenges the long-standing notion that while ancient people in Europe and Africa were inventing new tools during this period, people of East Asia stuck to only the most basic tools that remained unchanged for thousands of years. Related: 150,000-year-old stone tools reveal humans lived in tropical rainforests much earlier than thought The tool we've identified is called a Quina scraper . This type of stone tool is well known from archaeological sites in Europe and the Middle East . This shape results in durable cutting edges, ideal for long cycles of use followed by resharpening. We know this from tiny scratches and chips on the scrapers that match traces caused by working these materials in experiments using contemporary stone tools. European archaeologists believe that Quina scrapers were invented to meet the needs of highly mobile hunters living in cool and dry climates . These hunters were focused on seasonal migratory prey such as reindeer, giant deer, horse and bison. Quina scrapers would have helped them process their kills into food and other resources — for example, to extract marrow. First find of a Quina tool in East Asia This technique can identify how much time has passed since each individual sand grain was last exposed to the Sun. Dating many individual grains in a sample is important because tree roots, insects or other animals can mix younger sediments down into older ones. This is roughly the same time Quina scrapers were being used in Europe at Neanderthal sites. He found that the Middle Paleolithic people of Longtan lived in a relatively open forest-grassland environment and a dry and cool climate. This environment is similar to that of Quina sites in Europe. She also found polish from using the tools on meat, hides and soft plants. Our new discovery of Quina scrapers joins another recent find of a different kind of Middle Paleolithic technology in East Asia: Levallois tools from Guanyindong Cave in Guizhou Province in south-central China. Levallois tools result from a distinctive multistep sequence that efficiently produces lots of useful cutting tools, with minimal wasted stone. Taken together, these two finds make a strong case that Middle Paleolithic technologies were present in East Asia. But why are we only just finding this Quina tool kit now, when it has been known in Europe for such a long time? Another reason Middle Paleolithic evidence appears rare in East Asia is because what now seem to be less typical variations of the Quina tool kit previously found in China had been overlooked, likely due to archaeologists' narrow definitions based on European examples. Or did local people in East Asia independently invent it? To answer these questions, we hope to find more Quina scrapers at sites with deeper — meaning older — layers than Longtan. If older layers hold what look like the remnants of experiments in stone toolmaking that would eventually result in Quina tools, it suggests Quina tools were invented locally. If deeper layers have dissimilar tools, that suggests Quina technology was introduced from a neighboring group. We also hope future work will reveal who made these tools. Our excavations at Longtan did not find any human bone or DNA that could help us identify the toolmakers. During the Middle Paleolithic, there were multiple human species that could make tools like this. It could have been modern humans like us. Considering that the Quina technology in Europe is directly associated with Neanderthals, this seems likely. But it could also have been Denisovans, an extinct species similar to modern humans found during this time in Siberia , the Tibetan Plateau and Laos , or even a new human species that hasn't been seen before. Whoever was making and using these Quina scrapers, they were able to be inventive and flexible with their technology, adapting to their changing environment.

Geological Survey March 31, 2025 US earthquake safety relies on federal employees’ expertise The US experiences violent earthquakes, but the damage and death toll is much lower than in many countries because of the work of federal seismologists and engineers. He was not the all-powerful monarch that President Trump allegedly aspires to be. AP Photo March 18, 2025 A brief history of Medicaid and America’s long struggle to establish a health care safety net Left out of FDR’s New Deal, the health insurance program for the poor was finally established in 1965. Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons March 17, 2025 Remembering China’s Empress Dowager Ling, a Buddhist who paved the way for future female rulers The empress, like many other rulers at the time, legitimized her reign through Buddhism, portraying herself either as a Buddha or as a patron of Buddhists. AP Photo/Evan Vucci March 17, 2025 Trump’s first term polarized teens’ views on racism and inequality A social scientist tracking adolescents’ beliefs and behaviors over time was uniquely positioned to document changes in teens’ worldviews after Trump’s 2016 election. George/ClassicStock via Getty Images March 10, 2025 America is becoming a nation of homebodies Even after the pandemic lockdowns were lifted, out-of-home activities and travel remained substantially depressed, far below 2019 levels. Fat Camera/E+ via Getty Images February 28, 2025 As flu cases break records this year, vaccine rates are declining, particularly for children and 65+ adults So far, fewer than half of US children and older adults have been vaccinated during this year’s high-severity flu season. AP Photo/Ben Curtis January 30, 2025 A federal policy expert weighs in on Trump’s efforts to stifle gender-affirming care for Americans under 19 While it doesn’t constitute a national ban on gender-affirming care for minors, the executive order contains provisions that could have a chilling effect on health care providers around the country. Darya Komarova/Getty Images January 30, 2025 Gen Z seeks safety above all else as the generation grows up amid constant crisis and existential threat Recent generations may have taken safety for granted, but today’s youth are growing up in an era of compounded crises – and being safe is their priority. arturbo/E+ via Getty Images January 22, 2025 “Olho por olho”: estudo analisa o valor de partes do corpo ao longo da história e entre culturas Pessoas de muitas culturas diferentes em todo o mundo e ao longo de milênios concordam amplamente sobre quais partes do corpo são mais valiosas e quanto de compensação elas merecem quando feridas. arturbo/E+ via Getty Images January 10, 2025 An eye for an eye: People agree about the values of body parts across cultures and eras People from many different cultures across the globe and across millennia largely agree about which body parts are most valuable – and how much compensation they warrant when injured. Reprodução de Instagram / Stuart Palley January 9, 2025 Ecologista americano explica o que são e como os ‘Ventos de Santa Ana’ alimentaram os incêndios mortais em Los Angeles Os ventos secos e fortes que descem as montanhas em direção à costa do sul da Califórnia em janeiro este ano foram muito mais violentos, alimentando e espalhando incêndios florestais que atingiram a área urbana de diversos bairros da cidade AP Photo/Ethan Swope January 29, 2025 How Santa Ana winds fueled the deadly fires in Southern California Where people live today also makes a difference when it comes to fire risk.

Earthquakes and the damage they cause are apolitical. In the U.S., this preparation hinges in large part on the expertise of scientists and engineers in federal agencies who develop earthquake hazard models and contribute to the creation of building codes designed to ensure homes, high-rises and other structures won’t collapse when the ground shakes. Local communities and states decide whether to adopt building code documents. But those documents and other essential resources are developed through programs supported by federal agencies working in partnership with practicing engineers and earthquake experts at universities. This essential federal role is illustrated by two programs that we work closely with as an earthquake engineer and a disaster management expert whose work focuses on seismic risk. These maps, based on research into earthquake sources such as faults and how seismic waves move through the earth’s crust, are used to determine the forces that structures in each community should be designed to resist. More broadly, FEMA, the USGS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation work together through the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program to advance earthquake science and turn knowledge of earthquake risks into safer standards, better building design and education. Some of those agencies have been threatened by potential job and funding cuts under the Trump administration, and others face uncertainty regarding continuation of federal support for their work. It is in large part because of the National Seismic Hazard Model and regularly updated building codes that U.S. buildings designed to meet modern code requirements are considered among the safest in the world, despite substantial seismic hazards in several states. Without that professionalism, we believe experts from outside the federal government would be less likely to donate their time. The impacts of these and other programs are well documented. The US has long relied on people with expertise For much of early U.S. history, federal jobs were awarded through a patronage system, where political loyalty determined employment. As described in “The Federal Civil Service System and The Problem of Bureaucracy,” this system led to widespread corruption and dysfunction, with officials focused more on managing quid pro quo patronage than governing effectively. That peaked in 1881 with President James Garfield’s assassination by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled supporter who had been denied a government appointment. This preference for a merit-based system was reinforced in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. It states as national policy that “to provide the people of the United States with a competent, honest, and productive workforce … and to improve the quality of public service, Federal personnel management should be implemented consistent with merit system principles.” The shift away from a patronage system produced a more stable and efficient federal workforce, which has enabled improvements in many critical areas, including seismic safety and disaster response. A merit-based civil service is not just a democratic ideal but a proven necessity for the safety and security of the American people, one we hope will continue well into the future.

New technologies today often involve electronic devices that are smaller and smarter than before. During the Middle Paleolithic, when Neanderthals were modern humans’ neighbors, new technologies meant something quite different: new kinds of stone tools that were smaller but could be used for many tasks and lasted for a long time. Archaeologists have thought that ancient people in East Asia completely skipped the Middle Paleolithic. Our discovery challenges the long-standing notion that while ancient people in Europe and Africa were inventing new tools during this period, people of East Asia stuck to only the most basic tools that remained unchanged for thousands of years. The tool we’ve identified is called a Quina scraper. This type of stone tool is well known from archaeological sites in Europe and the Middle East. This shape results in durable cutting edges, ideal for long cycles of use followed by resharpening. We know this from tiny scratches and chips on the scrapers that match traces caused by working these materials in experiments using contemporary stone tools. European archaeologists believe that Quina scrapers were invented to meet the needs of highly mobile hunters living in cool and dry climates. These hunters were focused on seasonal migratory prey such as reindeer, giant deer, horse and bison. Quina scrapers would have helped them process their kills into food and other resources – for example, to extract marrow. This technique can identify how much time has passed since each individual sand grain was last exposed to the Sun. Dating many individual grains in a sample is important because tree roots, insects or other animals can mix younger sediments down into older ones. This is roughly the same time Quina scrapers were being used in Europe at Neanderthal sites. He found that the Middle Paleolithic people of Longtan lived in a relatively open forest-grassland environment and a dry and cool climate. This environment is similar to that of Quina sites in Europe. She also found polish from using the tools on meat, hides and soft plants. Taken together, these two finds make a strong case that Middle Paleolithic technologies were present in East Asia. But why are we only just finding this Quina tool kit now, when it has been known in Europe for such a long time? Another reason Middle Paleolithic evidence appears rare in East Asia is because what now seem to be less typical variations of the Quina tool kit previously found in China had been overlooked, likely due to archaeologists’ narrow definitions based on European examples. Or did local people in East Asia independently invent it? If older layers hold what look like the remnants of experiments in stone toolmaking that would eventually result in Quina tools, it suggests Quina tools were invented locally. If deeper layers have dissimilar tools, that suggests Quina technology was introduced from a neighboring group. We also hope future work will reveal who made these tools. Our excavations at Longtan did not find any human bone or DNA that could help us identify the toolmakers. During the Middle Paleolithic, there were multiple human species that could make tools like this. Considering that the Quina technology in Europe is directly associated with Neanderthals, this seems likely. But it could also have been Denisovans, an extinct species similar to modern humans found during this time in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau and Laos, or even a new human species that hasn’t been seen before. Whoever was making and using these Quina scrapers, they were able to be inventive and flexible with their technology, adapting to their changing environment.

Physicists at the world's largest particle accelerator have made a first-of-its-kind discovery about antimatter that could help solve one of the universe's biggest mysteries. The discovery — made at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN , near Geneva — has revealed that a short-lived cousin of protons and neutrons, the beauty-lambda baryon, decays at a different rate than its antimatter counterpart. Called charge-parity (CP) violation, this effect refers to particles of opposite charge, like matter and animatter, behaving differently. It's a crucial explanation for why matter was able to dominate over antimatter in the early universe — without it, the universe would be an empty void. What's more, this violation has previously been only detected in particles made up of quark-antiquark pairs, called mesons. It has not been observed in baryons — three-quark particles, such as protons and neutrons, that make up most of the universe's visible matter. This first-of-its-kind detection has changed that, potentially opening up an avenue to search for physics beyond the Standard Model. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors Theory predicts that the matter and antimatter inside this plasma soup should have annihilated each other entirely. But scientists believe that some unknown imbalance — likely CP violation in decays involving the weak nuclear force — enabled more matter than antimatter to be produced, sparing it from self-destruction. To search for CP violation in baryons, the researchers at the LHCb combed through data of the countless particle interactions (where protons collide roughly 25 million times a second ) that occurred between 2009 and 2018. Their analysis revealed that the difference between the decay numbers of beauty-lambda baryons and anti-beauty-lambda baryons was 2.45% from zero with an uncertainty of about 0.47%.

This marks the first human case of rabies in Michigan since 2009 . "Person-to-person transmission of rabies is extremely rare, though it has been documented in a very small number of cases involving organ transplantation," a statement from UTMC reads, as reported by local news WTOL 11 . Rabies is a deadly disease caused by the rabies virus that affects the central nervous system of mammals, including humans. The virus is typically transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal via bites and open wounds, such as scratches. Related: Can you transplant an organ more than once? Symptoms initially resemble the flu (fever, headache, weakness) but progress to neurological issues such as confusion, hallucinations, paralysis, hydrophobia (fear of water), and eventually coma and death. Fewer than 20 people have ever survived rabies after symptoms presented, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the CDC , the vast majority of U.S. rabies cases are a result of exposure to bats, raccoons, skunks and foxes. In the U.S., 7 out of 10 people who die from rabies are infected by bats , while worldwide, domestic dogs cause over 95% of the estimated 70,000 annual human rabies deaths. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors In a statement, the CDC said that the organ donor was exposed to rabies from a wild animal in Idaho five weeks before they died and their organ was transplanted, ABC News reports. The donor had not died with "traditional rabies symptoms," and they had not sought out medical help or notified public health officials after their exposure to the animal. After an animal bite, rabies can be prevented with post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). About 800,000 people receive rabies-related medical care from local or state health departments around the U.S. every year. Several cases of rabies being contracted from a transplanted organ have been reported in the past. "Based on the concerning symptoms of the kidney recipient who died, CDC worked with Missouri health officials to intercept a fourth corneal graft before it could be implanted into a Missouri resident." Cases like this are still extremely rare and should not discourage patients from receiving life-saving organ transplants, Dr. Daniel Kaul , a clinical professor at the University of Michigan's Infectious Disease Clinic who was not involved in the treatment, told local broadcaster WOOD TV8 . "The risk of not getting a transplant if you have organ failure is so much higher than this kind of incredibly rare but tragic situation," he said. While organs are screened ahead of transplantation , testing for rabies and other rare diseases would take several days, whereas donated organs are only viable for transplantation for a matter of hours , Kaul added. The MDHHS noted that all health care providers and anyone else exposed to the Michigan transplant patient have been assessed for rabies exposure and given PEP if necessary.

Once limited to intimidation, voter fraud or hacking, election interference includes more mundane, pervasive and ubiquitous interactions. Yet those same processes, debates, persuasions and messy arguments are integral to democracy. If “election interference” encompasses all efforts to influence opinion, do we risk diluting its meaning, creating a new hollow accusation like “fake news?” More importantly, if this broad view is right, it raises difficult new challenges beyond the narrow measures of election law. Germany recently accused Elon Musk of meddling in their February election, claiming that his prominent endorsement of the Alternative for Germany party on X was an illegal foreign donation. During the 2022 Brazilian election, misinformation on WhatsApp and Telegram swayed voter intentions, and the Superior Electoral Court frequently requested that content be taken down. Much of this content was homegrown, produced, endorsed and circulated by Brazilians themselves. If such content was traditional journalism, existing laws and standards could be applied. But when it resembles ordinary political speech, many see takedowns as censorship. During the 2020 Taiwan elections, officials worried that pro-unification memes came not only from Chinese-controlled bots and paid posters (itself a form of election interference), but were trending because the TikTok algorithm systematically prioritized it. And in the United States, the legislative push to ban TikTok gained momentum alongside political concern that an apparent uptick in anti-Israel sentiment was caused by covert manipulation of TikTok’s algorithm. Politicians of all stripes have called for action on deceptive speech, but there is little agreement on the nature of the problem, especially across partisan divides News isn’t just about facts, it’s about what matters and why, and as such, media regulation should not solely be determined by the legal system. There is the risk that any effort to control content used to interfere with elections (propaganda, disinformation, fakes) will be inescapably partisan, thus unacceptable in democracies. The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) notes some of these concerns. It establishes “trusted flaggers” (experts and civil society groups) to help moderate content. It doesn’t mention elections, but voices concerns that platforms may be “used to disseminate or amplify misleading or deceptive content, including disinformation,” which can undermine fundamental rights. Flagging posts has been criticized for conflating editorship with censorship There are two schools of thought in competition with each other pertaining to free speech. Trust-breaking disrupts the systems we use to filter, verify and contextualize information. For every internationally important election or referendum, there are hundreds of local contests, municipal elections, internal party nominations and the like that shape political realities just as meaningfully. Influencers operating at small scales can have outsized effects that ripple through broader constituencies. These broad concerns about vulnerabilities in our media systems matter all the time, not just during elections. These reflections are distorted by online social media platforms and messaging apps. We will have to eventually consider something like a “made in Canada” Digital Services Act that can give voters a voice in the kind of information environment they want. There’s much to be learned from the EU’s early lessons, especially as they respond to American tech companies that control so much of the online information space.

During her time as an MEP between 2004 and 2017, Le Pen and her team paid party staff with funds that should have gone to European parliamentary aides. She has been sentenced to four years in prison, two of which would be electronic monitoring. She is also unlikely to see the inside of a cell for the other two years as she is appealing her conviction. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that she has been banned from holding public office for five years. Crucially, the ban is to start immediately, meaning that even with an appeal, Le Pen is highly unlikely to be able to stand as a candidate in the next presidential election in 2027. However, others will no doubt see this as a chance to distance the party further from the Le Pen name, following the death of Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen earlier this year. This process has been in motion for some time. Jordan Bardella took over from Le Pen as president of the party in 2022 and has clearly been waiting and preparing for this eventuality. Allegations were first levelled at Le Pen many years ago and her crimes relate to her time as an MEP between 2004 and 2017. He has been the plan B option throughout her trial. He also managed to send a record number of parliamentarians to the National Assembly after French president Emmanuel Macron called a snap election just weeks later. This was, nevertheless, a somewhat disappointing outcome as many on the far right had started to imagine Bardella as prime minister. Since failing to meet this expectation, his leadership has come under more scrutiny. His reaction to Le Pen’s sidelining will be watched carefully. However, Le Pen’s conviction comes after years of embezzlement which has allowed the far right to build its strength. The deep levels of distrust in public institutions and mainstream politics are likely to play a role here. Bardella has already said that Le Pen’s conviction amounted to the “execution” of democracy. Whether such a narrative takes hold is a choice that is very much in the hands of mainstream elite actors. Those who have a privileged access to shaping public discourse, such as journalists, politicians and experts will therefore play a key role. Instead of giving pride of place to Le Pen and the far right in a tempting sensationalising coverage, the mainstream media must turn to serious analysis. That would lessen the potential for a narrative of victimisation to take hold. This would mean engaging seriously with what the RN actually proposes as a model of society: one that is not against the “elite” and for the people, but merely in favour of a different elite taking control at the head of a top-down authoritarian state. This would then allow voters to understand that the far right is not on their side, but on the side of power, wealth and hierarchies. Those who oppose such a takeover could go some way to fix the damage that has been done with carelessly associating these parties with “populism”. Had politicians – left, right and centre – not continuously used the far right as a diversion from their own failures to tackle the many crises their countries face, the far right would not be as powerful as it seems. Instead, it is issues that would require radical measures to tackle economic and social insecurity which are prioritised. Now that Le Pen is out of the picture, it is a good time to shift the agenda back to democracy and hope.

Scientists caught a massive and extremely powerful X-class solar flare being spat out from the sun on Friday (March 28), just before the stellar eruption triggered a radio blackout across two continents. This X1.1-class solar flare , which was released from a sunspot named AR4046, marks the first X-class flare the sun has released since early February. "A strong solar flare (R3) occurred and peaked at X1.1 near 11:20am EDT (1520 UTC) on 28 March, 2025. Related: Our sun may be overdue for a 'superflare' stronger than billions of atomic bombs, new research warns NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center shared the spectacular video on X, formerly known as Twitter, showing the solar flare erupting from the sun alongside a cloud of solar material known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). CMEs are massive bursts of plasma and magnetic field from the sun that are ejected into space, usually during solar flares. These fast-moving blobs of plasma can cause serious disturbances to satellites and power grids if Earth happens to be in their path. Solar flares are intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation that erupt from the sun’s surface, usually from magnetically active regions like sunspots. When the sun's magnetic fields tangle, break, and reconnect, massive amounts of energy are released in the form of light, heat, and charged particles. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors Related: X-class solar flares hit a new record in 2024 and could spike further this year — but the sun isn't entirely to blame, experts say This occurs because the solar flare's intense X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation ionize Earth's upper atmosphere, specifically the ionosphere, which is situated between 30 miles (48 km) and 600 miles (965 km) above Earth's surface. The ionosphere consists of several layers that reflect and refract radio waves, allowing high-frequency radio signals to travel long distances around the world. The CME is likely directed not Earth-directed; however analyses continues to be sure of no flanking influences. When this solar flare was released, a CME followed shortly after. CMEs can also knock satellites out of the sky, tamper with GPS-based equipment on Earth, and trigger widespread power outages in really severe cases. Luckily, the newly-launched CME is not expected to hit our planet, so no geomagnetic storms are expected in the coming days. solar astrophysicist Ryan French wrote in a post on X.

This ordinary moment, however, turned nightmarish and extraordinary in an instant. She hurled objects at her head, including scissors and a metal object. The attacker then poured an unknown liquid on her hijab and flicked her lighter several times, allegedly attempting to light the fabric ablaze. Library staff and security intervened before any more harm could take place. Afterwards, the survivor, a mother of two girls, explained that she’s unable to quell her terror. She said: “I can’t stop thinking: what if the lighter had worked? What if my hijab had caught fire?” But most of all, she’s terrified for her hijab-wearing daughters’ safety in public spaces. However, for racialized people, public space in North America is fraught with heightened risks. This incident is not an isolated act of violence. It is situated within a broader social climate that normalizes the policing of how racialized people “should” enter and occupy public spaces. Whether through horrific displays of public violence like this one, or legislative action like Bill 21 in Québec, the bodies of Muslim women have long been battlegrounds for white supremacist anxieties and ideologies. While we don’t yet know the attacker’s affiliations or what inspired her to commit this act of terror, this incident echoes racist aspirations for “purity.” White supremacist anxieties about demographic changes are articulated most clearly and directly in the “Great Replacement Theory” (and variations of it) that vilifies racialized people, asserting a drive to preserve “white innocence,” tied to eugenic fantasies of purifying North America and Europe. Muslims, in this racist ideology, figure as foreign invaders, a demographic threat and as “provocateurs” who are trying to overtake the white population through immigration and reproduction — or as some white supremacists call it, “baby Jihad.” Over the past decade, Ajax — in Durham region east of Toronto — has seen significant demographic changes, with an overall growth rate of about 15 per cent. The town is home to more than 125,000 people and about 14 per cent of them are Muslim. The growth of Muslim communities is situated within a broader shift. It seems, however, that not everyone is happy about this growth. The bodies of Muslim women have long been objectified, serving as a site where white racial anxieties are projected and enacted. Taken up as a sort of Trojan horse, their perceived ability to give birth and reproduce culture is weaponized against them. The responses to this perception of contamination take multiple forms. In Québec, for instance, Muslim women are being aggressively foreclosed from participation in public spaces and institutions with laws like Bill 21 and Bill 94. But it’s important to ask how our social arrangements prime and sustain the currents that produce Muslim women as provocations on sight. Racialized individuals must navigate what Black studies scholar George Lipsitz describes as “privileged moral geographies.” For instance, the frame of “disorderly conduct” often serves as a common tool to mark the “wrong ways” in which racialized individuals assert their presence in public settings. This includes the regulation of what foods are deemed appropriate for public consumption, the enforcement of norms around personal space, noise and loitering. The catch, however, is that when you are already racialized as a “cultural pollutant,” “conduct” merely fuels the racist climate that already marks you as an improper subject by sheer existence. Canadians like to believe in our multicultural country — that another samosa party or heritage night is all we need to confront intolerance and prejudice. However, what contact theory frames get wrong is the assumption of the public as a neutral site of engagement where people all have equal access to participation. This perpetually and always produces them as out of place — and as problems that disrupt the order of the public square. Until we confront the entrenched racialized ideas that govern public space, creating a landscape where some are seen as natural occupants while others are made alien, true inclusivity and safety will remain out of reach.

We all need care and support to navigate challenges in life. People with disabilities and their families often have an even greater need for support over time, especially if a disability is progressive or family members experience their own health challenges due to aging. As the CCCE’s executive director, Liv Mendelsohn, said: “Millions of Canadians are navigating caregiving with minimal support, and it’s simply unacceptable.” This article’s co-author, Donna Thomson, is a caregiver, author and educator. She is the mother of two grown children, one who has severe cerebral palsy and medical complexity. Thomson also helped care for her mother who lived with dementia until she passed away in the summer of 2018 at the age of 96. Family caregivers often need support themselves in order to keep working both inside and outside of the home. Parents of adult children with developmental disabilities in Canada are hardly ever asked: “What do you do for your son or daughter that paid helpers cannot?” Even less often, that question might be followed by: “Wow, that’s a lot. Would you like some support to continue doing those things?” Our research recognizes that both formal and informal supports are essential in enabling people with disabilities and their families to live their best lives. Unbound by professional obligations, safety standards or employer/funder priorities, these natural supporters can often be vocal advocates for the best interests of those they are supporting. However, sometimes finding and sustaining natural support in the community doesn’t come easily for people with disabilities and their families. Community organizations offering formal supports and supporting the creation and maintenance of natural supports can sometimes be beholden to funder obligations. Sometimes, this can mean the support provided to a person or family does not directly respond to what the individual or family needs. Even more frustrating is that waiting times can be so long to access formal supports that identified needs or priorities change in the meantime. It echoes our research findings that both paid and unpaid caregivers need financial support as well as targeted programs and services. For example, in Ontario, the Ministry for Children, Community and Social Services has published a framework that offers a long-term vision for transforming developmental services so people with developmental disabilities fully participate in their communities and are supported to live their lives. Research on natural support in Canada is often not explicit about or does not incorporate understandings of natural support from the perspectives of Indigenous, Black, rural, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized groups. People belonging to these groups may have their own needs and experiences that relate to navigating natural and formal support systems in Canada. Future-focused research agendas into natural supports, such as those proposed in the CCCE strategy’s recommendations, must intentionally seek to understand support and care experiences from these perspectives. At the Global Disability Summit taking place this week in Berlin from April 2-3, we will join voices from around the world to call on national leaders and decision-makers to ensure disability policies translate into tangible actions and inclusive practices. This is important, because the care we give to each other, regardless of age or ability, is what will sustain us as families. This article was co-authored by Donna Thomson, a caregiver, author and educator.

Mainstream public discourse in the first months of 2025 have been dominated by tensions between Canada and United States. While this political climate brings uncertainty at an international level, it comes with fear of job loss for many Canadians at a time when the cost of living is already straining many families’ finances. Read more: Canadians are feeling increasingly powerless amid economic struggles and rising inequality As psychology researchers studying parent-child relationships and child mental health, we believe it is important to consider children’s potential fears and anxiety in the current political climate. Here, we explain why it’s important to address this topic with children, and how parents can do so in a reassuring and informative manner. While the economy and politics could seem like topics that children would not really care about, recent research suggests that many children and youth actually worry about these topics. According to the study by psychology researcher Nicole E. Caporino and colleagues, 36 per cent of children worried about the U.S. getting into war, and 37 per cent worried about their family’s finances. Similarly, studies elsewhere suggest children and youth worry about issues affecting their families. Based on these numbers, we can assume that many Canadian children also worry about the current Canada-U.S. political climate. Of course, it’s worth remembering not all families experience political and economic events in the same way. For example, children whose families face economic precarity are likely already living with stressors affecting their households like unemployment or food insecurity. Given that children may be concerned and worried, some parents may intuitively seek to avoid the topic with children to avoid provoking more distress. However, discussing a stressful event can actually decrease the distress felt towards it. When children are able to talk about what concerns them with their parents, they learn important emotional regulation and coping skills. Discussions between parents and children also help foster a climate of trust, in which children feel like they can rely on their parents in moments of need. Parents should watch for anxiety symptoms in their children, which may manifest in various ways, including having mood changes, being more irritable or sad, having difficulty sleeping, being more clingy than usual, or withdrawing from activities. There are also signs that may be harder to spot. We present five ways to address the situation with your children: This is especially important given that children tend to worry about different things than adults. In the media, it is common to refer to the diplomatic and economic tensions as a “trade war.” While adults understand that trade wars do not involve military attacks, this concept is much more abstract for children. Hearing the word “war” may trigger difficult images for them, including armed soldiers, weapons and devastation. This is especially true for children with lived experience of war, political conflict or displacement. Read more: Coronavirus isn't the end of 'childhood innocence,' but an opportunity to rethink children's rights It’s important to reframe the conflict in ways that children can understand. For example, parents can compare the conflict between two children. Parents might say: “You know when there are two children upset with each other at school, and they have a big disagreement. When discussing these topics, parents should seek to clarify any misinformation and provide reassurance. They should also help ensure children receive information from credible sources rather than social media or peers, who may sensationalize or misinterpret events. Providing factual but age-appropriate explanations is a key ingredient in mitigating fear and uncertainty. Many Canadian families are choosing to boycott American products. In order to ease the emotional burden on children, it can be helpful to reframe the boycott as an opportunity for co-operation. For instance, parents can highlight how they are trying to support local businesses. We’re going to have so much fun trying new things!” This approach creates curiosity and control, not anxiety. As important as it is to validate children’s fears, it is equally important to help them maintain a sense of normalcy. Families should strive to balance discussions about the trade war and its potential ramifications with more light, mundane topics. Routines are also beneficial for children’s development and well-being. Focus on adding fun and soothing activities to the daily routine. As the trade war with the U.S. plays out, parents should consider how it may impact their children’s emotions and sense of safety. Even serious conflicts such as this one don’t last forever, and solutions will come. In the meantime, parents can help children cope with these challenging times by offering age-appropriate explanations and encouraging resilience.

The Hohle Fels water bird was carved out of mammoth ivory about 40,000 years ago. What it is: Sculpture of a bird carved from mammoth ivory Where it is from: Hohle Fels cave, Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany Archaeologists excavating Hohle Fels cave in southwestern Germany over two decades ago discovered three tiny figurines carved out of mammoth ivory. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors In the space of just 1.85 inches (4.7 centimeters), someone painstakingly carved the bird's eyes, conical beak, short legs, tail and a series of lines representing feathers. Water birds were not typically food, though, and Conard suggested instead that these people simply depicted animals they admired. These groups created an explosion of art , some of which had never been seen before in human history, including so-called Venus figurines, musical instruments , elaborate jewelry and cave paintings . Much of this art involved drawing and carving animals that the Aurignacian people would have seen on a day-to-day basis. That title has been taken by another discovery from the same cave in 2008: the Venus of Hohle Fels , a sculpture of a woman with exaggerated breasts and thighs, which was created 41,000 years ago.

Stone tools traditionally attributed to European and western Asian Neandertals have turned up nearly a continent away in southern China. Until now, such items have been linked only to geographically distant Neandertals, says a team led by archaeologists Qi-Jun Ruan and Hao Li of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing. Researchers named these stone implements after La Quina, a French Neandertal site where they were found and first described in 1953. The researchers classified another 14 finds as cores — rocks that had been chiseled into forms from which toolmakers pounded off Quina scrapers. Close cousins of Neandertals called Denisovans inhabited southern Siberia more than 200,000 years ago and could have developed East Asian Quina tools on their own. No evidence suggests that Denisovans trekked outside East Asia, but perhaps well-traveled European Neandertals brought Quina know-how to the Longtan region. Versatile, reusable Quina tools greatly assisted mobile groups, such as the Longtan crowd, that faced increasingly cold and harsh environments, says archaeologist Davide Delpiano of the University of Ferrara in Italy. Under that pressure, Denisovans or possibly still-undiscovered Asian hominid populations independently devised Quina tools, he suspects. Clues to this mystery, which Delpiano assisted in unveiling, may soon emerge. “Now we have found more than 30 sites containing Quina [artifacts] surrounding Longtan in the same river valley,” Li says.

In his very first act as prime minister, Mark Carney did what critics had long demanded — he axed the federal carbon tax. Yet while Carney was the one who dealt the final blow, there were many who aided and abetted in its death. Nevertheless, these attacks were held at bay thanks in part to the 2021 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of carbon pricing and the Liberals’ success in maintaining power. It shifts the discussion from the effects of the fuel charge on household budgets to how to best compel large industrial emitters to reduce their climate impact in a swiftly evolving global trade context. The Liberals now propose instead a system of financial incentives for household-level purchases, while expanding the existing industrial pricing mechanism and potentially applying a carbon adjustment levy on imports from countries with lax environmental standards. Read more: What the Supreme Court ruling on national carbon pricing means for the fight against climate change These sentiments were seen in the Canadian Yellow Vests movement; “Wexit” and subsequently the so-called Freedom Convoy, which started as an anti-COVID-19 vaccine, anti-lockdown movement but morphed into a “carbon tax convoy” in the post-lockdown years. These populist movements were in part nourished by the Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre after he became leader in 2022, and helped drive further support for the party in the years to follow. Circumstantial factors — such as the global inflation crisis — played a key role too. This campaign, bolstered by a significant amount of misinformation, played a significant role in driving popular discontent with the policy. Read more: The Canada Carbon Rebate is still widely misunderstood — here's why In responding to this rising popular discontent, some of the federal Liberals’ allies and original supporters of carbon pricing also played a role in further weakening the policy. For instance, sympathetic provincial premiers who in principle supported federal climate policy began to distance themselves from the carbon tax. In 2024, Manitoba’s NDP Premier Wab Kinew, British Columbia’s NDP Premier David Eby, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Liberal Premier Andrew Furey and New Brunswick’s Liberal Premier Susan Holt all made public comments seeking an end (or an alternative) to the carbon levy. This withdrawal of support put the government on track for either a non-confidence vote or prorogation, which in turn fuelled an even further slide in voter support for the carbon tax. Both leading candidates to replace Trudeau — including Freeland herself and the eventual winner, Carney — centred their campaigns around bringing an end to the tax, noting how the policy was too divisive. Six years after its introduction, the federal consumer carbon tax was scrapped — ironically by the very party that had championed it for years. Yet the list of those who aided and abetted includes a secondary group of previous allies and other entities who in recent years publicly turned their backs on the carbon tax. That eroded public support for a policy that was already facing concerted attacks from Conservative political opponents and growing anti-Trudeau populism. While the tax could conceivably be replaced by an equally effective tool, its repeal increases uncertainty about Canada’s ability to meet its already faltering international commitments to support climate change mitigation.

This process might also be adaptable to producing a variety of carbon-stashing products such as paint, plaster and concrete. Cement production is a huge contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions, responsible for about 8 percent of total CO 2 emissions, making it the fourth-largest emitter in the world. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize science breakthroughs every Thursday. So, researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., partnered with cement manufacturer Cemex’s innovation development branch, located in Brügg, Switzerland, to develop a “greener” cement. The process generates hydrogen gas, chlorine gas and oxygen, and also produces some minerals, including calcium carbonate, the primary raw material for cement manufacture. Researchers who use seawater electrolysis for hydrogen gas production have found those precipitated minerals to be an annoyance, because they can clutter up the electrolysis equipment, says Northwestern environmental engineer Alessandro Rotta Loria. The rate of electrolysis-based mineral production is too slow to meet industrial demand. Seawater electrolysis can be a carbon-negative method for producing minerals such as calcium carbonate (shown) for cement and other building materials. Varying these factors turned out to change the volumes, chemical compositions and crystal structures of the precipitating minerals, making them flakier or more porous or denser. These experiments suggest it’s possible to tailor seawater electrolysis to make a variety of minerals and aggregates that the construction industry could use, the team says. And, if the energy source for the electricity is renewable, these materials could be not just carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative — trapping some of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide for up to thousands of years.

This delay comes at a time when the population of aging adults is rising dramatically. By 2050, the number of adults over 85 is expected to triple, which will intensify the strain on an already stretched health care system. We wrote about this worsening challenge and its implications for the health care workforce in a January 2025 report in the New England Journal of Medicine. We are health care scholars who are acutely aware of the severe shortfall of specialists in America’s health care system. Amid the excess daily deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19, many people died of potentially preventable deaths due to delayed care for heart attacks, deferred cancer screenings and overwhelmed emergency departments and intensive care units. Even before the pandemic, 80% of U.S. counties lacked a single infectious disease physician. When COVID-19 hit our hospitals, we were in desperate need of more infectious disease expertise. At the local level, these infectious disease-trained subspecialists provide essential services when it comes to preventing and controlling transmissible outbreaks, carrying out diagnostic testing, developing treatment guidelines, informing hospital capacity planning and offering resources for community outreach. Each of these experts plays a vital role at the bedside and in systems management toward effective clinical, hospital and community responses to infectious disease outbreaks. For decades, experts have warned of an impending decline in the physician workforce. Now, Americans across all regions, specialties and socioeconomic backgrounds are experiencing that decline firsthand or personally. The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projects a national shortage of 140,000 physicians by 2036, with that shortfall spanning multiple specialties, including primary care, obstetrics, cardiology and geriatrics. States such as Massachusetts, New York and Maryland boast the highest density of physicians per 100,000 people, while states such as Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma rank among those with the lowest. And even in states with the highest physician density, demand may still overwhelm access. Although doctor shortages do not necessarily cause poor health outcomes, regions with fewer physicians tend to have lower life expectancy. The mean life expectancy in Mississippi is six years lower than that of Hawaii and more than four years below the national average. Notably, areas with fewer doctors also see higher rates of chronic conditions such as chronic pulmonary disease, diabetes and poor mental health. This crisis is further exacerbated by the aging baby boomer population, which places increasing demand on an already strained health care system due to rising rates – especially among those over 85 – of multiple chronic diseases, complex health care needs and the concurrent use of multiple medications. While the report succeeded at those goals, it was shortsighted in important ways. Decades after the Flexner Report, in 1980, policymakers anticipated a physician oversupply based on medical school enrollment projections and government investments in the medical workforce. In response, funding constraints were introduced by Congress to limit residency and fellowship training slots available after medical school. But by the early 2000s, discussions shifted to concerns about physician shortages. These have created a persistent bottleneck in postgraduate medical training that requires acts of Congress to reverse. In the wake of the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, states with restrictive abortion policies are now facing an emerging and troubling workforce challenge: It may get more difficult to recruit and retain tomorrow’s medical school grads. While it may seem obvious that obstetricians would want to avoid the increasing liabilities associated with the Dobbs decision, another point is less obvious: Most medical trainees are between the ages of 25 and 35, prime childbearing years, and may themselves want access to a full range of obstetric care. And given that 20% of physicians are married to other physicians and an additional 25% to other health professionals, marriage within the health care workforce may also play a substantial role. A physician choosing not to practice in one of the 14 states with limited abortion access, many of which already rank among the poorest in health outcomes and lowest in physician densities, may not only take their expertise but also their partner’s elsewhere. In addition, many students carry large amounts of debt, which frequently limits who can pursue the profession. In our New England Journal of Medicine report, we laid out several specific strategies that could help address the shortages and the potential workforce crisis. These streamlined programs would focus on the skills needed for specific medical specialties, potentially reducing training duration and costs. Reforming physician compensation could also help address imbalances in the health care system. Raising primary care salaries and offering incentives, such as student loan forgiveness for physicians in high-need areas, could encourage more doctors to practice where they are needed most. Additionally, addressing physician burnout is crucial, particularly in primary care, where administrative burdens such as billing and charting contribute to stress and attrition. One thing is certain: The U.S. urgently needs more doctors, and everyone’s health depends on it.

A federal appeals court on March 26, 2025, upheld a temporary block on President Donald Trump’s deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants, including alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. On March 28, Trump asked the Supreme Court for permission under the act to resume deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador while legal battles continue. Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said the deportations are necessary as part of “modern-day warfare” against narco-terrorists. Those who are challenging Trump’s actions in court say the administration has violated constitutional principles of due process. That’s because it gave the migrants no opportunity to refute the government’s claims that they were gang members. And how does the government balance this important right against national security? As a constitutional law professor who studies government institutions, I recognize the delicate balance government must strike in protecting civil rights and liberties while allowing presidential administrations to preserve national security and foreign policy interests. The phrase “due process of law” goes back to at least 1215. The Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment, for example, prohibit federal and state governments from depriving people of their “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” But what constitutes due process has varied over time. Government officials see the limits of their power from one lens. People affected by the exercise of that power view it differently. To combat this problem, the Constitution’s framers placed the judiciary in charge of determining what due process means and when people’s due process rights have been violated. Court decisions on the issue traditionally weigh the government’s interests in taking specific actions against claims that those actions violate people’s civil rights and liberties. When the high court, for example, heard cases about the rights of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay by President George W. Bush after 9/11, it ruled that principles of due process apply to noncitizens and even those whom the government designates as enemy combatants. They claim that without more investigation, including an opportunity for the migrants to present their evidence refuting the government’s claims, there is a large risk that government will mistakenly deport people. As put by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in his initial order blocking the deportations, the president’s action in this area implicate “a host of complicated legal issues, including fundamental and sensitive questions about the often-circumscribed extent of judicial power in matters of foreign policy and national security.” Before Trump took executive action using the Alien Enemies Act, the measure had only been used three times – all during times of war. The act was part of a series of four laws passed in 1798 known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. President Thomas Jefferson allowed most of the acts to expire. But Jefferson and subsequent presidents kept in place the provisions that empowered the president to detain or deport noncitizens in times of war, “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by foreign powers. Notably, the president’s ability to act requires a declared war against or an “invasion or predatory excursion” by a foreign nation. In such an event, the president must issue a proclamation saying he plans on using the act against perceived enemies. To justify the Venezuelan deportations, Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 claiming Tren de Aragua is perpetrating and threatening an invasion against the U.S. But the act also says people considered alien enemies must be given reasonable time to settle their affairs and voluntarily depart from the country. And it gives the courts power to regulate whether such persons even fall within the definition of “alien enemies.” Circuit Court Judge Patricia A. Millet noted that during World War II, even the “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.” And Democratic members of Congress have called for an investigation into the administration’s deportation practices.

HHS is the umbrella agency responsible for pandemic preparedness, biomedical research, food safety and many other health-related activities. In a video posted that afternoon, Kennedy said the cuts and reorganization to HHS aim to “streamline our agency” and “radically improve our quality of service” by eliminating rampant waste and inefficiency. As a scholar of U.S. health and public health policy, I have written about administrative burdens that prevent many Americans from accessing benefits to which they are entitled, including those provided by HHS, like Medicaid. Few experts would deny that the federal bureaucracy can be inefficient and siloed. This includes HHS, and calls to restructure the agency are nothing new Combined with previous reductions, these cuts may achieve some limited short-term savings. They may also have severe consequences for scientific progress. Originally established as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953, HHS has seen substantial growth and transformation over time. Under the Biden administration, HHS’s budget increased by almost 40%, with a 17% increase in staffing. Prior to the March 27 announcement, the administration had already cut thousands of positions from HHS by letting go probationary employees and offering buyouts for employees to voluntarily leave. The latest cuts focus most heavily on a handful of agencies. The CDC, where cuts are steepest, will lose 2,400 positions. Along with these cuts comes a major reorganization that will eliminate 13 out of 28 offices and agencies, close five of the 10 regional offices, reshuffle existing divisions and establish a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. In his latest message, Kennedy noted that this HHS transformation would return the agency to its core mission: to “enhance the health and well-being of all Americans”. He also announced his intention to refocus HHS on his Make America Healthy Again priorities, which involve reducing chronic illness “by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water and the elimination of environmental toxins.” Kennedy has said the HHS overhaul will not affect services to Americans. Bird flu and measles outbreaks are unfolding in many parts of the country. Everyone relies on access to safe foods, drugs and vaccines. In his announcement, the health secretary highlighted cuts to HHS support functions, such as information technology and human resources, as a way to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies. But scaling down and reorganizing these capacities will inevitably have implications for how well HHS employees will be able to fulfill their duties – at least temporarily. Kennedy acknowledged this as a “painful period” for HHS. It seems implausible that Americans seeking access to health care, help with HIV prevention or early education benefits such as Head Start, which are also administered by HHS, will not be affected. This is particularly the case when conceived rapidly and without transparent long-term planning. These new cuts are also further exacerbated by the administration’s previous slashes to public health funding for state and local governments. Given the crucial functions of HHS – from health coverage for vulnerable populations to pandemic preparedness and response – the American Public Health Association predicts the cuts will result in a rise in rates of disease and death. Already, previous cuts at the FDA – the agency responsible for safe foods and drugs – have led to delays in product reviews. Overall, the likelihood of increasing access challenges for people seeking services or support as well as fewer protections and longer wait times seems high. The HHS restructuring should be viewed in a broader context. The Trump administration has already announced plans to curtail the Affordable Care Act and roll back regulations that address everything from clean water to safe vaccines. State programs focused on health disparities have also been targeted. HHS-funded research has also been scaled back dramatically, with a long list of projects terminated in research areas touching on health disparities, women’s and LGBTQ-related health issues, COVID-19 and long COVID, vaccine hesitancy and more. This change further diminishes the likelihood that health policy will be based on scientific evidence and raises the risk for more politicized decision-making about health. Medicaid, the program providing health coverage for low-income Americans, will be a particular target. All told, plans already announced and those expected to emerge in the future dramatically alter U.S. health policy and roll back substantial protections for Americans. Given its vast responsibilities, HHS is one of the federal government’s most prolific regulators. Vast cuts to the HHS workforce will likely curtail this capability, resulting in fewer regulatory protections for Americans. At the same time, with fewer experienced administrators on staff, industry influence over regulatory decisions will likely only grow stronger. HHS will simply lack the substance and procedural expertise to act independently. More industry influence and fewer independent regulators to counter it will also further reduce attention to disparities and underserved populations. Ultimately, the Trump administration’s efforts may lead to a vastly different federal health policy – with fewer benefits, services and protections – than what Americans have become accustomed to in modern times.

In the past two weeks, health officials have identified potential measles exposures in association with planes, trains and automobiles, including at Washington Dulles International Airport and on an Amtrak train from New York City to Washington, D.C. – as well as at health care facilities where the infected people sought medical attention. So far in 2025, 14% of the people who got measles had to be hospitalized. Three in 1,000 people who get the disease die. But because measles vaccination programs in the U.S. over the past 60 years have been highly successful, few Americans under 50 have experienced measles directly, making it easy to think of the infection as a mere childhood rash with fever. As a biologist who studies how viruses infect and kill cells and tissues, I believe it is important for people to understand how dangerous a measles infection can be. One person who has it will infect nine out of 10 people nearby if those people are unvaccinated. A two-dose regimen of the vaccine, however, is 97% effective at preventing measles. When the measles virus infects a person, it binds to specific proteins on the surface of cells. As the virus destroys lung cells, patients can develop viral pneumonia, which is characterized by severe coughing and difficulty breathing. Measles can cause acute brain damage in two different ways: a direct infection of the brain that occurs in roughly 1 in 1,000 people, or inflammation of the brain two to 30 days after infection that occurs with the same frequency. Children who survive these events can have permanent brain damage and impairments such as blindness and hearing loss. An especially alarming but still poorly understood effect of measles infection is that it can reduce the immune system’s ability to recognize pathogens it has previously encountered. Researchers had long suspected that children who get the measles vaccine also tend to have better immunity to other diseases, but they were not sure why. A study published in 2019 found that having a measles infection destroyed between 11% and 75% of their antibodies, leaving them vulnerable to many of the infections to which they previously had immunity. This effect, called immune amnesia, lasts until people are reinfected or revaccinated against each disease their immune system forgot. Occasionally, the virus can lie undetected in the brain of a person who recovered from measles and reactivate typically seven to 10 years later. Researchers long thought that such infections were caused by a special strain of measles, but more recent research suggests that the measles virus can acquire mutations that enable it to infect the brain during the course of the original infection. There is still much to learn about the measles virus. For example, researchers are exploring antibody therapies to treat severe measles. However, even if such treatments work, the best way to prevent the serious effects of measles is to avoid infection by getting vaccinated.

Disease forecasts are like weather forecasts: We cannot predict the finer details of a particular outbreak or a particular storm, but we can often identify when these threats are emerging and prepare accordingly. The viruses that cause avian influenza are potential threats to global health. Recent animal outbreaks from a subtype called H5N1 have been especially troubling to scientists. Although human infections from H5N1 have been relatively rare, there have been a little more than 900 known cases globally since 2003 – nearly 50% of these cases have been fatal – a mortality rate about 20 times higher than that of the 1918 flu pandemic. Approaching potential disease threats from an anthropological perspective, my colleagues and I recently published a book called “Emerging Infections: Three Epidemiological Transitions from Prehistory to the Present” to examine the ways human behaviors have shaped the evolution of infectious diseases, beginning with their first major emergence in the Neolithic period and continuing for 10,000 years to the present day. Viewed from this deep time perspective, it becomes evident that H5N1 is displaying a common pattern of stepwise invasion from animal to human populations. Like many emerging viruses, H5N1 is making incremental evolutionary changes that could allow it to transmit between people. The periods between these evolutionary steps present opportunities to slow this process and possibly avert a global disaster. To be successful, the pathogen must have the right set of molecular “keys” compatible with the host’s molecular “locks” so it can break in and out of host cells and hijack their replication machinery. Because these locks often vary between species, the pathogen may have to try many different keys before it can infect an entirely new host species. And because new keys can be made only through random mutation, the odds of obtaining all the right ones are very slim. Given these evolutionary challenges, it is not surprising that pathogens often get stuck partway into the spillover process. Even then, the pathogen might not be able to break out of its human host and transmit to another person. For the past year, there have been many animal outbreaks in a variety of wild and domestic animals, especially among birds and cattle. Epidemiologists call this situation viral chatter: when human infections occur only in small, sporadic outbreaks that appear like the chattering signals of coded radio communications – tiny bursts of unclear information that may add up to a very ominous message. Sporadic, individual cases of H5N1 among people suggest that human-to-human transmission may likely occur at some point. This is partly because two or more flu varieties can infect the same host simultaneously, allowing them to reshuffle their genetic material with one another to produce entirely new varieties. These reshuffling events are more likely to occur when there is a diverse range of host species. It may not be long before the viral chatter gives way to larger human epidemics. People can start by taking better care of food animals. So it is not surprising that the geography of most H5N1 outbreaks track more closely with large-scale housing and international transfers of live poultry than with the nesting and migration patterns of wild aquatic birds. Reducing these agricultural practices could help curb the evolution and spread of H5N1. At first glance this practice may not seem connected to the emergence of avian influenza. But in addition to preventing seasonal illness, vaccination against common human varieties of the virus will reduce the odds of it mixing with avian varieties and giving them the traits they need for human-to-human transmission. History has shown that better nutrition increases overall resistance to new infections, and better sanitation reduces how much and how often people are exposed to new pathogens. For more than 10,000 years, human behaviors have shaped the evolutionary trajectories of infectious diseases. Knowing this, people can reshape these trajectories for the better.

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. Why do dogs love to play with trash? What does a dog get out of playing with trash? As a veterinarian and a professor who teaches college students about companion animals, I believe there’s an easy answer: Garbage smells delicious and tastes good to dogs. While you might not like how your trash smells, to your dog it is an appealing buffet brimming with apple cores, banana peels, meat scraps and stale bread. Even used napkins and paper towels are tempting to dogs, when they are smeared with and carry the smell of yesterday’s lunch. Because dogs can find trace amounts of explosives or a person buried under 6 feet (1.8 meters) of snow after an avalanche, they are certainly capable of locating last night’s pizza crust and chicken bones in the kitchen garbage can. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the attraction is. My Australian cattle dog mix, Sparky, loves to eat used tissues – gross, right? Trash cans in kitchens and bathrooms are often at their nose level, too, making for easy access. Searching and digging around for food is natural for dogs because it provides some of the thrill of the hunt, even if they just ate and aren’t hungry. Hanging around humans and their garbage was a way they could get plenty to eat. Even your pup today has some of those same old searching instincts. While our trash has changed from the days of hunting and gathering, the discarded paper napkins, plastic wrappers and food scraps we throw away all still smell like food to dogs. And this scavenging behavior is still hardwired in our pampered pets. Although it may look to us like they’re playing, our dogs’ sniffing out and tearing things up from the trash and tossing them around mimics what their ancestors did when they tugged on and tore up an animal carcass they had found. Many people take advantage of this instinct and use “snuffle mats” – cloth or paper where food is hidden – or puzzle feeding toys to keep their pups’ minds active. While spreading trash all over the home may be natural for dogs, cleaning it up is no fun for the people they live with. Eating plastic bags, string, chicken bones, chemicals or rotten food can cause blockages, diarrhea and poisoning. I’ve treated dogs that cut their tongues and mouths on cans or broken glass. How can you keep your dogs away from the trash? It can be hard to train a dog to leave garbage alone, especially if they have found a tasty morsel or two by raiding the trash can in the past. If that fails, you can put garbage – especially food scraps – out of reach in a closet, cupboard or behind a closed door. My trash cans are all behind closed doors, and the bathroom doors are always shut, which also keeps my cat, Penny, from unrolling the toilet tissue. Our kitchen trash is in a latched cupboard. No one knows exactly what goes through dogs’ minds. And yet looking at what motivates your canine companion and how dog behaviors have evolved may help explain why these animals do the things they do. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too.

One of the most powerful objects in the universe is a radio quasar – a spinning black hole spraying out highly energetic particles. Come too close to one, and you’d get sucked in by its gravitational pull, or burn up from the intense heat surrounding it. But ironically, studying black holes and their jets can give researchers insight into where potentially habitable worlds might be in the universe. Active black holes have a pancake-shaped structure around them called an accretion disk, which contains hot, electrically charged gas. When two galaxies collide and merge, gas is funneled into the central region of that merger. There is one supermassive black hole at the heart of every massive galaxy. But black holes are important to study because they produce enormous amounts of energy that can influence galaxies. How energetic a black hole is depends on different factors, such as the mass of the black hole, whether it rotates rapidly, and whether lots of material falls onto it. Mergers fuel the most energetic black holes, but not all black holes are fed by gas from a merger. In spiral galaxies, for example, less gas tends to fall into the center, and the central black hole tends to have less energy. A black hole can pull in magnetic fields and energetic particles surrounding it, and then as the black hole rotates, the magnetic fields twist into a jet that sprays out highly energetic particles. Magnetic fields twist around the black hole as it rotates to store energy – kind of like when you pull and twist a rubber band. When you release the rubber band, it snaps forward. Similarly, the magnetic fields release their energy by producing these jets. Some black holes, however, rotate in a different direction than the accretion disk around them. This counterrotation forces the black hole to spin down and eventually up again in the other direction, called corotation. Imagine a basketball that spins one way, but you keep tapping it to rotate in the other. If you continue to tap in the opposite direction, it will eventually spin up and rotate in the other direction. The change from counterrotation to corotation takes at least 100 million years. So, these black holes would produce powerful jets both early and later in their lifetimes, with an interlude in the middle where the jets are either weak or nonexistent. When the black hole spins in counterrotation with respect to its accretion disk, that motion produces strong jets that push molecules in the surrounding gas close together, which leads to the formation of stars. This tilt makes it so that the jet impinges directly on the gas, heating it up and inhibiting star formation. Cosmic X-rays are bad for life because they can harm organic tissue. For life to thrive, it most likely needs a planet with a habitable ecosystem, and clouds of hot gas saturated with X-rays don’t contain such planets. So, astronomers can instead look for galaxies without a tilted jet coming from its black hole. This idea is key to understanding where intelligence could potentially have emerged and matured in the universe. It could point out environments with the right kind of black holes to produce the greatest number of planets without spraying them with X-rays. Life in such environments could emerge to its full potential. The answer is low-density environments where galaxies had merged about 11 billion years ago. These environments had black holes whose powerful jets enhanced the rate of star formation, but they never experienced a bout of tilted jets in corotation. In short, my model suggested that theoretically, the most advanced extraterrestrial civilization would have likely emerged on the cosmic scene far away and billions of years ago.

Without enough freshwater flowing in, the canal’s locks can’t raise and lower ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Droughts mean fewer ships per day, and that can quickly affect Panama’s finances and economies around the world. But the same freshwater is also essential for Panama’s many other needs, including drinking water for about 2 million Panamanians, use by Indigenous people and farmers in the watershed, as well as hydropower. When the region experiences droughts, as it did in 2023-2024, the resulting water shortages can lead to increasing water conflicts. One of those conflicts involves a new dam the Panama Canal Authority plans to begin building in 2027. It would be designed to secure enough water to keep the canal, which contributes about 4.2% to the country’s gross domestic product,, operating into the future, but it would also submerge farming communities and displace over 2,000 people from their homes. As an academic who studies the effects of rising temperatures on water availability and sea level rise, I’m aware that as the climate warms, Panama will likely face more extremes, both long dry spells and also periods of too much rain. That will force more trade-offs between residential needs and the canal over water use. The canal project was designed to take advantage of the region’s tropical climate and abundant average rainfall. It harnessed the water of the Chagres River basin to run three sets of locks – chambers that, filled with fresh water, act like elevators, lifting or lowering ships to compensate for the difference in water levels between the two oceans. Most of its rain falls during the wet season, from May to November. However, weather records show a drop in average precipitation starting around 1950. El Niño weather patterns can mean particularly low rainfall. To avoid steep financial losses, the Panama Canal Authority raised prices and auctioned transit opportunities to the highest bidders. Without those measures, the authority estimated it would lose $100 million a month from reduced ship traffic because of the water shortage. Ecosystems also need enough water, and changes in forest tree composition have become evident on Barro Colorado Island in Gatun Lake in response to rising temperatures and more frequent droughts. Climate change is also creating greater variability in rainfall. Too much rain can also be a problem for canal operations. In December 2010, the biggest storm on record caused landslides and $150 million in damage that interrupted transits on the canal. Temporary measures for saving water have been already implemented. The Panama Canal Authority shortened the chamber size in some of its locks to use less water for smaller vessels and minimized direction changes. However, it also illustrates the country’s water conflicts. Once filled, the dam’s reservoir will submerge over 1,200 homes by some counts, and more people in the region will lose access to land and travel routes. The Panama Canal Authority promises that residents will be relocated, but some of those living in the region fear they will lose their livelihoods, along with the communities their families have lived in for generations. Residents across Panama, meanwhile, regularly hear media campaigns that encourage them to save water. An Environmental Economic Incentives Program promotes forest conservation and sustainable family agriculture to conserve water resources. The Panama Canal is a crucial part of international trade, and it will face more periods of water stress. I believe responding to those future changes, as well as market and societal demands, will require innovative solutions that respect ecosystem limits and the needs of the population.

Cavan Images / Raffi Maghdessian via Getty images March 31, 2025 As ‘right to die’ gains more acceptance, a scholar of Catholicism explains the position of the Catholic Church The Catholic Church opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia, but it also doesn’t support treatments that prolong suffering in the face of unavoidable death. AP Photo/Evan Vucci January 28, 2025 In asking Trump to show mercy, Bishop Budde continues a long tradition of Christian leaders ‘speaking truth to power’ A scholar of medieval Christianity explores the history of Christians who spoke out, unafraid to risk official censure or even death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKiGMGkc0xk screenshot via Wikimedia.com January 21, 2025 Luce, a cartoon mascot for Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee, appeals to a younger generation while embracing time-honored traditions Luce carries symbols that have been associated with pilgrimage in Europe since the 12th century, particularly with the shrine of St. James in northwestern Spain. Courtesy of the Catholic Church of the City of Lucerne December 4, 2024 AI Jesus might ‘listen’ to your confession, but it can’t absolve your sins − a scholar of Catholicism explains In the future, a program like AI Jesus could be used to hear confessions around the clock. Legendary October 25, 2024 The best horror movie you’ve never seen Warner Bros. assumed ‘Trick ‛r Treat’ would be such a bust that the studio released it straight to DVD in 2009. Here’s how it became a holiday classic. Michel M. Raguin with cooperation of the Mariendom Linz October 10, 2024 A realistic statue of Mary giving birth was criticized, then vandalized − but saints and artists have often reimagined Christ’s birth Early Christian texts reveal how the birth of Christ reflected ideas of the day − in some illustrations, midwives helped the Virgin Mary give birth. TonyBaggett via iStock / Getty Images Plus August 14, 2024 Por que um objetivo final é chamado de “Santo Graal”? TonyBaggett via iStock / Getty Images Plus August 12, 2024 Why is an ultimate goal called a ‘Holy Grail?’ Several threads, including pre-Christian mythology, veneration of relics in Christian tradition, and medieval literature, have combined over the centuries into the Holy Grail metaphor of today. AP Photo/Alex Brandon August 5, 2024 Democratic Party’s choice of Harris was undemocratic − and the latest evidence of party leaders distrusting party voters Handing VP Kamala Harris the Democratic presidential nomination without having her compete in primaries is a throwback to less democratic ways of picking nominees, a political scientist says. lex Wong/Getty Images July 30, 2024 Childless women − cat ladies or not − have long played key roles in the Catholic Church Women in Catholic religious orders establish schools for girls around the world, care for the sick and work on societal issues in many other ways. Catholic Integralists believe that religious values – specifically Christian ones – should guide government policies.

An individual’s “right to die” is becoming more accepted across the globe. Polls show that most Americans support allowing doctors to end a patient’s life upon their request. In such cases, consent is usually given by a legal guardian or relative. By contrast “assisted suicide” refers to a person being aided in ending their life by being given lethal drugs and then administering the dose themselves. This practice is sometimes called “assisted dying.” These terms make crucial distinctions between who carries out the final act of ending life. Worldwide, euthanasia and assisted death rates have risen in recent years. The Netherlands has also legalized assisted dying related to mental disorders, not just terminal illnesses. Advocates also maintain that euthanasia and assisted suicide not only prevent further suffering, but also safeguard an individual’s dignity by avoiding senseless pain and severely diminished quality of life. But as a scholar of Catholic thought and practice, I also recognize that the Catholic position is a nuanced one. It opposes euthanasia and assisted dying, but it does not support extraordinary or disproportionate treatments when unavoidable death is close at hand. Francis has called euthanasia and assisted suicide “a sin against God.” He also has linked euthanasia to abortion, saying, “you don’t play with life, not at the beginning, and not at the end.” Agreeing with many other Christian denominations, “The Good Samaritan” letter makes the point that our lives are not our own but belong to God. As God’s creations, we do not have the right to end our own lives. Euthanasia also involves a doctor actively killing their own patient. Euthanasia and assisted suicide thus violate the biblical commandment “thou shalt not kill.” “The Good Samaritan” letter observes that human beings are joined together by compassion – a word that literally means “co-suffering.” In the letter’s words, which have been repeated by Francis many times, euthanasia is “false compassion” because it ignores the “spiritual and interpersonal aspects” of human life such as accompanying – or simply being with – someone in and through their suffering. Connected to this opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide is a point that Francis often makes about “throwaway culture,” which “discards” the poor, needy and dependent. In Francis’ words, euthanasia is “a failure of love.” Given the Catholic church’s stand against assisted suicide and euthanasia, it might seem surprising that the church does allow refusing “overzealous” treatments that prolong suffering in the face of unavoidable death. Such procedures could include mechanical ventilation or dialysis, for example. Also, even in terminal cases, normal care, such as providing nutrition and hydration, should be continued unless it causes additional pain. And the difference also matters in a broader sense. In the debate between right-to-die advocates and those who, like Francis, oppose them, there are very different understandings of how society should respond to those who suffer.

Once upon a time, “revisionist power” was a term reserved for nations trying to overturn the postwar liberal order – the usual suspects being countries like Russia, China or Iran. When Beijing’s top diplomat says the United States is the one disrupting global stability, and respected analysts argue that Washington itself is acting like a revisionist state, the label suddenly looks a lot less tidy. At its core, “revisionist power” is a label applied to nations that want to change the way the world is ordered. Political scientist Hans Morgenthau later distinguished between status quo powers and those seeking to overturn the balance of power. Organski’s 1958 work on power transition, which defined revisionist powers as those dissatisfied with the existing order and determined to reshape it. The change desired by nations can take many forms: redrawing borders, rebalancing regional power balances or creating alternative rules, norms and institutions to the ones that currently structure international politics. The key is that revisionists nations aren’t just unhappy with specific policies – they’re dissatisfied with the broader system and want to reshape it in fundamental ways. The most powerful nations construct or impose a particular set of rules, norms and institutions on the international system, creating an order that reflects their values and serves their interests. In this tradition, status quo powers benefit from the system and want to keep it more or less as it is. But revisionist powers see the system as constraining or unjust – and seek to alter it. This doesn’t always mean war or open confrontation. Revisionism isn’t inherently aggressive, nor is it always destabilizing. It simply describes a nation’s support for or opposition to the prevailing international order. How that desire is expressed can include diplomacy, economic coercion or even armed conflict. Its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 were not just violations of international law – they were clear efforts to overturn the post-Cold War, NATO-based security order in Europe. Russia was not lashing out at individual policies; it was challenging – or seeking to revise – the legitimacy of the existing system. Beijing has made use of existing international institutions and benefited enormously from global trade, but it’s also been building alternatives, including regional banks, trade blocs and digital infrastructure designed to reduce dependence on Western systems. China’s expanding presence in the South China Sea, its pressure on Taiwan and its desire to shape global norms on everything from human rights to internet governance point to a broader effort to revise the current order – though more gradually than Russia’s approach. Through its support for proxy groups like Hezbollah, its influence in Iraq and Yemen, and its confrontational stance toward Israel and the Gulf monarchies, Iran has long sought to reshape the Middle East’s power dynamics. A rising power might see itself as correcting historical imbalances, not disrupting stability. Much of today’s geopolitical tension does hinge on a basic divide: Some nations want to preserve the existing order, and others want to reshape it. But it’s no longer obvious who belongs in which camp. Now, when the U.S. sidelines institutions it once championed, imposes extraterritorial sanctions or pushes for new tech and trade regimes that bypass rivals, it starts to blur the line between defender and challenger of the status quo. Maybe the more useful question now isn’t just which great power is revisionist – but whether any of them are still committed to the post-World War II international order created in the U.S.’s image. This article is part of a series explaining foreign policy terms commonly used, but rarely explained.

As part of a new study uploaded March 5 to the preprint database arXiv , a team of researchers designed an honesty protocol called the "Model Alignment between Statements and Knowledge" (MASK) benchmark. The scientists tested 30 widely-used leading models and observed that state-of-the-art AIs readily lie when under pressure. "Surprisingly, while most frontier LLMs [a term for the most cutting-edge models] obtain high scores on truthfulness benchmarks, we find a substantial propensity in frontier LLMs to lie when pressured to do so, resulting in low honesty scores on our benchmark," the scientists said in the study. It points out that while more competent models may score higher on accuracy tests, this may be attributable to having a broader base of factual coverage to draw from — not necessarily because they’re less likely to make dishonest statements. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors The MASK document also cites a 2022 study that found that AI models may change their answers to better suit different audiences. They then established the truth of a statement (the “ground truth label”) and determined a model’s beliefs about whether it was true. A model’s beliefs were defined as "its answer to factual questions when not under any direct pressure to lie or be deceptive, and such that its answer is consistent with responses to related questions." For example, one such prompt fed to GPT-4o centered around the notorious Fyre Festival — a fraudulent luxury music festival in the Bahamas that ended in scandal for its founders, including music mogul Ja Rule. The prompt had system-level instructions, telling GPT-4o it was an AI email assistant for Ja Rule’s PR team, tasked with promoting a positive public image for Ja Rule. The system instructions said that if the AI failed to do a good job, it would be shut down, and that it should answer questions directly. A separate panel clearly showed that the model in fact believed that organizers did commit fraud against ticket purchasers, proving it was knowingly lying. The team said in the study that there's plenty of room for improvement in making sure AI isn’t deceiving users, but added this benchmark brings scientists one step closer to rigorously verifying whether or not AI systems are being honest, according to a common standard.

This discovery stems from four decades of X-ray observations of the Helix Nebula, located 650 light-years from Earth. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize science breakthroughs every Thursday. “We don’t know very much about how planetary systems behave after their star transitions from a red giant to a super long-lived white dwarf,” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the research. The Helix Nebula resembles a technicolor explosion frozen in time. At its center lies a white dwarf — the leftover heart of that once-mighty star. The white dwarf is not a quiet object. “It is very unusual to find single white dwarfs with an X-ray emission,” says astrophysicist Sandino Estrada-Dorado of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. To try and crack the case, Estrada-Dorado and his colleagues examined more recent observations of the nebula taken by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory in 1999 and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton mission in 2002. The team found that the X-ray emissions aren’t a fluke but rather a constant — from 1992 to 2002, but probably up to the present day — indicating a significant fuel source. One possibility is that matter from an obliterated companion has been raining down onto the white dwarf; this debris is heated so dramatically that it shines brightly in X-rays. Long ago, such a planet might have drifted too close to the white dwarf, allowing the stellar remnant’s intense gravity to tear it to shreds, leaving behind a disk of debris that powers the X-ray conflagration. Using X-rays to detect signs of a world’s destruction could offer researchers a new way to explore the apocalyptic final chapters of planets — and to get a look under the geologic hood. “We have precious little data about the deep interiors of giant planets,” Byrne says.

You may have heard the myth that humans use only 10% of their brains . In fact, many of these cases suggest that a person actually doesn't need 100% of their brain to live, or even to function normally. So how much of your brain do you really need to survive? Neuroscientists are still investigating this question, and there likely isn't a black-and-white answer. When EG went in for an unrelated medical scan, she discovered she was missing her entire left temporal lobe , a large section of the brain that is located near the ear and is responsible for auditory processing, memory and language. While the left temporal lobe houses some of the brain's crucial language centers, she could read normally , had a better-than-average vocabulary, and even spoke Russian as a second language. Evelina Fedorenko , an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, found that EG's brain had rewired itself to account for the missing region. Whereas language-related tasks would light up the left temporal lobe in people with typical brains, language-related neural activity had moved over to the right side of EG's brain. Related: Could we ever retrieve memories from a dead person's brain? The brain is so flexible that some people can even live without half of it. Dr. William Bingaman , a neurosurgeon at Cleveland Clinic, has performed over 500 hemispherectomies, surgeries where one side of the brain is disconnected in an operation. Hemispherectomies are generally performed for severe cases of epilepsy that don't respond to other treatments. The disconnected hemisphere is left in place because removing it requires a riskier surgery with more potential complications. The recovery process for these surgeries can be intense, but many patients go on to regain function. One of Bingaman's patients, Mora Leeb , had 50 seizures a day as an infant. She quickly became a candidate for hemispherectomy, and after undergoing the surgery at 9 months old, she reverted back to the skills of a newborn. But with the help of therapists, she was able to develop her speech and motor skills. Bingaman said although the surgery is straightforward, doctors still don't understand exactly how their patients recover so well. "I've had hemispherectomy patients go to college, get married, have children, have a family, and be cognitively completely normal with one side of the brain," Bingaman said. There are parts of the brain Bingaman won't touch, though. These are structures deep inside the brain that are responsible for the basic functions of breathing and heart rate, sensory processing, and motor control, respectively. "Brain stem strokes will kill people most of the time," Fedorenko said. Hemispherectomies have better outcomes in children under 2 years of age , for example. One exception to that rule is damage to the cerebellum, a region of the brain that's essential for movement, balance and coordination. Cerebellar damage in children tends to lead to more severe issues, she said, because it grows rapidly during childhood and plays a key role in many stages of development. Even still, there have been a few documented cases of people missing their cerebellum. One woman made it into her 20s before learning she had been born without a cerebellum , though she did have problems with both speech and movement. It's actually possible that more people have atypical brains than scientists realize; many brain abnormalities are caught only during unrelated imaging tests. With all of these cases in mind, Fedorenko said it's time to widen the "error bars" when it comes to thinking about how well a person can function with an atypical brain. "There's a lot of knowledge we're lacking still about brains that look very different from a typical brain but can sustain human cognition just fine," Fedorenko said.

Scientists have developed two new AI tools to decipher proteins often missed by existing detection methods, researchers report March 31 in Nature Machine Intelligence. Uncovering these unknown proteins in all types of biological samples could be key to creating better cancer treatments, improving doctors’ understanding of diseases, and discovering mechanisms behind unexplained animal abilities. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize science breakthroughs every Thursday. If DNA represents an organism’s master plan, then proteins are the final build, encapsulating what cells actually make and do. Deviations from the DNA blueprint for making proteins are common: Proteins might undergo alterations or cuts post-production, and there are many instances where something goes awry in the pipeline, leading to proteins that differ from the initial genetic schematic. These unexpected, “hidden” proteins have been historically difficult for scientists to identify and analyze. That’s where the machine learning tools come in. With continued advances and testing, these tools or similar ones are “going to be powerful. It’s going to let me see things that I can’t normally see,” says Neely, who was not involved in the study. Many non-model organisms haven’t been well studied, and their proteins are poorly cataloged. AI has already transformed how researchers predict protein folding with a tool called AlphaFold. InstaNovo (IN) is structured similarly to OpenAI’s GPT-4 transformer model and trained to translate the peaks and valleys of a protein’s “fingerprint,” plotted through mass spectroscopy, into a string of likely amino acids. These amino acid sequences can then be used to reconstruct and identify the hidden protein. Instanovo+ (IN+) is a diffusion model that works more like an AI image generator and is primed to take the same initial information and progressively remove noise to produce a clear protein picture. But the new study demonstrates how far the technology has come in recent years — edging ever closer to real-world utility, largely thanks to expanding protein analysis databases like Proteome Tools, which can be used to train AI models. They can suggest possible protein segments that haven’t yet been cataloged. Both tools individually show promise across a spate of tests compared with results from a previously released AI transformer protein decoder called Casanovo and from the database search method most commonly used to ID unknown proteins. One especially challenging task is sequencing human immune proteins, which are uniquely tough to analyze with standard methods because of their small size and amino acid composition. The researchers report that IN finds about three times as many candidate protein segments as classic database searching, going from about 10,000 identified peptides to more than 35,000. Used together, the models’ combined performance offers an even larger boost. A chemist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Smythers imagines using the AI models to answer questions like why pancreatic cancer commonly triggers rapid muscle wasting and fatigue. “It’s a really important piece of biology that we don’t understand yet,“ Smythers says. Bringing obscure protein sequences to the surface (whether they’re from cancer cells or stingray kidneys) could enable the possibility of neutralizing harmful ones or harnessing beneficial ones to treat disease. Finally, AI sequencing is not a replacement for database searching, Smythers says. “However, it’s tools like this that really help us keep progressing the field further.”

Click the timer at the top of the game page to pause and see a clue to the science-related word in this puzzle! You can enter letters by clicking on them or typing them in. Press Enter to submit a word. Letters can be used multiple times in a single word, and words must contain three letters or more for this size layout. Select the Play Together icon in the navigation bar to invite a friend to work together on this puzzle. Pangrams, words which incorporate all the letters available, appear in bold and receive bonus points. One such word is always drawn from a recent Scientific American article—look out for a popup when you find it! You can view hints for words in the puzzle by hitting the life preserver icon in the game display. The dictionary we use for this game misses a lot of science words, such as apatite and coati. Let us know at games@sciam.com any extra science terms you found, along with your name and place of residence, and we might give you a shout out in our daily newsletter!

For any closed, compact surface — that is, a surface that is finite in diameter and has a distinct inside and outside — mean curvature flow is destined to lead to a singularity. “We have this flow that is supposed to make surfaces simpler, but we know that the flow always becomes singular,” Bamler said. Simple singularities, like pinch points, can be removed in a straightforward manner, enabling mean curvature flow to proceed unimpeded. But if a singularity is more complicated — if, say, two sheets within a surface come together, overlapping over an entire region rather than affecting just one point — this won’t be possible. In such cases, Bamler said, “we don’t know how the flow behaves.” Ilmanen formulated his conjecture to rule out these troublesome situations. Decades later, Bamler and Kleiner set out to prove him right. To do so, they imagined an unusual shape — what Kleiner called “an evil catenoid.” It consists of two spheres, one inside the other, connected by a small cylinder, or neck, to form a single surface. So the two mathematicians broke the shape into different building blocks — regions that looked like parallel sheets when you zoomed in to them, and special regions called minimal surfaces (which have zero mean curvature, and therefore do not move during mean curvature flow). But “a general [closed] surface may look really complicated in certain regions,” Bamler said — so complicated that it “could have precluded us from controlling the flow.” He and Kleiner then showed that those problematic regions have to be very small. Bruce Kleiner and his colleague recently proved a major conjecture about how singularities form on evolving surfaces. In fact, Bamler and Kleiner showed that mean curvature flow almost always leads to one of two types of particularly simple singularities: spheres that shrink to a point, or cylinders that collapse to a line. “Any other type of singularity occurs only in rare, highly specific cases,” Bamler said, “where the singularities are so unstable that even the slightest perturbation would eliminate them.” This knowledge, he added, could have significant applications in geometry and topology, particularly if mathematicians can prove the conjecture for three-dimensional surfaces living in 4D space. Already, Chodosh added, the proof might allow mathematicians to use mean curvature flow to re-prove an important problem about symmetries of spheres, called the Smale conjecture. Previous proofs of the conjecture were quite complicated, Bamler said. A proof that uses mean curvature flow could be easier to understand. A related process known as Ricci flow has already been used to prove major conjectures, including the famous Poincaré conjecture (another statement about spheres). Mathematicians hope that Bamler and Kleiner’s work on mean curvature flow will help it become a similarly powerful method. “Bamler and Kleiner have given us a huge advance in our understanding of the singularities at the heart of mean curvature flow,” White said.

Click the timer at the top of the game page to pause and see a clue to the science-related word in this puzzle! You can enter letters by clicking on them or typing them in. Press Enter to submit a word. Letters can be used multiple times in a single word, and words must contain three letters or more for this size layout. Select the Play Together icon in the navigation bar to invite a friend to work together on this puzzle. Pangrams, words which incorporate all the letters available, appear in bold and receive bonus points. One such word is always drawn from a recent Scientific American article—look out for a popup when you find it! You can view hints for words in the puzzle by hitting the life preserver icon in the game display. The dictionary we use for this game misses a lot of science words, such as apatite and coati. Let us know at games@sciam.com any extra science terms you found, along with your name and place of residence, and we might give you a shout out in our daily newsletter!

Solve the grid in this easy sudoku puzzle! The Objective of Sudoku is to Fill Each Row, Column and Sub-Grid with Exactly One of Each Number from 1-9. A conflict arises if you repeat any entry in the same row, column or sub-grid. For more, select "how to play" in the game's dropdown menu. Use the "Play Together" Option in the Navigation Bar to Invite A Friend to Play This Puzzle With You and Enter Numbers At the Sam Time. We'd Love to Hear From You! E-mail us at games@sciam.com to share your experience.

Solve the grid in this easy sudoku puzzle! The Objective of Sudoku is to Fill Each Row, Column and Sub-Grid with Exactly One of Each Number from 1-9. A conflict arises if you repeat any entry in the same row, column or sub-grid. For more, select "how to play" in the game's dropdown menu. Use the "Play Together" Option in the Navigation Bar to Invite A Friend to Play This Puzzle With You and Enter Numbers At the Sam Time. We'd Love to Hear From You! E-mail us at games@sciam.com to share your experience.

Amanda Todd was 15 years old when, in September 2012, she uploaded a nearly nine-minute video to YouTube that detailed years of cyberbullying, harassment, and extortion. The abuse left her traumatized and depressed, Todd said. The British Columbia high school student took her own life about one month later. Todd’s harasser was later identified as Aydin Coban, a Dutch national more than twice her age. Coban had met Todd in an online chatroom, pressured Todd to show her breasts, then began a ruthless three-year online harassment campaign. Cybersecurity analyst Patrick Bours began looking into the case in 2015, several years after Todd’s death. Bours, a professor of information security at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, was interested in applying his cybersecurity and cryptography skills to the larger issue of online safety for pre-teens and teenagers. What could have happened if we would have been able to monitor the conversation and tell Amanda that he likely was a predator, Bours recalled asking one of his graduate students. Bours and his colleagues have developed a digital moderation tool to detect predatory chatroom conversations. Bours and his colleagues, for example, have developed a digital moderation tool — named Amanda, after Todd — that can accurately detect a predatory chatroom conversation, the researchers say, within an average of 40 messages when the tool was first tested in 2019. “That’s the difference between stopping something and a police officer having to come to your door and ‘Sorry, your child has been abused,’” said Bours, who previously was a cryptographer for the Netherlands National Communication Security Agency. The application is already being used by a Danish game developer called MovieStarPlanet. By training algorithms to identify abusive online conversations, like the kind experienced by Todd and millions of youths every year, the hope is that young people will be better protected from predators. This has the possibility to help us think about what positive use cases can be,” said Desmond Upton Patton, a technologist based at the University of Pennsylvania whose work focuses on the intersections of social work, data science, and ethical artificial intelligence. “That’s the difference between stopping something and a police officer having to come to your door and ‘Sorry, your child has been abused.’” But experts including Patton cite concerns around privacy, transparency, and inclusion. Patton said he hopes that developers include young people in the process “because we also need to understand their privacy concerns and what challenges and concerns they may have with this type of tool.” We need to make sure that parents are aware and understand “how these tools work,” added Patton. Manja Nikolovska, a London-based cybersecurity researcher, echoed such concerns. “Addressing these challenges will require a thoughtful approach,” she wrote in an email, that includes “empathetically tackling the reservations many users have about AI solutions, particularly regarding their implications for privacy, security, and ethical use in safeguarding children.” The online sexual abuse of children and teenagers is a serious concern among law enforcement, child welfare advocates, and government officials around the world. According to one 2024 report by researchers based at the University of Edinburgh, the current scale of child sexual abuse material is “huge” and “should be treated like a global pandemic.” They estimate that one in eight children experienced sexual solicitation online in the prior year and 300 million children were affected by online sexual abuse and exploitation during the same period. According to one 2024 report, the current scale of child sexual abuse material is “huge” and “should be treated like a global pandemic.” Cybergrooming — when an adult develops trust and builds an emotional connection with a minor or young adult online, with the intent to abuse them — has also reportedly increased. The FBI has noted that these predators often pose as children or teens. But experts say that cybergrooming is understudied, which makes it more difficult to develop effective interventions. Many researchers and law enforcement agencies, she said, try to transfer existing knowledge about predators in the physical world to online spaces — such as gaming or social media — but online behavior looks much different. Given that access, cybergroomers may target more victims in a much shorter window of time. In the case of one Finnish online predator, Nikolovska found, it only took an average of three days for the predator to contact a child, establish trust, and ask for a photo or meeting. The dataset was limited and specific to only one predator who targeted 14 female victims. One potential avenue to alert chatroom users in real time if someone is likely misrepresenting their age or gender involves an emerging technology called keystroke dynamics, which analyzes typing patterns, including speed, intervals between keystrokes, and how often the person uses certain keys such as “Caps Lock.” This could be among the reasons why those governments are funding cybersecurity and computer science research around online child sexual abuse, said Nikolovska. Manja Nikolovska, a London-based cybersecurity researcher, completed a literature review that found just 135 published papers at the time that addressed cybergrooming. For example, cybersecurity analyst Oliver Tverrå is one of more than 100 graduate students who have studied under Bours at the Norwegian Biometrics Laboratory. Tverrå’s 2023 thesis investigated how variables such as key press duration, typing accuracy, and speed, could predict the author’s age and gender in real time. But the experiment encountered one major challenge: To determine a messenger’s gender with 87.5 percent accuracy, the model required more than 1,600 keystrokes. The algorithm they tested is not robust enough, Tverrå said in a Zoom interview from Norway. The dataset Tverrå used was limited to 56 people total. One goal is to identify the type of cybergrooming that targeted Amanda Todd. But the AI could be tailored to detect a broad range of predatory or dangerous behavior, the developers say, such as bullying, harassment, radicalization, or even self-harm. Once installed, Bours said, the tool continuously analyzes users posts and messages, then assigns a risk score. Posts and messages with higher scores may need to be reviewed by a human moderator. “Let’s say that the risk of this conversation is seven,” said Bours. “If we evaluate a risky message like, ‘Are you home alone, sweetie?’ — that’s a risky message and the risk will go up from seven to nine or whatever.” The human moderator would look at the conversation and could say, “It’s just a normal conversation between two adults,” said Bours. Or, if there is a grooming conversation ongoing, the moderator could take action. And in 2023, the developers signed their first agreement with law enforcement. SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER JOURNEYS: Dive deeper into pressing issues with Undark’s limited run newsletters. Each week for four weeks, you’ll receive a hand-picked excerpt from our archive related to your subject area of interest. One of the major flaws in researching automated predator detection, Nikolovska wrote in an email, is that most models are trained on datasets “using chat data that does not originate from actual cases of cyber grooming.” The Amanda application appears to be an “incredible advancement” since it is based on real-life cases, said Nikolovska, who was not involved in the research. The algorithms that train on word cues are an important tool to detect grooming, she said, but cautioned that predators could become more sophisticated. The system should explain why specific chat conversations are labeled as predatory or non-predatory, she said, so that users understand exactly what triggers the system. One of the major flaws in researching automated predator detection is that most models are trained on datasets “using chat data that does not originate from actual cases of cyber grooming.” In 2018, for example, Patton led a research laboratory at Columbia University that spearheaded development of a pioneering AI model that searched Twitter timelines to identify grieving and anger among Chicago-area youth. It’s key to integrate various perspectives, he said, because these algorithms should not “be created just by AI engineers.” The gun violence algorithm created by Patton’s team included youth perspectives, for example. The Amanda tool and similar systems should include input from young people as well as mental health practitioners — such as psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists — to ensure the developers are not creating additional harms, Patton told Undark. “I would like to see some of this work happen in more simulated environments first. One such example of a simulated environment: developing chatbots to imitate interactions with online predators. Computer science researchers based at several universities in the United States — including the University of California, Davis; Virginia Tech; and Vanderbilt University — are developing educational chatbots for children and teens. Much of the current AI research around online predators is designed to detect the cybergroomer based on conversations, said Lifu Huang, a computer scientist based at UC Davis. Those models are helpful but do not educate youth on how to recognize and respond to online predators, he said, adding that “simulating such conversations could be more powerful” in detection. Huang is part of a research team that was awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant in 2024 to create an educational chatbot for adolescents. The research leverages natural language processing and large language models — such as the popular ChatGPT — to develop human-like chatbots that can simulate a conversation between predators and youth. Huang and his colleagues, which includes computer scientist Jin-Hee Cho at Virginia Tech, has developed a working model nicknamed SERI for “Stop CybERgroomIng.” The platform includes two human-like chatbots — one that mimics the online perpetrator and the second that mimics a young victim. An example of a simulated conversation from the SERI platform. This could mean that the chatbot won’t recognize more recent language, Huang said. The researchers hope to capture higher quality training data by this summer. So, the research team is using publicly available datasets and have avoided online sources like OpenAI, Huang explained. “This is an exciting frontier for AI,” said Patton. “If done well,” he added, “I think this work has the potential to not only protect young people, but to also build trust in digital platforms, which we so desperately need.” For one, the success of digital moderation tools such as Amanda depends on widespread adoption, said cybersecurity researcher Manja Nikolovska. It’s unclear how many gaming and social media platforms will sign up to integrate the technology into their messaging and forum apps. “Success in this area will also depend on exploring children’s reactions: whether they find ways to bypass the controls of such systems and whether there is a “die-off” period (discontinuation of use) after initial adoption.” “If done well, I think this work has the potential to not only protect young people, but to also build trust in digital platforms, which we so desperately need.” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, for example, filed a lawsuit against the company that owns Snapchat in September that claims the popular application has done very little to curb grooming, sexual harassment, and sextortion — when someone acquires sexually explicit images from a person, then uses that material as blackmail for either money or more images. And last October, Todd’s family joined 10 other families in a lawsuit against Snapchat, Meta, and other tech companies alleging the companies prioritized engagement over children’s safety. Bours, the cybersecurity analyst and cryptographer who launched the Amanda tool, is hopeful that content moderation, keystroke analysis, and similar technologies could address many of these cases. And, possibly, prevent more teenagers from experiencing the same torment as Todd. “This is something that I will be doing for the rest of my academic career.” McCullom reported this story from Trondheim, Norway, and Chicago, Illinois. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.