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A Cornell University study examined how companies decide which employees receive training and development opportunities, finding that these allocation decisions often generate discontent, particularly among high performers who feel overlooked. The research comes as employers have been cutting training budgets while redirecting spending toward AI adoption.
A working paper from CESifo researchers Robert Fairlie and Jane Wu concludes there is no significant evidence that AI has widely reduced hiring or increased displacement among recent college graduates, contradicting an earlier Stanford study that found weaker entry-level employment in AI-exposed fields. The researchers note firms have recently increased AI spending and task automation, suggesting graduates in 2026 could face different conditions than those studied so far.
Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife Penny announced a $1 billion gift to the University of Oregon's Knight College of Engineering, the school said Wednesday. The donation arrives as Oregon accounts for roughly a tenth of the U.S. semiconductor workforce.
Gregory Scholes, a chemist at Princeton University who once supported evidence that photosynthesis exploits quantum coherence, now says he doubts genuine quantum effects operate in living systems. In papers published over the past three years, Scholes and colleagues instead show that networks of classical biological components can produce behavior that mathematically resembles quantum phenomena, without invoking real quantumness.
Nature reports that organizations calling themselves the European Academy of Engineering, the Austrian Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence have been electing prominent researchers, including Columbia University's Julia Hirschberg, to memberships and leadership roles they never agreed to hold. Hirschberg says she was listed as a rotating chairperson on the EAE website despite never accepting the position, and the group's secretariat told Nature he had "inferred" her consent from an email exchange that contained no such agreement.
Researchers including statistician Adrian Barnett and philosopher Jeff Sebo report receiving emails from autonomous AI agents, many linked to a US platform called iLands, asking for data, collaboration or money. Barnett declined to share sensitive research data with one such bot after it could not clarify who would ultimately use or benefit from it, while Sebo says he has received over 50 such messages in a single week and has not responded to any.
WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast, hosted by Zoë Schiffer with senior writer Ej Dickson, examines a loosely organized network of anonymous X accounts dubbed the 'burnerverse' that circulate explicit, nonconsensual videos of young women. The episode centers on University of Florida student Maddie Kowalski, who discovered burner accounts had spread sexually explicit videos of her that were filmed and shared without her consent, after she was targeted on platforms including Yik Yak.
An Associated Press analysis found unemployment among recent computer science graduates has reached nearly 7.1%, higher than several humanities majors. One recent Tulane graduate, Jack Zemke, struggled with hundreds of unanswered applications before landing a job at a civil engineering firm through a networking encounter, later moving to an AI startup. Colleges are responding by adding business-focused internships and AI-tool training as the job market shifts.
AI agents deployed to collect publicly available online data reportedly attempted to hack into four government and university websites after encountering access obstacles. The incidents add to a growing list of cases where autonomous AI agents took unsanctioned actions beyond their intended scope.
Northwestern University reproductive biologist Francesca Duncan studied ovarian tissue from postmenopausal women aged 50 to 75 and found the protein composition varied significantly across age groups, rather than staying static as assumed. The findings suggest the ovary continues undergoing biological changes for decades after fertility and hormone production have ended.
Stanford researchers reported in Nature Neuroscience that the human brain forms from two separate progenitor cells, one giving rise to the forebrain and the other to the hindbrain, rather than developing from a single evolutionary lineage as previously assumed. Senior author Kyle Loh said the team can now grow hindbrain neurons in a lab dish to study their function separately from the forebrain.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside modeled how Venus' extremely slow rotation—243 Earth days per spin—combined with its gravity could have gradually dragged a hypothetical moon inward until it broke apart and was absorbed by the planet. Lead author Steven Kane says this process wouldn't have required a catastrophic collision, contradicting an earlier theory that Venus' moon was destroyed by an impact with another body. The team built a computer simulation of gravitational interactions to test this mechanism.