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A political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis found that just 13% of Gen Z respondents believe most people can be trusted, while 74% agreed that 'you can't be too careful' when dealing with others. Researchers attribute this low trust to formative experiences shaping the youngest members of today's workforce.
Scientists from Griffith University and Sea World Foundation observed a humpback whale mother remaining with her stillborn calf near the seafloor off Queensland's southern Gold Coast for hours, possibly days, in 2025. The mother kept close contact, maintained eye contact and stayed positioned beside the calf, behavior researchers describe as consistent with grief and maternal attachment.
An entrepreneur whose company works with university admissions teams describes discovering that staff didn't want a new CRM to replace tools like Slate or Salesforce, but relief from hours spent on manual tasks such as sorting emails, downloading transcripts, and cross-checking student records across systems. The piece argues that this hidden, repetitive work—not the underlying software—is the true source of workplace friction.
A Stanford team led by Sergiu Pașca genetically engineered mice to lack most of their cortex and hippocampus, then implanted human brain organoid cells into the resulting gap. The human cells expanded to fill much of that space within weeks to months, and mice with the human tissue performed better on memory maze tests than mice without it.
After former OpenAI and Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly quit citing existential AI risk, Anthropic safety lead Evan Hubinger confirmed he personally estimates a greater than 10% chance AI could wipe out humanity within a decade, admitting the company lacks a solid plan for aligning superintelligent systems. Princeton computer scientists and authors of 'AI Snake Oil' have now published a response outlining ways to reduce that risk.
Washington State University researcher Cameron Peace, while analyzing DNA samples sent by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association from trees on abandoned farms, found that one sample matched a long-predicted but never-located ancestor in his North American apple pedigree database. The discovery means a living tree in Maine has been quietly passing traits like flavor, hardiness and disease resistance to hundreds of modern apple varieties for centuries.
Stanford researchers led by James Zou built a system called Paper2Agent that automatically transforms a scientific paper's text, code and data into an AI agent acting as a stand-in for its corresponding author. The tool deposits a paper's materials onto an MCP server, has AI agents build tools that apply the paper's methods to new data, and lets scientists query the resulting agent in plain language via any large language model. In one test, it built an agent for the AlphaGenome paper in about 45 minutes for $14, and that agent answered genetics questions with near-perfect accuracy.
Researchers led by Sergiu Pașca at Stanford transplanted lab-grown human brain tissue into newborn mice missing part of their brains, and the tissue expanded to fill much of that space while forming functional connections with the host nervous system. Published in Nature on September 16, the study represents the most extensive fusion of human neural tissue into a living animal achieved to date, though behavioral tests showed the mice did not gain enhanced cognitive abilities.
Wuyoh Sui, a digital-health researcher at Western University in Canada, examined how smart watches and rings are increasingly used in scientific studies of exercise, sleep and chronic disease. He points out that these commercial devices rely on opaque AI algorithms whose data handling is difficult to audit, raising ethical questions for researchers who adopt them.
South Korean universities including Sogang, SKKU, Korea University and Hanyang University have launched 'contract departments' co-created with SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, blending semiconductor and AI coursework with direct hiring pathways. Students in these programs, such as Sogang's System Semiconductor Engineering track, can receive guaranteed employment at SK Hynix upon graduation, while Samsung-linked programs like SKKU's Department of Intelligent Software require passing a separate company hiring process.
A new NBER working paper from researchers at Harvard and the Norwegian School of Economics surveyed over 9,000 workers and found that time spent in meetings was the strongest predictor of wage growth among all workplace activities studied. Meetings consume about 12% of work hours on average, and the study found firms with more meetings tend to be more successful overall, while employees attending more meetings saw greater pay and career progress.
Researchers led by Simin Ma at Yunnan University developed perovskite solar cells specifically tuned to convert the blue-shifted light that penetrates several meters underwater into electricity. They addressed the material's usual weakness to moisture by adding polyhexamethylene guanidine hydrochloride, which forms a water-repelling layer and strengthens the crystal structure, improving both durability and power output.