Exclusive: Campaigners argue news channel’s attacks on climate action ‘work in financial interests’ of Sir Paul Marshall

The hedge fund run by the co-owner of GB News almost tripled its investments in fossil fuel companies in the first quarter of 2026 to $2.8bn (£2.1bn), the Guardian can reveal.

Critics have accused Sir Paul Marshall of “cashing in on climate chaos” and have claimed the news channel, which frequently attacks climate science and action, was “working in its owner’s financial interests”.

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The cat sleeps more. It jumps up onto things less. It takes longer to get comfortable and doesn’t race around the way it used to. This reads as an obvious story: the animal is getting old. It’s natural. It’s expected. Most owners I know accept this narrative without a second thought because it’s tidy and it requires nothing of them.

What veterinary research keeps saying, with increasing insistence, is that the tidy narrative is almost certainly wrong.

The numbers are difficult to ignore

Studies consistently find that between 64% and 92% of cats over the age of ten have arthritis. By the time a cat reaches twelve, the figure for osteoarthritis alone is around 90%. In cats older than fourteen, 82% show joint involvement in imaging studies. These are not marginal findings from a single outlier study. They replicate across research institutions and countries.

The gap between those numbers and what most cat owners believe about their pets is enormous. And it exists almost entirely because cats are extraordinarily good at not telling you they are hurting.

Why cats conceal pain

This is not stubbornness or stoicism in any meaningful sense. It is evolutionary architecture. Cats occupy an unusual ecological position — they are predators, but they are also prey. A wild cat that signals injury or weakness invites attack. Over millions of years, the ones that survived were the ones that showed nothing.

That instinct does not disappear in a domestic animal sleeping on a heated blanket in a flat in Amsterdam. The cat that is quietly arthritic does not limp dramatically, does not vocalise its pain, does not do anything that reads obviously as suffering. It just… adjusts. It stops jumping to the high shelf. It grooms itself less around the hips. It finds a position and stays in it. To an owner watching casually, this looks indistinguishable from the ordinary changes of age.

Researchers from the University of California Davis and others have noted that owners frequently report these behavioural changes during routine vet visits, describe them as age-related, and don’t flag them as pain indicators — because they don’t know that’s what they are. The cat isn’t complaining. The owner isn’t alarmed. The pain goes unmanaged.

What to actually look for

The clinical picture of a cat in chronic pain is subtle, almost by design. The American Animal Hospital Association lists the signs: reduced activity, reluctance to jump, changes in grooming patterns, altered sleep positions, irritability when touched in certain places, and withdrawal from interaction. None of these is dramatic. All of them can be read as “just getting older.”

The distinguishing question a vet will ask is not whether any of these things are happening but whether they represent a change from the cat’s baseline. A cat that has always been calm and low-energy is probably fine. A cat that used to leap to the windowsill every morning and now doesn’t is a different conversation.

The treatment gap

There is now a real and expanding range of interventions for feline chronic pain — including newer monoclonal antibody treatments specifically approved for cats — but they require a diagnosis, which requires a vet visit, which requires an owner who suspects something is wrong.

That chain breaks at the first link when owners are operating on the assumption that the slowdown is natural. I find myself thinking about how many cats are spending years in unmanaged pain while their owners interpret the stoicism as contentment. The cat doesn’t complain. The owner assumes it’s fine. Nobody’s lying. But the outcome is the same as if both of them were.

If your cat is over ten and has changed its movement patterns in the last year or two, the veterinary consensus is clear: don’t wait for obvious signals. The species you’re dealing with evolved specifically not to give you any.

The post Most cat owners I know assume their older cat is just slowing down with age — veterinary research suggests up to 92% of cats over ten have arthritis, and most are hiding it appeared first on Space Daily.

One of the world’s leading technology companies, Nvidia, has just unveiled a new data center cooling system that uses a liquid coolant hotter than a hot tub to cut energy consumption.

The Californian company’s latest Rubin platform can operate using liquid coolant at temperatures up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius). The approach greatly reduces the need for energy-intensive chillers and cooling infrastructure.

According to the company, the feat is part of the DSX AI factory reference design, which introduces fully liquid-cooled infrastructure throughout the entire system. Every processor, networking part, and high-performance computing element is cooled by liquid in a closed-loop system.

Ali Heydari, Nvidia data center cooling and infrastructure director, noted that the DSX AI factory design reduces nearly all water use and cuts a substantial amount of the power necessary for cooling. “With dry-cooler-based designs, it’s a closed-loop system with no evaporative water cooling – outside of maybe one percent of the year when we might need chillers in some climates,” he added.

A new cooling method

Cooling has accounted for up to 40 percent of total power demand. Traditional data centers utilize large volumes of cooled air to remove the heat generated by servers. This requires extensive cooling infrastructure, like fans, chillers, cooling towers, and carefully managed hot and cold aisles.

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s Rubin platform captures heat directly at the chip level. It can reportedly reduce cooling water consumption from about 2.6 million gallons per megawatt per year to almost zero in suitable climates.

The system relies on a liquid coolant made up of 75 percent water and 25 percent propylene glycol, which circulates through cold plates attached to processors. The liquid enters at temperatures of up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit and exits at about 131 degrees Fahrenheit (55 degrees Celsius), once it absorbs the heat generated by the chips.

Since the heat is removed directly from the source, the processors can continue operating at full performance even with much warmer coolant temperatures than traditional cooling systems would allow.

Lower energy and water use

As per Nvidia, the higher operating temperatures unlock considerable efficiency gains. Industry estimates suggest that increasing chiller temperatures by just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius) can reduce cooling energy costs by four percent. In practice, this means that a 50-megawatt hyperscale facility can save more than USD four million per year in cooling-related energy and water costs by adopting liquid-cooled infrastructure.

“In the right geographic location, with the right system design, you don’t need any refrigeration equipment,” Richard Whitmore, president and CEO of Motivair, Schneider Electric’s advanced cooling division, pointed out. “You can just put big radiator coils outside and use the air temperature for all your cooling.”

The move to complete liquid cooling also required a major server redesign. Earlier liquid-cooled servers used a hybrid approach, cooling CPUs and GPUs with cold plates while relying on air cooling for other components.

Nvidia engineers reworked cooling pathways across the entire server and created a system that uses a single liquid loop to cool multiple high-power components. The redesign has also improved space efficiency. The company revealed that fully liquid-cooled servers can reach higher rack densities.

This allows more computing power to fit into a smaller footprint. “Once the watts per chip crossed a certain level, liquid cooling became mandatory,” Whitmore concluded in a press release.

In a groundbreaking study challenging prevailing assumptions about climate policy, German politicians appear to underestimate public support for climate action, suggesting a disconnect that could shape future legislative efforts. This research, recently published in Communications Earth & Environment, involved a comprehensive survey of over 6,000 German political figures combined with two robust population samples, shedding new light on the perceptions of climate-related public opinion within political domains.

The study’s core methodology involved contacting 6,074 German politicians via official email addresses between September and November 2024. These emails invited recipients to participate in a concise, five-minute online survey on “Trends in German Society,” deliberately omitting any direct reference to climate change in an effort to reduce bias. Despite the considerable size of the outreach, the overall final completion rate after stringent data cleaning—including a threshold where respondents completing less than half of the survey were excluded—yielded 1,599 high-quality responses. This cohort formed the backbone of the political sample for in-depth analysis.

Respondents were first provided a clear, scientific definition of global warming to ensure a consistent understanding across participants. This standardization was essential for eliciting valid attitudes relating to perceived problem awareness, policy acceptance, and willingness to engage in financial contributions toward climate mitigation efforts. The survey asked about politicians’ perceptions of how problematic the average German citizen finds climate-damaging behaviors and the corresponding desire for government intervention to reduce such actions. This dual focus aimed to assess both the perceived societal concern and the appetite for political support in addressing climate issues.

One of the critical findings centers on the perceived public acceptance of climate policies. Politicians were queried about communication and informational initiatives, the imposition of taxes on environmentally harmful products and behaviors, as well as stricter laws and regulations. Results indicated that politicians systematically underestimated the level of public support for each type of intervention, revealing a sizable perception gap that may influence hesitancy or delay in implementing ambitious policies.

Additional layers of the survey explored perceived willingness among citizens to contribute financially to climate action. Two specific metrics were used: the number of people believed to be willing to donate 1% of their household income monthly toward climate causes, and the expected amount of microdonations from a hypothetical €1 earned by survey participation. The politicians’ conservative estimates in these financial willingness measures contrasted with actual data derived from representative surveys of the German population, underscoring a potential underappreciation of public commitment.

Complementing the political survey, two population samples were simultaneously analyzed. The first was a nationally representative online cohort of 1,034 German residents aged 16 and older, recruited through the professional survey company Kantar. This sample’s data helped benchmark real public attitudes toward climate problem awareness, governmental support desires, and acceptance of policy measures. The second incorporated 1,000 participants from the global Gallup World Poll, representing a broad cross-section of the German populace, further reinforcing the validity of the findings.

The population samples consistently demonstrated higher levels of problem recognition and stronger endorsement for governmental action on climate change than the political respondents presumed. Notably, willingness to financially support climate initiatives was markedly higher among the general public than politicians estimated. This disparity points toward a systemic underestimation within the political elite regarding their constituents’ readiness for meaningful climate policies.

Such findings hold significant implications for political decision-making. By misjudging the public’s attitudes, legislators and party leaders may refrain from advancing or supporting robust climate legislation for fear of voter backlash or electoral risk. This dynamic could partly explain the sluggish pace of climate policy adoption in Germany despite mounting scientific urgency and popular concern.

The study also incorporates demographic variables from the political cohort—party membership, mandate level, government versus opposition status—but the perception gap in climate support appears pervasive across these strata. The researchers carefully mitigated selection biases by anonymizing survey topics and limiting survey length to encourage participation, thus strengthening the generalizability of their conclusions.

Moreover, the research underscores a broader phenomenon in democratic governance: the critical importance of accurate awareness of public opinion among policymakers. Misperceptions can skew policy priorities and stall necessary systemic transformation, especially in deeply divisive or complex issues such as climate change. This study contributes empirical evidence to the discourse, advocating for enhanced communication channels and feedback mechanisms between citizens and their elected representatives.

The implications extend beyond Germany, serving as a cautionary tale for democracies worldwide. As climate crises accelerate, aligning political perceptions with grassroots realities is paramount to fostering effective, timely policy responses. Future research might explore interventions that improve politicians’ insight into public sentiment or measure the impacts of corrected perceptions on policy enactment.

Researchers also highlight the need for continuous, high-resolution public opinion tracking using varied methodologies, including direct surveys with policymakers and general population samples. This multi-angle approach ensures robust cross-validation and prevents siloed misunderstandings from dampening political momentum on urgent environmental challenges.

By revealing that German politicians substantially undervalue public backing for climate action, this study challenges political assumptions and calls for strategic reforms in policymaker engagement with constituents. Increased awareness of genuine public support could embolden policymakers to champion ambitious climate initiatives, potentially reshaping Germany’s environmental trajectory.

The convergence of rigorous survey methods, large sample sizes, and thorough demographic controls lends significant credibility to these revelations. Ultimately, bridging the gap between political perception and public reality represents a critical step to unlocking proactive climate governance capable of meeting the demands of planetary stewardship.

As Germany positions itself as a leader in climate policy, this study’s insights serve as a powerful reminder that public opinion is not only a metric but a dynamic resource to be understood and harnessed. Greater transparency and dialogue between politicians and citizens might unlock untapped political will, enhancing collective climate action efficacy.

In conclusion, the evidence points to a pervasive issue: political misjudgment of climate support that risks impeding crucial policy advancements. Addressing this perceptual shortfall may catalyze transformative environmental legislation, aligning political action with the robust enthusiasm evident among the German populace.

Subject of Research: Public perceptions of climate action support among German politicians compared to the general population

Article Title: Public support for climate action is underestimated in the German political domain

Article References:
Sevincer, A.T., Hostlowsky, L., Styhler, F. et al. Public support for climate action is underestimated in the German political domain. Commun Earth Environ 7, 543 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03721-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03721-7

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an ultra-efficient computer chip that could help tiny robots and lightweight devices create detailed 3D maps of their surroundings while using very little energy. The new chip could allow small drones to fly through narrow spaces, such as air-conditioning ducts or industrial pipelines, to inspect […]

The post Tiny MIT chip could help small robots navigate like experts while using almost no power appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.

NASA’s September 2025 announcement about the Perseverance rover did not say that life had been found on Mars. It said something more careful, and in some ways more interesting: a sample taken from a rock called Cheyava Falls contains a potential biosignature.

The sample, named Sapphire Canyon, came from the Bright Angel formation in Neretva Vallis, a dried-up river valley that once carried water into Jezero Crater. According to NASA’s 10 September 2025 release, the rock preserves evidence of ancient water, organic carbon, and chemical reactions that could have provided energy for microbial metabolisms.

The central word is potential. A potential biosignature is not proof of life. It is a substance, structure, texture, or pattern that might have a biological origin, but still needs further evidence before biology can be separated from non-biological chemistry.

What Perseverance found at Bright Angel

Perseverance encountered Cheyava Falls in July 2024 while exploring the Bright Angel outcrops along Neretva Vallis. The rover’s instruments, including PIXL and SHERLOC, examined an arrowhead-shaped rock about 1 metre by 0.6 metres and later collected the Sapphire Canyon core.

The rock is sedimentary. NASA said the formation’s rocks are composed of clay and silt, materials that on Earth can preserve traces of past microbial life. The same rocks are rich in organic carbon, sulfur, oxidised iron and phosphorus.

Those ingredients matter because they sit at the intersection of habitability and preservation. Organic carbon is not life by itself. Water-shaped sediments are not life by themselves. Iron and sulfur chemistry is not life by itself. But a place where all of them overlap is exactly the kind of setting astrobiologists pay attention to.

The leopard spots carry the signal

The feature that raised the level of interest was a pattern of small spots and reaction fronts, described by the mission team as leopard spots. In higher-resolution data, those spots carried signatures of two iron-rich minerals: vivianite, a hydrated iron phosphate, and greigite, an iron sulfide.

On Earth, NASA noted, vivianite is often found in sediments, peat bogs, and around decaying organic matter. Certain microbial life can also produce greigite. The Nature paper behind the announcement, “Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars”, was led by Joel A. Hurowitz and published on 10 September 2025.

The paper interprets the mineral patterns as evidence of electron-transfer reactions between sediment and organic matter. That is why the finding is astrobiologically interesting: microbial life can use such redox reactions to obtain energy for growth.

It is also why the result must be handled cautiously. Chemistry that can feed life is not the same as chemistry made by life.

Why this is not a life detection

NASA’s own release is careful on this point. The minerals could have formed without biology, through processes involving sustained high temperatures, acidic conditions, or reactions helped along by organic compounds. The Bright Angel rocks do not appear to show evidence of high-temperature or acidic alteration, which makes those explanations less straightforward, but not impossible.

Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, put the caution plainly in the release: abiotic explanations are less likely under the paper’s findings, but they cannot be ruled out. That is the difference between an intriguing signal and a confirmed biological origin.

This matters because Mars has a history of life-shaped hopes that later proved more complicated. The scientific standard is not whether a feature can be explained by biology. It is whether non-biological explanations can be excluded strongly enough to make biology the best remaining account.

Cheyava Falls is not there yet.

The sample’s setting makes it harder to dismiss

The reason the finding is being treated seriously is the geological context. Neretva Vallis was carved by water flowing into Jezero Crater. Jezero itself was selected for Perseverance because it once hosted a lake and delta environment, the kind of setting that could have concentrated sediments and preserved chemical traces from early Mars.

The Sapphire Canyon sample was taken from clay- and silt-rich rocks in that ancient river system. If Mars ever hosted microbial life, fine-grained water-laid sediments are among the places where evidence might survive.

The surprise in the NASA release is that the rock belongs to some of the younger sedimentary material Perseverance has examined. One earlier assumption was that potential traces of ancient life would be most likely in older rocks. If the Bright Angel result holds up, it could suggest either that habitable conditions lasted longer than expected or that younger rocks can preserve clearer signals than anticipated.

That is a geological implication, not a declaration of biology.

Why Earth laboratories still matter

Perseverance can do a great deal from the surface of Mars. It can image textures, map chemistry, detect organic signatures, and choose samples. It cannot perform every laboratory test that would be needed to settle the origin of the Cheyava Falls features.

That is why the Sapphire Canyon core matters as a cached sample. The strongest tests would involve bringing the material to Earth, where laboratories could examine isotopes, mineral structures, organic molecules, microscopic textures, and possible formation pathways with instruments too large or specialised to fly on a rover.

This is the uncomfortable position Mars science now occupies. Perseverance may already have collected one of the most scientifically important rocks in the search for ancient life, but the interpretation remains limited by what can be done remotely.

The announcement therefore strengthens the case for sample return, even as Mars Sample Return has faced cost, schedule, and political pressure.

The careful reading

The Cheyava Falls result is one of the strongest potential biosignature claims from Mars because several pieces line up: an ancient water-shaped setting, organic carbon, redox-active chemistry, iron phosphate and iron sulfide minerals, and textures that resemble reaction fronts.

None of those pieces alone establishes life. Together, they justify the attention.

The next question is not whether the announcement should be exciting or dismissed. It is whether the same features can be produced without biology under plausible Martian conditions. Until that question is answered, Sapphire Canyon sits in the most interesting category Mars science has: not evidence of life, but evidence that deserves the full machinery of life-detection science.

The post In September 2025, NASA announced that a Perseverance sample from a Mars rock called Cheyava Falls contained one of the strongest potential biosignatures yet found on the planet: evidence of ancient water, organic carbon, and chemical reactions that could have supplied energy for microbes, all preserved in a dried-up river valley. appeared first on Space Daily.

In a groundbreaking longitudinal study encompassing nearly half a million individuals, researchers have unveiled intricate patterns and biological underpinnings that link cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) and depression. These two prevalent and often coexisting health conditions have long posed challenges due to their complex interaction and compounded risk on mortality. Now, through a multinational, multi-omic analytic approach, this study sheds new light on how these diseases develop, interlace over time, and ultimately impact life expectancy, offering hope for earlier detection and more precise interventions.

Cardiometabolic diseases—which include chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome—are among the leading causes of death globally. Depression, meanwhile, remains a colossal mental health burden, often running parallel to various physical ailments. The coexistence, or multimorbidity, of CMDs and depression exacerbates health outcomes significantly, yet the trajectory of how one condition progresses to include the other and the biological mechanisms driving this interaction have remained elusive.

Leveraging data from the UK Biobank, the largest population-based health cohort, the study followed 467,592 participants initially free of both CMD diagnoses and depression. Over a 14.6-year period, the scientists meticulously chronicled disease transitions using advanced multistate models. These allowed them not only to identify disease onset patterns but also to map complex pathways outlining progression from health to single disease states and then to multimorbidity.

The findings revealed that within the follow-up window, more than 64,000 participants developed CMD alone, while approximately 17,500 were diagnosed with depression exclusively. Crucially, over 6,100 individuals progressed to multimorbidity, reflecting the convergence of these conditions in a significant subset of the population. Importantly, the risk of subsequently developing the alternate condition was substantially elevated for those already affected by either CMD or depression, underscoring the bidirectional relationship between physical and mental health.

Further delving into survival outcomes, the researchers observed that individuals with multimorbidity faced a 13 to 22 percent increase in mortality risk compared to those free of disease, accompanied by a marked reduction in life expectancy averaging between 3.6 to 3.8 years. Such stark contrasts reinforce the clinical urgency of understanding and managing the intersection of CMDs and depression rather than treating them in isolation.

However, a nuanced discovery emerged from the survival analysis: the mortality impact of coexisting CMD and depression appeared additive rather than synergistic. This suggests that while coexistence heightens risk, the two diseases may operate through largely independent pathways driving mortality, a revelation that could recalibrate how treatment priorities are structured.

To decipher biological signatures predictive of disease progression and multimorbidity, the study incorporated multi-omics platforms—comprehensive analyses including proteomics, metabolomics, genomics, and methylomics. These high-dimensional tools allow scientists to detect subtle molecular changes reflecting pathophysiological shifts and prognostic biomarkers far earlier than clinical symptoms emerge.

Remarkably, proteomic models stood out in their predictive prowess. When applied to the 15-year risk horizon for CMD-depression transitions, these models achieved area-under-the-curve (AUC) values ranging between 0.70 and 0.91. This performance significantly eclipsed that of traditional clinical risk models, heralding a new dawn where molecular profiling could transform risk stratification and preventive strategies.

Distinct multi-omic signatures were identified at each disease transition point—whether from health to CMD alone, health to depression alone, or the combined pathway leading to multimorbidity. These signatures could reflect unique biological processes such as inflammatory cascades, metabolic dysregulation, neuroendocrine changes, or immune system perturbations, each contributing distinctively to disease progression.

The implications of these findings are far-reaching. With multimorbidity presenting as a growing global health challenge, understanding its trajectory and molecular footprints empowers clinicians and researchers to design targeted interventions that transcend symptom management. Early identification of individuals at highest risk via omic biomarkers could enable precision medicine approaches that pre-empt illness onset or halt progression.

Furthermore, by elucidating the distinct yet interconnected biological pathways linking CMDs and depression, this research challenges the traditionally siloed view of mental and physical health. It advocates for integrated care models that address the whole person rather than fragmented disease entities, a paradigm shift essential for improving patient outcomes in real-world settings.

The study also leverages rigorous multistate modeling, a sophisticated statistical technique allowing for dynamic representation of illness progression over time. This approach captures the complexity inherent in chronic disease trajectories, encompassing not only onset but transitions between disease states and eventual mortality. Such modeling enhances the granularity of epidemiological insights far beyond conventional methods.

As large-scale biobanks increasingly incorporate multi-omic data, the ability to unravel disease biology at unprecedented depth will only grow. The present study exemplifies how marrying big data with cutting-edge analytic frameworks can unveil novel insights into multimorbidity, transforming epidemiology into a powerful tool for precision health.

This research arrives at a critical juncture where global populations face rising burdens of chronic diseases intertwined with mental health challenges. Targeted, biologically informed strategies could ease the strain on healthcare systems and improve quality of life for millions living with overlapping disease burdens.

While promising, the findings also urge cautious optimism. The translation of molecular signatures into routine clinical tools requires further validation and contextualization across diverse ancestral and environmental backgrounds. However, these initial steps firmly establish a conceptual blueprint for future studies to build upon.

Taken together, this extensive investigation pioneers a new frontier in understanding the intertwined evolution of cardiometabolic diseases and depression. By uniting longitudinal clinical data with multi-omics analyses and sophisticated modeling, it heralds a transformative approach toward unraveling multimorbidity’s mysteries and paves the way for early, targeted prevention.

The convergence of CMDs and depression, previously viewed as a devastating clinical overlap, now emerges as a tractable problem awaiting targeted intervention—fueling hope that integrated molecular insights will soon translate into lifesaving real-world applications. This revolutionary research sets the stage for a future where vulnerability to complex chronic disease is revealed well before symptoms arise, opening unprecedented avenues for personalized health preservation.

Subject of Research:
Multi-omic signatures and disease trajectories linking cardiometabolic diseases and depression

Article Title:
Multi-omic signatures and trajectories of cardiometabolic diseases and depression

Article References:

Yang, G., Jiang, X., Wang, J. et al. Multi-omic signatures and trajectories of cardiometabolic diseases and depression.
Nat. Mental Health (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-026-00678-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-026-00678-6

Experiments exploring the effects of missing a night’s sleep on the human brain have found indications that a sleepless night actually increases connections between brain cells instead of impeding growth. However, the lack of sleep could also create brain “fatigue” and pressure, resulting in burnout.

The Forschungszentrum Jülich Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine team behind the discovery said that their findings might support the idea that sleep plays an important role in restoring the brain’s cellular balance.

Missing a Night’s Sleep Could Disrupt Cellular Balance

In a statement announcing the surprising discovery, study leader David Elmenhorst and colleagues note that scientists still are not in complete consensus about why humans and other animals need sleep. One proposal involves restoring synaptic connections between brain cells during certain stages of sleep, helping the brain maintain a form of cellular ‘homeostasis.’

For example, previous research has shown that synaptic connectivity increases during wakefulness. This increased activity also increases energy consumption, potentially resulting in problematic protein buildup. Conversely, scientists suspect that sleep helps restore baseline synaptic connections and protein levels, thereby maintaining a healthy cellular balance.

“Sleep is essential for synaptic homeostasis, a proposed mechanism whereby wake­fulness leads to synaptic potentiation, and sleep facilitates synaptic down-selection,” the research team explains in a recently published study.

Although previous studies suggest that missing a night’s sleep could disrupt this balance, the team notes that there is very little experimental data to support these conclusions.

Study Reveals Elevated Synaptic Activity After 28 Hours Awake

To explore the role of sleep in cellular homeostasis in the human brain, the researchers used an advanced brain-scanning technology called positron emission tomography (PET). According to the team’s statement, this tool can scan the human brain for signs of synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A (SV2A),  which they describe as a “marker” of brain synapses.

The team started by enlisting 40 study volunteers. Next, each volunteer was given a PET scan to establish baseline marker levels. After their first scan, 20 of the volunteers were told to get a normal night’s sleep. According to the study authors, the second half were assigned to “the sleep deprivation condition,” where they were told to miss a night’s sleep.

The next day, the team used the PET scan to search for telltale brain synapse markers. As hoped, the scans revealed a distinct difference between the two groups. Where the normal sleep group’s levels were within expected ranges, the synapse markers of the volunteers who had missed a night’s sleep were elevated.

A closer analysis found that once people passed 28 hours of continued wakefulness, their SV2A markers were higher “in several brain regions.” Notably, these increased markers were detected in the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory, and in the thalamus, which is critical for information relay within the brain.

“Sleep deprivation led to significant increases in synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A binding in multiple brain regions, including the thalamus (+4.6%), hippocampus (+5.6%), and parietal cortex (+3.2%), whereas no changes were observed in controls,” the study authors write.

Sleep Deprivation Causes Fatigue and CHanges Neural COnnections

When discussing the study’s limitations, the authors note that the SV2A marker used is a “proxy” for connections between brain cells, not a direct measure. They also note that the observed changes after a missed night’s sleep “were relatively small.” Still, they add, the results in several regions across several study participants “suggest a biological connection between the need for sleep and the buildup of cell connections.”

“During sleep deprivation, the brain remains awake longer and continues to process stimuli and information,” they write. “Our study shows that after approximately 28.5 hours of wakefulness, a marker for synaptic density increases in several brain regions. This suggests that sleep deprivation not only causes fatigue but is also accompanied by measurable changes in neural connections.”

The study “Sleep deprivation increases levels of the synaptic density marker SV2A in the human brain” was published in PLOS Biology.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

For the first time in nine years, a supercomputer from China has come ahead of all other machines in the list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The list was announced at the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg, Germany.

The number one spot in the list has been given to LineShine – a supercomputer from China that was previously unlisted. LineShine has displaced the US’ own El Capitan as the world’s most powerful supercomputer as measured by the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark.

Its debut marks the first time since 2017 that a Chinese system has led the TOP500, and it also takes over the No. 1 position on the HPCG ranking with 22.00 HPCG-Petaflop/s, according to a press release from the organization.

LineShine tops the Top 500 world’s most powerful supercomputers list

The supercomputer from China has not just topped the list of the world’s most powerful machines. It has also achieved 2.198 Exaflop/s on the HPL benchmark, making it the “first system in the TOP 500 to exceed two exaflops of sustained double-precision performance using CPUs only.”

LineShen is installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen (NSCS) and built by the Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center. It is based on a custom Chinese processor and the “LingKun” platform: 13.79 million cores across 304-core LX2 processors running at 1.55 GHz, linked by the proprietary LingQi interconnect and running Kylin OS.

The supercomputer draws approximately 42.2 megawatts of power and comes with an efficiency of 52.07 Gigaflops/Watt. LineShine reached 7.92 Exaflop/s for fourth place, a comparatively modest 3.6x speedup over its HPL score, indicating a CPU-only design without dedicated low-precision accelerators, the press release added.

It differs from other high-performance supercomputers because it relies on CPUs rather than modern graphics processing units (GPUs) used for AI.

However, LineShine’s debut marks a significant achievement, increasing the number of systems sustaining over one exaflop/s on HPL from four to five. Also, for the first time, the exascale systems are distributed across the Asian, North American, and European continents simultaneously.

El Capitan, Frontier, and Aurora from the US also feature in the top five

While LineShine might have captured the top spot, the next three supercomputers in the list are from the United States.

The most powerful supercomputer from 2025, El Capitan, is at the second position with 1.89 Exaflop/s on HPL. El Capitan is at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the US. It has 11.34 million cores and 60.94 Gigaflops/Watt, built on the HPE Cray EX255a architecture with AMD 4th Gen EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier supercomputer is in third position in the rankings with a performance of 1.35 Exaflop/s on HPL. The fifth most powerful supercomputer, according to the list, is the Jupiter Booster operated by the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany.

Supercomputers in the modern world are used for everything from predicting the weather and developing AI to advancing medical innovations and simulating nuclear explosions for defense needs. Therefore, they are in some ways considered a parameter of a country’s technological prowess. China’s win in this year’s list could translate to worries for the West in general, but the more powerful machines might be coming soon from the US and Europe.

A groundbreaking study conducted by researchers at the Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London, reveals a profound cultural shift in the moral fabric embedded within popular music lyrics over the past six decades. By leveraging advanced computational techniques combined with artificial intelligence and linguistic analysis, the team has mapped an evolving landscape in song lyrics that reflects broader societal changes in emotional expression and moral values. This unprecedented research charts the decline of traditional virtues and a concurrent rise in language expressing moral vices, offering a new window into the collective psyche and cultural dynamics of modern society.

Popular music has long been acknowledged as a mirror to societal trends and sentiments, but this study elevates that understanding by quantitatively analyzing over 380,000 English-language songs released from 1960 through 2023. The researchers employed sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to decode the moral themes present in song lyrics, categorizing emotional and ethical content within a scalable, data-driven framework. This expansive dataset incorporated multiple genres and both mainstream Billboard hits and lesser-known tracks, ensuring a comprehensive reflection of popular music’s lyrical evolution.

At the core of the research was the classification of lyrics according to moral foundations theory and sentiment analysis. The study tracked expressions linked to moral virtues such as care, decency, and loyalty alongside vices including harm, cheating, subversion, and degradation. Findings indicate a marked decline in lyrics invoking virtues, while negative sentiments—particularly those communicating conflict, anger, disgust, and antisocial behavior—have steadily surged. This dichotomy reveals not only changes in lyrical content but hints at a deeper transformation in cultural narratives and societal priorities over time.

Dr. Vjosa Preniqi, the lead author and a scholar in digital music research, elucidated the significance of these findings: music transcends entertainment—it functions as a cultural storyteller, encoding and broadcasting evolving societal values. Her insights emphasize that shifts in lyrical moral expression are nuanced and influenced by multiple factors, including genre-specific storytelling traditions and varying “shock-factor” tendencies within particular musical styles. This variation underscores the complexity of interpreting music as a cultural artifact and highlights the layered nature of moral discourse embedded within artistic expression.

Methodologically, the research utilized two expansive datasets: the WASABI dataset, featuring over 377,000 English lyrics spanning 1960 to 2010, supplemented by 5,500 top-charting singles from Billboard’s year-end charts extending into 2023. By integrating these datasets with machine learning models capable of semantic analysis and moral sentiment classification, the study achieves a level of granularity previously unattainable in cultural studies of music. This approach enables the detection of longitudinal trends in the interplay between emotional content and moral narratives on a scale unparalleled in previous literature.

One of the most striking revelations of the study is that the increasing prevalence of moral vices in lyrics does not simply reflect artistic rebellion or sensationalism but may symbolize broader societal shifts. The language of harm, subversion, and degradation capturing anger and disenchantment appears increasingly normalized within popular culture, potentially mirroring heightened social fragmentation, evolving attitudes towards authority, and intensified exposure to conflict in everyday life. This observation supports the thesis that popular music acts as a barometer, dynamically reflecting collective emotional states and moral orientations.

Another dimension explored by the study is the interplay between gender categories of artists and the moral tenor of their lyrics. Despite the acknowledged binary limitations in classifying artist gender within the datasets, patterns emerged showing that female artists more frequently express themes of care, loyalty, and social connection in their songwriting. In contrast, lyrics by male and mixed-gender groups tend to underscore themes related to conflict, harm, and degradation. These gendered moral narratives expose the complex ways identity, social roles, and cultural expectations are negotiated through musical storytelling.

Furthermore, genre-specific analysis elucidates diverse moral landscapes within popular music. Certain musical styles, such as soul and folk, are more closely associated with narratives centered on care, compassion, and communal values. Other genres, including punk, heavy metal, and hip-hop, often embrace vices and narratives of rebellion, subversion, and darker emotional states. This differentiation highlights how genre conventions shape and channel moral expression, reflecting distinct subcultural values and emotional registers within the broader musical ecosystem.

Senior author Dr. Charalampos Saitis underscores the reciprocal nature of music and culture, emphasizing that music both influences and responds to societal transformations. The capacity to quantitatively track these changes in moral storytelling within millions of song lyrics offers an innovative tool for sociologists, psychologists, and cultural theorists interested in the dynamic interplay between art and social values. These insights carry implications for understanding identity formation, cultural cohesion, and the emotional climate of contemporary society.

The technological underpinnings of the study represent a significant advancement in digital humanities and computational social science. By harnessing state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques, the researchers effectively decode complex moral and emotional dimensions traditionally accessible only through qualitative analysis. Such methods pave the way for future interdisciplinary research exploring cultural production, emotional expression, and moral evolution across diverse media, moving beyond anecdotal evidence to empirical, high-resolution cultural analytics.

This groundbreaking research arrives at a critical juncture when debates surrounding mental health, social fragmentation, and cultural transformation dominate public discourse. The study’s insights suggest that music, as a pervasive and influential cultural medium, encapsulates shifting emotional norms and value systems that both reflect and shape collective human experience. Understanding these trends holds profound importance for policymakers, educators, artists, and cultural leaders seeking to engage with society’s evolving moral landscape.

In conclusion, the evolution in moral expression documented by this study reveals a society increasingly confronted with complexity, ambivalence, and conflict as encoded in its popular music. The gradual erosion of lyrical virtues signals a transformative cultural moment, one where music captures the tensions and contradictions of a world in flux. This research not only amplifies our understanding of music as cultural commentary but also opens paths for deeper engagement with the ethical dimensions of artistic expression in the digital age.

Subject of Research: Evolution of moral expression in popular music lyrics from 1960 to 2023

Article Title: Evolution of moral expression in song lyrics

News Publication Date: 24-Jun-2026

Web References: 10.1038/s41598-026-53778-9

Keywords: moral values, popular music, song lyrics, cultural change, digital music analysis, artificial intelligence, sentiment analysis, emotion expression, social values, genre differences, artist gender, moral foundations

In a groundbreaking advance in neuroscience, researchers have unveiled a comprehensive single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas that illuminates the sexually dimorphic molecular responses to sub-chronic variable stress within the mouse hippocampus. This pioneering study, led by Liang et al., harnesses the power of cutting-edge single-nucleus RNA sequencing technologies to dissect the intricate cellular and molecular landscapes underlying stress responses, offering unprecedented insight into the neurobiological basis of sex differences in stress adaptability and vulnerability.

The hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory formation, emotional regulation, and cognitive processing, has long been implicated in the pathophysiology of stress-related psychiatric disorders. However, the molecular substrate accounting for sex-specific disparities in stress sensitivity and resilience has remained elusive. The current research fills this gap by providing a high-resolution snapshot of gene expression changes at the single-nucleus level, enabling dissection of cell-type specific transcriptional signatures modulated by sub-chronic variable stress paradigms in male and female mice.

The investigation employed a sub-chronic variable stress model designed to mimic real-world fluctuating stress exposures that are neither acute nor chronic, thereby reflecting a more physiologically relevant stress induction. This paradigm is instrumental in evoking complex behavioral and molecular responses that differ substantially between the sexes. By isolating nuclei from hippocampal tissue and applying state-of-the-art transcriptomic profiling, the researchers cataloged thousands of genes whose expression fluctuated in a sexually dimorphic manner.

At the core of these findings is the revelation that hippocampal cell populations, including excitatory neurons, inhibitory interneurons, astrocytes, and microglia, exhibit distinctive sex-dependent molecular trajectories when subjected to sub-chronic variable stress. Particularly striking were variations in stress-responsive gene modules tied to synaptic plasticity, neuroinflammatory pathways, and metabolic processes. These alterations underscore the molecular heterogeneity underpinning sex-based divergence in stress processing circuits.

The authors report that male hippocampal neurons predominantly engaged transcriptional programs involved in synaptic remodeling and excitability alterations, potentially reflecting an adaptive mechanism to maintain cognitive performance under stress. Contrastingly, female neurons showed a marked upregulation of immune signaling pathways and genes involved in neuroprotection, suggestive of a distinct protective strategy.

Astrocytes and microglia, glial cell types classically associated with support and immune surveillance, also displayed sexually dimorphic patterns. Female glial populations exhibited heightened activation of inflammatory mediators, coalescing with behavioral phenotypes indicative of anxiety and depressive-like states observed in females exposed to stress. These findings align with emerging knowledge of glia as pivotal modulators of neuropsychiatric disease pathogenesis potentially shaped by sex-specific factors.

Crucially, this granular atlas extends beyond cataloguing differential gene expression by integrating network analyses that map transcription factor activity and gene regulatory circuitry. This approach elucidates the upstream modulators orchestrating the sexually dimorphic stress responses, revealing candidate molecular targets such as estrogen receptor signaling components and stress-related transcription factors that could be harnessed therapeutically.

The study’s methodology represents a formidable technical achievement. By leveraging single-nucleus RNA sequencing instead of single-cell RNA sequencing, the researchers circumvented concerns related to dissociation-induced gene expression artifacts and preserved fragile neuronal subtypes, ensuring greater fidelity in the data. The depth and breadth of sequencing data permitted rigorous statistical comparisons and the identification of subtle yet biologically meaningful transcriptional differences.

Beyond its technical sophistication, this work engages with a pressing clinical imperative—understanding why psychiatric disorders with stress etiologies, such as depression and anxiety, often exhibit a striking sex bias in prevalence and manifestation. The molecular insights gleaned provide a scaffold upon which sex-specific therapeutic interventions might be designed, moving towards precision psychiatry that acknowledges biological sex as a fundamental axis of disease heterogeneity.

Moreover, the open-access single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas generated by this team constitutes a valuable resource for the neuroscience community. It is poised to catalyze further research into sex differences across other brain regions and in response to diverse environmental challenges, ultimately enriching our comprehension of brain plasticity and resilience at a molecular level.

The implications of these findings also extend to the realm of pharmacology, where sex-specific gene expression patterns may inform drug development and dosing regimens. Given the differential engagement of neuroimmune pathways in females, immunomodulatory agents could emerge as promising candidates for mitigating stress-induced neuropathology in women.

In sum, this tour de force study offers a transformative perspective on the molecular architecture of sex-dependent responses to stress, advancing our grasp of the biological underpinnings that differentiate male and female brain function under adverse conditions. As the field embraces increasingly granular analytical frameworks like single-nucleus transcriptomics, the promise of nuanced, sex-informed neuropsychiatric therapies draws closer to fruition.

The intersection of cutting-edge omics technologies with nuanced behavioral models as exemplified in this research heralds a new era in neurobiology. It underscores the imperative of integrating sex as a fundamental biological variable in neuroscience research—a paradigm shift that will ultimately enhance therapeutic precision and efficacy for a wide spectrum of stress-related mental health disorders.

Looking ahead, longitudinal studies tracking dynamic transcriptional changes over varied stress exposure timelines, coupled with functional validations of key gene candidates, will be essential to translate these foundational findings into clinical advances. Additionally, cross-species comparisons may help bridge the gap between murine models and human neurobiology, reinforcing the translational potential of this seminal work.

In conclusion, Liang and colleagues have charted a compelling course towards elucidating the sexually dimorphic molecular landscapes that shape hippocampal responses to stress. Their innovative single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas not only embodies a technical tour de force but also catalyzes a paradigm shift in understanding how sex shapes brain vulnerability and resilience, holding profound implications for neuroscience and mental health alike.

Subject of Research: Sexually dimorphic molecular responses to sub-chronic variable stress in the mouse hippocampus characterized by single-nucleus transcriptomic analysis.

Article Title: Single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of sexually dimorphic molecular responses to sub-chronic variable stress in the mouse hippocampus.

Article References:
Liang, L., Yuan, Yp., Chang, Cl. et al. Single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of sexually dimorphic molecular responses to sub-chronic variable stress in the mouse hippocampus. Transl Psychiatry (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-04202-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-04202-3

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Ocean Discovery League compiled records of approximately 44,000 deep-sea dives for a study published in Science Advances conducted between 1958 and the early 2020s. The dives were carried out by crewed submersibles, remotely operated vehicles, and autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with cameras, across dozens of institutions, flagged to multiple countries. When the League used this dataset to calculate the total area of seafloor that has been directly observed by a camera-bearing vehicle, the result was less than 0.001 per cent of the ocean floor below 200 metres depth.

The area amounts to roughly 2,100 square kilometres. For comparison, the state of Rhode Island covers about 4,000 square kilometres. Six decades of deep-sea exploration, by some of the best-equipped oceanographic programmes in the world, have produced direct visual coverage of the seafloor equivalent to a single small state.

The deep ocean covers approximately 335 million square kilometres.

What direct observation means, and what it does not

The figure requires some care in interpretation, because the deep ocean is not unknown in a simple sense. Acoustic mapping, particularly multibeam sonar, has produced detailed topographic charts of significant portions of the seafloor. The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 project, an ongoing international effort, aims to map the entire ocean floor at resolutions suitable for identifying major geological features; current estimates place mapped coverage at roughly 27 per cent of the total area. By some measures, we have higher-resolution topographic data for the surfaces of Mars and the Moon than for Earth’s own ocean floor, though that comparison depends on the resolution threshold used and is contested by some oceanographers.

Sonar tells you the shape of the bottom. It does not tell you what lives there. It does not reveal the composition of the substrate at close range, the structure of biological communities on the seafloor, the chemical processes occurring at hydrothermal vents, or the condition and diversity of organisms across different sites. For that kind of knowledge, a vehicle has to get close enough to look.

The Ocean Discovery League dataset measures only this second type of knowledge: the area of seafloor that has been filmed or photographed from a vehicle operating near the bottom. By that definition, the proportion observed is less than 0.001 per cent. This is the specific gap the dataset establishes.

Where the dives went

The approximately 44,000 dives in the dataset are not evenly distributed across the ocean. The analysis shows strong concentrations in the waters around the United States, Japan, and New Zealand, which together with France and Germany account for 97 per cent of all recorded dives. Much of the southern hemisphere and the central Pacific, which together represent a substantial fraction of the global deep ocean, has rarely or never been visited by a camera-equipped vehicle.

Depth distribution is also uneven. A disproportionate share of dives targeted waters between 200 and 2,000 metres, the upper portion of the deep zone. The hadal environment, the ocean trenches below 6,000 metres, remains the least observed of all, despite representing some of the most geologically and biologically distinctive terrain on the planet.

This geographic and depth concentration reflects the practical constraints of deep-sea exploration: where research vessels operate, which institutions have submersibles capable of reaching target depths, and which regions have received sustained scientific interest. It is not a random sample of the ocean.

The comparison with space exploration

The disparity between ocean and space exploration funding has been raised many times, and the Ocean Discovery League’s dataset frames its findings partly against this contrast. NASA’s annual budget has run to roughly 20 to 25 billion US dollars in recent years. The budget dedicated to systematic deep-sea exploration globally is a fraction of that figure.

The comparison has real limits. Space exploration serves scientific, commercial, and strategic objectives that cannot be straightforwardly compared with ocean science. Satellite infrastructure, planetary science, and Earth observation systems generated through space programmes benefit oceanography directly: sea-surface temperature data, altimetry for measuring currents, and biological productivity mapping all depend on orbital assets. The budget comparison obscures these linkages.

The point the dataset makes is narrower: that direct visual survey of the deep ocean has been slow, geographically patchy, and concentrated in a small number of well-resourced institutions, and that after six decades the coverage remains at a fraction of a per cent. Whether that constitutes an appropriate allocation of scientific resources is a policy question the League’s data cannot answer. What the data can establish is the baseline: how much has actually been seen, and how much has not.

What to watch

The Ocean Discovery League has argued that the solution to limited coverage lies in distributed exploration: more, smaller, lower-cost vehicles deployed from a broader base of institutions, rather than a small number of large research vessels and deep-rated submersibles. The economics of remotely operated vehicles have shifted enough in the past decade that capable systems are now accessible to research universities and smaller oceanographic institutions that could not previously have operated them.

Whether distributed deployment produces systematic coverage at meaningful scale is an open question. Approximately 44,000 dives across sixty years represent an enormous cumulative effort; the remaining area is not a minor gap. The dataset’s value, as the League frames it, is establishing a rigorous baseline rather than offering an easy remedy. Before this analysis, the scale of the gap was estimated. Now it is measured.

The post Scientists have directly observed less than 0.001 percent of the deep ocean floor — an area comparable to the state of Rhode Island — despite decades of exploration, according to a global dataset of 44,000 deep-sea dives compiled by the Ocean Discovery League appeared first on Space Daily.

Cambridge researchers have transitioned a laboratory-scale technology into a scalable, real-world application that uses solar power to convert plastic waste and cellulose into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable industrial chemicals.

The team demonstrated a new solar-powered reactor that converts everyday plastic waste, such as fizzy drink bottles, into hydrogen fuel. 

Interestingly, they did it outside, at scale, using a device that can be manufactured with tools not much more complicated than a standard hardware store paint sprayer.

Scaling up the solution for plastic waste

Photoreforming is the process of using solar energy to break down plastic molecules. It is a concept scientists have understood for quite some time, but scaling it up has always been the missing piece of the puzzle.

While the chemistry worked beautifully inside pristine laboratories, it was limited to tiny catalyst plates about the size of a smartphone wrapper. Scaling those up usually meant depending on highly complex manufacturing processes, scorching temperatures, and toxic chemical baths.

“When we started trying to scale this technology up, we quickly found out that what seems simple on a small scale is not simple at all when you’re trying to make it at scale. We can’t really have giant vats of solution to make these panels – it’s just not practical at scale,” said Ariffin Bin Mohamad Annuar, co-first author from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. 

To smash through this issue, the researchers went big. And constructed a one-meter-square reactor panel and took it entirely outdoors, testing it under the natural, unpredictable sunlight outside Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry.

The device does not generate electricity like a standard rooftop solar panel. Rather than that, it directly absorbs sunlight to drive a chemical reaction. On one end, it breaks down the polymers in PET plastic bottles and cellulose; on the other, it splits water molecules to harvest pure hydrogen.

The magic coating

The interesting part of the new system lies in how it was built. Compared with earlier versions that required high temperatures and complex liquid-suspension processes, the new solar panels can be assembled at room temperature using basic equipment. 

Professor Dominic Wright’s team developed a specialized molecular precursor material containing cobalt and zirconium. Professor Erwin Reisner’s team then loaded this material into a basic sprayer. 

The light-absorbing catalyst was sprayed directly onto ordinary glass panels at room temperature.

“What surprised me was, after all the optimization, just how simple it is,” said Mohamad Annuar. “We just have this huge panel, we spray our catalyst on it, put it into our solution, put it under the sun, and it produces hydrogen and other valuable chemicals just from plastic waste. It’s just simple and scalable.”

The Cambridge team also provided a comprehensive cost analysis for the system. This economic blueprint is a major first for this type of chemical research, mapping out exactly what it will take to bring the technology the market.

Plus, the manufacturing costs were cut down by using the spray-coating method. It proves that a future of solar-powered, localized recycling hubs is financially viable.

The technology is not quite ready for commercial deployment tomorrow. The team notes that the reactor’s overall durability and conversion efficiency still need refinement before mass production can begin.

However, the researchers have laid down a clear path toward cleaning up the planet by proving that the system can survive the outdoor elements while remaining cheap to produce.

The results are reported in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering on June 24.

When Michel Siffre left the Scarasson cave in September 1962, the outside world had kept ordinary time. He had not. After more than two months underground without clocks, calendars, or sunlight, he believed the date was still 20 August.

In real time, it was 14 September. The gap was not a small error in counting days. It was the central result of the experiment: Siffre’s subjective time had compressed so sharply that a 63-day stay had felt closer to one month than two.

This is reporting on an extreme time-isolation experiment, not guidance about sleep, health, or isolation.

What Siffre did underground

Siffre was a 23-year-old French geologist and speleologist when he descended into the Scarasson abyss in the Maritime Alps. In a 2008 Cabinet interview with Joshua Foer, he explained that he had first planned a shorter geological expedition to study an underground glacier. The idea expanded into something more ambitious: living without external time cues to see what the human body and mind would do.

The arrangement was simple and severe. A support team waited at the cave entrance, but they were not allowed to call down to him. Siffre called them when he woke, when he ate, and before he slept. He lived in darkness apart from artificial light, without a watch and without knowing the date above ground.

He also ran small tests on himself. Each time he contacted the surface, he took his pulse and performed a psychological timing task: counting from one to 120 at what he thought was one number per second. Toward the end, he later said, the task took him five real minutes. Subjectively, he was still experiencing it as about two.

That is the detail that makes the cave experiment more than a story about losing track of the calendar.

The body clock did not disappear

Siffre’s time sense changed, but he did not become rhythmless. In the Cabinet interview, he said the experiment showed that humans have an internal clock, independent of the ordinary day-night cycle. His sleep-wake rhythm ran slightly longer than 24 hours, around 24 hours and 30 minutes.

That early estimate sits in the history of chronobiology, though later laboratory work refined the number. In a 1999 Science paper led by Charles A. Czeisler, researchers reported that the intrinsic human circadian pacemaker is much closer to 24 hours than some older isolation experiments had suggested, with a mean period near 24.18 hours under stricter laboratory conditions.

That difference matters. Siffre’s cave was not a modern sleep laboratory. It was cold, wet, physically hard, and lit by artificial light he could control. The point is not that his 1962 result produced the final number for the human circadian clock. It is that his experiment made the problem vivid enough to study: take away external time, and the body continues to make time, but not always in step with the calendar.

Why his calendar collapsed

Siffre’s own explanation was memory. In the cave, he told Foer, the days did not differ enough from one another. There was no sunrise, no evening, no street noise, no social schedule, no weekend, no ordinary sequence of events by which a person anchors one day to the next.

Without those markers, experience began to flatten. A long sleep could be mistaken for a short one. A day could fail to separate itself from the previous day. The mind did not merely forget the date; it lost the structure that normally makes dates feel countable.

This is one extreme self-experiment, not a universal rule about everyone in isolation. But the pattern is recognisable. Human time is not built from clocks alone. It is also built from light, meals, conversation, tasks, fatigue, anticipation, and memory.

Strip those away and the calendar becomes less like a grid and more like a guess.

Why space researchers paid attention

The cave mattered because it was not only a cave. It was also an analogue for other enclosed, isolated environments: submarines, polar stations, bunkers, and spacecraft. Siffre himself linked the timing of his work to the early space age. Yuri Gagarin had flown in 1961. The nuclear submarine era was taking shape. Governments were asking how people would sleep, work, remember, and make decisions when ordinary time cues were missing.

In the Cabinet interview, Siffre said NASA analysed his first experiment and funded mathematical analysis. That does not mean the cave was the same as a spacecraft. It means the question was transferable. How does a person maintain rhythm, judgement, and psychological continuity when the external environment stops supplying ordinary time?

Spaceflight keeps that question alive. Astronauts on the International Space Station do not live in timeless darkness, but they do live inside an engineered schedule, in an orbit that produces 16 sunrises and sunsets every Earth day. Mission planners therefore treat light, sleep timing, workload, and crew routines as operational issues, not lifestyle preferences.

Siffre’s cave experiment belongs to that same lineage of concern. It showed that the clock on the wall and the clock in the body are not identical things.

The result was not just endurance

It is easy to read the 1962 experiment as an endurance story: young man goes underground, young man survives. That misses the sharper finding.

Siffre did not simply endure darkness. He demonstrated how much of ordinary time perception is borrowed from the world around us. When those cues vanished, his biological rhythm continued, but his lived calendar came apart. By the time the surface team told him the experiment was over, he thought he had weeks left to go.

The cave did not stop time. It removed the scaffolding that usually keeps human time aligned with the outside world.

That is why the story still matters for spaceflight. Long missions will depend on machines, propulsion, radiation shielding, and life support, but also on something less dramatic and harder to see: keeping human beings anchored to a rhythm that their bodies and memories can trust.

The post When Michel Siffre emerged from a lightless cave in 1962 after 63 days alone, he was stunned to learn the real date. Cut off from clocks, calendars, and sunlight, he believed it was only August 20 — nearly a month earlier than it really was. His sense of time had compressed so dramatically that two months underground had felt like little more than one. appeared first on Space Daily.

The year an American president signs a major infrastructure bill, a Chinese provincial governor breaks ground on three high-speed rail lines in the same week. The asymmetry is structural, the pace is sustained, and the cumulative result, after roughly 17 years, is a national rail network of a size and density that has no precedent in the history of transportation. The first revenue-earning Chinese high-speed rail line opened on 1 August 2008, exactly one week before the Beijing Summer Olympics. It was 117 kilometres long. It ran from Beijing to the port city of Tianjin. It used trains imported from Japan and Germany under licensing agreements that were already being quietly modified by Chinese engineers who would, within five years, be producing entirely indigenous variants without further input from their foreign partners. The line had been designed and built in approximately three years, primarily as an Olympic prestige project, and was treated by international observers at the time as an interesting but localised infrastructure achievement comparable to the high-speed rail networks of France, Germany, or Japan, which between them had been building and operating such systems for several decades. The line was, in retrospect, the start of something on a scale that none of those countries had ever attempted.

According to a comprehensive reference summary of the development of China’s high-speed rail network, the trajectory of construction over the subsequent 17 years has been the most aggressive infrastructure expansion programme of the early 21st century, possibly the most aggressive transport infrastructure expansion of any kind in modern history. The network grew from approximately 117 kilometres in 2008 to approximately 9,000 kilometres by the end of 2012. It reached 22,000 kilometres by the end of 2016, 35,000 kilometres by the end of 2019, and 37,900 kilometres by the end of 2020. The pace then accelerated rather than slowed: an additional 12,500 kilometres was added between the start of 2021 and the close of 2025, with the symbolic 50,000-kilometre threshold crossed in late December 2025 with the opening of the Xi’an–Yan’an line connecting the Shaanxi provincial capital to the northern revolutionary heritage city of Yan’an. By the standard measurement methodology, the global combined high-speed rail mileage outside China currently totals approximately 21,000 to 25,000 kilometres. China alone now operates more than twice that.

What the network actually connects

The geographical coverage of the network is the easier number to underestimate from the outside. As reported by Global Times’s coverage of the 50,000-kilometre milestone and the network’s role in regional development, the Chinese HSR system now extends to 33 of China’s 34 provincial-level administrative divisions, with the only exception being the Macau Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong was connected in 2018. The autonomous regions of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia are all integrated into the national grid. The southwestern province of Yunnan is connected via the Shanghai–Kunming high-speed line. The far-northern Heilongjiang province has been linked via the Harbin–Dalian line since 2012. The result of this geographic distribution is that any two major Chinese cities within 500 kilometres of each other are now generally within a one-to-two-hour HSR journey of each other, any two within 1,000 kilometres are within approximately four hours, and same-day round trips between cities approximately 2,000 kilometres apart are now routinely possible — equivalent to a one-day return trip between, in American terms, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The trains themselves have evolved across several generations. The current backbone of the network is the Fuxing (“Rejuvenation”) series, introduced in 2017, which operates at routine commercial speeds of 350 kilometres per hour across approximately 6,000 kilometres of the highest-grade passenger-dedicated lines. The successor generation, the CR450, has been in testing since 2023 with a designed commercial speed of 400 kilometres per hour and a tested maximum single-train speed of approximately 453 kilometres per hour. In June 2023, two CR450 prototypes passing each other in opposite directions on the Meizhou Bay cross-sea bridge in Fujian set a world record for relative closing speed at approximately 891 kilometres per hour — the fastest closing speed ever recorded between two trains passing each other on a steel rail. The most recent single-train 450 km/h test was conducted on the Shanghai–Chongqing–Chengdu high-speed line on 21 October 2025, with commercial entry to service expected by 2026. A separate maglev development programme, operating on different physics (electromagnetic suspension rather than steel-on-steel contact), produced a 600 kilometres-per-hour maglev train that was formally unveiled at the UIC World Congress on High-Speed Rail in Beijing in July 2025, with the stated goal of bridging the operational gap between conventional high-speed rail and commercial air travel.

What the system cost

The financial dimension is the part of the story that receives less coverage but is increasingly relevant to Chinese transport policy. Per Newsweek’s analysis of the scale of China’s high-speed rail expansion and its underlying drivers, the total construction cost of the system to date is estimated at approximately $300 billion. The 2009 single-year investment figure was approximately $50 billion. The 2025 figure was approximately 901.5 billion yuan, or about $129 billion. The unit construction cost per kilometre of 350 km/h passenger-dedicated line, in the Chinese case, has ranged between 94 and 183 million yuan, depending on terrain — substantially lower than the equivalent unit costs for high-speed rail construction in Europe (approximately $25 to $39 million per kilometre) or the United States (approximately $52 million per kilometre for the partially-completed California system). The cost advantage is attributed to economies of scale across the unusually large construction programme, standardised line and station designs, lower labour costs, vertically integrated state-owned construction enterprises, and the absence of the property-rights and environmental-review processes that typically extend construction timelines in other jurisdictions.

The accumulated debt of China State Railway Group, the state-owned operator that owns and operates the network, stood at approximately $839 billion at the end of 2023, by the corporation’s own published figures. The debt is real and is a non-trivial component of the broader fiscal picture facing Chinese local and central governments. Whether the network will continue to be expanded at the pace of the past 17 years, or whether the 15th Five-Year Plan (covering 2026 to 2030) will mark a transition to a slower, more financially conservative growth path, is one of the open policy questions currently being negotiated within the Chinese government. The current official target is to reach 60,000 kilometres of high-speed rail by 2030 — an additional 10,000 kilometres of new construction over the next five years, which would, in any other country, be a complete national high-speed rail programme in its own right. In China, it represents a deceleration. As described by Global Times’s coverage of the total network’s end-of-2025 status and the 15th Five-Year Plan, the country’s broader railway network (including conventional rail) reached 165,000 kilometres by the end of 2025, with the high-speed rail portion of approximately 50,400 kilometres representing roughly 30 percent of the total. The system is, by every available measure, the largest single transport infrastructure programme in modern history. The 17 years of construction that produced it have, in proportional terms, no precedent.

The post China’s high-speed rail network now stretches more than 50,000 kilometres across the country — longer than the combined high-speed rail networks of every other nation on Earth put together — and the entire system was built in roughly 17 years, beginning with a single line opened for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and now connects 33 of the country’s 34 provincial-level divisions with trains running at routine commercial speeds of 350 kilometres per hour appeared first on Space Daily.

Catastrophism is in retreat across science, says Benny Peiser, as new research challenges the theory that the Toba super-eruption caused a volcanic winter – with important implications for predictions of climate doom.

The post Catastrophism is in Retreat Across Science appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.