As our global population ages, movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease present growing challenges for healthcare systems. Traditional assessment methods rely on subjective clinical ratings during brief clinic visits and often fail to capture the full picture of a patient’s condition. Professor Martin McKeown and his colleagues are pioneering innovative artificial intelligence approaches which use ordinary video recordings to objectively monitor movement disorders. These cutting-edge technologies promise to transform care for millions of patients by enabling remote, continuous assessment of symptoms, while reducing healthcare costs and improving quality of life.

Feeding young children is a complex and nuanced process that goes far beyond simply providing nutritious food. How caregivers interact with children during mealtimes can have profound effects on eating behaviours, growth and development. An interdisciplinary team of researchers in early child health, nutrition, and development from RTI International, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, conducted groundbreaking work to refine our understanding of responsive feeding – the back-and-forth process between caregivers and children during mealtimes. Their research in Bangladesh provides new insights into measuring responsive feeding behaviours and highlights the importance of considering the emotional context of meals.

I’m a scientific content producer with a strong academic background in zoology, environmental science, and ecology. I hold a PhD in palaeoecology, and throughout my academic and professional journey, I’ve focused on making science accessible and engaging for a wide range of audiences.

Understanding how gut health influences overall well-being is an emerging frontier in biomedical research. A pioneering team of researchers in the US and Germany is harnessing artificial intelligence to create a digital twin that elucidates the complex links between the stomach and the brain. This innovative approach promises to shed light on a range of perplexing gastrointestinal disorders and pave the way for personalised therapies targeting the intricate dialogue between the digestive and central nervous systems.

A research team at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has discovered that a simple food supplement, specifically defatted bovine colostrum, can significantly enhance chicken gut health, reduce inflammation, and improve growth efficiency. The findings have implications for both animal welfare and human health under the One Health concept.

A significant debate continues between scholars in the astronomical community regarding the early history of our solar system. It’s been hypothesised that the solar system experienced a dramatic cataclysm a short while —in cosmological terms— after the Earth and Moon solidified. Dubbed the Late Heavy Bombardment theory, disturbances in gas giant orbits may have caused a sudden hailstorm of comets and asteroids to be hurled towards the inner planets. Lunar rock samples collected from craters during Apollo missions seemed to support the idea, but new evidence is demanding a rethink. Professor Yi-Gang Xu and his team examined samples recovered from the Chang’e-6 mission in 2024, and they suggest a more gradual change in the frequency of asteroid impacts, rather than a sudden, violent cataclysm.

Dr Carolina Montero Orphanopoulos contends that contemporary Catholic moral theology has become mired in combative debates around personal health choices and sexuality, losing sight of broader ethical challenges. She proposes a radical renewal through three key categories for progress: vulnerability, corporality, and recognition. Drawing on Pope Francis’s vision of ‘theology in exit’ (the Church actively engaging with the world), she argues for a public-facing moral framework that addresses 21st-century crises such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and political fragmentation, while remaining grounded in traditional Catholic values.

Warfarin is a commonly prescribed oral blood thinner used for the prevention and treatment of thromboembolic conditions. The wide variability in these conditions, that may range from deep vein thrombosis to heart valve replacement, adds to the complexity in determining dosing requirements among patients. Dr Jiexin Deng and colleagues at Zhengzhou Cardiovascular Hospital and Huaihe Hospital of Henan University in China have investigated the suitability of various pharmacogenetic algorithms based on different ethnicities to assist with warfarin dosing for the Chinese population, hoping to improve clinical outcomes and reduce the incidence of unwanted side effects.

When you sit in an ancient Greek theatre, marvelling at how clearly you can hear performers even in the back rows without microphones, you’re experiencing acoustic engineering that predates modern science by millennia. According to new research, many of the standard methods acousticians use for concert halls are ineffective for open-air venues. Dr Jens Holger Rindel of Odeon A/S in Denmark has demonstrated why we need different acoustical parameters to evaluate open-air theatres properly. His work challenges the conventional wisdom of applying indoor concert hall metrics to outdoor venues and proposes new approaches specifically tailored to spaces where the sky forms the ceiling.

In their insightful research, Professor Kathryn Newcomer at George Washington University and her colleagues highlight the critical role of learning agendas in shaping governance landscapes, fostering evidence-informed decision-making and organisational growth within public institutions. They explore the process of developing a learning agenda and offer guidance for its effective implementation. Additionally, they discuss both the benefits and challenges associated with developing learning agendas to enhance the usefulness and impact of evaluation within public agencies.