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Latest science news, discoveries and analysis

How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models

Brain-reading device is best yet at decoding ‘internal speech’

Dazzling auroras are just a warm-up as more solar storms are likely, scientists say

Human embryos embrace asymmetry to form the body

Is the internet bad for you huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being, world's brightest x-rays: china first in asia to build next-generation synchrotron, cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail, us tiktok ban: how the looming restriction is affecting scientists on the app, why mathematics is set to be revolutionized by ai thomas fink.

How men evolved to care for babies — before society got in the way

Hacking the immune system could slow ageing — here’s how

Alphafold 3.0: the AI protein predictor gets an upgrade

How artificial intelligence is helping Ghana plan for a renewable energy future

The us congress is taking on ai —this computer scientist is helping, bird flu in us cows: where will it end, dozens of brazilian universities hit by strikes over academic wages, major alphafold upgrade offers boost for drug discovery.

A DARPA-like agency could boost EU innovation — but cannot come at the expense of existing schemes

Diana Wall obituary: ecologist who foresaw the importance of soil biodiversity

Why it’s essential to study sex and gender, even as tensions rise

Reinvent oil refineries for a net-zero future, expat grants won’t fix brazilian research juliano morimoto, current issue.

Dark energy is tearing the Universe apart. What if the force is weakening?

Ancient dna traces family lines and political shifts in the avar empire, venus water loss is dominated by hco + dissociative recombination, an atomic boson sampler, research analysis.

Mega study charts how genetic variants affect metabolism

The phenomenon of genomic imprinting was discovered 40 years ago

A jawless-fish genome untangles the history of vertebrate genome multiplications

CRISPR therapy restores some vision to people with blindness

Balls of lightning and flames from the sky: can science explain, vibration isolation could boost performance of near-infrared organic leds, vaccine-enhancing plant extract could be mass produced in yeast, did atmospheric weathering help earth’s earliest continents to survive.

Why my heart beats for Nigeria’s endangered bats

How I fled bombed Aleppo to continue my career in science

My PI yelled at me and I’m devastated. What do I do?

Decent work for all: why multinationals need a helping hand, illuminating ‘the ugly side of science’: fresh incentives for reporting negative results, books & culture.

Tashni’s first tunnel

How rich is too rich?

From multiverses to cities: books in brief, smarty plants controversial plant-intelligence studies explored in new book, nature podcast.

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Fossil Catches Starfish Cousin in the Act of Cloning Itself

The brittle star specimen suggests that the sea creatures have been splitting themselves in two to reproduce for more than 150 million years.

By Jack Tamisiea

Las autoridades de California paralizan un estudio de blanqueamiento de nubes

Los investigadores habían estado probando un pulverizador que algún día podría utilizarse para empujar una niebla salada hacia el cielo, enfriando la Tierra. Las autoridades detuvieron los trabajos alegando problemas de salud.

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Summer 2023 Was the Northern Hemisphere’s Hottest in 2,000 Years, Study Finds

Scientists used tree rings to compare last year’s extreme heat with temperatures over the past two millenniums.

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Cloud Brightening Study in California Is Halted by Local Officials

Researchers had been testing a sprayer that could one day be used to push a salty mist skyward, cooling the Earth. Officials stopped the work, citing health questions.

Are Plants Intelligent? If So, What Does That Mean for Your Salad?

A new book, “The Light Eaters,” looks at how plants sense the world and the agency they have in their own lives.

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Estas víboras se hacen las muertas para salvar su vida

Las serpientes de dados encontradas en una isla del sureste de Europa incluso sangran por la boca para fingir su muerte.

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Can Parrots Converse? Polly Says That’s the Wrong Question.

In a cautious new paper, scientists tried to determine whether an interactive speech board might enrich the life of a parrot named Ellie.

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¿Estamos hablando demasiado sobre la salud mental?

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A New Tree of Flowering Plants? For Spring? Groundbreaking.

By sequencing an enormous amount of data, a group of hundreds of researchers has gained new insights into how flowers evolved on Earth.

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From Ancient Charcoal, Hints of Wildfires to Come

By digging into the geologic record, scientists are learning how wildfires shaped — and were shaped by — climate change long ago.

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MIT’s top research stories of 2021

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Despite the pandemic’s disruptions, MIT’s research community still found a way to generate a number of impressive research breakthroughs in 2021. In the spirit of reflection that comes with every new orbit around the sun, below we count down 10 of the most-viewed research stories on MIT News from the past year.

We’ve also rounded up the year’s top MIT community-related stories .

10. Giving cancer treatment a recharge . In October, researchers discovered a way to jump-start the immune system to attack tumors. The method combines chemotherapy and immunotherapy to spur immune cells into action. The researchers hope it could allow immunotherapy to be used against more types of cancer.

9. Generating 3D holograms in real-time . Computer scientists developed a deep-learning-based system that allows computers to create holograms almost instantly. The system could be used to create holograms for virtual reality, 3D printing, medical imaging, and more — and it’s efficient enough to run on a smartphone.

8. Creating inhalable vaccines . Scientists at the Koch Institute developed a method for delivering vaccines directly to the lungs through inhalation. The new strategy induced a strong immune response in the lungs of mice and could offer a quicker response to viruses that infect hosts through mucosal surfaces.

7. Assessing Covid-19 transmission risk . Two MIT professors proposed a new approach to estimating the risks of exposure to Covid-19 in different indoor settings. The guidelines suggest a limit for exposure based on factors such as the size of the space, the number of people, the kinds of activity, whether masks are worn, and ventilation and filtration rates.

6. Teaching machine learning models to adapt . Researchers in CSAIL developed a new type of neural network that can change its underlying equations to continuously adapt to new data. The advance could improve models’ decision-making based on data that changes over time, such as in medical diagnosis and autonomous driving.

5. Programming fibers . In June, a team created the first fabric fiber with digital capabilities. The fibers can sense, store, analyze, and infer data and activity after being sewn into a shirt. The researchers say the fibers could be used to monitor physical performance, to detect diseases, and for a variety of medical purposes.

4. Examining the limitations of data visualizations . A collaboration between anthropologists and computer scientists found that coronavirus skeptics have used sophisticated data visualizations to argue against public health orthodoxy like wearing a mask. The researchers concluded that data visualizations aren’t sufficient to convey the urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic because even the clearest graphs can be interpreted through a variety of belief systems.

3. Developing a Covid-detecting face mask . Engineers at MIT and Harvard University designed a prototype face mask that can diagnose the person wearing the mask with Covid-19 in about 90 minutes. The masks are embedded with tiny, disposable sensors that can be fitted into other face masks and could also be adapted to detect other viruses.

2. Confirming Hawking’s black hole theorem . Using observations of gravitational waves, physicists from MIT and elsewhere confirmed a major theorem created by Stephen Hawking in 1971. The theorem states that the area of a black hole’s event horizon — the boundary beyond which nothing can ever escape — will never shrink.

1. Advancing toward fusion energy . In September, researchers at MIT and the MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems ramped up a high-temperature superconducting electromagnet to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. The demonstration was three years in the making and is believed to resolve one of greatest remaining points of uncertainty in the quest to build the world’s first fusion power plant that produces more energy than it consumes.

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MIT community in 2021: A year in review

Top MIT research stories of 2020

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Science News

Sun launches strongest solar flare of current cycle in monster X8.7-class eruption

By Brandon Specktor published 14 May 24

The strongest solar flare in half a decade just launched off the sun from the same sunspot group that triggered dazzling auroras last weekend. But don't expect northern lights this time around.

Heavy metals in Beethoven's hair may explain his deafness, study finds

By Jennifer Nalewicki published 14 May 24

A DNA analysis of Ludwig van Beethoven's hair shows that he likely had lead poisoning.

OpenAI unveils huge upgrade to ChatGPT that makes it more eerily human than ever

By Ben Turner published 14 May 24

ChatGPT's latest upgrade means the voice assistant can now respond to audio, text and visual inputs in real time. The new chatbot, named ChatGPT-4o, will be rolled out to alpha testers in the coming weeks.

Atoms squished closer together than ever before, revealing seemingly impossible quantum effects

By Victoria Atkinson published 14 May 24

Using a clever laser technique, scientists have squished pairs of atoms closer together than ever before, revealing some truly mind-boggling quantum effects.

Japan plans to commercially hunt vulnerable fin whales, enraging conservationists

By Sascha Pare published 14 May 24

Japan has announced plans to add fin whales — the second-largest animal on Earth — to its list of commercial whaling species, which currently includes Bryde's, sei and minke whales.

Tree rings reveal summer 2023 was the hottest in 2 millennia

Tree rings suggest the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2023 was the hottest in 2,000 years, with temperatures exceeding those of the coldest summer in the same period by 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.9 Celsius).

'Quantum-inspired' laser computing is more effective than both supercomputing and quantum computing, startup claims

By Owen Hughes published 14 May 24

The desktop-sized LPU100 eschews traditional electronics and qubits in favor of lasers, and it can reportedly perform complex AI calculations in nanoseconds.

Mysterious L-shaped structure found near Egyptian pyramids of Giza baffles scientists

By Owen Jarus published 14 May 24

An enigmatic L-shaped structure found underground near the pyramids at Giza may be an entrance to a mysterious deeper feature below it.

Strange, red-glowing planet may be 'melting from within,' scientists report

By Sharmila Kuthunur published 14 May 24

Scientists have discovered a bizarre, red-glowing exoplanet named TOI-6713.01, which is loaded with active volcanoes and may be 'melting from within.'

Sketchy stem-cell treatments in Mexico led to drug-resistant infections

By Nicoletta Lanese published 13 May 24

Three U.S. hospital patients contracted drug-resistant infections in Mexico in 2022 and were still being treated as of March 2024.

Why are auroras different colors?

By Timothy Schmidt published 13 May 24

Auroras occur when charged solar particles bash into Earth's magnetic field and funnel toward the poles. The types of atoms these particles hit determines the color of light emitted.

Aurora photos: Stunning northern lights glisten after biggest geomagnetic storm in 21 years

By Live Science Staff published 13 May 24

An immense geomagnetic storm caused auroras as far south as Florida for the first time in 21 years after the sun unleashed a wave of solar flares and at least seven coronal mass ejections at Earth.

'Extreme' geomagnetic storm that painted Earth with auroras this weekend was the most powerful in 21 years

By Harry Baker published 13 May 24

Between Friday (May 10) and Sunday (May 12), people across the world were treated to stunning aurora displays as Earth's magnetic field experienced its biggest disturbance since October 2003. The supercharged storm also messed with satellites and caused power grid irregularities.

1st person to receive a pig kidney transplant has died

By Emily Cooke published 13 May 24

Rick Slayman was the first person in the world to receive this pioneering surgery in March 2024.

Earth may have had freshwater and continents soon after forming, ancient crystals reveal

By Richard Pallardy published 13 May 24

Ancient zircon crystals hold chemical clues that of freshwater may have existed on Earth soon after it formed.

China creates its largest ever quantum computing chip — and it could be key to building the nation's own 'quantum cloud'

By Owen Hughes published 13 May 24

China’s supersized superconducting chip looks to match the performance of industry leaders like IBM and will be used to help scale up the performance of quantum computers globally.

MIT gives AI the power to 'reason like humans' by creating hybrid architecture

By Nicholas Fearn published 13 May 24

MIT scientists devise three abstraction libraries that can be combined with AI systems to improve their reasoning and contextual awareness in programming, strategic planning and robotics.

Why do earthquakes happen far away from plate boundaries?

By Alice Sun published 13 May 24

It's well known that earthquakes can rock fault-filled places like the U.S. West Coast. But why do earthquakes happen in the middle of tectonic plates?

Earth from space: Majestic 'yin-yang' crater sits atop a dormant volcano in Turkey

The massive caldera of Turkey's Mount Nemrut volcano is split in half, with one side made of solidified lava flows and the other half a deep crater lake. Covered in snow, the summit scene looks like the yin-yang symbol when viewed from above.

James Webb telescope detects 1-of-a-kind atmosphere around 'Hell Planet' in distant star system

By Joanna Thompson published 12 May 24

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have discovered evidence of a carbon-rich atmosphere around the hellish world 55 Cancri e. This marks the best evidence yet of an atmosphere around a rocky exoplanet.

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• 2 2,500-year-old Illyrian helmet found in burial mound likely caused 'awe in the enemy'
• 3 Space photo of the week: 'God's Hand' leaves astronomers scratching their heads
• 4 James Webb telescope measures the starlight around the universe's biggest, oldest black holes for 1st time ever
• 5 See stunning reconstruction of ancient Egyptian mummy that languished at an Australian high school for a century
• 2 Atoms squished closer together than ever before, revealing seemingly impossible quantum effects
• 3 See stunning reconstruction of ancient Egyptian mummy that languished at an Australian high school for a century
• 4 'Quantum-inspired' laser computing is more effective than both supercomputing and quantum computing, startup claims

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Researchers publish largest-ever dataset of neural connections

A cubic millimeter of brain tissue may not sound like much. But considering that that tiny square contains 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses, all amounting to 1,400 terabytes of data, Harvard and Google researchers have just accomplished something stupendous.   

Led by Jeff Lichtman, the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and newly appointed dean of science , the Harvard team helped create the largest 3D brain reconstruction to date, showing in vivid detail each cell and its web of connections in a piece of temporal cortex about half the size of a rice grain.

Published in Science, the study is the latest development in a nearly 10-year collaboration with scientists at Google Research, combining Lichtman’s electron microscopy imaging with AI algorithms to color-code and reconstruct the extremely complex wiring of mammal brains. The paper’s three first co-authors are former Harvard postdoc Alexander Shapson-Coe, Michał Januszewski of Google Research, and Harvard postdoc Daniel Berger.

The ultimate goal, supported by the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative , is to create a comprehensive, high-resolution map of a mouse’s neural wiring, which would entail about 1,000 times the amount of data the group just produced from the 1-cubic-millimeter fragment of human cortex.  

“The word ‘fragment’ is ironic,” Lichtman said. “A terabyte is, for most people, gigantic, yet a fragment of a human brain — just a minuscule, teeny-weeny little bit of human brain — is still thousands of terabytes.”  

Jeff Lichtman.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

The latest map contains never-before-seen details of brain structure, including a rare but powerful set of axons connected by up to 50 synapses. The team also noted oddities in the tissue, such as a small number of axons that formed extensive whorls. Because the sample was taken from a patient with epilepsy, the researchers don’t know whether such formations are pathological or simply rare.

Lichtman’s field is connectomics, which seeks to create comprehensive catalogs of brain structure, down to individual cells. Such completed maps would unlock insights into brain function and disease, about which scientists still know very little.

Google’s state-of-the-art AI algorithms allow for reconstruction and mapping of brain tissue in three dimensions. The team has also developed a suite of publicly available tools researchers can use to examine and annotate the connectome.

“Given the enormous investment put into this project, it was important to present the results in a way that anybody else can now go and benefit from them,” said Google collaborator Viren Jain.

Next the team will tackle the mouse hippocampal formation, which is important to neuroscience for its role in memory and neurological disease.

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The 10 best research stories of 2021

Is the year over already?

2021 brought its fair share of big news and research breakthroughs, COVID and non-COVID alike. Given UC is the  global leader in cited scholarship , it’s no surprise that each campus produced numerous new ways of understanding our world.

We’ve rounded up some of the best stories from each campus: Some were extensively covered by the media, like UC San Francisco’s novel treatment for severe depression; others were underrated but deserving of more attention, like UC Santa Cruz’s study on the social factors that affect teen gender identity. Together, these stories show how the University of California propels research that changes the world.

1. Curing sickle cell disease (UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Francisco)

Using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology discovered by UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna, physicians are launching clinical trials aimed at correcting the defect that causes sickle cell disease. The inherited blood disorder, which is painful and often fatal, affects about 1 in every 365 Black or African American births. The trials will be led by doctors at UCSF and UCLA and are expected to begin by mid-2022. Tapping into UCLA’s expertise in genetic analysis and cell manufacturing and the decades-long expertise at  UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland  in cord blood and marrow transplantation and sickle cell gene therapy, they have the potential to create a cure for sickle cell disease that is both affordable and accessible. Doudna won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 for the CRISPR technology that makes these trials possible. This research is being funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-led Cure Sickle Cell Initiative, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Learn more:   https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/fda-approves-first-test-crispr-correct-genetic-defect-causing-sickle-cell-disease  and  https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/03/420137/uc-consortium-launches-first-clinical-trial-using-crispr-correct-gene-defect

2. A new type of supernova (UC Santa Barbara)

Scientists found the first convincing evidence for a new type of stellar explosion — an electron-capture supernova. The concept of an electron-capture supernova had been theorized for 40 years without any real-world proof. The discovery, led by UC Santa Barbara scientists at Las Cumbres Observatory, has been called the Rosetta Stone of astrophysics because it is helping scientists decode thousand-year-old records from cultures around the world, including a supernova from A.D. 1045 so bright it was seen for 23 days, even at daytime.

Learn more:   https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2021/020338/goldilocks-supernova

3. Social factors affect teen gender expression (UC Santa Cruz)

A UC Santa Cruz study showed that a growing number of Gen Z teens are identifying as nonbinary — but this is influenced by regional differences in levels of resources, rights, and visibility for sexual and gender diversity. While almost 25 percent of the LGBTQ+ youth surveyed expressed some form of nonbinary gender, it was more prevalent in those who lived in the Bay Area compared to the Central Valley. Additionally, teens who were assigned female at birth seemed more comfortable with these forms of gender expression, whereas those who were assigned male at birth faced strong pressures to conform to standards of masculinity. The research sheds light on factors that can support or hinder sexual and gender expression among teens.

Learn more:   https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/03/adolescent-gender-sexual-identity.html

4. Novel treatment for severe depression (UC San Francisco)

One of the most hopeful UC San Francisco stories this year was the successful treatment of severe, previously untreatable depression using customizable deep brain stimulation. Physicians were able to tap into a patient's unique brain circuit involved in her depression and interrupt it using the equivalent of a pacemaker for the brain. The breakthrough was hailed as a landmark in the years-long effort to apply advances in neuroscience to the treatment of psychiatric disorders. This precision medicine approach provided the patient with immediate, long-term symptom relief and could be transformative for other patients with chronic, treatment-resistant depression.

Learn more:   https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/hope-treatment-resistant-depression-brain-stimulation-demand

5. Tracking global wastewater testing for COVID-19 (UC Merced)

After the COVID-19 pandemic struck, scientists across the globe realized they could track the virus by testing sewage water. UC Merced professor Colleen Naughton pioneered a dashboard to host global findings, an innovation that earned her the 2021 Grand Prize in University Research by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. Wastewater monitoring allows scientists to test an entire group of people for COVID-19, not just one person at a time. It has also been shown to be effective at predicting outbreaks of COVID-19. Many cities, universities and countries have now adopted this testing approach and have reinforced the value of Naughton’s dashboard by sharing their results.

Learn more:   https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2021/naughton-lab-creates-dashboard-track-global-wastewater-testing-covid-19

6. Increased wildfire linked to human-induced climate change (UCLA)

Wildfires have been increasing over the last two decades. But how much of that trend has been caused by human-induced climate change and how much could be explained by other factors? This year, scientists from UCLA and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory set out to find answers. They analyzed a key variable tied to wildfire risk known as “vapor pressure deficit” — a term that reflects warm, dry air — and determined that 68 percent of the increase in vapor pressure deficit across the western U.S. between 1979 and 2020 was likely due to human-caused global warming. This suggests that human-induced climate change is the culprit for increasing fire weather in the western United States and that the trend is likely to worsen in the years ahead.

Learn more:   https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/frequent-wildfires-human-caused-climate-change

7. Feeding cattle seaweed reduces their greenhouse gas emissions (UC Davis)

Of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., 10 percent comes from agriculture — and half of that from cows and other ruminant animals belching methane throughout the day as they digest. In 2018, researchers from UC Davis were able to reduce methane emissions from dairy cows by over 50 percent by supplementing their diet with seaweed for two weeks. The seaweed inhibits an enzyme in the cow’s digestive system that contributes to methane production. This year, they tested whether those reductions were sustainable over time by feeding cows a touch of seaweed every day for five months. The results were clear: Cattle that consumed seaweed emitted much less methane, and there was no drop-off in efficacy over time.

Learn more: https://www.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/feeding-cattle-seaweed-reduces-their-greenhouse-gas-emissions-82-percent

8. Flame retardants linked to autistic-like behavior (UC Riverside)

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, are a class of ubiquitous fire-retardant chemicals, found in upholstery, carpets, curtains, electronics and even infant products. Thanks to the inadvertent digestion of contaminated household dust, they can also be detected in breast milk around the world. A research team led by UC Riverside scientists found that when female mice exposed to PBDEs pass on these chemicals to their developing offspring, the female offspring show traits similar to autism spectrum disorders. In addition to shedding light on a potential cause of autism, the study signals the importance of toxicology studies so that chemicals like PBDEs can be investigated before they are commercially released.

Learn more: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/flame-retardants-linked-autistic-behavior

9. Plant extract to prevent morphine addiction (UC Irvine)

Over the past two decades, dramatic increases in opioid overdose mortality have occurred in the United States and other nations, with the COVID-19 pandemic only worsening the problem. A UC Irvine-led study has pointed to a possible new therapy in an unlikely place — YHS, an extract of the plant Corydalis yanhusuo, which prevents morphine tolerance and dependence while also reversing opiate addiction. Even better, YHS has been used as an analgesic in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. It is considered safe and readily available for purchase, either online or as a “botanical” in certain grocery stores. The extract could have an immediate, positive impact in curbing the opioid epidemic.

Learn more: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-irvine-led-study-finds-medicinal-plant-extract-prevent-morphine-addiction

10. No serious COVID-19 vaccine side effects in breastfeeding moms (UC San Diego)

Mothers who are breastfeeding can get vaccinated and still continue to breastfeed their babies, researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine reported. Researchers found that breastfeeding mothers who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccination reported the same localized symptoms as non-breastfeeding women, with no serious side effects in their breastfed infants. The results not only demonstrated that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were not red flags for breastfeeding mothers but encouraged lactating women to get the COVID-19 vaccine and to continue to breastfeed their infants: Thankfully, they did not have to choose one over the other.

Learn more: https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-09-08-study-no-serious-covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-in-breastfeeding-moms-infants.aspx

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Stanford Medicine magazine explores the brain and nervous system

The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine features articles about developments in neuroscience and treatments for conditions affecting the brain and nervous system.

October 14, 2021 - By Rosanne Spector

The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine focuses on how researchers are unlocking secrets of the brain. Illustration by Craig Cutler

The brain has long been a black box and, until recently, we were in the dark about anything that might have gone wrong under its lid and what to do about it. That’s changing.

A themed section of the new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine, “The most mysterious organ: Unlocking the secrets of the brain,” provides new insights into neurological conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to stroke and conveys clinicians’ optimism about the relatively recent understanding that the brain is surprisingly adaptable. As Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote in his letter to readers :

“One of our most fascinating discoveries is that the brain isn’t as fixed and fragile as we once believed. The organ we thought was set in its ways by our late 20s is much more active — and resilient — for our entire lives.”

Advances in brain imaging and a more accurate understanding of the brain’s workings are enabling researchers and health care practitioners to develop new treatments. Some of these are available only at Stanford Medicine through clinical trials, while others have been adopted around the world.

The issue includes:

• A roundup of research and treatments aimed at addressing diseases of the brain and nervous system. These advances are enabling the paralyzed to move and the blind to see . They’re also suggesting strategies for preventing the loss of cognitive abilities .

• An article about brain trauma data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs revealing that women have a more difficult recovery from severe brain trauma than men do. The article is accompanied by a video featuring neurosurgery faculty members Odette Harris, MD, and Maheen Adamason, PhD, and a veteran talking about her experience of severe brain trauma.

• A story of the decadeslong quest to save more stroke patients from a life of disability. It was a tough sell to other neurosurgeons, but research by Gregory Albers, MD, and a team of researchers eventually succeeded in extending the window for effective treatment from just a few hours to a full day.

• A recounting of a high-stakes, innovative surgery to save a toddler’s life by removing a brain tumor through his nose .

• A Q&A with renowned flutist Eugenia Zukerman in which she reflects on the healing power of writing during the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, her first book of poetry and the hope her poetry offers other patients.

• An article about an experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease that seems like magic: a vibrating glove that reduces symptoms for patients who wear it a few hours a day.

• An essay adapted from a new book by psychiatry professor Karl Deisseroth , MD, PhD, Projections : A Story of Human Emotions , that describes an encounter with a young man who couldn’t cry and the neurological mechanisms behind shedding tears of joy and sorrow.

• A story about the efforts of neurosurgery chair Michael Lim, MD, to apply the successes of immunotherapy cancer treatments to some of the most pernicious tumors — those that originate in the brain.

• An article about an unusual surgery for a rare disease: Hope Kim needed a second bypass surgery to treat the brain disorder moyamoya , but no blood vessels in the scalp were right for the job. What to do? Professor of neurosurgery Gary Steinberg, MD, PhD, piped a blood vessel from her abdomen up to her brain.

This issue also includes a profile of associate professor of bioengineering Drew Endy, PhD, who believes that solving civilization’s most vexing challenges depends on harnessing “bioengineering to flourish in partnership with nature,” and excerpts from The Puzzle Solver , by Stanford Medicine science writer Tracie White with professor of genetics and of biochemistry Ron Davis, PhD. The book describes Davis’ desperate attempt to find a cure for severe chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, which has left his son bedridden by pain, fatigue and other disabling symptoms.

Stanford Medicine magazine is available online at stanmed.stanford.edu as well as in print. Print copies of the new issue are being sent to subscribers. Others can request a copy by sending an email to [email protected] .

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

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Reproductive rights in America

Despite state bans, abortions nationwide are up, driven by telehealth.

Elissa Nadworny

Abortion rights activists at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on March 26, the day the case about the abortion drug mifepristone was heard. The number of abortions in the U.S. increased, a study says, surprising researchers. Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Abortion rights activists at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on March 26, the day the case about the abortion drug mifepristone was heard. The number of abortions in the U.S. increased, a study says, surprising researchers.

In the 18 months following the Supreme Court's decision that ended federal protection for abortion, the number of abortions in the U.S. has continued to grow, according to The Society of Family Planning's WeCount project .

"We are seeing a slow and small steady increase in the number of abortions per month and this was completely surprising to us," says Ushma Upadhyay , a professor and public health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco who co-leads the research. According to the report, in 2023 there were, on average, 86,000 abortions per month compared to 2022, where there were about 82,000 abortions per month. "Not huge," says Upadhyay, "but we were expecting a decline."

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What's at stake in the supreme court mifepristone case.

The slight increase comes despite the fact that 14 states had total abortion bans in place during the time of the research. According to the report, there were about 145,000 fewer abortions in person in those states since the Dobbs decision, which triggered many of the restrictive state laws.

"We know that there are people living in states with bans who are not getting their needed abortions," says Upadhyay. "The concern we have is that that might be overlooked by these increases."

Florida, California and Illinois saw the largest surges in abortions, which is especially interesting given Florida's recent 6-week ban that started on May 1.

Abortion rights opponents demonstrate in New York City, on March 23. Some states' abortion bans are known as "heartbeat bills," because they make abortion illegal after cardiac activity starts, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Abortion rights opponents demonstrate in New York City, on March 23. Some states' abortion bans are known as "heartbeat bills," because they make abortion illegal after cardiac activity starts, usually around six weeks of pregnancy.

The latest report also captures for the first time the impact of providers offering telehealth abortions from states with protections for doctors and clinics known as shield laws – statutes that say they can't be prosecuted or held liable for providing abortion care to people from other states.

Between July and December 2023, more than 40,000 people in states with abortion bans and telehealth restrictions received medication abortion through providers in states protected by shield laws. Abortion pills can be prescribed via telehealth appointments and sent through the mail; the pills can safely end pregnancies in the first trimester.

The report includes abortions happening within the U.S. health care system, and does not include self-managed abortions, when people take pills at home without the oversight of a clinician. For that reason, researchers believe these numbers are still an undercount of abortions happening in the U.S.

Tessa Longbons Cox is a senior research associate at Charlotte Lozier Institute, a research organization that opposes abortion. She says the WeCount report, "highlights a concerning trend" that policies around mail-order abortion pills are boosting abortion rates. "By recklessly removing in-person medical visits and safeguards, abortion advocates have put women's health and safety last," Longbons Cox says in a statement.

Accounting for the increases

A major factor in the uptick in abortions nationwide is the rise of telehealth, made possible in part by regulations first loosened during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the report, telehealth abortions now make up 19% of all abortions in the U.S. In comparison, the first WeCount report which spanned April 2022 through August 2022 showed telehealth abortions accounted for just 4% of all abortions. Research has shown that telehealth abortions are as safe and effective as in-clinic care.

"It's affordable, it's convenient, and it feels more private," says Jillian Barovick, a midwife in Brooklyn and one of the co-founders of Juniper Midwifery , which offers medication abortion via telehealth to patients in six states where abortion is legal. The organization saw its first patient in August 2022 and now treats about 300 patients a month.

A Supreme Court abortion pill case with potential consequences for every other drug

"Having an in-clinic abortion, even a medication abortion, you could potentially be in the clinic for hours, whereas with us you get to sort of bypass all of that," she says. Instead, patients can connect with a clinician using text messages or a secure messaging platform. In addition to charging $100 dollars for the consultation and medication – which is well below the average cost of an abortion – Barovick points to the cost savings of not having to take off work or arrange child care to spend multiple hours in a clinic.

She says her patients receive their medication within 1 to 4 business days, "often faster than you can get an appointment in a clinic."

A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday followed about 500 women who had medication abortions with the pills distributed via mail order pharmacy after an in-person visit with a doctor. More than 90% of the patients were satisfied with the experience; there were three serious adverse events that required hospitalization.

In addition to expansions in telehealth, there have been new clinics in states like Kansas, Illinois and New Mexico, and there's been an increase in funding for abortion care – fueled by private donors and abortion funds.

The impact of shield laws

During the period from October to December 2023, nearly 8,000 people per month in states with bans or severe restrictions accessed medication abortions from clinicians providing telehealth in the 5 states that had shield laws at the time. That's nearly half of all monthly telehealth abortions.

"It's telemedicine overall that is meeting the need of people who either want to or need to remain in their banned or restricted state for their care," says Angel Foster, who founded The MAP, a group practice operating a telehealth model under Massachusetts' shield laws. "If you want to have your abortion care in your state and you live in Texas or Mississippi or Missouri, right now, the shield law provision is by far the most dominant way that you'd be able to get that care."

Foster's group offers medication abortions for about 500 patients a month. About 90% of their patients are in banned or restrictive states; about a third are from Texas, their most common state of origin, followed by Florida.

"Patients are scared that we are a scam," she says, "they can't believe that we're legit."

Since the WeCount data was collected, additional states including Maine and California have passed shield laws protecting providers who offer care nationwide. The new shield laws circumvent traditional telemedicine laws, which often require out-of-state health providers to be licensed in the states where patients are located. States with abortion bans or restrictions and/or telehealth bans hold the provider at fault, not the patient.

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One small pill — one big court case.

Existing lawsuits brought by abortion opponents, including the case awaiting a Supreme Court decision, have the potential to disrupt this telehealth surge by restricting the use of the drug mifepristone nationwide. If the Supreme Court upholds an appeals court ruling, providers would be essentially barred from mailing the drug and an in-person doctor visit would be required.

There is also an effort underway in Louisiana to classify abortion pills as a controlled substance.

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Schumer’s long-awaited AI ‘road map’ is coming this week. It will cost billions.

Crafted by a bipartisan group of senators, the plan reviews a host of issues — including AI’s effect on the military, health care and workers. It could be released as soon as Tuesday.

A bipartisan group of senators, including Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, will unveil a long-awaited “road map” this week for regulating artificial intelligence, directing Congress to infuse billions of dollars into research and development of the technology while addressing its potential harms.

The sprawling directive comes almost a year after Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for an “all hands on deck” push to regulate AI, saying Congress needed to accomplish years of work in months.

While not legislation, the initiative is intended to provide direction to the Senate committees increasingly crafting bills tackling the technology. The plan reviews a host of issues — including AI’s effect on the military, health care and workers, according to people who have been briefed on the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unreleased document. The plan could be made public as soon as Tuesday, one of the people said.

“The road map is still being finalized and should be released shortly,” Schumer spokeswoman Allison Biasotti said in a statement.

The plan is expected to call for about $32 billion in funding for AI research and development, according to people familiar with it. The figure is based on a 2021 National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence report, which called for 1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product to be directed to research and development at agencies including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The plan will also call for individual sectors — such as health care — to develop specific rules for AI, as well as for the development of testing and transparency measures that will help explain potential harms of the technology. The document will also include provisions to ensure that the U.S. military stays competitive in AI, tracking adversaries’ progress in developing the technology.

The United States lags far behind Europe and other governments in crafting guidelines for AI, and the road map is intended to spur a wave of legislative activity in Congress. The plan has bipartisan backing, but many observers are skeptical that a deeply polarized legislature will be able to craft comprehensive AI laws during a heated presidential election year.

Meanwhile, U.S. tech companies are forging ahead with ever more powerful AI systems and tools. OpenAI on Monday announced a number of upgrades to ChatGPT, powered by a new model that improves the chatbot’s capabilities to listen and respond by voice. Google is expected to announce AI enhancements to its own products at its Tuesday developer conference.

Schumer has urged the United States to swiftly develop guardrails for AI. A bipartisan group of senators dubbed the “AI Gang” — including Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) — crafted the proposal.

The plan is also expected to call for the passage of bipartisan bills that have already been introduced, including the Create AI Act, which would establish federal infrastructure for AI research, one of the people said. It also includes provisions to promote training and developing workers for other skills, amid broad concerns about the effect artificial intelligence could have on jobs, another of the people said.

Schumer teased the upcoming plan during an interview last week at the AI Expo for National Competitiveness , where he said congressional committees will take the lead on recommendations in the document. Some committees will move faster than others, he said. The Rules Committee, helmed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), is scheduled Wednesday to consider three bipartisan bills to address the effect of artificial intelligence on U.S. elections.

“Our committees will go to work,” Schumer said. “Some committees are a little further along than others. We’re not going to wait to have one huge comprehensive plan that touches on everything.”

Schumer’s plan is a product of months of meetings among lawmakers, top tech executives, civil rights and labor leaders, consumer protection advocates, and researchers, through a series of sessions he dubbed “insight forums.” In the most high-profile gathering last year, Schumer held a six-hour session with executives locked in fierce competition to direct the future of AI development, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

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Early mrna research that led to covid-19 vaccines wins 2023 medicine nobel prize.

Biochemists Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman overcame hurdles that enabled vaccine development

Researchers Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman discovered how to deliver mRNA into cells inside the body by enveloping the molecule inside lipid bubbles (illustrated). Technology that was essential for developing some COVID-19 vaccines earned the pair the 2023 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. 

JUAN GAERTNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES

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By Tina Hesman Saey , Meghan Rosen and Erin Garcia de Jesús

October 2, 2023 at 9:29 am

Updated October 2, 2023 at 1:30 pm

Two scientists who laid the groundwork for what would become among the most influential vaccines of all time have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology. 

Biochemist Katalin Karikó, now at the University of Szeged in Hungary, and Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania were honored for their research on modifications of mRNA that made the first vaccines against COVID-19 possible ( SN: 12/15/21 ). 

“Everybody has experienced the COVID-19 pandemic that affects our life, economy and public health. It was a traumatic event,” said Qiang Pan-Hammarström, a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which awards the medicine or physiology prize. Her remarks came on October 2 after a news briefing to announce the winners. “You probably don’t need to emphasize more that the basic discovery made by the laureates has made a huge impact on our society.”

As of September 2023, more than 13.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses — including mRNA vaccines as well as other kinds of shots — had been administered since they first became available in December 2020, according to the World Health Organization. In the year after their introduction, the shots are estimated to have saved nearly 20 million lives globally. In the United States, where mRNA COVID-19 shots made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech accounted for the vast majority of vaccinations, the vaccines are estimated to have prevented 1.1 million additional deaths and 10.3 million hospitalizations.

A different kind of vaccine

RNA is DNA’s lesser-known chemical cousin. Cells make RNA copies of genetic instructions contained in DNA. Some of those RNA copies, known as messenger RNA, or mRNA, are used to build proteins. Messenger RNA “literally tells your cells what proteins to make,” says Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire, a viral immunologist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Proteins do much of the important work that keeps cells, and the organisms they’re a part of, alive and well.

The mRNA vaccines work a bit differently than traditional immunizations. Most traditional vaccines use viruses or bacteria — either weakened or killed — or proteins from those pathogens to provoke the immune system into making protective antibodies and other defenses against future infections. 

The COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna instead contain mRNA that carries instructions for making one of the coronavirus’s proteins ( SN: 2/21/20 ). When a person gets an mRNA shot, the genetic material gets into their cells and triggers the cells to produce the viral protein for a short amount of time. When the immune system sees the viral protein, it builds defenses to prevent serious illness if the person later gets infected with the coronavirus. 

Vaccines using mRNA were a good choice to combat the pandemic, Corbett-Helaire says. The technology allows scientists to “skip that step of making large amounts of proteins in the laboratory and instead … tell the body to do things that the body already does, except now we make an extra protein,” she says. 

In addition to protecting people from the coronavirus, mRNA vaccines may also work against other infectious diseases and cancer . Scientists might also use the technology to help people with certain rare genetic diseases make enzymes or other proteins they lack. Clinical trials are under way for many of these uses, but it could take years before scientists know the results ( SN: 12/17/21 ).

A long time coming

The first mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 became available just under a year into the pandemic, but the technology behind it has been decades in the making.

In 1997, Karikó and Weissman met at the copy machine, Karikó said during a news conference October 2 at the University of Pennsylvania. She told him about her work with RNA, and he shared his interest in vaccines. Although housed in separate buildings, the researchers worked together to solve one fundamental problem that could have derailed mRNA vaccines and therapies: Pumping regular mRNA into the body gets the immune system riled up in bad ways, producing a flood of immune chemicals called cytokines. Those chemicals can trigger damaging inflammation. And this unmodified mRNA produces very little protein in the body.  

The researchers found that swapping the RNA building block uridine for modified versions, first pseudouridine and then N1-methylpseudouridine, could dampen the bad immune reaction. That nifty chemistry, first reported in 2005 , allowed researchers to rein in the immune response and safely deliver the mRNA to cells.

“The messenger RNA has to hide and it has to go unnoticed by our bodies, which are very brilliant at destroying things that are foreign,” Corbett-Helaire says. “The modifications that [Karikó and Weissman] worked on for a number of years really were fundamental to allowing the mRNA therapeutics to hide while also being very helpful to the body.”

In addition, the modified mRNA produced lots of protein that could spark an immune response , the team showed in 2008 and 2010. It was this work on modifying mRNA building blocks that the prize honors.

For years, “we couldn’t get people to notice RNA as something interesting,” Weissman said at the Penn news conference. Vaccines using the technology failed clinical trials in the early 1990s, and most researchers gave up. But Karikó “lit the match,” and they spent the next 20 years figuring out how to get it to work, Weissman said. “We would sit together in 1997 and afterwards and talk about all the things that we thought RNA could do, all of the vaccines and therapeutics and gene therapies, and just realizing how important it had the potential to be. That’s why we never gave up.”

In 2006, Karikó and Weissman started a company called RNARx to develop mRNA-based treatments and vaccines. After Karikó joined the German company BioNTech in 2013, she and Weissman continued to collaborate. They and colleagues reported in 2015 that encasing mRNA in bubbles of lipids could help the fragile RNA get into cells without getting broken down in the body. The researchers were developing a Zika vaccine when the pandemic hit, and quickly applied what they had learned toward containing the coronavirus.

The duo’s work was not always so celebrated. Thomas Perlmann, Secretary General of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, asked the newly minted laureates whether they were surprised to have won. He said that Karikó was overwhelmed, noting that just 10 years ago she was terminated from her job and had to move to Germany without her family to get another position. She never won a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to support her work. 

“She struggled and didn’t get recognition for the importance of her vision,” Perlmann said, but she had a passion for using mRNA therapeutically. “She resisted the temptation to sort of go away from that path and do something maybe easier.” Karikó is the 61st woman to win a Nobel Prize since 1901, and the 13th to be awarded a prize in physiology and medicine. 

Though it often takes decades before the Nobel committees recognize a discovery, sometimes recognition comes relatively swiftly. For instance, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2020 a mere eight years after the researchers published a description of the genetic scissors CRISPR/Cas 9 ( SN: 10/7/20 ).

“I never expected in my entire life to get the Nobel Prize,” Weissman said, especially not a mere three years after the vaccines demonstrated their medical importance. Perlmann told him the Nobel committee was seeking to be “more current” with its awards, he said.

The timely Nobel highlights that “there are just a million other possibilities for messenger RNA therapeutics … beyond the vaccines,” Corbett-Helaire says.

The researchers said at the Penn news conference that they weren’t sure the early morning phone call from Perlmann was real. On the advice of Weissman’s daughter, they waited for the Nobel announcement. “We sat in bed. [I was] looking at my wife, and my cat is begging for food,” he said. “We wait, and the press conference starts, and it was real. So that’s when we really became excited.”

Karikó and Weissman will share the prize of 11 million Swedish kronor, or roughly $1 million.

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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• Americans’ Changing Relationship With Local News

As news consumption habits become more digital, U.S. adults continue to see value in local outlets

Table of contents.

• 1. Attention to local news
• 2. Local news topics
• Americans’ changing local news providers
• How people feel about their local news media’s performance
• Most Americans think local journalists are in touch with their communities
• Interactions with local journalists
• 5. Americans’ views on the financial health of local news
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

The Pew-Knight Initiative supports new research on how Americans absorb civic information, form beliefs and identities, and engage in their communities.

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Knight Foundation is a social investor committed to supporting informed and engaged communities. Learn more >

Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand the local news habits and attitudes of U.S. adults. It is a follow-up to a similar study conducted in 2018 .

The survey of 5,146 U.S. adults was conducted from Jan. 22 to 28, 2024. Everyone who completed the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.  Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Refer to the topline for the questions used for this survey , along with responses, and to the methodology for more details.

This is a Pew Research Center report from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Find related reports online at https://www.pewresearch.org/pew-knight/ .

The local news landscape in America is going through profound changes as both news consumers and producers continue to adapt to a more digital news environment. We recently asked U.S. adults about the ways they access local news, as well as their attitudes toward local journalism, finding that:

• A growing share of Americans prefer to get local news online, while fewer are getting news on TV or in print. And newspapers are no longer primarily consumed as a print product – the majority of readers of local daily newspapers now access them digitally.
• The share of U.S. adults who say they are paying close attention to local news has dropped since our last major survey of attitudes toward local news in 2018, mirroring declining attention to national news.
• Americans still see value in local news and local journalists. A large majority say local news outlets are at least somewhat important to the well-being of their local community. Most people also say local journalists are in touch with their communities and that their local news media perform well at several aspects of their jobs, such as reporting the news accurately.
• At the same time, a relatively small share of Americans (15%) say they have paid for local news in the last year. And many seem unaware of the major financial challenges facing local news: A 63% majority (albeit a smaller majority than in 2018) say they think their local news outlets are doing very or somewhat well financially.
• Majorities of both major parties say local media in their area are doing their jobs well. While Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are slightly less positive than Democrats and Democratic leaners in their opinions of local media, views of local news don’t have the same stark political divides that exist within Americans’ opinions about national media .
• Most Americans say local journalists should remain neutral on issues in their community, but a substantial minority say local journalists should take a more active role. About three-in-ten say local journalists should advocate for change in their communities, a view that’s especially common among Democrats and younger adults.

These are some of the key findings from a new Pew Research Center survey of about 5,000 U.S. adults conducted in January 2024. This is the first in a series of Pew Research Center reports on local news from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Americans largely hold positive views of local news organizations

At a time when many local news outlets are struggling and Americans’ trust in the news media has waned, the vast majority of U.S. adults (85%) say local news outlets are at least somewhat important to the well-being of their local community. This includes 44% who say local journalism is extremely or very important to their community

About seven-in-ten U.S. adults (69%) say that local journalists in their area are mostly in touch with their community, up from 63% who said this in 2018. And most Americans also say their local news organizations are doing well at four key roles:

• Reporting news accurately (71%)
• Covering the most important stories (68%)
• Being transparent (63%)
• Keeping an eye on local political leaders (61%).

These are relatively positive views compared with how Americans see news organizations more broadly. For instance, a 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that fewer than half of U.S. adults say that news organizations in general do a very or somewhat good job of covering the most important stories, reporting the news accurately and serving as a watchdog over elected leaders.

What’s more, views toward local news are not as politically polarized as Americans’ opinions about the news media overall. While Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are not quite as positive as Democrats and Democratic leaners in some of their assessments of local journalists, most Republicans still say the local media in their area are doing their jobs well.

For example, roughly three-quarters of Democrats (78%) say their local media do well at reporting news accurately, compared with about two-thirds of Republicans (66%).

By comparison, the 2022 survey found that 51% of Democrats and just 17% of Republicans say that news organizations in general do a very or somewhat good job of reporting the news accurately.

Jump to more information on views toward local news organizations.

Fewer Americans are closely following local news – and other types of news

Despite these positive views toward local news organizations, there are signs that Americans are engaging less with local journalism than they used to.

The share of Americans who say they follow local news very closely has fallen by 15 percentage points since 2016 (from 37% to 22%). Most U.S. adults still say they follow local news at least somewhat closely (66%), but this figure also has dropped in recent years.

This trend is not unique to local news – Americans’ attention to national and international news also has declined.

The local news landscape is becoming more digital

The ways in which Americans access local news are changing, reflecting an increasingly digital landscape – and matching patterns in overall news consumption habits .

Preferred pathways to local news

• Fewer people now say they prefer to get local news through a television set (32%, down from 41% who said the same in 2018).
• Americans are now more likely to say they prefer to get local news online, either through news websites (26%) or social media (23%). Both of these numbers have increased in recent years.
• Smaller shares prefer getting their local news from a print newspaper or on the radio (9% each).

Specific sources for local news

The types of sources (e.g., outlets or organizations) Americans are turning to are changing as well:

• While local television stations are still the most common source of local news beyond friends, family and neighbors, the share who often or sometimes get news there has declined from 70% to 64% in recent years.
• Online forums, such as Facebook groups or the Nextdoor app, have become a more common destination for local news: 52% of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes get local news from these types of forums, up 14 percentage points from 2018. This is on par with the percentage who get local news at least sometimes from local radio stations.
• Meanwhile, a third of Americans say they at least sometimes get local news from a daily newspaper, regardless of whether it is accessed via print, online or through a social media website – down 10 points from 2018. The share of Americans who get local news from newspapers is now roughly on par with the share who get local news from local government agencies (35%) or local newsletters or Listservs (31%).

Not only are fewer Americans getting local news from newspapers, but local daily newspapers are now more likely to be accessed online than in print.

• 31% of those who get news from daily newspapers do so via print, while far more (66%) do so digitally, whether through websites, apps, emails or social media posts that include content from the paper.
• In 2018, just over half of those who got news from local daily newspapers (54%) did so from print, and 43% did so via a website, app, email or social media site.

There is a similar move toward digital access for local TV stations, though local TV news is still mostly consumed through a TV set.

• In 2024, 62% of those getting news from local TV stations do so through a television, compared with 37% who do so through one of the digital pathways.
• An even bigger majority of local TV news consumers (76%) got that news through a TV set in 2018.

Jump to more information on how people access local news.

The financial state of local news

The turmoil for the local news industry in recent years has come with major financial challenges. Circulation and advertising revenue for newspapers have seen sharp declines in the last decade, according to our analysis of industry data , and other researchers have documented that thousands of newspapers have stopped publishing in the last two decades. There also is evidence of audience decline for local TV news stations, although advertising revenue on local TV has been more stable.

When asked about the financial state of the news outlets in their community, a majority of Americans (63%) say they think their local news outlets are doing very or somewhat well, with a third saying that they’re not doing too well or not doing well at all. This is a slightly more pessimistic view than in 2018, when 71% said their local outlets were doing well, though it is still a relatively positive assessment of the financial state of the industry.

Just 15% of Americans say they have paid or given money to any local news source in the past year – a number that has not changed much since 2018. The survey also asked Americans who did not pay for news in the past year the main reason why not. The most common explanation is that people don’t pay because they can find plenty of free local news, although young adults are more inclined to say they just aren’t interested enough in local news to pay for it.

Jump to more information on how people view the financial state of local news.

Other key findings in this report

Americans get local news about a wide variety of topics. Two-thirds or more of U.S. adults at least sometimes get news about local weather, crime, government and politics, and traffic and transportation, while smaller shares (but still at least half) say they get local news about arts and culture, the economy, schools, and sports.

Relatively few Americans are highly satisfied with the coverage they see of many topics. The survey also asked respondents who at least sometimes get each type of local news how satisfied they are with the news they get. With the exception of weather, fewer than half say they are extremely or very satisfied with the quality of the news they get about each topic. For example, about a quarter of those who consume news about their local economy (26%) say they are extremely or very satisfied with this news. Read more about different local news topics in Chapter 2.

When asked whether local journalists should remain neutral on community issues or advocate for change in the community, a majority of Americans (69%) say journalists should remain neutral, reflecting more traditional journalistic norms. However, 29% say that local journalists should be advocating for change in their communities. Younger adults are the most likely to favor advocacy by journalists: 39% of those ages 18 to 29 say that local journalists should push for change, as do 34% of those 30 to 49. Read more about Americans’ views of the role of local journalists in Chapter 4.

Americans who feel a strong sense of connection to their community are more likely to engage with local news, say that local news outlets are important to the community, and rate local media more highly overall. For example, 66% of those who say they are very attached to their community say local news outlets are extremely or very important to the well-being of their local community, compared with 46% of those who are somewhat attached and 31% of those who are not very or not at all attached to their community.

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