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Climate health harms outpace action, prompting calls for global health emergency

The 2026 Report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change finds that many of the health risks and harms of climate change grew faster in the decade since the Paris Agreement was introduced (2016–2025) than in the decade before it (2006–2015).

Clean energy investment, health system leadership, more health-protecting legislation and growing scientific evidence helped deliver real health gains, but not enough to offset the rapidly growing harm from fossil fuel–driven climate change.

The report’s authors call for climate change to be formally recognized and addressed as a global health emergency, and for health to shape both climate policies and funding priorities to prevent climate change.

How our blood vessels age from within

With every heartbeat, blood is pumped through a vast network of vessels throughout our body, delivering vital oxygen, nutrients and other essential substances to even its most remote corners. But these vessels are far more than passive tubes: Their inner walls are covered by a thin layer of specialized cells called endothelial cells, which regulate blood flow, control what passes into surrounding tissues and help coordinate responses to injury.

They even contribute to the specific functions of the organs they serve, such as forming a protective barrier in the brain or supporting filtration in the kidneys. Yet, as we grow older, this finely tuned system can become dysfunctional, increasing the susceptibility to cardiovascular disease and its associated mortality.

Although endothelial cells are essential for vascular and organ function, they are often overlooked in studies of aging. As such, what happens inside endothelial cells as we age, and why their function may deteriorate over time, remains poorly understood. This is the question CeMM principal investigator Laura de Rooij and her team set out to answer.

Postnatal depression-associated breastmilk extracellular vesicles mediate intergenerational effects on offspring neurodevelopment

Maternal postnatal depression enriches specific microRNAs in breastmilk small extracellular vesicles. Through breastfeeding, these microRNAs are delivered to the offspring hypothalamus, where they suppress mGluR8 in neurons projecting to the hippocampus, thereby disrupting calcium activity and newborn neuron integration and leading to persistent cognitive and emotional deficits into adulthood.

Rising rates of colorectal cancer found in nearly all age groups

Colorectal cancer rates are rising across younger and older age groups, according to a study published in NEJM Evidence.

Colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths overall in the U.S., ranks first in adults younger than 50 years. The new study found that rising incidence now extends beyond younger adults to nearly all age groups, which has implications for the health care system as more diagnoses will create a greater demand for treatment and survivorship care.

Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D., MPH, professor of pediatrics and public health sciences at the University of Chicago, and her colleagues used the most recent data from the National Cancer Institute to examine incidence rates of colorectal cancer over a 20-year period. The data showed that the age-adjusted incidence rate fell from 55.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 36.7 in 2022, then rose to 38.3 in 2023.

Making virtual brain models more biologically realistic by capturing ion exchange

Mean-field models are a powerful tool for understanding collective brain activity. A new model extends this approach by incorporating the exchange of ions between neurons and their surroundings, bringing important biological mechanisms into simulations of neuronal populations.

How can researchers simulate the activity of the whole brain without modeling every neuron in full detail? A new study, published in eLife, explores one part of the answer: retaining key biological mechanisms while simplifying the mathematics needed to model large neuronal populations.

The brain’s electrical activity depends on the movement of charged particles, called ions, across cell membranes and through the fluid surrounding neurons. These processes also influence one another: changes in ion concentration can affect how neurons fire and, in some circumstances, contribute to abnormal brain activity, including epileptic seizures.

Genie 4: A new generation of world simulation

Envision walking down a bustling Tokyo street at twilight in a virtual world. You turn a corner, and a sudden rain shower begins—not because it was pre-scripted into a video file, but because the world model is computing the #physics, the sound of droplets hitting umbrellas, and the way pedestrians react in real time.

That is the shift happening with Genie 4, Google DeepMind’s most realistic and interactive world model yet.

Instead of rendering static video files frame-by-frame or following pre-rendered animations, Genie 4 generates dynamic, living environments that respond fluidly as you explore them. Every sight, ambient sound, and human interaction adapts instantly to input.

To understand why this is a massive leap forward, think about where interactive simulations are heading:

* Next-Gen Game Prototyping: Developers can “sketch” interactive environments on the fly. Rather than spending months manually coding physics, lighting, and non-player character (NPC) behaviors, creators can generate fully responsive worlds instantly.

* Hyper-Realistic Training Simulations: Emergency responders, pilots, and medical professionals can train in infinitely variable, high-stakes scenarios that react naturally to split-second decisions, far beyond the limits of scripted branching paths.

Continue reading “Genie 4: A new generation of world simulation” | >

Forgotten Particle Could Answer The Mystery of Why We Exist, Say Physicists

The Big Bang should have been the start and the end of the Universe, as we understand it.

In many ways, the cosmos likes balance, so it’s thought the Big Bang should have made matter and antimatter in equal amounts, leading them to destroy each other and leave only space and energy.

But an infinitesimal imbalance existed at some point in the early Universe that allowed matter to exist, which is important because humans and other stuff tend to be made of matter.