Top Society & Education News

February 3, 2026

Top Headlines

Middle Age Is Becoming a Breaking Point in the U.S.

Feb. 1, 2026 Middle age is becoming a tougher chapter for many Americans, especially those born in the 1960s and early 1970s. Compared with earlier generations, they report more loneliness and depression, along with weaker physical strength and declining memory. ...

“Existential Risk” – Why Scientists Are Racing to Define Consciousness

Feb. 1, 2026 Scientists warn that rapid advances in AI and neurotechnology are outpacing our understanding of consciousness, creating serious ethical risks. New research argues that developing scientific tests ...

Nearly All Women in STEM Secretly Feel Like Impostors

Jan. 5, 2026 Nearly all women in STEM graduate programs report feeling like impostors, despite strong evidence of success. This mindset leads many to dismiss their achievements as luck and fear being “found out.” Research links impostorism to worse mental ...

This Tiny Plant Is Helping Solve Crimes

Jan. 1, 2026 Moss may look insignificant, but it can carry a hidden forensic fingerprint. Because different moss species thrive in very specific micro-environments, tiny fragments can reveal exactly where a person has been. Researchers reviewing 150 years of ...

Nearly 70% of U.S. Adults Could Now Be Classified as Obese

Dec. 31, 2025 A major update to how obesity is defined could push U.S. obesity rates to nearly 70%, according to a large new study. The change comes from adding waist and body fat measurements to BMI, capturing people who were previously considered healthy. Many ...

Scientists Turn Carrot Waste Into Protein People Prefer

Dec. 30, 2025 Scientists have discovered a clever way to turn carrot processing leftovers into a nutritious and surprisingly appealing protein. By growing edible fungi on carrot side streams, researchers produced fungal mycelium that can replace traditional ...

Stanford Scientists Uncover Why MRNA COVID Vaccines Can Trigger Heart Inflammation

Dec. 27, 2025 Stanford scientists have uncovered how mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can very rarely trigger heart inflammation in young men — and how that risk might be reduced. They found that the vaccines can spark a ...

Deaths of Despair Were Rising Long Before Opioids

Dec. 20, 2025 Long before opioids flooded communities, something else was quietly changing—and it may have helped set the stage for today’s crisis. A new study finds that as church attendance dropped among middle-aged, less educated white Americans, deaths ...

Kids’ Anxiety and Depression Dropped Fast After COVID School Reopenings

Dec. 13, 2025 Researchers discovered that children who went back to school during COVID experienced far fewer mental health diagnoses than those who stayed remote. Anxiety, depression, and ADHD all declined as in-person learning resumed. Healthcare spending tied ...

Rising Temperatures Are Slowing Early Childhood Development

Dec. 10, 2025 Researchers discovered that unusually high temperatures can hinder early childhood development. Children living in hotter conditions were less likely to reach key learning milestones, especially in reading and basic math skills. Those facing ...

Global Surge in Ultra-processed Foods Sparks Urgent Health Warning

Nov. 24, 2025 Ultra-processed foods are rapidly becoming a global dietary staple, and new research links them to worsening health outcomes around the world. Scientists say only bold, coordinated policy action can counter corporate influence and shift food systems ...

Scientists Find a Surprising Link Between Lead and Human Evolution

Nov. 16, 2025 Researchers found that ancient hominids—including early humans—were exposed to lead throughout childhood, leaving chemical traces in fossil teeth. Experiments suggest this exposure may have driven genetic changes that strengthened ...

Latest Headlines

updated 3:24am EST

750-Year-Old Indian Poems Reveal a Landscape Scientists Got Wrong

Feb. 1, 2026 Old Indian poems and folk songs are revealing a surprising truth about the land. Scientists found that descriptions of thorny trees and open grasslands in texts written as far back as the 1200s ...

Ancient Tools in China Are Forcing Scientists to Rethink Early Humans

Jan. 31, 2026 Archaeologists in central China have uncovered evidence that early humans were far more inventive than long assumed. Excavations at the Xigou site reveal advanced stone tools, including the earliest ...

A Century-Old Stonehenge Mystery May Finally Be Solved

Jan. 27, 2026 Scientists have found compelling new evidence that humans, not glaciers, brought Stonehenge’s bluestones to the site. Using advanced mineral analysis, researchers searched nearby river sediments ...

Your Fireplace May Be Doing More Harm Than You Think

Jan. 26, 2026 Home fireplaces and wood stoves are quietly driving a large share of winter air pollution, even though only a small number of households rely on wood heat. Researchers found that wood smoke accounts ...

A Lost Disease Emerges from 5,500-Year-Old Human Remains

Jan. 26, 2026 A 5,500-year-old skeleton from Colombia has revealed the oldest known genome of the bacterium linked to syphilis and related diseases. The ancient strain doesn’t fit neatly into modern categories, ...

New DNA Analysis Rewrites the Story of the Beachy Head Woman

Jan. 25, 2026 A Roman-era skeleton discovered in southern England has finally given up her secrets after more than a decade of debate. Known as the Beachy Head Woman, she was once thought to have roots in ...

Ancient People Carried a Wild Potato Across the American Southwest

Jan. 25, 2026 Long before farming took hold, ancient Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest were already shaping the future of a wild potato. New evidence shows that this small, hardy plant was deliberately ...

This New Building Material Pulls Carbon out of the Air

Jan. 21, 2026 A new building material developed by engineers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute could change how the world builds. Made using an enzyme that turns carbon dioxide into solid minerals, the material ...

The Overlooked Survival Strategy That Made Us Human

Jan. 19, 2026 Long before humans became master hunters, our ancestors were already thriving by making the most of what nature left behind. New research suggests that scavenging animal carcasses wasn’t a ...

This Tiny Power Module Could Change How the World Uses Energy

Jan. 19, 2026 As global energy demand surges—driven by AI-hungry data centers, advanced manufacturing, and electrified transportation—researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have unveiled a ...

New Research Shows Emotional Expressions Work Differently in Autism

Jan. 19, 2026 Researchers found that autistic and non-autistic people move their faces differently when expressing emotions like anger, happiness, and sadness. Autistic participants tended to rely on different ...

The Breakthrough That Makes Robot Faces Feel Less Creepy

Jan. 16, 2026 Humans pay enormous attention to lips during conversation, and robots have struggled badly to keep up. A new robot developed at Columbia Engineering learned realistic lip movements by watching its ...

War Has Pushed Gaza’s Children to the Brink – “like the Living Dead”

Jan. 11, 2026 A new study warns that war in Gaza has pushed children to the edge, leaving many too hungry, weak, or traumatized to learn. Education has nearly collapsed, with years of schooling lost to conflict, ...

What You Eat Could Decide the Planet’s Future

Dec. 24, 2025 What we put on our plates may matter more for the climate than we realize. Researchers found that most people, especially in wealthy countries, are exceeding a “food emissions budget” needed to ...

Why Consciousness Can’t Be Reduced to Code

Dec. 24, 2025 The familiar fight between “mind as software” and “mind as biology” may be a false choice. This work proposes biological computationalism: the idea that brains compute, but not in the ...

AI Supercharges Scientific Output While Quality Slips

Dec. 24, 2025 AI writing tools are supercharging scientific productivity, with researchers posting up to 50% more papers after adopting them. The biggest beneficiaries are scientists who don’t speak English as a ...

The Real Reason Incomes Rise and Why They Drop

Dec. 20, 2025 Getting ahead financially is mainly about what you earn at work, not what you make from investments. Researchers found that promotions, skills, and better jobs drive most upward income movement. But ...

Ancient Sewers Expose a Hidden Health Crisis in Roman Britain

Dec. 21, 2025 Sediments from a Roman latrine at Vindolanda show soldiers were infected with multiple intestinal parasites, including roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia — the first time Giardia has been identified ...

Science Says We’ve Been Nurturing “gifted” Kids All Wrong

Dec. 21, 2025 A major international review has upended long-held ideas about how top performers are made. By analyzing nearly 35,000 elite achievers across science, music, chess, and sports, researchers found that ...

What If AI Becomes Conscious and We Never Know

Dec. 31, 2025 A philosopher at the University of Cambridge says there’s no reliable way to know whether AI is conscious—and that may remain true for the foreseeable future. According to Dr. Tom McClelland, ...

A Loud Minority Makes the Internet Look Far More Toxic Than It Is

Dec. 17, 2025 People think online platforms are overflowing with toxic and misleading content, but the reality is far calmer. A small group of highly active users creates most of the harm, while the majority ...

Medieval Miracles: Dragon-Slaying Saints Once Healed the Land

Feb. 2, 2026 New research reveals a forgotten side of medieval Christianity—one rooted not in cathedrals, but in fields, forests, and farms. Historian Dr. Krisztina Ilko uncovers how the Augustinian order built ...

TikTok’s Gout Advice Is Everywhere and Doctors Say It’s Often Wrong

Jan. 9, 2026 A new study finds that TikTok videos about gout frequently spread confusing or inaccurate advice. Most clips focus on diet changes and supplements, while barely mentioning the long-term treatments ...

This 8,000-Year-Old Art Shows Math Before Numbers Existed

Dec. 16, 2025 Over 8,000 years ago, early farming communities in northern Mesopotamia were already thinking mathematically—long before numbers were written down. By closely studying Halafian pottery, researchers ...

Are They Really Listening? Watch Their Blinks

Dec. 23, 2025 Your eyes may reveal when your brain is working overtime. Researchers found that people blink less when trying to understand speech in noisy environments, especially during the most important ...

Scientists Uncover a Volcanic Trigger Behind the Black Death

Dec. 8, 2025 A newly analyzed set of climate data points to a major volcanic eruption that may have played a key role in the Black Death’s arrival. Cooling and crop failures across Europe pushed Italian states ...

A Backwards Bible Map That Changed the World

Nov. 30, 2025 Five hundred years ago, a Bible accidentally printed with a backwards map of the Holy Land sparked a revolution in how people imagined geography, borders, and even nationhood. Despite the blunder, ...

Scientists Finally Uncovered Why the Indus Valley Civilization Collapsed

Dec. 14, 2025 A series of century-scale droughts may have quietly reshaped one of the world’s earliest urban civilizations. New climate reconstructions show that the Indus Valley Civilization endured repeated ...

New 3D Scan Reveals a Hidden Network of Moai Carvers on Easter Island

Nov. 30, 2025 A high-resolution 3D model of Rano Raraku shows that the moai were created in many distinct carving zones. Instead of a top-down system, the statues appear to have been produced by separate family ...

A Strange Ancient Foot Reveals a Hidden Human Cousin

Nov. 28, 2025 Researchers have finally assigned a strange 3.4-million-year-old foot to Australopithecus deyiremeda, confirming that Lucy’s species wasn’t alone in ancient Ethiopia. This hominin had an ...