When you wake up in the morning, it might feel like your brain just switched on at the ring of an alarm, although you still might feel groggy for a while. But the actual process the brain goes through to wake up is a gradual, coordinated event. So exactly how does it happen?

First, let's define what it means to be awake. "Being awake means the brain is in a state that supports awareness, movement and thinking," Rachel Rowe, a professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Live Science in an email. "Unlike sleep, where brain waves are slow and synchronized, wakefulness is marked by faster, more flexible activity that lets us respond to the world around us."

There isn't a single moment when the brain flips from asleep to awake, however, said Aurélie Stephan, a sleep researcher at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Research has shown that the subcortical regions of the brain — a group of neural formations located below the cerebral cortex — are responsible for waking us up. The reticular activating system (RAS) first acts like the "starter switch," Rowe explained, sending signals to activate the thalamus, a structure that relays sensory information to other parts of the brain, and then the cerebral cortex, the wrinkled outer layer of the brain.

In a 2025 study, Stephan and her colleagues also found that the brain executes a signature pattern of activity upon waking. When the study participants woke up from non-REM sleep, which comprises different stages of sleep ranging from light to deep sleep — their brain activity first showed a short burst in slower, sleep-like waves, followed by faster waves linked to wakefulness.

When they woke up from REM sleep — a sleep stage characterized by vivid dreams and rapid eye movements — their brain waves went straight to faster activity. Overall, regardless of which stage of sleep participants were in, their brain activity appeared to start from the front and central regions of the brain and move to the back of the brain as they woke up, the researchers found.

What happens now?
That may well be the question being asked by "No Kings" protesters, who marched, rallied and danced all over the nation on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025.

Pro-democracy groups had aimed to encourage large numbers of Americans to demonstrate that "together we are choosing democracy." They were successful, with crowds turning out for demonstrations in thousands of cities and towns from Anchorage to Miami.

And while multiple GOP leaders had attacked the planned demonstrations, describing them as "hate America" rallies, political science scholars and national security experts agree that the current U.S. administration's actions are indeed placing the world's oldest continuous constitutional republic in jeopardy.

Once a democracy starts to erode, it can be difficult to reverse the trend. Only 42% of democracies affected by autocratization—a transformation in governance that erodes democratic safeguards—since 1994 have rebounded after a democratic breakdown, according to Swedish research institute V-Dem.

Often termed "democratic backsliding," such periods involve government-led changes to rules and norms to weaken individual freedoms and undermine or eliminate checks on power exercised by independent institutions, both governmental and non-governmental.

Democracies that have suffered setbacks vary widely, from Hungary to Brazil. As a long-term practitioner of democracy-building overseas, I know that none of these countries rival the United States' constitutional traditions, federalist system, economic wealth, military discipline, and vibrant independent media, academia and nonprofit organizations.

Even so, practices used globally to fight democratic backsliding or topple autocracies can be instructive.

In a nutshell: Nonviolent resistance is based on noncooperation with autocratic actions. It has proven more effective in toppling autocracies than violent, armed struggle.

But it requires more than street demonstrations.

Tactics used by pro-democracy movements
So, what does it take for democracies to bounce back from periods of autocratic rule?

Broad-scale, coordinated mobilization of a sufficient percentage of the population against autocratic takeover and for a renewed democratic future is necessary for success.

That momentum can be challenging to generate. Would-be autocrats create environments of fear and powerlessness, using intimidation, overwhelming force or political and legal attacks, and other coercive tactics to force acquiescence and chill democratic pushback.

Autocrats can't succeed alone. They rely on what scholars call "pillars of support"—a range of government institutions, security forces, business and other sectors in society to obey their will and even bolster their power grabs.

However, everyone in society has the power to erode autocratic support in various ways. While individual efforts are important, collective action increases impact and mitigates the risks of reprisals for standing up to individuals or organizations.

Here are some of the tactics used by those movements across the world:

1. Refuse unlawful, corrupt demands
When enough individuals in critical roles and institutions—the military, civil servants, corporate leaders, state government and judges—refuse to implement autocratic orders, it can slow or even stop an autocratic takeover.

In South Korea, parts of the civil service, legislature and military declined to support President Yoon Suk Yeol's imposition of martial law in 2024, foiling his autocratic move.

2. Visibly bolster the rule of law
Where would-be autocrats disregard legal restraints and install their supporters in the highest courts, individual challenges to overreach, even if successful, can be insufficient.

In Poland, legal challenges in courts combined with public education by the judiciary, lawyers' associations initiatives and street protests like the "March of a Thousand Robes" in 2020 to signal widespread repudiation.. Read more

Neurons are well known for passing rapid messages to each other using synapses to transmit both electrical and chemical information. Yet, other cell types are known to use physically connecting bridging tubes to exchange molecules. Chang and team have just confirmed that a similar type of tube bridge occurs in neurons too, using advanced imaging and machine learning.

The researchers observed the nanotubes transporting amyloid-beta molecules that they had injected into mouse brain cells. These molecules have been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, where they tend to clump together abnormally.

When researchers stopped the bridges from forming, the amyloid-beta stopped spreading between cells, too, confirming that the nanotubes acted as direct conduits.

Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease occur when neurons in the brain gradually deteriorate and die. This progressive loss of nerve cells leads to symptoms like memory loss, cognitive decline, and difficulty with movement. Over time, these conditions severely impact quality of life and often leave patients dependent on constant care. While current medications can ease symptoms, they do not stop or reverse the disease, highlighting the urgent need for new treatment strategies. One promising direction focuses on encouraging the brain to generate new neurons through a process known as neuronal differentiation, which could replace damaged cells and potentially slow or reverse degeneration.

Vitamin K, a fat-soluble nutrient best known for its role in blood clotting and bone health, has recently been linked to brain protection and neuron formation. However, naturally occurring vitamin K compounds such as menaquinone 4 (MK-4) may not be strong enough to serve as effective therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.

Designing Next-Generation Vitamin K Analogues
In a groundbreaking study published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, researchers from the Department of Bioscience and Engineering at Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan, led by Associate Professor Yoshihisa Hirota and Professor Yoshitomo Suhara, developed new forms of vitamin K with stronger effects on brain cells. The team not only enhanced the vitamin’s neuroactive properties but also uncovered a previously unknown mechanism through which it promotes the formation of neurons.

Explaining the findings, Dr. Hirota stated, “The newly synthesized vitamin K analogues demonstrated approximately threefold greater potency in inducing the differentiation of neural progenitor cells into neurons compared to natural vitamin K. Since neuronal loss is a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, these analogues may serve as regenerative agents that help replenish lost neurons and restore brain function.”

We’ve captured one of our best images of the Space Station yet.

The number of satellites in orbit is set to increase tenfold in the next decade. At the same time, space-to-space threats are rising and the need to inspect and maintain satellites is accelerating faster than anyone expected.

Resolution alone won't deliver what's needed. True understanding comes from observing satellites frequently, from multiple angles and orbits, so you can see how they behave, respond to their environment, and what they're capable of across time and geography.

That's why HEO focuses on high-frequency Non-Earth Imaging. Our technology is built for speed, scale, and adaptability, operating across multiple orbits with diverse satellite providers to deliver more coverage, more data, and faster insights into thousands of satellites. This approach will get us to a future where satellite inspection is truly on-demand. You tell us you want an image of your satellite and we deliver imagery and analysis when you need them.

Image of the ISS captured with our partner BlackSky Inc.

🌕 Robots on the Moon — almost!

Eight teams from six countries brought their lunar tech to life at esa-DLR en's LUNA facility in Cologne for the Second Space Resources Challenge 🇵🇱🇨🇦🇩🇪🇬🇧🇱🇺🇩🇰

✨ Their mission? To dig, sort and process simulated Moon soil, aka regolith, paving the way for sustainable lunar living.

🔗 esa.int/Science_Explor…

The largest and most detailed analysis of alternative and complementary autism treatments has found little reliable evidence that these methods are effective, and noted that their safety is seldom evaluated.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition that affects how people communicate, process information, and interact with others. It is estimated to affect around 1 in 100 people worldwide.

In a study published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers from Paris Nanterre University, Paris Cité University, and the University of Southampton reviewed 248 meta-analyses, which together included 200 clinical trials and more than 10,000 participants.

The research examined how well complementary, alternative, and integrative medicines (CAIMs) work in treating autism, as well as their safety. The team analyzed 19 different approaches, such as animal-assisted therapy, acupuncture, herbal remedies, music therapy, probiotics, and Vitamin D.

The team also created an online platform to make it easier for people to see the evidence they generated on different CAIMS.

Autism and the Search for Better Treatments
Autistic people can find it hard to communicate, understand how people think or feel, be overwhelmed by sensory information, become anxious in unfamiliar surroundings, and carry out repetitive behaviors.

All of this can interfere with their quality of life, and up to 90% report having used CAIMs at least once in their lifetime.

“Many parents of autistic children, as well as autistic adults, turn to complementary and alternative medicines hoping they may help without unwanted side effects,” says Professor Richard Delorme, Head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit at Robert Debré Hospital in Paris.

“However, it is necessary to carefully consider evidence from rigorous randomized trials before concluding that these treatments should be tried.”

The Power of an Umbrella Review
Researchers carried out an umbrella review – a type of study that pulls together evidence to give an overall ‘big picture’ summary.

Dr. Corentin Gosling, Associate Professor at the Paris Nanterre University and first author of the study, explains: “Rather than looking at individual trials, we reviewed all the available meta-analyses, which are a compilation of many trials. This allowed us to evaluate the full body of evidence across different treatments.

“Importantly, we also developed a free and easy-to-use online platform, which we will continue to test. Ultimately, we hope this tool will support autistic people and practitioners in choosing together the best treatment.”

Is anybody out there? Probably. Most stars have planets; we've discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets thus far, and the most basic statistics point toward the existence of countless potentially habitable worlds in the universe. But when we have looked for any scrap of evidence for alien civilizations, we have found nothing so far. The question is why?

There are the usual ideas: life actually doesn't find a way; Earth is being kept in a cosmic zoo; civilizations destroy themselves as soon as they have the power to do so; some civilization has to be the first, and that's us. None of them are really provable at this point, and none of them are particularly satisfactory answers. So why not add another idea to the mix? What if the reason we haven't detected aliens is because of AI?

This idea comes from a new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server that re-examines some musings of Carl Sagan. Back in the 1970s, Sagan considered some of the challenges of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and one of them was what he called the "communication horizon."

The idea was that as an alien civilization advances, its technology becomes too sophisticated for us to detect. We could detect strong radio signals from a civilization 100 light-years away, but if they use neutrino communication, they'd be essentially invisible to us. And if there is some novel physics that allows them to communicate faster than light? Our search is doomed.

Sagan figured that it would take about a thousand years for a civilization to progress outside our observational limits, based on the way human civilization had advanced in the past. But a great deal has changed since Sagan's day, particularly in the area of computer technology.

These days, artificial intelligence is all the rage. Like it or hate it, AI is now a part of our daily lives. It's quite possible that the advancement of AI will reach some technological plateau, but it's also possible that we will achieve some kind of artificial super-intelligence (ASI). If an ASI appears in the next decade or so, it would become the dominant intelligence on Earth, and it would continue to advance at a rate faster than we poor lumps of flesh can imagine.

This latest work argues that if we factor in the exponential rate of technology and consider the possibility that non-biological intelligence is common, then the observation horizon shrinks considerably. It could be as short as a decade or two. If that's the case, then our chance of detecting an alien species is essentially nil. Perhaps the answer to Fermi's paradox of the Great Silence is the Dead Internet Theory on a cosmic scale.

You are what you eat... literally 🐍 King cobras feed on other serpents like this rat snake with ease—they even make a meal out of other king cobras.

The Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is evolving. We've moved on from the limited thinking of monitoring radio waves to checking for interstellar pushing lasers or even budding Dyson swarms around stars. To match our increased understanding of the ways we might find intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) is working through an update to its protocols for what researchers should do after a confirmed detection of intelligence outside Earth.

Their new suggestions are available in a paper posted on the arXiv preprint server but were also voted on at the 2025 International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, with potential full adoption early next year.

This updated protocol marks the largest change in the 36 years there has been a protocol. The IAA first created a "Declaration of Principles" in 1989 that was intended to suggest how humanity should react to a confirmed signal from an alien world. This protocol was updated in 2010, but those changes were largely just streamlining with little substantive differences.

The update being put forth now, though, is significantly different in a number of important ways. It is intended to reflect the growing complexity of dealing with highly sensitive topics in the modern world, especially when dealing with social media. A big part of its intent is to protect the researchers who announce the discovery from online harassment, or worse.

But perhaps the most important single change is the suggestion of whether humanity should respond to a direct message. Previous versions of the protocol have suggested that yes, we should, and put few restrictions on doing so. The updated one suggests that the researchers should absolutely not send any reply until after the issue is discussed at the United Nations, which makes sense, though getting the UN itself to agree to anything at this point seems like a hard ask.

To be clear, as it is explicitly stated in the paper, this suggestion does not directly impact the idea of messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI), where we would proactively send high-power signals ourselves to potentially promising nearby star systems. That idea is even more controversial than just passively scanning the skies for signals, or looking for other, unintentional "technosignatures." While it should probably have its own governing protocol, the best we have done so far is a series of "position papers" from the IAA and other organizations addressing thoughts on what we should do, but which hasn't been formally ratified into an accepted set of actions.

The actions in the new SETI protocol, though, are much more straightforward, though they too are to be thought of as "best practices" rather than hard and fast rules that bind anyone in the international order. They include methods for verifying the signal or collected data, as well as how and where to store the data (in two separate geographical locations and made accessible to more stakeholders), as well as the software used to analyze the data itself.

New evidence confirms a long-held theory that people with schizophrenia hear 'voices' in their heads by misattributing inner speech as external.

"This idea's been around for 50 years, but it's been very difficult to test because inner speech is inherently private," says Thomas Whitford, a psychology researcher at the University of New South Wales.

Using EEG (electroencephalography) to measure brainwaves, Whitford and his colleagues tested the way that the brain reacts to inner speech, and, in people with schizophrenia, the way their brains react to auditory hallucinations.

"When we speak – even just in our heads – the part of the brain that processes sounds from the outside world becomes less active," Whitford explains. "This is because the brain predicts the sound of our own voice. But in people who hear voices, this prediction seems to go wrong, and the brain reacts as if the voice is coming from someone else."

The Solar System ☀️🪐🌎

Vascular dementia is caused by blood flow issues in the brain: it's one of the most common types of dementia, but not as well researched or understood as others.

Neuropathologist Elaine Bearer from the University of New Mexico is trying to change that.

In a recent review, she has suggested new categorizations for vascular dementia, each with unique pathologies – the actual biological changes in tissues and organs.

She highlights some significant overlap with Alzheimer's disease, and she says her team's novel microscopy method sheds light on how microplastics that have seeped into the body could be triggering or exacerbating cases of vascular dementia.

"We have been flying blind," says Bearer. "The various vascular pathologies have not been comprehensively defined, so we haven't known what we're treating."

"And we didn't know that nano- and microplastics were in the picture, because we couldn't see them."

Climate projections have long indicated that global warming might weaken the Southern Ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2). Yet, long-term measurements reveal that this crucial ability has remained largely unchanged in recent decades. A new study by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) offers insight into why this might be the case.

For many years, low-salinity water near the ocean’s surface has helped trap carbon in the deep sea, preventing it from escaping back into the atmosphere. However, climate change is now disrupting this balance and altering how effectively the Southern Ocean functions as a carbon sink. The findings are detailed in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Oceans collectively take up about one quarter of the CO2 produced by human activity. Of that amount, the Southern Ocean alone accounts for roughly 40 percent, making it one of the planet’s most important regions for slowing global warming.

Its powerful influence stems from the region’s unique circulation patterns. Deep waters rise to the surface, exchange gases with the atmosphere, and then sink again, carrying newly absorbed CO2 into the depths.

“Previous studies suggested that global climate change would strengthen the westerly winds over the Southern Ocean, and with that, the overturning circulation too,” says Léa Olivier. “However, that would transport more carbon-rich water from the deep ocean to the surface, which would consequently reduce the Southern Ocean’s ability to store CO₂.” Although strengthening winds have already been observed and attributed to human-made change in recent modeling and observational studies, there is no evidence pointing to the Southern Ocean absorbing less CO₂ – at least at this point.

Long-term observations by the AWI and other international research institutes suggest that climate change may be affecting the properties of surface and deep water masses.

The Southern Ocean’s surface water salinity has reduced as a result of increased input of freshwater caused by precipitation and melting glaciers and sea ice. This “freshening” reinforces the density stratification between the two water masses, which in turn keeps the CO₂-rich deep water trapped in the lower layer and prevents it from breaking through the barrier between the two layers.

The team found that a normally inactive gene, WUSCHEL-D1, becomes active early in flower development, causing the plant to form extra ovaries that can each grow into a grain. This discovery could allow breeders to develop new, higher-yielding wheat varieties without needing more land or resources, offering a major step toward meeting global food demands in a changing climate.

A tiny chip implanted into the eyes of people suffering vision loss from irreversible age-related macular degeneration has restored central sight in a dazzling first.

It's called the PRIMA system, tested across 17 European hospitals, and it restored central vision in 26 of 32 patients who used it for 12 months – many of whom could even read again. The result, developed by a large international team of doctors and scientists over many years, represents a massive breakthrough in treatments for vision loss.

"It's the first time that any attempt at vision restoration has achieved such results in a large number of patients," says ophthamologist José-Alain Sahel of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, co-senior author on a paper describing the results.

"More than 80 percent of the patients were able to read letters and words, and some of them are reading pages in a book. This is really something we couldn't have dreamt of when we started on this journey, together with Daniel Palanker, 15 years ago."

Poisoning is a term most often associated with the human body and natural environments.

But it is also a growing problem in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) – in particular, for large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude.

In fact, a joint study by the UK AI Security Institute, Alan Turing Institute and Anthropic, published earlier this month, found that inserting as few as 250 malicious files into the millions in a model's training data can secretly "poison" it.

So what exactly is AI poisoning? And what risks does it pose?

What is AI poisoning?
Generally speaking, AI poisoning refers to the process of teaching an AI model wrong lessons on purpose. The goal is to corrupt the model's knowledge or behavior, causing it to perform poorly, produce specific errors, or exhibit hidden, malicious functions.

It is like slipping a few rigged flashcards into a student's study pile without their knowledge. When the student gets a similar question on a test, those rigged flashcards kick in and they give the wrong answers automatically even though they think they are doing it right.

The results of the first clinical trial of “enteral ventilation” have been published, and are considered a success, a step along the road to a treatment that could save many lives and prevent even more injuries. Such events happen every day as medicine progresses, but this one stands out because “enteral ventilation” is more popularly known as “butt-breathing” or a few other names you can probably fill in for yourself.

Several Australian turtle species have found a way to delay the dangers of coming to the surface to breathe by extracting oxygen dissolved in water using their cloaca. In other words, they have gill-like features in their bums that supplement their oxygen intake. Dragonfly nymphs do something similar, and even expel the water afterwards as a form of jet propulsion. This, however, is Australia, and you can probably find seventeen weirder animal behaviors within a stone’s throw of a butt-breathing turtle (arguably including their headwear). 

Medical applications were probably not the first thing on the mind of those who discovered the trait. However, sick of watching patients struggle for breath with various lung conditions, and inspired by loaches (fish that process air through their stomachs), Dr Takanori Takebe of the Institute of Science, Tokyo, proposed to take an algal leaf out of the turtles’ book. Inevitably, the work was awarded the 2024 Ig Nobel physiology prize for demonstrating the viability of mammals being able to breathe through their butts on some no doubt surprised pigs.

Undeterred by the challenges of getting taken seriously, Takebe has ploughed ahead, and the first results are promising. 

"This is the first human data, and the results are limited solely to demonstrating the safety of the procedure and not its effectiveness,” Takebe stressed in a statement. “But now that we have established tolerance, the next step will be to evaluate how effective the process is for delivering oxygen to the bloodstream."

It’s always a good day to celebrate vaccines. As one of the all-time great achievements in medicine, vaccines are the reason humanity has been able to eradicate smallpox, end the “summer plagues” of polio, and slash the incidence of cervical cancer, to name just a few. But there’s one disease that gets a bit less publicity, despite it being a significant cause of serious childhood infections before a vaccine was introduced in the 1980s: Hib.

Hib disease is caused by a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type B. First described in 1892 by Richard Pfeiffer, it was thought at the time to be the cause of influenza, as the bacteria were found in sputum samples from influenza patients. It was a good thought, but now we know that the flu is caused by a virus. 

H. influenzae was later understood to be a secondary infection in these patients. In fact, the bacterium can sometimes sit harmlessly inside the nose. But when it does cause disease, it can quickly get very serious. 

Hib used to be the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in children, with symptoms including fever, headache, stiff neck, and vomiting. In more severe cases, this could progress to seizures and coma. Case fatality rates vary depending on access to prompt medical care and antibiotics, but can be as high as 40 percent, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). 

Even with recovery, meningitis carries the risk of lifelong complications, including vision and hearing loss. Other presentations of Hib disease include epiglottitis, a potentially deadly swelling of the throat, cellulitis, pneumonia, and septicemia.