Twenty-five years ago, on October 31, 2000, the United Nations unanimously adopted its landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 (WPS 1325). The resolution on women, peace and security reaffirmed "the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction." It also stressed the "importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security."

The significance of women to building sustainable peace is undeniable. Our research has found that, on average, the incorporation of measures to include women in post-conflict society in a peace agreement reduces the probability of conflict recurrence by 11%. Even more significantly, if this process occurs alongside UN leadership, the probability of conflict recurrence is reduced by 37%.

So the anniversary of WPS 1325 should be a reason to celebrate. Instead, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, opened his report to the Security Council's annual debate on women, peace and security on October 6 with a warning. Guterres said the UN too often "falls short when it comes to real change in the lives of women and girls caught in conflict." He specifically noted the lack of inclusion of women in peace negotiations, the failure to protect women and girls from sexual violence, and the underfunding of women peacebuilders.

Over the past 25 years, the Security Council has adopted almost 1,000 resolutions related to WPS 1325. In 2015, Resolution 2242 aimed for the more systematic integration of the women, peace and security agenda into "all country-specific situations on the Security Council's agenda." To facilitate this, the UN Security Council set up an informal group of experts.

There is no doubt that the women, peace and security agenda has had a positive impact. Guterres noted that "gender provisions in peace agreements have become more common, and women's organizations have helped transform post-conflict recovery and reconciliation in communities worldwide." He declared that "women-led civil society and women peace builders … are the drivers behind holistic and sustainable peace."

Yet according to a UN Women survey in early 2025, global cuts to foreign aid budgets make it harder for women to make these vital contributions to peace and security.

The situation is similarly challenging for UN peacekeeping. The cumulative budget shortfall in mid-2025 stood at almost US$2.7 billion (£2.04 billion), with the US, China and Russia the three largest debtors. Despite a significant decrease over the past decade in the peacekeeping budget from US$8.4 billion in 2014-15 to US$5.2 billion in 2024-25, the share of unpaid contributions has more than tripled from 13% to 41% over the same period.

If these two trends persist, the prospects for sustainable conflict resolution will dramatically diminish.

Women as peacebuilders
Aiming to explore how to prevent civil wars from recurring, we analyzed 14 protracted peace processes in recurrent civil wars. This analysis revealed that the UN, working with local women's organizations, was able to create and sustain multi-level coalitions committed to concluding, maintaining and implementing peace accords.

We then tested these findings statistically against 286 agreements concluded in violent conflicts worldwide. This confirmed that—together—UN leadership and the inclusion of women in post-conflict society significantly increase the odds of a peace agreement surviving for more than five years.

Finally, we conducted in-depth case studies of peace processes in the Bangsamoro region in the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, as well as in Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone. This enabled us to establish how the UN and women-led organizations are able to help prevent civil wars from recurring.

Imagine reliving your entire life in the space of seconds. Like a flash of lightning, you are outside of your body, watching memorable moments you lived through. This process, known as “life recall,” can be similar to what it is like to have a near-death experience.

What happens inside your brain during these experiences and after death are questions that have puzzled neuroscientists for centuries. 

However, a new study  from Dr. Ajmal Zemmar of the University of Louisville and colleagues throughout the world, “Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain,” published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and even after the transition to death, and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal.

When an 87-year-old patient developed epilepsy, Dr. Raul Vicente of the University of Tartu, Estonia, and colleagues used continuous electroencephalography to detect the seizures and treat the patient. During these recordings, the patient had a heart attack and passed away.
This unexpected event allowed the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time ever. 

What did they find?
"We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, who organized the study.

“Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha and beta oscillations.” 

Brain oscillations are more commonly known as brain waves. They are patterns of rhythmic brain activity normally present in living human brains. The different types of oscillations, including gamma, are involved in high-cognitive functions, such as concentrating, dreaming, meditation, memory retrieval, information processing and conscious perception, just like those associated with memory flashbacks.

“Through generating brain oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” Zemmar speculated.

We're all familiar with the feeling of zoning out, especially when we're sleep-deprived. A new study suggests these brief wanderings of attention are our brain's attempts to catch up on maintenance that usually happens while we snooze.

The study, from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), used brain measurements taken by both electroencephalogram (EEG) caps and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners.

Periods of zoning out – or "attentional failures", in the words of the study – were accompanied by a wave of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flowing out of the brain, before it returned a second or two later.

The patterns matched the waves of CSF that usually happen during deep sleep. The thinking is that this nightly fluid flow helps wash away waste products that build up during the day.

"If you don't sleep, the CSF waves start to intrude into wakefulness where normally you wouldn't see them," says MIT neuroscientist Laura Lewis.

"However, they come with an attentional trade-off, where attention fails during the moments that you have this wave of fluid flow."

The study participants were each tested twice: after a night of restful sleep and after a night in the lab with no sleep at all. Unsurprisingly, their cognitive performance during the study tests was generally worse when they hadn't gotten any shut-eye the night before.

While zoning out occasionally happened after a full night's slumber, it was much more common after the participants had stayed awake all night. It's almost as if the brain is trying to catch up with a burst of microsleep, at the temporary cost of your mind's focus.

New scientific findings reveal a straightforward and environmentally friendly approach for breaking down Teflon, one of the most resilient plastics on Earth, into valuable chemical components.

A team of scientists from Newcastle University and the University of Birmingham has created a clean, energy-efficient process for recycling Teflon (PTFE), a material widely recognized for its role in non-stick cookware and other uses that require exceptional heat and chemical resistance.

The study shows that discarded Teflon can be transformed into reusable materials using only sodium metal and mechanical motion (movement by shaking) at room temperature, all without the need for harmful solvents.

Detailed in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) on 22 October, the research introduces a low-energy, waste-free method that provides a new alternative to traditional fluorine recycling techniques.

Dr. Roly Armstrong, Lecturer in Chemistry at Newcastle University and corresponding author said: “The process we have discovered breaks the strong carbon–fluorine bonds in Teflon, converting it into sodium fluoride which is used in fluoride toothpastes and added to drinking water.

Turning Waste Into Resources
“Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Teflon are produced globally each year – it’s used in everything from lubricants to coatings on cookware, and currently there are very few ways to get rid of it. As those products come to the end of their lives, they currently end up in landfill – but this process allows us to extract the fluorine and upcycle it into useful new materials.”

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have created an innovative cooling system designed to greatly enhance the energy efficiency of data centers and high-performance electronic devices. This new approach relies on a specially engineered fiber membrane that naturally removes heat through evaporation. It provides an effective and energy-saving alternative to conventional cooling methods such as fans, heat sinks, and liquid pumps, while also potentially reducing the large amounts of water used by many existing systems.

The breakthrough is described in detail in a study published in the journal Joule.

As artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing continue to grow, so does the demand for data processing, and the heat that accompanies it. Cooling now represents as much as 40% of a data center’s total energy consumption. If current growth continues, global energy demand for cooling could more than double by 2030.

The newly developed evaporative cooling system may help slow this trend. It operates using an inexpensive fiber membrane made up of countless interconnected microscopic pores that draw cooling liquid across its surface through capillary action. When the liquid evaporates, it removes heat from the underlying electronics without the need for additional energy. The membrane is placed above microchannels that supply the liquid, allowing heat to dissipate efficiently from the components below.

Ever worried that skipping breakfast might leave you foggy at work? Or that intermittent fasting would make you irritable, distracted and less productive?

Snack food ads warn us that "you're not you when you're hungry", reinforcing a common belief that eating is essential to keep our brains sharp.

This message is deeply woven into our culture. We're told constant fuelling is the secret to staying alert and efficient.

Yet time-restricted eating and intermittent fasting have become hugely popular wellness practices over the past decade. Millions do it for long-term benefits, from weight management to improved metabolic health.

This raises a pressing question: can we reap the health rewards of fasting without sacrificing our mental edge? To find out, we conducted the most comprehensive review to date of how fasting affects cognitive performance.

Why fast in the first place?
Fasting isn't just a trendy diet hack. It taps into a biological system honed over millennia to help humans cope with scarcity.

When we eat regularly, the brain runs mostly on glucose, stored in the body as glycogen. But after about 12 hours without food, those glycogen stores dwindle.

At that point, the body performs a clever metabolic switch: it begins breaking down fat into ketone bodies (for example, acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate), which provide an alternative fuel source.

This metabolic flexibility, once crucial for our ancestors' survival, is now being linked to a host of health benefits.

Some of the most promising effects of fasting come from the way it reshapes processes inside the body. For instance, fasting activates autophagy, a kind of cellular "cleanup crew" that clears away damaged components and recycles them, a process thought to support healthier ageing.

It also improves insulin sensitivity, allowing the body to manage blood sugar more effectively and lowering the risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes.

Beyond that, the metabolic shifts triggered by fasting appear to offer broader protection, helping reduce the likelihood of developing chronic diseases often associated with overeating.

What the data showed
These physiological benefits have made fasting attractive. But many hesitate to adopt it out of fear their mental performance will plummet without a steady supply of food.

To address this, we conducted a meta-analysis, a "study of studies", looking at all the available experimental research that compared people's cognitive performance when they were fasting versus when they were fed.

Our search identified 63 scientific articles, representing 71 independent studies, with a combined sample of 3,484 participants tested on 222 different measures of cognition. The research spanned nearly seven decades, from 1958 to 2025.

After pooling the data, our conclusion was clear: there was no meaningful difference in cognitive performance between fasted and satiated healthy adults.

People performed just as well on cognitive tests measuring attention, memory and executive function whether they had eaten recently or not.

When fasting does matter
Our analysis did reveal three important factors that can change how fasting affects your mind.

First, age is key. Adults showed no measurable decline in mental performance when fasting. But children and adolescents did worse on tests when they skipped meals.

Their developing brains seem more sensitive to fluctuations in energy supply. This reinforces long-standing advice: kids should go to school with a proper breakfast to support learning.

Timing also seems to make a difference. We found longer fasts were associated with a smaller performance gap between fasted and fed states. This might be due to the metabolic switch to ketones, which can restore a steady supply of energy to the brain as glucose runs out.

For the first time in humanity's long history, a human-made object will soon be a full light-day away from our home planet.

Space, as they say, is pretty big, and human-made objects are slow. The record speed any human has ever traveled was set by Apollo 10 back in 1969, and has not been broken since. The fastest human spaceflight remains 39,937.7 kilometers per hour (24,816.1 miles per hour), and at those speeds, it would take 3,730 hours to travel just 1 astronomical unit (AU), the distance between the Earth and the Sun. 

At around 155 days, that's an unacceptable travel time to (for example) slam into the Sun. And while it takes you 155 days to get wherever it is you went, light and communications from Earth would reach you in about 8 minutes and 20 seconds, really rubbing it in how great it is to be massless. 

But we will get a real reminder of the vast distance and incredible speed of light in late 2026, when Voyager 1 becomes the first human-made object to reach one light-day away from Earth.  

This spacecraft was launched in 1977 and has been traveling ever since. At the time of writing, it is around 169.5 AU from the Earth, having become the first spacecraft to go beyond the heliosphere, cross the heliopause, and enter interstellar space. At its current position, it takes 23 hours, 29 minutes, and 27 seconds for signals from Earth to reach the spacecraft. At its current speed of about 61,198 kilometers per hour (38,027 miles per hour), it will still take over a year to widen that light-distance to a full 24 hours.

When it does reach 25.9 billion kilometers (16 billion miles) from Earth, a journey that took nearly 50 years, it will finally be the distance that light can travel in a day. 

Two weeks ago, interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was at conjunction, on the opposite side of the Sun with respect to Earth. Last week, it reached perihelion, the closest point it would ever get to the Sun. Now it is back from behind the Sun and we can see it again. In fact, Earth is moving towards it as the comet moves away from the Sun, so the next several weeks are a great time to study it. And everyone can get involved.

The comet will be visible for anyone with a telescope or very good binoculars in the hours before dawn. The telescope doesn’t need to be anything extravagant to catch this object, but don't expect to see a spectacle like Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997. Still, this is a chance to see an object that formed 10 billion years ago, somewhere beyond our Solar System. 

How to find Comet 3I/ATLAS in the sky
“November will be the ideal month to observe Comet 3I/ATLAS, a rare interstellar visitor that will shine near Venus and the bright star Spica in Virgo. Around November 3, the comet will rise about two hours before sunrise. Its brightness may reach magnitude 10 — faint but visible through a telescope or good binoculars,” Dr Franck Marchis, senior astronomer and Director of Citizen Science at the SETI Institute and Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Unistellar, told IFLScience last week.

“To find it, start with Venus or Spica as guides. If you’re unsure where to look, use a stargazing app (like SkySafari, Stellarium, or Sky Tonight) or a stellar map. Comets are unpredictable, so their brightness may change after perihelion — meaning this might be your best chance to catch it!”

The sun has fired off not one but two colossal X-class solar flares in less than 12 hours, causing radio blackouts across the sunlit portion of Earth at the time of eruption and marking a dramatic uptick in solar activity.

The first eruption, an X1.8-class flare, exploded from sunspot AR4274 and peaked at 12:34 p.m. EST (1734 GMT). It triggered a strong R3 radio blackout across much of North and South America. A few hours later, at 5:02 p.m. EST (2202 GMT), a second X.1.1-class flare erupted from a region still hidden beyond the sun's southeastern limb, triggering another strong radio blackout across the North Pacific Ocean, New Zealand and parts of eastern Australia.

Both eruptions unleashed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — vast plumes of magnetized plasma — but early modelling shows neither is directed at Earth. However, the outer edges of these CMEs could interact with a fast stream of solar wind later this week, sparking strong (G3) geomagnetic storm conditions around Nov. 6-7, according to NOAA. This possible uptick in activity is good news for aurora chasers, as geomagnetic storms can result in some particularly vibrant and dynamic aurora shows.

Regular physical activity not only benefits the muscles, lungs, and heart, but also enhances the body’s immune defenses. This conclusion comes from a study involving older adults with long-term experience in endurance exercise, which includes activities such as long-distance running, cycling, swimming, rowing, and walking.

An international group of scientists examined the immune cells of these participants and discovered that their “natural killer” cells, the body’s sentinels against viruses and abnormal cells, were more adaptable, showed lower levels of inflammation, and functioned with greater metabolic efficiency.

Supported by FAPESP and published in Scientific Reports, the study focused on natural killer (NK) cells, a type of white blood cell (lymphocyte) responsible for identifying and destroying infected or diseased cells, including cancer cells. These cells play a vital role in immune defense by recognizing and attacking harmful invaders such as viruses and other pathogens. The team examined blood samples from nine participants with an average age of 64, separated into two groups: those who were physically untrained and those who had practiced endurance exercise.

“In a previous study, we found that obesity and a sedentary lifestyle can trigger a process of premature aging of defense cells. This made us want to investigate the other side of the story, that is, whether an older adult who has been practicing endurance exercises for more than 20 years may have a better-prepared immune system. And that’s indeed what we found. In these individuals, NK cells functioned better in the face of an inflammatory challenge, in addition to using energy more efficiently. Therefore, it’s as if exercise also trains the immune system,” says Luciele Minuzzi, a visiting researcher at Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU) in Germany.

A suspected strike by "tiny space debris" has delayed the return of the Chinese spaceship Shenzhou-20 and three astronauts, Beijing's space agency said on Wednesday.

"The Shenzhou-20 manned spacecraft is suspected of being hit by a tiny piece of space debris, and an impact analysis and risk assessment are under way," the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement.

The return of the spacecraft and the three astronauts, planned for Wednesday, has been postponed to ensure their safety, the statement said.

Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie had been expected to touch down at the Dongfeng landing site in northern Inner Mongolia. The CMSA did not give a new date for their return.

A relief crew arrived at the Tiangong space station aboard the Shenzhou-21 last week.

In 1949, famed mathematician and physicist John von Neumann delivered a series of addresses at the University of Illinois, where he introduced the concept of the "universal constructor." The theory was further detailed in the 1966 book, "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata," a collection of von Neumann's writings compiled and completed by a colleague after his death.

In the years that followed, scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) considered how advanced civilizations could rely on self-replicating probes to explore the galaxy.

As many theoretical studies have shown, self-replicating probes (released from a single planet) could proliferate and explore the entire galaxy within a few eons. According to new research by Professor Alex Ellery of Carleton University, these probes may have already visited the solar system, and some could be operating here right now. As he recommends in a recent paper, future SETI surveys should be on the lookout for the telltale technosignatures these probes would produce.

Alex Ellery is an engineering professor with the Center for Self-Replication Research (CESER) and the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University. In the past, Ellery has explored the concept of Von Neumann probes and their potential as a viable method for interstellar exploration by advanced civilizations, as well as the implications this has for SETI. In this latest paper, he revisits the rationale for such probes, their implications for the Fermi Paradox, and how resource requirements would drive their behavior, producing discernible technosignatures in the process.

As a researcher with CESER, Ellery is well-versed in the concept of Von Neumann probes and the technological innovations that will go into creating them. In a previous study, Ellery detailed how 3D printing, self-replication, and robotics will allow humans to build Von Neumann probes sooner than expected. He also conducted a detailed study on how human engineers could place limits on the number of times each probe could reproduce itself, thus ensuring that they do not run amok (per the Berserker Hypothesis).

In these and other papers, Ellery also argues that the search for Von Neumann probes and the technosignatures they would produce is a focus that SETI researchers should prioritize, rather than the traditional practice of searching the night sky for signs of radio transmissions. These searches, he indicated, should consider the solar system as a good starting point, which echoes similar recommendations made by Professor Gregory L. Matloff in his paper "Von Neumann probes: rational propulsion interstellar transfer timing."

As he told Universe Today at the time of the paper's publication, ''The solar system is huge and mostly unexplored, and the probes could be very small. There could be probes everywhere: in craters on the moon, or lurkers in the Asteroid Belt and Kuiper Belt. There are 100 million objects in the Kuiper Belt alone, and we have examined only two, one of which was very anomalous in its shape."

Similarly, Ellery considers how SETI researchers and future explorers could look for evidence of extraterrestrial probes through a dedicated search. The first step, he argues, is to consider the rationale for sending out self-replicating probes.

Earth will overshoot the critical warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels within the next decade, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said Tuesday (Nov. 4).

To stay below this threshold, the world needs to slash annual greenhouse gas emissions by 55%, compared with 2019 levels, by 2035. But given countries' inadequate actions so far, there's little to no chance that will happen, according to the 2025 Emissions Gap report.

"Given the size of the cuts needed, the short time available to deliver them and a challenging political climate, a higher exceedance of 1.5°C will happen, very likely within the next decade," UNEP representatives wrote in the report.

Best playtime ever! While their mom is looking out for them, these brown bear cubs are free to have fun and prepare for their life in the wild. 🐻

🚀 Dreaming of a career in space?

esa's European Astronaut Centre is looking for interns! 🌍✨

From space medicine to XR labs, media production and planetary science, this is your chance to work where astronauts train.

✅ Applications open until 30 November 2025

🔗 Learn more and apply: esa.int/About_Us/Caree…

Type 1 diabetes develops when the pancreas fails to produce enough insulin, a hormone made by specialized beta cells. This chronic condition affects an estimated 9.5 million people around the world. Without sufficient insulin, blood sugar levels remain high and, over time, can cause serious harm to vital organs including the kidneys, eyes, and heart. Managing the disease requires continuous monitoring of glucose levels along with regular insulin injections to keep those levels within a healthy range.

Scientists are exploring new ways to treat Type 1 diabetes by restoring or replacing the damaged pancreatic beta cells. One promising strategy involves generating new beta cells from other types of cells already present in the body. This approach was taken by researchers led by Xiaofeng Huang at Weill Cornell Medicine (USA) and Qing Xia at Peking University (China), who previously found that stomach cells in mice could be reprogrammed into pancreatic beta cells through genetic modification.

Transforming Stomach Cells Into Insulin Producers
In their new study published today (November 6) in Stem Cell Reports, the team investigated whether a similar transformation could occur in human stomach cells. To begin, they grew miniature models of the human stomach called organoids, which mimic some functions of real stomach tissue.

These organoids were then genetically modified so they could be switched into insulin-producing beta-like cells when a specific “genetic switch” was activated. Afterward, the engineered organoids were transplanted into the abdominal area of mice. There, they survived for up to six months, forming connections with nearby tissues and blood vessels as they matured.

That's over 100,000 kilometers more than we knew was there.

A new digital map of the road network that once connected the Roman Empire has been created, revealing a staggeringly vast constellation of interlocking routes. Named Itiner-e, the new digital map includes 299,171 kilometers (186,000 miles) of ancient roads spanning from the British Isles to the Middle East.

Famous for their straight roads, the Romans are known to have relied upon their transport infrastructure to maintain and expand their imperial control, while also allowing the movement of people and goods. However, until now, this extensive system of highways had remained poorly mapped.

The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, for example, has remained the most complete ancient roadmap since it was published 25 years ago, yet its resolution is poor, with a scale of one to one million in certain parts. The researchers behind Itiner-e therefore set out to improve upon this, providing a far more detailed and reliable Roman road atlas – and you can view it online here.

China recently reached out to NASA over a maneuver to prevent a possible collision between satellites, a space sustainability official said, marking a first for space traffic management.

"For years, if we had a conjunction, we would send a note to the Chinese saying, 'We think we're going to run into you. You hold still, we'll maneuver around you,'" Alvin Drew, director for NASA Space Sustainability, said during a plenary session at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 2.

A big shift had come a day earlier, Drew revealed. "Just yesterday, we had a bit of a celebration because, for the first time, the Chinese National Space Agency reached out to us and said, 'We see a conjunction amongst our satellites. We recommend you hold still. We'll do the maneuver.' And that's the first time that's ever happened," Drew said.

The move by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) comes as both the United States, notably through SpaceX's commercial Starlink constellation, and China, in the shape of the Guowang and Thousand Sails megaconstellations, are rapidly increasing the number of satellites they have in orbit. This means an increasing need for satellite operators to coordinate to limit the chances of collisions between satellites and prevent events that cause new clouds of space debris.

A fantastic new discovery has given astronomy an unexpected window into the formation of life-precursor molecules in an environment significantly different from our galaxy, the Milky Way. Scientists report the first-ever detection of Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) – potential "building blocks" of life – in ice outside of our galaxy.

The detection comes from the surroundings of a young star called ST6 located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the largest of the satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. It's so large and close that it can be seen with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.

University of Maryland and NASA research scientist Dr Marta Sewilo and her team used observations by JWST to study the presence of COMs in the ice around ST6. They detected five: alcohols methanol and ethanol, as well as methyl formate, acetaldehyde, and even acetic acid, the main component of vinegar. This is the first time acetic acid has been conclusively detected in space. 

“This is the first detection of COMs larger than six atoms in ices (in ice mantles on dust grains) outside the galaxy,” Dr Sewilo told IFLScience.

The LMC is very different from our galaxy. Stars and nebulae there have a lower percentage of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, so fewer building blocks for complex molecules and dust grains. There is also a lot more ultraviolet light. In certain respects, the LMC is similar to a primitive Milky Way, so this provides crucial insight into the formation of COMs in earlier epochs of the universe.

COMs are seen as precursors to life molecules. It is not a sign of life, but the molecules that make us and every living creature on this planet had to come from somewhere. Their integral parts likely formed in space and eventually found their way to Earth. In this new work, the team actually found signs of a lot more than those five, but they have not been able to classify all of them.

The supernova remnant W49B isn’t a sphere—it’s a bipolar blast! 💥

Using Resolve onboard XRISM, we found iron-rich gas racing toward and away from us at ~300 km/s, revealing a new twist in how massive stars explode.

Current U.S. immigration enforcement and deportation policies are producing widespread harm to physical and mental health, with family separation and the specters of fear and intimidation affecting the well-being of immigrant and non-immigrant communities.

That's the warning from several longtime public health researchers, who also outline proven community and policy actions that could reduce harm and strengthen health in communities across the nation.

Professors from five U.S. research universities called for health care professionals and researchers to advocate for the end of deportations and restrictive immigration policies. Their insights appear in the journal Health Affairs. Two academic briefs were published on Nov. 6, both supporting an editorial published on Aug. 5.

"These articles bring together years of research that paint a very clear picture: immigration enforcement harms the health of immigrants and their communities," said co-author Maria-Elena De Trinidad Young, an associate professor at the Department of Public Health in the University of California, Merced's School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts.

Contrary to the principles of public health
The researchers argue that deportation is a violent act and incompatible with the principles of public health. They describe an immigration system in which tens of thousands of people are held in unsafe prisons, often suffering from neglect and abuse. Families left behind face the loss of income and caregivers, leading to stress, anxiety and economic instability that spills across entire communities.

They contend that fear of raids and detention prevents many immigrants from seeking medical care or reporting crimes, weakening public safety. Deportation should be recognized as a public health threat.

The researchers support "community care"—support networks that provide emotional, legal and material aid during enforcement actions. Through community care, they said, solidarity, advocacy and protection become essential health interventions.

"As professionals committed to population health and the well-being of all communities," the authors said, "there is an opening for us to push for a nation where immigrants are not targeted with violent arrest, deportation or removal."

One of the briefs takes a step back and describes how three decades of exclusionary immigration policy have harmed immigrants and U.S.-born residents. Federal actions since the 1990s have shifted immigration matters from civil to criminal law, expanded detention and restricted access to public benefits.

Enforcement budgets have ballooned from $4 billion in 2000 to more than $25 billion in 2020, with another $170 billion approved in 2025, the authors say.