Orbiting the Mediterranean, from Europe into Africa. So much human history to see in the lights!

When migration is in the news, it is often cast in negative terms, but it has many benefits for host countries, from economic growth to critical support for systems like Social Security that support aging populations. That's according to a new report produced by two Fletcher School professors and four graduate students for the Club de Madrid, an international group of former heads of states that is concerned with policy issues worldwide.

The publication, "Overcoming Misinformation About Migration and Migrants: A Data-Driven Report on the Positive Impact of Migration on Economy and Social Development," addresses a number of issues in detail, showing, above all, that migration is not a black-and-white issue, and deserves a more nuanced approach.

The report came about thanks to a connection made by Carlos Alvarado-Quesada, professor of the practice of diplomacy at The Fletcher School and former president of Costa Rica. The Club de Madrid wanted a report on the economic and political aspects of migration, and he suggested a collaboration between the organization and the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security at Fletcher.

The Club de Madrid defined the policy areas to be examined, and the Fletcher team—Alvarado-Quesada, Leir Institute Director Katrina Burgess, a professor of political economy at Fletcher, and graduate students Lorenzo Beadle, Joaquín Martínez Albán, Lauren Davis, and Govind Harish—did the research and wrote the report.

"So much of the discourse around migration is about security and the threat posed by migration, and the Club de Madrid was very interested in producing some empirically grounded narratives," says Burgess.

A primary question was whether the data show that migrants are a threat to receiving countries.

"In fact, it turns out it's the opposite in many cases," says Burgess. "But it's complicated. Obviously, there are times when migration creates real challenges, but on balance, it's more of an opportunity than a threat."

In As You Like It, Shakespeare famously wrote about human life being divided into seven ages, from the “mewling” infant to the “second childishness” of the very elderly (he really did have a way with words, did old Bill). That was less science, more symbolism – but now, neuroscientists have revealed how the human brain really does seem to go through five ages, or epochs, over the course of a lifetime. 

Studying brain scans from nearly 4,000 people across the whole spectrum of human life, from newborns to 90-year-olds, a team has identified four “turning points” at which the brain undergoes seismic shifts, which therefore divide its lifespan into five periods.

The turning points happen, according to the data, at age 9, 32, 66, and 83.

“We know the brain’s wiring is crucial to our development, but we lack a big picture of how it changes across our lives and why,” said lead author Dr Alexa Mousley of the University of Cambridge in a statement. “This study is the first to identify major phases of brain wiring across a human lifespan.”

Feeling out-of-this-world thankful for your friends, family, or furry companions this holiday season? Sign up to send their names around the Moon and back!

Submitted names will be included on an SD card that will fly inside the Orion spacecraft when the NASAArtemis II mission launches in 2026: go.nasa.gov/artemisnames

Earlier this year, a group of researchers published a paper on the remarkable phenomenon of sex reversal in several Australian birds, including wild magpies and kookaburras.

They've yet to discover the exact mechanism through which this happens. Nonetheless, their discovery would have fascinated medieval scientists, who were just as engaged in trying to understand sex and gender in the avian world.

Medieval ideas of bird 'sex'
Sexual differences in birds include anatomical and behavioral characteristics that vary within and across species.

Scientists have found biological triggers for sex-specific traits that may shift during an individual's lifetime. For example, female ducks and chickens can take on "masculine" attributes once their egg-laying years are over.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) observed similar changes in birds almost 2,400 years ago. His text History of Animals explained that the physical characteristics of sex in chickens and other animals could change according to action and circumstance.

In medieval Europe, the word "sexus" was used to refer to everything people now label as "sex," "gender" and "sexuality."

Research on sexus occurred in all the places of medieval science: schools, universities, monasteries, households, workshops and natural landscapes. Medieval people developed their own experiments and theories based on their lived experiences.

Those who read Latin or Greek studied and revised the findings of ancient authorities such as Aristotle, Galen and Pliny the Elder.

Cultural exchange also helped advance scientific knowledge. The 11th-century physician-monk Constantine the African was one of many who translated Arabic texts for readers of Latin.

What are the physics of life? That is more than just a philosophical question - it has practical implications for our search for life elsewhere in the galaxy. We know what Earth life looks like, on a number of levels, but finding it on another planet could require us to redefine what we even mean by life itself. A new paper from Stuart Bartlett of Cal Tech and his co-authors provides a new framework for how life could be defined that could reach beyond just what we understand from our one Pale Blue Dot.

According to their framework, life isn’t just chemical or thermodynamic - it’s informational. In particular, it involves processing what they call Semantic Information (SI). By their definition, SI is information that helps and organism survive - such as “don’t eat that red berry”. Syntactic Information, on the other hand, is just raw data and can be dismissed as “noise” by life without any consequence to its viability.

Viability is really one of the keys to understanding the framework. The authors define life as having an intrinsic, relatively simple goal - don’t die. On the other hand, something that has complex chemical and thermodynamic systems, such as a rock or a hurricane, has no such qualms about its demise. Life has to constantly monitoring it surroundings, in terms of its available food, the exterior temperature, and whether there are any toxins around. Those pieces of information are all SI - meaning they have a material impact on the viability of the life form. On the other hand, a rock doesn’t really care what toxins or food are round, nor what the temperature is.

Fraser discusses why space exploration is so important to our evolution as a species.

We have good reason to suspect that Tyrannosaurus rex could swim. It’s hard to imagine, tiny-armed giant that it was, but it’s true.

Most animals can swim in some form or another regardless of whether they’re adapted for moving through water. The big question, really, isn’t could T. rex swim? It’s how did T. rex swim.

Could T. rex swim? The evidence
Sir David Attenborough took on the question of how T. rex might swim in Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet. The series went in hard with briefly-aquatic T. rex, featuring it doing a kind of doggy paddle on the series posters. So, what evidence is there of this behavior?

We’ve found swim traces thought to be made by the claws of a two-legged dinosaur, like T. rex, scraping along the sediment. Some theropod swim traces were found in the Cameros Basin in La Rioja, Spain.

Hundreds of footprints were found at the site, but some of these were cut through by swim traces, indicating the water level rose and our walking dinosaurs had to get swimming. We’ve found similar marks (thousands of them, in fact) in Utah, so it doesn’t seem like swimming was all that rare.

It’s Lucy!

For decades, her species was thought to have played a key role in our evolution - but a recent discovery raises the possibility that a different species was our ancestor.

Find out what new fossils have revealed
nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/…

Mars is about to join a currently exclusive planetary club. Until today, the only worlds known to have lightning were Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. It has long been suspected that the Red Planet, with its whirlwinds and global dust storms, could have some lightning phenomena, just like in the deserts of Earth. Now, researchers have finally found evidence supporting that notion.

The evidence is not visual, as we might expect when we picture lightning. Instead, it is audio recordings from the SuperCam microphone aboard the Perseverance rover. And it didn't record thunder either – the recordings are of the electric discharge that happens in the air.

Trying to avoid getting drawn into holiday shopping? Get pulled into #BlackHoleFriday instead!

Get up to speed on some black hole basics here: go.nasa.gov/4iucoVS

Long-term memory emerges from a sequence of molecular programs that sort, stabilize, and reinforce important experiences.

Understanding these timers may allow researchers to bypass damaged brain regions and preserve memories in degenerative conditions.

How the Brain Chooses What to Remember
Every day, the brain takes fleeting experiences, moments of creativity, and emotionally charged events and turns them into lasting memories that help shape who we are and how we make decisions. A major question has been how the brain chooses which pieces of information to preserve and how long each one should remain.

Recent research shows that long-term memories form through a series of molecular timing processes that unfold across different parts of the brain. Using a virtual reality-based behavioral system in mice, scientists found that specific molecular regulators guide memories along distinct paths, either strengthening them into more stable forms or allowing them to fade.

Multiple Brain Regions Orchestrate Long-Term Storage
The study, published today (November 16) in Nature, reveals that several brain regions work together to gradually transform new experiences into more permanent memories. Along the way, various checkpoints help determine which memories are important enough to be reinforced and preserved.

“This is a key revelation because it explains how we adjust the durability of memories,” says Priya Rajasethupathy, head of the Skoler Horbach Family Laboratory of Neural Dynamics and Cognition. “What we choose to remember is a continuously evolving process rather than a one-time flipping of a switch.”

NASA has confirmed that it will contribute to Europe's Martian rover Rosalind Franklin, which is scheduled to launch in 2028 after repeated delays, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday.

The rover aims to be the first on the red planet capable of drilling up to two meters (6.5 feet) below the surface to search for extraterrestrial life.

However, the mission relies on several elements from NASA, which US President Donald Trump has targeted with steep budget cuts since returning to the White House in January.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said he had received "a letter from the NASA administration to confirm the contributions" of the US space agency to the mission.

"That is good news," Aschbacher said on the sidelines of the ESA's ministerial council meeting being held this week in the German city of Bremen.

The mission was originally intended to launch in 2020, but suffered several setbacks.

In 2022, it was suspended after the ESA ended cooperation with Russia—the agency's main partner for the mission—following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

New research warns that Africa's forests, once vital allies in the fight against climate change, have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source.

A new international study published in Scientific Reports and led by researchers at the National Center for Earth Observation at the Universities of Leicester, Sheffield and Edinburgh reveals that Africa's forests, which have long absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, are now releasing more carbon than they remove.

This alarming shift, which happened after 2010, underscores the urgent need for stronger global action to protect forests, a major focus of the COP30 Climate Summit that concluded last week in Brazil.

How researchers measured forest changes
Using advanced satellite data and machine learning, the researchers tracked more than a decade of changes in aboveground forest biomass, the amount of carbon stored in trees and woody vegetation. They found that while Africa gained carbon between 2007 and 2010, widespread forest loss in tropical rainforests has since tipped the balance.

Between 2010 and 2017, the continent lost approximately 106 billion kilograms of forest biomass per year. That is equivalent to the weight of about 106 million cars. The losses are concentrated in tropical moist broadleaf forests in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and parts of West Africa, driven by deforestation and forest degradation. Gains in savanna regions due to shrub growth have not been enough to offset the losses.

An investigation into why blood doesn't always behave as doctors expect has revealed a super-rare mutation in an extremely uncommon variation of blood.

Testing more than 544,000 blood samples in a hospital in Thailand revealed three people carrying a never-before-seen version of the B(A) phenotype – a genetic quirk estimated to occur in about 0.00055 percent of people, or roughly one in 180,000.

This discovery, says a team led by hematologist Janejira Kittivorapart of Mahidol University in Thailand, suggests that there may be more rare blood variants out there, too subtle for standard testing to detect.

Human blood is categorized into eight main groups based on the sugars and proteins – or lack thereof – stuck all over your red blood cells.

A, B, and AB types are based on the shape of antigens, sugar molecules that can trigger an immune response. O-type blood has no A or B antigens. Meanwhile, rhesus factors are proteins that determine blood compatibility, and are what give your blood its + or - designation.

Climate change conditions turn plastics into more mobile, persistent, and hazardous pollutants. This is done by speeding up plastic breakdown into microplastics—microscopic fragments of plastic—spreading them considerable distances, and increasing exposure and impact within the environment.

This is set to worsen as both plastic manufacturing and climate effects increase. Global annual plastic production rose 200-fold between 1950 and 2023.

A new review published in Frontiers in Science is calling for urgent action to avoid irreversible ecological damage by stemming the tide of microplastics entering the environment. The authors, from Imperial College London, urge eliminating non-essential single-use plastics (which account for 35% of production), limiting virgin plastic production, and creating international standards for making plastics reusable and recyclable.

"Plastic pollution and the climate are co-crises that intensify each other. They also have origins—and solutions—in common," said lead author Prof Frank Kelly, from Imperial's School of Public Health. "We urgently need a coordinated international approach to stop end-of-life plastics from building up in the environment."

A new study in Nature Communications from researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in the Republic of Korea finds that global warming is speeding up the likelihood of multi-year droughts. These prolonged dry periods can push regions toward severe water shortages, putting pressure on drinking water supplies, agriculture, and communities around the world within the next few decades.

To investigate this risk, the team used state-of-the-art climate model simulations to estimate when local water demand will surpass the available supply from rainfall, rivers, and reservoirs. This tipping point is known as the Day Zero Drought (DZD). Recent close calls in Cape Town (South Africa) in 2018 and Chennai (India) in 2019 have already demonstrated how vulnerable cities are to running out of water.

Identifying when and where these thresholds will occur is essential for planning effective water management for both urban and rural regions. According to the study, DZD events are projected to rise rapidly in the coming years, happening far earlier than once expected.

Climate model projections reveal accelerating Day Zero Drought events
The team relied on climate simulations based on the SSP3-7.0 and SSP2-4.5 greenhouse gas scenarios. By examining prolonged rainfall shortages, declines in river flow, and growing water use, the researchers identified clear DZD hotspots across the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and sections of North America. The analysis shows that cities in these regions are especially at risk.

Some creatures, like the hornbill and the mongoose, form unexpectedly close bonds.

Find out why this happens and see the peculiar pair in action in this week’s Surprising Science 🐾🪽

A planet’s habitability is determined by a confluence of many factors. So far, our explorations of potentially habitable worlds beyond our solar system have focused exclusively on their position in the “Goldilocks Zone” of their solar system, where their temperature determines whether or not liquid water can exist on their surface, and, more recently, what their atmospheres are composed of. That’s in part due to the technical limitations of the instruments available to us - even the powerful James Webb Space Telescope is capable only of seeing atmospheres of very large planets nearby. But in the coming decades, we’ll get new tools, like the Habitable Worlds Observatory, that are more specifically tailored to search for those potentially habitable worlds. So what should we use them to look for? A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv by Benjamin Farcy of the University of Maryland and his colleagues, argues that we should look to how a planet formed to understand its chances of harboring life.

To be clear, HWO won’t be able to see into the past - at least not anymore than would be allowed by how far the light from these worlds has to travel to get to us. However, it can glean insights into how the planet was formed based on current measurable values. Dr. Farcy and his co-authors describe four different aspects of a planet that are determined early in its formation that have a major impact on its ability to harbor complex life down the road.

The first major theme is the bulk composition - mainly of the four major elements that make up 93% of terrestrial planets. These are magnesium, iron, silicon, and oxygen. Ultimately, the ratio of these elements determine whether or not the planet has plate tectonics, which are necessary to maintain a relatively stable environment over millions of years. Conveniently, it’s also possible to determine the ratios of these elements in a planet by looking at the ratios in the planet’s host star - they should be equivalent since they were both formed out of the same available matter.

The colors of our atmosphere seen from space! Multiple vibrant layers of green atomic oxygen, orange hydroxyl radicals, and red airglow excited from solar activity.