Science & Medicine

The OECD's PISA 2025 results showed a sharp global slide in teen reading and maths — the worst this century in the US, Australia and Germany — with 'digital distractions' blamed.

Genomics and biomedicine advanced: a newly flagged antimalarial resistance haplotype threatened control efforts, a complete human genome benchmark launched, 'ghost' ancestry was traced in modern humans, and AstraZeneca's COPD candidate hit late-stage goals.

Astronomy and physics delivered: the largest sky map yet (5.6 trillion pixels), the first observed quantum effect of gravity, and health studies linking second-hand smoke to 1.7M deaths and semaglutide to lower bipolar hospitalization.