Around 5.8 million refugee children did not attend school in 2025, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, leaving 44 per cent of the world’s 13.2 million school-age refugee children without
In mid-2023, an experiment within OpenAI’s “RLSlow” research project produced results that changed the way its researchers viewed the trajectory of artificial intelligence. Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s chief scientist, recalls that he and
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The world is living through an age of extremes, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who has warned that wars, technological disruption, climate chaos, political polarisation and widening
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A concert, a demonstration or a football match may appear to be an ordinary gathering of people. But as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in facial-recognition systems, such events can also become
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On a cloudless night in August, a lawn chair offered a simple vantage point for watching the sky. It was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, when as many as 100
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For more than a century, the idea of replacing a failing human organ with one taken from an animal has hovered between medical ambition and science fiction. Now, advances in genetic engineering
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A Chinese-German research team has developed an ultra-sensitive magnetic sensor capable of detecting signals a billion times fainter than Earth’s magnetic field, creating a potential new tool for the search for elusive
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The United States should begin preparing for scenarios in which extreme measures could be required to prevent China from achieving artificial general intelligence first, including state-backed espionage and military strikes against Chinese
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A genetically modified pig kidney functioned in a human patient for 271 days before being removed and replaced with a human donor organ, marking the longest recorded survival of an animal-to-human kidney
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China is stepping up its effort to become a global leader in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), approving a series of brain-technology products this year as domestic start-ups seek to compete with overseas companies
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OpenAI is preparing to release Astra, a forthcoming artificial intelligence model that the company says is the first large language model to meet its “critical cybersecurity threshold” after demonstrating an ability to
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Anthropic has released Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, twin versions of what the company describes as its most advanced AI model, combining performance improvements with changes designed to reduce token costs and
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The United Nations Environment Programme has acknowledged that the world is on course to exceed the 1.5°C limit established as a key ambition of the Paris climate accord, with the planet now
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Scientists have systematically mutated nearly every nucleotide in the genome of the bacteriophage ΦX174, or phi X, revealing both unexpected effects on the virus and significant limitations in the ability of leading
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Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping digital infrastructure across Asia and the Pacific, but persistent gaps in network speed, reliability and computing power could deepen existing inequalities, according to a newly released report
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Anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder are usually treated as distinct psychiatric conditions, each with its own symptoms, diagnostic category and specialised therapy. But David Barlow, one of the most influential psychologists of
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