Energy & Environment
There are now 61 snow leopards in Uzbekistan’s largest nature reserve, more than double the 2015 count.
Using GPS-tracking collars, a system of mobile alerts, and more hands-on herding, cattle farmers in Botswana’s Okavango Delta are successfully coping with rebounding lion populations. Over a decade after implementing these technologies and techniques, both lion and cattle killings in the region have fallen.
Health & Demographics
According to recently updated UNICEF data, 4.9 million children under the age of 5 died in 2024, down from 13 million in 1990.
Patents on semaglutide will soon expire in many countries, including India, China, Brazil, Turkey, Canada, and South Africa, permitting cheaper generic versions of the weight loss drug in countries home to a large share of the world’s overweight population.
Endometriosis, a painful condition where uterine-like tissue grows outside the uterus, is notoriously difficult to diagnose. A new blood test could help. In a recent study, it detected 80 percent of positive cases, ruled out the disease in 98 percent of negative cases, and caught 62 percent of cases missed by medical imaging.
In a small, early-stage trial, an experimental RNA-modulating drug cut seizures by an average of 80 percent in children with Dravet syndrome, a treatment-resistant congenital form of epilepsy.
There are some signs that young people are starting to adapt to social media by restraining their use. Large shares of Gen Z report having deleted a social media app, and time spent on social media appears to have fallen worldwide since 2022, particularly among young people.
Science & Technology
Across much of the US, Amazon is now delivering certain products in three hours or less.
An analysis of NASA’s 2022 DART mission, which sought to redirect the Dimorphos asteroid by crashing into it with a spacecraft, found that not only did the collision alter Dimorphos’s orbit around its parent Didymos, but it also slightly shifted both asteroids’ orbits around the sun—providing a proof of concept for planetary defense.
Waymo now has 170 million miles of safety data for its robotaxis. The results are much the same as before: the vehicles are 13 times safer than human drivers (i.e., they are involved in 92 percent fewer serious injury-causing crashes).
Violence & Coercion
The crime analyst Jeff Asher finds that rare but widely-covered “flash mob” looting events peaked in the US in 2024 and are now trending downward.
A randomized control trial in northern Nigeria found that an educational program providing girls with schooling, vocational training, and after school support reduced their likelihood of being married as children by 80 percent.