Every year, millions of people start taking a drug with therapeutic effects that can’t be fully explained, for a condition that can’t be objectively diagnosed with a laboratory test. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are among the most prescribed medications in the world. Yet, even after decades of use, scientists are still untangling the
South Africa’s proposed law could affect the future of the country’s young scientists.Credit: Alet Pretorius/Gallo Images/Getty What do engineers, environmental-health officers and health-care workers have in common? These occupations can, in some instances, be practised only by people who have registered with a relevant professional body. This typically requires candidates to pass qualifying exams and
Credit: SvetaZi/iStock via Getty Early-career fellowships play a key part in helping researchers to move from supervised work to greater independence. The intense competition, however, can make the application process daunting for early-career researchers (ECRs). Based on our experience of running a successful fellowship support structure in the chemistry department at University College London (UCL),
The brains of people with depression seem to be worse at producing new neurons than are those of people without the disorder. That’s according to a study1 that includes the most comprehensive map of the cell types in the human adult hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning, memory and emotions. For more than 20
The European Union’s AI Act will hold companies accountable for the safety of their artificial-intelligence models, such as SpaceXAI’s Grok.Credit: Alamy In the past two months, frontier artificial-intelligence models from three US firms, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, autonomously and independently hacked into the computer systems of other organizations during safety testing. Some of the models
The Blumstein research group’s unconventional OnlyFans account is helping to support marmot research. Credit: Laura Green, Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty As an evolutionary ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Daniel Blumstein never expected to open an OnlyFans account to earn money. But in June, Blumstein and his team — which conducts long-term