New study finds neural "blind spots" that make it harder for people to respond emotionally to large-scale risks to life, especially disasters in other countries. 

Researchers found brain activity drops off when faced with large numbers of potential casualties. 

The emotional centre of our brains responds more dramatically to deaths than survival stories, but not if it happens in countries abroad.  

Researchers are developing Australia’s first quality-of-life measure specifically for people aged 65+ receiving subacute care, such as rehabilitation after illness or injury. The tool will assess factors older people value most, including independence, social connection, emotional wellbeing and meaningful activities, rather than focusing solely on clinical outcomes. Researchers hope it will provide a consistent way to evaluate care across hospital and aged care settings, improve service planning and investment, and ensure older Australians’ experiences and priorities are better reflected in care decisions.

Dartmouth researchers report KinyaProp, the first digital tool for detecting online misinformation and propaganda in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda—and possibly the first for any Bantu language. Led by Dartmouth senior Fabrice Niyigaba, the study shows that KinyaProp—a digital glossary of examples of propaganda in Kinyarwanda—enables commercial platforms such as Claude and ChatGPT to identify loaded and misleading language with high precision similar to their performance in English. The project could be foundational for developing these tools in Swahili, Zulu, and other languages in the close-knit Bantu family, which, despite being spoken by 350 million Africans, are significantly overlooked in AI research, the team reports.