The proportion of global education aid being committed to early childhood education - which was already well below international targets - has started to fall, according to new research which suggests that the internatonal community is starting to turn its back on the world's most vulnerable children. These findings are from the annual donor 'scorecard' produced by University of Cambridge researchers for the charity Theirworld. This tracks how much international aid is being spent on education for the critical early years, up to age five. The authors suggest the true picture could be far worse than that presented in the report, as the latest available data are from 2023, the beginning of what they describe as a new era of "cuts and conflict". Since then, 99% of United States funding for basic education has been axed by the Trump administration and Britain and Switzerland have also scaled back spending.  

Yuze “Alice” Sun, an electrical engineering professor, has been elected to The University of Texas at Arlington’s Academy of Distinguished Researchers for her contributions to technologies critical to health care, environmental monitoring and national defense.

The Armour Research Foundation Reactor at Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) has been officially recognized as a Nuclear Historic Landmark by the American Nuclear Society (ANS). Nicknamed “the atomic furnace,” the world’s first privately owned and operated nuclear reactor marked a significant transition in the history of nuclear research—from its secretive wartime origins to a publicly celebrated pursuit of knowledge and progress.

Rice professors Karen Lozano and Eduardo Salas have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest and most prestigious learned societies in the nation.

A skeleton from Roman-era England has bite marks consistent with those of a large cat like a lion, suggesting that this individual may have died as part of a gladiator show or execution, according to a study published April 23, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Tim Thompson from Maynooth University, Ireland, and colleagues.

A new analysis of school shootings in the U.S. suggests that most shooters had a social background in which guns were a key leisure item, with attached meanings of bonding and affection, which also translated into easy access to firearms. Anne Nassauer of the University of Erfurt, Germany, presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on April 23, 2025.