Saving women first? What the Gaza hostage crisis tells us about gender and public opinion
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 21-Dec-2025 07:11 ET (21-Dec-2025 12:11 GMT/UTC)
What happens when care is distributed unequally – not necessarily because some suffer more, but because some are more easily seen as suffering? In this case, the suffering of men risks being overlooked, because it may not fit dominant narratives of vulnerability.
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) scientists have built the world’s first automated cyborg insect “factory line”. Supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), this new prototype robotic system automates the attachment of miniature electronic backpacks on the back of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, turning them into insect-hybrid robots. This new assembly method significantly reduces preparation time and human error, marking a big step towards large-scale deployment of insect-hybrid robots in complex environments for search and rescue efforts in disaster zones. Led by Professor Hirotaka Sato from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at NTU Singapore, the automated system can attach the electronic “backpacks” to Madagascar hissing cockroaches in just 1 minute and 8 seconds per insect. This is about 60 times faster than the traditional manual process dependent on trained operators, which often takes more than an hour. When processing four insects, the system completed all assemblies in under 8 minutes, about 30 times quicker than manual methods.
The question “What is the meaning in life?”, asked for millennia, is one of the central questions of philosophy. There has been a growing movement to approach this question by carefully analyzing the “meaning in life.” Now, Professor Masahiro Morioka of Waseda University has proposed a new idea: to explore “meaning in life” as a kind of geographical landscape experienced when a person tries to engage with their life with a certain attitude or intention.
The commonly held belief that people become happier after 50 appears to apply mainly to unemployed men. At age 50, unemployed men were more than twice as likely to report symptoms of depression as those who had lost a spouse. By age 65, when retirement becomes the norm, the mental health gap between employed and unemployed men disappears entirely. The findings suggest this improvement stems not from biology or lifestyle, but from easing social expectations around work.