Two billion people globally suffer from moderate to severe food insecurity and widespread micronutrient deficiencies. This contrasts with 654 million people who are classified as extremely poor according to the World Bank’s US$2.15 per day International Poverty Line (IPL). Current poverty measures overlook a crucial aspect of human well-being: adequate nutrition. In collaboration with Misereor, a research team from the University of Göttingen has developed a new way of assessing poverty that incorporates the affordability of healthy diets in addition to other basic needs. According to these metrics, in 2022 between 2.3 and 2.9 billion people globally lived in poverty. The study is published in the journal Food Policy.

When faced with a potential threat, mice often freeze in place. Moreover, when two animals are together, they typically freeze at the same time, matching each other’s periods of immobility. In a new study, researchers found that coordination during fear looks different in males and females. 

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display social communication impairments and restricted and repetitive behaviors. While previous studies have shown that children with ASD tend to prefer observing repetitive movements over random ones, the developmental timeline of this preference has remained unclear. To address this, a recent study utilized eye-tracking methods demonstrating that children with potential ASD spent significantly more time observing predictable movements, highlighting its potential as an early marker for ASD detection.

A new study uses digital tools to analyze nearly 1,000 Syriac manuscripts from the British Library, focusing on how scribes and editors selected and rearranged parts of texts—a practice known as excerpting. The researcher introduces a new measurement called Excerpts Per Manuscript (EPM) to track how often this happened. This approach reveals that the people who copied and compiled these manuscripts were not just preserving texts—they were actively shaping what future generations would read and remember. By highlighting these editorial choices, the study shifts attention away from authors alone and shows that scribes played a key role in organizing knowledge, adapting texts for new purposes, and influencing how Syriac literary culture developed over time.

Professor Tatia M.C. Lee, Chair Professor of Psychological Science and Clinical Psychology and May Professor in Neuropsychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has attained the 9th Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award (Humanities and Social Sciences) (2nd Prize) from the Ministry of Education (MoE).  This Award recognises Professor Lee's publication "Qigong exercise enhances cognitive functions in the elderly via an interleukin-6-hippocampus pathway: A randomised active-controlled trial" published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (Vol. 95, 2021).