Washington, D.C., June 2025: In a defining moment for global public health and the fight against chronic disease, more than 350 leading scientists, policy makers, ethicists, journalists and civil society representatives from over 50 countries and 150 major organizations gathered at the inaugural Human Exposome Moonshot Forum. What is expected by participants to be seen, in-time, as a historic event, this Washington, D.C. gathering marks the formal launch of a bold and globally coordinated, bottom-up initiative to map the physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial exposures that people experience during their lifetime. Known as the "exposome" experts agree that these influences account for over 80% of chronic disease today. As Professor Thomas Hartung of Johns Hopkins University, Member of the Organizing Committee and the Forum’s Host stated: “We are not promising a rocket launch to a ready destination. We are building the launchpad. The exposome is not the rocket, it is the moon. Each new data point, each discovery, is a step towards that distant but vital world where prevention replaces reaction and science empowers health.”

With oyster populations down 85%, researchers are racing to monitor reef health more efficiently. A new study tests ODYSSEE, an AI trained to detect live oysters from underwater images. Research found that ODYSSEE was far faster than humans but not as accurate.