The research, spanning five jurisdictions—Delhi (India), Jordan, Rwanda, Shanghai (China), and Wales—reveals that middle-tier instructional leaders fulfill four critical roles: providing accessible support for teachers, fostering collaboration within and across schools, utilizing international and local knowledge, and serving as intermediaries between education ministries and schools. These insights highlight the potential of middle-tier leaders to drive sustainable educational reforms and empower teachers in complex systems.

In a paper published in National Science Review, an international team led by Prof. Xuanmei Fan presents a deep learning-based framework that utilizes a novel global database of nearly 400,000 earthquake-triggered landslides to predict landslide probability for any earthquake worldwide with ~82% spatial accuracy in less than one minute without requiring prior local field data.

Good indoor air quality is a basic prerequisite for human health and is crucial for the ability to concentrate at work, or while studying. A nationwide study by Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) has now shown that most Austrian schools do not comply with national and European guidelines on ventilation. In the past school year, the guideline value for the daily average CO₂ concentration of 1000 ppm was exceeded in 75 per cent of the classrooms examined. In winter, the rate even rose to 88 per cent. In individual cases, the average hourly CO₂ values exceeded 6900 ppm, almost seven times the guideline value. Worse still, A quarter of all classrooms did not even provide the absolute minimum level of ventilation (4 litres of air per second per person) that is required by current European and Austrian standards (10 litres per second per person is recommended under normal operating conditions). This means that many school children are getting less than 40 % of the recommended air flow rate per person.

A research team led by Prof. ZHANG Haijiang from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), in collaboration with Dr. Robert Myhill from the University of Bristol, utilized tele-seismic double-difference tomography technology to uncover the morphological changes of the Pacific subducting slab in the mantle transition zone beneath Northeast China. In addition, they also reported its controlling effects on Changbaishan volcanic field (CVF) volcanism and deep earthquakes. This study was published in Nature Communications.