A new interdisciplinary study published in Nature reconstructs over 2,000 years of population history in Argentina’s Uspallata Valley (UV), a southern frontier of Andean farming spread in ancient times, with broader lessons on how agriculture shaped societies and how communities endured crises. By combining ancient human and pathogen genomics with isotopic analyses, archaeology and paleoclimate records–and working in close collaboration with Huarpe Indigenous communities–, the research reveals how local hunter-gatherers adopted agriculture, how more recent intensive maize farmers experienced prolonged stress, and how kinship-based mobility may have helped communities persist through instability. 

AI researchers at Mass General Brigham have two new papers showing that the thymus, an immune system organ long assumed irrelevant after puberty, may actually be a key driver of longevity, disease risk, and response to cancer treatment. In their first study, they used AI to analyze CT scans from more than 27,000 adults, and found inviiduals with high "thymic health" scores had a ~50% lower risk of death, 63% lower cardiovascular mortality, and 36% lower lung cancer risk compared to those with low scores. In a second study of 1,200 cancer patients treated with immunotherapy, the researchers found those with stronger thymic health had a 37% lower risk of cancer progression and a 44% lower risk of death. Together, the findings point to a major role of the thymus in adult health, and its potential as a target for screening and personalized medicine.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard as the recipients of the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their essential role in establishing the foundations of quantum information science and transforming secure communication and computing.