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1,116 news posts in Featured news

Featured news

08 Aug 2025

'One child called the robot "my little brother"': can assistance tech become part of the family?

In a new article published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Dr Zhao Zhao and her colleagues investigate the long-term lifespan of a social robot given to 20 families in 2021 to see whether it could help their children learn to read. Four years after their previous study, the robot was no longer needed for its primary purpose, but that didn’t mean it was no longer wanted. In this guest editorial, Zhao explores the new roles the robot that stayed took on — as keepsake, pet, and companion — and how our relationships to technology can change over time.

Featured news

05 Aug 2025

Hearing loss lowers prospects of employment and higher income for young Americans

Researchers analyzed data from 27,656 Americans between 23 and 43 years old in the ADD Health study. They found that participants reporting to have poor or worse hearing had significantly lower educational attainment, a lower probability of being in paid work, and earned less than their peers. These negative impacts of hearing loss were especially pronounced for Black and Hispanic Americans. Suffering from tinnitus was not found to have any effect on these outcomes. The authors propose better access to hearing care, early screening, and workplace support, as well as reducing stigma, to level the playing field for people with hearing loss.

Featured news

25 Jul 2025

Persistently, intensely grieving relations are nearly twice as likely to die within 10 years after losing a loved one

Researchers followed 1,735 people in Denmark over 10 years after their loss of loved one. 6% participants showed unabatingly high levels of grief symptoms, and these had a 88% higher hazard rate of dying from any cause over the time period than those with persistently low symptoms. The first group were likewise more likely to use healthcare services, with 186% higher odds of receiving talk therapy or other mental health services, and between 160% and 463% higher odds of being prescribed psychotropic medication. This is the first study on the long-term mortality rate and the use of healthcare in a large-scale cohort of bereaved persons. The results suggest that patients at risk for long-term ‘high grief’ may be identified in advance, and need additional support from the healthcare system.

Featured news

18 Jul 2025

Gene essential for vitamin D absorption could help unlock treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases

Scientists have identified the human gene SDR42E1 as essential for the absorption of vitamin D from the intestine, its subsequent metabolic processing, as well as the production of lipids and steroids. Without the functional protein, the survival of cells dropped by 53%. This discovery has at least two potential applications in precision medicine. First, the experiments showed that the gene can be blocked to selectively kill cancer cells. Second, boosting SDR42E1’s expression could help treat many other diseases, for example, autoimmune and metabolic disorders, against which vitamin D and its related forms are thought to protect.