A 60-year "dead" reef teems with life, and hunger works like loneliness

This year a team led by oceanographer Gérard Zinzindohoué finally did, spending months between April and December 2025 mapping the seafloor with modern side-scan sonar. They found two patches of hard-bottom habitat stretching roughly 7 kilometers, and when they lowered cameras and a remote drone down to look, they found a living coral garden 45. These are mesophotic reefs, sometimes called "twilight reefs," sitting deep enough that only a trickle of sunlight reaches them, which may be exactly why they survived while shallower reefs bleached in the warming water above.

Working with The Transfarmation Project, a Mercy For Animals initiative that helps farmers transition off livestock, they converted one of those barns into a specialty mushroom operation, now called 1100 Farm. It opens as a public demonstration hub on August 8, showing other farmers what the transition actually looks like. Tanner Faaborg told the Guardian that being a contract pig farmer indebted to a meat company "can take a toll on your mental health," and that his family, welders and hog farmers for 40 years, are "not a likely candidate for this story" 193.

Physicians are split on whether the results are strong enough to start prescribing either drug for this purpose right now, but the fact that both trials point the same direction, using drugs with decades of safety data behind them, is notable on its own.

Kids were reassessed four and six years later. The language features the AI picked out predicted who would go on to develop depression or anxiety disorders more accurately than the standard clinical risk factors doctors currently rely on, things like trauma checklists and demographic data 57.

A research team built a synthetic molecule called SK-129 that works like a molecular brace, binding to several parts of alpha-synuclein and holding it in a shape that makes it far less likely to stick to other copies of itself, and it especially targets the earliest, most dangerous clumps before they grow 135. In mice, it blocked the clumping and spreading of the protein and reduced disease symptoms.

California startup Science Corporation just won European approval for PRIMA, an implant smaller than a grain of rice placed under the macula that works with camera-mounted glasses: the glasses translate what they see into near-infrared light, the chip converts that light into electrical pulses, and those pulses stimulate the retinal cells still healthy enough to respond. In a 38-patient trial across five countries, participants gained an average of 25.5 letters, more than five lines, on a standard eye chart 186.

A growing body of research backs up what she saw: even brief, routine contact with green space measurably reduces stress and improves mood, no hiking boots or weekend trip required. Nearby, frequently visited parks, like the Civil War battlefield parks preserved on the edges of many American cities, may do more for public health than the far-off national parks most people picture when they hear the word.