Bats began in Europe, and a gene therapy restores hearing to children

The study, published in Nature, puts the origin in Europe during the late Paleocene, roughly 65 to 60 million years ago 6. Descendants then spread into Africa, and from there separate groups reached the Americas, Asia and Australia. Africa, Asia and North America had each been proposed as the birthplace before 6. The data also suggest flight and echolocation appeared near the start of bat evolution, not as later add-ons 6.

He was one of 24 participants, aged 10 months to 16 years, in the CHORD trial of Otarmeni, a gene therapy that delivers a working copy of OTOF to hair cells. Half the participants got one infusion in one ear; half got a dose in both ears 42. Around 80% improved within 24 weeks, and 42% have since regained their hearing 42. In April, Otarmeni became the first gene therapy for hearing loss approved by the US FDA 42.

The model guesses a speaker's age, and the gap between that guess and the real age is the "speech age gap." In the Science Advances study, a bigger gap tracked brain atrophy on MRI, three separate DNA-methylation aging clocks, and higher plasma p-tau217, an Alzheimer's marker 93. Participants with larger gaps also scored worse on cognition and memory tests 297. Lifelong social adversity, including lower education, food insecurity and poorer access to health care, pushed the gap wider 93. A separate team at Boston University used language processing on how people retell a story in a routine memory test, counting things like simplified sentences and remarks such as "I forgot her name." In the Long Life Family Study, that profile predicted lower cognitive performance seven years later 98.

Exercisers showed stronger sugar, fat and muscle metabolism and more antioxidant molecules, much of which was already known 19. The new part came from looking at individual cells, including how accessible genes are on the DNA, and found exercisers' immune cells were more vigilant 19. An outside researcher, Michael Siebers of the University of Duisburg-Essen, called it the first look at what happens at the cellular level when people do sports 19.

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz realized they could read the same signal. They adapted a passive sampling method, resin beads in mesh rings that soak up dissolved compounds over days or weeks, to catch copepodamides that are otherwise too dilute and short-lived to measure in open seawater 78. Over a 28-month campaign at the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, a hot spot for toxic blooms in Monterey Bay, the cues allowed forecasts up to seven weeks ahead, more than a month longer than conventional toxin tracking, according to the PNAS study 78.

Researchers from the Berkeley Geochronology Center, UC Berkeley and the University of Padua used that date to calibrate argon-argon dating, a standard method for dating volcanic rock 12. They measured eight samples of sanidine, a potassium-bearing mineral from Vesuvius. The result was 1,938 ±13 years before the 2025 analysis, against a historical age of 1,946 years, a precision of 0.7% 12. The work appears in Science Advances. Study leader Paul Renne said it shows that this level of precision and accuracy can be reached "into the historical realm" 12.

A bare rock that close to its star should be as hot as physics allows. This one was much cooler than expected, which fits heat being carried to the night side by an atmosphere, or clouds reflecting light and heat 296. The study is in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.