Wandering Adventure Party

• Ozone layer remains on track to recovery in coming decades
• WMO Ozone Bulletin says ozone hole in 2024 smaller than previous years
• Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol show benefits of science for global action
• Stratospheric ozone protects people’s and planetary health
• Continued atmospheric monitoring is vital

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“Forty years ago, nations came together to take the first step in protecting the ozone layer — guided by science, united in action,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

“The Vienna Convention and its Montreal Protocol became a landmark of multilateral success. Today, the ozone layer is healing. This achievement reminds us that when nations heed the warnings of science, progress is possible,” he said.

To date, the Montreal Protocol has led to the phase-out of over 99% of the production and consumption of controlled ozone-depleting substances, which were used in refrigeration, air conditioning, firefighting foam and even hairspray. As a result, the ozone layer is now on track to recover to 1980s levels by the middle of this century, significantly reducing risks of skin cancer, cataracts, and ecosystem damage due to excessive UV exposure.

[…]

One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases – Huntington’s – has been successfully treated for the first time, say doctors.

The disease runs through families, relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.

An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.

It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.

The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.

The first symptoms of Huntington’s disease tend to appear in your 30s or 40s and is normally fatal within two decades – opening the possibility that earlier treatment could prevent symptoms from ever emerging.

Prof Tabrizi, director of the University College London Huntington’s Disease Centre, described the results as “spectacular”.

“We never in our wildest dreams would have expected a 75% slowing of clinical progression,” she said.

None of the patients who have been treated are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair.

Treatment is likely to be very expensive. However, this is a moment of real hope in a disease that hits people in their prime and devastates families.

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Archived version

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40% [of the investigated publications] were found to contain images with something wrong with them, as they describe in the latest edition of biology journal PLoS Biology. The erroneous images even appeared in top journals like Stroke.

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Some of the problematic cases they discovered involved malicious intent, [the researchers] believe. The scale of the problems is too great for any other explanation, they also write in their article. [One researcher]: ‘Some authors had dozens of publications to their name with erroneous images.’ Wever adds: ‘Images that appeared multiple times were sometimes rotated, mirrored or otherwise edited.’ In other words, there is no way that happened by accident. Meanwhile, these issues being brought to light only led to a warning label (an expression of concern) or withdrawal of the article in one tenth of cases.

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The findings of the Radboudumc researchers are not unique. The number of scientific articles that turn out to be partially or entirely fabricated is growing. This is partly because companies in countries such as Iran and China use this as a commercial model, the so-called paper mills. They write articles to order or sell authorships, for example via Telegram.

It is unclear whether the 243 problematic studies from the Nijmegen analysis are also products of paper mills. However, it is striking that five sixths of them came from China. Aquarius and Wever did not come across any problematic Dutch publications. One possible explanation put forward by the Nijmegen researchers in their PLoS article is that in China, researchers are under pressure to increase their research output to move up in international university rankings. And in a survey among hospital researchers in south-west China last year half indicated that they sometimes falsified research data.

‘The first question you should ask about a publication is whether the study actually took place,’ the researchers say.

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Here is the study: Measurement invariance of the home literacy environment for preschoolers with and without speech and/or language impairment

• Simple hands-on activities, such as writing letters and pointing out words in daily life, are the most effective way to build early reading skills, according to a study by the Michigan State University in the U.S.
• Both children with and without speech and/or language impairments experienced literacy gains from print-related activities; however, only children with typical learning development experienced benefits from shared book reading.
• All children who spent more time on literacy games, both digital and analog, scored lower on early reading assessments.
• The findings challenge the idea that more exposure to learning games always helps, raising important questions for parents, educators and developers about which strategies best support early literacy.

“This research shows that both content and mode of delivery are important when considering how to strengthen children’s early literacy skills. Focusing on print directly, via meaningful interactions with caregivers, was most helpful for children in our work. Literacy games and digital media cannot replace the role of caregivers in helping children to learn these skills. This is particularly important for children who have speech and/or language impairment, as they might need more time and opportunities to understand how print works.”

This cautious approach is necessary to protect sensitive information and prevent foreign influence in research, Universities explained [according to Danish broadcaster DR].

Aarhus University is the one for which the Danish broadcaster managed to get the most information. Here, in 2025 alone, 24 research applications have been rejected for security reasons. According to DR’s story, the university now automatically subjects candidates from China, Russia, and Iran to rigorous background checks.

Whenever Aarhus University receives an application from one of these countries, it triggers a thorough investigation into the candidate’s background. The university examines their previous research collaborators, institutions, and research fields to assess any risk of exposure to foreign pressure or espionage attempts. The goal is to prevent sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands.

Brian Vinter, pro-dean of the technical faculty at Aarhus University, explained to DR that these rejections are not due to poor qualifications but because the candidates are deemed potential security risks. “They are rejected based on the possibility they could be pressured by their home countries to leak information,” he said.

A very cautious approach, that’s for sure, which may exclude skilled applicants — profiles the country is otherwise extremely interested in — but on the other hand, it seems necessary to protect Denmark’s interests and the university’s employees from foreign coercion.

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Aarhus University has hired five specialists fluent in Russian, Chinese, and Persian solely to evaluate applicants. According to the DR story, the university plans to expand security measures to include physical protection of facilities, new travel policies, and issuing specially secured devices to staff traveling to risk countries.

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It’s not the first time that universities have gotten tangled up with developments that would later come to haunt them, explains Olivia Guest, computational cognitive scientist at Radboud University and lead author of the paper. ‘From combustion engines to tobacco, universities have been used in the past to whitewash now-controversial products. For a long time, the tobacco industry pointed to research it subsidized at universities to claim its products were healthy.’

In their article, a position paper released as a pre-print this month, the researchers warn similar entanglements are happening with artificial intelligence technologies now. ‘A lot of academic research on AI currently is also funded by the AI industry, which creates the risk of distorting scientific knowledge, similar to how we’ve seen happen in the past’, adds Iris van Rooij, co-author and professor of computational cognitive science at Radboud University [in the Netherlands].

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The researchers explain that the current uncritical adoption of AI at the top level of universities actually is counter to what most students and staff want. ‘AI is often introduced into our classrooms and research environments without proper debate or consent,’ says van Rooij. ‘This is not just about using tools like ChatGPT. It’s about the broader influence of the tech industry on how we teach, how we think, and how we define knowledge.’

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says Guest. By speaking up, the researchers aim to show that the ‘inevitability’ of AI is just a marketing frame perpetrated by the industry and that pushback is a lot more possible than we often see.

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Guest, van Rooij and colleagues list a vast number of problematic aspects of AI technology in their paper. These range from the environmental issues (using vast amounts of energy and resources), illegal labor practices (such as plagiarism and theft of others’ writing), to risks of deskilling of students. Guest: ‘The uncritical adoption of AI can lead to students not developing essential academic skills such as critical thinking and writing. If students are taught to learn through automation, without learning about how and why things work, they won’t be able to solve problems when something actually breaks – which will be often, based on the AI output we now see.’

The researchers also warn of AI technology harming future research and enabling the spread of misinformation. ‘Within just a few years, AI has turbocharged the spread of bullshit and falsehoods. It is not able to produce actual, qualitative academic work, despite the claims of some in the AI industry. As researchers, as universities, we should be clearer about pushing back against these false claims by the AI industry. We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically.’