Shelter dogs in more crowded conditions might have more disrupted gut microbiomes compared to those with more space, per Thai study

Urban forests are essential infrastructure for climate resilience, biodiversity, and public health, argues new essay from group of global researchers which highlights policy priorities to safeguard these vital ecosystems.

Skill-based reinforcement learning has become the mainstream approach to solve sparse-rewards decision making tasks. The skills extracted from the demonstration datasets provide the temporal abstraction. However, in previous skill-based RL methods, the skills are kept fixed during online learning, which brings in sub-optimal asymptotic performance when the dataset contains only sub-optimal behavior modes.

A new European Southern Observatory (ESO) study has found that current proposals to launch over 1.7 million satellites into orbit, including extremely bright ones, would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.” According to the study, no more than 100 000 faint satellites, below naked eye visibility, should orbit Earth, to safeguard our ability to observe the night sky with modern telescopes. The study is the first to compute the extent to which large and bright satellite constellations — which have also raised concerns about their impacts on health and the environment — would affect astronomical observations by making the night sky brighter.

Senior nutrition programs are facing rising demand as the nation’s older adult population rapidly expands, and a new Iowa State University study shows training is becoming a critical tool to keep pace. Researchers report strong gains from a free online course that’s helping early‑career staff build the policy, menu‑planning and operational skills the job requires.