Are we ready to live with caregiving robots? With Japan facing a projected shortage of 570,000 care workers by 2040, researchers at Chiba University surveyed older adults, families, caregivers, and developers about their acceptance of home-care robots. They found that openness to using robots influenced willingness among both users and developers, while other factors differed between the groups—revealing distinct perspectives and highlighting the need for collaboration and ethical awareness in developing home-care robots.

A new deep learning framework can accurately classify four molecular subgroups of medulloblastoma and predict critical genetic risk factors using magnetic resonance imaging, according to a study by researchers from China. The artificial intelligence model achieved a median accuracy of 77.5% for subgroup classification and up to 91.3% for predicting high-risk genetic alterations. This approach could help clinicians stratify risk and tailor therapies without invasive testing.

A study by researchers from the UK, Ghana and the USA - and led by the University of Plymouth (UK) used thermal imaging technology and other sensors to measure the leaf temperatures found at CO₂ levels forecast to occur in 2050. It found that temperatures within the forest canopies rose by around 1.3°C as a direct consequence of increases in CO₂ – from an average of 21.5°C under current conditions to 22.8°C at the predicted 2050 CO₂ levels. They believe that as well as having a direct impact on leaf pore structure, it could impact trees’ ability to transmit water back into the environment, which would have a knock-on effect on the water cycle globally.