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Adults whose brains still have strong neuron production seem to have better memory and cognitive function than do those in whom the ability wanes, finds a study published today in Nature. The authors examined brain samples from deceased donors ranging from young adults to ‘super agers’ — people older than 80 with exceptional memory.

They found that young and old adults with healthy cognition generated neurons, a process called neurogenesis, at high levels for their age. The team estimated that the new neurons made up only a small fraction — 0.01% — of those in the hippocampus, a brain region that’s essential for memory. By contrast, in people experiencing cognitive decline, including individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, neurogenesis seems to falter: the researchers spotted fewer developing, or immature, neurons in those brain samples.

Surprisingly, a group of ‘super agers’ had an even higher number of immature neurons than did other groups, and significantly more than did those with Alzheimer’s. However, the group sizes were small, so the findings were not all statistically significant.

Maura Boldrini Dupont, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York City, says that the small size of the groups — each had ten or fewer individuals — is a reason to take the results with a grain of salt.

Understanding the tools that the brain uses to generate neurons and maintain cognitive function in old age could help researchers to develop drugs that induce neurogenesis in people with cognitive decline, says co-author Orly Lazarov, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Controversy over neurogenesis

The findings support the idea that people’s brains continue to generate neurons even in adulthood. But that idea hasn’t always been accepted.

In the early 1900s, neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal suggested that the human brain could not form neurons after birth. Eventually, researchers found that neurogenesis did occur in childhood, but still thought that was the endpoint.

“That’s what they used to teach when I went to medical school,” Dupont says.

In the past few decades, however, this dogma was challenged by new evidence supporting neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus, fuelling an ongoing debate in neurobiology.

Although researchers know that neurogenesis occurs in some adult animals, including mice and primates, they haven’t been able to agree on whether it happens in the brains of human adults. That’s mainly because there are more tools for studying neurogenesis in animals than in humans. In mice, for instance, researchers can inject chemicals that trace the birth and development of neurons. This cannot be done in living people, and research in human brain samples has been limited, Lazarov says.

One tool researchers have used to study neurogenesis in humans, however, is protein markers. Antibodies can be used to detect certain proteins expressed by neural stem cells — which can turn into neurons — and immature neurons in donated brain samples. But Lazarov points out critics’ argument “that these proteins are not specific enough and could be expressed in other cell types, not just in neurogenesis”.

So scientists have turned to single-cell RNA sequencing to find more specific genetic markers of neural stem cells and immature neurons in the human hippocampus.

Into the future

Lazarov and her colleagues went a step further in their latest study. They not only used RNA sequencing to identify the genetic signatures of these cell types, but also uncovered their epigenetic signatures. Epigenetic markers are DNA modifications that control gene expression. The team used an assay that pinpoints parts of a cell’s DNA that are primed for expression to determine these signatures. Dupont says that the assay is a strong point of the study.

Lazarov says that the next step would be to understand the function of the neurons generated in the adult brain. “What we need is functional validation of these cells, to tell what they’re doing in the human brain,” she says, adding that this would require new imaging techniques that are sensitive enough to detect this activity.

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I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know it would all happen so fast,” Hannah Baker*, a 32-year-old mother of one in the southeastern United States, tells me. “I had already made up my mind back in the summer that if he got elected, we were a one-and-done family. I think my partner was hoping I’d change my mind or that things wouldn’t be as bad as they are, but nope. We’re done.”

Baker’s not alone. And while U.S. fertility rates have been dropping for years, and cultural pressure around having a family has fortunately lessened, studies show that much of the declining birth rate can be attributed to the lack of infrastructure that makes it possible for families to grow. A recent Pew Research study found that 26% of parents under 40 cite financial reasons for not having more children, and a Gallup study found that many American families have less children than they actually want. A study at the Institute for Population Research found that while the birth rate has nosedived, Americans’ desire for children has stayed more or less the same. It’s simply less feasible.

In the time since Baker and I last spoke, the government website reproductiverights.gov went dark. An executive order removed more than 200 pages from Head Start, the federal program for low-income children, including videos on postpartum depression. The United States has been removed from the world’s main climate pact. Remote work for federal employees — a lifeline for working mothers — has all but been eliminated. There is no “family leave plan” on the table. There’s no federally protected right to abortion. There’s no hope for the climate and the state of the planet. There’s no comfort for LGBTQ communities, for transgender people, for pregnant people.

“I don’t want to die trying to have another baby. I don’t want to leave my own living child motherless.”

So as much as Baker says she’d like to give her son a sibling, she just doesn’t feel ready, not in this political climate. It doesn’t feel safe. “For me, I just want to be sure I can take care of him. And with everything going on, I’m just terrified. Like what if he’s gay? What if I lose my remote work job? What if groceries stay so expensive?”

Some women cite the terminology in abortion laws — as some state’s abortion restrictions are blamed for the completely avoidable deaths of women like 28-year-old Amber Thurman in Georgia — as a reason why they’re changing their family plans.

Theresa Parks* lives in a blue state with one child — but she’s suffered several miscarriages. “I’ve always had to have a D&C,” she tells me. “I want more children, but I’m terrified of experiencing another miscarriage and being left to go septic or something if they completely ban abortion.” She feels “somewhat safe” in her blue state, she says, but she doesn’t trust the government or any of the pundits who say abortion is really just a states’ rights issue. “I don’t want to die trying to have another baby. I don’t want to leave my own living child motherless.”

Baker’s not alone. And while U.S. fertility rates have been dropping for years, and cultural pressure around having a family has fortunately lessened, studies show that much of the declining birth rate can be attributed to the lack of infrastructure that makes it possible for families to grow. A recent Pew Research study found that 26% of parents under 40 cite financial reasons for not having more children, and a Gallup study found that many American families have less children than they actually want. A study at the Institute for Population Research found that while the birth rate has nosedived, Americans’ desire for children has stayed more or less the same. It’s simply less feasible.

 

Dr. Kecia Gaither, M.D., a double board-certified physician in OB-GYN and maternal fetal medicine, is the director of perinatal services/maternal fetal health medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals. When I spoke to her in November, before Trump was officially sworn in as president, I’d hoped she’d beam a light of hope down and declare all of our fears unfounded. This did not happen. “Reproductive health and equity has taken a major hit in the wake of the Roe v. Wade reversal. In light of that ruling, many states have banned the election of pregnancy terminations, forcing women — and the physicians who care for them — to face difficult and, many times, life-threatening situations. For my colleagues in certain parts of the country, they have been witness to their health care compatriot being threatened, coerced, and even jailed for rendering care — even in the face of their patients facing life-threatening pregnancy complications,” she tells me. “The incoming administration’s agenda, via Project 2025, apparently will end access to medical abortion, curtail birth control access, allow health facilities to deny particular emergency saving care, and establish an abortion surveillance system… to name just a few.”

Julia Mazer, a Georgia mom of a toddler, was nine weeks pregnant on Election Day 2024 with what she described as “hopefully” her second child. “I have lost pregnancies before, so I know that a pregnancy doesn’t always guarantee a baby. I think we would have stopped trying to conceive if I wasn’t already pregnant before the election,” she tells me. “The biggest change this time is that I am more afraid for my life than I was before. I have been pouncing on news articles about Josseli Barnica and others who died during miscarriage due to abortion bans. I Googled which states have bans and what the term limits are in case I need to travel out of state for abortion care — if there’s time.” Mazer says that she’s always been pro-choice, and that she can’t imagine feeling all of these debilitating pregnancy symptoms while also worrying about an abusive or absent co-parent, food insecurity, anything. “It makes me feel so privileged. I don’t know what will happen, but I do know that this pregnancy will be our last.”

Maddison Z was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, when she gave birth to her first son in early 2023. She had just moved from NYC. “I was really early in my pregnancy when Roe was overturned. It felt so heavy and scary. But I was thankfully living somewhere where I had access to the health care I needed. In July of 2024, when our son turned 18 months old, my husband and I were discussing trying for another baby. In order to feel comfortable, I knew I needed to live in a state that granted me access to all health care. If something were to happen during a pregnancy that put my life at risk, I needed to be able to choose my life, and the life of my son, who needs me,” she told me before the election.

Since then, Maddison’s ideas about having another child have have shifted: “We wonder if it is even ethical to bring another child into this world, knowing the negative impact this current administration will have on the environment, social issues, and the economy,” she says.

Lauren Hughes* in Michigan tells me she’s terrified to have a baby if Trump’s Supreme Court overturns same-sex marriage. “It’s already an ordeal to make sure my wife is listed on the birth certificate, even if we use her egg. She has to adopt her own child, basically. What if they take away our marriage?”

“The biggest change this time is that I am more afraid for my life than I was before.”

Megan Buck, 32, in Atlanta, agrees. “Me and my wife were considering IVF last year. We both want kids and went through a bunch of testing to see if we could. We went to baby sections of stores just to daydream; it was amazing. But now with the political animosity towards our community, it’s scary.” Buck has an autoimmune disorder and also worries about the laws surrounding abortions. “Not only are there health risks associated with me having a baby, but with the attack on trans rights, it seems like only a matter of time before they come for more in our community. The last thing I’d want to happen is for everything to go well and then have complications with my wife having rights to our baby because we’re two women.”

Baker’s not alone. And while U.S. fertility rates have been dropping for years, and cultural pressure around having a family has fortunately lessened, studies show that much of the declining birth rate can be attributed to the lack of infrastructure that makes it possible for families to grow. A recent Pew Research study found that 26% of parents under 40 cite financial reasons for not having more children, and a Gallup study found that many American families have less children than they actually want. A study at the Institute for Population Research found that while the birth rate has nosedived, Americans’ desire for children has stayed more or less the same. It’s simply less feasible.

In the time since Baker and I last spoke, the government website reproductiverights.gov went dark. An executive order removed more than 200 pages from Head Start, the federal program for low-income children, including videos on postpartum depression. The United States has been removed from the world’s main climate pact. Remote work for federal employees — a lifeline for working mothers — has all but been eliminated. There is no “family leave plan” on the table. There’s no federally protected right to abortion. There’s no hope for the climate and the state of the planet. There’s no comfort for LGBTQ communities, for transgender people, for pregnant people.

“I don’t want to die trying to have another baby. I don’t want to leave my own living child motherless.”

So as much as Baker says she’d like to give her son a sibling, she just doesn’t feel ready, not in this political climate. It doesn’t feel safe. “For me, I just want to be sure I can take care of him. And with everything going on, I’m just terrified. Like, what if he’s gay? What if I lose my remote work job? What if groceries stay so expensive?”

Some women cite the terminology in abortion laws — as some state’s abortion restrictions are blamed for the completely avoidable deaths of women like 28-year-old Amber Thurman in Georgia — as a reason why they’re changing their family plans.

Theresa Parks* lives in a blue state with one child — but she’s suffered several miscarriages. “I’ve always had to have a D&C,” she tells me. “I want more children, but I’m terrified of experiencing another miscarriage and being left to go septic or something if they completely ban abortion.” She feels “somewhat safe” in her blue state, she says, but she doesn’t trust the government or any of the pundits who say abortion is really just a states’ rights issue. “I don’t want to die trying to have another baby. I don’t want to leave my own living child motherless.”

Dr. Kecia Gaither, M.D., a double board-certified physician in OB-GYN and maternal fetal medicine, is the director of perinatal services/maternal fetal health medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals. When I spoke to her in November, before Trump was officially sworn in as president, I’d hoped she’d beam a light of hope down and declare all of our fears unfounded. This did not happen. “Reproductive health and equity has taken a major hit in the wake of the Roe v. Wade reversal. In light of that ruling, many states have banned the election of pregnancy terminations, forcing women — and the physicians who care for them — to face difficult and, many times, life-threatening situations. For my colleagues in certain parts of the country, they have been witness to their health care compatriot being threatened, coerced, and even jailed for rendering care — even in the face of their patients facing life-threatening pregnancy complications,” she tells me. “The incoming administration’s agenda, via Project 2025, apparently will end access to medical abortion, curtail birth control access, allow health facilities to deny particular emergency saving care, and establish an abortion surveillance system… to name just a few.”

Julia Mazer, a Georgia mom of a toddler, was nine weeks pregnant on Election Day 2024 with what she described as “hopefully” her second child. “I have lost pregnancies before, so I know that a pregnancy doesn’t always guarantee a baby. I think we would have stopped trying to conceive if I wasn’t already pregnant before the election,” she tells me. “The biggest change this time is that I am more afraid for my life than I was before. I have been pouncing on news articles about Josseli Barnica and others who died during miscarriage due to abortion bans. I Googled which states have bans and what the term limits are in case I need to travel out of state for abortion care — if there’s time.” Mazer says that she’s always been pro-choice, and that she can’t imagine feeling all of these debilitating pregnancy symptoms while also worrying about an abusive or absent co-parent, food insecurity, anything. “It makes me feel so privileged. I don’t know what will happen, but I do know that this pregnancy will be our last.”

Maddison Z was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, when she gave birth to her first son in early 2023. She had just moved from NYC. “I was really early in my pregnancy when Roe was overturned. It felt so heavy and scary. But I was thankfully living somewhere where I had access to the health care I needed. In July of 2024, when our son turned 18 months old, my husband and I were discussing trying for another baby. In order to feel comfortable, I knew I needed to live in a state that granted me access to all health care. If something were to happen during a pregnancy that put my life at risk, I needed to be able to choose my life, and the life of my son, who needs me,” she told me before the election.

Since then, Maddison’s ideas about having another child have have shifted: “We wonder if it is even ethical to bring another child into this world, knowing the negative impact this current administration will have on the environment, social issues, and the economy,” she says.

Lauren Hughes* in Michigan tells me she’s terrified to have a baby if Trump’s Supreme Court overturns same-sex marriage. “It’s already an ordeal to make sure my wife is listed on the birth certificate, even if we use her egg. She has to adopt her own child, basically. What if they take away our marriage?”

Baker’s not alone. And while U.S. fertility rates have been dropping for years, and cultural pressure around having a family has fortunately lessened, studies show that much of the declining birth rate can be attributed to the lack of infrastructure that makes it possible for families to grow. A recent Pew Research study found that 26% of parents under 40 cite financial reasons for not having more children, and a Gallup study found that many American families have less children than they actually want. A study at the Institute for Population Research found that while the birth rate has nosedived, Americans’ desire for children has stayed more or less the same. It’s simply less feasible.

In the time since Baker and I last spoke, the government website reproductiverights.gov went dark. An executive order removed more than 200 pages from Head Start, the federal program for low-income children, including videos on postpartum depression. The United States has been removed from the world’s main climate pact. Remote work for federal employees — a lifeline for working mothers — has all but been eliminated. There is no “family leave plan” on the table. There’s no federally protected right to abortion. There’s no hope for the climate and the state of the planet. There’s no comfort for LGBTQ communities, for transgender people, for pregnant people.

“I don’t want to die trying to have another baby. I don’t want to leave my own living child motherless.”

So as much as Baker says she’d like to give her son a sibling, she just doesn’t feel ready, not in this political climate. It doesn’t feel safe. “For me, I just want to be sure I can take care of him. And with everything going on, I’m just terrified. Like, what if he’s gay? What if I lose my remote work job? What if groceries stay so expensive?”

Some women cite the terminology in abortion laws — as some state’s abortion restrictions are blamed for the completely avoidable deaths of women like 28-year-old Amber Thurman in Georgia — as a reason why they’re changing their family plans.

Theresa Parks* lives in a blue state with one child — but she’s suffered several miscarriages. “I’ve always had to have a D&C,” she tells me. “I want more children, but I’m terrified of experiencing another miscarriage and being left to go septic or something if they completely ban abortion.” She feels “somewhat safe” in her blue state, she says, but she doesn’t trust the government or any of the pundits who say abortion is really just a states’ rights issue. “I don’t want to die trying to have another baby. I don’t want to leave my own living child motherless.”

Dr. Kecia Gaither, M.D., a double board-certified physician in OB-GYN and maternal fetal medicine, is the director of perinatal services/maternal fetal health medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals. When I spoke to her in November, before Trump was officially sworn in as president, I’d hoped she’d beam a light of hope down and declare all of our fears unfounded. This did not happen. “Reproductive health and equity has taken a major hit in the wake of the Roe v. Wade reversal. In light of that ruling, many states have banned the election of pregnancy terminations, forcing women — and the physicians who care for them — to face difficult and, many times, life-threatening situations. For my colleagues in certain parts of the country, they have been witness to their health care compatriot being threatened, coerced, and even jailed for rendering care — even in the face of their patients facing life-threatening pregnancy complications,” she tells me. “The incoming administration’s agenda, via Project 2025, apparently will end access to medical abortion, curtail birth control access, allow health facilities to deny particular emergency saving care, and establish an abortion surveillance system… to name just a few.”

Julia Mazer, a Georgia mom of a toddler, was nine weeks pregnant on Election Day 2024 with what she described as “hopefully” her second child. “I have lost pregnancies before, so I know that a pregnancy doesn’t always guarantee a baby. I think we would have stopped trying to conceive if I wasn’t already pregnant before the election,” she tells me. “The biggest change this time is that I am more afraid for my life than I was before. I have been pouncing on news articles about Josseli Barnica and others who died during miscarriage due to abortion bans. I Googled which states have bans and what the term limits are in case I need to travel out of state for abortion care — if there’s time.” Mazer says that she’s always been pro-choice, and that she can’t imagine feeling all of these debilitating pregnancy symptoms while also worrying about an abusive or absent co-parent, food insecurity, anything. “It makes me feel so privileged. I don’t know what will happen, but I do know that this pregnancy will be our last.”

Maddison Z was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, when she gave birth to her first son in early 2023. She had just moved from NYC. “I was really early in my pregnancy when Roe was overturned. It felt so heavy and scary. But I was thankfully living somewhere where I had access to the health care I needed. In July of 2024, when our son turned 18 months old, my husband and I were discussing trying for another baby. In order to feel comfortable, I knew I needed to live in a state that granted me access to all health care. If something were to happen during a pregnancy that put my life at risk, I needed to be able to choose my life, and the life of my son, who needs me,” she told me before the election.

Since then, Maddison’s ideas about having another child have have shifted: “We wonder if it is even ethical to bring another child into this world, knowing the negative impact this current administration will have on the environment, social issues, and the economy,” she says.

Lauren Hughes* in Michigan tells me she’s terrified to have a baby if Trump’s Supreme Court overturns same-sex marriage. “It’s already an ordeal to make sure my wife is listed on the birth certificate, even if we use her egg. She has to adopt her own child, basically. What if they take away our marriage?”

“The biggest change this time is that I am more afraid for my life than I was before.”

Megan Buck, 32, in Atlanta, agrees. “Me and my wife were considering IVF last year. We both want kids and went through a bunch of testing to see if we could. We went to baby sections of stores just to daydream; it was amazing. But now with the political animosity towards our community, it’s scary.” Buck has an autoimmune disorder and also worries about the laws surrounding abortions. “Not only are there health risks associated with me having a baby, but with the attack on trans rights, it seems like only a matter of time before they come for more in our community. The last thing I’d want to happen is for everything to go well and then have complications with my wife having rights to our baby because we’re two women.”

Jessica Hernandez* lives in the South and tells me she won’t have any more babies if there’s even a chance of an ICE agent showing up at the hospital while she’s in labor. “Would they take my kid?” she asks.

Miranda Lynch is a birth photographer and around babies and families constantly. She decided a long time ago that she didn’t want children, and after years of debilitating endometriosis, PCOS, and autoimmune disorders that make her periods unbearable, she’s found a solution that works for both her pain and to keep her from getting pregnant: hormonal birth control pills. “Not an IUD, not a shot, not whatever — my pills,” she tells me over the phone. “And if I cannot access my hormonal birth control pills, my life will go back to being unmanageable. So the solution is to have my organs cut out, unfortunately, before it becomes illegal to do so.” Lynch has a hysterectomy scheduled. “I’m also unmarried. I don’t have a husband to sign off on anything. I have to get it done now.”

Lynch is also nervous about this new administration and how its policies may affect the families she works with in the delivery room. “There are going to be a lot more upsetting incidents that I’m witness to. There are going to be more scared parents and fewer just elated and confident ones. It’s going to change. And how does birth worker culture shift into that space?”

Gaither says it’s impossible to gauge how things will go right now until we actually see how the reproductive landscape will look in 2025. But the truth of the matter is that women will die if reproductive rights are not upheld. When I ask Gaither to explain why abortion is health care, she’s succinct. “The question becomes this: if a woman is carrying a baby with a lethal anomaly, or carrying a molar pregnancy, or other obstetric complication that may impact her survival? We need to have options.”

The current Republican Party, who has so desperately tried to claim the title “party of family values,” has made no secret about what they wanted or how they wanted this country to look. Eliminating free lunches at school, insisting that you can just “ask grandparents to help” (when what we really need is free, universal child care), not to mention the prospect of risking our autonomy and our lives in pregnancy, with near-constant dread about the viability of the planet — it all adds up. The prospect of building a family under the current administration is becoming less like the American dream than, for too many people in this country, a potential nightmare.

*Names have been changed for safety reasons.

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“I want more children, but I’m terrified of experiencing another miscarriage and being left to go septic or something if they completely ban abortion.”

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The United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday in a major assault that threatened a broader regional conflict, with President Trump vowing to devastate the country’s military, eliminate its nuclear program, and bring about a change in its government.

Waves of large explosions shook the Iranian capital, Tehran, starting around 9 a.m. local time — 1 a.m. in Washington — and continued into the evening. Witnesses described chaos in the streets as people rushed to seek shelter, find loved ones, or flee the city.

Several residential buildings in Bahrain’s capital Manama were targeted this evening, according to the Gulf kingdom’s Ministry of Interior. “Civil Defense continues with firefighting and rescue operations at the affected sites,” the ministry said in a statement, without elaborating further. Videos being shared on social media on Saturday night, and verified by The New York Times, appeared to show a moving object striking a residential apartment building in the capital Manama, causing a large explosion.

The New York Police Department said it was enhancing its presence at sensitive locations in the city, including at diplomatic and religious sites, in light of the strikes in Iran. Gov. Kathy Hochul said the State Police was taking similar precautions across New York. No specific, credible threats to the city or state have been identified, the governor said.

‘Under this rubble, students are buried’: Iran says dozens killed in strike on school.

Dozens of people, probably most of them children, were killed in a strike that hit a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, according to Iranian health officials and state media.

It was one of two strikes that appear to have hit schools since U.S. and Israeli warplanes launched their attack on Iran around 10 a.m. local time. Saturday is the start of the workweek in the country, and many Iranians had already dropped off their children and headed into their offices as explosions began to shake the capital and many cities across Iran.

Netanyahu takes his shot at regime change in Iran.

The joint U.S.-Israel attack on Iran is, in one sense, a long-held aspiration for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He has been portraying the Islamic Republic, a sworn enemy of his country, as a singular threat to Israel, the region, and the world for more than three decades.

Now, an emboldened Israel and its strongest ally, the United States, have declared the aim of the war as nothing less than paving the way for the overthrow of Iran’s government by encouraging Iranians to rise up against the Islamic Republic.

The Israeli military published a warning urging those present at an “industrial complex” in Isfahan, a major city in central Iran, to evacuate. It also told residents of a nearby area to remain in their homes until the morning hours.

Hundreds of Shiite Muslims marched in various parts of Pakistan to express their support for Iran. Many Pakistani Shiites, a sizable religious minority in their country, look to Iran for religious guidance and, at times, political support. “When Iran is attacked, we feel our faith, our identity, and our very existence are being targeted,” said Asghar Jaffer, a Shiite student activist in Karachi.

Iranian attacks on Israel shine a light on shelter shortage.

Sirens warning of incoming Iranian missile fire have sent people in Israel running to public and private bomb shelters, and fortified rooms in their homes.

But the missile barrages have also highlighted a shortage of protected spaces in a country that has been preparing for war with Iran for decades.

Several dozen protests opposing the U.S.-led strikes in Iran are planned in cities across the United States as part of a national day of action today. The sponsors of the demonstrations, a coalition of organizations, including Answer Coalition, a group that opposes war and racism, said they were protesting the Trump administration’s “illegal attack” on the country.

“The people of this country reject another endless war,” the sponsors wrote in their call to action.

Mai Sato, a Japanese legal scholar and the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, called the U.S.-Israeli strikes “unlawful” because they were launched without authorization from the U.N. Security Council. The Council will convene an emergency meeting later today. She said in a social media post that military intervention is not a solution to the nuclear issue and “does nothing to address why people took to the streets. It is for the Iranian people to shape their own future.”

The Strait of Hormuz, a global shipping lane, has been “effectively closed,” according to Tasnim, the news outlet affiliated with the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, the county’s most powerful military force.

“The IRGC has warned various vessels that, due to the insecure conditions around the strait resulting from the U.S. and Israeli military aggression and Iran’s responses, passage through the strait is currently unsafe,” Tasnim quoted the IRGC as saying.

The Israeli military said it struck roughly 500 targets across Iran since this morning, including air defense systems and missile launchers. It said the targets included a surface-to-surface missile launch site in the area of Tabriz, in western Iran. The strikes allowed the Israeli Air Force to “expand its aerial superiority” in Iranian skies, the military added.

The U.S. Maritime Administration, a government agency, has advised American commercial ships to stay away from the Persian Gulf area, including the Strait of Hormuz. “It is recommended that vessels keep clear of this area if possible,” the agency said. Jordan’s Public Security Directorate said it handled 54 reports of falling debris that caused material damage but no injuries.

The Israeli military just said it began another wave of attacks on Iranian aerial defense and missile launches in central Iran. Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, is reporting explosions in Garmdareh, west of Tehran, as well as the northwestern city of Urmia near the Turkish border, the southern port city of Bushehr, and Qom, south of Tehran.

The authorities in Dubai said that four people were injured and taken to a hospital after an “incident” in the Palm Jumeirah area, an artificial island off the coast of the city, adding that the site was secure and the resulting fire under control. Videos shared on social media that were verified by The New York Times appeared to show an object landing close to one of the buildings that line the main road of the Palm Jumeirah, causing an explosion. The conflict in the Middle East has quickly threatened the flow of oil out of the Middle East, which could make oil and other fuels more expensive. Oil analysts expect prices to jump when markets open on Sunday evening. Shipping companies have stopped sending their tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which at least 20 percent of daily oil production travels, according to oil industry analysts. “Nobody’s going to enter right now,” said Angeliki Frangou, the chief executive of Navios Maritime Partners, a Greek shipping company with vessels in the region, referring to the strait.

The foreign ministry of Saudi Arabia said in a statement that it successfully intercepted Iranian attacks aimed at the Riyadh region and the Eastern Province. The kingdom will “take all necessary measures” to defend itself, “including the option of responding to aggression,” it said.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on social media that President Trump has spoken on the phone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. She said Trump also monitored the military assault in Iran “overnight at Mar-a-Lago alongside members of his national security team.”

Here’s what members of Congress are saying about the U.S.-led attacks on Iran.

Members of Congress are weighing in on the United States’ attack on Iran, and Republicans and Democrats are significantly at odds.

Republicans largely praised President Trump for what they said was a critical operation targeting a country that had long threatened the United States and its allies. Many circumvented the issue of whether the president needed authorization from Congress to carry out an extended military operation.

Kuwait’s state media said a drone struck the country’s main airport on Saturday, citing the civil aviation authority. It said the drone caused minor injuries to workers at the airport’s Terminal 1 building.

The Emirates defense ministry said on Saturday evening that it had intercepted a “new wave” of Iranian missiles launched toward the country, and that “fragments from the interceptions” had fallen in areas across the cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The defense ministry statement said there were no injuries at those sites. A White House official said the Pentagon notified members of the Armed Service Committees early Saturday morning after the strikes began. Some members of the committees said they were not notified, including Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, said that military action against Iran was urgently needed “despite the significant risks involved.”

“Delay would have allowed the Iranian regime to reach a level of immunity for its nuclear program, as well as to engage in the mass production of long-range ballistic missiles,” he said in an English-language statement.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, asked for the council to intervene and said Israel and the United States had violated international law in attacking Iran. “The United States and the Israeli regime shall bear full and direct responsibility for all ensuing consequences, including any escalation arising from their unlawful actions,” Mr. Araghchi said in the letter. “All bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile forces in the region shall be regarded as legitimate military objectives within the framework of Iran’s lawful exercise of self-defense.”Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, announced on social media that she would convene a special security update meeting on Monday on the situation in Iran. She said that it is “of the utmost importance that there is no further escalation through Iran’s unjustified attacks on partners in the region.”Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain has said in a televised statement that British planes “are in the sky today” in the Middle East “as part of co-ordinated regional defensive operations to protect our people, our interests, and our values.” Mr. Starmer said Iran should refrain from further strikes, give up its weapons program, and end repression of its people, adding: “This is the route back to the negotiating table.”

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It’s officially squeak season.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s March Madness is right around the corner. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is fresh off its All-Star break, with the playoffs on the horizon. The playoffs for the women’s three-on-three league Unrivaled start this weekend—and Angel Reese will be back!

So turn on your TV and pump up the volume. Try tuning out the color commentary, the pulsating music, and the “defense” chants, and what you’ll hear is basketball’s true soundtrack: a symphony of squeaks.

Today, in a study published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists have made a “Wemby”-sized stride forward on the timeless scientific mystery of why basketball sneakers make those joyful noises.

“We were not expecting to find so much richness and depth, from a physics point of view, underneath the sole of a shoe,” says Adel Djellouli, a scientist at Harvard University and co-lead author of the study.

Most scientists who had considered the problem believed that shoe squeaks were a straightforward example of the common “stick-slip phenomenon.”

It’s easy to see stick-slip in action. Just plop a heavy book on a table and try to gently slide it across. Instead of a smooth slide, you’ll get a jerky, stop-and-start kind of motion.

Basketball squeaks, the theory went, were an example of the same phenomenon. When a player stopped on a dime, their shoe’s rubbery sole would slip slightly—many times per second in the same stop-and-start pattern—producing a squeak. This is how violins work and why a squeaky door hinge rings at a lower pitch when you open it slowly.

But with the power of high-speed cameras and acoustic analysis, Djellouli and his co-authors have shown that basketball shoes are special. 

It’s all about the bumps. Those long, raised patterns of ridges that line the bottom of a sneaker are really the maestros of basketball’s soundscape. Watch the bottom of a shoe rubbing against the hardwood in slow motion, and you’ll see.

The sole’s ridges don’t lift and stick all at once. Rather, only a tiny part of each ridge separates from the ground at any one time. That pocket of separation glides down the ridge until it reaches the end of the sole, at which point the air outside the shoe receives a little kick. Those separation waves ripple down the ridges thousands of times per second, kicking the air rhythmically. The rate of kicks is exactly the frequency of the squeak—the faster the kicks, the higher the pitch.

That frequency depends on the shape of each ridge, which guides the waves down with a characteristic speed. “The idea of a waveguide for friction was not known,” says Gabriele Albertini, a structural engineer at the University of Nottingham in England and Djellouli’s co-lead author. To demonstrate their finding, the scientists reverse-engineered rectangular blocks of synthetic sole with distinct pitches. They were even able to play Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars on a piece of glass. “It took us three days to rehearse,” Djellouli says. “We could have just shown it in a graph, but where’s the fun in that?”

The sneaker study falls under the larger umbrella of “bimaterial friction,” the special physics of two different materials rubbing together. The phenomenon of two different faults slipping against each other to produce an earthquake, for instance, is much like a sneaker rubbing on hardwood. Rather than the entire fault stopping and starting, ripples of separation move along it, similarly to what happens with the sneaker. The team believes its rubber setup could become an easy way to study earthquake physics in a lab.

“This is a more advanced and technically sophisticated analysis of a problem I dipped my toe into 20 years ago,” says Martyn Shorten, a stick-slip expert at BioMechanica, a consulting firm in Oregon. “I love it!”

So next time you see NBA player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander take someone’s ankles, remember that the spectacle’s squeaky score is something to behold as well. And when you cop your favorite player’s new signature shoe, you’re buying a finely tuned musical instrument that simulates an earthquake with every step. Who knows—maybe we’re just a few years off from “signature squeaks!”

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As I cheer on my sister, Amber Glenn, during her first-ever Olympics, I’m so proud of the person and athlete she is. And, of course, with that love comes a fierce desire to protect her from the ugliness and hate I’m seeing online.

Recently, Amber was interviewed by our longtime friend Ashley Cain, the cohost of the Flame Bearers and Culxtured series Making It to Milan, about Amber’s journey to the Games, equity in sports, and her advice for young athletes. I was thrilled to be a part of her episode, too, and talk about what it means to me to see someone I love so much finally get the honor and recognition she deserves.

Amber has always been exceptional. In a sport where longevity often leads to burnout, she has stayed relentlessly devoted to her dream. After more than a decade in international figure skating, three consecutive US national champion titles, and now a gold medal at her very first Olympics, she’s shown the world that she fights for her dreams and doesn’t give up.

The same goes for her beliefs and values. Amber has always been unapologetically exactly who she is. For Amber, being the first out LGBTQ+ woman on a US Olympic figure skating team means more than just a footnote in her bio. She wears the Pride flag pin not for attention or because it’s on trend, but because she’s had to fight to love herself unconditionally, and she wants the same for LGBTQ+ people across the country.

You may be wondering what my sister said to bring on such vicious hatred. When asked at a press conference about her views on Trump’s impact on the LGBTQ+ community, she responded: “It’s been a hard time for the [LGBTQ+] community overall in this administration. It isn’t the first time that we’ve had to come together as a community and try and fight for our human rights.”

She never expressed a lack of respect or a lack of appreciation for this country. She simply spoke about what millions of Americans are living right now, as shown in the more than 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced in the US so far this year, according to the ACLU. That’s when the hate started pouring in. This isn’t criticism; this is an attempt to strip away someone’s humanity, all because what she’s saying is different and scary to them.

Especially now, as Amber prepares for one of the biggest moments of her career, she should not have to carry the hate she has received while also trying to land her jumps. No athlete should. We say we want people to be authentic, then we recoil when they are. We say athletes are role models, then we demand they stay silent about their own lives. We celebrate them right up until they make us uncomfortable, and then we say they are horrible people.

For me, there was never a question of whether or not I would love and support my sister unconditionally—love doesn’t have strings attached. Neither does allyship. Our parents taught us to treat all people with love and respect, even if we don’t understand where they’re coming from. You don’t have to be LGBTQ+ (or even understand what it means) to agree that people deserve to be who they are, and love who they love, without receiving hate.

Allyship is supposed to be uncomfortable. That’s kind of the point. It gives us just a taste of what the people we care about deal with day in and day out. If it makes us feel overwhelmed, we can imagine how they must feel all the time. Through the years, I’ve seen the beautiful and terrifying sides of people reflected through sports. I’ve seen how sports can bring people together across divides, and how groups and platforms like Flame Bearers champion women exactly as they are. I’ve also seen the way that people use sport as a space to promote bigotry, declaring that there’s only one way to be an athlete, a woman, an American.

When I see my sister with her teammates, beaming with pride, I think of the good in sports. Beyond any medal, seeing my sister happy is the greatest victory. Seeing all the positive comments in Flame Bearers’ feed reminds me that there are other people out there who celebrate diversity and lead with compassion. I’m going to keep looking toward the light, and doing all I can to outshine the dark.

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“Something like this dispute was inevitable,” said Michael C. Horowitz, who worked on A.I. weapons issues in the Defense Department during the Biden administration. “Because the technology is advancing so quickly, we’re having these debates now. A.I. has moved from being in a niche conversation to something really at the center of global power.”

An hour before the deadline on Friday, President Trump weighed in on the fight, posting on social media that he would “NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS!” That decision, he said, “belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.”

The clash centers on the Pentagon’s use of a classified version of Anthropic’s A.I. model, Claude. The company wants to embed safeguards in its technology to prevent its use for mass domestic surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons with no humans in the loop.

The Pentagon has said that it has no plans to use the technology for those purposes, but that a private contractor cannot decide how its tools will be lawfully used for national security, just as a weapons manufacturer does not determine where its missiles are dropped.

At the Pentagon, the dispute comes at an important moment. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News contributor who has lashed out at policies and companies he sees as too liberal, wants to aggressively integrate A.I. in war planning and weapons development. Mr. Hegseth is echoing Mr. Trump, who has made the expansion of A.I. a cornerstone of his policies.

But Anthropic, a five-year-old company worth about $380 billion, has staked its reputation on A.I. safety and raised concerns about the technology’s dangers, even as it has collaborated with U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. It is the only A.I. company currently operating on the Pentagon’s classified systems.

In recent days, the Pentagon and Anthropic have showed no signs of backing down. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, posted on social media on Thursday that the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic allow it to use A.I. “for all lawful purposes,” saying it was a “common-sense request.”

In response, Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, said the Pentagon’s “threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.” Anthropic was prepared to lose its government contract and help the Pentagon transition to another company’s technology, he said.

Without a compromise, Mr. Hegseth has threatened to invoke the rarely used Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to work with it on its terms, or designate the company a supply chain threat and block it from doing business with the government.

The confrontation has created new divisions between Silicon Valley and Washington at a moment when the industry seemed in step with President Trump’s tech-forward agenda, especially as Google, xAI, and OpenAI are also involved in A.I. work with the Pentagon.

On Thursday, nearly 50 OpenAI employees and 175 Google employees published a letter calling on their leaders to “refuse the Department of War’s current demands.” More than 100 employees who work on Google’s A.I. technology expressed concern in another letter to company leaders about working with the Pentagon. Prominent technologists, including Jeff Dean, a top Google executive, have also said they are concerned about how A.I. can be misused for surveillance.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies have denied those claims.)

A little over two years ago, A.I. safety and regulation was a top concern. At a global summit hosted in Britain by then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the United States, China, and 26 other countries signed a pledge to address some of the technology’s potential risks, such as giving hackers new attack methods and accelerating disinformation.

But as the A.I. race ramped up, the issue has faded as a priority. Last year, the Trump administration revoked safety policies imposed under President Biden. Mr. Trump signed an executive order in December aimed at undercutting state laws that regulate A.I. He has also lifted restrictions on exports of A.I. semiconductors, despite concerns that the components could help rivals like China.

The European Union, which passed far-reaching A.I. regulations in 2024, is now considering rolling some back. At the United Nations, a yearslong effort to ban certain A.I. weapons has been stalled by opposition from the United States, Russia, and other countries.

On the battlefield, the war in Ukraine has ushered in an era of drone warfare that turned autonomous weapons from a futuristic possibility to a near-term reality.

“As A.I. becomes more powerful and more capable, the incentives to use it also become much stronger,” said Helen Toner, an A.I. policy expert at Georgetown University and former OpenAI board member. “At the same time, people’s appetite to talk about risks and how to solve them has gone down.”

Ms. Toner said the Anthropic-Pentagon dispute showed a fundamental disconnect. In Washington, officials view A.I. as a new tool that can be harnessed for specific goals. In Silicon Valley, creators of the technology see it becoming more like an “entity” with sophisticated reasoning that may behave in unexpected and dangerous ways without oversight and refinement, she said.

The fight between the Pentagon and Anthropic began on Jan. 9, when Mr. Hegseth published a memo calling for A.I. companies to remove restrictions on their technologies.

“The time is now to accelerate A.I. integration, and we will put the full weight of the Department’s leadership, resources, and expanding corps of private sector partners into accelerating America’s Military A.I. Dominance,” he wrote.

Underpinning Mr. Hegseth’s strategy was a fundamental shift in military technology. Hardware is in an age of decline. Military contractors have struggled to deliver ships and fighter planes on time and on budget.

Software has become an increasingly powerful tool. Tech executives, including Alex Karp, the chief executive of the data analytics company Palantir, which works closely with the federal government, have argued that America’s competitive edge over adversaries will be found in its advances with software.

Anthropic has been a willing partner, providing the government with a special version of Claude that has fewer restrictions. Yet some in the Pentagon viewed the start-up with suspicion. Its openness to talking about safety risks put off some in the department’s leadership, who have called the San Francisco company “woke.”

When talks between the Pentagon and Anthropic began over a $200 million contract for use of A.I. in classified systems, lawyers from both sides quietly traded emails over contract language, said two people involved in the discussions.

Anthropic asked for two things. The company said it was willing to loosen its restrictions on the technology, but wanted guardrails to stop its A.I. from being used for mass surveillance of Americans or deployed in autonomous weapons with no humans involved. Without those, Anthropic risks damaging its safety-first reputation.

“This is really about the power of the state to determine how A.I. is being deployed in the world versus companies,” said Robert Trager, co-director of Oxford University’s Martin A.I. Governance Initiative.

Cordula Droege, the chief lawyer for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has called for global limits on A.I. weapons, said the violent risks of introducing swarms of autonomous weapons on battlefields is being lost in the wider debate.

“Throughout history, warfare goes in parallel with the development of technology,” she said.

The Latest on the Trump Administration

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• Inquiry of Ex-Officials: A U.S. attorney in Miami is said to be expanding the scope of an investigation into former officials involved in scrutinizing Trump during his first campaign and term.

• Downed Drone: The U.S. shot down a drone belonging to the Homeland Security Department over a Texas border town, prompting the F.A.A. to shutter nearby airspace, according to four people familiar with what transpired.

• Iran: As they made their public case for another U.S. attack, President Trump and his aides made claims about Iran’s weapons and nuclear program that were either false or unproven.

• Voter Data: The Trump administration sued five states to obtain unredacted voter registration databases, in pursuit of baseless claims of voter fraud.

• Sanctions Against U.N. Official: The family of a U.N. expert on the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories sued Trump and top officials, challenging sanctions imposed against her over her views of the war in Gaza.

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The Pentagon has said that a private contractor cannot decide how its tools will be lawfully used for national security. Credit…Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

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