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Researchers studying the remains of a prehistoric woman who lived around 10,500 years ago in what is now Belgium have produced a reconstruction of her face using ancient DNA.

A team led by scientists from Ghent University found that the woman would have had blue eyes and slightly lighter skin than most other people from the Mesolithic period in Western Europe who have been analyzed to date, according to a statement from the university on Tuesday.

Isabelle De Groote, an archaeologist at Ghent University who leads the research project on Mesolithic Belgium, told CNN that the woman came from the same population group as the Cheddar Man, who lived in what is now the United Kingdom at around the same time, but had lighter skin.

The findings challenge previous assumptions that European hunter gatherers shared the same genetic makeup, and demonstrates that there was already considerable variation in skin color among different populations, said De Groote.

“From the skull we could also tell that she was somewhere between 35 and 60 years old,” De Groote told CNN on Wednesday.

“She also had a nose with a high nasal bridge, which is similar to Cheddar Man,” De Groote added. “She also has strong brow ridges despite being a female.”

The woman’s remains were found in the Margaux cave in Dinant during an archaeological dig in 1988-1989 alongside the bodies of eight other women, said De Groote.

This was “an unusual finding” as most Mesolithic burial sites contain a mixture of men, women and children, she added.

“Many of the skeletons were sprinkled with ochre, a practice associated with ritual or symbolic behavior,” said De Groote.

Most of the bodies were carefully covered with stone fragments, while one individual had cut marks on her skull that were made after her death, she added.

“Also interesting is that this burial cave was used over a period of several hundreds of years so that they were places of memory that people would go back to despite their mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle,” said De Groote.

“These findings point to complex burial customs and raise intriguing questions about the social structure and cultural practices of this early hunter-gatherer community,” she added.

Philippe Crombé, an archaeologist at the university who is part of the project team, said that the ancient woman’s skin color was “a bit of a surprise,” but there’s a limited pool of Mesolithic people with whom to compare.

“All individuals so far analyzed on ancient DNA in Western Europe have belonged to the same genetic group,” he said.

“So it’s a bit of a surprise, but on the other hand, it is to be expected that in the wide area of Western Europe there’s some variability, as there is today.”

When the remains were recovered there was no way to conduct research into ancient DNA, said Crombé.

“Techniques have developed since the excavation,” he told CNN on Wednesday, adding that the interdisciplinary project is “a re-analysis of old excavations using state of the art methods.”

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A reconstruction of a possible scene from daily life in the woman’s community. – Ulco Glimmerveen/Department of Archaeology

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Jeffrey Lawson was born prematurely in February 1985. Shortly afterward, the newborn had to undergo heart surgery without anesthesia. He remained awake throughout the procedure, given only Pavulon, a muscle relaxant, to prevent movement. He died five weeks later.

After Jeffrey Lawson’s death, his mother was told that her son had been too young to tolerate anesthesia. And the anesthesiologist had attempted to reassure her that there was no evidence premature babies felt any pain.

The Lawson family’s story, famous in pain research, was not an anomaly. Until the 1980s, surgical procedures on infants were routinely performed with little or no anesthesia. Even clear defensive reactions to painful stimuli were considered to be mere reflexes.

But more than 20 years after Jeffrey Lawson’s operation, an international research team found evidence that the brains of newborn premature babies react to pain stimuli in a very similar way to those of adults. More specifically, the researchers observed an increased oxygen supply in parts of the cerebral cortex that were associated with conscious experience. This evidence of increased neuronal activity indicated that premature babies do indeed feel pain.

Understanding the experiences of infants has presented a challenge to science. How do we know when infants consciously experience pain, for example, or a sense of self? When it comes to reporting subjective experience, “the gold standard proof is self-report,” says Lorina Naci, a psychologist and a neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin. But that’s not possible with babies.

Among the debates surrounding the developing mind is the question of when consciousness first emerges. And that question is tied to the scientific challenge of defining conscious experience. Various philosophical, psychological and neurobiological models have attempted to explain what it is and what underlies it. Investigating whether this phenomenon exists across early development may offer new insights and ways to assess theories of consciousness.

Many scientists now recognize multiple types of consciousness and suspect that certain forms exist earlier than others in development. That insight has helped address some issues but has left others unresolved. “The answer to the question of when children become conscious depends on what exactly is meant by consciousness,” says developmental psychologist Norbert Zmyj of TU Dortmund University in Germany.

Sensation and Sensibility

Broadly speaking, there are two camps among researchers when it comes to consciousness in early development, Naci says. Some take a strict view that consciousness emerges in early childhood and that a being is only conscious once it reaches a stage where it can demonstrate abilities such as decision-making and self-reflection.

For example, one influential idea is that a mental state becomes conscious when a thought is directed toward it. So if you see a red apple and then think, “I see a red apple,” you are conscious of this sensation because you have a higher-order thought that represents it. With that definition, consciousness only arises in the course of childhood because it requires higher thought processes.

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The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog says US strikes on Iran fell short of causing total damage to its nuclear program and that Tehran could restart enriching uranium “in a matter of months,” contradicting President Donald Trump’s claims the US set Tehran’s ambitions back by decades.

Rafael Grossi’s comments appear to support an early assessment from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, first reported on by CNN, which suggests the United States’ strikes on key Iranian nuclear sites last week did not destroy the core components of its nuclear program, and likely only set it back by months.

While the final military and intelligence assessment has yet to come, Trump has repeatedly claimed to have “completely and totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program.

The 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran began earlier this month when Israel launched an unprecedented attack it said aimed at preventing Tehran developing a nuclear bomb. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The US then struck three key Iranian nuclear sites before a ceasefire began. The extent of the damage to Tehran’s nuclear program has been hotly debated ever since.

US military officials have in recent days provided some new information about the planning of the strikes, but offered no new evidence of their effectiveness against Iran’s nuclear program.

Following classified briefings this week, Republican lawmakers acknowledged the US strikes may not have eliminated all of Iran’s nuclear materials – but argued that this was never part of the military’s mission.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported on Sunday the US had obtained intercepted messages in which senior Iranian officials discussing the attacks said they were not as destructive as they anticipated.

Severe but not ‘total’ damage

Asked about the different assessments, Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CBS’s “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”: “This hourglass approach in weapons of mass destruction is not a good idea.”

“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” he told Brennan, according to a transcript released ahead of the broadcast.

“It is clear that there has been severe damage, but it’s not total damage,” Grossi went on to say. “Iran has the capacities there; industrial and technological capacities. So if they so wish, they will be able to start doing this again.”

Grossi also told CBS News that the IAEA has resisted pressure to say whether Iran has nuclear weapons or was close to having weapons before the strikes.

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CLIMATEWIRE | The Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected to announce Wednesday that it’s moving into the headquarters of the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the union representing NSF employees.

But as of Tuesday evening, staff at the science foundation hadn’t been informed by management about their building’s incoming occupants, leaving them feeling blindsided and unsure about where they’re expected to work.

One NSF employee said that they had “literally zero idea” the move was coming until reports began circulating among staffers Tuesday evening. That person was granted anonymity because they fear retaliation.

Jesus Soriano, president of the union that represents NSF employees, said he was expecting a press conference Wednesday morning in the NSF lobby including HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Soriano said he was informed about the plans by NSF employees.

Soriano sent an alert to union members Tuesday evening informing them that NSF’s management “learned this afternoon [from HUD]” that the Wednesday news conference would include an announcement that “HUD will take over the NSF building” and that the science agency was not involved in the decision.

The union, Soriano wrote, “understands that there is no planning except that the HUD secretary may take over the 18th and 19th floors” and start planning the HUD move over the next two years. “There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move,” he wrote.

HUD and the General Services Administration announced in April that HUD wanted to move out of its current location in the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building near L’Enfant Plaza in Washington. That building, which opened in 1968, faces over $500 million in deferred maintenance and modernization needs, GSA said. The building would be at half of its capacity with every HUD staffer at headquarters, according to GSA.

An NSF spokesperson directed a request for comment to GSA. GSA, the White House and a Youngkin spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It’s unclear what happens to the staff at NSF, where more than 1,833 employees work in the building, according to the employee union. The science agency moved into the Alexandria office from Virginia’s Ballston area in 2017.

“Is the government more interested in the technological and scientific leadership of this country or on using taxpayer dollars to offer luxury accommodations to government officials?” Soriano said.

The union said in a press release Tuesday that it was told that plans for NSF headquarters include a dedicated executive suite for the HUD secretary on the 19th floor, the construction of an executive dining room, reserved parking spaces for the secretary’s cars, exclusive use of an elevator for the secretary and a space dedicated to hosting the secretary’s executive assistants on the 18th floor.

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On the surface of the U.S. economy, prices are higher. The latest inflation data out on Friday from the government showed a bigger uptick than forecast. On Thursday, Nike said it took a $1 billion hit due to tariffs and the fact that price increases have yet to be implemented.

Inside the U.S. economy, within distribution networks that manage inventory, there are fewer items overall due to the trade war, but more goods on which sticker prices are going up.

“We are now seeing multiple customers increasing pricing,” said Ryan Martin, president of distribution and fulfillment for ITS Logistics.

While price tags are placed on items at the manufacturer, Martin said over the past month his company has started re-ticketing “millions of units of products for many customers,” items ranging from apparel to consumer products in the warehouse being prepped for eventual delivery or immediate transport to stores.

Depending on the product, price increases range from 8%-15%, he said.

“This is creating additional inflation,” Martin said. It is happening in e-commerce as well, he said, though the price change is reflected online, not on the product.

A new survey from the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America for Q2 shows 55% of respondents expect their average retail price to rise between 6%-10% in 2025 as a result of tariffs.

Martin says the last time he saw this amount of re-ticketing was during the pandemic, and it was much higher then.

“Everything was getting more expensive at that time, transportation, labor and quantities of product,” he said. “We saw increases across all products, including food and beverage,” he said. “Re-ticketing was between 30%-40%.”

It’s not just higher prices but less inventory

With current concerns about trade uncertainty and consumer softness, retailers and manufacturing clients are managing inventory by shrinking SKU counts and importing fewer SKUs they are keeping. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that gross domestic product shrank by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2025.

“The overall inventory footprint is smaller,” said Martin. “You are looking at three months of inventory on hand now versus six.”

Supply chain data from the warehouse sector and the growing number of empty shipping containers at ports are pointing to a more mild peak season (the summer buildup of inventory for the back-to-school and holiday shopping periods).

Warehouse inventory levels are down 6% month over month, according to the Logistics Managers’ Index.

Comparing readings from the first half of June to later in the month, growth in inventories started to slow down, which suggests that an increase in early June was temporary, according to Zachary Rogers, associate professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University. “Because of how long it takes inventories to move through systems, we haven’t seen any big shifts in transportation yet,” said Rogers. “Warehouse capacity did move from mild contraction to mild expansion.”

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Unlocking the future of energy! 🔋 Discover the latest in fusion technology and its potential for limitless clean power. The world might be on the brink of a revolutionary change! #FusionEnergy #CleanPower #SustainableFuture

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Fusion

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Looking at my bookshelf, I’m stricken with guilt: the collected Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle have been sitting untouched for years. Unfortunately, I never got past the fantastic television adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch to read the source material. But happily for Holmes, the British detective has a following the world over.

In fact, stories about the ingenious sleuth and his brilliant nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, so appealed to mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern that they played a role in the creation of game theory in the early 20th century. This mathematical discipline explores the strategies for solving various decision-making problems. Take the classic “cake problem,” which posits that the fairest way for two people to split a cake such that each gets as much as possible requires one person to try to cut the cake into two equal pieces and the other to select a slice. Morgenstern and von Neumann did not devise this solution (it has been known since ancient times), but it is a good illustration of how game theorists devise optimal strategies.

The pair were particularly taken by a scenario described by Doyle in his short story “The Final Problem,” in which Moriarty pursues Holmes to a platform at Victoria station in London. There Moriarty sees Holmes jump onto a train to Dover. Moriarty can no longer board the train. He therefore hires a single motorized railroad carriage in pursuit. Holmes’s train does not go straight to Dover, however, but stops at Canterbury on the way. So Moriarty has to make a decision: Should he stop in Canterbury, in the hope that Holmes will get off the train there, or travel all the way to Dover? Holmes, too, must weigh his choices. From Dover, he can flee to the European mainland. He knows that Moriarty may expect that outcome and wait for him there, though, so maybe Holmes should get off the train at Canterbury. But what if that is exactly what Moriarty wants Holmes to think?

This scenario intrigued Morgenstern and von Neumann, who ultimately came to the conclusion in their 1944 foundational book that “Sherlock Holmes is as good as 48% dead when his train pulls out from Victoria Station.” But how could they put such a precise figure on it? And how should Holmes act to escape his adversary? All this can be answered with the help of game theory.

A Battle of Wits

The first thing to consider is that the clever Holmes and Moriarty are each likely to guess what the other is thinking. (“If he thinks that I think that he thinks….”) These considerations could easily land Holmes in an endless logic loop with no way out.

Holmes should therefore assume that Moriarty will foresee his decision in either case and limit the damage accordingly. In other words, the detective ought to optimize his decision with the most pessimistic assumptions in mind. This strategy was published by von Neumann as early as 1928 and was used to demonstrate that a player’s profit can be maximized if one assumes that one’s opponent intends to deal the greatest possible damage.

With no clear winning strategy—unlike in the cake problem—only chance can help. Consider games such as rock-paper-scissors: as soon as one player picks a pattern, the opponent can exploit it to win. The best strategy is therefore to select scissors, rock and paper equally, with a probability of one third each. On average, both parties should then win and lose equally often, minimizing their damage.

The case of Holmes and Moriarty is a bit more complex. To understand this point, it helps to go through the various possible scenarios individually and weight them using numbers, as von Neumann and Morgenstern did. The two mathematicians decided to use values between –100 and 100, with a high value symbolizing a particularly rewarding situation for a given person. The exact numerical values (known as payoffs) chosen for each situation are subjective, but this subjective weighting can then be used to make an optimal decision from an objective point of view.

Morgenstern and von Neumann determined that four different situations could ultimately occur. First, Moriarty and Holmes could both travel to Dover, where Moriarty would assassinate the detective. For Moriarty, this is optimal, so it corresponds to a payoff of 100. For Holmes, on the other hand, it is a disastrous –100 outcome.

Second, Moriarty could get off the train at Canterbury while Holmes travels to Dover. This is bad news for Moriarty because Holmes could flee to the European continent, making it even harder to catch him. This situation is therefore weighted at –50 for Moriarty. For Holmes, on the other hand, it is a positive outcome, so von Neumann and Morgenstern give it a value of 50.

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Summer used to mean one thing: escaping the everyday grind for a much-needed tropical vacation (or for some, a city roaming adventure). But this year feels fundamentally different, and we all know why (hint hint, it has to do with what took place in November 2024).

As families across the country start planning their getaways, a harsh new reality is setting in. In Trump’s America, that dream vacation is a luxury that fewer can justify. In other words, affordable travel is slipping away and a lot of us are feeling it firsthand.

Now I know what you may be thinking: I see people traveling all the time across my social media feeds. Well, according to a recent LendingTree survey, that’s not actually the case. More than half of Americans are scaling back their travel plans, not because they don’t want to explore the world, but because they simply can’t afford to anymore. We’ve become a nation caught between wanderlust and financial survival, so the influencers you may see on TikTok and Instagram are not representing the majority who struggle with finances and can’t prioritize travel this year.

Most people blame soaring travel costs for making vacations feel out of reach. And honestly? Same. I’m not going to lie, as an avid traveler (and one who wants to feel like I’m actually enjoying myself rather than sticking to a tight budget when I travel), I’ve even felt these hits myself. And for many others, the sticker shock of flights, hotels, and dining has changed what once felt like accessible luxury into a significant financial decision. 

What’s particularly heartbreaking is watching an entire generation get priced out of experiences their parents took for granted. I have a sister in her early 30s, and also nieces and nephews in their 20s who won’t get the same opportunity to roam as freely the way we were able to 5-10 years ago when there were flight deals, and opportunity hacks galore (does anyone remember the $175 Dubai flight deal that dropped on Christmas from Christmas 2014?!) Young Americans, already drowning in student debt and struggling with housing costs, are finding travel increasingly impossible. Meanwhile, older generations with more established wealth can still afford to jet off, widening yet another gap in American society.

For families, the math just isn’t mathing. When you’re looking at the cost of four plane tickets instead of two, when you need family suites instead of standard rooms, that “affordable” vacation quickly becomes a mortgage payment. Parents are having to explain to their kids why this summer will be different or why the annual trip isn’t happening. It may just be a summer camp and chill kind of summer (though even the cost of summer camp has gone up drastically, as well!)

Then there’s the tariff nightmare. Trade policies that were supposed to put America first are instead keeping Americans home. The uncertainty alone is enough to make people postpone major expenses, but the actual impact on travel costs is making international trips feel like pipe dreams.

“Prices are still high for so many things, and many Americans are concerned the implementation of tariffs will only make things worse,” says Matt Schulz, LendingTree chief consumer finance analyst. “Those concerns are spurring many people to proceed with caution, delaying bigger expenses such as vacations until things seem more steady.”

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Smiling parents with their daughters are walking with luggage to the airport.

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Online opinion polling and data analytics company Civiqs has polled more than 30,000 US citizens on how they think President Donald J. Trump is faring in his job during his second term as POTUS. Specifically, the question put to the cross-section of America was, ‘do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?’ The results show that Trump’s approval ratings remained mostly steady across the country this past week, though a few states saw some notable shifts. Overall, 54% of those polled currently disapprove of Trump’s presidency, while 43% approve, and 3% neither approve not disapprove (Pictures: Getty Images)

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Trump

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Many in the world woke to the news on 22 June that the United States had bombed nuclear sites in Iran, with the goal of destroying the nation’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. The raids targeted Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities in Fordow and Natanz, and its nuclear research centre in Isfahan, using stealth bombers to drop massive ‘bunker-busters’, and cruise missiles.

Although Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, experts have long assessed that Iran was close to having the capability of building nuclear weapons if it chose to do so. The US attacks followed a bombing campaign by Israel, which has since carried out further attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. On 23 June, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that “very significant damage is expected to have occurred” at the underground Fordow site.

Researchers at academic institutions and think tanks are also assessing the potential impacts of the attacks on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Analysts have said that the attacks probably set the nuclear programme back substantially, but not permanently. In particular, Iran could have moved stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium, and perhaps some enrichment centrifuges, elsewhere. David Albright, a nuclear policy specialist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington DC, spoke to Nature about what researchers know.

How do you assess the impact of the bombings on Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

There aren’t many researchers who are able to assess the impact of the bombings. We have decades of experience with the Iranian nuclear programme, so we know their facilities and activities very well. And we have great access to satellite imagery — which we have to buy. We try to buy some every day. And we utilize analysts who have decades of experience to analyze these images. We also have lots of contacts with governments, and we have colleagues who also have contacts with governments.

A lot of the damage is on the surface, so it’s a question of knowing what the building did [in terms of its role in the nuclear program]. We rely on our repository of information about the sites that are attacked. So it’s pretty straightforward.

Obviously, more problematic is the underground sites. When we initially assessed Israel’s bombing of Natanz, three days later I saw a very small crater above the underground hall. I could work out and link it to a type of Earth-penetrator weapon that Israel is known to have. It would leave a really small crater when it went in, and the damage would be underground. The United States bombed it with a much more powerful Earth penetrator. So damage is probably more extensive.

How and when will we know for sure the extent of the damage?

As nuclear experts, we’d like to see this done with diplomatic agreements, where Iran would allow intrusive inspections into its programme. If that does not happen, then it’s the job of US and Israeli intelligence to assess the damage. They’re looking at communications intercepts, or trying to recruit people on the inside to reveal information.

Would there be radioactive materials detected outside Natanz, Esfahan and Fordow if the attacks were successful?

So far, the IAEA reports no such leaks. And it appears that Iran had moved the enriched uranium stockpiles in the days before the bombings. The United States has said that the target of its bombings was the facilities, so they understand they are not getting at the nuclear material.

Can shockwaves damage enrichment facilities even without a direct hit?

Shockwaves can cause a lot of damage. They will push against the centrifuges, and if they’re spinning, it can cause the rotor inside to crash against the wall. It’s anyone’s guess how much is destroyed without additional information. But the idea of the US bombing was that Israel may not have done enough damage.

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