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The latest annual impact report from the Global Foodbanking Network — a nonprofit that works with regional food banks in more than 50 countries to fight hunger — found that its member organizations provided 1.7 billion meals to more than 40 million people in 2023. According to the nonprofit, this redistribution of food, much of which was recovered from farms or wholesale produce markets, mitigated an estimated 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

These numbers reflect an ongoing, high demand for food banks. Last year, the Global Foodbanking Network, or GFN, served almost as many people as it did in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic sent food insecurity soaring. In order to respond to this pressing need in their communities, many of GFN’s member organizations have invested in agricultural recovery, working to rescue food from farmers before it gets thrown out.

Their efforts show how food banks can serve the dual purpose of addressing hunger and protecting the environment. By intercepting perfectly good, edible food before it winds up in the landfill, food banks help mitigate harmful greenhouse gas emissions created by food loss and waste.

“There is always food that is unnecessarily wasted,” said Emily Broad Leib, the founding director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, who has worked with GFN before but was not involved in the recent study. All that unnecessary waste means “there is ongoing need for scaling up food banks and food-recovery operations,” Broad Leib added.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations found that 13 percent of food was lost while it was making its way from producers to retailers in 2022. Subsequently, 19 percent was wasted by retailers, restaurants, and households, according to a recent analysis from the United Nations Environment Program. The world’s households alone let 1 billion meals go to waste each day. The scope of food wasted around the world has been shockingly high for years: In 2011, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations released a study that suggested roughly one-third of food produced globally is never eaten.

Food waste at this scale comes with massive planetary impacts. When food goes uneaten, all of the emissions associated with growing, transporting, and processing it are rendered unnecessary. Furthermore, when food rots in landfills, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that 58 percent of methane emissions from U.S. landfills come from food waste. Globally, food loss and waste have been estimated to be responsible for 8 percent to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing them is essential for achieving climate targets.

Food banks can play a special role in that reduction by rescuing more food before it’s lost and redirecting it to people in need. “Our members have been building out their redistribution capacity,” said Lisa Moon, the president and CEO of GFN. “I think that was our first challenge in the face of this rising need: How do we as an organization capture more supply?”

In order to do this, food banks within GFN member organizations have been coordinating more closely with farmers to redirect surplus food from landfills. GFN defines surplus food as food from commercial streams that was grown for human consumption but that, for some reason or another, cannot be sold. So-called “ugly” produce — misshapen food that never makes it to the grocery store because of its looks — falls into this category.

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Google’s flagship Pixel smartphone line touts security as a centerpiece feature, offering guaranteed software updates for seven years and running stock Android that’s meant to be free of third-party add-ons and bloatware. On Thursday, though, researchers from the mobile device security firm iVerify are publishing findings on an Android vulnerability that seems to have been present in every Android release for Pixel since September 2017 and could expose the devices to manipulation and takeover.

The issue relates to a software package called “Showcase.apk” that runs at the system level and lurks invisible to users. The application was developed by the enterprise software company Smith Micro for Verizon as a mechanism for putting phones into a retail store demo mode—it is not Google software. Yet for years, it has been in each Android release for Pixel and has deep system privileges, including remote code execution and remote software installation. Even riskier, the application is designed to download a configuration file over an unencrypted HTTP web connection that iVerify researchers say could be hijacked by an attacker to take control of the application and then the entire victim device.

Verify disclosed its findings to Google at the beginning of May, and the tech giant has not yet released a fix for the issue. Google spokesperson Ed Fernandez tells WIRED in a statement that Showcase “is no longer being used” by Verizon, and Android will remove Showcase from all supported Pixel devices with a software update “in the coming weeks.” He added that Google has not seen evidence of active exploitation and that the app is not present in the new Pixel 9 series devices that Google announced this week.

In response to WIRED’s inquiry about Showcase’s vulnerability, Verizon spokesperson George Koroneos says, “The APK in question was used for retail demos and is no longer in use.” Smith Micro said in a statement that, “The APK in question was previously licensed to Verizon for in-store retail demos, and is no longer in use.”

“I’ve seen a lot of Android vulnerabilities, and this one is unique in a few ways and quite troubling,” says Rocky Cole, chief operating officer of iVerify and a former US National Security Agency analyst. “When Showcase.apk runs, it has the ability to take over the phone. But the code is, frankly, shoddy. It raises questions about why third-party software that runs with such high privileges so deep in the operating system was not tested more deeply. It seems to me that Google has been pushing bloatware to Pixel devices around the world.”

iVerify researchers discovered the application after the company’s threat-detection scanner flagged an unusual Google Play Store app validation on a user’s device. The customer, big data analytics company Palantir, worked with iVerify to investigate

Showcase.apk and disclose the findings to Google. Palantir chief information security officer Dane Stuckey says that the discovery and what he describes as Google’s slow, opaque response has prompted Palantir to phase out not just Pixel phones, but all Android devices across the company.

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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

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We long ago blew past any meaningful controls on political giving in American elections. Now we should focus on the rules governing political spending, which are in equally terrible shape. For that we can blame the Trump campaign and the federal government’s feeble enforcement efforts.

Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent.

Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign went into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates. This year’s campaign disclosures are shaping up to be the same. Donors big and small give their hard-earned dollars to candidates with the expectation they will be spent on direct efforts to win votes. They deserve better.

During the 2020 election, almost $516 million of the over $780 million spent by the Trump campaign was directed to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware-based private company created in 2018 that masked the identities of who ultimately received donor dollars, according to a complaint filed with the F.E.C. by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. How A.M.M.C. spent the money was a mystery even to Mr. Trump’s campaign team, according to news reports shortly after the election.

All but 18 of the 150 largest expenditures on a Trump campaign’s 2020 F.E.C. report went to A.M.M.C. None of the expenses were itemized or otherwise explained aside from anodyne descriptions including “placed media,” “SMS advertising” and “online advertising.” F.E.C. rules require candidates to fully and accurately disclose the final recipients of their campaign disbursements, which is usually understood to include when payments are made through a vendor such as A.M.M.C. This disclosure is intended to assure donors their contributions are used for campaign expenses. Currently, neither voters nor law enforcement can know whether any laws were broken.

A.M.M.C.’s first president was reported to be Lara Trump, the wife of Mr. Trump’s son Eric. The New York Times reported that A.M.M.C. had a treasurer who was also the chief financial officer of Mr. Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner signed off on the plan to set up A.M.M.C., and one of Eric Trump’s deputies from the Trump Organization was involved in running it.

Ms. Trump is now a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which, soon after her arrival, announced it would link up with the Trump campaign for joint fund-raising. The joint entity prioritizes a PAC that pays Mr. Trump’s legal fees over the R.N.C., The Associated Press has reported, making assurances from Mr. Trump’s campaign co-manager that R.N.C. funds wouldn’t be used to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills seem more hollow.

This election, the Trump campaign and four of its PACs have paid Red Curve Solutions, another private company, at least $18 million. The Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve appears to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills and then gets reimbursed by the PACs. (The law is murky on what types of legal bills can be paid by campaigns, but some are allowed.) The head of Red Curve also serves as the treasurer for the Trump campaign as well as the affiliated PACs.

What percentage of donor contributions go to lawyers defending Mr. Trump? It’s impossible to know.

In June, NBC revealed the existence of a new mystery company, called Launchpad Strategies. Launchpad took in almost $15 million in Trump political cash via the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and the Trump National Committee. Little is known about this new group. It was created in 2023 and the Trump campaign says it is related to fund-raising. We don’t know who owns it, who runs it, or where the $15 million went.

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Baptiste Virot

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Alone, Tyrannosaurus rex sniffs the humid Cretaceous air, scenting a herd of Triceratops grazing beyond the tree line. As the predator scans the floodplain, its vision suddenly snaps into focus. A single Triceratops has broken off from the herd and wandered within striking distance. Standing motionless, the T. rex formulates a plan of attack, anticipating the precise angle at which it must intersect its target before the Triceratops can regain the safety of the herd. The afternoon silence is shattered as the predator crashes though the low branches at the edge of the forest in hot pursuit.

T. rex has hunted Triceratops in so many books, games, and movies that the encounter has become a cliché. But did a scene like this one ever unfold in real life? Would T. rex identify its prey by vision or by smell? Would the Triceratops be warned by a loudly cracking branch, or remain oblivious because it was unable to locate the source of the sound? Could T. rex plan its attack like a cat, or would it lash out indiscriminately like a shark?

Ever since dinosaurs were first described in the early 1800s, paleontologists have debated their intelligence, sensory capabilities, and behavioral complexity. Early investigations relied on natural endocasts, which are casts formed when sediment fills the empty space in a skull. These casts replicate the shape of the braincase’s contents in life. The conventional wisdom long held that all dinosaurs had tiny brains and therefore unsophisticated behaviors. Perhaps the most amusing example of this view of dinosaur intelligence came from 19th-century paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, who hypothesized that the armored dinosaur Stegosaurus had a second brain near its rump to supplement the walnut-size brain in its skull. This idea was based on a vaguely braincase-shaped expansion of the spinal canal near the dinosaur’s pelvis. The mysterious expansion is now thought to represent a glycogen body—a structure that stores energy-rich glucose and occurs in a similar position in some modern birds.

Present-day paleontologists remain unconvinced that Stegosaurus was capable of much higher reasoning. But in recent years, scientists’ appraisal of the cognitive capacity of some other dinosaurs has improved, particularly that of members of the theropod lineage that gave rise to birds. With the advent of new technologies, such as micro computed tomography (CT) scanning, we can now reconstruct the volume and surface topography of brains without having to depend entirely on rare natural endocasts, greatly expanding the number of species available to study. Advanced imaging is also teaching us how dinosaurs might have used their brains. We now have the tools needed to answer the question of how long-­vanished animals perceived the world around them and what really happened when predator met prey in the age of dinosaurs.

Where did T. rex fall on the intelligence spectrum between dim-witted Stegosaurus and tool-using ravens? In a high-profile paper published last fall, neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel of Vanderbilt University suggested that a T. rex was about as smart as a baboon—a startling conclusion because primates, with their large brains, are some of the cleverest animals around. Having spent long hours pondering the way brain volume scales with body size and what this relation means for brain function in extinct dinosaurs and birds, we were intrigued to see the headlines about this study. Superficially, the brain of the tyrant lizard king looks fairly puny compared with its body size. Weighing in at less than a pound, the brain of this six-ton dinosaur is diminutive next to the 11-pound brain of the African elephant, which, despite being the largest living terrestrial mammal has a smaller body than T. rex.

Herculano-Houzel argued that the relation be­­tween brain size and body size is unimportant when it comes to intelligence. What matters, she said, is the raw number of neurons in the telencephalon, a region in the front of the brain that includes not only the olfactory bulbs that process smell but also the cerebrum, where higher cognitive functions such as decision-making occur. Scientists previously had only an imprecise understanding of how many neurons were present in vertebrate brains because in different species they can be more or less densely packed in different parts of the brain.

A T. rex with the intelligence of a primate would be terrifying. We think some caveats are in order, however.

Herculano-Houzel and Roberto Lent of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro invented a technique for counting neurons called the isotropic fractionator method. It uses special chemicals to dissolve a brain, essentially making brain soup. A fluorescent dye stains the nuclei of neurons so that they glow and are easily visible. Researchers can precisely count the glowing nuclei in a small, homogeneous sample of the soup and then extrapolate the total number of neurons in the living brain. Using this method, Herculano-­Houzel and her colleagues calculated that human brains have approximately 100 billion neurons, confirming earlier estimates.

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Beth Zaiken

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About one-third of the global population, around 3 billion people, don’t have access to the Internet or have poor connections because of infrastructure limitations, economic disparities, and geographic isolation.

Today’s satellites and ground-based networks leave communications gaps where, because of geography, setting up traditional ground-based communications equipment would be too expensive.

High-altitude platform stations – telecommunications equipment positioned high in the air, on uncrewed balloons, airships, gliders, and airplanes – could increase social and economic equality by filling internet connectivity gaps in ground and satellite coverage. This could allow more people to participate fully in the digital age.

One of us, Mohamed-Slim Alouini, is an electrical engineer who contributed to an experiment that showed it is possible to provide high data rates and ubiquitous 5G coverage from the stratosphere. The stratosphere is the second lowest layer of the atmosphere, ranging from 4 to 30 miles above the Earth. Commercial planes usually fly in the lower part of the stratosphere. The experiment measured signals between platform stations and users on the ground in three scenarios: a person staying in one place, a person driving a car, and a person operating a boat.

My colleagues measured how strong the signal was in relation to interference and background noise levels. This is one of the measures of network reliability. The results showed that the platform stations can support high-data-rate applications such as streaming 4K resolution videos and can cover 15 to 20 times the area of standard terrestrial towers.

Early attempts by Facebook and Google to commercially deploy platform stations were unsuccessful. But recent investments, technological improvements, and interest from traditional aviation companies and specialized aerospace startups may change the equation.

The goal is global connectivity, a cause that brought the platform stations idea recognition in the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Top 10 Emerging Technologies report. The international industry initiative HAPS Alliance, which includes academic partners, is also pushing toward that goal.

Fast, Cost-Effective, Flexible

Platform stations would be faster, more cost-effective, and more flexible than satellite-based systems.

Because they keep communications equipment closer to Earth than satellites, the stations could offer stronger, higher-capacity signals. This would enable real-time communications speedy enough to communicate with standard smartphones, high-resolution capabilities for imaging tasks, and greater sensitivity for sensing applications. They transmit data via free-space optics, or light beams, and large-scale antenna array systems, which can send large amounts of data quickly.

Satellites can be vulnerable to eavesdropping or jamming when their orbits bring them over adversarial countries. However, platform stations remain within the airspace of a single country, which reduces that risk.

High-altitude platform stations are also easier to put in place than satellites, which have high launch and maintenance costs. The regulatory requirements and compliance procedures required to secure spots in the stratosphere are likely to be simpler than the complex international laws governing satellite orbits. Platform stations are also easier to upgrade, so improvements could be deployed more quickly.

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(Credit: Thales Alenia Space via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

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Doris Tsao is the 2024 recipient of The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for her research on facial recognition. Her work has provided insights into the complex workings of the brain and has the potential to advance our understanding of perception and cognition.

Megan Hall: When we see a friend’s face, how do we instantly know who they are? Doris Tsao looks closely at the brain patterns of monkeys to help unravel this mystery. This year, she received The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with Nancy Kanwisher and Winrich Freiwald, for identifying a specialized region of the brain where facial recognition happens.

Scientific American Custom Media, in partnership with The Kavli Prize, spoke with Doris to learn more about her discoveries and how she’s using them to unlock a bigger question – how do our brains represent the world?

As a kid, Doris Tsao was surrounded by science. Her mother was a computer programmer and her father is a mathematician.

Doris Tsao: I always had grew up with the sense that being a scientist was the most noble life calling. That really came from my parents talking to them. It was part of our family.

Megan Hall: But Doris didn’t think she’d be a scientist.

Doris Tsao: I didn’t think of myself as particularly interested in science. I like math. My parents gave me geometry problems, and I loved that. I certainly didn’t think about the brain when I was a kid. I liked to play. I played with Barbie dolls. I loved to read biographies.

Megan Hall: That all changed when she was in sixth grade.

Doris Tsao: I remember just waking up one morning and, suddenly, for no real reason, wondering if space is infinite or not. Because it seemed like if space is infinite, that seems incredible. I’d never thought about infinity before. And if it wasn’t, how could that be? Right? So, I just kept going in these loops, and I remember obsessing about this for days.

Megan Hall: She revisited this question in high school as she started reading about artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Books by philosophers like Immanuel Kant made her think about how our minds perceive space. Why do you think that question gripped you so much?

Doris Tsao: It’s kind of funny, I always thought I was special, but my kids, they’re like six years old and they ask me that nowadays. So, I think it’s such a natural question. Maybe every kid wonders about this at some point.

Megan Hall: But Doris kept wondering about it. Still, she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what she was looking for. She says she went to the California Institute of Technology for college because she liked the idea of being a scientist.

Doris Tsao: And I had read all these books about the brain, and so on. So, I had romantic notions about that, but it was like sort of a fantasy about what my life could be like rather than motivated in a question about the world.

Megan Hall: Then something pretty common happened. She was on a camping trip with her dad and he asked her to proofread one of his academic papers. His first language is Chinese, so…

Doris Tsao: He would give me his papers to correct English mistakes. And I did this starting in middle school, high school, and I had no idea what his papers were – they were like gobbledygook – but I could figure out that the verb was not agreeing with the subject.

Megan Hall: But this time was different. With her training from Caltech, Doris actually understood what he was writing about.

Doris Tsao: It was kind of astonishing to me, like, the idea.

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As I sink into the plush, cream-coloured leather recliner, a glass of Champagne in hand and hiking boots raised, I’m ready for a three-hour spectacle where nature takes center stage. But the stage isn’t just in front of me – it’s all around.

I’m not in a theater; I’m in Switzerland aboard the GoldenPass Express: a state-of-the-art panoramic train where floor-to-ceiling windows reveal stunning views of the Swiss countryside – from turquoise lakes that mirror towering mountain peaks to rolling meadows dotted with storybook chalets – that rival the grandest cinematic experiences. Sitting in the nine-seat Prestige Class carriage in a specially designed heated, swiveling chair feels both private and personal – as if I’ve got the snowcapped Alps, wildflower-laced pastures, and bell-adorned cows to myself.

Opened in December 2022 and fully relaunched in June 2023 after addressing problems with track wear, The GoldenPass Express (GPX) is one of Europe’s newest (and most luxurious) high-tech trains. Its 115km journey follows a medieval trade route connecting Interlaken’s glaciers to Montreux’s terraced vineyards, and thanks to a technological innovation, the GPX allows travelers to take one of the world’s most scenic train routes without transferring, as passengers did previously. The GPX is one of five premium panoramic trains within the Swiss Travel System. Individual tickets range from 56-145 Swiss francs (roughly £50-130). It’s also included in the Swiss Travel Pass (starting from 244 Swiss francs – roughly £219 – and children under 16 ride free of charge) which offers unlimited access to all public transportation (trains, trams, buses and passenger ferries), 50% off mountain railways and gondolas, and free admission to more than 500 museums.

The train’s midnight-blue exterior and classic design evoke the bygone era of the original Orient Express that still connects Paris to Istanbul. Inside, the interior is crisp and cutting-edge, the Prestige Class specially designed chairs are by Ferrari-designer firm Pininfarina and are the only such rail seats in Europe. Need lower back support? There’s a button for that. Tired feet? Elevate your legs. Feeling chilly? Just press the seat warmer. Want a different view? Simply pivot your seat to face the direction of your choice. Just don’t fall asleep!

But what truly sets the GPX apart from other luxury trains is something you can’t see: it can seamlessly jump between tracks of different gauges and voltages.

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(Credit: MOB)

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John McFall, a Paralympic sprinter who later became an orthopedic and trauma surgeon, has had an esteemed career fueled by his intense drive and curiosity. Now he’s adding yet another acclaimed career to the mix: astronaut.

Following a serious motorcycle accident when he was 19, doctors amputated McFall’s right leg above the knee. With the use of a prosthetic leg, which he has worn ever since, he won a bronze medal in the 100-meter sprint event at the 2008 Paralympic Games, where he represented the U.K. In 2022, after a competitive selection process, the European Space Agency (ESA) inducted McFall into its astronaut corps, making him its first physically disabled member, or parastronaut. McFall was specifically chosen to participate in ESA’s groundbreaking “Fly!” feasibility study, which aims to systematically assess the barriers that exist in spaceflight for individuals with physical disabilities. The Fly! study is set to conclude this autumn. McFall has yet to fly in space, let alone to be assigned a slot on any upcoming mission, but that could soon change.

He now awaits his chance to launch and continues his training. Scientific American spoke with McFall about the process of becoming an astronaut and the unique physiological challenges uncovered in the latest feasibility study.

Why did you apply to participate in this study? What aspects of your background made you feel particularly suited for this project?

What was interesting about the application for this study was that there was never any guarantee of a flight to space. The notice was just for a candidate with a physical disability to participate in a feasibility study, with ESA’s goal being to hopefully create an opportunity to fly someone with such a disability to space. For me, it was like, “What have I got to lose?” I didn’t have going to space on my radar at all, but a friend of mine sent me a message suggesting that I look into it. I saw it as a bold and innovative opportunity, and it’s commendable that ESA is the first space agency to take on such a brave initiative. In the back of my mind, I thought that if I could get selected, this would tick all the boxes for things I love doing in my life: being curious while challenging myself academically, physically, and emotionally.

In terms of my background: As an amputee and surgeon, I know a lot about medicine and my disability specifically—especially what is and isn’t feasible with my condition. As an athlete, I know that I’m fit and physically capable—probably an ideal person to demonstrate how capable people with physical disabilities can be. I thought I might be an ideal candidate to help answer this question.

It’s somewhat surprising that we haven’t had someone with a physical disability in space yet. Before doing this study, why do you think other groups hadn’t tried to do this?

I don’t think there is a definitive answer. If you look at the history of human spaceflight, especially in the last 20 years, the space station has been inhabited with a constant human presence since the year 2000. In the first decade [after 2000], essentially until the end of the shuttle era, the space station was still being built. We were also learning a lot about long-term human habitation in orbit. Around 2014 or 2015 we started gathering good long-term data on the effects of living in low-Earth orbit with microgravity on astronauts. Since then, the idea of whether this would be possible for someone with a physical disability has been floating around. Dave Parker, then director of human and robotic space exploration for ESA, went to all the ESA member states to get approval for selecting someone with a physical disability in 2021. It takes time, but I think the idea has been there for a while. Now that we’ve learned more about human spaceflight and how the body responds to prolonged microgravity, we’re ready to move to the next step.

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Conventional wisdom has it that only children are smarter and less sociable. Parents, freed from the shackles of constantly settling sibling disputes, devote more time and money to the singleton, exposing them to a greater variety of higher-level activities (there’s a term for what happens when you spread that time and money over more kids: resource dilution). Conversely, since those only children never have to share a toy, a bedroom, or a parent’s attention, it is assumed they miss out on that critical life skill of forever-having-to-get-along.

But are their actual brains different?

Jiang Qiu, a professor of psychology at Southwest University in Chongqing, China, and director of the Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality in the ministry of education, led a team of Chinese researchers that sought to answer this question with more than 250 college-aged Chinese students. They used standard tests of intelligence, creativity, and personality type to measure their creativity, IQ, and agreeableness. They also studied their brains, to see if growing up as an only child affects the structure of them. It did.

On the behavioral tests, only children displayed no differences in terms of IQ, but higher levels of flexibility—one measure of creativity—and lower levels of agreeableness than kids with siblings.

The brain scans then confirmed these findings, showing significant differences between only children and non-only children in the brain regions associated with flexibility, imagination, and planning (supramarginal gyrus) and with agreeableness and emotional regulation (medial prefrontal cortex). The scans also revealed differences in the parahippocampal gyrus, which helps manage emotional and mood regulation.

The study concluded that the family size we choose, or end up with, affects not only the environment in which children grow up, but also the architecture of their brains. The research was published in Brain Imaging and Behavior.

The idea that only children are somehow deficient was started 125 years ago by Granville Stanley Hall, a leader in the child-study movement, writes Lauren Sandler, author of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joys of Being One. Having worked on the 1896 study “Of Peculiar and Exceptional Children,” Hall cast only children as “oddballs” as “permanent misfits,” descriptions that have stuck over the years with remarkable persistence. “Being an only child is a disease in itself,” he claimed.

There is ample evidence suggesting the stereotypes of the “lonely only” are wrong. Toni Falbo, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and research methodologist Denise Polit undertook a meta-study looking at only children and intelligence and personality. They found that only children, along with firstborns and people who have only one sibling, score higher IQ marks and achieve more, but aren’t markedly different personality-wise (context matters: an only child in an unhappy household may be disagreeable; so might a child with five siblings in a poor family).

Jiang and his co-authors hypothesized a few reasons for their findings. Creativity —defined as having original ideas that have value—is strongly influenced by everything from family structure and parental views, to interactions and expectations (one older study showed that children were more likely to excel if they had a mother whose abilities matched her expectations). Parents of only children may interact more with their children, and seek out more opportunities to extend their children’s creativity. A parent might also have higher expectations of an only child, or they might give the child more independence, and some studies have shown that independence fosters creativity.

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Creative genius or budding misanthrope? Photo by Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar.

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