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Though we take this capability for granted today, it was a breakthrough at the time. Before this, it was impossible to transmit high-quality images over long distances. Kapany figured out how to “bend light” to send these images through thin glass strands called fibers. Bundling many fibers together could make cables that sent images at the speed of light.

Kapany first coined the term “fiber optics” in a 1960 publication in the magazine Scientific American. It was around this time that he had moved to the United States and founded an optics technology company. Kapany became an expert and champion for the technology as it expanded. Today, fiber-optic cables cross oceans and traverse landscapes to connect the world. Without it, there likely wouldn’t be high-speed Internet for playing online games or doing homework.

So how can you tell when photos and videos are real? Here are a few tips.

• Study the details. If the photo shows a person, do their fingers look right? Are their ears the same shape as in other photos? Does the face look like the person, or are a few features different?
• Study the words. AI isn’t very good at generating words in a photo. Sometimes a street sign or the words on a person’s clothing will be misspelled or won’t make sense.
• Study the background. If a famous person is shown in a setting that seems unrealistic, the photo may be fake. Did Ariana Grande really pose for a photo with flamingos? 
• Study the crispness. If a video seems a little blurry, or if the person’s voice and mouth movements don’t match, it may not be real.
• Read the comments. Sometimes viewers will point out when an image or video is AI, and how they know. These claims aren’t always correct, but if a lot of people have evidence that it’s AI, they may be right.
• Use reverse image search. Google and other search engines have a “reverse image search” capability. This lets you upload the image to learn who created it and where else it is being used. If the image is being used by trustworthy websites like the Associated Press or Britannica, it’s probably real. But if the image appears only on social media accounts, then its authenticity may be more questionable.

AI is getting cleverer. But so far, there are still ways to keep ahead of it!

In just 25 years, the MSB has gathered more than 2.5 billion seeds from nearly 100 countries. The seeds are stored in giant underground vaults that could protect the seeds from floods or blasts that could potentially harm them. But why go through all this effort for the humble seed?

“People often think that the vault is for a distant, doomsday scenario,” said seed scientist Owen Blake in an interview with National Geographic Kids. “But many of the seeds here are already urgently needed to restore degraded habitat!” The goal for these seeds is to restore destroyed wildlife habitats. If the destruction is big enough, these areas will need seeds to regrow lost plants.

According to the survey, the young people who volunteered felt connected to their communities and more personally resilient, meaning they feel “they can handle whatever comes their way.” 

These survey results come at a time when other research shows that young people are feeling socially disconnected. Young people who volunteer could be trying to make meaningful in-person connections.

“Service is a powerful developmental tool for young people’s career readiness, connection and resilience,” said Greg Weatherford II, who works for the Allstate Foundation. “When youth are trusted to lead and given real opportunities to make an impact, the benefits multiply.”

Kawakami came up with the concept of chindogu to challenge the idea that all inventions should be things people want to buy. 

“The one big difference is that while most inventions are aimed at making life more convenient, chindogu have greater disadvantages than [existing] products, so people can’t sell them,” said Kawakami in a 2002 interview with magazine J@pan, Inc. “They’re invention dropouts.”

Rather than always driving to be productive, Kawakami believes there should be a creative category for people who just enjoy solving simple problems with absurd solutions. According to Kawakami, creating something that is “unuseless” (neither useful nor useless) is still meaningful.

Based on the evidence, the research team made some hypotheses. The first is that a squirrel misjudged the jumping distance between trees, so it fell into some freshly poured concrete below. The other explanation is a hawk caught the squirrel and then accidentally dropped it. Either way, once the squirrel’s body landed, it made a lasting imprint when the concrete hardened. However, the cement did not preserve the fine fur of the squirrel’s bushy tail, which is why the imprint looked so rat-like.

To study this, scientist Shany Dror put 10 family dogs to the test. Dror had the dogs’ owners hold a new dog toy, like a stuffed armadillo, and describe it in detail to another person while their pet watched. The owner also had to use the new toy’s name, “armadillo,” in the conversation. Later, the owner would put the armadillo in a toy-filled room and ask the pup to retrieve it using the name of the toy. Seven out of the 10 dogs in the test were able to return with the armadillo, proving they could learn through eavesdropping and context clues. 

“This is the first time that we see a specific group of dogs that are able to learn labels from overhearing interactions,” said Dror in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Dror is an animal trainer and a scientist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Austria.

Parrots and apes are the other animals shown to learn through overhearing social interactions. The latest research highlights that the animals around us may be paying closer attention than we realize. 

While Liu’s serenity may have helped her win, it also led to an even bigger breakthrough: a change in the conversation around mental health and pressure in elite sports.

Liu skated competitively from a young age and even went to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing at just 16, placing sixth overall. Shortly after this, she unexpectedly announced her retirement, saying she was burned out and yearned to live a normal teenage life. For two years, Liu focused on studying, traveling, new hobbies, and spending time with family and friends. 

Almost as unexpectedly as her retirement, Liu returned to skating in 2024. Now skating on her own terms, Liu said she is focusing on her love for the sport instead of trying to be the best.

“‘[This is] a better version’ of me,” she said in an interview with Olympics.com. “I chose to be here…. When I started when I was five, I had no idea what I was getting into…. I was able to come back and choose my own destiny.”

The rangers are all Batak, an Indigenous group of Sumatra. The Batak have a strong cultural connection to the Sumatran tiger, which they call opung, or grandparent, in their language. Calling the tiger opung stems from Batak legends in which tigers become friends and family members.

Nayla Azmi created Nuraga Bhumi with the expectation that local Indigenous women who are strongly connected to the land and local communities can have a positive impact on wildlife conservation. Unfortunately, these women are often left out of conservation efforts, she said in an interview with The Guardian.

“We can’t just sit around while there is rampant poaching or while our opung live in cages,” said Azmi.

Nima celebrated each success on social media with the hashtag #SherpaPower. The Sherpas are a mountain-dwelling ethnic group that lives in Nepal, India, and the region of China called Tibet. Because of their connection to high-altitude living, many Sherpas work in the mountaineering industry as climbing guides. As a result, there’s a common misconception that the word Sherpa refers to someone who helps mountaineering stars. This misunderstanding has led to the false belief that Sherpa people are merely support staff, even though they climb alongside their clients.      

Nima is among those helping to change these stereotypes. Increasingly, Sherpas are breaking climbing records and running their own guiding businesses. Nima says his dream is to train more young Nepalis to be adventure heroes, while also honoring past Sherpa climbers who never received recognition.

“The generation before us, they are the pioneers, [and] we’re climbing the route that they established,” said Nima in an interview with CNN. “But I’m just so happy that I’m living in this moment right now, [because] so much is happening in the world of mountaineering. And as a younger generation, we’ll always try to do something better.”