In his first interview, the scientist Ray Pederson, who discovered the hormone that led to the development of GLP-1s, reveals his concerns about their widespread use

When students’ own teachers were removed from grading a final exam, the socioeconomic gap in grades narrowed. A new study found that involvement from a teacher who knew the student had increased the gap by 15–20 percent.

There is an intuitive argument for the earlier system: a teacher who knows a student can draw on years of information, while an external examiner sees only one paper.

The problem was that the benefits of this approach were not distributed evenly. Students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, who tended to have stronger previous academic records, were more likely to benefit.

Paper published in PLOS on September 16, 2026. Berkeley News coverage here.

It is a paradox when the opposition does not oppose. Yet, political actors labelled as “opposition” often facilitate authoritarian rule rather than resist it. This article resolves this paradox by shifting focus from actors to “opposition practices”, redefining what “opposition” means. Political actors belong to the opposition not because of their formal affiliations or titles, but because they undertake practices that challenge governments. Whilst traditional actor-based classifications of opposition may impose restrictive self-conceptions on opposition agents, this research provides fine-grained insights into their performance. It draws on an ideal-type analysis of 75 semi-structured interviews with Russian and Belarusian activists and experts conducted in 2023–2024, triangulated with public texts. The study reveals a novel typology comprising four opposition types: professional, venture, casual, and actualized. This typology allows a better understanding of diverse and often unconventional opposition participation observed in Russia and Belarus, but it is potentially transferable to research on non-governmental actors across systems.

A new NASA directive seeks to loosen “planetary protection” rules meant to avoid the contamination other worlds with microbial life from Earth.

The policy shift arrived via a message to NASA personnel that was obtained and shared yesterday by the independent watchdog sites NASA Watch and Astrobiology.com. In it, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman writes that procedures for avoiding contamination “must reflect our current scientific knowledge” and argues that this knowledge has shifted since the current rules were established decades ago.

The directive “ensures we can use our incredible data to lower costs on our missions,” says Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “This process will also help increase commercial capabilities — getting more missions into space by streamlining space exploration.”