How neuronal circuits achieve credit assignment remains a central unsolved question in systems neuroscience.

Study of 320,000 adults reveals there is no safe level of smoking, with even light smokers facing significantly higher risks of heart disease and early death.

The Israel Defense Forces struck Hamas "terrorist targets" in Gaza on Wednesday following the latest ceasefire violation threatening Israeli troops.

Logical Credal Networks or LCNs were recently introduced as a powerful probabilistic logic framework for representing and reasoning with imprecise knowledge.

Equal contribution; authors are listed in random order.

The grand challenge facing global agriculture today is the need to increase food production to feed a rapidly growing population, amid diminishing natural and human resources and climate pressures. With the global population expected to exceed 9.5 billion by 2050, and with several key resources being depleted (see sidebar), the agricultural community is turning to a digital revolution to secure the future of our food production. Touted Agriculture 4.0, this new movement is deploying digital technologies at scale, including field and aerial sensing, automation, and other smart devices to monitor and track resources and to improve operational efficiency. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are playing a central role in driving this revolution: enabling real-time decision support using spatiotemporal data collected on farms, augmenting human labor with automated decision making and robotics, estimating and forecasting risks due to extreme weather, and aiding in longer-term planning under climate-imposed uncertainties. To propel the development and deployment of AI tools and technologies for U.S. agriculture, since 2020 the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) has made a strategic investment in five AI institutes.

The automaker has taken the covers off its Cayenne Electric and Cayenne Turbo Electric, the most powerful production Porsches ever. But it won't confirm a key AI feature of its first fully electric SUV. In the first nine months of 2025, Porsche's operating profit plummeted by 99 percent compared to the same stint the year before. Profit has tanked for the auto brand with a track record of making billions. The reasons for Porsche's misfortune are no secret.

Google's ultra-private CEO Sundar Pichai is showing me around Googleplex, its California headquarters. A walkway runs along the length of it, passing by a giant dinosaur skeleton, a beach volleyball pitch and dozens of Googlers lunching under the hazy November sun. But it's a laboratory, hidden away at the back of the campus behind some trees, that he is most excited to show me. This is where the invention that Google believes is its secret weapon is being developed. Known as a Tensor Processing Unit (or TPU), it looks like an unassuming little chip but, says Mr Pichai, it will one day power every AI query that goes through Google.

Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers is stepping down from the board at OpenAI, a week after a tranche of emails between him and late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released. Summers said in a statement to the BBC that he was grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress. Summers, who was also once the president of Harvard University, said on Monday that he would be stepping back from public commitments over his ties to Epstein. The recently released emails showed Summers communicated with Epstein until the day before Epstein's 2019 arrest for the alleged sex trafficking of minors. In a statement, the artificial intelligence company said it respected Summers' decision to resign.

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? At least 19 people have been killed and dozens wounded in Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine, according to the country's emergency service. The attack came overnight on Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to arrive in Turkiye, where he hopes to revive talks over ending the war caused by Russia's full-scale invasion two years ago. Effective sanctions and assistance to Ukraine can change this," the president said in a social media post on Wednesday, calling for air defence missile aid from allies.