Every Rosh Hashanah, annual reports are released focused on birth rates, the average number of children per family, and other population growth data. However, there’s another side to these statistics: experiences of involuntary childlessness, in which people who wish to be parents are unable to for medical, social, or institutional reasons. A new study reveals that these experiences are far more widespread than commonly thought, especially among the LGBTQ+ community. The researchers note that an international comparison of this phenomenon is important, as countries vary widely in the degree of encouragement they offer for childbearing, the assistance they provide to prospective parents, and the barriers they place that can impede the path to parenthood. The current study compared responses from participants in the United States with those in Israel.

Banana production worldwide is threatened by narrow genetic diversity, pests, diseases, and climate pressures.

Grapevines worldwide face heavy losses from fungal diseases, with white rot posing one of the greatest threats. 

A research team led by Osaka Metropolitan University explored the association between blood vitamin D metabolites and cognitive function.

Using pictures to help middle school students visualize science terms could be the key to boosting vocabulary for all students, including those with learning disabilities who struggle with reading and writing.  

For children with severe lung diseases, transplantation can be the last hope for survival, yet its practice has remained extremely rare worldwide. 

The US Department of Justice's increasing use of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements (D/NPAs) over the past two decades has sparked debate about their merits compared with traditional plea deals, which often result in criminal convictions. As D/NPAs gain traction in the United States and internationally, this study highlights a trade-off: while D/NPAs mitigate harm to innocent stakeholders, they are less effective at deterring future misconduct than traditional prosecutions.

Simple quantum-classical neural networks achieve good results in classifying lesions with fewer computational parameters. Scientists from São Paulo State University demonstrated a hybrid model at an international symposium.