Literacy rates in Sub-Saharan Africa remain low, despite increased primary school enrollment. In rural Mozambique, only 3% of children possess grade-level reading skills. Poor learning outcomes in lower grades are a barrier to further expanding school enrollment at higher grade levels. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explores whether a teacher training program and reading camps could improve literacy levels among elementary school children.

A newly-discovered species of a large, crocodile-relative predator has been described via a remarkably well-preserved fossil from Argentina, according to a study published August 27, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Fernando Novas from Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”, Argentina, and colleagues.

A new survey-based study suggests that the “unhappiness hump”—a widely documented rise in worry, stress, and depression with age that peaks in midlife and then declines—may have disappeared, perhaps due to declining mental health among younger people. David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on August 27, 2025.

Breathwork while listening to music may induce a blissful state in practitioners, accompanied by changes in blood flow to emotion-processing brain regions, according to a study published August 27, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Amy Amla Kartar from the Colasanti Lab in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, U.K., and colleagues. These changes occur even while the body’s stress response may be activated and are associated with reporting reduced negative emotions.

Gaps are emerging in the provision of local news across Australia, but embracing community driven content could be key to improving the viability of local news.