Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) scientists have built the world’s first automated cyborg insect “factory line”. Supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), this new prototype robotic system automates the attachment of miniature electronic backpacks on the back of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, turning them into insect-hybrid robots. This new assembly method significantly reduces preparation time and human error, marking a big step towards large-scale deployment of insect-hybrid robots in complex environments for search and rescue efforts in disaster zones. Led by Professor Hirotaka Sato from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at NTU Singapore, the automated system can attach the electronic “backpacks” to Madagascar hissing cockroaches in just 1 minute and 8 seconds per insect. This is about 60 times faster than the traditional manual process dependent on trained operators, which often takes more than an hour. When processing four insects, the system completed all assemblies in under 8 minutes, about 30 times quicker than manual methods.

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the July 2025 Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking highlights the concept of “Humane Artificial Intelligence,” examining how AI can support human flourishing across contexts including healthcare, education, peacekeeping, and daily digital interactions.

New research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Turku reveals that female gorillas make strategic decisions about when to take risks and challenge powerful groupmates. The study found that 42 percent of aggressive interactions originated from lower and targeted higher ranks - more than expected. Among females of different reproductive states, pregnant females took the greatest risks by targeting more powerful group members, highlighting a link between energetic needs and risk-taking. Females targeted more powerful groupmates when there were more males in the group, potentially protecting females, but they targeted less powerful groupmates when there were more females in the group, suggesting that females prefer to target weaker opponents when given the option. These findings suggest that animals can adapt their competitive behaviour and risk-aversion according to the social context and their individual needs.

The question “What is the meaning in life?”, asked for millennia, is one of the central questions of philosophy. There has been a growing movement to approach this question by carefully analyzing the “meaning in life.” Now, Professor Masahiro Morioka of Waseda University has proposed a new idea: to explore “meaning in life” as a kind of geographical landscape experienced when a person tries to engage with their life with a certain attitude or intention.

Once an electoral candidate is in the lead, the public views them as the winner. If the candidate then loses, fraud seems a likely explanation, and even the winner’s supporters might be inclined to be suspicious about the final result. This is because of the cumulative redundancy bias (CRB). The CRB is a cognitive effect that makes it difficult for us to ignore information that we have already processed, even if the previously processed information is redundant to the most recent observation. “This effect plays a major role in the communication of election results in the USA in particular,” explains Dr. Moritz Ingendahl from the Social Cognition Lab at Ruhr University Bochum with regard to the presidential election in 2020. The researchers report their findings in the journal Psychological Science from July 24, 2025.

Self-disclosure is vital for communication. In the present century, various innovative forms of communication have emerged, including video-conferencing and embodied virtual reality (VR). In this context, researchers from Japan have recently demonstrated that embodied VR, especially with unrealistic avatars, facilitates the revelation of personal feelings. Moreover, female-to-female pairing had the highest self-disclosure score, underlining the role of gender.