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.

Researchers at the Champalimaud Foundation have developed a label-free optical imaging method that can distinguish between benign and malignant colorectal tissue with high accuracy. Using autofluorescence lifetime measurements and artificial intelligence, the team analyzed surgical specimens from 117 patients and trained a machine learning model to detect cancer-related biochemical signatures. The approach achieved 85 percent accuracy on unseen test data, highlighting its potential for real-time cancer detection during colonoscopy or surgery. This technique could improve early diagnosis and reduce the need for invasive biopsies.