Global hunger levels fall but Africa still lags behind, UN report finds
Global hunger declined for the third consecutive year according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report. Africa still has the highest hunger rate at 20% of its population facing insufficient food.
518-million-year-old creature reveals the origins of spider fangs
A 518-million-year-old sea creature fossil contains pincerlike limbs and preserved soft tissues that represent the earliest known evidence of structures that became spider fangs. The discovery explains how spider and scorpion ancestors evolved into effective hunters with these specialized appendages.
This hydrogen turbine turns controlled explosions into electricity
A hydrogen turbine generates electricity using detonation waves to create pressure instead of requiring a mechanical compressor. The system produces its own pressure through controlled explosions within the turbine combustion chamber.
AI Leaders Propose SAFE Guidelines for Cybersecurity Transparency
The Open Secure AI Alliance, comprising over 120 organizations, is developing SAFE guidelines to improve cybersecurity transparency for agentic AI systems. The Linux Foundation released a Request for Comments on these Shared AI Findings Exchange guidelines at the Black Hat conference.
Strange quantum experiment shows “negative time” is more than an illusion
Photons passing through a cloud of atoms emerged early enough to suggest negative dwell time inside the cloud. Researchers confirmed this counterintuitive result using weak measurements of the atoms themselves, demonstrating the effect is physically real rather than an artifact of measurement technique.
A shy bird found only in Nepal is waiting for the world to notice
A medium-sized bird with brownish upperparts and black feather streaks called the spiny babbler was recorded in Nepal for the first time in June after previous disappearance. The species, found only in Nepal's shrubby hillsides, sometimes displays a chalky white facial patch.
CLARITY Act Senate Vote Locked In, But 60-Vote Hurdle Looms Large
A Senate floor vote on the CLARITY Act is scheduled before August recess, though three unresolved disputes threaten the 60-vote majority needed for passage. The crypto reform bill faces a significant procedural hurdle requiring supermajority support to advance.
DNA on the Shroud of Turin reveals centuries of hidden history
DNA analysis of the Shroud of Turin found traces of human lineages, microbes, plants, animals, and coral accumulated through centuries of handling and travel. The findings document biological material preserved in the cloth but do not prove its age or authenticity.
Pan-African payments fintech Moment raises $22 million
Moment completed a $22 million Series A funding round led by AlphaCode Venture Partners. General Catalyst and MultiChoice continued their investment while Canal+ participated as a new investor.
‘They’re not alone’: Chris Hoy on his ambition to stop men dying of prostate cancer
Chris Hoy, diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer nearly three years ago, is campaigning to raise awareness that prostate cancer affects more men in Britain than any other cancer type. He fundraises and works to provide hope to men and families facing terminal diagnoses.
Y Combinator Open-Sources QM: An MIT-Licensed Multiplayer Agent Harness That Runs In Slack And The Web
Y Combinator open-sourced QM, a multiplayer agent harness released July 31, 2026 under MIT license that operates in Slack and the web with isolated workspaces and scoped memory per room. The system supports multiple AI models including Pi, OpenCode, Codex, and Claude Code running on the same headless core to prevent vendor lock-in.
Bitmine stakes $278M in Ethereum, pushing total past 5 million staked ETH
Bitmine staked $278 million in Ethereum, bringing the company's total staked ETH past 5 million. This large concentration of staking power in a single entity raises concerns about Ethereum network centralization.
Genspark Open Sources GenOffice: A Free, Ad-Free AI Office Suite for macOS and Windows with Docs, Sheets, Slides, PDF
An AI office suite called GenOffice was open sourced under Apache License 2.0 with five Electron apps covering Docs, Sheets, Slides, and PDF. The system preserves original file bytes during editing by regenerating only edited paragraphs as OOXML and splicing them back, keeping untouched blocks in their original form to maintain layout compatibility with Word.
Your brain may be wired to regain lost weight
The human brain treats a previously higher weight as normal and triggers stronger hunger and lower energy use after weight loss occurs. Medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro reduce appetite signals to counteract this biological response, though their effects may diminish when treatment stops.
Sources: Cristobal secures extension with Miami
Mario Cristobal agreed to a long-term contract extension with Miami after leading the Hurricanes to the College Football Playoff title game last season. The team lost that championship game to Indiana.
These bizarre new beetles look so stretchy scientists named them Luffy
A newly discovered beetle genus with unusually long, slender mandibles and antennae was named Luffy after the stretchy One Piece character. The insects' extended body parts resembled the manga hero's rubber-like ability to elongate his body.
Scientists went looking for giant trees in Taiwan and found a lost world
Researchers discovered an 84.1-meter Taiwania fir in Taiwan's remote mountains, the tallest known tree in East Asia. Using LiDAR mapping and field expeditions, they identified dense clusters of giant trees in carbon-rich ancient forests previously unknown to science.
NAB Tests AI Agents in Plan to Deploy Tech to Banking Customers
NAB's technology chief announced the bank will soon test security and operational guardrails for an agentic AI platform. The country's largest lenders are seeking to deploy this technology more widely to banking customers.
Paymentus Revenue Surges as Businesses Seek to Deliver Smooth Billing Experiences
Bill payment solution provider Paymentus achieved record revenue in the second quarter as service providers prioritized improving customer billing experiences. The company's CEO cited upcoming research findings during an earnings call on August 3 regarding the importance of billing and payment experiences to customer loyalty.
BBVA call centre staff develop and deploy AI agents to speed up response times
BBVA's contact centre staff in Italy and Germany developed AI assistants that reduced average handling time for common customer inquiries by over 15%. The assistants address questions about products, services, and general procedures at the bank's fully digital operations.
Qwen3.8-Max arrives with a bold claim: it outperforms GPT-5.6 Sol Max and Fable 5 on agentic computer use
Alibaba's Qwen team released Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model that scores 86.1 on the OSWorld-Verified benchmark, outperforming GPT-5.6 Sol Max at 83.2 and Fable 5 at 85.0. The company plans to release open weights for Qwen3.8-Max next week alongside Qwen3.8-27B.
Mechanical shortcut' rapidly carries organic particles into the deep ocean
A mechanical process rapidly transports organic particles from the surface to the deep ocean, helping capture atmospheric carbon and store it on the seabed. Researchers can now measure this mechanism across depths from the surface to the ocean floor.
Four labs find experimental differences can undermine AI catalyst predictions
Four research labs discovered that experimental variations can significantly reduce the accuracy of AI models predicting which catalysts work best for converting carbon dioxide into fuel. The findings show that AI predictions depend heavily on consistent, high-quality input data, similar to how chatbot performance relies on training data quality.
Asana's AI agents share memory across your company — but not your secrets
Asana built an AI agent operating system called Agentic Work Management that allows agents to share memory across teams while maintaining data security. The system runs on the Work Graph, an 18-year-old database architecture organizing information through tasks, projects, portfolios, and company goals in a hierarchical structure.
AI Voice Agents Take Over the Retail Sales Floor
Voice agents based on models like OpenAI's GPT-Realtime can now conduct real sales conversations and ask probing questions to adapt to shopper needs. Previously, retailers used website chatbots for two years that could answer specific questions but could not complete sales transactions.
EXL Completes iMerit Acquisition to Expand Its End-to-End Enterprise AI Capabilities
EXL completed its acquisition of AI data specialist iMerit for up to $310 million, consisting of $170 million upfront and up to $140 million in earnouts. The transaction combines the two companies' capabilities in enterprise artificial intelligence, with earnout payments tied to milestones over two years.
Forest floors reveal overlooked seed dispersers: Slugs, beetles and crabs spread viable seeds
Tiny ground-dwelling invertebrates including slugs, beetles, and crabs function as seed dispersers and spread viable seeds, according to a review from the University of Hong Kong. This finding challenges traditional assumptions that focused primarily on birds and mammals as the main agents of seed dispersal in forests.
A DeepMind exec finally said what the trillion-dollar AI spend is for: machines that improve themselves.
Machines capable of recursive self-improvement represent the target of trillion-dollar AI spending, according to DeepMind's chief strategy officer. Jasjeet Sekhon made this argument at a UC Berkeley summit, framing the investment as a bet on systems that can enhance their own capabilities.
Bringing it all into focus—computational microscope captures 25.2 billion pixels per second across a wide field of view
Researchers developed a computational microscope that captures 25.2 billion pixels per second while maintaining a wide field of view and high resolution. The system overcomes the traditional trade-off between speed, field of view, and resolution that has limited microscope design.
The danger isn’t the AI model. It’s the agent acting on its own, and Zenity raised $125m to watch it.
AI agents operating independently pose greater risks than the models themselves, prompting Zenity to raise $125 million to monitor agent actions. The Israeli startup focuses on securing what autonomous agents do once deployed within company systems.