The research involved 40 mentally healthy adolescents aged 16 to 19 with typical social connection levels. On two separate days, each participant spent 3-4 hours alone before completing computer tasks measuring reward-seeking motivation (e.g., reacting to social interaction images or money-earning games). The critical difference: one day, they had no social contact at all (no phones, no Internet); the other, they could use devices for virtual interaction. The results were striking: after total isolation, teens showed far stronger drive to seek rewards—staring longer at happy social scenes and excelling (胜出) more in money-earning games. Virtual socializing softened this shift, though it still caused a drop in positive mood.

This study adds nuance (细微差别) to the social media debate. While digital platforms are often blamed for rising teen loneliness, they acted as a buffer here, easing loneliness and reducing intense reward-seeking. Yet they're no cure-all — Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore notes virtual connection brings risks like harmful content or addiction. Its value depends on context: it helps when in-person bonds are scarce but can never replace their richness.

Global teen loneliness has doubled in a decade, driven by academic pressure, changing family structures, economic instability, and more — not just social media. Loneliness ties to depression, anxiety, and even long-term cardiovascular risks.

The study's core lesson: social interaction is a basic human need, not a luxury. For caregivers, educators, and society, creating environments where teens build genuine in-person connections is essential for healthy development. Loneliness, ultimately, is a signal — seek community. Answering that call doesn't just ease teens' present pain; it lays the groundwork for their lifelong well-being.

Bruce, a parrot missing part of his beak （喙）,  creatively uses stones to clean feathers （羽毛）,  highlighting advanced intelligence in parrots. 

Bruce lost the upper part of his beak in 2012 and was sent to live at a reserve in New Zealand. The defect made Bruce unable to search for food on his own, let alone keep his feathers clean with his beak. But in 2021, when comparative psychologist Bastos arrived at the reserve with colleagues to study parrots, zookeepers reported something strange：Bruce had seemingly figured out how to select and use small stones to clean his own feathers with his beak. 

Over nine days, the team kept a close eye on Bruce, quickly taking, videos if he started cleaning his feathers. It turned out that Bruce had indeed invented his own way to do so, the researchers reported in Scientific Reports. 

"It's crazy because the behavior was not from the wild, " Bastos says. When Bruce arrived at the reserve, he was too young to learn how to clean his feathers. And no other bird in the reserve uses stones in this way. "It seems like he just invented this tool use for himself, " she says. 

Tool use is just one of parrots' many talents. They're famous for copying and even understanding human speech. Some species can also solve complex puzzles, like how to enter a covered rubbish bin or practice self-control. 

For a concept as abstract （抽象的） as intelligence, it's challenging to develop a definition that applies across animals. Researchers often point to features once thought to make humans special—enhanced learning, memory, attention and movement control—as signs of advanced skills. However, many of these abilities can also be seen in parrots, as well as other animals like chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants. 

"Parrots are our evolutionary （进化的） mirror image. These brilliant birds may teach us about how humanlike intelligence can appear, " behavioral ecologist Antone wrote in his 2022 book The Parrot in the Mirror. With powerful brains and a preference for words, these birds are "the very best example, " he writes,  "of nature's 'other try' at humanlike intelligence. "

About 10% of the detected plastic particles were micro-plastics, and the other 90% were nanoplastic. Micro-plastics are between 5 millimeters and 1 micrometer; nanoplastic are particles less than 1 micrometer in size. For context, a human hair is about 70 micrometers thick. Micro-plastics have already been found in people's lungs and blood.

Nanoplastic could be even more dangerous than micro-plastics because when inside the human body, "the smaller it goes, the easier for it to be misidentified as the natural component of the cell," says Wei Min, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University.

The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) said in a statement that it has had "very limited notice and time" to review the study. But the group said the new detection method "needs to be fully reviewed by the scientific community and more research needs to be done to develop standardized methods for measuring and quantifying nanoplastic in our environment." The association said there is "no scientific agreement on the potential health impacts of nano-and micro-plastic particles."

The particles they could identify accounted for only 10% of total particles they found — the rest could be minerals, other types of plastics, or something else, says Beizhan Yan, a research professor and co-author on the study. They hope the research will lead to a better understanding of how much plastic humans are regularly putting into their bodies and its effects.

Yan says they plan future research employing the same technology to look at plastic particles in tap water, in the air, in food and in human tissues. "This is basically just to open a new window for us to see what was this invisible world before."