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As rampant AI use accelerates a crisis in education, University of California professors are pleading with leadership to reinstate college-entrance exams, The Wall Street Journal reports, claiming that incoming students barely have a middle-school level understanding of math and other subjects.
Their request, made in a letter last week, will be a controversial one. Entrance exams like the SAT and ACT have long been criticized for exacerbating racial inequality. Taking them isn’t free, and nor is participating in rigorous preparation courses, with wealthier and usually white children thirteen times likelier to get a high score on either test than kids from low-income families, one study led by Harvard researchers found.
Nonetheless, UC math and science professors find the situation on the ground to be untenable, with the letter claiming that nearly a third of students taking their first semester calculus course at UC Berkeley are now displaying “severe preparation deficits.”
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the faculty wrote, as quoted by the WSJ. “UC has finite resources and can help only so many students.”
As the COVID pandemic gripped the US in 2020, many schools, UC included, began making SAT and ACT exams optional. Today, more than 90 percent of schools don’t require them, Harry Feder, executive director of educational policy group FairTest, which advocates against the exams, told the WSJ.
But elite colleges have been reversing course. MIT reinstated its SAT requirement in 2022, as did Harvard and Dartmouth College in 2024, and Yale University last month.UC has stood its ground, encouraging prospective students to study, write essays, and take up extracurricular activities instead, according to the reporting.
One thing that’s undeniable: the education landscape is drastically different to what it looked like just a few years ago. AI chatbots and other AI tools have ushered in rampant cheating. Where its use is considered within ethical academic bounds, many educators are skeptical that AI facilitates actual learning, with numerous studies linking heavy AI use to impaired critical thinking skills and memory loss. One found that students who used ChatGPT to help write essays had lower brain activity in areas corresponding to creativity compared to students who only used a traditional Google search or didn’t look up information at all.
All the while, grade inflation has skyrocketed across the country since the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT and other AI tools, with recent research showing that the share of A grades in courses more vulnerable to AI cheating — typically in the humanities and engineering — surged by about 30 percent since 2023.
But is the answer to these deeply-rooted issues reinstating mandatory testing? It’s debatable, and you could argue that it’d be the equivalent of slapping on a band-aid to treat a disease. It’s clear that the education system is failing young students, and unless serious conversations are had about myriad systemic issues, plus the incursion of AI — which is fueled by institutions happy to take Big Tech money — the situation isn’t going to improve.
I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.
Former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Iran: This war is very much turning into Trump’s Vietnam. In Vietnam, we negotiated, but in the end, the North Vietnamese basically took total control. We were lucky to get our forces out. I think we’re heading in the same direction with this war. https://x.com/brikeilarcnn/status/2062627259404448029/video/1
Iran and Pakistan allegedly made their nuclear warning call on an unsecured line deliberately because they wanted the U.S. to intercept it. Ex-CIA Analyst Larry Johnson says Iran likely has at least three warheads, and if they demonstrate, it will be an underground detonation at a pre-announced time, setting off seismic shocks the world detects simultaneously.
Global cooperation on nuclear disarmament looks even further away
The Iran war inhibited progress at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. But so did P5 countries’ resistance to talking seriously about disarmament.
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Published 3 June 2026 —3 minute READ
Image — France’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noel Barrot at the 11th NPT Review Conference at UN Headquarters on 27 April 2026. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images)
The 2026 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference concluded on 22 May without a consensus outcome document. It is the third time in a row that states parties have failed to agree on a review of the treaty’s implementation and progress, or to set out a plan to support and strengthen the treaty’s implementation. However, this failure was different from the last.
In 2022, it was Russia alone that blocked agreement, following its invasion of Ukraine. This year, multiple countries were prepared to hinder progress. The fractures ran across the ‘P5’ – the UN Security Council permanent members, all of whom are classed as ‘nuclear-weapon’ states and are the only countries permitted to possess nuclear weapons under the treaty. (Other nuclear armed countries are not parties to the treaty).
But what happened in New York was not a targeted disruption. It was the latest sign of a non-proliferation system under strain in an increasingly dysfunctional environment.
What broke down and why
The primary cause of failure was the Iran conflict. Countries could not agree on adding a paragraph addressing Iran’s non-compliance with its NPT obligations and stating that Iran could never acquire nuclear weapons. That remained bracketed in the final draft outcome document, meaning consensus had not been reached.
Conference President Đỗ Hùng Việt, whose management of an extraordinarily difficult process deserves credit, chose not to force states into a public confrontation on the issue. When he asked the conference to adopt at least a procedural consensus on strengthening the review process, Russia, China, and Iran blocked that too. Related workAvoiding a new nuclear arms race
Even if Iran had not been the breaking point, something else might have been. Other fault lines were close to the surface: Russiapushed for the deletion of text on North Korea’s weapons programme, prompting South Korean objections. Disputes over language on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, still under Russian occupation, remained unresolved.
A pattern is emerging, where review conferences become a forum for airing regional and bilateral grievances. That reflects a broader shift in how the major nuclear powers approach multilateral institutions.
When powerful states believe that their security interests are better served by bilateral leverage than by collective frameworks, consensus-based multilateral processes become difficult to sustain.
The disarmament deficit
The failure to agree a final document obscured another serious problem. Even the draft that was on the table represented a significant weakening of prior commitments.
New START, a US–Russia nuclear arms control agreement, expired in February with nothing to replace it. That leaves the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals without any agreed limits for the first time in over fifty years.
China’s nuclear build-up is accelerating. The US has threatened to resume nuclear testing and has accused both Russia and China of conducting tests. France has announced an expansion of its nuclear programme.
In this environment, the five recognized nuclear weapon states arrived in New York and set about forcing the removal of language calling on them to begin negotiations on disarmament – or even to pursue discussions urgently.
Nuclear weapons states removed even more mild requests from the outcome document – for more transparency and accountability on their part. The final draft vaguely called for constructive dialogue that might facilitate future progress. Many non-nuclear weapons states will interpret this as a signal – that beyond ensuring other countries do not acquire nuclear weapons, the P5 are no longer committed to the wider NPT regime.
Collective engagement can only do so much if the P5 are not listening.
The grand bargain at the heart of the NPT – that non-nuclear states forgo nuclear weapons in exchange for progress on disarmament by the P5 – is under severe strain, and the cracks are showing.
There were still meaningful signals from the wider membership. Countries pushed back against weakened disarmament language. There was strong opposition to any resumption of nuclear testing, with many states defending the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The fact that so many non-nuclear states remained engaged and vocal matters. But collective engagement can only do so much if the P5 are not listening.
What comes next
The next NPT Review Conference is in 2031. The risk is that the underlying conditions deteriorate further during the intervening five years, proliferation pressures mount, and the case for investing political capital in the NPT becomes progressively harder to make.
Avoiding that outcome requires a practical assessment of what went wrong and what can be done differently.
An important lesson is that review conferences cannot be the primary forum for adjudicating active crises. When countries demand that a consensus-based multilateral process takes sides on contentious regional issues like the wars in Iran or Ukraine, deadlock is almost guaranteed.
An alternative is possible. In the leadup to the 1985 Review Conference, nuclear arsenals were almost at their Cold War height, Israel had destroyed a safeguarded nuclear reactor in Iraq, and there were serious non-proliferation concerns relating to several non-parties (such as South Africa and Brazil).
In this unsecure environment, the United States and Soviet Union famously set their differences aside and focused on strengthening the system by cooperating to reach consensus, rather than weaponizing it. That was a long time ago, but it is a reminder that cooperative behaviour during times of high geopolitical tension is possible.
The P5 need to strengthen engagement with one another on nuclear risk reduction through the ongoing ‘P5 process’ – a diplomatic forum between the countries. Dialogue has stalled in recent years. But this is a crucial route for progress on even modest confidence-building measures on doctrine, on new technologies, and on crisis communication.
The P5 demonstrating a willingness to engage in good faith, and treating the NPT as worth preserving, would itself send a signal. Seriously engaging with transparency and accountability initiatives put forward during the review conference would be a good start and is relatively low pressure and low-hanging fruit in terms of compliance.
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Non-nuclear weapon states committed to the treaty also need to coordinate more effectively and sustain pressure on the P5 beyond the NPT conference. Diplomatic pressure from a coherent, persistent bloc raises the political cost of obstruction. It will not transform P5 behaviour on its own, but it could shift the calculus.
A crucial time ahead
The NPT’s record on actual non-proliferation remains, by historical standards, impressive. The world has far fewer nuclear-armed states than analysts feared possible in the 1960s. The treaty continues to provide the legal and normative foundation for a global safeguards system that constrains proliferation and facilitates peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
But a treaty that cannot sustain its own institutional credibility will find it harder to underwrite the stability it was designed to protect. Three consecutive failed review conferences, against a backdrop of an accelerating arms race, expiring treaties, and mounting proliferation pressures, is not a temporary rough patch. The window for course correction is narrowing. States have five years to demonstrate they understand what is at stake.
U.K., U.S. experts trace rise in awareness through research, political involvement, pandemic
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
June 3, 2026 6 min read
One of the first national efforts to combat loneliness as a societal health problem fizzled after the pandemic amid economic slowdown and political polarization. But the initiative also raised awareness sufficiently that is still recognized as a public health problem today.
“It started well, but I think it’s fair to say that COVID put a bit of a spanner in the works,” said Tracey Crouch, former United Kingdom minister for loneliness, of her nation’s efforts. “I do think there’s still a real drive from policymakers around the world to recognize the issue of loneliness, recognize the health impact, social impact of loneliness, and try to tackle it in their own unique ways.”
Experts from the U.K. and the U.S. agreed with that assessment at an event Tuesday hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Acknowledgment of the depth and breadth of the issue in the U.S. got a major boost during the pandemic, but efforts in U.K. began earlier.
Alex Smith, a Shorenstein fellow and author of a recent report on the U.K.’s efforts to address loneliness, said globally the problem has been made worse by increased social change toward individualism, fostered by the development of smartphones and social media.
In the U.K., the response to the problem was ignited by academic research highlighting loneliness’s impact, which created a ripple effect across society and drew the attention of Member of Parliament Jo Cox after her 2015 election.
Philanthropy became interested and started to invest in the matter, and community programs began to show impacts that encouraged others to get involved.
Cox helped press the issue among U.K. political leaders. Her murder in 2016 as she walked to a constituent meeting caused an outpouring of grief and further energized efforts.
“Jo knew that while loneliness is a deeply personal and subjective emotion, its drivers and solutions were really everyone’s business, and there are solutions,” said Olivia Field, chief executive of U.K.-based Jo Cox Foundation. “Her legacy ultimately shattered the myth that it only affects older people and proved that it impacts people of all ages and all backgrounds. She refused to accept living in a lonely country.”
The surge following Cox’s death was driven by nonprofit organizations and governmental cross-party collaboration, which resulted in a commission on loneliness, Field said. By 2017 the narrative had shifted to highlight that many people are affected by loneliness, making it less hidden and an open public health priority.
The next phase, Field said, was a unified call to action that included creation of the world’s first minister for loneliness, along with a national strategy, government funding, and a commitment to more research.
An important characteristic, Field said, was that the issue was a “blank canvas” politically in the U.K. That meant there was no institutional defensiveness to overcome and that working across party lines was easier.
“The winning formula included robust evidence alongside powerful storytelling,” Field said. “We used the hard data that had been collected for a couple of decades or longer to demonstrate the scale of the problem and its impact. We did that alongside human stories that made it relatable and undeniable. The sector consensus was absolutely critical, so we spoke with one unified voice.”
The health impacts of loneliness were recognized as important in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when isolation and social distancing were key responses, said Smith, who is also founder of the Cares Family charities in the U.K. But the energy around the issue waned as the pandemic wore on.
“There’s not much you can say was good [that] happened in COVID, but one thing that did happen was that the stigma around loneliness was reduced.”Tracey Crouch
The post-pandemic economic crisis, marked in the U.S. by the ending of government pandemic stimulus programs and beginning of high inflation, refocused public attention, as did other crises with global ramifications, such as the Ukraine War and increasing political polarization.
“There’s not much you can say was good [that] happened in COVID, but one thing that did happen was that the stigma around loneliness was reduced,” Crouch said. “People began to understand that it was a real feeling. Things could have been done differently but at least people were now talking about it.”
In the U.S., a high point in the fight against loneliness occurred in 2023, when then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory about the ill health effects of loneliness.
Trey Leveque, former engagement chief of staff to Murthy, said the advisory grew out of Murthy’s belief that isolation and loneliness are not fringe issues but global ones. Loneliness, Murthy felt, highlights broad problems of social connection in the same way that rising hunger highlights poverty and other major social problems.
“The evidence and research became impossible to ignore,” Leveque said. “Researchers were increasingly demonstrating that social connection and disconnection affect not only emotional well-being but physical health, mental health, emotional outcomes, workplace performance, even civic participation. What has long been considered a private struggle in so many situations and scenarios had started to become recognized as a public health issue, which led to the report that Dr. Murthy put out in 2023.”
Though public attention and political intention have both become fragmented in the years since, panelists agreed that the issue remains potent.
Cultural shifts are continuing to occur, with Asian societies seeing a shift toward individualism and the declining pull of the central family that has been seen in other societies. Artificial intelligence has spread rapidly in recent years and may impact the issue in ways still unknown.
An important date in the U.K. comes June 16, when the 10th anniversary of Cox’s death is likely to draw new attention to the issue.
“I’m hopeful that some of the same actors and a new generation of actors will see — particularly with the arrival of artificial intelligence, which is going to change again how we interact — that how we interact with one another and our communities is a fundamental part of what it means to be human,” Smith said.
Summary: A pioneering functional neuroimaging study provided the first neurological evidence detailing how reading mediums alter story comprehension. The research compares how the brain processes narrative arcs when read on paper versus digital tablets.
By measuring localized brain blood flow via functional MRI (fMRI) scanners, investigators demonstrated that paper reading provides stable spatial and tactile cues that allow the brain to organize and retrieve complex story information with significantly less cognitive effort.
Key Facts
The Medium Comprehension Debate: While e-readers and tablets are ubiquitous, neuroscientists have long debated whether digital screens impact deep reading comprehension, narrative integration, or long-term memory retention.
The Two-Part Manga Assay: Researchers used a specialized two-part manga story split across two protagonists’ perspectives, using the medium’s rich visual narratives and pictorial data to facilitate scene comprehension outside the scanner.
The Goggle Imaging Protocol: Because massive MRI magnets block electronic tablets from entering scanning rooms, participants read the first half of a story outside on paper or a tablet, then read the second half inside the scanner using specialized LCD goggles.
The Digital Processing Delay: While both test groups answered story questions accurately, individuals who initially read the opening half on a tablet took significantly longer to answer demanding questions that required combining details from both halves of the story.
Frontal Region Efficiency: Brain scans revealed that during the second half of the story, participants who started on paper showed reduced activation in frontal language-related brain regions associated with linguistic and narrative integration.
The Effortless Organization Hypotheses: This reduced frontal activation suggests that paper allows the human brain to organize contextual flow and storylines with less mental effort, reducing later processing demands during recall.
The Tactile Cue Advantage: Principal investigator Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai notes that paper’s advantage lies in stable spatial and tactile cues that digital screens lack, with plans to extend the research to compare handwriting against keyboard typing.
Source: University of Tokyo
A new study by researchers at the University of Tokyo explores whether reading manga on paper or on a tablet changes how the brain understands and remembers stories.
Participants first read the opening half of a two-part manga story either on paper or on a tablet.Later, while inside an MRI scanner, they read the second half through LCD goggles and answered questions about the story. Brain scans taken during the reading and questioning showed differences in activity depending on which medium they had just read.
Reading on paper provides stable spatial and tactile cues that reduce activation in frontal language-related brain regions, enabling low-effort narrative integration compared to digital tablets. Credit: Neuroscience News
People who first read the opening half of the stories on a tablet took longer to answer more demanding questions that required combining information from both halves than those who first read it on paper. This research could impact educational decisions or even hardware and software related to digital reading.
For as long as e-readers have been on the market, there has been some debate about the potential benefits and drawbacks, including whether they can impact aspects of reading or comprehension. As a neuroscientist focused on language study, Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai from the Department of Basic Science has often pondered these things and was recently approached by a manga publisher in Japan to investigate the matter experimentally. Together with his team, they sought to find out how paper versus tablet reading could impact reading comprehension on a neurological level.
“We assembled a test group and gave them all a reading task, then some questions to answer,” said Sakai. “Participants were given the same manga to read, a special story split into two protagonists’ perspectives. The questions included simple ones and complex ones, the latter of which required comprehension of both parts of the story. But the first story was given to participants on different mediums, paper or e-readers.
During questioning, we measured brain activations by using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. This method is called a functional MRI (fMRI). The fMRI technique actually measures the amount of local blood flow in the brain reflecting neuronal activity in a particular region. We found some interesting differences in activity between the two test groups.”
Sakai and his team found that participants answered questions accurately under both conditions, but those who first read the opening half of the manga on a tablet took longer to answer the more demanding questions requiring integration of information from both halves of the story. Brain scans also revealed differences in activity depending on whether participants initially read on paper or tablet.
During reading of the second half inside the scanner, participants who first read on paper showed reduced activation in frontal language-related brain regions associated with linguistic and narrative integration. The findings suggest that reading on paper may allow the brain to organize story information with less effort, reducing later processing demands.
“This is the first time that a neuroscientific investigation has revealed a specific difference in brain activity between readers of either paper or screens. It’s a fascinating result, but it was tricky to devise this experiment.
“When comparing a paper book and an electronic tablet, we cannot bring the latter device into the scanning room because the scanner is a huge magnet. So instead, participants first read the opening half of the story either on paper or on a tablet outside the scanner and later read the second half inside the scanner using LCD goggles,” said Sakai.
“The same results would likely be obtained for reading novels, because storylines and contextual flow are basically the same between manga, novels and other written material. One important advantage of using manga stories in our tests was that manga has visual narratives, which provide rich pictorial information that facilitates the comprehension of scenes.”
While the exact reasons for the results are an ongoing matter of study, the team suggests that, at least at present, the advantage of paper might be that it provides stable spatial and tactile cues that digital devices don’t. These cues may help the brain organize narrative information more effectively. But Sakai and his team have a few more ideas to investigate too.
“Using a similar method, we are now examining the effects of writing by hand or with a keyboard. This would be a natural extension of comparing paper and electronic devices,” said Sakai. “The advantage of paper is not only about memory, attention and emotional engagement, but about language and thought because it involves careful reading and thinking processes.”
Key Questions Answered:
Q: Why did the University of Tokyo team use manga instead of classic textbooks to test reading retention?
A: Because manga combines text with rich visual narratives. Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai chose this medium because the pictorial information helps the brain easily reconstruct scenes, though the team notes the exact same integration results apply to traditional novels and text documentation.
Q: How does a paper book physically help the brain save energy when reading complex stories?
A: By providing permanent spatial and tactile anchors. Turning physical pages provides the brain with stable structural cues that screens cannot replicate, allowing your internal language networks to organize plot lines and context with far less effort.
Q: What did the fMRI blood flow scans reveal about the weakness of reading on digital screens?
A: It showed a clear processing bottleneck in frontal language regions. When tablet readers faced complex questions that required integrating clues from both halves of the story, their frontal circuits had to work harder and took longer to process the answers compared to paper readers.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper reviewed in full.
Additional context added by our staff.
About this neuroscience and reading research news
Author: Rohan Mehra Source: University of Tokyo Contact: Rohan Mehra – University of Tokyo Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Manga reading on paper vs. digital devices: Prospective effects on core and supportive integration processes in the brain
Reading on paper reportedly improves story comprehension compared to its digital version, although the underlying neuroscientific mechanisms remain unclear. We used a format of Japanese manga stories as visual narratives told in halves, each of which depicted the same events from the different perspectives of two protagonists.
We examined how the medium used to read the first halves, either on a paper book (Paper preparatory condition) or on an electronic tablet (Tablet preparatory condition), facilitated reading of the second halves for the memorized stories, which they read on an electronic display with continuous empathy ratings.
Magnetic resonance scanning was conducted during the latter reading and during answering two sets of questions: Set 1 that could be answered after reading the first half alone, and Set 2 that required comprehension from both halves.
Behavioral results showed prospective effects of reading manga stories on a paper book or an electronic tablet, such that the response times were prolonged in Set 2 for the Tablet condition.
By comparing the results of Sets 1 and 2 with correct answers for each story, we found significant response time differences for the Tablet condition alone. Moreover, for the Paper condition, activations in the left frontal regions significantly decreased while reading the second halves, and those in the right frontal regions also decreased in Set 1.
Furthermore, core left frontal activations were highest in Set 2 for the Tablet condition, while supportive right frontal activations correlated with individual accuracy rates in Set 2 for the Tablet condition, indicating that excessive integration processes support improved performances required by correct answers.
The present results demonstrate stronger prospective effects of reading on paper books, such that linguistic and narrative-structural integration processes are facilitated and led to saved excessive activations.
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