People often consider evolution to be a process that occurs in nature in the background of human society. But evolution is not separate from human beings. In fact, human cultural practices can influence evolution^[1] in wildlife. This influence is highly

The U.S. Air Force dropped a dozen ground-penetrating bombs, each weighing 30,000 pounds (13,607 kilograms), in a raid on Iran’s nuclear site^[1] at Fordo on June 21, 2025. The attack was an attempt to reach the uranium enrichment facility buried deep

When U.S. forces attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities^[1] on June 21, 2025, the main target was metal tubes in laboratories deep underground. The tubes are centrifuges that produce highly enriched uranium needed to build nuclear weapons.

Inside of a centrifuge,

A $157 billion defense funding boost that the Pentagon has been counting on to compensate for an otherwise flat budget has been approved by Congress and is on its way to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature.

The House voted 218-214 almost entirely along party lines on Thursday afternoon to pass the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, sweeping legislation to enact Trump's agenda on everything from immigration to taxes. The House passage, which followed the Senate's narrow approval on Tuesday, closed a week of Congress sprinting to get the bill to Trump's desk by his self-imposed deadline of July 4.

In addition to bulking up defense funding, which includes a few billion dollars for service member quality-of-life improvements, the bill will slash social safety net programs, including food assistance that military families and veterans rely on.

Read Next: Guardsmen Help Operate 'Alligator Alcatraz' as Trump Increasingly Leans on Military for Immigration Crackdown^[1]

"The One Big, Beautiful Bill makes a historic and long overdue investment of $150 billion to achieve President Trump's Peace Through Strength agenda and restore American deterrence," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said in a statement after the bill's passage. "We can't afford to wait any longer to begin rebuilding our military capacity, launching the future of American defense, and supercharging American manufacturing."

The Pentagon has been banking on passage of the bill to bring its budget next year to a record nearly $1 trillion. Without passage of the bill, the department has been planning a roughly $848 billion budget for fiscal 2026, essentially the same amount of funding it has this year.

The Pentagon's budget gimmickry irked some GOP defense hawks in Congress who had intended for the $150 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill to supplement a regular $1 trillion defense budget. But the House, at least, has so far followed the Pentagon plan in its regular appropriations process^[2].

The Pentagon has said the funding in the Trump agenda bill could be used to make up for holes^[3] caused by pulling some existing funding for operations on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The bill approved Thursday includes about $1 billion for military operations on the border, compared to about $5 billion in border funding being planned for at the Pentagon.

The Army^[4] has already moved about $1 billion^[5] from facilities maintenance, including for dilapidated barracks, to border operations.

The One Big Beautiful Bill has $1 billion for barracks restoration -- but that money is intended to be divvied up between the Army, Air Force^[6], Navy^[7] and Space Force^[8].

The bill separately provides about $350 million specifically for the Marine Corps^[9]' housing improvement initiative known as Barracks 2030.

The bill also provides temporary authorization for more widespread barracks privatization, an idea that has gained steam in recent years^[10] as the services have struggled with maintenance backlogs.

The bill's biggest pots of defense funding are $29 billion for shipbuilding, $25 billion for munitions and $25 billion for the Golden Dome, Trump's still hazy proposal^[11] for a space-based missile shield over the United States.

The barracks funding in the bill is part of an overall $9 billion set aside for military quality-of-life issues, including $2 billion for military health care programs, $2.9 billion to help cover Basic Allowance for Housing^[12] costs, $50 million for special pay^[13] and bonuses, $100 million for child care fee assistance, and $10 million for military spouse^[14] professional licensure fee assistance.

Meanwhile, the bill makes deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps.

Specifically, the bill will cut federal funding and force states to make up the difference. While the burden on states is not quite as heavy in the final bill^[15] as originally proposed, state government officials and anti-hunger advocates have still warned that the burden-sharing will overwhelm state budgets and force them to make cuts that will affect everyone on the program, including veterans and military families.

SNAP is a lifeline for many military families, which face food insecurity at higher rates than the civilian population. About 1.2 million veterans are also estimated to be on SNAP.

The bill also revives SNAP's work requirements for veterans, reversing a change made in a bipartisan deal in 2023 that exempted all veterans from work requirements regardless of their disability status. The reversal has elicited fierce pushback from some veterans groups.

"Cutting SNAP exemptions for veterans is an unacceptable betrayal," Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said in a statement last week. The bill's cuts "ignore the unique challenges veterans face, from service-connected disabilities to navigating the transition to civilian life. SNAP isn't a handout; it's a vital lifeline that keeps food on the table for those who serve."

Republicans have defended reviving work requirements for veterans by pointing to continued exemptions for people with disabilities and framing the mandate as an "opportunity."

"The One Big Beautiful Bill restores work, volunteer and training opportunities for veterans on SNAP -- rolling back a Biden-era carveout that denied them the dignity of work," House Agriculture Committee Republicans posted on social media Friday. "Veterans who qualify for exemptions remain fully protected."

Republicans pushed the bill through Congress using a process known as reconciliation, which allowed the bill to pass without any Democratic support. But wrangling enough GOP support to pass was also a battle.

In the Senate, Republicans added several provisions meant to spare Alaska from harsh benefits cuts in order to win support^[16] from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. Still, Vice President JD Vance needed to break a tie in order for the bill to pass the upper chamber because three other Republicans -- Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky -- opposed it.

In the House, members of the hard-line conservative Freedom Caucus spent Wednesday threatening to tank the bill over what they viewed as insufficient spending cuts, while some more moderate Republicans balked at Medicaid cuts. But ultimately, they voted for the bill Thursday without any changes.

Just two House Republicans, conservative Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted against the bill.

Related: Food Assistance Cuts Softened, Veterans Education Benefits Protected in Senate Version of Trump Agenda Bill^[17]

Hundreds more miles of federal land along the U.S. southern border in Arizona is set to be transferred to the Department of Defense, further expanding newly created military zones -- and the footprint of the military's role in immigration enforcement.

The newest military zone in Arizona -- the fourth border zone created by the Trump administration -- will encompass 140 miles of Department of Interior land near the Barry M. Goldwater range and will be transferred to the military as an extension of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma^[1], Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters Wednesday.

The administration has created the zones as a way to tap the military to enforce its border security and immigrant deportation agenda, and they allow additional court charges to be filed against those who trespass. Most recently, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last month said an additional 250 miles, this time along the Rio Grande River, would be handed^[2] to the Department of the Air Force^[3] as an extension of Joint Base San Antonio^[4], Military.com previously reported.

Read Next: Army Creating New Artificial Intelligence-Focused Occupational Specialty and Officer Field^[5]

Once those two new federal leases are transferred, it will mean that the Army^[6], Air Force and Marine Corps^[7] will all have an ownership stake in enforcing security at the U.S. southern border.

Two other military zones have already been created at the border, one in New Mexico that is an extension of the Army^[8]'s Fort Huachuca^[9], Arizona, and another in West Texas that is considered a part of Fort Bliss^[10]. Last month, U.S. attorneys announced some of the first convictions^[11] of migrants who crossed into the zones.

Meanwhile, officials are offering differing numbers on just how many active-duty troops are involved in the expanding border mission.

At the press briefing, Parnell told reporters that about 8,500 military personnel are currently assigned to the active-duty Joint Task Force Southern Border mission. The figure is a drop from earlier figures of around 10,000. One defense official said the new figure doesn't reflect any units being removed but rather the normal ebb and flow of personnel for a long-standing mission.

Maj. Geoffrey Carmichael, a spokesman for the border mission, told Military.com on Wednesday that the total number of Joint Task Force Southern Border personnel was hovering around 7,600.

Another defense official said the roughly 1,000-person difference between the two figures was because the 7,600 number was troops directly on the border while the larger 8,500 number Parnell offered included various personnel supporting or on loan to the Department of Homeland Security and the border mission.

In total, upward of 600 miles of the U.S. southern border with Mexico has either been placed, or is soon to be placed, under the Department of Defense's ownership.

Following President Donald Trump's earliest executive orders this year, the military has expanded its integration with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection, a move that continues to alarm defense and legal experts, Military.com has previously reported^[12].

"It seems to be a growing trend," Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities think tank in Washington, D.C., told Military.com on Wednesday. "There are obviously limits to how much of the land along the border they can militarize easily -- private land will be more challenging -- but I would expect them to keep pushing ahead with this tactic."

In addition to the thousands of military personnel now patrolling the border alongside the Border Patrol, the Pentagon says that the efforts to build the first ICE detention center on a military installation are making progress.

The first defense official who spoke with Military.com said that the ground at Fort Bliss, located near El Paso, Texas, has already been prepared for a "temporary, soft-sided holding facility" that will be paid for by the Army but run by contractors, not military personnel.

When asked whether there were plans to expand efforts for holding facilities to other bases, the official noted that the Pentagon is "a planning organization" but that they had nothing to announce at the present time.

The result, according to Parnell, is that there have been more than 3,500 patrols, including 150 with the Mexican military, since March 20.

Parnell boasted that between June 28 and June 30 there were zero "get-aways" -- people crossing the border who either flee from patrols back into Mexico or into the U.S.

"We have made incredible progress and will continue to work toward achieving 100% operational control of the border," Parnell told reporters.

However, the claims come as the Pentagon heads into a budget season that leaves a lot of questions about how it will pay for the expanded operations.

Last week, officials said that more than $5 billion is being budgeted in the upcoming year for operations at the U.S. southern border.

But defense officials, who briefed the press on annual budget plans, said they are betting on a Trump agenda bill in Congress to backfill any money pulled from current military funds to help pay for not only the thousands of troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border but also those sent to Los Angeles after immigration raid protests in the city.

Meanwhile, the military services have been raiding other parts of their budgets -- namely those aimed at upkeeping and building new barracks -- to make ends meet.

The Pentagon has already moved to gut $1 billion from the Army's facilities budget, which the service was planning to use on living quarters for junior troops that have suffered from dilapidated conditions for years.

Related: Guardsmen Pulled off LA Mission as State Warns Troops Are 'Stretched Thin' Amid Wildfire Season^[13]

"We found that patients not only maintained their weight loss after abdominoplasty, but also continued to lose weight over time - up to ten pounds, on average," comments senior author John Y.S. Kim of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago. "This postoperative weight loss appears greater, and increases at later follow-up times, in patients with initially higher body mass index [BMI]."

Continued weight loss up to five years after tummy tuck

Abdominoplasty is a cosmetic surgical procedure to improve the appearance of the abdomen. In 2023, ASPS Member Surgeons performed more than 170,000 abdominoplasties, according to ASPS statistics. Many of these procedures are performed in patients with massive weight loss that leaves them with excess, sagging skin.

Plastic surgeons have observed that patients may continue to lose weight after abdominoplasty. However, there is little research evidence on this issue, including whether the abdominoplasty procedure itself contributes to long-term weight loss.

Dr. Kim and colleagues performed a study to assess changes in body weight in 188 patients who underwent abdominoplasty between 2018 and 2022. Ninety-seven percent of patients were women. The average preoperative weight was about 168 pounds with a BMI of 27.7. Most patients underwent liposuction or a further procedure to remove excess fat (lipectomy) at the same time as abdominoplasty. Trends in body weight were assessed through up to five years after surgery.

The results showed continued weight loss after abdominoplasty. At three to six months, average weight loss was between five and six pounds, with about a three percent decrease in BMI. From one to four years, weight loss was about five pounds, for a BMI reduction of about two percent. By five years (in a limited number of patients), average weight loss was nearly ten pounds, with more than a five percent decrease in BMI.

'Near-constant negative change in body weight' after abdominoplasty

Overall, about 60% of patients lost weight during follow-up. Further analysis showed a "near constant negative change in body weight that did not significantly change over time," the researchers write.

After adjustment for other factors, continued weight loss was more likely for older patients, for those who underwent liposuction/lipectomy, and those who had never smoked. Weight loss was greater for patients who had higher body weight and BMI before surgery, and for a small number of patients who used the newer weight loss medication semaglutide.

The study adds new evidence that "post-abdominoplasty weight reduction is a quantifiable phenomenon and that patients undergoing abdominoplasty continue to lose a significant amount of weight for up to five years after surgery," the researchers write. They note some key limitations of their study, including varying follow-up times and potential confounding factors.

The study cannot definitively explain why patients continue to lose weight after surgery. However, Dr. Kim and coauthors write, "We have found that patients who were able to achieve weight loss after their abdominoplasty succeeded in developing healthy habits that centered around nutrition and exercise." They highlight the need for an "evidence-based platform" to assess weight changes after abdominoplasty and to identify factors associated with long-term weight loss.

• Two areas of the brain may work in combination to tell the brain when it's "feeling" tired.
• People with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often experience cognitive fatigue.
• Results of the study may provide a way for physicians to better evaluate and treat people who experience such fatigue.

In experiments with healthy volunteers undergoing functional MRI imaging, scientists have found increased activity in two areas of the brain that work together to react to, and possibly regulate, the brain when it's "feeling" tired and either quits or continues exerting mental effort.

The experiments, designed to help detect various aspects of brain fatigue, may provide a way for physicians to better evaluate and treat people who experience overwhelming mental exhaustion, including those with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the scientists say.

A report on the NIH-funded study was published online June 11 in the Journal of Neuroscience, detailing results on 18 female and 10 male healthy adult volunteers given tasks to exercise their memory.

"Our lab focuses on how [our minds] generate value for effort," says Vikram Chib, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a research scientist at Kennedy Krieger Institute. "We understand less about the biology of cognitive tasks, including memory and recall, than we do about physical tasks, even though both involve a lot of effort." Anecdotally, Chib says, scientists know cognitive tasks are tiring, and relatively less about why and how such fatigue develops and plays out in the brain.

The 28 study participants, who ranged in age from 21 to 29, were paid $50 to participate in the study, and were told they could receive additional payments based on their performance and choices. All participants received a baseline MRI scan before the experiments began.

The tests of their working memory, which took place while undergoing subsequent MRI scans of their brains, included looking at a series of letters, in sequence, on a screen and recalling the position of certain letters. The farther back a letter was in the series of letters, the harder it was to recall its position, increasing the cognitive effort expended. The participants were given feedback on their performance after each test and opportunities to receive increasing payments ($1-$8) with more difficult recall exercises. The participants also were asked before and after each test to self-rate their level of cognitive fatigue.

Overall, the test results found increased activity and connectivity in two brain areas when participants reported cognitive fatigue: the right insula, an area deep in the brain that has been associated with feelings of fatigue, and the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, areas on both sides of the brain that control working memory. For each participant, activity in both brain locations during cognitive fatigue increased by more than twice the level of baseline measurements taken before starting the tests.

"Our study was designed to induce cognitive fatigue and see how people's choices to exert effort change when they feel fatigue, as well as identify locations in the brain where these decisions are made," says Chib.

Notably, Chib and his research team members Grace Steward and Vivian Looi found that the financial incentives need to be high in order for participants to exert increased cognitive effort, suggesting that external incentives prompt such effort.

"That outcome wasn't entirely surprising, given our previous work finding the same need for incentives in spurring physical effort," says Chib.

"The two areas of the brain may be working together to decide to avoid more cognitive effort unless there are more incentives offered. However, there may be a discrepancy between perceptions in cognitive fatigue and what the human brain is actually capable of doing," says Chib.

Fatigue is linked with many neurological conditions, including PTSD and depression, says Chib. "Now that we've likely identified some of the neural circuits for cognitive effort in healthy people, we need to look at how fatigue manifests in the brains of people with these conditions," he adds.

Chib says it may be possible to use medication or cognitive behavior therapy to combat cognitive fatigue, and the current study using decision tasks and functional MRI could be a framework for objectively classifying cognitive fatigue.

Functional MRI uses blood flow to measure broad areas of activity in the brain; however, it does not directly measure neuron activation, nor more subtle nuances in brain activity.

"This study was performed in an MRI scanner and with very specific cognitive tasks. It will be important to see how these results generalize to other cognitive effort and real-world tasks," says Chib.

Funding for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R01HD097619, R01MH119086).

Despite representing only 4% of the world’s population^[1], the United States accounts for over half of science Nobel Prizes^[2] awarded since 2000, hosts seven of The Times Higher Education Top 10 science universities^[3], and incubates firms such as Alphabet (Google)^[4], Meta^[5] and Pfizer^[6] that turn federally funded discoveries into...

Astronomers manning an asteroid warning system^[1] caught a glimpse of a large, bright object zipping through the solar system late on July 1, 2025^[2]. The object’s potentially interstellar origins excited scientists across the globe, and the next morning, the European Space Agency confirmed^[3] that this object, first named A11pl3Z and then...

Many modern devices – from cellphones and computers to electric vehicles and wind turbines – rely on strong magnets made from a type of minerals called rare earths. As the systems and infrastructure used in daily life have turned digital and the United States has moved toward renewable energy, accessing these minerals has become critical...