Trust in science and researchers has fallen following the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest survey of public confidence in science shows. Led by the global biomedical funder Wellcome in London and published on 10 October, it explores how people feel about science and health ' including vaccines, pandemic preparedness, clean energy and, for the first time, artificial intelligence (see 'Trust in decline'). 'We should be paying attention to, and thinking about, what needs to be done to earn that trust,' says Philippa Michael, head of public initiatives at Wellcome, who led the project. This is the third survey of its kind conducted by Wellcome, following editions in 2018 and 2020. The analysis points to a 'mixed' picture that varies between countries and regions, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a specialist in science communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (see 'Regional differences'). 'If people feel economically insecure, then they're going to feel a greater distance between themselves and science and scientists,' says sociologist Gordon Gauchat, at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This disconnect 'is not about science's efficacy or its ability to fix problems', he adds....
Venture funding to robotics startups has soared in 2026, with the bulk of investment going to companies based in China and the U.S., Crunchbase data shows. All told, global venture funding to robotics startups totaled $9.9 billion in Q3, more than double the $4.3 billion invested in Q3 2025, per Crunchbase data 1. The bulk of robotics funding this year has been in China, with $13.2 billion invested, and the U.S., with $12.1 billion. Germany, the third-largest recipient of robotics startup funding, trails with $1.7 billion invested. The largest rounds in China went to Guangzhou-based Xpeng Robotics, a builder of AI models and physical robots that raised $900 million, and Shenzhen's AI' Robotics, which is working to build intelligent robots for manufacturing, healthcare and services and raised a $736 million Series C round. In the U.S., billion-dollar rounds have also been raised this year by companies including Travis Kalanick's Los Angeles-based Atoms ' which includes its ghost kitchen business, and divisions for robotics in mining and transport ' and Pittsburgh-based Skild AI, which raised $1.4 billion for its robotics foundation model Skild Brain....
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won his bid for re-election on 25 October, to the relief of many scientists who feared for the future of Brazilian research if right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro prevailed. In recent weeks, some of Brazil's leading scientific organizations, including the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, circulated an open letter endorsing Lula, a leftist former labour leader. It received more than 20,000 signatures. 'It's hard to express just how happy the scientific community and the Brazilian society is with Lula's victory,' says Paulo Artaxo, a physicist at the University of Sao Paulo. Many worried that, if Bolsonaro were elected, he might slash support for Brazilian science and undermine it in the way that his father, Jair Bolsonaro, did. Jair was Brazil's president from 2019 to 2023, and during that time, he cut science funding and expressed anti-science rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, casting doubt on vaccines and promoting unproven treatments. The former president could not run for office again because he was sentenced to prison over a coup plot that he instigated after he lost his bid for re-election to Lula in 2022. He is currently serving the sentence at home because of health concerns....
Medical lab testing giant Quest Diagnostics has confirmed a cyberattack and data breach affecting an as-yet unspecified amount of sensitive patient information stored in its systems, according to a legally required disclosure with U.S. regulators. Quest said in an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it learned of a cyberattack on Wednesday targeting one of its lab testing systems, Quanum, which allows doctors' offices, hospitals, and healthcare practices to request lab tests for patients while also handling billing. The platform stores a large amount of patient health and medical records, as well as associated diagnostic and billing data. The cyberattack on Quest is the latest major cyber incident to affect the healthcare industry this year. A series of cyberattacks and data breaches have sparked weeks of disruption and allowed the theft of millions of patient electronic health records and other medical information. Health tech companies have become a major target for financially motivated cybercriminals, who aim to steal as much sensitive data as possible and threaten to publish it if they aren't paid a ransom....
