Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 30 October 2026 · From issue 60

Where intention goes, responsibility flows: Grounding AI accountability in the machine learning paradigm

Courts can trace AI harm back to specific human choices made while building the system.

Martin Hilbert.

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Also in issue 60 15 papers

In mice, a short burst of fatty food at the start of skin inflammation makes it as severe as long term obesity.
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In a lab plant, turning on a DNA-marking eraser built pathogen immune memory lasting one week.
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Adult and baby fruit flies use different nerve-signal sensors at their muscle junctions.
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Fitness level, not sex, decides who feels less pain after hard exercise.
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In a global simulation, dams raise carbon emissions by just 21.5%, far less than past estimates.
Science Advances
In lab tissue, too much immune signal pushes Down Syndrome lung cells to mature in the wrong way.
Nature Communications
A collapsed star system flared for only 10 months, far shorter than its earlier 23 year outburst.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
In boreal forests, crowding by same-species neighbors shifts from harmful to helpful as forests age.
Nature Communications
In simulations and lab tests, one trained model predicted stress in materials it had never seen.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
A full-body floor mat senses pressure 30 times a second with near-perfect accuracy.
Science Advances
Bird song patterns closely match patterns found in human speech and song.
Science
A new math method correctly measures wasted energy in systems with memory effects.
Physical Review Letters
In computer simulations, a distant change flips an enzyme between a working shape and a broken one.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In a computer model, different brain settings can cancel out overactive signaling linked to seizures.
eLife

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