“Americans are having fewer children than ever before. In 2024 the fertility rate was just 1.6 babies per woman, down from 1.9 a decade ago. This is partly because people are becoming parents later in life; some may be discouraged by the costs of housing and child care. Whatever the cause, those who do have children are spending more time with them than previous generations did—and fathers account for much of the recent increase.

The trend is not new. One study found that between 1965 and 2012 the amount of time parents in rich countries spent with their children doubled. Data from the American Heritage Time Use Study, from 1975 to 2018, show that successive generations have devoted ever more time to their little ones. Millennial mothers (born between 1981 and 1996) spent 12% more time caring for children than Gen-X mums (1965-80) did at the same age. The difference between young Gen-X and baby-boomer mothers (1946-64) was 52%. Millennial fathers, meanwhile, spent 6% more time on child care than Gen-Xers did. The biggest jump was between boomer and Gen-X dads: young Gen-X fathers spent more than twice as much time with their kids as their predecessors did at the same age.

Since the pandemic the amount of time fathers spend with children has risen further. According to newer time-use data, men who lived with their partners spent 11% more time caring for children in 2024 than in 2019, and 30% more time doing household chores.”

From The Economist.

“In just a few short years, new diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro have taken the world by storm. In the United States, one in eight adults say they’ve tried one of these medications, which are known as GLP-1 drugs, and that number seems sure to rise as prices fall and new oral formulations hit the market.

Fluffy and Fido could be next.

On Tuesday, Okava Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company based in San Francisco, is set to announce that it has officially begun a pilot study of a GLP-1 drug for cats with obesity. The company is testing a novel approach: Instead of receiving weekly injections of the drugs, as has been common in human patients, the cats will get small, injectable implants, slightly larger than a microchip, that will slowly release the drug for as long as six months…

Results are expected next summer. If they are promising, they could represent the next frontier for a class of drugs that has upended human medicine, and a potentially transformative treatment option for millions of pets.  Some veterinarians have already begun administering human GLP-1 drugs, off label, to diabetic cats.”

From New York Times.

“Researchers have now found a new class of origami that they call bloom patterns. Resembling idealized flowers, many bloom patterns are rotationally symmetric around the center.

The bloom patterns, with their set of attractive properties, appear promising for future engineering uses, especially for large structures that are sent to outer space. They fold up flat and compactly, they can be constructed out of one flat sheet, and they can be extended to ever larger shapes.

The discoveries originated from the paper-folding explorations of Zhongyuan Wang, a sophomore at Brigham Young University in Utah…

The bloom patterns can be broken down into repeating tiles of creased patterns, called wedges, around a central polygon. Larger structures, which can still be folded flat, are created by expanding the wedges into larger shapes with additional creases. When folded up, the wedges stack up in a helical shape.

Dr. Howell said that a search through the scientific literature turned up a few individual bloom patterns that had been folded previously, but the new paper provides a general mathematical framework that describes a new class of possible foldings…

Dr. Howell’s research group has made physical manifestations of the bloom patterns, not just out of paper but also from other materials like 3-D printed plastics.

Real-world applications, like solar panels, will not be as thin as paper, and the folds may need to be wider to accommodate the thickness of the tiles. Still, the fundamental flat-folding nature of bloom patterns means that it should be easier to pack a structure into the limited space of a rocket.”

From New York Times.

“Startup ElevenLabs said it has launched a new service called Eleven Music that lets individuals and businesses generate their own music with its artificial intelligence model.

Users enter a prompt in plain English, such as ‘create a smooth jazz song with a ‘60s vibe and powerful lyrics, but relaxing for a Friday afternoon,’ and the startup’s AI model generates a tune within minutes, complete with vocals and instrumentals.

With the launch, ElevenLabs—best known for its voice generation software—enters a fraught sphere where major music labels have already sued two music-generation startups, Suno and Udio, for their alleged use of copyrighted works to train their AI.

ElevenLabs Co-founder and Chief Executive Mati Staniszewski said the three-year-old startup has a deal with Merlin Network, a digital rights agency for independent labels, to train its model on artists’ work whose rights are represented by Merlin. ElevenLabs has a similar deal with Kobalt Music Group, an independent rights management and music publishing firm.”

From Wall Street Journal.