The photographs were taken inside the Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Thailand, also known as the To Daeng swamp forest. The site has been the focus of a long-running biodiversity survey led by Panthera Thailand in collaboration with government rangers.

Officials said the camera traps recorded several flat-headed cats at different times and locations, including a female accompanied by a kitten, providing clear evidence that the species is breeding in the wild.

DNP director-general Attapol Charoenchansa said the images represent the first confirmed camera-trap records of the flat-headed cat in Thailand in 29 years. According to the department, the animal was documented 13 times in 2024 and 16 times in 2025.

The flat-headed cat, scientifically known as Prionailurus planiceps, is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. It is found only in parts of Southeast Asia and is closely associated with wetlands, rivers and peat swamp forests.

Roughly the size of a domestic cat, the species is highly specialised for a semi-aquatic lifestyle . It has webbed feet, partially non-retractable claws and sharp, backward-pointing teeth that allow it to hunt fish, frogs and other aquatic prey.

The species has suffered sharp population declines across its range due to habitat destruction, wetland drainage and pollution . The IUCN estimates that fewer than 2,500 mature individuals remain globally, and it had previously been considered possibly extinct in Thailand.

Attapol said the rediscovery reflected strengthened protection of peat swamp habitats in the south, where rangers have increased patrols and enforcement to curb illegal encroachment and environmental damage.

Krisana Kaewplang, director of Panthera Thailand, said the finding demonstrated the value of sustained conservation efforts and scientific monitoring, adding that further research and protective measures would now be expanded to secure the species’ future in Thailand.

Neutrinos, sometimes nicknamed “ghost particles,” are among the most puzzling components of the universe. They pass straight through planets, buildings and even our bodies without leaving a trace, and trillions of them stream through humans every second. 

Because they barely interact with anything, scientists struggle to study them. However, understanding how they behave could help explain how the universe is structured and where its matter comes from.

The new data suggests JUNO is working exactly as planned and is already measuring neutrino behavior with more accuracy than all previous experiments combined, according to scientists at the University of Mainz in Germany, who collaborate on the project. 

The results put researchers closer to answering a major outstanding question in physics: the order of neutrino masses, which determines how these particles transform from one type into another as they travel .

The observatory itself is enormous: a 20,000-ton spherical detector buried deep under a mountain in southern China. It took ten years to build and cost more than $350 million. It was designed specifically to track the subtle changes neutrinos undergo as they move, which earlier experiments could not measure clearly.

Although located in China, JUNO is a global effort involving more than 700 researchers from 17 countries, including the United States , Germany, Italy, France and Russia.

“Achieving such precision within only two months of operation shows that JUNO is performing exactly as designed,” project leader Yifang Wang said. 

He said the detector is now positioned to answer questions that have puzzled scientists for decades and to search for entirely new physics beyond current theories.

HIV’s ability to remain dormant in certain white blood cells, known as the latent reservoir, has long thwarted efforts to eradicate it. This hidden reservoir allows the virus to evade both the immune system and antiretroviral drugs, requiring lifelong treatment for the nearly 40 million people living with HIV globally. According to UNAIDS , one person died every minute from HIV-related causes in 2023, underscoring the urgency of finding a cure.

The Melbourne team’s breakthrough involves delivering mRNA to these white blood cells using a novel lipid nanoparticle (LNP), dubbed LNP X. The mRNA instructs the cells to reveal the hidden virus, making it vulnerable to attack. “It was previously thought impossible to deliver mRNA to the type of white blood cell that is home to HIV,” said Dr. Paula Cevaal, co-first author of the study. “Our hope is that this new nanoparticle design could be a new pathway to an HIV cure.”

While the findings are promising, the road to a cure remains long. The study was conducted in lab settings using cells from HIV patients, and further research in animals and human safety trials will be needed, a process likely to take years. “Many things in biomedicine don’t make it to the clinic,” Cevaal cautioned. “But in terms of HIV cure research, we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing.”

Dr. Michael Roche, co-senior author from the University of Melbourne, noted that the approach could have implications beyond HIV, as the targeted white blood cells are also relevant to cancers.

Parallel research at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine offers complementary insights. Their findings reveal how subtle variations in HIV’s Rev-RRE axis, a viral control system, dictate its replication and latency. “Understanding how the virus stays latent could help us develop a lasting cure,” said Dr. Patrick Jackson, a lead author. These variations explain why some HIV strains are harder to flush out, informing strategies to target the virus more effectively.

Meanwhile, at the 25th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2024) in Munich, a new case of long-term HIV remission was reported. A 60-year-old German man, who received a stem cell transplant in 2015 for leukaemia from a donor with a single CCR5-delta 32 mutation, has been off antiretroviral therapy since 2018 with no detectable HIV. This case, dubbed the “second Berlin patient,” builds on the success of Timothy Brown, the first person cured of HIV in 2007 via a similar transplant. “This confirms we are moving in the right direction,” said Dr. Meg Doherty of the World Health Organisation, though she stressed that stem cell transplants are high-risk and not a scalable solution.

The convergence of these findings - mRNA breakthroughs, insights into viral latency, and remission cases fuels cautious optimism. While a cure remains years away, the global HIV response continues to prioritise testing, treatment, and research to end the epidemic by 2030. As Cevaal put it, “We’re very hopeful that we could eventually do this in humans.”