DNA analysis revealed that the people buried before and after the collapse were not closely related, indicating that the original population largely disappeared and was replaced by newcomers.

“We see a clear genetic break between the two periods,” said Frederik Valeur Seersholm, assistant professor at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen and one of the lead authors of the study.

“The earlier group resembles Stone Age farming populations from northern France and Germany, while the later group shows strong genetic links to southern France and the Iberian Peninsula.”

The results suggest that the local population shrank dramatically before new groups migrated north and settled in the region.

Ancient Disease and Signs of Crisis

To investigate what may have caused the decline, the researchers used a DNA technique that examines all genetic material preserved in ancient bones. This allowed them to identify traces of several pathogens, including Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for plague, and Borrelia recurrentis, which causes louse borne relapsing fever.

Although plague was present, the researchers say it does not fully explain what happened.

“We can confirm that plague was present, but the evidence does not support it as the sole cause of the population collapse,” said Martin Sikora, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and senior author of the study. “The decline was likely driven by a combination of disease, environmental stress and other disruptive events.”

The skeletal remains also point to an unusually severe crisis. Archaeologists found exceptionally high mortality during the earlier burial period, especially among children and young people.

“The demographic pattern is a strong indicator of crisis,” said Laure Salanova, research director at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

DNA Reveals Changes in Stone Age Society

The genetic evidence also shows that the population replacement was accompanied by significant social changes.

During the earlier period, the tomb contained multiple generations of the same extended families, suggesting closely connected communities that buried relatives together over time. In the later period, burials became much more selective and were dominated by a single male lineage, indicating a different social organization.

“This indicates that the population change was accompanied by a shift in how society was structured,” Seersholm said.

A Clue to the End of Europe’s Megalith Builders

The findings add to growing evidence that the Neolithic population decline affected large parts of northern and western Europe, extending well beyond Scandinavia and northern Germany.

The study may also help explain why the construction of megalithic tombs and other massive stone monuments came to an end across Europe during roughly the same period.

“We now see that end of these monumental constructions coincides with the disappearance of the population that built them,” Seersholm said.

The advent of the injectable weight-loss drug semaglutide (known better by its brand names Wegovy and Ozempic) marked a distinct shift in the weight-loss drugs market when it became available just a few years ago.

Semaglutide is a class of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medication. These drugs mimic the gut hormone GLP-1, which is released soon after eating. This hormone signals fullness to the brain, slowing digestion and stimulating the release of insulin. By replicating the action of this hormone, GLP-1 drugs have proven highly effective at managing type 2 diabetes and promoting weight loss.

Although semaglutide is widely used, a key issue with the drug is that it needs to be injected into the belly, thighs or back of the arm. This can make it difficult for patients with needle phobia or who don’t want to self-inject due to the inconvenience.

Another logistical issue with injectable GLP-1 drugs is that they require refrigeration throughout the supply chain. This can pose a challenge in low- and middle-income countries.

It’s for these reasons that researchers and developers have started investigating the efficacy of oral versions of semaglutide.

Based on current research, it appears that oral semaglutide is very effective. However, it must be taken on an empty stomach – and users must wait 30 minutes before eating or drinking.

Alongside being expensive to produce, it also has poor bioavailability compared with injectable semaglutide. This means only about 1% of the ingested drug is absorbed and able to exert its effects.

But a recent phase 3 clinical trial has shown that a new type of oral weight-loss pill may have overcome these issues – proving to be more effective than the current oral semaglutide products on the market.

Oral weight-loss pill

The recent 52-week phase 3 trial involved 1,698 adults with type 2 diabetes across six countries. It set out to compare current oral semaglutide products against orforglipron, which is also taken as a daily tablet.

The primary measure researchers were looking for was a reduction in HbA1c. This blood test reflecting average blood sugar levels over three months is the standard indicator of diabetes control. Diabetes is present if HbA1c is 6.5% or more.

From a baseline average HbA1c of 8.3%, it was found that after 52 weeks, orforglipron was able to reduce this value by an average of 1.71–1.91%. In comparison, oral semaglutide only reduced HbA1c by 1.47%.

Not only did orforglipron meet the trial’s goals of proving it was as effective to oral semaglutide, it proved it was superior for lowering blood sugar. The participants who took orforglipron also lost more weight – an average of 6.1kg-8.2kg, compared with 5.3kg in those taking semaglutide.

However, a key issue highlighted by the trial was one of tolerability.

GLP-1 drugs can cause gastrointestinal side-effects such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation. In this latest trial, around 59% of participants on orforglipron reported such symptoms, compared with 37–45% on semaglutide.

The reason for this difference may be the more prominent, daily peak drug concentrations with orforglipron. The consequence was that around 10% of orforglipron participants discontinued treatment due to adverse effects. Just 4-5% of those taking semaglutide discontinued treatment.

No head-to-head trials have been done of injectable GLP-1 versus orforglipron. However, the weight loss seen in this study of people with type 2 diabetes is broadly comparable with that previously observed with injectable GLP-1.

Market implications

The trial’s results show that orforglipron, which was developed by Eli Lilly, can be considered one of semaglutide’s most credible challengers.

Another remarkable thing about orforglipron is that it belongs to a new category of drugs called small-molecule drugs. This means it’s a synthetic chemical compound small enough to be absorbed directly through the gut wall. There, it’s able to act on GLP-1 receptors, even though it isn’t of a similar structure to a GLP-1 hormone.

Oral semaglutide, on the other hand, is a peptide drug. This means the structure of its amino acids (one of the building blocks of protein) closely resembles that of the natural GLP-1 hormone.

As a small-molecule drug, orforglipron is cheaper and simpler to manufacture than peptide-based drugs such as semaglutide.

And as with oral semaglutide, it requires no refrigeration. This gives it a logistical advantage over injectable GLP-1 formulations – a potentially important consideration for expanding access in low- and middle-income countries, where cold chain infrastructure is unreliable.

It remains to be seen, however, how orforglipron will perform against oral semaglutide in the broader market.

Although this latest trial has shown it is superior for controlling blood sugar and aiding weight loss, its higher rate of side-effects and treatment discontinuation may temper enthusiasm. In a crowded and competitive market, long-term adherence – shaped as much by tolerability as by efficacy – is probably a critical differentiator.

Orforglipron is still undergoing trials in patients with obesity but without diabetes.

If those two processes could be separated, however, engineers could direct heat much more precisely. A material could absorb thermal energy from one direction while releasing it in another, potentially improving thermal management, energy conversion, infrared sensing, and thermal communication technologies.

A Material That Can Control Heat

To overcome this limitation, an international team led by Professor Koichi Okamoto and Dr. Shunsuke Murai of Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Engineering developed a new type of device using magneto-optical materials. These materials change the way they interact with light when exposed to a magnetic field, making it possible to alter their thermal behavior.

The researchers paired a magneto-optical material with a phase change material known as GST. The resulting device can control the direction in which heat is radiated, switch that behavior on or off, and retain its configuration even after the power has been turned off. In effect, it allows heat to be programmed in a way that resembles how data is stored and controlled inside a computer chip.

“We made heat radiation behave in a ‘smarter’ way,” Dr. Murai explained. “Achieving these capabilities in a working model could enable a new generation of efficient infrared emitters, thermal-energy devices, sensors, and photonic memory technologies.”

Better Performance Than Earlier Designs

The team found that the device responded differently depending on the direction from which light arrived, even when the light struck it almost straight on. Earlier technologies typically required light to hit the material at very steep angles to achieve similar effects, reducing both absorption and radiation efficiency compared with normal incidence.

The new design also addressed other shortcomings of previous systems. Earlier devices produced inconsistent switching between their “on” and “off” states, and they lost their stored configuration once power was removed. In contrast, the new material can reliably switch states while preserving its memory, making it far more practical for future applications.

Toward Programmable Thermal Devices

The researchers see this technology as an important step toward devices that manage heat with the same level of precision that electronic circuits use to control electricity.

“Our ultimate goal is to develop compact devices that can actively control heat radiation, much like electronic circuits control the flow of electricity,” Professor Okamoto said. “Such devices could be used in smarter infrared sensors, more efficient energy systems, and new types of photonic memory that store information using light and heat instead of electrical charges.”

Superconductors allow electric current to flow without losing energy, but only when cooled to extremely low temperatures where quantum effects emerge. These remarkable materials are already used in technologies ranging from quantum computers and medical neuroimaging systems to fusion reactors and maglev trains.

Despite their enormous potential, superconductors remain exceptionally difficult to discover. There are virtually endless combinations of chemical elements that could form new materials, yet only a tiny fraction turn out to be superconductors. Those that have already been identified generally require costly cooling systems that bring them close to absolute zero before they exhibit their unique properties.

Scientists around the world are searching for a practical superconductor that can operate at room temperature.

“Superconductive materials that can operate at room temperature would forever change the way we consume energy,” explains Törmä. “If such a material could replace regular conductors in applications like computers and data centers, global energy consumption could be slashed and the heat footprint of the ICT sector vastly reduced.”

AI and Quantum Physics Join Forces

The SuperC consortium was established in 2023 by Professor Törmä and an international group of leading physicists who share the goal of using quantum physics to help address climate change. It is the first coordinated global collaboration dedicated to discovering new superconductors, with the ambitious objective of finding a room temperature superconductor by 2033.

According to Törmä, combining quantum geometry with machine learning provides a powerful foundation for that search. In the team’s latest work, the newly identified superconductors, YRu₃B₂ and LuRu₃B₂, owe their properties to electrons forming flat bands within a kagome lattice, a geometric arrangement inspired by traditional Japanese basket weaving patterns.

To identify these materials, researchers first used machine learning to rapidly screen enormous numbers of possible elemental combinations. A specialized algorithm selected the most promising candidates, which were then analyzed using detailed quantum calculations to determine whether they could become superconductors.

Once the predictions were confirmed theoretically, collaborators at Rice University synthesized the materials by chemically combining their constituent elements into new compounds. Led by Professor Emilia Morosan, the Rice team then experimentally verified that both materials are indeed superconductors.

The proof of concept study was recently published in Physical Review Research.

A Faster Path to New Superconductors

Developing a complete quantum mechanical understanding of superconductivity is extraordinarily challenging, making the search for new superconducting materials slow and computationally demanding.

“Over the decades researchers have recognized over 7,000 superconductors, but mostly serendipitously,” explains Törmä. “The process of identifying possible materials is so computationally heavy that, in fact, researchers have only been able to theoretically predict the viability of about 20 of these.”

Even when a material appears promising on paper, it may still prove impractical because it is too difficult to synthesize or impossible to produce at scale, Törmä notes. Traditionally, evaluating huge numbers of potential materials has required enormous computing resources. The SuperC team’s AI driven approach changes that process by focusing detailed calculations only on the strongest candidates.

“Our method uses machine-learning-based pre-screening followed by targeted calculations on the promising candidates. This approach will greatly speed up superconductor discovery in the future. With machine learning, we may be able to push the number of materials we can process into the billions,” says Törmä. “This will take us a critical step closer to finding a room-temperature superconductor.”

Looking Ahead

SuperC’s research will be featured in Aalto University’s Designs for a Cooler Planet exhibition from September 1 to October 30, 2026, in Greater Helsinki, Finland.

The SuperC consortium receives funding from The Kavli Foundation, Klaus Tschira Stiftung, Kevin Wells, the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, the Keele Foundation, the Magnus Ehrnrooth Foundation, and the Neste and Fortum Foundation.