Chat apps, e-mail, and cloud files have become the primary communication channels among policy makers, and archivists are scrambling to preserve them ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
July 7, 2026—Government officials conduct business through text, encrypted chats and cloud apps. But obtaining and preserving those records is a technological feat. Plus, what's behind a rare chimp "civil war" in Uganda, and why just 90 minutes less of sleep can lead to weight gain.
—Andrea Gawrylewski
Chief Newsletter Editor
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Near-Earth asteroid Kamo'oalewa imaged by Tianwen-2 CNSA
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Digital Governance
Modern governments and public officials make decisions in email, chat apps and cloud documents, often inside proprietary systems. These communiqués are a matter of public record, but obtaining them and storing them have become a huge technical challenge. And a weighty one: The National Archives added 463 terabytes of electronic records to its permanent collection in 2024 alone. Though public-records laws can require preservation, recent incidents (like U.S. Cabinet officials discussing military plans via the encrypted app Signal) show that obtaining those records can be a hurdle.
The challenges:
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Pulling preserved data off a hard drive or USB drive without altering files or metadata such as time stamps takes skill. Different software versions, and even different storage media, can preserve different file fragments and automatic backups. Those offer valuable clues to how a document was drafted and how its creators thought, but recovering and interpreting them is painstaking, specialized work.
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Cloud-based systems such as Google Docs can hold the most detailed file histories of all, but extracting files from them without the original passwords and two-factor authentication is its own challenge.
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As software evolves, stored digital material must remain readable. That often requires regularly migrating material like word processing documents, spreadsheets and computer-aided design files to current file formats while keeping a careful log of exactly what’s been done.
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Digital archives can contain copyrighted material alongside sensitive correspondence, including personal messages and medical bills, sitting in the same inboxes and folders as the files a researcher wants. That makes institutions cautious about opening collections broadly.
What can be done: Machine learning and AI might help these processes. Specialized software could help spot pieces of sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, and extract text from scanned documents or archived video through optical character recognition and automated transcription. AI can also surface files relevant to a particular question in a sprawling archive, including documents a simple keyword search would miss.
What the experts say: Even as AI gets better at parsing archival material, it is unlikely to relieve human researchers of the need to read the relevant documents themselves. “It’s still important for a human user to go back to the documents and be able to read individual e-mails just to understand the context,” says Lise Jaillant, a professor of digital cultural heritage at Loughborough University in England.
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Chimp Civil War
A community of more than 200 chimpanzees in Uganda are embroiled in a lethal conflict researchers are calling a rare “civil war.” The large community of chimps is made up of two social groups called the Central and Western clusters. The splinter between the groups began in 2015, when a group of chimps from the Western cluster approached a group of Central chimps, quieted, and then ran away as the Central chimps chased after them. In the years since then, the two groups split apart geographically and socially, and have protected their borders with deadly force. More than 24 chimps have been killed since the outbreak of fighting.
Why this matters: This is the first time a fracture like this has been observed in chimps without any human influence. Researchers suspect it may have happened because of a breakdown in social relationships due to the strain of the group size, competition and changes in which individuals were alpha males.
What the experts say: Researchers are now looking into similarities between why chimps and humans break out into violent conflict. To protect peace, it’s not just about understanding other groups but also about nurturing friendships that connect them, says Aaron Sandel, a primatologist at the University of Texas at Austin. —Emma Gometz, Newsletter Editor
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YOUNG AMERICAN SCIENTISTS
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Alice Stanton developed the first complete tissue model of the human brain, which included blood vessels and all six major cell types, including neurons and immune cells. To model neurological diseases, Stanton incorporated other types of cells in her model rather than just stem cells. For example, she included immune cells called microglia—the activity of which is tied to Alzheimer’s. From this larger model, Stanton also developed a miniature version—a brain-on-a-chip—that can be used to test treatments. It’s smaller than a mustard seed, but part of a class of “organs-on-a-chip” that are emerging as tools of great potential in research and drug discovery. "I really want to expand, not just lifespan, but help people live their best lives their whole time here," she says. —EG
Read all Young American Scientists profiles here.
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If you are a reader of historical nonfiction or historical biographies, you'll know that so much of what historians glean from the past is built on written records and letters. Famous declarations and personal letters alike give us insight into the inner worlds of many of the past's most influential people. But what will the historians of the future be able to deduce about us? Will our texted conversations (emojis and all) be preserved in fragments? Our emails sporadically committed to a database for posterity? The digital age has enabled unprecedented communication, but the messages may not be lasting.
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Send any digital messages to me, plus other thoughts or feedback on this newsletter: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow.
—Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
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