In a recent update on Elasticsearch and Apache Lucene, several enhancements and changes were highlighted, including a reduction in the default number of shards per index to address oversharding, the addition of support for the Search Template API in the high-level REST client, and the removal of custom key and trust managers to comply with FIPS standards. The update also mentions improvements such as faster histograms with non-fixed time zones to benefit Kibana users, optimization of top-k queries by storing static scoring signals as term frequencies, and progress on cross-cluster replication with added security permissions. Additionally, a new NIO-based transport layer has been introduced, and changes have been made to improve caching efficiency and forbid expensive query parts in ranking evaluation. Apache Lucene's recent release, version 7.3.1, addressed issues like removing the 2 billion document limit per index, better handling of pending deletes, and allowing doc-value updates to non-existing fields. The update reflects ongoing efforts to enhance efficiency, security, and functionality in both Elasticsearch and Apache Lucene.