Previous evidence suggests that masturbation has a complementary function for women and a compensatory function for men. However, in light of changing attitudes toward masturbation, this gendered model of compensation versus complementation may not remain valid. […] Men who reported the highest intercourse frequency were less likely to report masturbation in the past month, while women with higher intercourse frequency were more likely to report masturbation in the past month. […] when partnered sexuality faces challenges, masturbation may serve as a replacement for both women and men

Doctor leaves a patient on an operating table under anaesthetic to have sex with a nurse in another room

Doorbell prankster that tormented residents of German apartments turns out to be a slug

Re-freezing the Arctic? A giant sea curtain? High-tech efforts to save the ice sheets are doomed, report finds

Tesco trials avocado ripeness scanners

Never steal a hacker’s girlfriend’s phone: How an expert exposed a global network of thieves

Asking a Question is a Proposal in Shared Inquiry

More than 40% of American adults now report being online “almost constantly”

spiritual bliss attractor state

Tehching Hsieh punched a time clock every hour for a year [more]

Buddhism, Nothingness, and Pessimism: From Schopenhauer to Nietzsche

A surgeon who froze his legs so they would require amputation to satisfy a sexual obsession before making nearly £500,000 in insurance claims has been jailed.

Mark Zuckerberg sues Mark Zuckerberg — Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. But his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years, since Meta’s moderation systems flag his account as falsely impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the platform.

OpenAI is working on a “jobs platform” for people who lose their jobs to AI

Study claims dark matter does not exist and the universe is 27 billion years old

Not all calories are equal: Men gained around 1 kg more of fat mass while on the ultra-processed diet compared to the unprocessed diet, regardless of whether they were on the normal or excess calorie diet. Ultra-processed foods harm men’s health —

There are 3 different scenarios. For each, you are given a list of constraints and statistics on the attribute distribution. You can assume, participants are sampled i.i.d., meaning the attribute distribution will not change as the night goes on. […] The person at the top of the leaderboard Sept 15 6am PT will be the winner and get to go to Berghain - we fly you out!

Zuckerberg went on an unprecedented hiring spree seeking to lure top AI researchers to his new team[…] At least three AI researchers hired have already left

Zuckerberg gave noise-canceling headphones to his neighbors in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto in an effort to address years of frustration over ongoing construction and disruption surrounding his expanding residential compound

Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 have discovered the key to getting large language model (LLM) chatbots to ignore their guardrails, and it’s quite simple. You just have to ensure that your prompt uses terrible grammar and is one massive run-on sentence

YouTube’s Sneaky AI ‘Experiment’ — Something strange has been happening on YouTube over the past few weeks. After being uploaded, some videos have been subtly augmented, their appearance changing without their creators doing anything. Viewers have noticed “extra punchy shadows,” “weirdly sharp edges,” and a smoothed-out look to footage that makes it look “like plastic.” Many people have come to the same conclusion: YouTube is using AI to tweak videos on its platform, without creators’ knowledge.

In a Hotter World, Some People Age Faster, Researchers Find — Exposure to heat waves over just two years could add up to 12 extra days of age-related health damage. [NY Times]

Six scientists demonstrate in their laboratory that a sulfur compound could have been key to the appearance of the first proteins on early Earth […] In 1991, De Duve proposed a hypothesis about the origin of life that did not require any deity: “the thioester world,” a compound containing carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur. On that primordial planet, still devoid of life, thioesters would have provided the energy necessary for chemical elements to react and form more complex molecules, such as the first genetic material, RNA.

Scientists Strip Cancer of Its “Superpower” To Outsmart Drugs

This study demonstrates negative associations between stress and sexuality, with stronger effects in women

How Queen Victoria Became the Biggest Drug Dealer of All Time

Waymo granted first permit to begin testing autonomous vehicles in New York City

Short-term rental bans and the hotel industry: Evidence from New York city […] We find that total hotel lobbying in NYC in 2023 was about twenty times larger than lobbying by Airbnb and other home-sharing networks. […] the heavy involvement of the hotel industry in the rise of short-term rental regulations and their particular involvement with NYC’s short-term rental ban. […] Our findings are that total hotel revenue increased by roughly $2.1 to 2.9 billion over the first eighteen months after the ban’s enactment. We also find that NYC’s short-term rental ban increased average daily hotel prices by approximately $14 to 19 per night. Despite the substantial increase in prices, we find little, if any, increase in the quantity of rooms rented […] so the revenue increase was mostly due to the increase in room rates.

Study links rising temperatures and declining moods

Exercise is great for your health – but not necessarily for weight loss

Why Grindr decided to build a side hustle selling erectile dysfunction pills

‘Shrekking’ is ‘dating down’

How to draw a Space Invader

Delta, United sued for selling windowless ‘window seats’

Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

How Well Does the Money Laundering Control System Work?

Strategies for Coping With the End of a Desirable Intimate Relationship

Pubertal development is believed to influence cognitive and behavioral development during adolescence, but measuring puberty is challenging.

How can England possibly be running out of water? […] The reservoirs England does have are at their lowest levels in at least a decade, just 67.7% full on average.

Rates of daily reading for pleasure have declined over the past 20 years in the US […] with decreases of 3% per year

How Croatian freediver held breath for 29 minutes

A brain implant can decode a person’s internal chatter — but the device works only if the user thinks of a preset password — The mind-reading device, or brain–computer interface (BCI), accurately deciphered up to 74% of imagined sentences. The system began decoding users’ internal speech — the silent dialogue in people’s minds — only when they thought of a specific keyword. This ensured that the system did not accidentally translate sentences that users would rather keep to themselves.

Scientists discover surprising language ‘shortcuts’ in birdsong – just like humans — “In human language, if we say something a lot, we tend to shorten it – like saying ‘TV’ instead of ‘television’. It turns out that the same pattern exists in birdsong.

How Baltimore’s violent crime rate hit an all-time low

Gamblers Now Bet on Al Models Like Racehorses

LinkedIn is the fakest platform of them all — It was meant for professionals—but it is filled with chatbots

Invitin is a French startup that allows couples to sell seats at their weddings to help finance their event.

A decade after losing her sight, a B.C. woman can see again — through her tooth

For a few dozen people in the world, the downside of living with a rare immune condition comes with a surprising superpower—the ability to fight off all viruses. […] Taking inspiration from this rare mutation that makes people impervious to viral diseases, a Columbia researcher is developing a therapy that could bestow this superpower on the rest of us

we found that participants consistently rated every common daily activity as more enjoyable when interacting with someone else. […] results suggest that whether we are eating, reading, or even cleaning up around the house, happiness thrives in the company of others. […] Across more than 40,000 participants and more than 100,000 episodes, we found that participants consistently rated every common daily activity as more enjoyable when interacting with someone else.

The ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that women’s mate preferences for androgen-dependent secondary sexual traits in men are most pronounced during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle. […] we provide the first test of whether women’s sexual preferences for male facial hair, which is reliably associated with male sexual maturity and masculinity, peak during the ovulatory phase among women with higher salivary testosterone. […] While beards increased male attractiveness, preferences did not change over the menstrual cycle. […] Women’s preferences for men’s beards may not support the ovulatory shift hypothesis.

Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info

Kirsty Farts, 28, started the flatulence-themed content to help pay off an £11,000 vet bill. She now uploads up to 60 videos a month to her 9,000 fans on social media

FDA approves breakthrough eye drops that fix near vision without glasses

There have been at least 33 crypto kidnappings around the world this year. The case against William Duplessie and John Woeltz, who are accused of holding Italian tourist Michael Carturan captive in a $75,000 a month Nolita townhouse and torturing him for weeks in an attempt to get the password to his cryptocurrency accounts, would be the first known occurrence in New York. […] They moved from Kentucky to the five-story Prince Street townhouse, where they threw wild, drug-fueled parties, often attended by employees of the Brandy Melville store around the corner, and would show off their guns, knives, and cattle prods.

LAPD Eyes ‘GeoSpy’, an AI Tool That Can Geolocate Photos in Seconds

The best lots are all taken, so developers are stretching the limits to make use of space that isn’t always ideal for skyscrapers. They’re not necessarily taller than buildings of the past, but they are a lot more slender. “Pencil tower” is the term generally used to describe buildings that have a slenderness ratio of more than around 10 to 1, height to width. […] limiting wind-induced motions is a major part of high-rise design […] I built a model in the garage to show you how this works

Diabetic Man With Gene-Edited Cells Produces His Own Insulin

Currently, it is not clear whether any animal reaches an age comparable to a human in their 80s. Most species seem to age differently compared with humans. Some preliminary observations suggest that cats may share common patterns of aging with humans. We studied pet cats, research colony cats, and wildcats living in zoos to encapsulate species variation in the speed of development and aging. We found that cat and human brains atrophy with age, and that their age-related patterns in brain aging are sufficiently similar that we could use them to generate cross-species age alignments.

Breast milk-flavored ice cream

Butter made from carbon tastes like the real thing, gets backing from Bill Gates

Meeting partners online is related to lower relationship satisfaction and love: Data from 50 countries

Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for both inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises. Humans also arguably have the most sophisticated communication system in the animal kingdom: natural language allows us to express complex and structured meanings. Some have therefore argued for a tight relationship between complex thought and language, postulating that reasoning, including logical reasoning, relies on linguistic representations. […] Our findings reveal that the language system is not engaged during logical reasoning, and patients with severe aphasia exhibit intact performance on logic tasks. [PDF]

There are no new ideas in AI — only new datasets — All four big breakthroughs in LLMs happened because we unlocked a new source of data. What will be the next one?

How much money do Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, and Snapchat make from you?

An emerging form of surveillance, “wireless-tapping,” explores the possibility of remotely […] a team of computer science researchers at Penn State demonstrated that transcriptions of phone calls can be generated from radar measurements taken up to three meters, or about 10 feet, from a phone […] accuracy remains limited — around 60% for a vocabulary of up to 10,000

An Australian scientist says probabilities are the leading cause of the Bermuda Triangle disappearances […] every instance contains a degree of poor weather or likely human error (or both, as in the case of Flight 19) as the true culprit.

How can you cut an equilateral triangle into four pieces that can be reassembled to form a perfect square?

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say

Toe transfer surgery – using one or more of the patients’ toes to replace the amputated digits – is a potential alternative to replantation. […] hand function was significantly better for patients undergoing toe transfer, compared to replantation. The difference in favor of toe transfer was substantial, with hand function scores about three times higher than the benefit considered clinically important. […] Amputations of the fingers and thumb are common injuries, affecting about 45,000 people per year in the United States alone

Eating three servings of French fries a week is associated with a 20% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, but eating similar amounts of potatoes cooked in other ways – boiled, baked or mashed – does not substantially increase the risk

Americans get more than half their calories from ultra-processed foods

In many Western countries, the number 7 is considered lucky, causing it to be disproportionately selected in lotto games. This study quantifies the financial cost of this tendency

Welcome to the world of fake weddings – a rising trend in Indian cities where people gather to enjoy the wedding party, minus the actual marriage.

Costume tests for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Scientific fraud has become an ‘industry’

Denmark zoo asks people to donate unwanted pets to feed predators and imitate ‘natural food chain’

From 2017 to 2022, Uber customers reported incidents of sexual assault or sexual misconduct every 8 minutes in the US

we applied a technique to extract the patterns the model uses to represent character traits – like evil, sycophancy (insincere flattery), or propensity to hallucinate (make up false information). We do so by comparing the activations in the model when it is exhibiting the trait to the activations when it is not. We call these patterns persona vectors.

This paper aims to structurally analyze what it means for thought to “leap.” By redefining phenomena traditionally labeled as “inspiration” or “intuition”—typically viewed as accidental or emotional—into a reproducible cognitive model, the paper introduces the concept of Mindflight Cognition. Unlike simple perspective shifts, mindflight cognition involves the simultaneous occurrence of perspective leaps, structural reconfigurations, and the emergence of new meaning. The paper identifies six constitutive elements (hierarchical jumpability, multiperspectival shifting, structural overlooking, cognitive cartography, ideation germination sensitivity, and core-belief orientation), and three essential activating factors (core belief, structural quotient, and structural shards). Using the author’s hot dog business model as a real-world implementation case, it visualizes how mindflight cognition manifests in structural terms.

Trait-Based Embryo Selection […] When a couple uses IVF, they may get as many as ten embryos. If they only want one child, which one do they implant? In the early days, doctors would just eyeball them and choose whichever looked healthiest. Later, they started testing for some of the most severe and easiest-to-detect genetic disorders like Down Syndrome and cystic fibrosis1. The final step was polygenic selection - genotyping each embryo and implanting the one with the best genes overall. […] Last month, a startup called Nucleus took the plunge. They had previously offered 23andMe style genetic tests for adults. Now they announced a partnership with Genomic Prediction focusing on embryos. Although GP would continue to only test for health outcomes, you could forward the raw data from GP to Nucleus, and Nucleus would predict extra traits, including height, BMI, eye color, hair color, ADHD, IQ, and even handedness. And this week, Herasight4 entered the space with the most impressive disease risk scores yet, an IQ predictor worth 6-95 extra points, and a series of challenges to competitors, whom they call out for insufficient scientific rigor.

Scientists in South Africa are making rhino horns radioactive to fight poaching

Multiple hypotheses have been suggested to explain why the three zebra species (Equus quagga, E. grevyi and E. zebra) are striped. […] The main hypotheses discussed during the last decade are the deterrence of biting flies, thermoregulation through stripe-generated air movement, and three anti-predation hypotheses: crypsis to avoid detection; dazzle coloration to confuse pursuers; and interspecies signalling to encourage protective mixed-species herding. Our evaluation suggests that these theories struggle to explain all aspects of variation in striping. […] Deterrence of biting flies is the theory that currently has strongest empirical support, but this theory alone struggles to explain why striping occurs so strongly in zebra but not in other African mammals, and the distribution of stripes across the body.

Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality […] [Some] argue that Copenhagen’s emergence as the default comes from historical accident, rather than its strengths. Critics say it allows physicists to sidestep deeper questions.

“That’s subjective!” People sometimes respond like this to claims about what’s true, what’s ethical, what others find beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, and more. To call a claim “subjective” seems in part to say that something important about the claim depends on the subject—the person—making the claim. What this “something” is varies depending on the claim. Are judgments like these truly “subjective”? What does “subjective” really mean?

the study of aesthetics is the study of the felt quality of perceptions of the senses, while the study of art is the study of the historical practice of making art objects.

Dark patterns: tricks to make you spend more online

‘Ozempic face’ may be driving a cosmetic surgery boom “Although they felt much better losing weight, in some ways they felt they looked older. And this was due to the loss of volume in their face.”

changes in pedestrian behavior since 1980 […] pedestrians now walk faster and linger less, researchers find

while males born during summer had a higher risk of developing depression symptoms, there was no observed association among females, study (n = 303)

Decades of global surveys point to a single, consistent foundation of well-being: our relationships

Peacocks have a secret hidden in their brightly colored tail feathers: tiny reflective structures that can amplify light into a laser beam. After dyeing the feathers and energizing them with an external light source, researchers discovered they emitted narrow beams of yellow-green laser light. […] the first example of a laser cavity in the animal kingdom

the Mosquito Bucket of Death

Three Chinese women were detained and questioned by immigration officers at the airport because their passport photos did not match their post-cosmetic surgery faces. [2017]

Man awarded $12,500 after Google Street View camera captured him naked in his yard in Argentina

When I say GPT may be an information virus, I am referring to the spread that is about to happen. The economic incentives of our information economy will drive thousands of businesses to create AI-generated content. As more of the internet becomes AI-generated, humans will no longer be able to effectively use it as an information storage system. […] In the information cesspool that is an internet filled with 99% of AI-generated content, Google’s search will no longer work. People will no longer use it. Advertisers will stop advertising. [2023]

An extra copy of chromosome 21 was discovered as the cause of Down syndrome more than half a century ago […] Using a system to rescue human cells with trisomy 21, this study successfully demonstrates the efficient elimination of excess chromosomes using multiple allele-specific targeting.

people experience an inflection point at around 50 years old, after which ageing seems to accelerate […] the study suggests that some tissues — especially blood vessels — age faster than others

How Some Butterflies Fooled Evolution and Developed a Second “Head”

Lucier was a pioneer of experimental music who died in 2021. But here in the Art Gallery of Western Australia he has been resurrected with cutting-edge neuroscience. […] “We have developed a brain on a dish, more or less, that has the ability to take action in the real world” […] This “brain on a dish” takes the form of two small, white blobs on a pedestal at the gallery. […] it was grown out of stem cells created from blood samples the composer agreed to donate to the project the year before he died. […] In order to produce new music, the blobs — Alvin Lucier’s surrogate self — are connected to 20 handcrafted brass plates attached to the gallery walls, like paintings. The plates, which contain hidden transducers and mallets, respond to neural signals the biological matter gives out in real time, creating an ethereal soundscape.

Compared with people who walked only 2,000 steps per day, those who took 7,000 steps saw a 47 percent drop in the risk of death from any cause within several years

Flight attendant who police say secretly recorded girls in airplane bathroom sentenced to 18.5 years

On 25 May 2003, a Boeing 727-223 airliner was stolen at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola […] prompting a worldwide search by law enforcement intelligence agencies in the United States. No trace of the aircraft has ever been found.

The Fermi paradox — the apparent absence of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations despite vast cosmic opportunities — may arise from a fundamental misunderstanding of advanced technological development. Building on Smart’s transcension hypothesis (2012) and extending it through the Quantum-Patterned Cosmos (QPC) framework, we propose that civilizations undergo “dimensional deepening” rather than spatial expansion upon reaching a critical coherence threshold. Previously: From these two facts it follows that the evolutionary path to life-forms capable of space colonization leads through a “Great Filter”

Kleptocracy is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population. Kleptocracy is different from plutocracy (rule by the richest) and oligarchy (rule by a small elite). In a kleptocracy, corrupt politicians enrich themselves secretly outside the rule of law, through kickbacks, bribes, and special favors from lobbyists and corporations, or they simply direct state funds to themselves and their associates.

“You go on Instagram and everyone is somehow living their best lives,” […] Approximately 60 per cent of Coachella tickets this year were purchased using BNPL (buy now, pay later)

Con man Joseph Weil once paid a Chicago bartender $10 to watch his dog, saying he had an urgent business meeting. He told him it was a pedigreed hunting dog.

Man dies after being pulled into an MRI by a metal chain he wore

Optimists have similar patterns of brain activation when they think about the future—but pessimists are all different from one another, a brain scan study suggests

Why do some people keep making choices that hurt them, even when the outcomes are obvious? […] for a small number of people, the problem isn’t due to a lack of motivation or capacity, but rather a subtle but persistent failure to connect their actions with its consequences. […] “We found that some people just don’t learn from experience,”

Dopamine in the brain is different to dopamine in the rest of the body. In the blood, dopamine helps modulate the function of multiple organs as well as our immune responses. In the brain, it’s a chemical messenger involved in mediating a diversity of animal behaviors – from movement and mood to sleep and memory to reward and motivation. Neurons that release dopamine are known to do so with different firing patterns, and yet it’s not clear what messages these specific signals encode, or why. […] “We are really only at the tip of the iceberg in trying to understand how dysfunctions in dopamine contribute to diseases like Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia or addiction”

Sex at birth is not always random — mum’s age and genetics can play a part — Families with three or more boys, for example, are more likely to have another boy than a girl as the next child. […] The authors note that changes in vaginal pH as women age could explain this phenomenon. For instance, the changes could influence the sex of the child by affecting whether sperm carrying the X chromosome or the Y chromosome are more successful at fertilizing the egg.

Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission

According to the Pacific Institute, global water-related violence surged by more than 50 percent in 2023 alone. Yet international institutions still treat water as a development or an environmental issue—not as the national security flashpoint it has become. Around the globe, from Yemen to Ukraine, this critical resource is increasingly being used as a tool of control.

A lifeguard was impaled by a beach umbrella in Asbury Park, NJ […] The umbrella went through the woman’s armpit and came out her back.

Cancer DNA is detectable in blood more than three years before a diagnosis show tumor traces

Babies made using three people’s DNA are born free of hereditary disease

Imagine sending Google an encrypted question and getting back the exact results you wanted — without them having any way of knowing what your question was or what result they returned. The technique to do that is called Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). The first time I heard about what FHE does, I didn’t believe it was possible. But it is — an it works in real-world systems today. […] The implications are big. The entire business model built on harvesting user data could become obsolete. Why send your plaintext when another service can compute on your ciphertext? […] If people are demanding it, and the trends have made FHE practical for most computations, then most internet computations will be on FHE. The future of internet computations will be encrypted. It is not if, it is when.

Over the course of last year, researchers fulfilled a decades-old dream when they unveiled a proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture — a key piece of a group of interconnected problems called the Langlands programme. The proof — a gargantuan effort — validates the intricate and far-reaching Langlands programme, which is often hailed as the grand unified theory of mathematics but remains largely unproven.

Contemplative traditions universally acknowledge paths centered on inner light and inner sound. This article introduces the Yoga of the Inner Body, a third, less formally recognized, yet equally fundamental path rooted in the direct perception of subtle, endogenous bodily sensations that arise during deep meditative and contemplative states. These phenomena, including fine shivers, waves of warmth, electric tingling, pulsations, and full-body stillness paired with inner vibrations, are presented not as symbolic or pathological, but as direct expressions of consciousness.

40% of People Have Eyes That Aren’t Perfectly Round

this paper shows that facial similarity between investors and entrepreneurs predicts positive funding decisions but negative investment outcomes

Palantir is clearly the most “expensive” stock in S&P 500

Pop Mart expects 350% profit spike as Labubu fan frenzy lifts sales […] Since its rocky post-IPO debut in 2020, the company has staged a sharp turnaround, with shares rising nearly 600% over the past 12 months. That’s left Pop Mart with a market cap north of $44 billion, more than the combined value of Sanrio, Hasbro, and Mattel — the toy giants behind Hello Kitty, Transformers, and Barbie, respectively.

Why do some ideas spread widely, while others fail to catch on? Here, we review the psychology of information spread, or the psychology of ‘virality’. Surprisingly, widely shared content is often not widely liked, a phenomenon called ‘the paradox of virality’.

The link between masturbation and memory has been widely debated, with conflicting claims ranging from cognitive decline to potential mental clarity benefits. […] Findings suggest that masturbation influences neurochemical processes, including fluctuations in dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. These changes do not conclusively impair memory but may enhance mood regulation and stress relief, indirectly supporting cognitive function. While moderate masturbation does not negatively affect memory, compulsive behaviors, particularly when associated with excessive pornography consumption, have been linked to attentional deficits and psychological distress.

How does your brain wake up from sleep? Recordings of people as they woke from the dream-laden phase of sleep showed that the first brain regions to rouse are those associated with executive function and decision-making, located at the front of the head. A wave of wakefulness then spreads to the back, ending with an area associated with vision.

Google’s AI can now make phone calls for you — A new option in Search can have AI check pricing at businesses near you

Google is using the motions sensors on mobile phones to detect quakes worldwide — and send alerts

The attacks earned Réunion infamy as a “shark island,” prompting officials to close its beaches to swimming and surfing, causing immense damage to its lucrative tourism industry. Scientists, however, flocked to the island. In an effort to understand the outbreak and prevent future attacks, the French government, which oversees Réunion, poured millions of euros into studying shark ecology and behavior, as well as technologies to deter attacks. […] One of the first questions CHARC addressed was where the sharks were lurking offshore. To track the predators, scientists had to catch and tag them. […] Data from 46 tagged tiger sharks showed they were seasonal visitors to Réunion and preferred offshore waters. In contrast, tag data from 36 bull sharks showed the presence of males peaked in winter and females stayed year-round. Data also showed bull sharks often cruised close to the shore, especially during the afternoons, when most attacks occurred, and at night. “For science, these were very good results,” Blaison says. “But for security, it was quite bad,” because they showed sharks stayed close to shore all year.”

Animals react to sounds being made by plants, new research suggests, opening up the possibility that an invisible ecosystem might exist between them.

A Litmus Test for Plant Consciousness: Pattern–Temporal Synergy in a Relation-First Ontology

The United States is one of the few OECD countries to pay individuals to donate blood plasma and is the most generous in terms of remuneration. […] Our findings indicate that the opening of a plasma center in a city leads to a 12% drop in the crime rate

Life insurers can predict when you’ll die with about 98% accuracy. […] Underwriting is the dark art that allows an insurer to figure out if you’re a good bet or a risky one. Typically, underwriters- suspiciously sounds like undertakers-rely on a handful of key health metrics like HbA1c, cholesterol, blood pressure, and BMI to calculate your risk of dying earlier than expected (and thus costing them money). […] Those same four metrics are exactly what GLP‑1s improve. So, what’s the issue? […] If we assume about 65% of people who start GLP-1 medications quit by the end of year one, that creates a big problem. When someone stops the medication, they’ll usually regain the weight they lost, and in two years, most of those key health indicators (like BMI, blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol) bounce back to their starting point. This means the underwriter has just locked in a 30-year policy at preferred rates for someone who’ll be high-risk again by year three.

OpenAI is also very meritocratic. Historically, leaders in the company are promoted primarily based upon their ability to have good ideas and then execute upon them. Many leaders who were incredibly competent weren’t very good at things like presenting at all-hands or political maneuvering. That matters less at OpenAI then it might at other companies. The best ideas do tend to win. […] An unusual part of OpenAI is that everything, and I mean everything, runs on Slack. There is no email. I maybe received ~10 emails in my entire time there.

documenting social behaviours that lack a direct physical purpose (hereafter: “non-instrumental”) is essential as they offer parallels to aspects of human culture, where many social customs are arbitrary and serve more to reinforce group identity and cohesion than to impart specific skills. Behaviours such as fashion trends, rituals, and social norms in human societies often do not have direct material benefits but may promote social bonding and cultural identity. Finding similar socially-learned non-instrumental behaviours in the animal kingdom may thus speak to the evolutionary ancestry of our own socio-cultural behaviour. In this study, we document two non-instrumental behaviours in chimpanzees […] five out of eight individuals began wearing grass in their ears and six out of eight from their rectums

ADHD drug curbs impulsivity in men only, linked to brain wiring differences

Some gut microbes can absorb and help expel ‘forever chemicals’ from the body, research shows

The number of scam centers in eastern Myanmar is expanding at a rapid pace. Even after a large-scale crackdown in February, construction has continued

Five Companies Now Control Over 90% of the Global Food Delivery Market

Scientists hide messages in papers to game AI peer review — Some studies containing instructions in white text or small font — visible only to machines — will be withdrawn from preprint servers.

In 1642, licenses were granted to some Dutch citizens to settle in Queens. “Kill” is a Dutch word meaning “little stream.” Since Dutch men settled around the “Kill,” (in Long Island City) the name Dutch Kills was adopted. The “Kill” (or stream) is a tributary of Newtown Creek, which divides Queens from Brooklyn.