This study in serotine bats (Eptesicus serotinus) shows that the penis is used as a ‘copulatory arm’ rather than an intromittent organ, revealing a novel copulatory behaviour in mammals. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.0

This study shows that in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the downregulation of active TE families extends lifespan. These findings link DNA activity to aging and opens up new possibilities in medical and biological research for health improvement and age determination. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40957- (open access)

The final push to start using Firefox over Chrome on Android might finally be thanks to the enormous selection of add-ons (Firefox's version of extensions) coming out next month. Chrome doesn't offer native support for extensions in its mobile app. Also, better security.

It was sometime in early 2022 that I found myself reading a few romance novels. I remember being mildly annoyed about how most of the books had instant chemistry/attraction as part of the plot. Then I suddenly found myself wondering, how do I feel if and when I feel attraction? I think I have probably never felt instant attraction. When I look at a good looking man/woman I just feel an appreciation for their beauty, like how I would feel looking at a beautiful painting or photograph. At most all I feel is a wish is to look at them a few times more than is appropriate. I don’t remember how it feels like to feel attraction towards someone I have feelings for. The last time I felt strong feelings for someone was many years ago and I can’t recall my feelings now. I am very curious to know how other people feel when they experience attraction towards someone. How does it feel physically, and what thoughts and/or feelings do you experience? Also, do you consider chemistry and attraction to be the same or different? How?

Imagine if our brains could be scanned and the contents of our thoughts could be read. A team of researchers and also Meta have just achieved this feat by using AI. This episode takes a look at it. Links:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.19812 https://ai.meta.com/blog/brain-ai-image-decoding-meg-magnetoencephalography/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/science/ai-speech-language.html https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01304-9**

What do you think are the ramifications of this research?

By mulling over colliding bubbles on a cosmological scale, physicists are finding cause for speculation about fresh sparks of cosmic creation. It is possible, they say, that in the weeks after the big bang there was a second, similarly profound moment of transformation. This one may have spawned monstrous shadow particles trillions of times the mass of those that make up normal matter and could make sense of the mysterious, invisible matter that seems to hold galaxies together. As outlandish as it might sound, the concept of a “dark” big bang is broadly in line with a quiet revolution that is already under way, as cosmologists rewrite what we think of as the standard big bang to account for multiple distinct “phase transitions”, each leaving its mark on the cosmos. What’s more, we now have the tools to test this idea by peering into the universe’s earliest moments and untangling the faint ripples produced by these profound primordial shifts. Archive link: https://archive.li/YH6tl

Cytoplasmic lattices (bundles of fibres floating in the cytoplasm) in mammalian egg cells seem to be storage sites for many proteins that are essential for the development of the early embryo. The discovery indicates that their absence, which can be determined by genetic testing, would point towards infertility of the eggs.

DOI of the publication: DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.10.003

Large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 can identify a person’s age, location, gender and income with up to 85 per cent accuracy simply by analysing their posts on social media.

But the AIs also picked up on subtler cues, like location-specific slang, and could estimate a salary range from a user’s profession and location.

Reference:

arXiv DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2310.07298

A simulation suggests that fine particles played a stronger role in cooling the planet and stalling photosynthesis after an asteroid impacted the Earth.

The study’s authors say that micrometer-size fine silicate dust lingered as long as 15 years in the atmosphere after the impact and contributed to the global cooling. Also, photosynthetic activity on Earth may have ceased completely within two weeks following the Chicxulub impact largely because of fine dust.

Nature Geoscience

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01290-4

It is not obvious why selection should favor menopause or the continued survival of individuals that can no longer reproduce. The famous Grandmother Hypothesis had been used to explain the evolutionary significance of menopause. A new study conducted on the Ngogo chimpanzees community of wild chimpanzees in Uganda challenges this hypothesis. Science 27 Oct 2023 Vol 382, Issue 6669 DOI: 10.1126/science.add547

Boston Dynamics turned its robot dog into a talking tour guide using AI as seen in a somewhat unsettling video posted by Boston Dynamics. Boston Dynamics used OpenAI’s ChatGPT API, along with some open-source large language models (LLM) to carefully train its responses. It then outfitted the bot with a speaker, added text-to-speech capabilities, and made its mouth mimic speech “like the mouth of a puppet.”

The version speaking in a British accent and the one of a Shakespearean time traveller had me 😂 but it's certainly a little unsettling overall.

Researchers have developed a new mechanism to make water droplets slip off surfaces, described in a paper published in Nature Chemistry. The discovery challenges existing ideas about friction between solid surfaces and water and opens up a new avenue for studying droplet slipperiness at the molecular level. The new technique has applications in a range of fields, including plumbing, optics, and the auto and maritime industries. Nature Chemistry. DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01346-3