Number 411
Math shows why your vote may not count the way you think it does
Mathematicians have shown that completely fair elections are—in a sense—impossible. No electoral system can guarantee both that local votes translate directly into local seats and that total seat distribution matches overall vote shares—not without an indefinitely growing parliament.
Beyond the nucleus, no other organelle in eukaryotic cells captures the public’s imagination quite like mitochondria: They are the engines of cellular energy production; they possess their own DNA, and they are passed from generation to generation from mothers to offspring.
Astronomers finally measure the full size of the largest known galaxy
The largest galaxies, called brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs), are products of hierarchical galaxy formation. They grow by absorbing smaller galaxies over billions of years. Their faint stellar halos blend smoothly into the intracluster medium—the diffuse gas and stars filling the space between galaxies in a cluster.
A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack
It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work researchers argue. The claim has huge implications for the safety of this technology, which is being used in more and more applications, from government and military systems to online shopping and health care.
Scientists identify fructose as a surprise driver of cancer spread
A new study from The Wistar Institute has uncovered an unexpected link between fructose—a common dietary sugar—and the spread of an aggressive form of ovarian cancer.
Invasive species emerge as a driver of human displacement, new research shows
The new study argues that biological invasions can erode natural resources vital to human security, forcing communities to abandon their land and livelihoods. Despite these impacts, the link between invasive species and human displacement has received little attention.
Tiny fossils crack a Cretaceous cold case
A 113-million-year-old marine murder mystery may finally be solved. Using chemical clues locked inside microscopic fossils,
Popular vs. reliable sources—a blind spot in how LLMs assess information
Giving LLMs access to external resources allows them to produce responses that are up to date and more comprehensive. If a model cannot reliably judge the reliability of external sources of information, however, it may generate text that is untrustworthy or inaccurate.
New technique pinpoints human DNA inherited from ‘ghost’ ancestors
Researchers have identified regions of DNA that humans inherited from two unknown ancestors as a result of long-ago interbreeding among modern humans and at least four other archaic human relatives.
Curious people embrace richer experiences, but cognitive test scores tell a more complicated story
Curiosity often gets credit as a booster for learning and brain health. Psychologists point out that curiosity “is continually exhibited throughout the lifespan” and is tied to several health advantages. Studies have shown that people who are curious about information tend to retain it better. Openness to experience has also been tied to more challenging activities and less cognitive decline in other longitudinal studies.
== think we had something on this before, but this is a good look at that number
What is a p-value? Expert explains the most misunderstood number in science
If you’ve ever tried to read a scientific paper, you’ve almost certainly run into a p-value. And if you found it confusing, you’re in good company: Plenty of working scientists misunderstand it too.
== in case anyone interested, fyi I have not read the paper
What Godzilla can teach us about Donald Trump
He tramples things without intending to. He was created by us. He never permanently goes away. In recent years, metaphorical representations of Donald Trump as the Japanese kaiju Godzilla have become common.
== British perspective, but we have also seen very few wasps or bees this sprint and summer,
== nothing like 5-10 years ago, though more bees than wasps this year
Where have all the wasps gone this summer?
Summer can be lovely—until a wasp turns up. Whether they present as an irritating picnic visitor or an uninvited attic guest, common social wasps are as much a part of our summer as festivals, sunscreen and the growing despair of how to entertain children who’ve forgotten how to be bored.
== yjc
Better guacamole? How avocado import rules helped cut Mexico’s water pollution
At picnics and World Cup watch parties across the United States this summer, people have been reaching for bowls of chips and guacamole. Most of that guacamole is made from avocados grown in Mexico—on orchards that, in what might come as a surprise, contribute less water pollution today than they did a decade ago.
How ancient red algae power extreme ecosystems and offer clues to life’s evolution
Ancient single-celled red algae that thrive in scalding, acidic waters are emerging as far more than specialized survivors.
Unique fossil reveals the internal organs of a 245-million-year-old marine reptile
This almost completely preserved fossil provides the first detailed view of this prehistoric animal’s entire skeleton and large parts of its digestive system. Various internal organs, such as the stomach, liver and intestines, have been clearly identified using modern analytical methods. This is the oldest known example of a largely complete digestive system in a reptile.
Why do humans keep pets? A new international study suggests that some of the behavioral foundations of human-animal companionship may have much deeper evolutionary roots than previously thought.
An ancient civilization of millions once flourished in the Amazon
New research conducted using airborne laser scanning reveals that a multicultural civilization that flourished in southwestern Amazonia between 600 BCE and 850 CE was home to millions of people. Spanning roughly 183,000 square kilometers (71,000 square miles), the Aquiry civilization built large centers for political and ritual purposes.
First 3D map reveals hidden thermal structure of nearby interstellar medium
The interstellar medium, the thin gas filling the space between stars, isn’t just empty space. It is the raw material for new stars and planets to eventually form. Whether that gas stays warm and diffuses or cools into dense clouds comes down to a balance between heating from starlight and cooling through radiation.
Exercise is well known for keeping the brain healthy, but does how we move matter as much as how much we move? In a recent study, researchers investigated whether sustained periods of physical activity offer greater long-term protection against dementia, depression and anxiety than the same amount of activity spread across shorter bursts.
The spacecraft NASA sent to rescue the falling Swift observatory is in trouble
In early July, NASA launched a spacecraft designed to rescue the Swift observatory, which is currently decaying at a faster rate than normal, in hopes that it could still collect data for scientists over the coming years. But now that spacecraft itself is in trouble, and the fate of the mission remains unclear.
== yjc, this is the site OpenAI’s LLM hacked
The Python Ecosystem That Changed AI Development
How one open-source ecosystem made state-of-the-art AI accessible.
== follow up
OpenAI’s Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face
In a new disclosure, OpenAI says its agent used exposed logins to gain access to at least four “publicly available services” in its quest to solve a test.
Your Brain Can Rewire Itself To Allow True Multitasking
Driving while listening to the radio; making breakfast while talking to the family; eating a sandwich while reading a book. Our daily lives are built on multitasking, but are our brains actually doing two things at once, or just switching very quickly between them?
== yjc, rather lengthy
The Most Beautiful Statistic: The History and the Science of the Humble Mean
The mean keeps making its usefulness felt in all sorts of situations, often in truly non-obvious ways
For long-term health, diet quality matters more than food processing level
The study of more than 200,000 people found that the overall quality of a person’s diet was strongly associated with their risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and death. However, these associations did not appear to substantially differ based on food processing levels.
Pelagic sargassum takes its name from sargaço, the Portuguese word for grape. When Portuguese navigators reached the region, they noticed the seaweed’s small, grape-like, air-filled bladders that keep it afloat. Christopher Columbus later wrote about encountering vast mats of it during his voyage to the Americas.
One grain to rule them all: History of rice as a global food
Rice is the most popular food in the world, providing sustenance to more than 3.5 billion people each day. Rice is deeply embedded in food, daily rituals, language and spirituality. It is easy to take it for granted. But where did rice come from? And how did it spread to become the foundation of global food security?
Cracking the axolotl code: How to regrow limbs and stay young
Minor cuts and scrapes usually heal in time, but losing a finger or a whole limb? For most vertebrates, that’s a done deal. Unless, of course, you’ve got the self-healing machinery of an axolotl.
‘Rivers in the sky’ influence marine heat waves
Marine heat waves are periods of abnormally high ocean temperatures that last for weeks or even months. Atmospheric rivers, meanwhile, are transient weather systems that often cause extreme rainfall and flooding over land.
Chicxulub’s lingering dust may have turned falling debris into a global firestorm
ixty-six million years ago, the six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) Chicxulub asteroid crash-landed in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and changed life on Earth forever. The reign of the dinosaurs ended, and only creatures that could shelter in burrows or shallow waters survived into the age of mammals that followed.
== likely a problem world wide
California drought may have pushed parts of the Sacramento Valley aquifer toward permanent collapse
Around a quarter of the U.S. food supply is grown in California’s Central Valley. Most of its crops, like rice, fruit trees and nut trees, are water-intensive and require extensive groundwater pumping during droughts. Over time, heavy water extraction has contributed to changes in the aquifer systems under the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys.
Brain fluid structure may flag future dementia risk years before diagnosis
Dementia, a progressive loss of memory and decline in mental function that can be caused by various neurological conditions, is estimated to affect more than 57 million people worldwide. Identifying specific biological and neural markers of this condition could help estimate the risk that individuals will develop it and potentially enable early interventions aimed at delaying its emergence or slowing its progression.
== yjc
‘Grumpy’ Pallas kittens on display at Japan zoo
The animals belong to one of the oldest living cat species and are native to the dry, rocky areas of Central Asia.
Moth wings reveal an unexpected ability to smell plant chemicals
Insect wings are bristling with senses, feeling the wind blowing and even tasting potential mates, but little was known about whether moth wings are equipped with a sense of smell.
Cameras attached to whale sharks capture krill chases never witnessed before
Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus)—the world’s biggest fish—are one of the most charismatic marine species. They connect with the hearts of anyone lucky enough to encounter them, making people deeply curious about their lives and invested in their conservation.
The surprising physics hiding in a single handful of beach sand
The same stuff people curse at the shore is quietly becoming one of the most important materials on Earth. And it’s starting to run short.
Why the future of fashion might involve wearing live fungi
The idea of having living fungi cover your body might not be the most appealing thing in the world. But what if it was part of a clothing fabric that could change color, protect you from UV rays and even repair its own tears?
Fossil footprints reveal body size and group dynamics of 1.4-million-year-old human relative
“The special thing about footprints scientifically is that they preserve an instant in time. They also allow people to relate to these fossils much more easily than an isolated piece of bone or jaw.”
Earth’s Biggest Disasters Strike In a Hidden Pattern Every 27 Million Years
Mass extinctions. Giant volcanic eruptions. Oceans suddenly deprived of oxygen. At first glance, Earth’s biggest geological disasters seem to have little in common beyond their sheer scale.
How ‘fire-generated thunderstorms’ make wildfires more deadly
The huge amount of heat generated by wildfires makes the air above the fire rise rapidly, carrying smoke, ash and water vapour high into the atmosphere. As the air rises, it cools and the water vapour condenses into a cloud.
== click the “Read this for free” link
The Best AI Tutor Is a 140-Line File You Can Edit
Open a folder on your computer and type one sentence: “teach me to taste wine, I want to be able to name a grape blind.” A minute later you have a private tutor. It interviews you about your goal, builds a curriculum around the gaps you actually have, quizzes you at the right difficulty, and remembers where you got stuck last week.
Persistent money struggles tied to faster brain aging
“Most studies on cognitive aging look at financial hardship at only a single point in time. Our study using several decades of data allows us to see that it is the accumulation of hardship over many years that is linked to the worst cognitive health outcomes, rather than occasional episodes of adversity.”
As retailers increasingly embrace artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and autonomous vehicles, a new retail model is beginning to emerge: mobile stores that drive directly to customers instead of waiting for customers to come to them.
Small tropical islands face dangerous humid heat by end of the century
Millions of people living on tropical islands could face a future of increasingly dangerous heat as climate change drives longer and more intense periods of humid conditions. While rising temperatures are often discussed as the main consequence of climate change, humidity plays a crucial role in determining how much heat the human body can tolerate. When the air is already full of moisture, sweat evaporates less effectively, making it harder for people to cool down.
Oxygen collisions at the LHC show new indications of extreme state of matter
Quark–gluon plasma is a state of matter that forms under intense pressure and at temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun. Under these extreme conditions, composite particles break down into quarks and the gluons that ordinarily hold them together. Scientists believe this was the state of the universe in the first microseconds after the Big Bang.
== probably not in my life time, repeat??
Scientists find compound that may help muscles stay strong as we age
Skeletal muscle is one of the first tissues to decline with age. This decline can lead to weakness, scarring, fat accumulation inside muscle and the loss of fast-twitch muscle fibers that are important for quick, powerful movements.
Could alien signals be hiding on a different radio channel?
Most radio SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) surveys have focused on frequencies between 1.42 and 1.66 GHz. This range is known as the “water hole” because it lies between the natural radio frequencies emitted by hydrogen and hydroxyl, two molecules whose combination forms water.
Drying Lakebeds Are Releasing Massive Amounts of Carbon, Study Finds
In many parts of the world, lakes are drying out at a scale so massive that scientists are warning they may be emitting enough greenhouse gases to rival our fossil fuel habit.
Professor Hides White Font in Midterm, Catches Students Using AI in the Stupidest Way Possible
Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, says that he used white font to hide a prompt telling an AI model to spew nonsense in the instructions for his mid-term. Unfortunately, it ended up working a little too well.
== given article below, had to include this one
A Promising Process For Nuclear Fuel Re-use and Disposal?
The standard plan for spent nuclear fuel is to wait it out. You pull the used bundles from a reactor, sit them in a pool of water for seven to ten years while the heat and radiation come down, seal them in concrete casks, and look for somewhere deep and geologically dull to leave them for the next hundred thousand years. Canada has been hunting for that burial site since the 1980s and still doesn’t have one in the ground.
== yjc, found it somewhat interesting
Canada remains anti-nuke, but its potential path to the bomb is getting shorterd
For decades, Canada’s official policy on nuclear weapons has been that they shouldn’t exist, and there is no sign that principle is about to be abandoned. But for reasons of history and geography, Canada is also one of the world’s non-nuclear countries with the easiest technical path to a nuclear weapon.
China is Creating a Herd of 100 Elite Yak Clones
The long-haired Himalayan cattle are a critical part of the region’s economy and culture. But both domestic yaks and their wild cousins have been facing threats for years, with some rare subspecies at risk of disappearing entirely.
“In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.”
— Winston Churchill