science

https://www.thenewlede.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Dear-President-Masotti.pdf

Osuna-Mascaró hopes the work will inspire scientists to pay more attention to farm animals as well. Though he’s largely studied chimpanzees and cockatoos until now, he wants to continue to work with cows. He’s even put a cow screensaver on his phone. “I think most animals are living a rich life and have something really interesting to tell us,” he says. “We just have to ask the right questions.”

The continuing row highlights long-standing tensions over clinical research trials in Africa that are proposed and run by researchers in other countries. African scientists say that the Guinea-Bissau study shows how political pressure, funding interests and fragmented oversight can push local health priorities aside.

...“The calculation results show enhancements of fusion yields by orders of magnitude with currently available intense low-frequency laser fields,” highlighted the study.

For a collision energy of 1 keV—a level where fusion is normally almost impossible—the application of a 1.55 eV low-frequency laser can transform the reaction rate.

At 10^20 W/cm² intensity, the fusion probability increases by three orders of magnitude, while increasing the intensity to 5×10^21 W/cm² boosts the efficiency by a staggering nine orders of magnitude.

This dramatic increase effectively makes fusion at 1 keV (relatively low temperature) as probable as fusion at 10 keV without laser assistance...

We’re not sure if it’s exciting or not that scientists just discovered new ‘lifeforms’ inside of our bodies. Tiny bits of RNA, smaller than a virus, colonize bacteria inside our mouths and guts and have the power to transfer information that can be read by a cell.

Dubbed ‘wildly weird’ by the team of Stanford scientists writing about the find in Nature, the discovery now has a name: obelisks. And we ... don’t really know their end goal.

“It’s insane,” said Mark Peifer, a cell and developmental biologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to Science. “The more we look, the more crazy things we see.”

Named obelisks because of their rod-shaped structures, they are even smaller than viruses, but they can still transmit instructions to cells. What they’re saying, however, we just don’t know.

It looks more like a worn sock than a fearsome predator. It moves slower than an escalator. By most accounts, it is a clumsy and near-sightless relic drifting in the twilight waters of the Arctic, lazily searching for food scraps.

But the Greenland shark, an animal one researcher (lovingly) said, “looks like it’s already dead”, is also one of the least understood, biologically enigmatic species on the planet.

But this month, scientists made a groundbreaking discovery: the sharks are not, in fact, blind. The newly published findings upend commonly held beliefs and expose the challenges of studying a shark that has long resisted the reaches of science. But the disruptive nature of the research also underscores the challenges scientists face in predicting how a rapidly changing climate might harm or help the elusive fish.

Link to the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-03097-0

Per the article,

"These sharks appear to have adapted their physiology to be able to optimize their energy use," Prof. Rummer said. "This work challenges the narrative that when things go wrong—such as warming oceans—that reproduction will be the first thing to go.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/33287055

Human penis size may indicate male attractiveness and fighting ability, with a larger size more attractive to women and more likely to intimidate rivals, according to Australian and South African researchers. The team asked more than 600 male and 200 female participants to rate computer-generated male figures that varied in height, body shape, and penis size. Women rated the figures’ sexual attractiveness, while men assessed how threatening they found them, both in terms of fighting ability and as a sexual rival. Women rated taller male figures with a higher shoulder-to-hip ratio (indicating a more V-shaped body) and a larger penis as being more attractive, but only up to a point, when further increases in penis size made little difference. Males also rated taller figures with more V-shaped bodies and larger penises as being more intimidating, both as sexual rivals and fighting opponents. But, in contrast to females, men consistently ranked males with ever larger penises as more of a sexual threat, suggesting they overestimate the importance of penis size in attracting a mate. These pressures may help explain why humans evolved larger penises than other primates, the authors conclude.