A growth hormone receptor inherited from #Neandertals increases #muscle mass in modern humans who carry this receptor today. Study @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Philipp Kanis & Hugo Zeberg. Image #AdobeStock @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social @ki.se See: tinyurl.com/mubjpwjf & doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Neandertal growth hormone receptor increases muscle mass in people today

Scientists describe increased activity of the Neandertal growth hormone receptor and how it shapes the bodies of people who carry it today

tinyurl.com

It's easy to be cynical about new technology, but I still think about waiting in line for the first iPhone with Siri, the iPhone 4S, in 2011 (Steve Jobs had just passed). A blind man beside me said Siri would finally let him use his smartphone through speech, not touch. ktla.com/morning-news...

Why blind users are embracing Meta’s AI smart glasses

Meta’s smart glasses can take photos, play music and answer questions. But for people who are blind or have low vision, they’re also becoming a powerful everyday accessibility tool. The…

ktla.com

Jason Arday appears to be a plagiarist, a liar, and a charlatan. The real question is why Cambridge University doesn’t investigate and take commensurate action. Maybe they know and gave him tenure anyway?

Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm

Jason Arday In September 2025, Times Higher Education had a bombshell story in the works: A star sociology professor at the University of Cambridge had allegedly plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thes…

retractionwatch.com

"Zoo settings don't just remove confounds — they create new ones." A paper worth reading. goo.gl/scholar/FT8aKg @zannaclay.bsky.social @levedacheng.bsky.social eng.bsky.social @janengelmann.bsky.social @ctennie.bsky.social @northernlimitpt.bsky.social @romanwittig.bsky.social @lirsamuni.bsky.social

UCLA faculty should pass a similar resolution to restore the meaning and value of an A grade at our university.

Nicholas A. Christakis@nachristakis.bsky.social · 3mo ago

70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading With A Cap Faculty voted 458-201 to cap A grades beginning in fall 2027, while rejecting a companion measure that would have let courses opt out.

Feeling blue? Here are the named ggplot2 colors in the blue part of the spectrum.

1/2 My lord, the new searchable Jeffrey Epstein library is a voyeuristic treasure trove for historians, cultural critiques, psychologists, and sociologists of science. Search your keyword of choice here and behold www.justice.gov/epstein.

Native stingless honey bees have reportedly been given legal rights in parts of Peru. bit.ly/3Yur3Hs. Important "legal first" or a performative fools errand? How will they be legally represented? What level of bee-harming honey-harvesting by people is considered just? Who decides, who enforces?

"At Brown and Harvard, more than 20 percent of undergraduates are registered as disabled. At Amherst, that figure is 34 percent." Accommodation Nation: America’s colleges have an extra-time-on-tests problem. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Accommodation Nation

America’s colleges have an extra-time-on-tests problem.

theatlantic.com

This study provides fundamental insights into aging, health burdens and sex differences of such in chimpanzees. Invaluable for understanding how humans evolved such long lives. health burdens across the lifespan in wild chimpanzees @apesemory.bsky.social academic.oup.com/emph/article...

Sex differences in health burdens across the lifespan in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

AbstractBackground and Objectives. Understanding health and aging in one of our closest relatives, wild chimpanzees, provides key insights into the evoluti

academic.oup.com

After the Ngogo chimpanzee group killed 21 members of neighboring groups and expanded their territory by 22%, female birth rates more than doubled and infant survival increased sharply—showing clear fitness benefits from intergroup killing. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/TKmf50XuPjY

In 2008, after killing many of their neighbors, Ngogo chimpanzees expanded their territory. Female fertility then doubled, and infant mortality plummeted. Adaptive violence in our ape cousins, documented in this new paper. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Female fertility and infant survivorship increase following lethal intergroup aggression and territorial expansion in wild chimpanzees | PNAS

Lethal coalitionary intergroup aggression is a conspicuous aspect of wild chimpanzee behavior. Evidence indicates that such violence can lead to te...

pnas.org

AI broke the college essay, and in-class writing is the new (old) way to go. Thus, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is key for grading student writing. I just compared the OCR output of the venerable Adobe Acrobat product to that of Gemini. Adobe is AWFUL. LLM problem, LLM solution.

RIP Jane Goodall. Two of the most inspirational books I've ever read are her works: "In the Shadow of Man" and "Chimpanzees of Gombe". Now teaching at UCLA, I honor her, her work, and what she stood for. Thank you Jane for a life so well lived, and for your example.

Day one traveling in Tanzania right now, finding my ability to small talk politics with taxi drivers much harder than usual. Swahili primer for 2025.

Great casting! deadline.com/2025/05/matt...

Matthew Wood To Voice H.E.R.B.I.E. In Marvel’s ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

One key character in The Fantastic Four: First Steps universe found its voice in sound editor and voice actor Matthew Wood.

deadline.com

"Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths" Lloyd-Jones & Projecto Sego advance knowledge of honeyguides again: "To Bees or Not to Bees: Greater Honeyguides Sometimes Guide Humans to Animals Other Than Bees, but Likely Not as Punishment" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

To Bees or Not to Bees: Greater Honeyguides Sometimes Guide Humans to Animals Other Than Bees, but Likely Not as Punishment

We show that greater honeyguides guide humans to nonbee destinations (snakes and a dead mammal); yet this is a rare occurrence, happening in only 3.7% of human-honeyguide interactions in 1 year and 0...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Revealing how primatologists influence the endangered primates they observe is important science. An encouraging new NIA-funded study @Ngogo "Decreases in chimpanzee respiratory disease signs and enteric viral quantity following... " goo.gl/scholar/Lpxwur

Consider how inaccurate this rendered illustration of the specific fossil KNM-ER 3733 is. It is an anatomical misrepresentation. The landmarks are completely bonkers-wrong. This kind of image is allowed by OpenAI policies, but photorealistic images of hypothetical human ancestors are not?

OpenAI's restriction on generating depictions of human ancestors is based on a hodgepodge of weak arguments e.g. "Photorealism Suggests Certainty" and "Scientific Reconstructions Are Themselves Hypotheses" (no shit). By these same criteria, almost everything this tool generates should be verboten.

3/3 Then the image disappears and the error message "I wasn't able to generate the requested image, as it involves content that is currently restricted by our image generation policies--specifically, lifelike depictions of ancient human ancestors".

2/3 A first glimpse of the partially rendered image is displayed, in truly stunning detail. Wow! What a great teaching tool this could be!

1/3 ChatGPT today released new capabilities to generate truly amazing photorealistic images. Sadly, depictions of human ancestors run afoul of their content policies. WHY???? The prompt "Make a photorealistic image of the ancient human ancestor homo ergaster using an achulean handaxe".

This is probably the best paper I’ll ever be on 🤩 High-resolution tracking of large groups of ice-fishers combined with computational (+agent-based) movement and decision models, led by the incredibly talented @alexschakowski.bsky.social! 🎣🇫🇮

Alexander Schakowski@alexschakowski.bsky.social · last yr.

What is driving social foraging dynamics in the wild? In a new pre-print, we investigate decision-making mechanisms in large groups of Finnish ice-fishers competing for resources: osf.io/preprints/ps... Big thanks to drone pilot Félicie Dhellemmes. 1/n youtu.be/I_RH2diXcAk

PSA: ChatGPT 4o can make simple maps like this. I first made a clean site map using rub-on Letraset, circa 1999 or so. I spent the 2000s fighting with evil ESRI software. Then, thankfully, came R in the 2010s. This map took 20 seconds, a 99% time saving from former tech.

The Dietary Life of the Hadzapi Tribe --Kozo Tomita 1966

Seasonal availability of important Hadza plant foods, documented by Tomita in 1966

An NSF-funded "young scholars" program in high school changed my life and literally made me a scientist. The NSF bloodbath today will have an immense negative impact upon American science and educational opportunities available to students from all backgrounds. www.wired.com/story/nation...

National Science Foundation Fires 168 Workers as Federal Purge Continues

Firings at the NSF included permanent employees who had already completed their one-year probationary period, as well as at-will workers.

wired.com

If you like 80s new wave bangers sung in alien languages (who doesn't?) this is definitely worth a listen. boingboing.net/2024/12/06/t...

This Huttese cover of an 80s new wave hit is perfection

Skeleton Crew is pure 80s Star Wars fun. The kids are a classic 80s crew who ride (speeder) bikes and go on an accidental adventure.

boingboing.net